Home

Freedom 101

Submitted by Staff on Fri, 2024-05-20 12:00.


The ten pillars of freedom, including a visit with libertarian grand strategy

Our lives mostly occur in a social context, not on a desert island.  Therefore, the rules of that society must be conducive to the ability of individuals to think and to act for their own lives.  Society, therefore, must exist in a condition of what is commonly called freedom, or liberty.

For a site that calls itself from Reason to Freedom, a description of freedom is as essential as a description of reason.  Freedom, in the simplest terms, is the condition of human existence in which an individual is unimpeded by others in the pursuit of his or her values, as well as being protected from the arbitrary actions of authority. 

The context of this column/article is American political reality, and at the moment Americans are at the culmination of roughly a century of unchallenged statism.  The culture is morally bankrupt.  The nation’s piggy bank is economically bankrupt… because we’ve had nothing but packs of looters in the government all these years.  Looters of both major varieties: Left, right, left, right.  Any way you look at it you lose.  [The National Debt is currently: $7+ Trillion.  Your individual portion about $30,000.(1)  —Ed.]

Surely, so too have other Western (not to mention non-Western) governments been guilty of massive looting of their citizens.  But America is a now the clear "free" world leader in the looting growth industry.  In America, "freedom was the original idea," to quote a famous Libertarian presidential campaign slogan.  So the sense of betrayal is especially devastating to those of us with traditional American memories and principles.

More than the looting though, there’s that part of tyranny that doesn’t have any mundane objective.  A large part of our current descent into Orwellian hell is driven by the purely psychopathological "power over people" thing, i.e. the state pushing people around, beating them up, putting them in jail, and killing them because the people won’t obey arbitrary state edicts.

The drug wars in this country are the quintessence of our descent into "do-as-I say-or-I’ll pound-you-to-a-bloody-pulp" despotism.  On the foreign front, the obscenity of the United States’ war on Iraq and Afghanistan kills or maims tens of thousands of foreign people on a continuing bipartisan basis [last best estimate was over 100,000 civilians  —Ed.].  Both wars are acts of criminals, criminals who will hopefully soon be suitably prosecuted by freedom-loving citizens under authority of the US Constitution.

When we reclaim the Bill of Rights in America, the next step will be to let freedom ring to the entire planet.  We will live up to the promise of the Statue of Liberty, send a beacon for the nonaggression principle around the world, bring home our troops carrying out aggressive policies, protect our soil from the aggressors who remain, cooperate with other nations in ending terror operations by states and by sundry nomadic lunatics.

Just giving you an image of the not-too-distant future in store for us if freedom wins. 

It’s important for freedom to win.  I have a personal stake in it.  We all do.  A group of savages screaming "Freedom Now!" doesn’t work.  The achievement of political freedom requires reason and reasoning, and that’s what we’re going to convey herein.

The summary of the ten pillars of freedom appears in the table below, which is followed by a detailed walkthrough of each principle.

Table 1: The Ten Pillars of Freedom

#

 Pillar Revealing Quote Meaning
1 Right "The divine rights of you."

The concept of individual rights was well developed in the thinking of the Founders, mainly from philosophers of the Enlightenment.  The concept "right" links reality, man’s life qua man, ethics (e.g. the concept of right and wrong), and politics.  Rights: life, liberty, property.
2 Life "You own yourself." The first right, derived from nature.  Obviously, if human life in nature is good, then we each have the right to take the actions it requires and to enjoy the product of those actions.  Whose life?  One’s own.  Nature does not divorce the actor from the moral purpose of his action.
3 Liberty "Whose life is it, anyway?" Liberty in this context means the right of an individual to make decisions about his actions, regardless of whether those actions are objectively beneficial.  "Libertarians are prochoice on everything."  It’s your life.  No one has the right to force you to do or not to do anything.
4 Property "No manna from heaven." Human beings are material living organisms.  We can’t live on lotus flowers and pixie dust.  What we develop from the land, or create from our minds, or gain in voluntary exchange with others is our property.  A country without property rights is a country of masters and slaves.
5 Nonaggression "Keep your hands off your neighbor." The simplest expression of the freedom/libertarian philosophy is the nonaggression principle: no one has the right to initiate force against another.  No one can properly start the use of force.  Laissez nous faire.  Live and let live.  You don’t get to push me around.
6 Protection "Sole reason for government." The nonaggression principle implies the only valid use of force is in retaliation or defense, and only against those who initiate its usefor being aggressed upon.  If it is wrong to initiate force against someone, it is right to defend and compensate against those who do choose to violate the principle.  ["Pre-emptive" war is not only condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal, it also violates international law, UN resolutions, the Geneva Convention, and is a clear violation of the nonaggression principle]
7 Law "Versus the alternative of Hatfields and McCoys." The concept of law presupposes (depends upon) the concept of natural rights.  The purpose of the law is to settle conflicting claims—the world isn’t perfect and mistakes are possible—as well as to place the criminal law under objective control, avoiding range wars/blood feuds.
8 Government "The night-watchman state." It may not be possible to construct a noncoercive government—the agency given a monopoly on force in a given geographical area.  A minimal government is better than roving gangs of bandits, but only if confined in writing to the minimal functionality: protecting rights.
9 Services "TANSTAFL" There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.  Also, if you want it, we won’t stop you from paying for it.  The minimalist idea is no service aside from protection of rights is a valid province of the state.  Education, transportation, welfare, trash removal, day care belong entirely to the people.
10 Strategy "How best to get to point B." Objective reality is glum on early 21st century Earth, but it’s darkest just before the dawn.  The reason movement is afoot, and the liberty movement has been in progress for some years.  The force of these together is overwhelming; here’s how best to win the day, soonest.

These pillars are intended mainly as tools of understanding, the exact term isn’t so important as the need to cover the associated concept.  The principles proceed from the abstract to the specific.  Then, because people of integrity need to act on their convictions, we suggest some practical action under the category of strategy.(2)


  1. Prior to 1950 the democrats were the Debt increasers and afterwards the Republicans have been the debt increasers.  http://zfacts.com/p/318.html  A great deal of additional information, and some things you can do to prepare, can be obtained from http://www.alkalizeforhealth.net/Ldebtclock.htm back to text
  2. As a practical man’s guide to libertarianism—both its understanding and its implementation—I can think of no better work than David Bergland’s Libertarianism in One Lesson: Bergland, David, Libertarianism in One Lesson, Eighth Edition.  Orpheus Publications, Huntington Beach, CA, 2004, 158 pp. back to text
  3. We’ve noted this before, on the use of the historical male gender pronoun to denote both genders—for tradition, consistency, convenience, and readability. back to text
  4. The rational libertarian position on abortion is that the choice of terminating a pregnancy belongs to the woman.  A woman is a person; a fertilized egg is not a person.  Rights pertain to persons.  When pregnancy cannot be avoided or is unforeseen, abortion can be the moral alternative—the moral standard being the life and happiness of the woman (person).  Regardless of any moral considerations about the act itself, the state has no right to intrude on a woman’s body, on her person, for any reason—either to compel or to prohibit gestation and birth. This is the only rational libertarian position.  The same arguments apply to euthanasia; the voluntary choices of persons are all that matters. back to text
  5. The two comprehensive works most often cited as foundations of libertarian economics are Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises and Man, Economy, and the State, by Murray Rothbard.  I’d also like to throw in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Ayn Rand’s (a series of essays) Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal; these are premier, though more rational rights-focused, works in the context of economic reality. back to text
  6. Masters, Bill. Drug War Addiction. Lonedell, MO: Accurate Press, 2001. back to text
  7. Consider the treatment of government by radical individualist-anarchist, Lysander Spooner, in his work, No Treason, The Constitution of No Authority. back to text
  8. Ray Kurzwell and Terry Grossman, MD. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, dist. by Holtzbrinck Publishers, 2004. back to text
  9. Florida, Richard, The Rise of the Creative Class. Perseus Basic Books, Cambridge, MA, 2002. back to text
Bookmark/Search this post with:
  • Delicious
  • Magnoliacom
  • Facebook
»