DONT INIATE VIOLENCE ON PEACFUL PEOPLE. PERIOD.
Voluntarism (psychology), the doctrine that the power of the will organizes the mind's content into higher-level thought processes. Voluntaryism, a libertarian ideology based on contractualism and the absence of initiatory force or coerced association by any person, state, or collective.
NOT ONE MORE
NOT ONE MORE WAR
NOT ONE MORE LOCKDOWN
NOT ONE MORE BAILOUT
NOT ONE MORE MANDATE
NOT ONE MORE PEACEFUL PERSON LOCKED IN A CAGE FOR VICTIMLESS CRIME !
Interactions between citizens and other citizens, including agents of the state should be voluntary as much as possible. We should view all non-voluntary interactions, or interactions where someone is innating force on another or their property, with carful skepticism. We should assume the person initiating force is in the wrong unless proven otherwise.
WE SHOULD ALWAYS LEAN IN THE DIRECTION OF VOLUNRATY INTERACTIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS. NO VIOLENT FORCE.
These rules are generally already in-place for regular citizens. Agents of the state have been granted a monopoly on the inhiation of force. Over the centuries these powers of force and violence have grown tremendously. The monopoly of, and expansion of initiation of force by government agents has resulted in:
1. The criminalization of millions of peaceful American citizens, locking them in dangerous government cages with actual violent criminals and violating their civil rights. Drug prohibition has also destabilized entire countries and directed hundreds of billions of dollars per year into the hand of violent criminals in the black market.
2. A military industrial complex expanded to police the world paid for on the backs of American tax payers while the rest of the western world benefits and others get invaded.
3. Blow back from interventionist military operations that take the form terrorist attacks.
4. An education system that has fallen to the bottom of the world ranking for industrialized modern countries. Higher education costs have sky-rocketed and reduced in value.
5. Astronomical medical costs and in-efficiency. High drug prices and reduced quality of care.
6. The militarization and expansion of our police force as they attempt to police the personal lives of 350 million freedom loving citizens.
7. A fait currency system controlled by a secretive private bank that taxes the poorest American by diluting the value of their currency and keeping the government in perpetual debt.
8. Corporatism / cronyism infested the legislature in order for lobbyist to control the centralized use of force in the direction of their dominance over people and markets.
9. An ever expanding tax and spend Ponzi scheme that has resulted in the United States being over 20 trillion dollars in debt.
10. Over regulation of both citizens and small business.
The list goes on and on....
There is one single principal responsible for understanding these crises.
It is simple, efficient, effective and predictive.
THE NON-AGRESSION PRINCIPAL.
This is the essence of VOLUNTARISM.
The idea that we should always move towards maximizing how many interactions are done voluntarily by free people, and minimalize how often physical force is initiated on people or their property by any person or entity.
Non-aggression is not an absolutist answer, its not a hard rule for all situations. It is surely not a fix-all.
Non-aggression is simply the direction we need to move in, it needs to be the main consideration when granting authority to the government or any other entity.
Libertarianism is based on a single ideal, the non-aggression principle, so libertarian rhetoric tends to be remarkably consistent. Libertarians oppose the initiation of force to achieve social or political goals. They reject “first-strike” force, fraud or theft against others; they only use force in self-defense.
Those who violate this “non-aggression principle” are expected to make their victims whole as much as possible. This “Good Neighbor Policy” is what most of us were taught as children. We were told not to lie, cheat, steal, not to strike our playmates unless they hit us first. If we broke a friend’s toy, we were expected to replace it.
Most of us still practice what we learned as children with other individuals, but we have grown accustomed to letting government aggress against others when we think we benefit. Consequently, our world is full of poverty and strife, instead of the harmony and abundance that freedom (i.e., freedom from aggression) brings.
Simply put, libertarians take the non-aggression principle that most people implicitly follow in their interactions with other individuals, and apply it to group actions, including government actions, as well.
You might have heard the Libertarian Party (LP) referred to as the “Party of Principle.” This is because the LP bases its programs and policy positions on the non-aggression principle.
Government is coercion because it takes (taxes) without providing any real value
The free market could provide what the government does, far better, and without coercion
The government is not “us”, it’s just the politicians in charge, and it only serves their interest
The government needs support from the people to keep on stealing
The State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion
How the Government Secures Support
The government has many techniques to secure support, including:
Bureaucrats’ vested interests: the small class of people who do benefit from the government handouts, and often work for the government
Religion: especially in the old days, the king was either in cahoots with the religious leaders, or he was a god himself
Tradition: the “way we were” and respecting history ad our ancestors becomes a way to legitimize the present and the future
Spreading fear: the government serves as protection against invading armies, and marauders
Judiciary system: what’s “constitutional” becomes legitimate (see below)
“Inevitability”: if the state and government seem “inevitable”, then people never even think about a world without the state, or come to accept it with passive resignation (ie.: “only death and taxes are certain”)
Guilt-tripping: by making people feel guilty and greedy for amassing resources and pursuing individual wealth without “giving back”
Nationalism: political manipulation is all about fusing people’s personal identity with the state. When people mistake their identity for their “land”, then being good citizens means they need to work for that state, or provide protection to it. And that way, they end up serving the political elites to their own detriment (see first quote)
Intellectuals: they are the opinion-swayers, they spread the misinformation that the government is necessary to society, to provide basic services and/or to stop evil, and thus intellectuals prop-up the government by giving it legitimacy. They include professors, authors, speakers, etc.
Why Intellectuals Support the State
The state needs intellectuals to provide the government with legitimacy.
Intellectuals also need the state, since intellectuals by themselves are not well-positioned to earn a living and make money.
So the state offers them a job, and a salary. And it becomes an exchange of “money for support”.
The Judiciary Support the State
Theoretically, the judiciary and legal apparatus in most democracies is independent of the government. But, in truth, courts and judges do the bidding of the government.
Rothbard says that the Constitution interpreted by a judiciary supposedly independent of the other branches of government places limits on the government. But the constitution’s limits tend to be ever-broadened, and the judiciary can then provide a stamp of legitimacy to whatever it approves as “constitutional”.
Says Rothbard quoting Charles Black:
The State has, in the process, largely transformed judicial review itself from a limiting device to yet another instrument for furnishing ideological legitimacy to the government’s actions. For if a judicial decree of “unconstitutional” is a mighty check to government power, an implicit or explicit verdict of “constitutional” is a mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance of ever-greater government power.
The State Prioritizes Power & Self-Preservation
The state fears anything that limits or takes away its power.
The state can only be overthrown by:
War
Revolution
So the state focuses all its propaganda and effort on those two issues. In war, the state manipulates people into believing that they need to fight for self-defense. This is why the gravest crimes for the state are the refusal to fight, or the fight against the state itself.
I felt that Rothbard makes a great point here. I quote him:
We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax.
Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’etre.
DISCLAIMER: This blog post is mostly the combination of other people’s work. Please see the SOURCES at the bottom of the page for original authors of content that was combined and organized in this post.
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