Donald Trump or Barack Obama or George Bush or Franklin D. Roosevelt weren’t particularly dangerous until they obtained control of the state, and the same can be said of nearly every politician, dictator, and tyrant in history. What makes evil people so dangerous is that they can—often in an ostensibly legitimate manner—assume power over millions or even billions of other people.
Category: Thinking Out Loud
The Myth of ‘Good Government’
The history of the US is not that of good government gone bad, but of bad government remaining bad. Yes, it’s improved a bit in some areas even as it has worsened in others, but when it comes to its central evils—plundering, kidnapping, caging, and killing people—it continues to follow the pattern of cruel oppression which has always defined it.
Unparalleled Threat to Our Existence
Not a day goes by that I don’t hear about or talk to someone whose life has been irrevocably harmed by the state. If you haven’t yet experienced this, consider yourself fortunate, but please try to have some empathy for the millions of people who are languishing under state oppression.
To Initiate Force Against Certain Others
“It is acceptable and/or desirable to initiate force against __________.” How one fills in that blank is one of the central components of their ideology and worldview.
Let’s Try to Understand Before Casting Aside
I’m a firm believer in giving people enough rope to hang themselves, but I also try not to make judgments based on one or two often out-of-context comments.
Individualist, Voluntaryist, and a Human Being
I believe that if your actions neither pick my pocket nor break my leg, they’re none of my business. I believe in peaceful coexistence, voluntary transactions, and free markets.
State Intrusions into the Market
There is a tendency among certain libertarians (and among critics of libertarianism) to question how some problem they believe is currently being alleviated by the state would be dealt with in a free society. What they typically fail to comprehend is that the vast majority of problems which the state pretends to mitigate are actually caused primarily if not entirely by the state and its intrusions into the market.
UBI Proposals Prove Welfare Critics Have Been Right All Along
If there is anything positive to be said about the growing chorus of voices advocating a “Universal Basic Income” or UBI, it’s that the long-term critics of the welfare state have at last been proven correct. The flowery language of “safety nets” and “a hand up, not a handout” has always been a lie, and the proof is indisputable in this latest notion.
The Liberty of Man
The consistent libertarian is not “hostile to family, to religion, to tradition, to culture, and to civic or social institutions,” but he is also not necessarily supportive of any particular version of these things.
Liberty is Not About Politics
Politics is a distraction from the message and the philosophy of Liberty. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what politicians do or don’t do. It doesn’t matter which figurehead gets replaced by which lackey. Politics is the bread and circuses of our time.