NAP

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.