Murray Rothbard understood that ownership of roads was a critical issue. It is now increasingly clear that the state is using its control of the roads to increase its power over us far beyond any issue of safety. Through its illegal roadblocks and checkpoints, the state can control our movement. We are quite helpless if we can’t travel and the statists never cease to repeat the lie that driving is not a right but a privilege. Sorry, driving is a natural right (freedom of movement) and one without which, in modern life, all the other rights can be destroyed or damaged.
Today, I have to drop all else and get permission of the state to drive on the roads I pay for. In the process, I have to sign an Orwellian statement that reads: “You must sign this consent” to have information sent to unknown bureaucracies and those under 26 must consent to be registered with the Selective Slavery System.
A few years ago, I thought someone needed to write a book on all this and if no one else did, I would. This was because the local liberals would frequently argue from road socialism to generalized socialism! Well, Walter Block did write such a book: The Privitization of Roads and Highways.
Update: We need to use words correctly and fight Orwellianism. Just as I call the schools “government schools” (thanks to the late Marshall Fritz, I call the roads, “road socialism” now. If anyone knows who coined this term, let me know and I will post that here.
8:13 am on December 11, 2009
