Free and equal: Liberty and natural rights

Subject: Free and equal: Liberty and natural rights Sun Feb 06, 2022 9:23 pm

As ~~the great libertarian political philosopher~~ Robert Nozick wrote, “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them.” On this rock libertarianism is built. Human dignity is central to the philosophy of liberty. Each and every one of us has rights against aggression by others. These rights are the bulwark of justice. In a just society, every man receives his due. Before all else, he is due freedom.

Free and equal: Liberty and natural rights 0b428927-285a-4bf0-b181-d0f07def23d2-salter_headshot_new

Free and equal: Liberty and natural rights 0b428927-285a-4bf0-b181-d0f07def23d2-salter_headshot_new

If this sounds radical, good! It’s meant to. It was radical in 1776, too. Thomas Jefferson shook the world with the Declaration of Independence, which contains this immortal passage: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Neither the prerogative of kings nor the demands of the masses justified the infringements of man’s rights.

Murray Rothbard, one of the great libertarian theorists of the 20th century, explained the social implications of man’s rights: “No man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else.” This famous saying is known as the non-aggression principle. It rules out any coercive or fraudulent infringements against others. This is not the same as pacifism. Man has the right of self-defense, meaning the violent resistance of violence. But the initiation of force is impermissible.

Liberty means freedom from force and fraud. In a free society, citizens respect the non-aggression principle in their dealings with each other. Just as important, society’s public institutions respect it as well. When it comes to the government, this may be hard to imagine. Can we conceive of a government that doesn’t use force to control individual behavior? The state always has some do-gooder scheme it wants to foist on citizens. Such plans are often well-intended. But the desire to improve society doesn’t justify using men as pawns. Adam Smith warned against the “man of system…so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it.” And to prevent such deviations, he’s more than happy to dominate those who would rather be free.

.https://www.lubbockonline.com/story/opinion/2022/02/06/alexander-salter-free-and-equal-liberty-and-natural-rights/6653031001/

Free and equal: Liberty and natural rights

Free and equal: Liberty and natural rights

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