The philosophy of liberty

This says it all:

The Philosophy of Liberty is really the best, most concise, and most understandable explanation I have seen of how to determine what is right and wrong in the realm of politics.  Any law that cannot be justified on the basis of these principles is unjust.  Any time a freedom lover, anarchist, libertarian, or voluntaryist justifies force to violate these principles, he or she is making a terrible mistake.

I've seen people in these camps (or this camp) occasionally veer off of these principles for causes that might seem "left-wing" or "right-wing" or might not seem to fit into either category.  At the same time, I've seen people who've never even seen this presentation follow these principles perfectly.  This is what libertarianism is about (and all those other groups I listed above).  This is what morality is about.  Everything else involves initiating force against people who have done nothing wrong.

"Stimulus" means you are in a cage

Stimulus is for lab rats, not economies of free people. Give us freedom. Man shall be neither free nor prosperous until the last politician is strangled with the entrails of the last bureaucrat.

What we need is for the government to quit causing the boom-bust cycle. Given a free economy, the resources we have will be allocated optimally for satisfying human wants and producing wealth, making us all better off.

Instead, we get items like the Federal Reserve, and "stimulus" packages when it goes wrong. Naked transfers of money and power; blatant infringements on liberty.

If I were free, I would be able to keep the dollars I earn and use them to bless this society in a way profitable for me and others. If I were free, I would be able to start a business of my choice with no permission or regulation from the government, and again I would thus be able to bless this society to my own profit and for the benefit of others.

If you won't do it for me, at least do it for my neighbors: give us freedom. Give people permission to get out of this mess! Give people permission to say "this government is no longer acting to secure my rights to life, liberty, and property, and I renounce my association with it and will establish another, with my neighbors, which shall have its foundation laid on such principles and be organized in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Government cannot solve the problem. The United States government is the problem. If you do not like theft, murder, and infringement of liberty, then the biggest criminal in the world and the source of the vast majority of all of these things which you do not like is the United States government.

It's over. Let freedom ring.

Whole Foods bludgeoned by Mafia for serving the public

Right now, the Whole Foods Market chain is trying to buy the Wild Oats chain. This is an honorable move: Whole Foods is exchanging money that it has earned through serving society for a business with the consent of the owners of that business. Other than that, it's nobody else's business.

But the federal government is attempting to stop the trade. The federal government does not own Wild Oats, and therefore if they attempt to force their way on the subject, they are effectively stealing Wild Oats and/or Whole Foods. They may permit the true owners of these companies to retain some ownership rights, but as long as these owners have to get permission from some other party to do as they wish with what is their own, they are no longer truly owners, but instead stewards appointed by the true owners: government.

And that government says that it is representing you and me. I don't own a single share of either company. Do you? Could you explain why your agents are harassing these free citizens? If it's not moral for you to tell Wild Oats who they can and cannot sell their company to, then how did you delegate that authority to the government that is acting on your behalf and claims to derive its authority from you?

You can find a lot of writing demonstrating what a bad idea it is to allow government to forbid mergers and acquisitions that arise naturally in a free market. It harms all of us. But assuming you're a Christian reader, shouldn't it be enough to just know that God does not give us dominion over the property of other people, instead commanding us "Thou shalt not steal?"

You can also find Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's blog and read the case he makes, that Whole Foods purchasing Wild Oats will help, not harm, consumers. Of course it will help them! Whole Foods cannot make money without helping consumers. That's how businesses get consumers to give them money. The alternative is to steal the money, which can be accomplished by direct force or by using one's government to enact laws and use force indirectly. Isn't it strange that the government says it's a bad thing when Whole Foods tries to serve people, but says it's a good thing when they (the government) restrict private property rights and the free market and damage the market's ability to help people?

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." (Isaiah 5:20)

Optimus Prime and the rights of all sentient beings

Admittedly I liked the Transformers as a boy (I think every boy who was my age did). And admittedly I'm excited about the upcoming movie, which will be released tomorrow. And I'm particularly excited that Peter Cullen, the voice of the original Optimus Prime, will be reprising his role.

Optimus Prime was presented as the ultimate hero. He was completely noble, with perfectly pure motives. In multiple versions of the Transformers story (the cartoon and the comic books carried completely different stories, and the movie is starting yet another new version) that purity and nobility led him to give his life to save others. Sometimes multiple times -- it's science fiction, and that kind of thing happens.

Now as an adult I can ask serious questions like "Is it really good for kids to invest so much hero-worship in a fictional character, and an animated one at that?" And "if I'm using the word hero-worship, should I be a little worried, theologically?" And I definitely don't hold up Optimus Prime as the supreme example of morality, as I might've been more inclined to do at age seven or so. Obviously some people took Optimus Prime very seriously as a role model. And I confess I just bought a Softimus Prime for my second boy's first birthday. Probably he'll mostly just chew on it, not view it as a role model. (But it really transforms!)

But Optimus Prime got a lot of great heroic lines, and some of them taught good morality. And one of them forms the basis of my slogan for the work I do through this weblog and my writings and conversations elsewhere: "Secession is the right of all sentient beings."

Prime's original slogan was "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." What a great 80's American slogan, huh? :) No wonder Optimus Prime is conspicuously colored in red, white and blue. But the American ideology of freedom is a good one. At least when you mean true freedom, the ideology of the founders, not the ideology of today where we pretend that "democracy" means "freedom" instead of "everybody voting on taking turns violating freedom."

In our world we don't have freedom, because we're missing a particular right. Without that right, freedom is meaningless. Ironically, tomorrow, the day the Transformers movie comes out, is the day that we have set aside for the past 231 years to celebrate men exercising that right: the right to secede. But today we have eliminated that right, and we brainwash children to create a public that actually thinks that not having that right is a foundation of freedom. The mind boggles.

The founders recognized that government was not an institution that magically deserved blind obedience from its subjects. The Declaration of Independence specifically states that government is an institution created by men in order to protect rights. It states that people are free and have the right to abolish and reform that government and create their own whenever the government isn't securing their rights. And when people do establish their government, nothing permits them to commit their descendants to give that government perpetual fealty, generation after generation. Nothing permits them to take away their descendants' rights as expressed in the Declaration of July 4, 1776.

How many things can you name that your government does that do not secure rights? Will your government recognize your right to secede? And if you want to stay with your government, will you recognize the right of other people to make a different choice?

Optimus Prime teaches children that all sentient beings, anything that can think, anything which, as the Christian might say, "has a soul" deserves freedom. He teaches it on a child's level. But adults wrote the declaration of independence, and if the message of Independence Day really is true, then Secession really is the right of all sentient beings. I acknowledge your right to secede, and may I suggest that you celebrate Independence Day by acknowledging mine, and that of others?

Judge asserts right to raise my children

I resent this. Cocaine energy drink has been banned in Texas. (Not by passing a law, of course. By a judge.) Why do I resent this? I don't like the idea of drinking something named after a harmful drug. I don't take drugs. I do drink energy drinks, but I wouldn't drink this one. It honestly scares me. :) My kids wouldn't be allowed to drink any energy drinks at all.

So why do I resent it? Because I'm not raising my kids in a commune. Judges are supposed to make decisions about the law, not make decisions about how we should all raise our children. That judge asserted a right over my kids which he does not have, and that's wrong.

Once upon a time those who were in charge of this country made decisions based on liberty. Now the decisions are made based on what's best for "us".

Folks, "we" are not in this together, and I'm not going to allow you to raise my kids. And in turn, I'm not going to even attempt to raise yours.

The Cocaine energy drink people did not do anything wrong. They came up with a product which I find disgusting. They are not ambushing people in alleys and forcing them to buy this product. Instead they are just offering to sell it. If you don't like it, don't buy it. The Cocaine energy drink people are not your slaves. You don't have the right to tell them what to do. They exist for themselves and for God, not for you. They've chosen to serve a market. If you're not a part of that market, it's none of your business. They are not slaves to society. But this judge has enslaved them.

Manstealing is a sin.

What is permitted

Al Sharpton says, "We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves.".

Dear Al Sharpton,

Read the First Amendment.

It's a despicable thing to make hurtful comments based on someone's skin color. But it's an even more despicable thing to threaten to use the law to take away somebody's freedom, and to encourage a society that thinks it is right to decide what is and is not permitted for other people. The former hurts feelings. The latter ultimately results in either free people submitting to enslavement, or free people having government force used against them when they refuse to submit. In the end, when you tell people you think there should be a law against certain things they say, you are telling them that you authorize your representatives to act in your behalf and pick up a gun to threaten those people. That's not right, and it's far worse than simply saying something hurtful.

"We" don't need to have any such discussion, Mr. Sharpton. If I own a printing press, I'll decide what gets printed on it. If I own a radio station, I'll decide what gets broadcast on it. If you have a problem with that, get your own press or station and quit trying to take (or control) what doesn't belong to you.

Pizza for pesos, part two

Pizza Patrón has announced their intention to continue accepting the Mexican Peso at their stores. Good for them! I'm sure they are making a lot of money off of this service. Good for them! Unless somebody was using force to affect the transaction (for example, by pointing a gun at someone, or passing a law requiring authorities to point a gun at someone), such voluntary transactions mean that people were served, and society, on balance, advances. In general, they will prosper in proportion to the value of the service they provide.

Money liberty is a freedom we don't often think about. The authors of the United States Constitution intended American money to be limited to gold and silver. It is impossible for the government to inflate the supply of gold and silver. Inflation is a means of stealing some value from the entire money supply and using it to create new (stolen, counterfeit) money. It is a violation of Leviticus 19:35-36. Inflation does not add value to the total money supply; it merely redistributes the value that already exists. (And unlike other government programs, it usually doesn't make any pretense of redistributing the value to the poor. This value tends to go to bankers and other credit-driven industries like real estate.) After millenia of human existence, the free market had selected gold and silver as money, the medium of human exchange. Governments used force to confiscate gold from their citizens and force their populations to use paper money instead, giving government powers over the money supply, such as inflation. (They call this power "flexibility.")

The sole reason government insists on paper money is in order to have this power over the money supply. If left to the free market, trade would probably resume again in some commodity like gold or silver. Platinum has presented itself as a modern choice that some people think could be a good medium of exchange. In older times, some societies were known to trade in butter, cartwheels, and even cigarettes. But over time, gold and silver have always tended to win out as being the most convenient for trading.

If you own your property, you have the right to do whatever you want with it, including trade it to another property owner for whatever he is willing to trade for it. But we have decided that modern societies need to have limits on freedoms like this. We tell people they may keep their property, but then we limit what they may do with it. This is a violation of God's command that we honor private property: "Thou shalt not steal." If I tell you how to use your property, I've stolen it and left you as a mere custodian. On top of this fundamental abuse of freedom that occurred in order to bring about our present money situation, the whole reason for this system's existence is so that the government can create new dollars at will: in other words, so that the government can steal from every single dollar holder at once, any time it wishes. Is this a power that Christians should vote for?

The Constitution granted Congress the power to make coins out of gold and silver, and to establish their value. In its first act pertaining to money, the Congress declared the United States dollar would be equal to the amount of silver in a one ounce silver coin that was circulating at the time. This coin had a lengthy history: in the middle ages, some of the best silver coins came from the German area of Joachimsthal. The coins came to be known as the Joachimsthaler, or later the Thaler. If it's not obvious, this is where the name "dollar" came from. Eventually there were lots of sources for Thaler-sized coins, and they were all called Thalers or Dollars. It doesn't matter where an ounce of silver comes from as long as its the same weight as every other ounce.

Long before our modern paper money, the most popular coin for trade in America was a Thaler coin called the Spanish Milled Peso, or the Spanish Dollar. America's founders couldn't care less what was stamped on their silver and gold coins, as long as the coins were of the right valuable substance, and of the right weight. Even though America eventually started minting its own coins, Spanish Pesos and American Dollars circulated side by side for over a century. Nobody thought this was strange. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson -- all of them almost certainly traded in Spanish Pesos at some point in their lives, here in America.

Government came up with the idea that it should have a monopoly on coin production within its territory. It started teaching its people the idea that they should use only their own national coins, as a matter of national pride. Almost all governments did this. Eventually governments passed laws to try to require people to use their own national currencies in most day to day transactions. This was just a step on the road to currency the government could inflate. (If everybody can switch to gold or silver coins from another country or a private mint, then they will do so the minute the government starts issuing inflated coins with less gold or silver in them. Competition, the free market, protects people's interests far better than any government.) Search your Constitution -- you'll find the power to mint coins granted to the federal government, you'll find the power to mint coins and the power to issue paper money denied to the States, you'll find an amendment that says the federal government doesn't have any powers that aren't granted to it by the Constitution (this is in an Amendment because the original writers of the Constitution thought it was obvious). If you compare with the previous Articles of Confederation, you'll find that the phrase used to grant Congress the power to mint coins originally contained permission to issue paper money -- this was intentionally taken out when the sentence was moved to the Constitution. What you won't find in the Constitution is the right for the federal government to monopolize money. You won't find any sentence granting them the right to require people to use American coins. In 1920 it took an Amendment to the Constitution to give the federal government the right to outlaw alcohol. Why did it not take an Amendment to give Congress the power to monopolize money, or issue paper bills?

If you'll check this link, you can see how much value has been stolen from American dollars. Originally, a dollar was one ounce of silver, or one twentieth of an ounce of gold. How much silver is a dollar worth now? How much gold?

Given that America's founders used coins like the Spanish silver Peso interchangeably with American Dollars, and intended us to continue doing so, I find the uproar over Pizza Patrón's private business decision to take Mexican paper Pesos to be somewhat out of place. A more appropriate uproar would be one against the criminals in government who violated the Constitution and required us to start using fake paper dollars.

Pizza for pesos!

Pizza Patrón has announced their intention to continue accepting the Mexican Peso at their stores. Good for them! I'm sure they are making a lot of money off of this service. Good for them! Unless somebody was using force to affect the transaction (for example, by pointing a gun at someone, or passing a law requiring authorities to point a gun at someone), such voluntary transactions mean that people were served, and society, on balance, advances. In general, they will prosper in proportion to the value of the service they provide.

One reason people want to restrict immigration is because of security concerns. It's true that right now we are at great risk from people sneaking in to the country who might desire to harm us. We certainly need some diligence. But private property is a better way to resolve this. I don't let people on to my property unless I trust them. If we all followed the same policy, we'd be a lot safer than we are now. All of us would be on the lookout for dangerous or suspicious individuals. But unfortunately we have this "we are in this together" mindset about so much that "we" do. This mindset is just another name for socialism. We've socialized large portions of the land of this country, including land along the borders, and we've socialized the service of defending that land. The result of socialism is always that resources are misallocated.

Another reason people want to restrict immigration is to "protect American jobs." But this is a wrong position to take. There's nothing better about Americans than other people. It's not moral to use American guns to protect American jobs, period. Besides, America's economy would be better served if we allow the free market to make things more efficient. More efficient generally means lower costs, which generally means some people are going to have to find another line of work. Again, this is better for all of us.

People are also concerned about immigration because of our government's policy of giving so many free handouts. These handouts generally go even to illegal immigrants, and they consist of resources stolen from other people. Obviously these handouts are sinful and harmful, but as Walter Williams is fond of saying, "That's a problem of socialism, not a problem of freedom." In other words, if your socialism means you need to restrict my freedom, the real solution is that your socialism needs to be eliminated, not that my freedom should be curtailed.

God's immigration policy to Israel was amazingly broad: "You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Exodus 23:9) Over and over again the same sentiment is expressed. If somebody comes in, they are allowed to stay, unless they are stealing and harming people. Most of the thievery in our nation is committed by the government, not immigrants.

Prohibiting people from immigrating amounts to a sinful theft of property rights: you are denying people the freedom to do what they will with their own property, which is to decide who is and is not allowed on it. It's sinful. It's also economically harmful.

More on Pizza Patrón tomorrow.

Conscription is slavery

There's a beautiful fable that goes around in Christian circles, about a little boy who was asked to donate blood in order to save his brother's life. The little boy readily agrees, and upon beginning to draw the blood, the doctors learn that the little boy was under the impression he was going to give all of his blood and die for his brother. The story is a touching analogy of the love the Lord Jesus had for us in giving His life, and His blood, for our sakes.

But let's turn the tables a bit. Suppose a person is diagnosed with a rare disease, and we discover that he can only be cured with a substance obtainable from a particular baby boy. But obtaining this substance will require dismantling the boy. The boy must be killed if the man wants to live. Christians would rightfully call this murder and label a man despicable who would kill a baby, even to save his own life. (Whether the baby is born or unborn, I might add.)

It is a beautiful thing for a man to willingly give his life to save others. In fact, Jesus said no man has greater love than this (John 15:13). But it is abominable to require such a sacrifice from another without his consent.

No man has the right to the life of another. The enslavers of former centuries captured human beings and sold them as property. The truth of the matter is that we all belong to God, and since God decreed, "Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls" (Romans 14:4), then we are accountable to God, not to each other. Thus a legal system that is moral recognizes the self ownership of each individual, giving them the right to acknowledge their ownership by God or else live to themselves, with God, not the state, as Judge.

To exercise authority over other people is to assert that they are not owned by themselves, or by God, but by the one exercising authority. As Jesus said, such people like to call themselves "Benefactors," pretending that what they are doing is good for all concerned (Luke 22:25), but it is not to be so among us (22:26).

In America today every soldier serving in the military is doing so by his own consent. In fact, it makes me angry when people try to pretend that the stopgap measures that extend the tour of duty of some soldiers is somehow a "backdoor draft," because those soldiers agreed to those stopgap measures, and opposing these agreements means opposing the freedom of people to make agreements, the freedom of contract. (Not to mention that it unfairly accuses the authorities of doing something wrong, when all they are doing is relying on agreements that free people made to them. The authorities exercise immoral compulsion often, but this is not one of those instances.)

But it was not always so. Beginning in the time of Abraham Lincoln, the government asserted the authority to compel its citizens to fight for its defense. In short, the government asserted ownership rights over its people. It declared itself to be the master and the people to be slaves. It stole them from their rightful Owner.

If we agree that people have the right to self-defense, then we agree that they have the right to fight for themselves, their families, and their homes. We would also agree that they have the right to delegate this authority: to request help (volunteer or paid) in their own defense, to band together for common defense, to voluntarily appoint police or other authorities for the defense of their rights. But when do people have the right to compel others to fight for their defense? When do they have the right to compel others to furnish their resources and children for their defense? And if you say, "They have this right because they must do so in order to survive," then you are saying that the ends justify the means, and you need to explain to me why the terminally ill man can't kill a baby in order to survive. Because you are postulating a situation where a man is going to die and has the right to save his life by sending another grown man to a potential death.

If the threat is real enough, won't people band together for defense willingly? Many military and former military members I have known will tell you this is one of the reasons a volunteer army situation is far preferable to a draft: the volunteers believe in the cause being fought for. It worked for the Revolutionary War.

When you get to the point that the government is compelling people to fight in defense, you have reached the point where the government is less worried about preserving the lives and rights of its citizens and more worried about preserving its own survival. Institutions will fight like crazy in order to continue to exist, and to expand their own power.

The draft has been ended, and will hopefully never come back, but the government still requires registration of young men in order to continue asserting this right.

Do you have the right to the lives of others? Or are they owned by God? If they are owned by God, I hope you would never assert ownership rights over them.

Like all the other nations

In I Samuel 8, the Israelites sinfully ask the prophet and judge Samuel to "appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations." (8:5) Under the direction of the Lord, Samuel explains to them why this desire is not only sinful, but a bad idea, but "the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said, "No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations" (8:19-20) The result was disastrous in many ways, as any child with a mother can tell you that jumping off a bridge is still a bad idea even when all the other kids are doing it.

The United States was established after many years of improvement over the older model of government, monarchy. Under monarchy, a single human being ruled every citizen and had absolute power at whatever arbitrary level of detail he pleased. As we've seen, no such centralized authority can satisfy the needs of the whole society.

The United States was set up with certain restrictions on the power of its government. These may be seen in the Constitution. For example, no state was permitted to make anything but gold or silver a legal tender (and given that the Constitution strictly limits the powers of the federal government to those things explicitly included within it, and given that the Constitution permits the Congress to coin money, but not print it, the same is true of the Federal government as well. Unfortunately, while people of the early twentieth century correctly recognized that a Constitutional amendment was required in order to give the federal government the power to ban alcohol, nobody noticed when the government overstepped its bounds on this matter). The federal government was not permitted to pass laws restricting the freedom of speech, or of the press, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The Congress could not pass export taxes, or ex post facto laws. Titles of nobility could not be granted.

All of these restrictions on the power of the government were designed to preserve something that we can have only at the expense of the power and size of the government: freedom. Man's concept of government had evolved from the tyrannical monarch, with the power to do anything, no matter how cruel or selfish, to government as "a dangerous servant and a fearsome master" (according to George Washington). Its powers had to be sharply curtailed, or people could not be free. (And as we've seen, if people are not free, they cannot prosper.)

Unfortunately since the days of those wise but fallible men, much wisdom has been forgotten. The idea that government has any limits to its powers is out of vogue. The standard for judging what the nation is permitted to do is not the Constitution, nor any notions of morality, nor even any notions of what is best (Austrian economics has proved that what is best is for government to dissolve itself and get out of the way). Instead it is presumed that, as long as a vote is taken, the government may do anything any other "civilized" nation does.

Actually it didn't take long for people to forget (perhaps deliberately?) the limitations imposed by the Constitution. On your ten dollar bills is a man named Alexander Hamilton, who pressured the United States to establish a national bank, something not permitted. His rationale? All the other nations do it, so clearly this was something "necessary and proper" for a nation to do. He had a bunch of other schemes he wanted the government to enact as well, a philosophy called "The American System," which was really a system of mercantilism, or an early example of cronyism. (It had to be called the "American" system to distinguish it from the systems of all the other nations, upon which it was based.) You can read a bit more about The American System and find out who eventually enacted it with help from Google. By the way, Hamilton's image goes great on that ten dollar bill, which is an unconstitutional form of money specifically left out of the Constitution. And as any of the anti-Hamiltonian founding fathers could have told you, the results of Hamilton's actions is that ten dollars is worth a lot less than it used to be. (Ten dollars was originally defined as one-half of an ounce of gold. Use this link to check the current price of gold and see how much half an ounce is worth now. The gold isn't worth more; what's changed is that the dollar is worth less. All that value was plundered by the government.)

How about all the other great things that other nations do? Socialized health care? We want it. Why does it matter if the Constitution permits it or not? Compulsory education? That was based on the system Prussia had. Originally it had to be a matter for the states alone, because the federal government wasn't permitted to address it, as it was not in the Constitution. But after about two generations of state-level compulsory (socialized) education, nobody remembered why that mattered, and today we pass national education bills without ever consulting a judge or a lawyer or a literate person to see if the Constitution permits it.

In the early days of the U.S., the great desire of every man was to learn from the lessons of history and construct a government that was different from the others. Today, I'm afraid, we sound more like the Israelites. And if we don't ever ask, "Why didn't the founders include this in the Constitution, when other countries thought it was a great idea?" perhaps we, like they, deserve what we get.