Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Are You Part of the Reason Liberty is Dying?

Personally, there are a lot of activities I don't like. Guess what... my opinion is less than worthless. As long as you are not harming another innocent person I have no right to stop you, nor does government. In fact, since government is not a person, it has no "rights" at all.

Suppose your neighbor likes to get together with a group of like-minded people and lick stinging nettles and straddle electric fences on their own property. You may think they are crazy. You may decry the fact that they are harming themselves. You may even be disgusted at the fact that your neighbor gets a sexual thrill from his chosen activity. You can question the reasons behind it. You can try to convince your neighbor that he is damaging his body. But the second you try to use coercion, either personally or by attacking him with the state, you are doing wrong.

Now substitute a real-world activity for the nettles-and-electricity scenario (not claiming no ones does this, just that there are others easier to imagine). Do you love liberty enough to defend the right of the person doing the thing you hate the most, as long as they are not harming others? If not, why not?

Do you seek to throw the state at others in any way? Do you have any pet project that uses the state, but that you defend "just in this one instance"? Do you fall for the propaganda that serves to divide freedom lovers and empower the state as it attempts to control every aspect of our lives? Do you defend the speech rights of those who say hateful things, while still proclaiming that they are wrong, or do you seek to use the state to make them be quiet? If so, you are helping build government, not to dismantle it.

In this time of mega-state Big-Brotherism, we must fight even harder against those who would infringe on even the most bizarre and unpopular victimless activity. Otherwise we are playing right into the hands of the worse enemy human civilization has ever known: government. They know the game of "divide and conquer" and they have been using it for millennia. Don't play their game. Join with your neighbors and smash the state.


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