I did not write this I wish I had. The viral email I got it from did not have an author or I would quote his name,
Liberty
Philosophy of Liberty is based on the principle of Self Ownership.
Self Ownership
You own your Life. To deny this is to imply that another person has a higher claim on your life than you do. No other person, or group of persons, owns your life nor do you own the lives of others. Since you own your own life you are responsible for your life. You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience. Nor are you a slave to others that demand your sacrifice.
You Exist in Time: Future, Present and Past
This is manifest in the life, liberty and the product of your life and liberty. Future: To lose your life is to loose your future. Present: To lose your liberty is to loose your present. Past: To lose the product of your life and liberty is to loose that portion of your past that produced it.
Property
A product of your life and liberty is your property. Property is the fruit of your labor, the product of you time and energy and talents. Property is that part of nature which you turn to valuable use. Property is the property of others that is given to you by a voluntary exchange and mutual consent. Two people who exchange property voluntarily are both better off or they would not do it. Only they may rightfully make that decision for themselves.
Force or Fraud
At times some people use force or fraud to take from others without their voluntarily consent. The initiation of force or fraud: To take life is murder; to take liberty is slavery; to take property is theft.
It is the same whether these action are done by one person acting alone, or by many acting against the few or even by officials with the fine hats. You have the right to protect your own life, liberty and justly acquired property from the forceful aggression of others. You may ask others to help defend you but you do not have the right to initiate force against the life, liberty and property of others. Thus, you have no right to designate some person to initiate force against others on your behalf.
Selected Officials
You have the right to seek leaders for yourself but have no right to impose rulers onto others. No matter how officials are selected they are only human beings and they have no rights or claims that are higher than those of other human beings. Regardless of the imaginative labels, or the numbers of people encouraging them, officials have no right to murder, to enslave or to steal. You cannot give them any rights that you do not have yourself.
Goals and Actions
You choose your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and grow. Your action on behalf of others or their action on behalf of you is virtuous only when it is derived from voluntary mutual consent. For virtue can only exist when there is free choice. This is the basis of a truly free society is not only the most practical and humanitarian foundation for human action and it is also the most ethical.
Problems and Evil
Problems in the world that arise from the initiation of force by governments have a solution. The solution is for the people of the earth to STOP asking government officials to initiate force on their behalf. Evil does not arise only from evil people but also form good people who tolerate the initiation of force as a means to their own end.
In this manner good people have empowered evil people throughout history. Using a governmental force to impose a vision on others is intellectual sloth and typically results in unintended perverse consequences.
Free Society
Having confidence in a free society is to focus on the discovery in the marketplace of values rather than to focus on some imposed goal or vision. Achieving a free society requires courage to THINK, to TALK and to ACT, especially when it is easier to do NOTHING.
