Thomas Jefferson, like many libertarians today, understood the basic principles, but created carve-outs in his attempts to impose his view of how the world should work on others. That’s the thing about principles, though; they don’t have exceptions.
Category: Thinking Out Loud
Deny Bakery Service? Go to Jail. Deny Airline Service? The Law Will Help You!
In America, if you are a small bakery and you decline to do business with someone—with no contracts broken and no money paid—you can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and lose your business.
Failing to Illicit Their Ire
I find it disheartening that some people resent and condemn the slow relinquishment of superstitious and puritanical prohibitions against voluntary pleasure, yet fail to acknowledge the blatant immorality and wanton destruction perpetrated by the state.
Why the Insurance Model Doesn’t Work for Healthcare
Healthcare is costing Americans trillions of dollars every year, yet they keep demanding more and more of it—all at little or no cost to themselves, of course.
Nobody Has a Right to Healthcare
No, Obama, the goods and services which are categorized as healthcare are most certainly not a “right for everybody.” Such goods and services can only be obtained through purchase, charity, or theft.
Creating Millions of Victims Annually
The greatest danger that you face as an American is not terrorism or violent crime or immigration or North Korea or Iran or climate change or loss of medical insurance or any of the other things the media and politicians tell you to fear—it’s your own government and the maliciously evil criminal prosecution system it has created to destroy you.
Collectivist Thinking Leads to Atrocities
Collectivist thinking isn’t just about being cliquish or rude to others; carried to its natural extreme, it allows individuals to imagine a conflict where none exists and to use that imaginary conflict as an excuse for the most barbaric of behaviors.
If Republicans Had Balls, They’d Repeal Obamacare in Full
The Republican “alternative” to Obamacare isn’t a repeal, but merely a few clumsy modifications which fail to address the original law’s most blatant shortcomings.
Life Isn’t Perfect, and Neither is Justice
I readily admit that some crimes are so heinous, full restoration is impossible. A life taken cannot be restored. Innocence lost cannot be reclaimed. Life isn’t perfect and therefore neither is justice. These facts are equally true in a retributive system of justice as they are in a restorative one. A murder victim is no less dead because his killer is executed by the state. A rape victim is no less victimized because her killer is locked in a cage for a decade. Retribution is popular because it feels good. Hurting someone who hurt us satisfies a primal urge. That doesn’t make it right.
The Malevolence of The Right
As a libertarian, I consider myself outside of the “political spectrum” of left versus right. That said, if I must partner with either a liberal whose greatest sin is his willingness to steal money for humanitarian endeavors or a conservative who gleefully calls for the kidnapping and caging of peaceful people because they grow plants or ingest chemicals of which he does not approve, I will choose the liberal.