By Aaron
Cuevas
Based on the prologue of Ken
Schoolland's book, "The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible.”
Libertarianism & the Non-Aggression Principle
Libertarianism
finds its basis in the Non-Aggression Principle, which in turn it is based on the
idea of self-ownership or the fact that you own your body. Therefore, you own
your life. To deny it, is to imply that other people has a higher claim on your
life, than you do. However, no other person or group of persons owns your life
nor do you own their lives. As a consequence, you own your life, liberty, and
the product of your life and liberty. The choices you make about your life and
freedom is your prosperity. You exist in time: future, present, and past.
To lose your life is to lose your future. To lose your liberty is to lose your
present. To lose the product of your life and liberty is to lose your past, the
time when you developed and acquired what you own now.
The product of your life and liberty is your
property. Property is the fruit of your labor, the product of your energy and
talents. It is that part of nature that you transform into valuable use. And it
is the property of others that was given to you by voluntary exchange and
mutual consent. Two people who exchange property voluntarily are both better
off, or they wouldn't do it. Only they may rightfully make that decision for
themselves.
At times some people use force or fraud to take
from others without consent. The initiation of force to take life is murder, to
take liberty is slavery, and to take property is theft. It is the same whether
these actions are done by one person acting alone, by the many acting against a
few, or even by officials with uniforms and fancy titles.
You have the right to protect your own life,
liberty, and justly acquired property from the physical aggression of others.
So you may rightfully ask others to help protect your life, liberty, and all
the things you own. But you do not have a right to initiate force against the
life, liberty, or the property of others. Hence, you have no right to ask certain
people to initiate force against others on your behalf.
You have a right to seek leaders for yourself, but
would have no right to impose rulers on others. No matter how officials are
selected, they are humans just like everyone else; therefore, officials have no
rights or claims higher than those of any other human being. Regardless of the creative
labels for their behavior or the numbers of people supporting them, officials
have no right to murder, enslave, or steal. We cannot give them any rights that
we do not have ourselves.
Since you own your life, you are responsible for
your life. You do not rent your life, so others cannot demand your obedience.
Nor are you a slave to others, so they cannot demand that you act against your
will.
You choose your own goals based on your own values.
Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and to grow. Your
actions on behalf of others, or their actions on behalf of you, are only virtuous
when they are voluntary, when there is mutual consent. Virtue can only exist
when there is free choice, when there is no physical coercion.
This is the foundation of a truly free society. It is
not just the most practical, humanitarian, and productive foundation for human
cooperation; it is also the most ethical.
Problems that arise from the initiation of force by
government have a solution. The solution is for people of the world to stop
asking officials to initiate force on their behalf. Evil does not only arise from
evil people, but also from nice people who tolerate the initiation of force for
their preferred goals or outcomes. In this manner, good people have empowered
evil throughout history.
Living in a free society is to join the discovery process
of values, dreams, and happiness through voluntary cooperation, instead of
giving support or toleration to the imposition of goals by physical force.
Using government force to impose a vision or a dream on others is anti-social, intellectually
sloth, and the unintended consequences are perverse. Achieving a free society
requires courage to think, talk, and to act even under opposition and threats.
Libertarianism is the Non-Aggression Principle
applied to a person’s past, present, and future.
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