|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas: HERE.
Politicians tax what we earn, regulate what we build and often decide what we can do with our bodies and our money.
I like to think I own myself. But politicians increasingly act as if they do.
“People should not have power over other people’s lives,” says Timothy Sandefur, author of the book “You Don’t Own Me.”
In my latest video, Sandefur challenges the attitude that “freedom belongs to the government and it can parcel it out to us.”
He starts with building permits.
“A building permit really says, you’re not allowed to build on your own property until the government gives you permission. And you have to pay for that permission. The government has essentially confiscated your land and sells it back to you in exchange for more rights.”
Such government control makes it harder to build anything.
“The Empire State Building,” Sandefur reminds me, “was built in a single year. Now it’s unimaginable that you could accomplish a project like that, or even just the paperwork, within a year.”
So vast sums of money are wasted. Take high-speed rail for example. Somehow, California has spent 16 years and $14 billion without laying down a single mile of high-speed track.
“How much would Californians have done with that colossal amount of money?” Sandefur asks.
Government forced me to get vaccinated, to pay into Social Security.
If I want to buy a gun or get a hunting license, I must ask government’s permission. I even have to get bureaucrats’ permission to start a business braiding someone’s hair.
“Two-thirds of businesses in America require some form of government permission slip for you to do your job,” complains Sandefur. “Everything from something as simple as barbering to something as complicated as engineering. If you want to earn a living, you first have to get permission. Often … this is not only unconstitutional, but a violation of the fundamental principle that you have the right to pursue happiness.”
Sandefur’s state is trying to do something about it.
“Arizona passed a universal licensing law that says that if you have an occupational license from another state and you move to Arizona, you will automatically get the equivalent license. Which only makes sense. You don’t forget how to be an architect when you move from California to Arizona.”
Where regulation is heavy, Americans aren’t waiting for politicians to simplify things. They’re just leaving.
U Haul records show people moving from blue states like California, New York and Illinois to freer states like Texas, Florida and North Carolina.
It’s a good thing that we Americans are free to move. We vote with our feet. We’re not totally stuck with the rules local politicians impose.
We libertarians like that.
“Libertarianism expresses the idea that the individual is in charge of his or her own life and has the right to achieve happiness or suffer the pains of making wrong decisions,” says Sandefur. “I’m a libertarian because I believe that freedom is the natural state of all human beings.”
“Seems right to me,” I reply, “Yet this is a tremendously unpopular political philosophy.”
“Libertarianism hasn’t been sufficiently explained to people. They think libertarianism consists of doing whatever you feel like. … The opposite is the case. A truly free society is one where people have to take a great deal of self-responsibility.”
The core idea is simple: “You own yourself. Who else has a better right to own you or me? I’m the one who suffers if I make bad decisions. I’m the one who gets to enjoy the rewards if I make good decisions. So why should somebody else have this right to decide the direction of my own life?”
“To protect me from myself if I’m making bad decisions?” I reply.
“That’s always the excuse that’s given,” Sandefur says. “The kings never rode on top of the people because they wanted to, but because people were better off for being ridden upon.”
Let’s not buy into that.
“I don’t think government can ever really own you,” says Sandefur, “unless you let it.”
Ah, a Lesley Gore fan I see!
The Founders believed the sole purpose of government was to protect God-given natural rights, against enemies foreign and domestic. Other issues were the responsibility of the people. Since the dawn of Progressivism (Wilson, Dewey, FDR, et. al.), the prevailing thought has been there is no such thing as God-given natural rights. Our rights are what are granted by government. The fruits of that progressive thinking are big government and the largely unaccountable administrative state.
I hate to echo a cliche`, but you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head!
As the suns’ rays struggled through the dawn mists on the African plain thousands of years ago, it awakened a groggy hunter who had had a fitful nights sleep guarding his kill.
A friend approached who had been doing the same thing. They talked the situation over and decided to take turns on guard and get a much better rest.
Word got around and a thug approached one morning. He suggested that he would guard their kills for a piece of the meat. Thus began government and the end of our freedom.
Those are the facts of life Mr. Stossel. Libertarianism can never work except as a talking point in the bar.
“Libertarianism hasn’t been sufficiently explained to people. They think libertarianism consists of doing whatever you feel like. … The opposite is the case. A truly free society is one where people have to take a great deal of self-responsibility.”
The Libertarians have a lot of wacko, whim-worshippers, in their movement. They have been correctly called the “Hippies of the Right”.
It seems that Libertarianism hasn’t been sufficiently explained to the Libertarians.
“For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with, and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called “hippies of the right,” who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs….
Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to “do something.” By “ideological” (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the “libertarian” hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. (For a discussion of the reasons, see “The Anatomy of Compromise” in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.)” – Ayn Rand
A term that has always offended: “calling politicians our ‘leaders’.
They are our ‘representatives, not our leaders. Otoh, way too many warm their chairs far, far too long. Term limits are sorely needed.
Thank you. This habit of calling representatives “leaders”, or worse, “betters”, has grated on me like nails on a chalkboard.
All IS being REVEALED! N.C.S.W.I.C., W.W.G.1W.G.A., and P.A.N.I.C. The world’s coming to a very small point… nothing’s what it seems, people are awakening and waking others to realizing this’s the only place we can live for the foreseeable future, better start in earnest to take better care of it and ourselves. Only warning you’ll get…..The Evil Global Cabal MUST BE ERADICATED from our Earth 🌎 by any means necessary. Git r Dun!
We are citizens of a Constitutional Republic. We are not subjects of a tyrannical government which has taken away our rights which are protected under the Declaration and the Constitution. Our lives cannot be governed by fiat or mandate. We shall not be led down The Road To Serfdom. If we agree with and subscribe to the ideology preached and practiced by the Democrats in this country, that is precisely where we are headed.