Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Stop looking so hard for disagreements

Stop looking so hard for disagreements

We who love liberty should not be forced to join together in order to survive. After all "to each his own" is at the foundation of our values. The simple reality is that there is strength in numbers, and as individuals we are easier to surround and defeat. As long as a majority of people believe coercive, external government is acceptable, this will always be a danger. I am not saying liberty is necessarily more elusive for the individual who has no one watching his back, but it is nice to have others you can count on in a pinch. Yet, disagreements over the word "libertarian" and issues like abortion continue to keep us divided. This prevents us from mounting an effective defense against the Orcs of statism. This is very unfortunate.

A big part of the superiority of libertarianism is that we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that each individual is valuable. This is not just a trite saying, as it is with authoritarians who parrot the idea, but is deeply thought out and lived with consistency. We know that "groups" are only as good as each member treats each other member and non-member, and deserve only as much respect as they each, individually, give to every other individual. This clashes with the authoritarian mindset which values the collective over the individual and ignores the fact that without the individual, there is nothing. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" only has merit if each one of those "few" comes to that conclusion on his own, and not through intimidation or coercion. Otherwise, it is a philosophy of death and destruction.

You, as an individual who understands and loves liberty, have plenty of opposition without trying to look for reasons to disagree with other "libertarians". I want to look for reasons to agree; not to argue.