The right of self is the right to move one’s body as one desires, to reside unmolested by others in a given place, and to move from one unoccupied place to another.

The three aspects of this right, which can be viewed as separate rights to one’s body, one’s place, and one’s freedom of movement, are very closely related, as one can easily infer from reflection. It should already be clear to the reader how essential they are to human life and how those who interfere with such rights are indeed committing criminal acts.

This right is violated when we have done nothing to infringe anyone’s rights, but are, for example, threatened, harassed, pushed around, physically attacked, detained, arrested, imprisoned, or kidnapped. In ordinary day-to-day life, most do not encounter any of these actions (although there are certainly exceptions), but everyone, whether they are conscious of it are not, is always experiencing the threat of such action from governments acting upon criminally inappropriate laws.

It is important to recognize that when a man threatens you with a gun and tells you to do his bidding, that there are no important differences between whether he’s physically shoving the gun into your side, whether he’s showing it to you, whether it’s hidden in his pocket, whether he’s following you from ten or a hundred yards, whether he tells you over the phone that he’ll break into your house at four in the morning if he learns that you defied him, or whether ten or ten million of his kind voted on something that orders you around, takes your property, and employs similar threats to control your behavior – I call this the “principle of the hidden gun.” When it comes to deciding whether something infringes a right or not, one can easily infer that there is no difference between a credible threat that it will be violated and the physical violation itself.

“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”

— John Philpot Curran, 1790

It is an unfortunate fact that humans have the capability of mentally repressing and ignoring blatant usurpations of their rights, because it means they are violated all the more. In order to stay vigilant about one’s rights, it is essential to think. It takes an active process of thinking to recognize all the ways you are controlled by criminal threats, and how much better your life would be without those threats. The actions of men, regardless of number, do not constitute the law of the universe; they constitute chosen actions that could have been different. When such actions initiate interference with you, then they should have been different, and justice is called for, not acquiescence and obedience.

The right of property is the right for human beings to pursue, acquire, and keep particular material objects, and to prevent others from using or taking those particular material objects.

It is inherent to being alive that an organism must pursue, acquire, and keep portions of the material substance of this Earth in order to sustain its life (but, the fact that an organism needs something is not an argument that it has a right to it). The right of property defines this type of action for human beings. To emphasize an important point: When I use the word “property,” I mean a specific, physical, well-demarcated material object.

The right to specific property, i.e. ownership, is an action, and as such, it must exist as some form of action – otherwise there is nothing to be interfered with and thus no property right. A mere intention is not an action. The required action can be goal-oriented and abstract, but it must exist. For example, the abstract action of building or living in a home does not require that one be on site constantly in order to claim ownership. When one ceases to take actions of ownership, one has abandoned one’s property, leaving it for someone else to claim, precisely because the actions one was formerly taking do not exist any more and thus there is no interference (that it may be difficult to adjudicate this point in some circumstances does not refute the principle).

The following examines in detail the phases of property pursuit, claim, acquisition, ownership, and abandonment. This level of detail may seem tedious for some. More detail would be required in order to properly define a system of law, but at least this much detail is required in order to begin to address the crucial problems of our age.

As the purpose of rights is to define the kind of human action that does not interfere with the actions of other humans, there can be no such right as the right to be the exclusive pursuer of a given object. Pursuit begins in the mind; the first actions of pursuit are mental actions, including the identification of an object of pursuit, the decision to pursue, and the plan of action defining how to pursue. It is clearly impossible that men can read minds, so there is no way to define an exclusive right of pursuit in the mental realm. Similarly, men will begin physical action toward an object that may include preparatory actions such as gathering of resources and movement to its general vicinity, as well as actions leading up to acquisition. It is impossible for one man to know that another man has already started pursuing the same object; a right of exclusive pursuit would create a condition of inherently unavoidable and mutual interference and is therefore a contradiction (this is the basic reason why patents are illegitimate; an issue I will cover in some detail later in this book). This of course does not stop a man from hoping and wishing that other men would not pursue his chosen object; however, any action to prevent their pursuit or acquisition (other than, say, stamping his feet and pouting) would be a crime. Man’s mind is evidently such that he can, if not careful, easily confuse mental objects with material objects; however, the man who fails to correct this improper mode of thinking will never live in peace and harmony with mankind. Such a man is a menace.

To point, delineate, demarcate, emborder, map, describe, file paperwork, jump up and down screaming “It’s mine!” is not to acquire, at most it is an expression of intent to pursue. No man rightly acquires property by mere claim. Otherwise one could point to the whole Earth and thus the first human could have owned it, with everyone else being subjugated to him. Or, he could step onto a new continent and claim it all for himself, attacking anyone who steps foot on it. Such megalomania is not made less absurd when governments, which are merely aggregates of men having no more rights than the sum of those that make it up, indulge in it.

The fact that there can be no right to exclusive pursuit does not justify frivolous pursuit (related to the concept of “frivolous pursuit” is John Locke’s “Lockean Proviso.” See his Second Treatise on Government, chapter 5) by men whose real purpose is not to pursue the same object as another man, but rather, to interfere with his pursuit. Although one cannot, by mere claim or demarcation, own something, if there is plenty of a given substance that you advertise a claim to, where your claim does not impede others from making similar claims, then you do have a right to claim it without actually owning it – this I call the “claiming principle.” Such a claim does not constitute permanent ownership, it merely constitutes an intent. This intent has force from the fact that there is other similar substance nearby, which would mean that competing claims are frivolous pursuit.

Frivolous pursuit of property also includes claiming so many natural resources that it in fact cannot be used by the grabber such that the property, in and of itself, actually furthers his life, or gratuitously destroying or corrupting a natural resource and thus preventing legitimate pursuers from obtaining the natural resource. Such interference constitutes a crime. (One might ask: Who decides whether something actually furthers life or not? All matters of alleged rights violation require an objective application of justice, with a good faith respect for and adherence to the nature of individual rights. We are all dependent on other men having a sensible idea of justice. There are no guarantees that our rights won’t be violated; there is only our best effort at furthering what is true and right. We have enough potential to understand the truth well enough to land man on the moon. I trust our ability to do as good of a job discerning what is right, if only we would choose to.)

Many instances of frivolous pursuit have occurred in the history of man, ranging from a bully who would treat another man like a plaything by observing what he is trying to obtain and getting it first in order to obtain deranged amusement for himself, to a tyrant who would ruin a natural source of food in order to win dominion in a geographic area, such as when the American government virtually exterminated the buffalo species in order to starve Native Americans. Cases like this are not cases of legitimate joint pursuit of the same object, they are criminal acts of interference.

Pursuit of a given object leads to acquisition. In the case of multiple pursuers, two parties might, rarely, acquire a given object at the same time. You can imagine two children running to grab an apple that fell from a tree. It would be rare for them to grab it simultaneously, particularly if both are honestly pursuing it rather than one being engaged in frivolous pursuit. (Mimicry is not a form of frivolous pursuit. If one person gives another the idea that something is valuable, then the second person truly values it, and thus, by going after it he is not engaged in frivolous pursuit, that is, he is not pursuing it to harass someone else, but because he has learned to value something for himself.) But if they are both honestly pursuing, and both grab it, then it is easy to make a rule that resolves the conflict reasonably and amicably: cut the apple in half and share, as neither has any more right to it than the other. Even more rarely, the object cannot be split in this manner and keep its value. Suppose they were pursuing a mouse or frog to keep as a pet (which would be exceedingly rare to grab at the same time). They can’t both have the same pet, but they can timeshare, or agree to keep looking until they find two. Honest, well-meaning children will probably come up with some means of resolving the issue without fighting. And so it is with adults who come upon the rare issue of simultaneous acquisition.

But by far the more common case is that someone has acquired something first, without someone else simultaneously acquiring it. Most of us implicitly understand quite clearly that a person’s property is his property, and it is a violation of his rights to wrest it from him or to threaten him in some way as to make him give it up.

The right to keep what one has acquired, to be in control of a given object as a direct extension of your intentions and actions is to own it. To grab an object from your hands is to directly interfere with your living action as it is in process in that very moment, which is a clear a violation of your rights.

What if the object is not, at the time of the grabbing, under one’s direct control, that is, one is not directly physically connected to the object? Perhaps you find yourself working at a big rock in the middle of the wilderness, you put down your knife to go find a piece of wood, and someone or something comes up and grabs the knife as his or its own. If the entity that grabbed your knife was not human, then you would simply get the knife back however you could; the issue of rights doesn’t enter into it. But if it is human, he will be aware of the fact that his find was surprising, that someone must have made it, and that whoever did might still be in the vicinity, and in fact, you’re right there demanding your knife back. But by what right do you demand it back, and why should it be given back? After all, it was not under anyone’s direct control and action.

The answer to the question requires some analysis. We know that our intentions as human beings go far beyond what happens to be in our hand or pocket. We form goals and take actions that include a far wider scope. We might be building a shelter in the forest, or a cabin, or a skyscraper. During the act of building we must often leave to get more material; when we come back we expect our property to be there for our continued pursuit. Note how we refer to building a skyscraper – this is an abstract action that is comprised of many other concrete physical actions and we have just as much of a right to take this broader action of building as we do to take the more concrete action of hammering; to “build” is no less of an action merely because it is more abstract.

All rational human beings implicitly know that action refers not merely to concrete physical action, but to long-term goal-oriented action. Physical objects are connected to us not merely when we are directly interacting with them; our intentions can be distantly connected to physical objects through specific physical actions over time. We also know how to objectively discern whether a given object is in use in this more abstract, long-term respect or not. You don’t just pick up a knife laying on a rock; you see the knife, and then look around for evidence of its owner. If it shows signs of having rusted there for several days, perhaps you take it and refurbish it and make it your own. You do this on the premise that it was abandoned, that is, it was formerly connected to but is now disconnected from the living action of another human being.

But if the knife is seems to be in use – if the site looks like work has been going on, perhaps there is other nearby property or signs of ongoing activity; in other words, there is evidence of a specific chain of physical actions that took place recently thus connecting the knife to an owner – then to take the knife is to steal it. If the situation is ambiguous, then perhaps you take it, but if the owner asks for it back, you should peacefully turn it over and apologize for the misunderstanding. (In a civilized society it is usually trivial to discern that an object is owned by someone else, for example, land ownership usually makes it obvious that all property in a given area is owned.)

In other words, it is no different to grab a person’s property out of his hands as he is using it, than it is to walk onto a site he is working and start taking things merely because he is not present. Both directly interfere with his living actions, they are violations of the Life Principle and therefore criminal acts. If you inadvertently take this criminal action and pick up someone’s knife while it is in (long-term) use, then he should employ the principle of taking only what action is necessary to resolve the matter. In the case that you were well-meaning, it just means asking for the knife back. To prosecute you for theft would be to go far further than is necessary, thereby committing a crime against you.

It is critical to not misapply the above reasoning to all possible kinds of human intention and thus create a contradiction where there are multiple owners (as in the multiple pursuer case above). There is a radical difference between a physical object that is connected to you through a specific series of goal-oriented physical actions, and a physical object that you merely thought about doing something with. Mere thought or intent is not enough to connect a physical object with your physical being; either it is physically connected through a specific series of goal-oriented physical actions leading directly back to you or it is not.

For most objects on Earth, and in most circumstances, the foregoing ideas are all we need. If someone acquires something first, then it is his until he abandons it (and we must respect the fact that something might be in long-term use before considering something abandoned). However, there are rare but real complications that can occur. Many of these can be resolved by properly forming governments (a subject of subsequent chapters). Some occur regardless of whether a government exists, or between different governments. Two such crucial issues are: menacing physical objects, and frivolous acquisition or destruction of natural resources.

There is a vast difference between a nuclear bomb and a tank. A nuclear bomb can destroy a large city and can at least in principle accidentally go off. It is indiscriminate in its destruction; inherent in setting it off in a populated zone is that many innocents will be killed. On the other hand, a tank has to be pointed at a particular target by a particular individual, who must bear the responsibility for whatever he chooses to shoot. In and of itself, a tank is not menacing. But we can certainly question the legitimacy of even building a nuclear weapon in the first place (I will not explore that issue here). Assuming we decide that it can be legitimate, we certainly cannot allow any random individual to own one and store it at his house. It is an inherent threat and menace to anyone nearby. At most, we might consider letting it be controlled by some huge group, with many guarantees and safeguards, including a safeguard for the destruction of this weapon should the group be under any threat of dissolution. Any individual or group is thus warranted in preventing an individual or unstable group from building or possessing nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons are obviously a very complicated and very important topic which does demonstrate that it is not the case that anyone should be left free to build or own any kind of thing; however, this is an extreme case, most objects are not an inherent menace to a whole city. Where do we draw the line? If someone is sufficiently distant that they only destroy themselves if something were to blow up, then clearly we have no business telling them whether they can have this or that explosive, unless we have good cause to think they are at war with us. But if your next-door neighbor were to start stockpiling TNT, then you clearly have good cause to force him to store it somewhere else, barring an agreement among all potentially affected neighbors. TNT, like nuclear weapons, does present a clear and present danger, a potential threat and menace, and it is not a violation of its owner’s property rights to demand that he take reasonable care and store it at a reasonable distance from others and their property.

There are many real-world complications in applying the science of individual rights and it is not possible for any individual to answer every possible issue. That task should be the job of lawyers, whose profession ought to be dedicated to the principle of defending everyone’s right to act in any way that does not infringe on the rights of others to do the same, instead of to the policy of “winning” by using unjust laws and tactics.

The right of medium is the right to use portions of the natural flow of sunlight, water, air, and other natural mediums, as well as the right to defend one’s continued use of such mediums after having incorporated its use into one’s pattern of activities.

The physical nature of mediums is opposite from property in an important respect: rather than having well-defined physical boundaries, they are physically indistinct and unconnected to any particular property or person. The air flows freely across the Earth; water is lifted from the ocean by sunlight and deposited to flow where Nature wills; the medium of the Earth itself is filled with metals and minerals we mine; the medium of whatever substance it is that supports radio waves pervades every property without any clear boundary. With each breath we naturally acquire and then release air from and into the wild. Air is in some sense unowned and not able to be owned, but in another sense, we would defend to the death any threat to our right to breathe. The right to travel is the right to the use of a particular kind of medium according to the mode of travel. Other natural resources differ in how tightly they are coupled to our life, but do not differ in principle regarding our right to come to depend on them and defend our right to continue to use them. No one has the right to pour poison into “his part” of the river, precisely because there are those downstream who are using this medium.

For the types of medium that can be physically acquired, such as drawing a breath of air or pumping a gallon of water, once a portion of the medium is justly obtained, it becomes ordinary property, and all of the ordinary property rights principles apply. But before that time, or when using mediums that cannot be so divided (such as radio wave medium), we need additional principles.

Imagine a boat moving rapidly through the water, or a jet flying through the air. At any given time, it is using some portion of the given medium, but it is also using something beyond that: the medium in front. When a jet is flying through the air, it depends on unrestricted motion for the next several hundred yards. If someone were to move something into its path, and risk a crash and a destruction of the jet, then that would be an infringement of the medium that jet is using. It has a direct claim, via the aforementioned claiming principle, on the medium it is immediately using, as well as an implicit claim on the medium in front of it for some distance. Once the pilot in his jet has passed, he abandons his claim as quickly as he acquired it, but for the time that he depends on it for his very life, it is solely his own. Two jets can be on an inadvertent collision course. In such a case, they had better use similar rules as those in my example of children sorting out conflicts or they will both be killed.

An essentially similar but more complex example comes up with water use. If a person is daily walking down to the river to draw a bucket of water, then no one upstream may infringe on this established use. The river cannot be justly diverted, nor poisoned with pollutants, nor can anyone draw so much water upstream that it infringes on all downstream users’ established usage patterns. This does not mean that everyone downstream is guaranteed water whereas everyone upstream must constrain usage in order to guarantee them water. If all established upstream usage is of a given set of types of uses, and through population growth increases by a multiplication of similar uses, or if natural circumstances ensue that reduce flow, then barring some kind of agreements between upstream and downstream users, those downstream are, perhaps tragically, without just recourse other than adapting to the new reality or moving elsewhere. What is barred from those upstream are new types of use that by virtue of their nature, change the quality or amount of water such that those downstream are harmed. (The topic of water and other medium rights deserves greater analysis than I can give here.)

Air rights are similar. No one may justly build a noisy, smelly new coal plant nearby that interferes with your established use of air of a given quality and quietness. (If a town needs a dirty coal plant, and if affected members of the town are part of a given government, they may have no choice but to accept it. How this can be reconciled with natural rights will be discussed later.) Sometimes, pollution buildup can be a slow and insidious process, and just because the infringement on air quality happened slowly, or was unrecognized without scientific testing (such as mercury pollution of water), it does not negate the right to a clean medium when the pollution can be traced back to a specific source. On the other hand, the mere fact that a given pollutant is present does not imply specific harm. Volcanoes spew many “pollutants” into the air, as do naturally-occurring forest fires. Even pollen might be considered a “pollutant.” No air is “pure,” and the fact that a statistical rise of a given substance is detected and traced to a given source does not imply that any harm or infringement actually happened.

The right of land is the property right to the naturally-fixed portions of a given geographic area, as well as the medium right to the surrounding mediums that one’s land use depends upon. The right of land, being a type of property right, includes all the attributes of property rights except that it is not a well-defined physical object, and it comes with specific and sometimes complicated responsibilities concerning connected areas of land.

Right of land is derived from the right of self, the right of property, and the right of medium. A right of self means you have a right to reside on an unoccupied part of the Earth (since that is an action that does not interfere with anyone else’s right and all actions that are not interference are rights). Further, because of right of self, you have a right to create property on and of the land, to reshape the land into a new form, to build structures, to farm crops, and so on. Since these are your property and you have a right to them, then you also have a right to the previously unoccupied land of which they are an inherent part, as well as to the medium that you depend on.

The extent of physical ownership derives from medium rights to the medium of the Earth, not from a simplistic geometrical idea such as that you own a pyramid-shaped area from the surface of your land to the very center of the Earth. The extent of your rights is not defined by physical boundaries, nor by governments, they are defined by whether or not they interfere with another human being. Here are three examples:

• You do not own all the Earth beneath your house, but you do have the right to maintain a stable surface if that is what nature provided. No one can, without your consent, rightly build a mine such that it exists on your land, or changes the surrounding medium that you depend on, but if they can mine the minerals underneath your land such that it does not cause you risk or disturbance, they have every right to do that.
• If someone is using part of a medium, such as a river that flows through your land, and you interfere with its flow, then you are interfering with them. You do not own the river merely because it passes through your land. Likewise, you cannot control your land such that it interferes with another’s right to travel. If your land blocks an established route of travel, you must provide reasonable egress.
• Someone cannot rightly build a massive space station that happens to obscure the light to huge portions of Earth, because that action interferes with the action of others who were already exercising their land rights. So in this case, our individual rights actually extend into outer space.

These examples illustrate the fact that rights can have a vast physical extent, even while the physical extent or nature of ownership is constrained (by the normal rules of property ownership as already discussed). Land ownership comes in aspects or respects in regard to a particular form of use, and in accordance with furthering individual life. Uses that do not conflict are each acquired and owned independently from one another. Mistaking these issues can cause substantial social conflict.

The right of land is the ultimate expression of human rights. To respect a man’s right of land is to respect his other rights; to violate it is to usurp all of his rights. This is why totalitarian regimes lay claim of ownership to vast geographic regions that are in truth, unowned – this is a species of frivolous pursuit also known as “land-grabbing.” Some regimes are more honest about their denial of this basic human right; others put forth a pretense of ownership while simultaneously demanding that one pay rent in exchange for them permitting you to “own” (in their contradictory sense of the term) the land.

“By what right do men exercise power over each other?”

— Auberon Herbert

The right of consent is the right to make agreements that yield a portion of one’s own rights in exchange for a portion of another’s. The right of consent is the crown of all rights; it recognizes that you are the King of your own rights having exclusive dominion over them, and only by your assent may they be altered or constrained. It is the sole means by which all forms of proper social exchanges and orders are created, including buying and selling, marriage, business, and government. It is how man-made laws are made and remade (as opposed to Natural Law, which is immutable).

Everyone who has ever purchased anything understands consent. You agree to give up your right to a portion of your property, in exchange for the right to possess a certain object or obtain a certain service. Concerning simple trades like this, the modern-day practice and legal system is – at least in “first world” countries (and unlike in many other areas of human activity) – generally very sound, which is part of why it works so well most of the time.

The Law of Conservation of Energy states that the energy in a closed system can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change forms. This fundamental law of physics explains a crucial aspect of the entire range of physical phenomena. Likewise, legitimate consent is based on a similarly fundamental and analogous law which follows directly from The Law of Origin of Rights, namely, The Law of Conservation of Rights: Rights originate in the individual and may neither be created nor destroyed, but only transferred to others through the individual’s right of consent.

If you understand this law, then you have understood everything I have said thus far and you at least implicitly understand everything anyone could ever say on the subject of human rights, including how all human associations from the most simple to the most complex (including governments) can properly be formed.

Violations of this law through force and fraud (which bypass an individual’s right of consent) abound, particularly in the realm of government. Like those snake-oil salesmen peddling fountain of youth potions, or the alchemists who futilely try to turn lead into gold, governments are engaged in a massive counterfeiting activity of peddling fiat consent as if it were true consent. At the heart of this criminal operation is the villainous wish that government can somehow be exempt from Natural Law. But it is a self-evident absurdity to think that if two people gang up and engage in a criminal act, then the crime magically becomes a right. Nothing is changed when the size of the gang grows to ten, a hundred, or three hundred million. Future human beings, if mankind is to have a future, will undoubtedly look back on our age in shocked disbelief that the majority of mankind actually believed otherwise.

Note that since the definition of “right” includes any kind of non-interfering action, whether abstract principle of action (such as right of property in general) or particular action (such as the right to hold a coin in your pocket), the term “transferred” does not imply that you can consent to yield unlimited dominion of your rights to another party. On the contrary, when adjudicating disputes regarding consent, it is essential to recognize the definition of consent: to voluntarily yield a right in order to obtain a more desirable end. If the right yielded and the end obtained are not reasonably commensurate, then the original contract is null and void. Thus, although one can promise to become a lifelong slave in exchange for an ounce of gold, on the grounds that there was no true consent, one cannot be bound to such a contract. This must be so, if for no other reason than that any contract must be interpreted in order to be adjudicated, and rational interpretation requires dismissal of the absurd. (Another perspective on why slavery would not be upheld in a rights-respecting court is in the next section.)

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

The right of justice is the right to take whatever action is required in order to force the initiator of a crime to make amends and assure he does not repeat his crime, so long as such action does not go beyond the bounds of what is required in order to do so. While the other five rights represent the first aspect of the Life Principle – that to live is to take action in support of one’s life – the right of justice represents the second aspect, that to live is to quell interference with one’s rightful action.

Justice is proximate “interference” with another, but this proximate interference is ultimately caused by the perpetrator of a crime by eliciting the “Life Principle” response in the victim, namely, that to pursue life is to act against interference. It is a contradiction to hold that a man should on the one hand be left free to pursue life, but on the other hand should not act to stop interferences with such a pursuit. So it is clear that justice is not a criminal act. It is the initiator of interfering acts that is interfering; retaliation for such interference is merely the action that attempts to end the interfering act. It is not itself a criminal act unless it is in excess of what is necessary and goes beyond the actual defense of the originally violated right (this is why a slave contract would not be upheld in a rights-respecting court – a slave who refused to work or who ran away would at most be liable for what he had received in payment for having become a slave). A criminal who is interfered with is not feeling his own rights being violated by another, he is feeling the the law of cause and effect: the consequences of his own criminal acts are reflected back onto himself via the Life Principle of another.

The right of justice belongs to everyone, not only to the harmed party. Third parties are warranted in implementing justice because a criminal’s actions are an implicit declaration of war, not only against the individual attacked at that time, but also against Natural Law and all men who might meet the criminal in similar circumstances.

Since justice permits the interference with another’s life, exceedingly special care must be taken in its exercise, because misguided justice is itself a criminal act. A is A: to defend rights means to defend rights – and no more. To go further is to interfere with non-interfering acts, it is to commit a crime. Conscientious men formally declare their intention and reasons for pursuing justice for these important reasons: First, composing a formal declaration is an aid to the reason, helping insure correctness and certainty in both the nature of the alleged criminal act and the proposed remedy. Second, it permits the alleged criminal to possibly provide details that might exonerate him, or to make amends. Third, it permits others to understand your action so they do not judge you as a criminal menace and retaliate. The Declaration of Independence, formal declarations of war, and justified lawsuits are all forms of declaration of intent to pursue justice.

In order to provide an even greater guarantee on the objectivity and appropriateness of acts of justice, the sensible custom has evolved in human society to delegate one’s right of justice to the judgment of a third party. However, the right of justice is the right of every individual, otherwise there would be no right to delegate to the third party. It is only through consent that any right, including the right of justice, is validly transferred.

“As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always be resolved into the simple elements or least parts of the whole.”

— Aristotle

The individual in the wilderness acquires his own land through the use of his natural rights, and, through the consent of his guests, this sovereign land owner may justly subject visitors to certain “house rules,” the man-made laws that apply to those who decide to remain his guests. As sovereign owner, the host may ask many things of the guest, or require him to leave, so long as their right to consent is not violated. He can ask that the guest perform labor in exchange for residing, or that the guest refrain from certain speech, or that the guest pay rent. So long as the guest chooses to reside on property that is owned by someone else, he is free to either take the terms – or to leave.

As only the true owner of land may dictate conditions of its use (this is the very meaning of “ownership”), such “house rules” literally constitute the law of the land. This sovereign liberty, which used to be exercised by kings, actually belongs to every individual human being and is the starting point for the genesis of legitimate government.

Having imagined a lone individual being the host to guests and subjecting them, through their own consent, to certain man-made laws, we can now easily imagine several individual land owners who together own all the land in a given geographic region, and who through the values they hold in common, agree that certain uniform laws will apply to all guests, including when they are guests of each other. We can easily imagine such an arrangement growing into a town with its own government emerging from the common values of the land owners, and expanding organically as those who wish to become members of the town acquire land connected to the town at the outskirts.

It is evident upon reflection that even men of radically different beliefs actually hold many values in common. For example, virtually all individuals desire to be free from assault, theft, trespass, breaking and entering into their homes, fraud, and other injustice as defined by Natural Law. Thus, even men randomly aggregated in a given area can find much to agree on with respect to a mutual government. Individuals are more apt to disagree on the technology used to implement government – its particular system of laws and branches of government – than on its purpose. But even admitting this disagreement, most individuals in such an anarchic state will be very motivated to correct it, and thus will be apt to accept a reasonable government technology, so long as the stated and recognized purpose of such technology is to secure individual rights. (The principal defect of the United States Constitution is that it lacks a clear statement regarding its ultimate justification and purpose. The Declaration of Independence has, in a terse form, such a statement, but it has no contemporary legal effect.) Wise individuals will see the distinction between purpose and technology, and include in their system a means for it to be perfected over time in accordance to improved comprehension of the purpose and improved technologies for implementing it.

Even while many will agree on technology, many may not. This would create an analogous problem to getting a suburb to agree on a particular telephone or electricity technology. In principle, two technologies could exist side-by-side, but it destroys the economy of scale to a large degree. Likewise, having different jurisdictions in the same local area leads to problems. Chief among these is also economy of scale, and that closely-entangled or intermingled jurisdictions leads to the problem of deciding to what law and what jurisdiction applies to a given act. In extreme cases and with an irrational populace this could lead to war – however, when all jurisdictions (including jurisdictions of a single individual) respect Natural Law, as they should and must if they want to continue to exist – such a consequence is unlikely.

But the problem of potential jurisdictional intermingling is a red herring. It is easy for us to become distracted by this problem, because if our governments were to accept the principle of consent, then this would be among the first problems to arise. Some might also observe that jurisdictional issues do already in fact lead to war in some parts of the world, but this observation does not apply to governments that are not engaged in land-grabbing. In the current world, the problem of totalitarian jurisdictions (the precise meaning of totalitarianism will be examined in detail in the next chapter) foisted on the unwilling is a far greater moral and practical problem, resulting in perpetual suffering and death. Difficult problems are tractable only when solutions are not premised on creating or maintaining other fundamental problems. For example, a drug addict can solve the problem of his troublesome withdrawal symptoms in two ways: he can find a steady source of drugs, or he can go through the pain of withdrawal once and never have the problem again. Likewise, we can “solve” the problem of jurisdictional intermingling by violating the individual rights of each and every individual within a totalitarian jurisdiction, or we can deal with the transient issue of resolving the inefficiencies and other problems resulting from intermingled jurisdictions. And to the extent that jurisdictional intermingling is indeed a real problem for a given group, it is readily solvable, if by no other method than like-minded individuals moving to another locale and organically claiming and acquiring land in such a manner that all land within the jurisdiction is interconnected.

Once jurisdictions of one or many individuals are created, then within the constraints of their individual rights, the laws of the land they create would be their own prerogative. But such laws can be extremely broad and varied. A sample of possible laws they could jointly agree to if they so chose:

• Laws may be revised by majority vote, or by a vote of representatives, or may be immutable (until the land is abandoned).
• Once land is annexed through consent of its owner, it can never again become sovereign. That is, all subsequent owners of the land could be made subject through the purchase agreement to the same terms as the original owner (until abandoned). This is the principle upon which the “homeowners association” is created (and in fact these associations would take on a larger role once totalitarianism is abolished).
• Commune-style laws could be adopted, where everyone must pool their production; or capitalist-style laws could be adopted, where everyone must fend for themselves or depend on charity if they run into trouble; or anything in between.

What they cannot legitimately do is exceed the bounds of individual rights. They cannot legalize slavery or abuse of children. They cannot grab all the unowned land on the continent. They cannot interfere with those who have natural egress rights through their town. They cannot extend their man-made laws beyond the boundaries of their own land (but their right of justice does permit extending Natural Law to anywhere on Earth; this is the heroism that should animate military forces). The philosophy espoused by certain anti-intellectual brutes in our age when you complain about the government, that “if you don’t like it, then leave” would actually apply, because you could always go beyond the outskirts and make your own kind of town if you wanted, and if you entered the town then you couldn’t complain when you were bound by the rules of the owners.

The mode of government formation described above can be condensed into The Law of Origin of Government: Government originates in the consensual transfer of rights from individuals to representatives in order to enforce Natural Law and man-made laws; the jurisdiction of such a government is solely comprised of land owned by consenting individuals. Legitimate government never extends man-made laws beyond its jurisdiction defined by the land boundaries of its citizens, nor prevents any individuals from leaving its jurisdiction, unless the individual has been justly imprisoned on grounds that can be proven to the world (unjust imprisonment of any individual should rightly be taken by the rest of mankind as an act of war against humanity and a just cause for war).

We may thus define “government” as an association to which its members have consensually transferred a portion of their rights in order to more reliably defend the individual rights of its members than the members would otherwise be able to achieve individually, and for other purposes its members deem desirable. Such members are called “citizens” of the respective government. The Law of Conservation of Rights means that the formation of a new government does not create any new rights. The new government is restricted to exercising only those rights that are voluntarily transferred – and no more. In other words, if an individual citizen did not have the right to take a given kind of action before he transferred a portion of his rights to the government, then agents of the government have no such right. Agents who do engage in such actions are in fact committing crimes, including the crime of the fraudulent pretense of acting in the name of their citizens. This definition of government is radically different from what is practiced today, but is not essentially different from what the Founders of America originally had in mind as evidenced by their own words as quoted above: to secure individual liberty through consent of the governed. The system of government I am describing is not without historical precedent. It is similar to the system of “city-states” that has been used throughout history, including a few rare modern city-states, but especially by the ancient Greeks. The opposite type of system, which lays claim to sweeping swaths of land and asserts its laws onto it, is “totalitarian,” for it seeks nothing less than a total confiscation of wild unowned land and a total assertion of its man-made laws onto anyone who happens to live there, most importantly, through the legalized theft of property known as taxation.

It should now be clear that the root of our modern political problems lies in a misapprehension of the distinction between man-made and Natural Law. Man-made laws must not be asserted onto unowned land and to do so is a totalitarian act of war against humanity; however, for Natural Law to be asserted through the consent of citizens is the ultimate heroism that government is capable of. Impressing a clear distinction between man-made laws and Natural Law upon the minds of the human race is the most desperately needed form of intellectual activism and could lead to the most important political reform of our age.

“The consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”

— Robert E. Lee

“For remember, of all possible evils, that of despotism is the worst and the most to be dreaded.”

— Samuel Bryan, To the Freemen of Pennsylvania

The progress of the human race critically depends on individuals being left free to pursue their own peaceful ends. It is particularly important that those engaged in long-range research and development be secure in their possessions, for when one feels that a pirate or dictator will steal what you have in the next month, year, or decade, then one is rationally inclined to short-range action. This is why third-world countries remain third-world countries. Thus, the more security can be ensured by proper government from thieves, pirates, and totalitarianism, the more mankind can prosper and achieve its true potential. This is the most critical reason to form sophisticated, large-scale government. Just as the instruments of science permit man ever more precise knowledge of reality and just as the achievements of engineering give man ever more precise control over nature, the institutions of government should ensure ever greater security of individual rights.

It is inevitable that land-owners (who are not under duress from totalitarianism) will aggregate and form city-states, which are neither more nor less than the embodiment of the laws of their own land that they hold in common. It is also inevitable and indeed highly desirable that these city-states will form higher-order governments representing the common laws between them, for the very same reason: to secure their individual rights from criminal aggression, including the large-scale criminal aggression of governments. There is good reason in principle why there should be many levels of government with each higher level of government representing nothing more than the common principles of its member governments.

The guiding principle of each of these levels of government must always be: a consensual transfer of the rights of individuals to the government – and without a single exception. An individual in the wild who may be near a given city-state must not be forced to join, and this is the critical test of legitimate government activity: government exists for the preservation of natural individual rights, not for their usurpation. To violate this principle is to undercut the very basis of government. For this ultimate end, various specific purposes should conceivably be in treaties that form higher levels of government:

• Preservation of the frontier as a frontier, that is, securing the fundamental right of individuals to form new governments in wild lands so that city-states do not ever become virtual prisons and our posterity forever has the same rights our ancestors once had. This is the most crucial purpose of any large-scale government, precisely because the closure of the frontier by totalitarian governments is the worst possible man-made threat to humanity.
• Securing the individual right to travel wild lands and the ocean unmolested by pirates and their close relative, totalitarian regimes, by enforcing Natural Law in these domains.
• Securing the world from totalitarianism by explicit reference to evil totalitarian acts and commitment to fight them wherever they occur, whether by embargo or by open war.
• Securing the world from frivolous pursuit and destruction of natural resources (but not as the pretext to totalitarian land-grabbing that the religion of environmentalism is in our age).
• Creating the means to resolve disputes between city-states through a hierarchy of courts.
• Creating reasonable intellectual property laws, such as copyright and reverse-engineering laws. It is crucial to recognize that such laws are only justly constructed from consent; there is no natural right to intellectual property (I will examine this issue in more detail in Chapter 5).
• Encouraging “free-rider” city-states to join a treaty through embargo. One might imagine that some backward city-state might benefit from the actions of neighboring city-states who are participating in a treaty, such as by copying copyright-protected works without paying. Embargo can be a reasonable action to take against the backward city-state, with one crucial qualification: the consequences of embargo can only be directed against citizens of the city-states that belong to the treaty. Only citizens would have consented to various rules of government, including the possibility of embargo against a free-rider city-state. In other words, it is only valid to restrict one’s own citizens from trade with the embargoed city-state, and only then if there is prior consent from citizens. To directly interfere with a free-rider city-state would be a violation of their rights, a manifestation of totalitarianism and an act of war. It is crucial that embargo be used peacefully and no directly coercive acts be used; otherwise it is impossible to tell who is the backward group and who is the more advanced. In the case where unreasonable people adopt poor treaties, it will tend to encourage the more reasonable citizens to leave their respective city-states and join or form new ones, which will create a virtuous cycle in which the unreasonable city-states are pressured to reform or face disintegration. This virtuous cycle can only happen when land-grabbing totalitarianism is abolished, that is, when governments no longer assert man-made laws beyond their own legitimate jurisdictions as defined by Natural Law.

Such treaties result in a natural hierarchy of governments, with most rights concentrated with the individual, and successively fewer rights being aggregated toward the higher levels of government in order to accomplish successively more specific and limited purposes. It should be clear that if the Law of Conservation of Rights is adhered to, fewer and fewer rights, more specific and more delimited rights, would be transferred up to each level. At the first level, one can expect that a reasonable human being would be jealous of his own rights, and only very cautiously and judiciously transfer them to someone else. For this same reason, local governments would be loath to part with autonomy and sovereignty, and would only do it for the most crucial ends, and for ends that could not be achieved by other means. Also, just as no one can truly consent to become a slave (see Chapter 2), no one can truly consent to submit to open-ended claims upon one’s rights. It is only through usurpation that vast, sweeping powers can be transferred to the highest levels of government, and to the extent that these usurped powers define the government, it is not actually a government, but rather, it is an anarchic criminal operation, like a mafia but operating on a vastly larger scale and with nothing to oppose it.

Since rights originate in the individual, it is implicit that any rights not explicitly transferred by contract or treaty reside with the individual. This notion was partially recognized in the tenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This amendment should never have needed to be stated, as it is implicit in any contract that those rights that are not surrendered are retained, and indeed, it was an error to make this amendment rather than to address the root issue: that a contract is a contract, even when made by representatives.

This natural, organic method of constructing governments allows for a wide diversity in peacefully co-existing and evolving forms of government. With respect to one another, and in the absence of legitimate treaty, governments must interact with one another (or with other human beings not belonging to any government) on the strict basis of Natural Law described in the Chapter 2. However, citizens of the government may have consented to a wide variety of abridgments (either themselves or by virtue of a previous land owner who transferred ownership with certain constraints). Everything ranging from a free market system to a kind of commune are legitimate. A system of social “safety nets” and a general property tax to pay for them are legitimate. So all the usual arguments people have about what kind of government they want become moot: if they don’t like their current form, they would be free to alter it according to their previously agreed upon rules, or repatriate, or even strike out on their own in the vast unowned wilderness and make up their own laws. Such a system would result in a healthy competition between governments to discover the best sorts of laws that humans can create. Such a system also serves as a “pressure relief valve” for society, as those who have become disenfranchised would be permitted to leave in peace, rather than being forced to stay. Such force only encourages the disenfranchised to become a problem for society, and while we would certainly blame the disenfranchised for their chosen acts against innocents, we cannot withhold blame from a society that refuses to follow the Law of Origin of Government, thereby goading the weak-minded into becoming criminals.

Social systems formed in this manner would be self-correcting and ever-improving:

• Suppose someone somehow acquired a great deal of farmland by hiring “serfs” to work it for him. If he ever became so oppressive that the “serfs” abandoned him and he could hire no one else, then the land would revert to wilderness, leaving it free to be claimed by more benevolent land holders, or by the former “serfs” themselves.
• Without patents, a corporation could only keep employees by managing them well; if it ever became unfair in pay or management style, employees could leave and compete (they could not legally take the company’s physical property of course, but with their knowledge they would be free to try to build competing technology).
• Contrary to the massive number of laws the U.S. Congress passes (without reading them), laws would necessarily be limited in number and scope because the more widely they are applied the more individuals would have to consent to them.
• The monopoly position governments (and entities of all kinds) hold on people would end. They would be forced into serving their purpose, or risk evaporating as their constituents abandon them.

IN SUMMARY:

1. The awesome power of government demands a scientific understanding and construction in accordance to the principles of individual rights.
2. The individual in the wilderness acquires his own land through the use of his natural rights and, through the consent of his guests, this sovereign land owner may justly subject visitors to certain “house rules,” the man-made laws that apply to those who decide to remain his guests.
3. The Law of Origin of Government: Government originates in the consensual transfer of rights from individuals to representatives in order to enforce Natural Law and man-made laws; the jurisdiction of such a government is solely comprised of land owned by consenting individuals.
4. The only geographically-oriented form of government that is legitimate is the organic aggregation of individually owned land into city-states through consent of individual owners. City-states can legitimately band together in treaty, but there is no legitimacy to totalitarian land-grabs by governments.
5. The root of our modern political problems lies in a misapprehension of the distinction between man-made law and Natural Law.
6. By virtue of the individual’s right to justice including his right to come to the defense of another individual’s rights and by the Law of Conservation of Rights, governments may exercise their powers beyond their borders, including into wild lands, in order to secure the Natural Rights of individuals both citizen and non-citizen alike, but they may not apply any laws other than Natural Law beyond their own borders as defined by Natural Law. To extend man-made laws outside of legitimately owned borders is an act of war against humanity.
7. Properly formed governments permit a very wide range of man-made laws. Traditional battles between “capitalism” versus “socialism” versus “communism” are all beside the point; the real battle is between the consensually-formed city-state and its treaties, and the land-grabbing totalitarian state.

“Those of the chemical craft know well that no change can be effected in the different species of substances, though they can produce the appearance of such change.”

— Avicenna

“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

— President Richard Nixon

“The average person thinks that morality can be applied as directly to the conduct of States to each other, as it can to human relations. That is not always the case, because sometimes statesmen have to choose among evils.”[2]

— Henry Kissinger

If a government official decided that he was going to go around to everyone’s house and forcibly require everyone to turn in their gold to him, then most would consider this an abuse of authority and a criminal act that should land that official in jail. Yet for some reason, if the official publishes a decree saying “turn in your gold because I say so,” with perhaps some bromides about the “public good” and signatures from a few accomplices in government, almost everyone regards his act as legal and lets him get away with it. (See US Executive Order 6102, which “criminalized” the possession of gold.)

To an unconditioned mind, the power to transmute a crime into a right would seem astonishing, tantamount to the claim of an alchemist that he could transmute lead into gold, or the claim of a “scientist” that he’d invented a perpetual motion machine. How indeed can a crime be so easily transmuted into a right, by the mere incantation of jargon on a scrap of paper having the “official” stamp of government approval? Well, it is quite obvious that it can’t, and instead there is now a sham of massive proportions taking place in society, a sham that surely must begin with the inculcation of children in order for them to somehow come to believe that such a bizarre practice is acceptable. But certainly, one can understand the motivation behind what is the ultimate kind of criminal power grab. Such “official” criminality is ordinary, to be sure, but it is no less irrational and criminal in spite of how commonplace it is. Cannibalism and slavery were commonplace in some human societies as well, but no one would argue that just because they were accepted and common, they are therefore right, or indeed, even sane. Fiat, an ancient form of mind-control that permits those who wear the mantle of authority get away with crimes, is no more justifiable.

There is only one ultimate authority in the political realm: the principle of not violating someone’s natural rights. Fiat is the ultimate blank check for dictators: a counterfeit authority consisting in the pretense that the authority flows from government officials, rather than from the Law of Conservation of Rights. All of the frauds committed by government have their root in this counterfeiting operation, which takes place at all scales and levels in modern society.

There is no essential difference between fiat and crime; there is only the difference in whether one recognizes fiat as a type of crime or not – and when the purveyors of fiat propound that their actions somehow derive from legitimate authority, then the crime only gets compounded with the crime of fraud. Fiat is thus a political manifestation of widespread frauds and delusions about the nature of rights. So, the concepts “totalitarianism” and “fiat” are inherently associated with one another: you can’t have fiat without totalitarianism, and you can’t have totalitarianism without fiat. Since the basis of fiat is mass delusion, the basis of totalitarianism is also mass delusion[3].

Most people who believe they hate government really hate fiat, not government. They think they hate government because the only government they have known indulges in fiat as if it were a normal everyday thing to do. Psychologically-healthy individuals hate being ordered around without good cause; they hate being threatened and punished for victimless crimes; they hate following arbitrary rules that have no basis in protecting rights, but only in inflating the power and authority of bureaucrats or funneling money into the pockets of special interest groups.

The potential types and variations of fiat are unlimited. Every kind of human action can potentially be constrained by fiat; every kind of human crime can be allegedly legitimized by fiat. Once government is permitted to indulge in this kind of nonsense, there really is no limit to what they will control, nor any way to prevent a slide toward total control, except to eliminate the bogus notion that fiat is somehow legitimate.

Just as there are Six Fundamental Rights, there is also a fundamental fiat that stands in direct opposition to these rights. A particular fiat constitutes a fundamental delusion about the nature of government authority and the key bulwark and foundation of totalitarianism: Fiat Jurisdiction.

“Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.”

— George Carlin

Since the owner of a given area of land has sole right to create “house rules,” no individual or group may presumptuously declare that their set of man-made laws apply to land they do not legitimately own. Fiat jurisdiction is nothing less than fiat land ownership and is a gross violation of the Law of Origin of Government.

We are indoctrinated with the fiction of fiat jurisdiction at the earliest possible age, when we are given little maps and Crayons and encouraged to identify one swath of the Earth as “belonging” to one nation, and another swath as “belonging” to another. False patriotism teaches children to more strongly associate their self-esteem with the government and its ill-gotten swath of land than with their own achievements. True patriotism should teach children to have reverence for their own individual rights and the individual rights of others, that our common interest is in keeping our hands to ourselves, that mankind achieves the most when we work together in this manner rather than interfering with one another, that the worst enemy of mankind is totalitarianism, that the greatest heroes are those who free men from its vicious grasp, and that they should aspire to be like these heroes in order that they and their posterity can have liberty. To love one’s government regardless of what it does is not “patriotic”; on the contrary, this “unconditional love” of government is treason of the highest order: it is treason against the human beings a corrupted government violates; it is treason against the highest law – Natural Law. True patriotism is a love of Natural Law, a pride in one’s own government for furthering it, and a desire for it to be enjoyed by the rest of mankind.

There simply is no way to justify the assertion of man-made laws onto land that is not, by virtue of Natural Law, legitimately owned. No man can legitimately sweep his arms across the face of the Earth and, by fiat, own it. Such megalomania is clearly a direct assault on every man’s right to land – an implicit declaration of war on mankind. Nor can two men, ten men, or ten million men have any more right to take this megalomaniacal act than any single man – adding more and more human beings can’t magically transform insanity into sanity, it only increases its scale.

This insanity has serious consequences. In our age, even wild animals are afforded more “right” to a spot to live on this Earth than are men. Wild animals are free to move from place to place, building nests or dams or sleeping in caves, whereas many men are “homeless” – it is illegal for them to walk into the wilderness, seek and gain sustenance and build shelter, and reside on a small spot of land. Even on the land governments do permit individuals to “own,” the “ownership” isn’t true ownership; it is rental. Like a landlord, the government dictates what kind of improvements can be made to the property, expects rent in the form of “property” taxes, and if you don’t pay them, they evict you. (But recall that city-states can be designed such that they can rightfully tax.) It gets worse when it comes to conflicting government claims of jurisdiction and ownership: there is perhaps no greater cause for war in mankind’s history than the presumption and assertion of fiat land ownership. George Carlin is right: something is wrong, very wrong. And what’s gone wrong is that we’ve allowed our governments to act as if they can own land, instead of being delegated specific rights by legitimate owners; and worse, we’ve allowed them the pretense of ownership by mere claim.

As if to flaunt their insane land grabbing behavior before God himself, governments have even conspired to form treaties that in effect, and I do not jest, preemptively grab the entire Universe and prevent you from owning even a tiny portion of it. Not only are you not free to peacefully occupy some tiny spot of land for yourself while being unmolested by governments, you are also not free to leave planet Earth and colonize outer space! Behold, the megalomania literally without limit (quoted from the “Outer Space Treaty”, dated October 10, 1967, and signed by the United States and about 100 other countries):

• “The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the State concerned.”
• “The State on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and any personnel thereon, while in outer space.”

These statements do not merely refer to the immediate vicinity of Earth, to the space occupied by man-made satellites, the moon, or even the solar system; this “mother of all land grabs” extends to the entire Universe. So much for the “Final Frontier” and the distant hope some space enthusiasts have for escaping human tyranny by leaving planet Earth[4]. This is precisely what fiat jurisdiction ultimately leads to: a literally insane mockery of human rights. But these megalomaniacs are not attempting to send a breathtakingly arrogant message to either God or space aliens; they are merely testing the limits to which the populace will let them get away with their fraudulent authority over every last scrap of land and every last human being on Earth. The central motive driving these lunatics will make a fitting epitaph for the human race unless the lunacy is ended: Here lies a race that had infinite potential – until it grasped at infinite dominion.

Consider the true meaning of fiat jurisdiction. Imagine yourself a land owner, who has certain “house rules” that you apply to those who come onto your land. What do you call such people? Guests. Unless you do not allow them to leave, in which case they are your prisoners, bound to follow your rules until they can escape. But at least there is some hope that they could escape – there is somewhere to go. Now focus your mind on the fact that there is no spot on Earth that does not have a megalomaniacal land-grabbing government asserting its man-made rules onto you without your consent. In this respect, you are worse off than a prisoner.

If it is clear why a slave-owner does not want his slaves to leave or why a feudal lord wants his serfs to be bound to his property, then it should also be clear why the entire planet Earth is organized on exactly the same model. If those in power are not able to prevent their subjects from leaving, then given how they evidently wish to act, they will not be able to maintain their power[5]. The best and only way to secure their positions of power is to secure the entire Earth. And this is where the battle for individual rights in our modern age must begin: we must advocate for governments to cease in waging war against those who might choose to live in the wilderness; to cease in recognizing the claims of those world organizations who presume to own unused portions of the Earth; to recognize the sovereignty of the individual land-owner (but only if they own it in a proper, non-land-grabbing sense); and to reconstruct themselves on the basis of actual consent. And they undoubtedly will obtain this consent from most citizens if they commit themselves to securing individual rights, rather than securing all the land on Earth in order to turn it into a colossal human farm.

Don’t wonder why your freedoms have eroded over time. Your freedom was lost when your government first indulged in the high crime of fiat jurisdiction.

Fiat consent is the pretense of consent, whether the pretense is advertised as propaganda by those with political authority, or believed by the weak-minded. Fiat consent is nothing less than to pretend consent was given when it in fact was not, and usually for the purpose of blunting the consequences associated with usurping the rights of those who are perceived as not having the power to defend themselves from the usurpation. It is a show put on to make rights-usurpers and their apologists feel better about themselves, and to prevent retribution for their vile acts.

Those who think to some degree about the crimes of government will naturally be concerned and in need of some kind of resolution of their concerns. For example, if government threatens people into paying taxes, to an honest man, that looks like extortion. Men with some moral sense but who are unwilling to admit that it is indeed as it appears (because, for example, they lack the imagination to figure out how to secure the benefits of government without such crimes) are uncomfortable and in need of some rationalization. Fiat consent provides some degree of comfort, in exchange for the usual payment: your mind.

In spite of the delusion of fiat consent, the fact remains that in order to have an individual’s consent, you must have his consent; the individual must either implicitly or explicitly give it. It is the individual’s untrammeled choice that causes it to be consent. And clearly, any form of “consent” that leaves an individual unable to choose to withhold it is not in fact consent, it is criminal usurpation of his natural rights and an act of war against that individual. Fiat consent has absolutely no legitimacy – regardless of the size of the army standing behind the usurpation.

Just as alchemists sought the “Philosopher’s Stone” that would turn lead into gold, philosophers over the ages, even including alleged defenders of individual rights, have produced rationalization upon rationalization, apologetics for either criminal government acts or their own inability to conceive of rational alternatives; they have attempted and as could have been expected, abysmally failed to transmute lack of consent into consent. In spite of their conundrums and failure to admit them, the issue is simple: Consent is consent. No number of human beings can legitimately vote away or aggregate themselves such that they can legitimately usurp another human being’s rightful consent. A more crude form of attempting to transmute non-consent into consent is the gangster’s tactic of putting a gun to someone’s head and making him sign something. Just as there is no magic recipe or incantation or polling procedure or rational argument that can turn lead into gold, neither can lack of consent be transmuted into consent. Consent cannot be produced from anything but the individual’s own untrammeled choices.

If you want to see proof of fundamentally illegitimate and patently unjustifiable political activity, look for usurpations of individual consent. If you want to see moral corruption in the realm of art, observe the books and movies that incessantly try to pound into your brain that your consent must occasionally be usurped either for the “good of the group” (which ignores the fact that “good” has no meaning for the group as such, but only for its individual members), or for “law and order” (which ignores the fact that usurping rights is a crime). If you want to see an intellectually bankrupt philosopher bent on rationalizing and apologizing for corruption, who is uninterested in the pursuit of truth, observe one who would try to argue that civilization or justice requires forcibly stripping individual human beings of their right to consent to join that civilization.

This bogus notion of fiat consent is one of the Massive Lies of the modern world – we all are forced to belong to a given government by virtue of being born into it, we have no way of leaving, we must simply submit and go along, or be imprisoned, or die. It is impossible to overstate the violence, destruction, and wickedness inherent in this, the hatred and subjugation of the free and independent human spirit, the direct insult to one’s own life’s pursuits, and the violence inflicted on innocents from the blowback stemming from forcing others to do something they, as a self-evident truth and a biological imperative, know that no one has any right to force them to do.

Fiat consent is only made possible through fiat jurisdiction. If governments had integrity to the Law of Origin of Government – to their proper geographic limits, namely, the boundaries of land owned by consenting citizens – then one could always leave a government one didn’t agree with.

In addition to fiat jurisdiction and fiat consent, there are a multitude of other forms of fiat ultimately rooted in and based upon these foundational forms of fraudulent authority. Some would not be fiat, if only they were based on consent. To address all of them would take many volumes, perhaps as many as the United States Code, so I must limit myself to what seems to me the more conspicuous, damaging, or interesting forms of fiat.

“How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”

— Samuel Adams

“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?”

— Thomas Jefferson

“If, to the consciousness of having saved some lives, [a physician] can add that of having no time, from want of caution, destroyed the boon he was called on to save, he will enjoy, in age, the happy reflection of not having lived in vain; while the lawyer has only to recollect how many, by his dexterity, have been cheated of their right and been reduced to beggary.”

— Thomas Jefferson, To David Campbell

“Woe unto you, lawyers! For ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”

— Luke 11:52

“The more laws, the less justice.”

— Cicero

“Lex malla, Lex nulla – A bad law is no law.”

— St. Thomas Aquinas

How can one reply to “Ignorance of the law is no defense” but that which will get one thrown in jail for contempt of court? It is impossible to not be ignorant of the law since it is so vastly huge. Just one part of the United States Code, Title 26 (the U.S. Tax Code), is approximately 17,000 pages in approximately 21 volumes. Certainly the tax code alone keeps plenty of lawyers, judges, accountants, programmers, and IRS agents busy doing make-work that ultimately is far worse than useless to society, but it has nothing to do with what is required in order to run a proper government and everything to do with a the bloated festering stench of fiat justice smothering every citizen in its wretched unwholesomeness.

Was this the noble reason our forefathers dumped British tea into the Boston harbor? So that we could be lorded over by lawyers? How our descendants will look upon us with pity at the pathetic wreck of a government we’ve inflicted ourselves with that would create such monstrosities as the U.S. Tax Code, and they will view us with scorn that we should shackle our descendants to such a system. Indeed, a child maturing in the United States comes upon an inevitable and seemingly endless series of horrific psychological insults as he learns the true nature of the adult world he lives in; it would be better that he were forced to attend weekly shock therapy than learn the truth behind our culturally accepted forms of “justice.” No wonder teachers preach to children “Life’s not fair,” it numbs their natural outrage at discovering the gross unfairness that has been created by adults – and not just any adults – but professionals allegedly dedicated to law and order.

“Ignorance of the law” is completely beside the point. The purpose of a “justice system” is to implement justice, not to slavishly and unthinkingly apply farcical laws. The foundation of every court should be Natural Law. Even man-made laws must conform in the respect that there must be legitimate consent in order for the man-made law to be applicable. Natural Law doesn’t take volumes and volumes to explain.

A good sanity check on whether you’re dealing with Natural Law or with man-made laws is to ask: would you go to war over it, would you attack and kill others to defend it? (Consulting one’s intuition obviously won’t yield anything useful if you are deranged, but it can be a good sanity check if you’re reasonable.) For example, if another government kidnapped your citizens, or stole your land, then those would be seen by reasonable people as acts of war. However, a government that lets its citizens get away with copying your books is clearly a different matter. Few to none are advocating war with China for copying America’s books and movies.

Copyright is not a natural right, but a man-made construct. If a primitive, living in the wilderness, happens upon an abandoned object that you have copyrighted and makes copies, it is a violation of his rights to attack him. The object was abandoned, and his copying in no way interferes with your own pursuits.

Copyrights are indeed sensible, so long as they are created through consent. It is perfectly reasonable to have your city-state, or your federation of city-states, all agree that they will respect reasonable copyright laws, and that those who consented but then “trespass” on copyrights will bear some reasonable penalty. Likewise, it is reasonable to have members of your city-state refuse to trade with parties who do not recognize your copyright laws, thus depriving them of the benefits of your more civilized society, encouraging them to assent to your requirement that creators be paid for their efforts through voluntary trade.

If you are right that your terms are better and if you are generally right on your other man-made laws, then your city-states will prosper and grow, while the ones who do not accept your terms will shrink. The city-states you embargo will feel the pressure to conform to your reasonable rules (as identified in Chapter 3, this is only made legitimate by constraining one’s own citizens who have agreed to live under your system; enforcing your embargo on parties who did not consent to it is illegitimate and an act of war). You’re free to adopt unreasonable rules as well, but the more unreasonable they are, the more your city-state will tend to shrink and fail, while the more reasonable city-states prosper. Indeed, the city-state system, so unlike the totalitarian system we have today, ensures that the more reasonable social constructs win over time; not by destruction of city-states, but by individuals voting with their feet and teaching valuable lessons to city-states before they fail. Totalitarians hate losing what they view as their property (namely, each of us), but it is of extreme beneficence to mankind to strip this monopoly on government from the hands of dictators and place it where it belongs: in the hands of each and every individual.

Reasonable copyright laws support the creation of easily-duplicated but difficult-to-create new objects, without interfering with the productivity of other citizens. For example, a given piece of music can take months or years to create, and it costs everyone else nothing to restrict access to it unless the creator is paid. This new object would not have existed but for the creator, therefore no one is set back by having to pay for it. (It is difficult to ascertain what the ideal and specific terms of copyright could and should be given intelligent people living in free city-states. My support of copyright should not be taken as support of all modern copyright laws, but only as support of the basic idea of protecting literal copying of works through man-made laws.)

“The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.”

— John Carmack

“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today…”

— Bill Gates

Patents are fundamentally different from copyrights, because they do in fact impact the productive efforts of others. Unlike copyright, patents apply not to specific works, but to general ideas applying to an unlimited number of variations and manifestations (note the similarity to the infinite dominion motive that reared its ugly head in connection to “land grabbing” the whole Universe). Two people can easily think of the same general idea, and as one can easily see by observing how the modern patent systems work, often do. This fact alone proves that patents are not natural rights, because there can be no right to a contradiction. If one inventor patents something and another inventor independently creates the same idea, then there is no actual interference by the second inventor, and yet the current patent laws permit the first to confiscate his property anyway, on the pretext that the second inventor actually did interfere with the first inventor. But the only respect in which the second inventor could be construed as “interfering” is that he “interfered” with the first inventors hopes and wishes to monopolize a given area of human life. As was noted in Chapter 2, Right to Property, such hoping and wishing creates a criminal menace from a man. But the fact is that both inventors acted in precisely the same way: they independently conceived of a given idea. How can one have a right to do it, but with the other it was a crime? There is no natural right to a patent.

As it was with copyrights, city-states can choose to implement patents, so long as they don’t apply their man-made patent laws to individuals who are not their own citizens. But unless those patent laws are severely restricted relative to the ones we have in the modern age, that would be a mistake. In the current patent regime, it is very easy to accidentally “trespass,” which severely damages those who materially carry mankind: the inventors. Any city-state that adopted the modern patent system would thus lose all its good inventors to city-states that did not have this megalomaniacal form of patents and therefore collapse. Thus, the modern patent system is merely a consequence of totalitarian fiat and would cease to be as the totalitarian system was abandoned, along with the horde of lawyers, judges, and patent examiners who implement it.

Ancient man and his fellow-traveler the Neanderthal had total freedom to exchange value for value without the meddling of a third party. When modern man engages in the same activity, the legal tender laws treat him as if he were a criminal. To trade value for value without yielding to the illegitimate tax jurisdiction of a regime is to risk imprisonment, or if you resist going along quietly to prison, you will be murdered by the defenders of the totalitarian state. And this system of terrorism inflicted upon innocents is purported to be “civilized.”

The naïve and common view of fiat money is that it’s backed by trust. We “trust” that when we go to the grocery store we’ll be able to buy a loaf of bread for a reasonably predictable amount of fiat money, and likewise, the grocer “trusts” that he’ll be able to take that fiat money and buy what he needs in order to stay in business. On a superficial level, this has some truth to it, but the fact is, if we repeal the legal tender laws, the system would fall like a house of cards as those who know better inevitably stop “trusting” fiat dollars – which is precisely why those laws exist. In other words, fiat dollars aren’t backed by trust, nor are they backed by nothing, but in fact they are backed by guns. The strength of a given unit of fiat money is a direct measure of the military and police power of a given totalitarian state and the corresponding fear the citizens have that they will be violated by their own government for exercising their natural right to trade with one another. When you pull a dollar out of your wallet and see the virtual gun pointed at your head and your fellow citizens cowering in fear and rotting in prison, then you’ve come to understand fiat money[6]. Contrary to some economists, a “gold standard” is not the solution, because any form of currency that is forced upon unwilling victims is fiat money as well. It is not fiat money because of what it is made of; it is fiat money because it is backed by government force and not consent. It makes no essential difference whether the underlying value of the material is relatively low or high; the only difference that it makes is the particular form of evil consequence that results from the fiat.

Unlike many of the other kinds of fiat, fiat money is honestly named, even if it is not well understood. What is not so honestly expressed is the purpose of fiat money. A key purpose is to fund the totalitarian state through money printing, which permits the state to buy what it wants, with the almost unseen and insidious penalty of inflation – the devaluing of the money that everyone who is forced to hold fiat dollars has in their possession. It also has a “side-benefit”: wealth can be transferred as desired from outsiders to insiders in possession of knowledge, and conveniently, no physical transfer need take place nor be recorded. If you know that the dollar will deflate, save and lend; if you know it will inflate, buy assets and take out fixed-interest loans (and if well-connected, take out zero interest loans directly from the Federal Reserve). No one can really know what will actually happen but those who pull the levers. Fiat money stacks the deck for insiders; everyone else has to guess whether there will be inflation or deflation, and they have no control over which they’ll get.

The evil of a third party forcing others onto a system of hidden financial levers should be obvious. Everyone should be free to trade value for value in whatever units of wealth they wish. If someone chooses to use paper for transactions, then that should be their choice, and if someone else wants to use something else, like silver and gold or any kind of terms mutually agreed on, they should be free to do so. As is the case with fiat property, if a given city-state wishes to use paper backed by nothing but an agreement to use it to exchange goods, then that would be their choice, so long as the use of paper is backed by consent, not guns.

“Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

“Academies that are founded at the public expense are instituted not so much as to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them. But in a free commonwealth arts and sciences will be better cultivated to the full if every one that asks leave is allowed to teach publicly, at his own cost and risk.”

— Spinoza

“… if there is to be a philosophy at all, that is to say, if it is to be granted to the human mind to devote its loftiest and noblest powers to incomparably the weightiest of all problems, then this can successfully happen only when philosophy is withdrawn from all State influence.”

— Schopenhauer

Human action springs from a single source: human beliefs. As a single cause leads to a plethora of effects, so too does a single human belief lead to a plethora of human actions. The key to enslaving people with the least possible trouble and therefore the greatest “return on investment,” is to control their beliefs, both through myths taught when they are young and through misrepresentation and omission in the press and in the history books.

The belief that education is so important that the government must be in charge of it is as powerful a myth as it is revealing. Oh the celebration of any tyrant to find that the populace is not only willing to entrust him with the molding and shaping their children’s tender minds, but are indeed clamoring for him to not only take control of their children, but to extort tax monies for that purpose as well. If Thomas Jefferson were still alive, he would certainly rue the day that he thought that government and education should ever be brought near to one another.

America began with a free press, which was brought to almost total collapse through a highly consolidated media, and precariously, seems to be on the verge of being resurrected by the Internet (ca. 2008-2010)[7]. If anything can help cure the world of the disease of totalitarianism, a nearly unfettered Internet can. Time will tell whether the barbarians will figure out a scheme they can use as a pretext to hobble or shut it down, but one thing is certain: such actions by government must be thwarted.

One can go on an on and on identifying the many crimes of totalitarianism, as indeed many have in various books and other media produced over the span of centuries. Many important books have been written in just the last decade. But as my purpose is to underscore the most fundamental crimes, principally fiat jurisdiction and fiat consent, I will end my remarks here.

One of the most revealing phrases of our time, a virtual litmus test for whether evil is prospering or is on the run is “life isn’t fair.”

There are two ways to interpret this statement. The most benign interpretation is that the universe is neutral regarding you and doesn’t care whether you get what you want or not. But this isn’t what is usually meant. Those uttering this phrase hide the true meaning behind the word “life.” They don’t really mean “life isn’t fair,” they mean “people aren’t fair, and don’t expect anyone to do anything about it, especially me” or “I’m not fair, but I have power and authority over you, so get used to it.”

Like the venom of a spider that paralyzes the victim into inaction that it might be safely devoured, the phrase “life’s not fair” is primarily aimed at inducing a state of paralyzed apathy in the victim or his potential champion, so that they just sit there and accept injustice instead of fighting it. This is one of the most useful phrases of human parasites of all kinds, because even children grasp the meaning when they are told by their teacher that “life isn’t fair,” and many adults permit the venomous phrase to poison their minds as well. And so, we have a whole culture of people who have been trained since grade school to roll over and take it when authorities and bullies of all kinds devour more and more of our rights as the years go by.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit a world full of bullies.”

— Richard Bobowski

Take this verbal dagger aimed at the heart of justice out of the hands of the fools and villains who wield it and turn it back on them. It’s not that “life” isn’t fair, it’s that certain people thwart justice and should therefore be punished.

The “argument from wickedness” is the notion that the burden of proof lies upon the victim of a crime to demonstrate how the criminal’s life can be acceptable to him if he does not commit his crimes. But if a cannibal is holding you at knife-point and says he wants to hear your argument for why he will be better off by not eating you, it’s not your responsibility to prove anything to him. In fact it might be impossible to do so since he’s so evil he may not be able to produce anything anyway, so what might in fact be best for him is to eat you.

It is not your responsibility to prove the practicality of abolishing the crimes of fiat jurisdiction, fiat money, involuntary welfare programs, and other forms of government usurpation of individual rights. Your only responsibility is to justice – to make sure it is clear to the other party that they are interfering with you. If someone is so evil that they rank their own criminal desires above the fact that they are party to the usurping of your rights then there’s nothing left to say to him. Clearly, it’s his responsibility to keep his grubby paws off of you, not yours to show him how his life will be so much better if once he stops being a barbarian thug.

It is not wrong of course to ask how a system based on individual rights will work. But given the state of the world, we cannot project all the solutions that free men will find to solve problems when they are finally freed from the grasp of totalitarians. Nor is it anyone’s responsibility to prove what a particular solution to a particular problem is. A conversation about how to make things better takes place among moral people (also see REASON and LIBERTY, chapter 3), not as barter for your rights.

Given how commonplace it is for individual rights to be violated in the modern world and how most of us were taught as children to regard this as “normal,” some individuals may be slow to recognize that they are in fact arguing for the usurpation of your rights and thus participating. Their slowness in grasping the issue is not per se a sign of a corrupted mentality.

The historical record is clear. Being polite in the face of evil hasn’t worked. It’s time to speak plainly, to deal with evil for what it is. We the rights-respecting should not lend credibility to vile ideas by responding to them with a polite argument, nor should we permit those who support or indulge in evil ideas get away with the pretense that what they promote is anything but barbarism.

The 2010 version of this section has been superseded by my 2011 essay Against Anarchism.

“Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.”

— Aristotle

Let us give full benefit of the doubt and define “minarchism” as a system of government that claims exclusive jurisdiction to enforce Natural Law[1] in a given geographic region. The key here is the claim of exclusive jurisdiction.

Ayn Rand is perhaps the most noteworthy advocate of minarchism. In the following excerpt from The Ayn Rand Lexicon, Rand is referring particularly to the Rothbardian “anarcho-capitalist” idea of “competing governments,” but her argument is implicitly against the idea of overlapping jurisdictions as such: “One cannot call this theory a contradiction in terms, since it is obviously devoid of any understanding of the terms ‘competition’ and ‘government.’ Nor can one call it a floating abstraction, since it is devoid of any contact with or reference to reality and cannot be concretized at all, not even roughly or approximately. One illustration will be sufficient: suppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.”

If it is impossible that Government A and Government B can agree on just principles of enforcement in this situation, then how can it be that Government A and a citizen of Government A can agree? That is, how is Ayn Rand’s worldview here not a bald-faced apologetic for tyranny? Ironically, Ayn Rand’s argument against Natural Law jurisdiction furthers the anarchist position (and indeed, many anarchists came to anarchism directly through the works of Ayn Rand).

We must ask Ayn Rand one of her favorite questions: “By what right?” By what right does one group of people lay total claim to enforce laws upon a geographical region, thereby stripping the natural right to consent and justice from those who do not so choose? Ayn Rand’s sole answer to this is, in effect: “But there would be gang warfare otherwise.” In other words, “We’re from the government, and we’re here to protect you. Now hand over that tax revenue before we beat the living hell out of you and haul you to prison.”

The rationalization “but there would be gang warfare otherwise” is obviously no answer (particularly when you are being made into the subject of a gang you didn’t choose – which is, ironically, a kind of gang warfare against the individual). An actual answer must be founded upon particular individual rights, not the fear-mongering assertion that Government A and Government B are not able to resolve any differences without resorting to gang warfare. Ironically again, Ayn Rand’s denigration of anarchists applies at least as much to her own arguments as it does to theirs.

“All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.”

— Samuel Adams

Ayn Rand (evidently inadvertently) argues for totalitarianism in other writings as well, for example, in her definition of government: “A government is an institution that holds the exclusive [emphasis mine] power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area.” This is tantamount to totalitarianism, regardless of whatever remarks Rand made about individual rights elsewhere: suppose some “anarcho-capitalists” individually own land in a given area and want to implement their “competing governments” model on their own land. Samuel Adams surely would have supported the answer: let them try, and let them bear the consequences. Rand’s definition rules that their government is no government, and her view of government as the usurper of a sweeping geographical area (as evidenced in her definition and her other writings) would put them under the jurisdiction of a totalitarian government, which would then forcibly exterminate their competing governments.

We can answer the question I posed to Ayn Rand by citing the Law of Origin of Government: The only right by which one people can lay total claim to exclusively enforce laws in a given geographic region is if they have or have been delegated, through the consent of each and every land-owner, the right to exclusive enforcement that flows naturally from the right of land ownership. But this precludes the sweeping totalitarian fiat jurisdictions that Ayn Rand supported; the right of exclusive jurisdiction can only apply to those areas that are legitimately owned land (as defined in Chapter 2), and only then if no owner violates the rights of those outside of its jurisdiction.

The absurdity of minarchism is also understood from these basic observations:

• If Government A and Government B find it impossible to resolve their differences when jurisdictions overlap, then it is equally impossible for them to resolve their differences in matters where citizens engage in trade outside their resident jurisdiction, or when a citizen allegedly commits a crime in another jurisdiction. In other words, the same assumptions about our alleged inability as human beings to come to mutual agreement that allegedly require fiat jurisdiction, leads to the alternative of either incessant war between governments – or a one world totalitarian government. (Which is precisely the historical trend.)
• If the reasons for the alleged necessity of geographical dominion by a single government is applied to governments themselves, then it follows that multiple governments existing on Earth is just as anarchic and in need of government as individuals who have no government; in other words, the argument for minarchy is the argument for a one world totalitarian government – hardly the “minimal” state minarchists think they are calling for.
• Consider the places on Earth where government can draw no clear boundaries, or where boundaries are disputed, such as the ocean. If Government A and Government B cannot agree where jurisdictions overlap, then they cannot agree where boundaries are in dispute or where there are no boundaries at all. If Government A and Government B cannot resolve their differences when jurisdictions overlap, then they can’t resolve them here, and thus the call for minarchism must again degenerate into the call for a one world totalitarian government.
• Consider the usual hierarchy of governments, such as appears in the United States (County, City, State, Federal). If it is impossible that Government A and Government B can resolve disputes, then it is likewise impossible that the Federal and State governments can resolve disputes, unless the State governments are mere extensions of and handmaidens to a tyrannical Federal government.
• Consider the only possible means of resolving a territorial dispute among minarchists. If one group of minarchists claims fiat jurisdiction over formerly free wilderness, and another makes the same claim, then both are wrong, and (barring them recognizing this) the only possible resolution is full-scale war. This leads to a policy of “might makes right” in every other sphere within a minarchist/totalitarian state. (So despite being predicated on a distaste of gang warfare, Ayn Rand’s own system inevitably leads to gang warfare on the largest possible scale).

Thus, when pressed on his premises, the consistent minarchist must ultimately degenerate into a full-scale totalitarian. And this is precisely the sorry state that every government that indulges in fiat jurisdiction has devolved into throughout history. Minarchy is thus a myth at best and a Trojan horse of totalitarianism at worst.

Because “Natural Law” and “fiat jurisdiction” are incompatible, even the best minarchist can only argue for pseudo-Natural Law within a given totalitarian jurisdiction. Unlike Samuel Adams, the minarchist cannot be a true and consistent supporter of the Rights of Man. If some citizens prefer to live in a jurisdiction where there is no prostitution, or no drugs, or where their neighbors have to follow certain building codes, or where there is a kind of “social safety net,” then they have no choice: they must either put up with the lack of what they see as necessary man-made laws, or try to foist their man-made laws on everyone by infiltrating the pseudo-Natural Law government and further corrupting its laws. And the minarchist cannot rationally object to the latter: he is a hypocrite who promotes the violation of Natural Law at the very foundation of his system. He is in no place to argue against a continual chipping away of the liberties he feigns respect for given that he flouts the Law of Origin of Government at the outset and thereby violates the most important of human rights: the right to own land.

Forcing everyone into the same jurisdiction is tantamount to forcing human beings into a cockfight and can only devolve into an unstable social disaster. History has demonstrated this repeatedly.

The proper ideal is not a totalitarian government based in fiat jurisdiction, the ideal is tight communities of a single jurisdiction, justly acquired by the Law of Origin of Government, with its associated man-made laws, and its treaties with other such city-states that confer only a limited set of rights to higher-level governments, for the purpose of securing Natural Law to the utmost degree, such that true consent, peace, harmony, and prosperity can exist.

Minarchists pose as the guardians of individual rights; in truth, they are, because of their posturing, an even greater enemy of them than the worst kind of dictator, because minarchists promote dictatorship and call it individual rights, thereby eradicating an authentic concept of individual rights from the minds of men, trading that which makes every man his own King for a fool’s bauble.

The “Malthusian Catastrophe” is the idea that at some point, human population and resource constraints will reach such a point that a apocalyptic economic crash will happen, one that reduces almost everyone to a subsistence-level existence or worse.

This nightmare situation is, unfortunately, quite possible. But the danger does not lie in the places usually cited, such as fundamentally limited natural resources. Mankind has amply demonstrated its creative ability to invent unanticipated ways of expanding resource production to meet his needs – when he has been left free to do so. The danger lies in how governments typically respond to problems. In the modern era, the typical government response to emergencies is to worsen the conditions that led to the emergency in the first place. As of this writing, the latest crisis relates to financial instruments, the root cause of which is fiat currency. If not for the fiat currency, such a wide-scale financial collapse would be impossible, as everyone would be diversified into widely varied instruments based on their own individual assessments, rather than being corralled by government into a centralized financial system. But instead of rectifying the fundamental problem, governments increase the power and authority of the centralized money system, virtually guaranteeing a future economic disaster of even greater proportions. They seek to hide this by engineering the spread of the disaster across a long span of time (such as through a gradual lowering of standards of living through inflation or other means), so that most do not notice the destruction, but because centralized systems are unstable, the disaster could come all at once as well.

Malthusians relish the idea of society collapsing, and they come in all stripes. Some Malthusians, such as certain extreme environmentalists, hate the human race, and would love nothing more than our species dying out in order to make room for flies and weeds.

Like anarchism, Malthusianism is a way to instill apathy and thus let tyranny run amok. In spite of the stance of most Malthusians, who adopt a self-certain attitude that is superficially impressive, no one can predict the future. The economy is far too large and complex to predict if and when it will collapse to the point of bare subsistence. If history is any guide, it will move along roughly as it has, and if you follow the advice of Malthusians, you will apathetically disengage from society, and the most probable outcome will be you reaching old age only to find a society that hasn’t collapsed, but where you had abandoned many opportunities for personal success, and traded them for the Malthusian vision of watching everyone else suffer. I doubt that anyone with the benefit of hindsight will consider that a good trade.

Economic forecasting is notoriously difficult. If you have a crystal ball and can see for yourself that it is going to collapse, then by all means, run for the hills. If you do not have a crystal ball, and if you cannot see for yourself that there is a solid case that the economy will certainly collapse to subsistence levels, then by all means, hedge your bets to a reasonable level, seek to improve your self-sufficiency, but don’t organize your entire life on the premise that we’re destined for Armageddon.

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”

— Bertrand Russell

“In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.” – > “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

— Joseph Goebbels

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

— paraphrasing Adolf Hitler

A substantial portion of government’s immense power is directed at preserving itself in its given form at a given time, regardless of whether the government might in fact be better if its form were altered. This inertia, embodied as massive swamps of bureaucracy, the “deep state”, reams of legislation, the academic establishment, the corporate establishment, and so on, is an enormous obstacle to improvement. To try to fight it all at once is to be doomed to fail. We have to fight it at the source: the basic myths about government people carry around in their minds.

That every tyrannical form of government in history has had its own mythology indicates how central these lies are for sustaining tyranny. At root they are all the same: they all teach men to ascribe God-like powers to government, to implicitly believe that government is an entity that transcends and overrules man’s nature, to believe that government is somehow more than just a group of individuals who happen to possess power and authority over other individuals.

There are three related purposes of such mythologies. First, the mythology instills fear, powerlessness, and subservience in the victims. Second, it causes the victims to feel as if the government is almost another parent, one who in spite of its brutal hand, will protect them from even more brutal enemies (enemies who are often fabricated as part of the mythology). Most important is that the victims come to believe that the government is somehow magically exempt from moral law; that it may do things that would be blatant crimes if ordinary citizens did them. All three purposes represent the psychological, spiritual, and moral disarmament of the victim and thus permit the government to get away with crimes of totalitarian proportions, many in full-view of a citizenry who are too intellectually paralyzed by the mythology to apply the same reasonable standards they use in their everyday lives to the actions of their own government. (To those who have thrown off the mental chains of tyranny-appeasing mythology, who well know that government is merely an institution of men and is bound by the same moral laws, this mythology and the acts it results in often make it seem as if planet Earth is one big insane asylum.)

John Locke dealt a serious blow to the prevailing government mythology of his time when he wrote his two treatises on government. In his time, these mythologies were of absolute monarchy and “Divine Right of Kings.”[2] Locke argued vigorously against this rationalization for tyranny, instead supporting a conception of government rooted in inalienable individual rights and “consent of the governed.” John Locke’s ideas animated many of the Founders of America and directly inspired Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Locke railed against the mythology of “Divine Right of Kings,” that heirs of Adam had inherited “paternal rights” over the rest of mankind, and instead championed the idea of natural rights, that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights.” A contemporary and counterpart of Issac Newton, Locke believed that human rights and the proper form of government could be understood through the powers of reason, by applying reason to the realm government just as Newton had applied it to the realm of physics.

We have “progressed” since the time of John Locke, not from mythology to science, but from one mythology to another. In today’s world, there are still those who believe that God ordains this or that government bureaucrat; however, most are under a different and more base spell: that might makes right, that if my gang is bigger and stronger than yours then I should get my way, that mob rule is the ultimate justification for everything (also see: legal positivism). In other words, the notion of “democracy” has trumped the place in the minds of many that was formerly occupied by God. Absolute democracy wasn’t prevalent in the time of John Locke, but one can be certain that if it had been prevalent, he would have railed against that as vigorously as he railed against the mythologies of his time. As many have identified and even more have felt, it is no less of a tyranny to be ordered around by the majority than it is to be ordered by a King. Indeed, democracy can be even more tyrannical than a King, who has sole authority and therefore sole blame when things go wrong: a King has to worry about things like angry mobs and the guillotine, and this concern surely regulated the behavior of many Kings, whereas anonymous voters feel relatively safe from the repercussions of their cowardly violations of their fellow man from the presumed safety of the voting booth. (This feeling of safety is illusory, but unfortunately the various forms of blowback that naturally follow the various voting crimes injure not only the voter, but the entire society, including those who are innocent.)

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

— John Adams

The fundamental metaphysical premise of demagogues and their dupes is that wishing makes it so – as long as they have a majority vote. For a time, democratic rule that is unrestrained by the principles of individual rights can seem to work, but as it parasitically sucks the blood out of the productive to feed it to the unproductive, the rule of the mob must inevitably collapse, and such a collapse must necessarily be filled with chaos and limitless human suffering and tragedy.

To many, the concept “society” seems almost magical, as if it is something imbued with an inexplicable property that “it” can do things that are completely unjustifiable for you to do yourself. Men have no trouble understanding that they shouldn’t steal their neighbor’s property, nor should a gang of ten men, but for some reason, when “society” does it, they feel it is appropriate. A right is an action that pertains to individuals only, and aggregations of actions are only the aggregations of the actions of individual men. If the right to commit a crime is a contradiction for individuals, then it therefore must also be a contradiction for a group of them – no matter the size nor the number of documents that rationalize such action.

Consider Winston Churchhill’s notions on democracy: “Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.” But logic dictates that there cannot be something that is right but impossible (a fundamentally moral form of government) or wrong but practical (democracy unrestrained by Natural Law).

Moral-practical dichotomies are not philosophic truth, they are divide-and-conquer strategies for inattentive masses. In the history of man, many scientific-technological solutions to problems have never been tried, but no sane person would claim that we therefore should stop using reason in that sphere to discover new technologies and content ourselves with the best that we could come up with 2000 years ago. Our age is a testament to change for the better in the scientific-technological realm. We should learn our lesson. If we use our minds correctly, we can correctly discover truth and improve our condition on Earth. Moral-practical dichotomy peddlers are interested in only one thing: manipulating you into a state of unprincipled apathy in order to control you.

“Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.” – > “John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?”

— Emma Goldman

Supposing that man were inherently corrupt, then in order for men to productively cooperate rather than incessantly attack and steal from one another, they would need to be coerced. Like undisciplined children, they would need a “parent” to force them to do what they ought, because they will always pursue mischief otherwise. Thus, they would need a Leviathan State to act as if it were parent of all men. So it is no coincidence that tyrants decry “evil” human nature, while simultaneously exemplifying the worst kind of human evil.

But no man can see directly into the soul of another; instead, he infers the nature of all mankind by introspecting upon his own soul. Therefore, men who espouse the philosophy that all men are inherently evil indict themselves. Their cynicism about mankind isn’t an argument, it’s a confession. Thus, there is no refutation to offer such a man, there is only the admonition to redeem his soul from the evil he indulges in, and to stop making unreasonable inferences about other men based on his own wicked state.

A variation on the view that all men are inherently corrupt is that the majority of mankind is inherently corrupt (or stupid), in effect, that man is not a single species, but in fact two species: the common man, who has no concern for reason, truth and morality, and the higher and rarer sort of man, who does. This self-satisfied view is a potent anesthetic for the pain of recognizing just how daunting the task of redeeming mankind from the grip of bad government is, but also has the disastrous side-effect of inducing a state of helpless apathy in that crucial minority of sensible people.

One cannot know the true capacities and potentialities of the “common man” in a true state of liberty, but one can know that man ought to have liberty, and one can know that a paternalistic government turns men who would otherwise be self-sufficient into helpless dependents. We know that men who are enslaved often lose their hope and virtue. What justification then is there to look out at the world as it is now, and presume to know what “average” men are truly capable of? As with all things of great worth, there is no guarantee of successful attainment, there is only the alternative of action or inaction and the knowledge that you either did what you were capable of, or you did not. This view of the inherent inferiority of the “average” man cannot be based on reason, but only on hopelessness and cowardice.

The notion of “necessary evil” is that some measure of evil is necessary in order to further a “greater good.” The scoundrel uses it as a rationalization for his own purpose of usurping the rights of innocents. The hypocrite uses it as cover for his own treasonous cowardice.

When something that is good and necessary to human life has been corrupted, no idea is more helpful to the furtherance and increase of that evil than the idea that it is inherent to that thing and therefore also necessary. No evil is necessary, and nothing that is necessary can be evil; this notion is the trick of the parasite that encourages one to suffer with a disease instead of curing it. Evil rejoices in your embrace of the concept of “necessary evil” and its allied false dichotomies: theory vs. practice, moral vs. practical. Accepting such divisions stops thinking by making thinking in principles impossible. It therefore makes it impossible to discern right from wrong. Which is precisely the purpose of those dichotomies. By accepting them, the not entirely innocent victim voluntarily shackles his own mind, to the glee of the evil that forged the shackles. Don’t fall for it.

The refutation of “necessary evil” is a trivial application of the Law of Excluded Middle, that there is no middle ground between contraries: good and evil are opposites; what is good cannot be evil; what is evil cannot be good. The triviality of the logic reveals what can only be untoward motives behind any acceptance of this notion: that one wishes to get away with something evil, or that one wishes not to have to think or to disagree with authority figures who are engaged in the former.

Evil that is long-suffered can become intertwined with the good in such a way that an immediate termination of evil may cause more evil, just as the crude extraction of an arrow can cause even more bodily harm. But that doesn’t make the original evil “necessary,” it means that a specific gradual process must be used to terminate it.

It is craven to beg a robber not to steal from you because he’s “misallocating scarce resources and interfering with the free market economy.” He’ll just steal and then add well-deserved insult to your injury by mocking you as he makes off with the loot. The robber needs moral condemnation and ostracism and justice, not a lecture on economic theory.

Economics is not the basis of human rights. It is of course true that letting people be free maximizes their potential to prosper. This is not a principle of economics, but is a deeper principle that follows from the Life Principle: to interfere is to elicit retaliation; two beings engaged in interference with each other is destruction, not creation, and will necessarily result in less overall prosperity than two beings engaged in mutually-beneficial and non-interfering action. No theory of economics is needed in order to comprehend this basic and obvious biological fact.

“Man does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself.”

— Andrew Carnegie

“[T]he whole content of human life can not be summed up in the production, acquisition, and distribution of wealth. … I have sometimes thought that here may be the rock on which Western civilization will finally shatter itself. Economism can build a society which is rich, prosperous, powerful, even one which has a reasonably wide diffusion of material well-being. It can not build one which is lovely, one which has savor and depth, and which exercises the irresistible power of attraction that loveliness wields. Perhaps by the time economism has run its course the society it has built may be tired of itself, bored of its own hideousness, and may despairingly consent to annihilation, aware that it is too ugly to be let live any longer.”

— Albert Jay Nock, The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

Without wealth, there can be no human life, and especially not the kind of life one would regard as human. But life is more than wealth. A culture that prioritizes wealth accumulation over basic human values such as liberty and justice is a sick culture.

If the credit for a given consequence must be given to the consequence’s essential cause, then the greatest American industrialist and inventor was a man who garnered relatively little credit for it, both in his lifetime and thereafter. This is a man without whom the Second Industrial Revolution could not have taken place, and yet he died in poverty, even while all of America benefited immensely from his inventions, and leading industrialists profited handsomely from them. Even today, more than fifty years after his death, his inventions are being used in novel products. He was America’s greatest inventor, indeed, history’s greatest inventor, and yet America’s leading intellectuals permitted Thomas Edison to defame him both in his lifetime and thereafter. This man was Nikola Tesla.

The story of Tesla’s exploitation by those who historians have traditionally given higher billing is a long one.[3] It began when Tesla arrived in America and started working for Thomas Edison. Edison promised a large bonus to Tesla in exchange for unimaginable (by Edison) improvements in Edison’s DC motor. Tesla made the improvements, and Edison profited, but declined to pay Tesla his due. So Tesla quit Edison’s employ in order to pursue his AC motor (something he could not convince the short-sighted Edison as being worthwhile) – the heart of the Second Industrial Revolution. When Tesla started having success with his motor, Edison, in order to scare the public away from Tesla’s invention, began electrocuting various animals, including horses, dogs, and elephants. Edison even funded the invention of the electric chair and coined the phrase “to Westinghouse,” referring to death by electrocution. It took eight minutes for the first victim of Edison’s chair, whose blood vessels burst and whose body caught fire, to succumb.

While Tesla employed the power of his mind to bring inexpensive electricity to mankind, Edison employed his wealth to produce a horrific killing machine. Tesla’s vision was to harness the power of Niagara Falls for the benefit of mankind. Edison’s vision was to garner wealth and fame for his own benefit, and Tesla had gotten in his way. While Tesla was driven by deep human values, Edison was driven by economism.

The soulless philosophy of economism would strike Tesla again. Westinghouse had agreed to pay Tesla certain fees in exchange for his AC motor. But when Westinghouse met financial difficulties, Tesla magnanimously forgave Westinghouse its debts, tearing up his contract with Westinghouse. Westinghouse went on to profit immensely, while Tesla was left by those who had so richly benefited from Tesla’s efforts to die in poverty.

The same historians who glorified Edison at Tesla’s expense would of course accuse Tesla of being a bad businessman. But those infected with economism only see the world through fascist spectacles. Tesla’s highest desire was to see his motor employed to the betterment of mankind. It was not to maximize the amount of wealth he extracted from his fellow human beings. He certainly could have made a better business decision, but Westinghouse (who, unlike Tesla, was a full-time businessman) could have made a better human decision and protected Tesla from making a mistake. It must have been stunningly obvious to Westinghouse that Tesla was making a mistake – but in the face of such magnanimity on Tesla’s part, where was Westinghouse’s? Should we glorify businessmen who act in this manner? How difficult would it have been for Westinghouse to add a clause that would have compensated Tesla after they recovered from their financial difficulties? Legally, we have to respect Westinghouse’s undeserved gift from Tesla, but we do not have to morally respect Westinghouse’s failure to respond in kind. Nor do we have to morally respect those cultural characteristics that let such a man as Tesla die in poverty and relative obscurity while lesser men such as Thomas Edison are glorified in the history books.

Economism is a cultural-spiritual issue, not specifically a political issue, but as goes the spirit, so goes the body. Economism’s natural political consequence is fascism, for if wealth has higher cultural priority than it should relative to human values in general, then it also has a higher political priority relative to particular human values, such as the values of individual rights.

Consider the following fascist tendencies in the United States (ca. 2008-2010):

• Onerous tax codes heavily favor big business over small business, for it is very simple for a big business to hire a professional accountant, but a huge burden for a small business to do so.
• Only big business can afford to pay for lobbyists in Washington. Therefore, the political tendency is to favor big business.
• Only big business can afford to jump through all the legal hoops required in order to obtain investment capital from the general public.
• Only big business can afford to devise and implement the complicated tax-shelter schemes the current legal environment encourages.
• In spite of the propaganda about patents benefiting individual inventors, the facts demonstrate quite the opposite. Patents guarantee that big business can hold its monopoly position over small businesses. Indeed, even the allegation of infringement can cost a small business a million dollars to defend, something easy for the big business to handle, but impossible for the small business.
• The Federal Reserve hands out money at low or no interest to big businesses, who then either use it to compete directly with small businesses who have no such access to cheap fiat money, or loan the money out at substantially marked up rates to the smaller businesses. Among many other victims of this process is the small farmer, who has systematically been driven out of business by the banking system.
• There is a revolving door between many big businesses and big government positions. This biases laws and their application in favor of big business.
• Government regulatory compliance is virtually impossible for small businesses in some fields. This leads not only to the stifling of small business, but the removal of life-saving products from the marketplace.[4]
• Government dominion over wild lands greatly favors rich and connected individuals when it comes to getting permission to extract natural resources.
• The whole history of medical insurance is the history of individuals losing their ability to insure themselves in favor of big business’s ability to shackle the individual to their job, all made possible by government regulations. This again favors the big business over the small one.
• Only big businesses can be “too big to fail” and get bailed out of mistakes that would bury any small businessman (observe the financial crisis of 2007-2008).

So it’s obviously a big racket. Big government likes big business. To borrow a phrase from Ayn Rand: it makes one neck ready for one leash. (Ironically, Ayn Rand’s followers, the Objectivists, can be generally be relied on to come to the defense of big business while remaining almost totally silent on rights-violating actions of government that favor big business at the expense of small business. But this fascist shift is a reversion to a form of serfdom or slavery; it is a step backward for human society and is something that must be understood and fought and reversed.)

It is generally thought that bigger businesses mean bigger economies of scale, but without repealing the laws that favor big business over small ones, it is impossible to know to what degree this is actually true. And what is a better hope and vision for the average man: To be eternally under the direction and control of an employer, to live a major portion of his life in a cubicle building things for someone else; or as an independent, self-sufficient creator of value, who determines the arc of his life according to his own personal values and goals?

Ironically, those who agree that big business gets too many favors react in an exceedingly counter-productive way. Instead of removing those factors in government that favor big business, they compound the problem by adding yet more laws and regulations that grant favors to the employees. And this further harms the small businessman, who is also subject to supplying these favors, and is indeed, less capable of supplying them than the big businessman. So these favor-seekers are really just shooting themselves in the foot.

This unfortunately represents the behavior of the majority of Americans: those who seek favors from government for big business, their apologists, and those who react by putting more burdens on business in general, including the very party most harmed by the burdens: the individual and the small businessman. It is no wonder that the explosion in prosperity that occurred at the founding of the United States, caused by the vast increase in liberty, has been continuously slowing, and is now in fact under threat of reversing: the majority are under the impression that shackling one’s neighbor with laws is the path to justice. One can be certain that legal and bureaucratic profession is prospering from this situation, but it is turning everyone else into slaves.

The problem with “capitalism” is twofold.

First, not only has it never existed in reality, but it has never existed in conception either. We are always told that capitalism is based on “property rights,” but then capitalists proceed to base their system on fiat property of various kinds: fiat money, patents, land grabs, regulations, and licensing that make competition difficult or impossible. The marketing brochure claims “property-rights-respecting capitalism”, but what we always end up with is fiat-property fascism.

The second problem is that capitalists always offer capitalism up as if it is a kind of religion. The idea seems to be to make everyone think almost exclusively in economic terms (economism), and then while they are distracted by the narrow pursuit of property, the rest of their individual rights are grabbed out from under their noses.

Consider Ayn Rand’s definition of capitalism: “Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.” Now consider the Six Fundamental Rights from Chapter 2. Rand’s definition “recognizes” individual rights, but aggrandizes the specific right to property, and further, decrees how such property must be used (“privately”). What about the right to self, consent, and justice? Presumably these are not nearly important enough to associate with the definition of her preferred social system. Suppose that some consenting people would like to set up a commune, a small city where everyone shares in the work and the profits? Would Rand’s capitalism defend their right to perform that social experiment?

What kind of social system do you prefer? One that fixates on property rights (without identifying the evil of fiat property), or one that explicitly respects all of your rights? Should a system concerned with the Six Fundamental Rights be named after a big business term such as “capital”? I of course do not deny the crucial importance of capital, nor the inalienable right to property, but the rights to self, consent, and justice are at least as important.

What should a system based on individual rights be called? It is too important and too true to call it any kind of “ism.” Do we call some part of mathematics “Pythagoreanism”? There was in fact just such a religion. But it was wisely cast off centuries ago, in favor of the science of mathematics. Likewise, we should cast off all such inherently biasing “isms,” such as socialism, communism, fascism, and capitalism, and replace them all with the science of government, which is and can only be rooted in the science of individual rights.

Hypocrites, being vain, love nothing more than seeing their own reflection in the form of other hypocrites. And when they can’t get enough actual hypocrites, their powers of self-deception enable them to readily manufacture them from their betters.

Thus, when one argues that government should not, for example, extort money in order to pay for its services, one hears stupid remarks such as “Well, you use the roads!” or “Well, do you plan on collecting Social Security?” or “Well if you don’t like it then why don’t you leave!” or other such nonsense that is not intended to have you rectify any hypocrisy on your part, but rather to justify the declaimer’s own hypocrisy.

Even these seekers of feet of clay probably understand that when a woman is kidnapped and raped, one does not call her a “hypocrite” for having sex with someone she doesn’t know, one calls her a victim. But it is evidently far beyond them to comprehend that when one is forced to live under totalitarianism, one has a basic alternative: adhere to the “laws of the land,” or die. What would be hypocritical is to not take whatever reasonable steps there are to gaining more liberty, such as trying to convince the feet-of-clay-seekers that liberty is preferable to tyranny.

Some denigrate Natural Law as the “law of the jungle.” They are engaging in the fallacy of equivocation, of deceptively using a given term at times with one meaning and at times with another, and thus obscuring an important truth. Natural Law is the foundation of Rights and all actually legitimate laws. The “law of the jungle” refers to the notion that “anything goes,” “might makes right,” or that “survival of the fittest” is the only proper constraint of human action. These two are opposite ideas, not the same idea.

Ironically, the very people who denigrate Natural Law as “the law of the jungle” are in fact adherents to “the law of the jungle” in the realm of government. For if there is no law prior to government, then for government, anything goes and might makes right.

Pragmatism in the sense I mean it here is not as much an argument as it is incompetence at argument; it refers to the policy of responding to self-contradiction by blithely ignoring it on the pretense that resolving it is “impractical” (i.e. the moral-practical dichotomy). To rationalize actions that contradict one’s professed beliefs, is, of course, to embrace hypocrisy as the rule of one’s life.

When faced with contradiction, every human being is faced with a basic alternative: one can seek to understand the source of the contradiction and then revise one’s ideas – or one can evade the effort and proceed on whim. This whim manifests in two different ways. One can become a zealot, damning reality and proceeding with one’s ideas regardless of the facts. Or, one can become a pragmatist, damning reason and proceeding with one’s ideas regardless of contradiction. Of course, in the final analysis, both approaches damn both reason and reality, they just emphasize a dislike of reason or reality according to their particular whim at a particular moment. Indeed, zealots and pragmatists are very close cousins, and they easily flip from being one or the other, often in the course of minutes.

Pragmatism is unfortunately a major theme of the American public education system, deeply entrenched from the efforts of many including John Dewey, an avowed pragmatist. This is a major reason so many Americans find it difficult to think in a principled manner: they have been trained since the time they were in kindergarten not to do so.

Hence, many apparent pragmatists aren’t pragmatists by their own design, they are merely victims of pragmatist teachers and parents – they aren’t true pragmatists. Characteristic of the true pragmatist is not merely the inability to grasp the range of applicability of a given principle, but an actual desire that the principle break down when applied to reality. When talking to a true pragmatist, he acts as if the universality of any particular principle is a reproach to the pragmatist’s entire mental approach to life, and it is. Thus, when discussing principles with a pragmatist, one encounters an endless series of “buts”: “yes, but this, … yes, but that …”

The scientific mind will naturally and appropriately generate exceptions as a means of exploring the meaning of a principle, but unlike the pragmatist, will eventually come to a firm induction of principle from evidence, and will stand by that principle until and unless he finds a contradiction to it, in which case he will seek to induce better principles. The pragmatist uses the flux of apparent exceptions to a principle not as a means of increasing the precision of his knowledge, but in order to wage war on principles. Thus, answering any particular exception with an explanation of how the apparent exception to the principle is only an apparent and not an actual exception is not met by the pragmatist with his being impressed with the strength of the principle or a relief that reason works after all, but rather is met with yet another superfluous exception. The stamina the true pragmatist has in generating apparent exceptions is understood from the fact that his entire way of life is questioned by the applicability of even a single general principle – he is a hypocrite, he likes it that way, and any notion that principles work out in reality after all is viewed as a threat. Thus, when his stamina and creativity finally fail, the pragmatist will call on his last line of defense: changing the subject.

The cure for pragmatism is simple. All one must do is trust one’s ability to know, while remaining sensitive to what one does not know. To fail to apply the former leads to pragmatism; to fail to apply the latter leads to zealotry (again, the same individual usually manifests both behaviors, depending on the circumstance and the particular direction their whim takes them at a given moment).[5] Trusting in one’s ability to know means that one regards the universe as knowable and one has confidence not in one’s present mental state, but in its capacity to improve (in this connection, the perfectibility of human reason was a key idea of the Renaissance and led to vast improvement in human prosperity as men who trusted in their ability to know pursued knowledge). Remaining sensitive to what one does not know means paying very close attention any time you are wrong about something, whether you have a contradiction in your ideas or a misapprehension of the facts, and then seeking to correct the particular mental frailty that led to your mistake. A pragmatist uses a mistake as evidence for why he can’t know anything, as an excuse for being lazy and taking no pride in his own mind. The proper stance is to be curious about mistakes, to put time and energy into discovering why it happened and to train oneself to do better the next time. This is the heart and soul of pride, Aristotle’s “Crown of all Virtues,” so-called because it leads to all the other virtues. Assuming one is normal and healthy, this leads to a constant improvement in one’s mental state, whereas the pragmatist approach leads to a constant degeneration, even approaching a state of self-induced mental retardation, a condition seen in aged, lifelong pragmatists, whose mental scope has withered to a tiny point such that they cannot grasp the simplest of principles.

The pragmatist mentality will sometimes agree “in principle”[6] that you should have your individual rights respected but bemoans that the world is a complex place and that principles “don’t work”. He never says precisely why not, nor why we can do complex things like land spaceships on the moon and control robots on Mars using scientific principles, while simultaneously not being able to construct political systems based on scientific principles.

The reason he never answers why not in any sensible terms is that he’s engaging in an intellectual con-game. Certainly it occurred to this self-satisfied intellectual hoodlum that if principles won’t work, then no principle, including the “principle” that the world is too complex for principles to work, could possibly work either. Or perhaps his superiority complex is not coming from confidence in his ideas, but rather from confidence in prevailing opinion, or in his ability to pull one over on you.

In fact, the case is the opposite from what the pragmatist pretends. Principles are the only method that human beings have for dealing with complexity. We have no alternative of whether we act in accordance to some kind of principle, we only have the choice of whether that principle is well considered, rational, and based on our best good-faith assessment of the facts, or whether we use unverified facts, regurgitated slogans, propaganda, peer pressure, and unseemly motivations as our principle of action.[7]

“Anyone who denies the Law of Non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as to not be burned.”

— Avicenna (980-1037)

When logic gets in the way of looting, the subjectivist has an easy answer: “It’s all a matter of opinion.” He wants you to respect his opinion, while he loots you with corrupt legislation. But it’s not a difference of opinion, it’s a difference of whether you get a gun shoved in your face or not.

“… I consider those laws [the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798]* as merely an experiment on the American mind, to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the Constitution. If this goes down, we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress, declaring that the President shall continue in office during life, reserving to another occasion the transfer of the succession to his heirs, and the establishment of the Senate for life… That these things are in contemplation, I have no doubt; nor can I be confident of their failure, after the dupery of which our countrymen have shown themselves susceptible…”*

— Thomas Jefferson (letter to Stephens Thompson Mason)

“Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”

— Arthur Miller

When criticizing government to one’s fellow citizens, one often hears the remark that we should be grateful for our freedoms because there are many people on the planet or in history that have had it worse. Your fellow citizens are in a sorry state when they’re comparing things not to how they ought to be, but to the worst possible examples of how poorly off others are. The inevitable result of this kind of attitude is a slow degeneration of society. A vision of how things ought to be is the soul that animates human action; to lose it is to be condemned to wither away and die.

This irrational defense at the patently unjust on the grounds that someone somewhere had it far worse, is the result of a deep psychological injury. We learn from the time we are children, implicitly or explicitly, that we are under severe duress by our governments. We know that if we do not do as we are commanded to do, we will be murdered: if we do not pay income tax, we will be ordered to court; if we do not show, we will have a policeman at the door; if we do not comply to his orders, we will be arrested; if we do not submit to arrest, we will likely be shot. This sequence, which illustrates the “principle of the hidden gun,” can be discerned on a vast array of issues where the government has tyrannically usurped our rights and substituted for them an empty and hypocritical promise in return: that it will keep us “safe” and “secure.” Ironically, the very lack of security we have against government attacks on our rights only serves to feed our emotional need for someone to promise us safety and security, while the seeming intractability of this life or death problem leads many to self-deception. Most don’t comprehend the irony, but they do on some level sense the horror of it, and it is manifested in the many dystopian books and movies about the final consequence of totalitarian governments. These dystopian works can be viewed as an expression of humanity’s subconscious, the feelings of fear, guilt, and doom resulting from not having created a proper system of government and instead creating a tyrannical monster of a government, one that comes upon us with inhuman powers to seek revenge for the moral crimes of apathy and hypocrisy.

Most do not explicitly come to terms with any of this, and it is consequently very difficult to have a reasonable conversation with them. But it is crucial for them to come to terms, as it is the fundamental reason we are enslaved – and not to tyrants or government agencies operating in secret, but to collective apathy, hypocrisy, and fear. Sapere aude – dare to know.

“Stockholm Syndrome” is defined by Wikipedia as “a psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which they have been placed.” It is illuminating to read the various explanations Wikipedia gives for Stockholm Syndrome. I would put it like this:

• The hostage-taker is able and willing to kill us if necessary. If we do not come up with a strategy for behaving as he wishes, we can die. Since it is extremely difficult to control emotional responses of hatred of our keeper, we warp our thinking and evaluations to conform to the reality we are forced into and in a perversely self-destructive act, we force ourselves to love him instead.
• We begin to take for granted, as almost a “law of the universe” or “metaphysical absolute,” that he can kill us at any time. So when he doesn’t, we implicitly view it as a kind of gift, particularly if we are allowed certain human comforts. If we view these things as gifts, we tend to feel gratitude toward the gift-giver.
• Focusing on the fact that we are held captive, or that we can be shot at any time, seems to us to be fruitless and unproductive and makes us unhappy. Therefore we focus on what we think we can actually obtain. We lie to ourselves about the whole truth and instead “focus on the positive, not the negative.”
• We have assumed that our life and happiness depends on believing in one or more of the above. Therefore, anyone who tries to convince us otherwise is a threat and must be resisted or punished.

Perhaps Stockholm Syndrome is the last great barrier we must cross as a species in order to cure the evils of our governments. Many have crossed and await enough to tip the balance such that we can defeat this common, faceless enemy. In a certain respect this barrier is merely a mirage existing solely in the mind or a reflection of ourselves; there is in fact no hostage-taker, there is only the aggregate opinion of all of us manifested as a brutal physical power. We are in a sense afraid of our own shadows, even while this fear provokes a very real danger to those who would first venture to cross this great barrier, from the pragmatists/zealots who have not yet glimpsed at what is beyond it.

The very phrase “conspiracy theory” as used by most people, particularly those in the mass media, is a dishonest idea, used solely as an ad hominem attack on those who allege that there is something more than meets the eye behind human events. According to their view, it’s plausible that a magician can trick an audience, but it’s impossible that members of a government can trick their citizens. There is plenty of historical evidence that government officials have indeed colluded behind the scenes to manipulate the public,[8] and therefore it is not prima facie unreasonable to speculate on root causes of important human events. Further, grand conspiracies are consistent with human nature. Scientists pursue omniscience concerning nature; engineers pursue omnipotence concerning nature; would it really be that surprising to learn that some human beings attempt to play God with the human race in the realm of politics?

Consider these two obvious facts: 1) Prosperity leads to leisure, which leads to thinking, which leads to truth, which leads to action against those who claim power based on untruth, which leads to their loss of power. 2) It is far easier to destroy than it is to create; to cause mayhem and destruction is not a complicated feat relative to the feat of creating prosperity. Is it really much of a stretch to imagine that those who claim illegitimate power would not tend to favor the creation of the mayhem and destruction that would tend to sustain it? If you had invited a guest into your home, and caught him stealing, wouldn’t you tend to think that he might be capable of even worse things? If some other bad thing happened around your home at the same time, wouldn’t you rightly tend to assign blame to him given his proximity and demonstrated lack of moral scruples? What is the better policy: to trust or to distrust those who claim illegitimate powers over you?

Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to manipulate you:

“[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.”

— Cass Sunstein and A. Vermeule, J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), Page 219

Evidently our government officials think a reasonable way to defeat conspiracy theorizing is to announce to all conspiracy theorists that they might be getting infiltrated by the government! Just why do government officials think they have any role in implanting us with any kind of information, let alone proposing infiltration of groups whose views they disagree with and engaging in blatant acts of fraud (and probably prosecutable fraud if you aren’t an agent of the government)? Is it even legal for the United States government to use taxpayer dollars to wage a psychological war on its own citizens? If they really want to solve the “problem” of conspiracies, the solution is, in principle, easy: be trustworthy. When government officials start being motivated by what is true and good and cease in their willingness to manipulate us, then the populace will naturally stop engaging in conspiracy theories. Until governments cease and desist in violating our individual rights, conspiracy theories will persist, in spite of further attacks on our individual rights. If you want to be trusted, being trustworthy is an obvious prerequisite. So, who is more of a “nut,” a man like Sunstein, who would write thirty pages trying to escape from the reality that trust requires trustworthiness, or the man who would doubt the motives of such a man?[9]

But even history and open admission by government officials of intent to commit fraud against citizens whose views they do not like does not cure some people of their delusions. So clearly, those who allege that someone’s a “conspiracy nut” merely because of theorizing about hidden causes are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

That obviously does not mean that everyone who believes in conspiracies has valid reason. Many “conspiracy theorists” are suffering from what I call “Reverse Stockholm Syndrome.” Those suffering from it anthropomorphize the unthinking machinery of government and find conscious intent where there is evidence of none. They are certain they are being attacked by specific conspiring individuals, when in truth all one can discern is the operation of a machine, which may or may not be controlled by any individual conscious of the consequences of the machine’s operation. This is not a surprising response. It is a simple fact that modern government indeed holds all of us hostage to a host of corrupt rights-usurping laws. It is a natural and healthy response to develop distrust in it. Indeed, those suffering from Reverse Stockholm Syndrome are more mentally-healthy than their counterpart; at least they have the self-esteem to reject the usurpation of their rights. Unfortunately, they fail to discern that the majority of interference originates not from sinister individuals out to get them, but from the unintended consequences of incompetent barbarians running a government without any concept of individual rights. Individual rights are the science that must be used in order for government to operate properly; to attempt to use anything else is akin to a witch-doctor thinking he can rebuild an airplane that crash-landed in the middle of the jungle by jumping up and down wearing a mask and pleading with magical spirits.[10]

No psychological derangement is beneficial and Reverse Stockholm Syndrome is no exception. Reverse Stockholm Syndrome causes a misdirection of human energy. Among fervent conspiracy theorists one almost never hears mention of the scientific principles by which government ought to run, instead they are almost exclusively fixated on specific government figures or acts. Now, if one has a theory supported by evidence that a given government official colluded in a certain way in a crime, it certainly is a good thing to try to bring him to justice. But the problems of our age do not flow from powerful politicians or businessmen. They flow from a general misapprehension of the Three Fundamental Laws: The Law of Origin of Rights; The Law of Conservation of Rights; and The Law of Origin of Government.

The psychological derangement of Reverse Stockholm Syndrome causes a corresponding derangement in political action: to worry too much about conspiracy theories in the face of the fact that the government openly commits so many criminal acts represents inverted priorities. If we can’t get the government to stop committing criminal acts in the open, it is a folly to even worry about the crimes it allegedly commits in secret. So, by and large (and with important exceptions), “conspiracy theories” are a distraction. Indeed, they are such a large distraction of the energies of those who are open to the idea that the government isn’t unquestionably good that one can imagine government officials conspiring to create conspiracy theories in order to keep people distracted from the real problems that plague government (if nothing else, this “conspiracy theory” will hopefully encourage Reverse Stockholm Syndrome sufferers to consider altering their habits).

“[Killing the chickens to scare the monkeys] is the cruel yet effective tactic of killing one to tame a hundred: As monkeys misbehave in the treetops, annoyed humans violently kill chickens in front of the monkeys. From fear, the monkeys get silent and tamed.”

— The Korea Herald

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

— Benjamin Franklin

“We’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen.”

— Governor Le Petomane, Blazing Saddles

Consider the risks of various external causes of death in the United States:

Cause of Death vs. Lifetime Odds[11]:

• Car accident – 1 in 85
• Falling – 1 in 184
• Murder – 1 in 207
• Drowning – 1 in 1,073
• Fire – 1 in 1,235
• Airplane/space accident – 1 in 5,862
• Police, or legal execution – 1 in 8,848
• Terrorist attack (not an official estimate)[12] – Less than 1 in 11,400

You are at least as likely to be killed by your own government as you are by a terrorist.[13] Take into account the American Civil War and the latest trends in government (ca. 2008-2010), including the erosion of the Bill of Rights, and you are far more likely to be killed by your own government than by a terrorist. And yet your government, and its handmaiden the mass media, spend far more energy propagandizing on matters of terrorism than on any of the other preventable causes of death. The government in particular is persistently attacking the Bill of Rights on the pretext of protecting citizens from terrorism. How much effort do they spend protecting the citizens from the terrorist acts of government? Stories of excessive use of force by police juxtaposed with zero legislation in Congress aimed at correcting this problem paints a grim picture of the government’s actual concern for its citizens’ well-being. Yet many are compliant and apathetic in the face of this tyranny. Slavish obedience is a dangerous vice.

Any terrorism is too much terrorism. That is why it is such an outrage how little effort our governments have spent identifying is actual causes, while at the same time spending enormous amounts of our money on insane attacks on our civil liberties. But asking why terrorists attack us is derided by politicians and pundits as being “unpatriotic.” We aren’t supposed to wonder if maybe some of these terrorist attacks constitute blowback from illegitimate United States activities in the Middle East, or regarding domestic terrorism, blowback from rights-usurping legislation. Instead, Americans hear from the mass media that in effect the terrorism is causeless, that it’s coming from various kinds of lunatics who have absolutely no comprehensible reason to attack, and no one deeply investigates how they became lunatics in the first place.

Due to our worse than useless mass media, most Americans have little idea of the activities of its government in other countries, nor of the insidious problems legislation causes at home, and thus the notion that terrorists attack us out of the blue and without cause seems plausible. But in fact, there is plenty of good cause for wondering about the activities of the United States government:

• In 1953 the CIA in a formerly secret act of war called “Operation Ajax,” deposed the democratically elected government of Iran, and installed a dictator in his stead.
• As of 2010, the United States has at least 700 military bases operating in foreign countries. How would Americans react to having the military bases of foreigners in our own country?
• Our “War on Drugs” (a completely illegitimate war and a dishonestly named war because it is not against “drugs,” it is against innocent Americans who choose to use them) extends beyond our own borders and into other countries.
• There are countless laws that are far too harsh or outright corrupt, oftentimes ruining a person’s life and hope for the future, and this can lead to terrorism. Quoting Gerald Celente: “When people lose everything, and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”

Understanding the factors that cause someone to attack innocents does not excuse their attack – they have free will and their choice to indiscriminately attack innocents was their own. But a government that incessantly usurps the rights of millions of people is incitement, and at least a portion of the blame for the predictable consequences of such incitement should rest on those who participated in it.

Consider terrorism’s close conceptual relative, “extremism.”[14] There is definitely something very bizarre about those who on the one hand get apoplectic about “extremists,” while on the other hand, condone breaking into someone’s house with a SWAT team in order to confiscate a harmless plant from a peaceful human being. Considering the mass fear government and media incite concerning terrorism, and add to that the persistent attacks on innocent human beings who opt to smoke a plant that has been on Earth for millions of years, one can easily become confused regarding who are the actual protectors and who are the terrorists.[15]

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

— Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican Party acceptance speech

The concept “extremism” is the natural by-product of the pragmatist mentality. Consistency is the ultimate enemy of pragmatism, and thus it does not matter to this mentality whether one is consistently good or consistently evil, all that matters to the pragmatist is that he regards consistency as his enemy. He zealously worships his own hypocrisy, and anyone who doesn’t will not be tolerated. Ironically, this is, by its own definition, a form of “extremism,” but unsurprisingly, such hypocrisy does not trouble the pragmatist. On the contrary, hypocrisy is seen as the highest virtue, and to fail to be hypocritical is seen as a sign of trouble. Indeed, pragmatists in the United States Department of Homeland Security have gone to such an extreme as to brand supporters of Ron Paul (a principled defender of human liberty), Chuck Baldwin (a supporter of the Constitution of the United States), Bob Barr (a Libertarian Party candidate) and others espousing a principled view on government as “extremists” and potential “terrorists.”[16] One naturally wonders why an employee of the United States government, who has sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against both foreign and domestic enemies, would possess such an extreme hatred of those who call for them to uphold and defend the Constitution. Perhaps their true concern lies not with protecting the citizens of the United States, but rather with their own guilty conscience about their own actions, and about the potential consequences of those actions.

The epithet “extremist” is not merely a verbal attack on principled individuals, it is an attack on Constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, and has already been deployed against innocent citizens displaying nothing more than a bumper sticker stating “Don’t Tread on Me.”[17]

A similar concept to “extremism” is “radicalized.” The mass media’s penchant for nonchalantly calling a criminal “radicalized” while ignoring radicalized police officers, SWAT teams, and other government agents that engage in gross violations of individual rights under the color of law means only one thing: their definition of the word is “radicalized” is dishonest. What they really wish to convey is that the idea that when ordinary citizens do the same kinds of things that governments routinely do, it’s bad, but when government does these same radically criminal things, it’s good. In other words, their purpose is to propagandize against individual rights, and promote the bogus notion that the State is God and may do anything it wants to you. This is about as radical and extreme as it gets: they promote government-sponsored terrorism against their fellow citizens.

The cynical refrain “think of the children” is the clarion call of totalitarians. The reality is that this call is a deranged, cynical hypocrisy that feigns concern[18] for children while ignoring what’s in a child’s best long-term interest. The primary desire of most children is to grow into mature adults and thus gain the freedom to live their lives as they deem best, but this call to “think of the children” is nothing less than stealing that freedom before they ever had a chance to exercise it by modeling government on the notion that it should treat all of its adult citizens as if they were children. Thus, this refrain is similar to the claim about allegedly “corrupt human nature,” except instead of regarding everyone as if they are corrupt, it regards everyone as if they are naïve and in need of parenting.

This refrain of totalitarians is, like many of their protestations, ironic, since it is totalitarianism that causes the most human suffering. In today’s reign of totalitarianism, about 15 million children die every year from starvation. This pattern has been going on for decades, while the same tired solution is offered: more tyranny, including the tyranny of stealing resources from one group and handing them to another group.

If our “free” press ever discusses the true causes of the mass starvation it is rare, and probably because a guest to one of their shows was not well-screened in advance. And yet the answer stares everyone in the face: mass starvation is the ultimate consequence of denying human beings of their fundamental rights, including their right to self, property, medium, land, consent, and justice. People in the “third world” aren’t hopeless and apathetic because they have a genetic predisposition to be lazy. They know that if they build something, it will be torn down; if they grow something it will be stolen; if they acquire personal property they will be mugged. And yet what do our governments send them? Food for the next week, to be stolen by the nearest thugs and sold for arms used to further oppress the innocent. They don’t primarily need charity, they need their rights to be respected, so they can plan and act long-range, and grow their own food and build their own shelter, etc. We should be very concerned when our government and populace thinks that the best solution to mass starvation is theft from people who aren’t starving to deliver food into the hands of thugs that don’t use it to feed the starving but instead sell it for more guns in order to continue oppressing the starving, whereas the idea that a respect for fundamental human rights would fix the problem is nowhere to be seen.

What starving masses of people need is for the totalitarian boot to come off their necks. And our government uses these starving people as an excuse to stamp down on our necks more firmly.

The real solution to these problems is simple. Prosperity has always been the natural consequence of liberty. Set a good example to the world. Show others how freedom really does work by abolishing tyranny in every form. Any country that establishes a consistent respect for fundamental rights will become a beacon to the world, a shining example of how things ought to be. This by itself will likely cure the rest of humanity’s ills.

But if stubborn totalitarian regimes stay in power, then voluntary charity might be in order. Educate their populace to the virtues of individual rights and the prosperity that results. Drop leaflets, smuggle books, or broadcast into their borders. The resulting civil unrest might by itself be enough to topple the totalitarian regime. By all means, send food and clothing if you can ensure it won’t be used as a tool to prop up the dictatorship and further oppress the populace. Other more drastic acts of charity might also be called for, depending on the situation.

“And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.”

— Galileo Galilei

“An error made on your own is safer than the ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”

— Ayn Rand

“But besides the criminality of the origin of aristocracy, it has an injurious effect on the moral and physical character of man. Like slavery it debilitates the human faculties; for as the mind bowed down by slavery loses in silence its elastic powers, so, in the contrary extreme, when it is buoyed up by folly, it becomes incapable of exerting them, and dwindles into imbecility. It is impossible that a mind employed upon ribands and titles can ever be great. The childishness of the objects consumes the man.”

— Thomas Paine

You alone are responsible for what you believe. As children we learn to rely on authority figures, to regard others’ thoughts as true because someone who was here before us said them, or to regard our own whims as true because of indulgence. The delicate process of reasoning is easily corrupted by such reliance. As we mature we learn – or should learn – that nothing makes our parents, anyone else, or even our own emotions automatically right, that automatically relying on these authority figures is harmful, that we have to learn to think. In the final analysis, we are utterly alone and solely responsible for what we think. To rely on authority figures to verify the ideas you accept is to guarantee their unreliability: Even if someone could be with you day in and day out to guide you every step of the way – it was you who has decided to accept their guidance – you are not off the hook. Did you truly have a good reason to believe them? Even if this person (Or is it your feelings? Or is it a voice in your head?) is always right – how can you be certain you are interpreting their guidance correctly? If your reasoning mind is not capable of guiding itself, then how can it be capable of comprehending and implementing the guidance you are getting?

Accepting the fact that you are alone and responsible for your own thoughts is a prerequisite for grasping all truth. This is particularly so for unconventional truth. If you trust in an authority figure, whether it be a divine entity, popular opinion, person, or your own unquestioned ideas and emotions, then you are trusting in it, it is your sole decision and therefore your sole responsibility. There is no way around this fundamental fact. You can fear it, hate it, and pretend it doesn’t exist, but it won’t go away. Your authority figure can console you with the notion that you can rely on him and don’t have to worry – but the fact is that you chose to follow this authority figure and you choose how to interpret its guidance. By your nature, you are inherently responsible, there cannot be any exemption from this, there can only be your accepting this truth, or your lying to yourself.

To truly take responsibility for your thoughts is the original truth, it is the first virtue and the source of all human good in this world. To uncritically rely on authority figures is the original sin, it is the source of evil in this world. To shut down that evil you must think for yourself. There is no other way.

Thinking can be difficult, particularly for those unfortunate enough to have had mental shackles put on their minds when they were but children. However, the honest should take comfort in the fact that there’s nothing perverse in Nature, it has no intent to trick or deceive. Moral truth is utterly simple, normal, and natural. The hulk of bad ideas that weigh down mankind are merely the remnants of deceit aimed at taking the unearned, these mental shackles can and should simply be thrown off.

“To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.”

— Thomas Paine

“Even if you persuade me, you won’t persuade me.”

— Aristophanes

At the root of one’s philosophy is the choice to regard reality as either subject to hopes, whims, wishes, or not subject to them. It would certainly be nice that whenever we cry, we get what we want. This desire is probably naturally present in every toddler, who must learn that the only tool an infant has for supporting his life is to be discarded when one is no longer an infant. Perhaps the greatest harm a parent can ever do to a child’s mind is to pander to this fundamental human frailty and thus condemn the child to a lifetime of mental infancy.

There is no talking to a person who has not discarded this infantile hoping and wishing and stamping one’s feet, who thinks that consciousness has primacy over reality, because their understanding of any part of reality – including any argument you might offer – is fundamentally distorted. They are literally in an infantile state of mind and reasoning with them would be like reasoning with a spoiled child.

There is only one hope for those who think that wishing makes it so: it is to experience enough consequent misery that they become open to questioning that premise. Unfortunately, with our current totalitarian political systems, they not only bring this misery upon themselves, but upon the rest of us as well, and thus are never in a position to clearly see that the blame for their misery truly lies with their own infantile premise that wishing can make it so.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

— President Gerald Ford, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, August 12, 1974

When so many of your fellow citizens think that wishing makes it so, it is unsurprising that they want the concrete manifestation of something that might have the power to fulfill those wishes: a despotic rights-usurping government.

Any false right is always an attack on legitimate rights. For example, if someone claims a “right” to healthcare at your expense (and assuming you did not consent to pay into a general pool), then that is an attack on your right to your own property. Animal “rights” are yet another kind of attack.

Rights are inherently a two-way street. If a given entity inherently cannot respect rights, then such an entity has no rights. Therefore, if some human being captures and kills a duck and eats it, then in spite of insane protestations from animal “rights” advocates, that is his right.

But that does not mean there is not an important relationship of rights to the animal kingdom. A “right” is a human action that does not interfere with the non-interfering actions of another human. A “crime” is a human action that does interfere with the non-interfering actions of another human. This is a specialization of the more basic biological distinctions related to the concepts of predator and parasite. The only difference between the general concept of predator/parasite and the more specific concept of “criminal” is that a criminal is a human being who has the choice not to be a predator or parasite of other human beings and then makes the wrong choice. Only human beings have volition and reason, therefore only human beings can make the choice, and therefore only human beings have rights.

That does not mean that it’s “anything goes” with respect to animals. One cannot frivolously destroy natural resources (see Chapter 2), and that includes the wanton destruction of animals. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with communities adopting man-made laws that make it illegal to torture animals, or to kill those animals that the local culture regards as pets, so long as the laws do not convey the notion that animals are more important than humans (city-states have the right to regard animals as more important, but they would tend to fail over time as the more sane human beings left them).

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

— Jefferson Memorial

Some people seem to worship the Constitution as if it were the word of God, ignoring the fact that it was written and amended by men. This worship is obviously absurd, and goes against everything that Founders such as Thomas Jefferson believed. To the degree that the Constitution of the United States of America upholds Natural Law, it is a perfectly valid document. To the degree that it does not, it is in need of amendment. Importantly, it should be amended to apply only Natural Law to wild lands, and only those man-made laws that have been consented to.

The notion of “State’s Rights” is similarly misguided. States as such cannot have rights, only individuals can. At best, States can have a limited set of rights consensually transferred to them by citizens or their representatives. When the concept of “States Rights” is wielded in order to take back rights that had been usurped by the Federal Government, then that is a good thing. But when States seek to violate Natural Law, then it is completely proper for the Federal Government to override their usurpation. Since the concept of “States Rights” implicitly embraces both, then it cannot be regarded overall as a source of good, although the concept could be redeemed if advocates of “States Rights” explicitly founded them on the basis of strict consent and thus claimed only those rights the State actually had, as set forth in Chapter 2 and 3.