Even some totally imaginary things have been used as excuses to limit or deny natural human rights of some people. Things like nationality or “citizenship”, for example.
Tag: citizens
Why School Vouchers are a Terrible Idea
My own opposition comes from a very different direction: I’m against vouchers not because they might damage, or fail to replicate, the existing system, but because they threaten to make “private” alternatives more LIKE that system.
Foreign Policy, Part I
While I favor Agorism, Voluntaryism, and Anarcho-Capitalism, I do have a solid knowledge base on the United States Constitutional Republic. This article will focus on normative foreign policy in this context, and later articles will deal with more philosophically palatable foreign policy questions.
Trail of Tears
Andrew Jackson, no doubt, had lots of statist policy justifications for implementing the Trail of Tears and similar enslavements of fellow human beings. He may have even quoted Biblical alibis. Abraham Lincoln may have had lots of bureaucratic babel to spend on excuses for his bringing a country to civil war.
Freedom, Not Force, Creates Lifelong Learners
As author Ray Bradbury famously said: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” If we want an educated and engaged citizenry, with a passion for reading and knowledge and ongoing self-improvement, then perhaps “free choice” should be the norm rather than the exception.
Freedom Begins in the Mind
There is no such thing as a ‘free country’ or a ‘free state’ because freedom is not an attribute of a country or a state. There are free individuals and a group of free individuals could comprise a free society, but freedom is fundamentally incompatible with centralized or even external governance. Stop wasting your time trying to create a free country and focus on actually being free.
A Public Choice Perspective on Trade
Let’s say you could make a strictly economic case for government interference with people’s trading activities, that is, with their ability to cooperate freely with others across the world. (I have no idea what “strictly economic case” even means, but stay with me.) Would we free traders have to give up? No way.
Scott Adams on Guns
It is in every decent person’s self-interest to encourage gun ownership for everyone. Even if I go crazy and try to kill an innocent person, and they shoot me in self-defense, I completely support their right to do so. Maybe knowing they are armed would help keep me sane, or scare me into not attacking them even if I go nuts.
We Rule: A Socratic Dialogue
Socrates: Instead of spreading allegedly noble lies about Athenians or barbarians, my dear Glaucon, let us spread the noble truth that civilization is the product of human knowledge and human effort – and celebrate both wherever they may be found.
The Welfare State: Where’s the Freedom and Responsibility?
The number of people on benefits is growing, while the relative number of people supporting those benefits is decreasing. There was a time when there were no benefits, and people were expected to exercise personal responsibility regarding their financial situation. Now, as much as 70% of American families receive more from the government than they pay in taxes. This is not sustainable, any more than it is moral.