"…the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection."
~ Etienne de la Botie
That which occupies the minds of the majority of men manifests itself in their rule. Thus, when we, as consumers and subjects, embrace the machinations of the state as they are endorsed by the media and entertainment industry, we perpetuate our subjugation happily and ignorantly. When we cannot imagine a solution that is not stamped with the royal seal, we cannot imagine liberty.
Herein lies the greatest deterrent to the reclamation of our physical liberty. That which we cannot imagine, we cannot achieve. In other words, physical liberty, the right of man to do as he pleases short of aggression against his fellows and absent violence or threat from any authority, depends entirely upon his ability to conceive of it.
We have come quite a distance from the ideals that inspired the secession of the various colonies from the British crown, and that distance has all been in the wrong direction. No sooner had freedom been won before Washington ordered a band of government thugs to ride to Pennsylvania to put down the tax protest later dubbed the Whiskey Rebellion. This occurrence exemplifies the fact that government cannot, will not and has no capacity or incentive to protect the lives, liberties or properties of its subjects. Government always begets more government. It is the task of all men to jealously protect their own property against the predations of the State.
Property begins with our minds and bodies. Simply stated, we each own ourselves. By putting our minds and/or bodies to the task of labor, we create something uniquely our own: our property. The drafters of the US Constitution did not create the right to be secure in that property. They only encoded it in language. That primary right is God-given and cannot, as a result, be transferred to another. To protect our physical property, we must first understand that it belongs to us and why. Once we understand this, we must conclude that no man or collection of men may forcibly, or otherwise, take away our right to own it.
This brings us to the role of government. Government enjoys, as Murray Rothbard pointed out, a monopoly on violence. Stripped bare, government's role is to transfer, at the point of a gun, the property of one individual to another. That this runs counter to everything that we know of property precludes government's legitimacy in any form.
We, as individuals, must each come to this conclusion and hold it foremost in our minds before we may live free of the clutching and grasping of the State. Freedom in mind begets freedom in action. We each have a responsibility to ourselves and to God to maintain that freedom. It begins with a thought.
April 19, 2007
