Liberty

What does it mean to be free? This video gives a short introduction to the philosophy of liberty.



I believe we have natural rights, that is to say each individual is sovereign and cannot be trampled upon, as demonstrated above life, liberty, and property should belong to the sovereign individual and not be violated. Government cannot endow you with rights, it can only trespass upon and violate them - declarations of human rights in law only serve to notify the government of certain aspects of our natural rights we are not willing to relinquish to the authority.

Interpreted correctly, it seems to me that ultimately, anarcho-capitalism is the most moral state of governance. I personally take a more moderate view on the state - it would be possible to get rid of the state completely, but humans form for themselves government in the absence of an authority, so it could be argued to be a pointless task to totally abolish the state.

Anarchy is something of a misconception in my opinion - in the absence of what we call 'government', people do govern themselves (rather than there being no government at all). There are laws, since each individual makes laws for themselves, and perhaps communities take it upon themselves to deal with those who have committed crime, in which case government exists at a very localised level anyway.

I believe in localised government, the more local the better generally, though the reality of the world and the cause of military defence in particular inhibit this kind of government from forming. Thus using a broader government (at the current national level) for the common defence (and as little else as possible) is one compromise that would be reasonable.

So, except for fundamentalist anarchists, we all trade liberty for security (to paraphrase Ben Franklin), on a regular basis. The difference which the US Founding Fathers understood, is that we at the very least needed a clear-cut declaration of "essential" (as Franklin said in the above quote) freedoms that shall not be restricted upon, such that the state that they created does not grow out of control.

But, as Keith Olbermann explained in 2006, those freedoms are...ahem...wait, where did they go?

(see 5:20 for the "Bill of Right".)


"The Brutal Police State of the UK"



How can we credibly oppose what the Taliban do, for example, after we idly rationalise the evil of our own tyranny?