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Libertarianism is the philosophy of freedom.

Its not easy to define freedom. The author Leonard Read said, Freedom is the absence of man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. The Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek referred to a state in which each can use his knowledge for his purpose and also to the possibility of a persons acting according to his own decisions and plans, in contrast to the position of one who was irrevocably subject to the will of another, who by arbitrary decision could coerce him to act or not to act in specific ways. Perhaps its best to understand freedom as the absence of physical force or the threat of physical force. John Locke offered this definition of freedom under the rule of law:

[T]he end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the states of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom. For Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others which cannot be, where there is no Law: But Freedom is not, as we are told, A Liberty for every Man to do what he lists: (For who could be free, when every other Mans Humour might domineer over him?) But a Liberty to dispose, and order, as he lists, his Persons, Actions, Possessions, and his whole Property, within the Allowance of those Laws under which he is; and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary Will of another, but freely follow his own.

That is, a free person is not subject to the arbitrary will of another and is free to do as he chooses with his own person and property. But you can only have those freedoms when the law protects your freedom and everyone elses.

However we define freedom, we can certainly recognize aspects of it. Freedom means respecting the moral autonomy of each person, seeing each person as the owner of his or her own life, and each free to make the important decisions about his life.

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each persons right to life, liberty, and propertyrights that people possess naturally, before governments are instituted. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used forceactions such as murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.

Libertarians believe in the presumption of liberty. That is, libertarians believe people ought to be free to live as they choose unless advocates of coercion can make a compelling case. Its the exercise of power, not the exercise of freedom, that requires justification. The burden of proof ought to be on those who want to limit our freedom.

The presumption of liberty should be as strong as the presumption of innocence in a criminal trial, for the same reason. Just as you cant prove your innocence of all possible charges against you, you cannot justify all of the ways in which you should be allowed to act. James Wilson, a signer of the Constitution, said in response to a proposal that a Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution: Enumerate all the rights of man! I am sure, sirs, that no gentleman in the late Convention would have attempted such a thing.

Why do libertarians value freedom? There are many reasons.

Freedom allows each of us to define the meaning of life, to define whats important to us. Each of us should be free to think, to speak, to write, to paint, to create, to marry, to eat and drink and smoke, to start and run a business, to associate with others as we choose. When we are free, we can construct our lives as we see fit. Freedom is part of whats needed to lead a full human life.

Freedom leads to social harmony. We have less conflict when we have fewer specific commands and prohibitions about how we should livein terms of class or caste, religion, dress, lifestyle, or schools.

Economic freedom means that people are free to produce and to exchange with others. Freely negotiated and agreed-upon prices carry information throughout the economy about what people want and what can be done more efficiently. For an economic order to function, prices must be free to tell the truth. A free economy gives people incentives to invent, innovate, and produce more goods and services for the whole society. That means more satisfaction of more wants, more economic growth, and a higher standard of living for everyone.

A political system of liberty gives us the opportunity to use our talents and to cooperate with others to create and produce, with the help of a few simple institutions that protect our rights. And those simple institutionsproperty rights, the rule of law, a prohibition on the initiation of forcemake possible invention, innovation, and progress in commerce, technology, and styles of living.

In barely 250 years of having widespread economic freedom, weve escaped from the back-breaking labor and short life expectancy that were the natural lot of mankind since time immemorial to the abundance we see around us today in more and more parts of the worldthough not yet enough of the world.

What does valuing freedom mean for the libertarian view of government?

For libertarians, the basic political issue is the relationship of the individual to the state. What rights do individuals have (if any)? What form of government (if any) will best protect those rights? What powers should government have? What demands may individuals make on one another through the mechanism of government?

We try to discover the rules that govern the world, and rules that will enable us all to live together and realize those wonderful rights in the Declaration of Independencelife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The worst governments are tyrannical predators; the best embody attempts at providing the framework of rules we need to live together.

We know who and what government is. It isnt some Platonic ideal. Government is people, specifically people using force against other people. We need some method to constrain and punish the violent, the thieves and fraudsters, and other dangers to our freedom, our rights, and our security. But that shouldnt eliminate our skepticism about empowering some people to use force against others. The power that government holds is wielded by real people, not ideal people, and real people are imperfect. Some are corrupt, some are even evil. Some of the worst are actually attracted to state power. But even the well-intentioned, the honest, and the wise are still just people exercising power over other people.

Thats why Americans have always feared the concentration of power. Its why I often say that Smokey the Bears rules for fire safety apply to government: Keep it small, keep it in a confined area, and keep an eye on it.

Libertarians, as the name implies, believe that the most important political value is liberty, not democracy. Many modern readers may wonder, whats the difference? Arent liberty and democracy the same thing?

Theyre not. Much of the confusion stems from two different senses of the word liberty, a distinction notably explored by the nineteenth-century French libertarian Benjamin Constant in an essay titled The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns. Constant noted that to the ancient Greek writers the idea of liberty meant the right to participate in public life, in making decisions for the entire community. Thus Athens was a free polity because all the citizensthat is, all the free, adult, Athenian mencould go to the public square and participate in the decision-making process. Socrates, indeed, was free because he could participate in the collective decision to execute him for his heretical opinions. The modern concept of liberty, however, emphasizes the right of individuals to live as they choose, to speak and worship freely, to own property, to engage in commerce, to be free from arbitrary arrest or detentionin Constants words, to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives and undertakings. A government based on the participation of the governed is a valuable safeguard for individual rights, but liberty itself is the right to make choices and to pursue projects of ones own choosing.

I have attempted to sketch here what it means to be a libertarian. There are many kinds of libertarians, of course. Some are people who might describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or say they want the government out of my pocketbook and out of my bedroom. Some believe in the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and want the government to remain within the limits of the Constitution. Some just have an instinctive belief in freedom or an instinctive aversion to being told what to do. Some are admirers of Dr. Ron Paul and his son, Senator Rand Paul, and their campaigns against war, government spending, the surveillance state, and the Federal Reserve. Some like the writings of Thomas Jefferson or John Stuart Mill. Some have studied economics. Some have learned from history that governments always seek to expand their size, scope, and power, and must be constrained to preserve freedom. Some have noticed that war, prohibition, cronyism, racial and religious discrimination, protectionism, central planning, welfare, taxes, and government spending have deleterious effects. Some are so radical they think all goods and services could be provided without a state. In this Guide, I welcome all those people to the libertarian cause. When I talk about libertarian ideas, I mean to include the ideas of thinkers from John Locke and Adam Smith to F. A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, and Richard Epstein.

The old ideologies have been tried and found wanting. All around usfrom the postcommunist world to the military dictatorships of Africa to the insolvent welfare states of Europe and the Americaswe see the failed legacy of coercion and statism. At the same time we see moves toward libertarian solutions constitutional government in Eastern Europe and South Africa, privatization in Britain and Latin America, democracy and the rule of law in South Korea and Taiwan, the spread of womens rights and gay rights, and economic liberalization in China, India, and even some countries in Africa. Challenges to freedom remain, of course, including the continuing lack of Enlightenment values in much of the world, the unsustainable welfare states in the rich countries and the interests that fight reform, the recurring desire for centralized and top-down political institutions such as the Eurozone, Islamist theocracy, and the spread of populist, antilibertarian responses to social change and economic crisis. Libertarianism offers an alternative to coercive government that should appeal to peaceful, productive people everywhere.

No, a libertarian world wont be a perfect one. There will still be inequality, poverty, crime, corruption, mans inhumanity to man. But unlike the theocratic visionaries, the pie-in-the-sky socialist utopians, or the starry-eyed Mr. Fixits of the New Deal and Great Society, libertarians dont promise you a rose garden. Karl Popper once said that attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. Libertarianism holds out the goal not of a perfect society but of a better and freer one. It promises a world in which more of the decisions will be made in the right way by the right person: you. The result will be not an end to crime and poverty and inequality but lessoften much lessof most of those things most of the time.

Read the original:
Introduction to Libertarianism | A Libertarianism.org Guide

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I cannot fail to speak of the grave risks associated with the invasion of the positions of libertarian individualism at high strata of culture and in school and university education, the Pope said in an message sent to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences meeting in the Vatican and subsequently shared with Breitbart News.

A common characteristic of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, that is the idea of living well or the good life in the communitarian framework, Francis said, while at the same time exalting a selfish ideal.

Members of the Pontifical Academy are currently engaged in a workshop bearing the title Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural Integration, which began Friday and will run through May 2.

Francis said that libertarianism, which is so fashionable today, is a more radical form of the individualism that asserts that only the individual gives value to things and to interpersonal relations and therefore only the individual decides what is good and what is evil.

Libertarianism, he said, preaches that the idea of self-causation is necessary to ground freedom and individual responsibility.

Thus, the libertarian individual denies the value of the common good, the pontiff stated, because on the one hand he supposes that the very idea of common means the constriction of at least some individuals, and on the other hand that the notion of good deprives freedom of its essence.

Libertarianism, he continued, is an antisocial radicalization of individualism, which leads to the conclusion that everyone has the right to extend himself as far as his abilities allow him even at the cost of the exclusion and marginalization of the more vulnerable majority.

According to this mentality, all relationships that create ties must be eliminated, the Pope suggested, since they would limit freedom. In this way, only by living independently of others, of the common good, and even God himself, can a person be free, he said.

This isnt the first time that the Pope has taken issue with popular social and political trends.

In March, Pope Francis told leaders of the European Union that the populist movements that are sweeping many parts of Europe and other areas are fueled by egotism.

Populism, he said, is the fruit of an egotism that hems people in and prevents them from overcoming and looking beyond their own narrow vision.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter

Excerpt from:
Pope Francis Warns Against 'Invasion' of Libertarianism - Breitbart News

Have you seen the viral "libertarian tip"? Someone in Missouri left a cash tip with a note explaining it was actually a personal gift and so not subject to state and federal income taxes, and wrote "taxation is theft" in the tip line on the check.

Who knows if the note is authentic? "Taxation is theft," an old libertarian bromide, has in the last year or so become a fairly popular internet meme. By some accounts, the meme wars were an important aspect of the 2016 election and its outcomeand you can expect the trend of political memes to grow. Maybe the "libertarian tip" was staged by someone who wants to promote libertarianism or encourage others to leave libertarian tips, or even just someone who wanted to play with the "taxation is theft" meme.

Nevertheless, I went out to lunch today to replicate the meme so I could give you an authentic photo of an authentic non-tip left as an untaxable personal gift. Here it is:

Reason

Some tips for you: the original photo looked like a note, not an envelope. I thought putting the money in an envelope would more clearly separate it from a tip. A note is better to show off how much you've tippedI put the money in the envelope after snapping the photo. You should probably make sure to have the change you need to give the tip you want. Asking for change from the wait staff might strengthen the case your untaxable non-tip is actually a taxable tip.

Afterward, I asked my waitress if my ploy would work. She seemed as if she wanted to tell me it would, even though she knew it didn't, because, as she explained, tips count as sales. She said that the tips that bring her wage up to the minimum wage (waiters and waitresses are generally exempt from minimum wage laws under the assumption tips get them to at least the minimum wage) get taxe like income, and that "40 to 50 percent" of tips beyond that get declared.

The intersection of libertarianism and wait staff is not new. During the 2012 election, then Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), a Republican presidential candidate, became an "unlikely hero" (the New York Post's words) to wait staff for his efforts to pass the Tax Free Tips Act. In 2013, The New Yorker appeared to discover and bemoan that wait staff were hiding tips from the taxman. The horror.

Meanwhile, wait staff are also among workers most negatively impacted by higher minimum wagesthey are often asked to do more work as restaurants look to mitigate the costs of a higher minimum wage in an already low-margin business. Just last month, Eric Boehm reported that San Diego had lost 4,000 restaurant jobs in the year-plus since they raised their minimum wage at an even faster pace than the state, which has so far only seen a slowdown in the growth of restaurant jobs.

And while we're so directly on the "taxation is theft" topic, here's one of my favorite chyrons ever on FreedomWatch with Judge Napolitano, a show I produced for. Thanks go to Media Matters for preserving the screen cap:

Fox Business

See original here:
I Gave My Waitress a 'Libertarian Tip': Taxation Is Theft! - Reason (blog)

CUMMING -- Radio host Monica Perez gave some local Tea Party members a lesson in libertarianism this week.

On Monday, the United Tea Party of Georgia welcomed Perez, who hosts a radio show on WSB and is a self-described anarcho-capitalist, a political philosophy she described as extremely libertarian.

I really am a radical Libertarian, Ive absolutely lost all faith in at least the federal government, Perez said. I really think they work against our interests for their own interests, like truly go out of their way to reduce our fiscal and physical security because thats their bread and butter.

Throughout the evening, Perez took questions from the ultra-conservative group, including some issues the group might not favor, such as her opinion of President Donald Trump.

I was always skeptical about Trump and felt, actually, that it was the establishments way to control the Tea Party and libertarians, so people who were desperate to restore the foundational laws of this country, she said.

However, Perez said she did not vote for the Libertarian candidates in November and was not a member of the Libertarian Party.

They were fake, she said. Libertarianism is individual responsibility and personal freedom on all issues at all time it is not fiscal conservatism or social liberalism; thats not what it is.

Also present at the event was District 24 state Rep. Sheri Gilligan, who answered a question about getting more involved in politics by recommending people get involved locally and never staying quiet by their beliefs.

We keep focusing on Congress. We keep focusing on Trump, and we act like everything is up there. By golly, its right here in Forsyth County and its right here in the state of Georgia, she said. As much as I love where I live, I would be really ridiculous to say we are clean and we have no problems and we dont want bigger government issues and answers here in Georgia.

The meeting was the first to be a joint meeting of the Forsyth County Tea Party and the United Tea Party of Georgia, which also holds events in Buford and Lawrenceville, and drew a larger crowd than most meetings.

The group meets on the last Monday of each month at 7 p.m. at VFW Post 9173 at 1045 Dahlonega Highway.

Read more:
Tea Party in Forsyth welcomes Libertarian radio host - Forsyth County News Online

From its beginnings as a distinct ideological movement in the postwar years, libertarianism has been a set of outsider ideas vastly disrespected by most American politicians and intellectuals. It was kept alive by small institutions, publications, and scattered academics (mostly in economics at first) who for decades were largely concerned with just keeping any expression of these ideas a going concern, barely expecting it could soon seriously influence mainstream political culture. (That story is told up to the turn of the 21st century in my book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.)

Libertarians understand they are still to a large degree strangers in a strange land when it comes to the American political scene, struggling for impact in a world they never made, and any number of other cliches indicating that obvious truth: libertarianism is still a minority idea and libertarians are still embroiled in a difficult and long-term fight to influence political ideology and practice in America. Libertarians are generally not delusional on that point.

When it comes to awareness and acceptance of the overarching principles of libertarianism, even if not to their actuation across the board in governing, the situation for libertarianism is America has gotten much better in the 21st century along many dimensions. As Reason's Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie have argued, an often pre-political embrace of the options, variety, and choice inherent in the libertarian vision of free minds and free markets has spread massively in American culture, even if government qua government isn't shrinking.

One of the ironic demonstrations of libertarianism's inroads in American culture is that mainstream outlets find it necessary frequently to declare it dead, irrelevant, or fatally wounded. Lately we've had Tim Alberta in Politico assuring us that the libertarian dream is dead; and Adam Ozimek in Forbes saying libertarianism could be more successful if only it would narrow its vision a little.

Politico makes a good point as far as it goes: Until Donald Trump's bold political entrepreneurship proved surprisingly successful, there was reason to believe the GOP might be more inclined to go for a libertarian-leaning candidate such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) rather than someone like Trump, policy-wise a Buchananite populist in the Rick Santorum style (to point to the nearest even slightly successful precursor in the GOP), but with less sanctimony, less even half-convincing Christianity, and more aggressive crudity and lack of intellectual polish.

Examining the respective political fates of Paul and Trump in the 2016 presidential race, now we know better. But by the very fact that it is an outsider political movement not fully at home in either major party, nothing about libertarianism's correctness or its hopes for the future depend on some short term victory; certainly nothing about the American people's choice of aggressive protectionist nationalism (to the extent we can be sure what people thought they were getting when they choose Trump) proves that libertarianism is either mistaken or dead.

It just proves libertarianism remains what it has been since it arose as a distinct movement in America after World War II: a small fighting rump, but one whose spread and reach is as high as it's ever been, even if it has failed in 2016, as it has always failed, to win the White House.

Otherwise, Politico's long article is merely a portrait of a moment in time, not the final fate of an ideology. Its observational power is mostly rooted in noting that, while he occasionally talks a libertarian-sounding game when it comes to, say, regulation, Trump is overall very opposed to the larger libertarian vision of truly free markets, respect for property rights, and restrained government power. True, and understood; especially as Trump's pre-election rhetoric that hinted at the possibility he might be less bellicose than his predecessors overseas is drowned out in the sound of exploding missiles.

Alberta's Politico article is a portrait of libertarianism as a philosophy still where it's always been: not a comfortable fit with either major party. But it has a greater grip on a greater number of prominent politicians, and Americans (see, for just one easily quantifiable example, the Libertarian Party nearly quadrupling its highest previous vote total) than ever in modern history.

If libertarians are rightor even on the right pathwith their understanding that our government is overtaxing, overspending, overregulating, and overextending its reach both into the lives of its citizens and across the globe in ways that make many people's lives worse and our future more perilous, then American history will show it an idea that's neither dead nor needing extensive pruning, as Ozimek in Forbes seems to believe.

Libertarianism: Is Less More?

Ozimek should rest assured that a narrowly-funded, scrappy, outsider ideological movement that has never quite been able to find a national politician they can all get behind (not even Ron Paul) knows full well that a majority of Americans don't yet agree with them.

That's the purpose of an organized minority ideological movement such as libertarianism: to do the research, education, advocacy, electioneering, and storytelling that might help Americans see that, to survey some libertarian ideas, the drug war is both wrong and unproductive; that stealing property from citizens without charging them with a crime is unjust; that market and price mechanisms need to play a role in a sensible and affordable health care market; that our foreign interventions often merely sow the seeds for the next perceived necessary foreign intervention.

With that understoodthis basic idea that a radical and small movement for ideological change is trying to move the political needle somewhere it isn't alreadyOzimek's basic argument that most Americans don't seem to shape their own decision-making or voting around small government proves libertarianism is terribly flawed and needs rethinking doesn't bear much weight. (Nick Gillespie explained here 12 years ago why obviously decisions other than tax rates or regulation are going to shape people's decisions about where to live as life is, blessedly, about more than just taxes and regulations.)

Ozimek has a narrow set of libertarian ideas he thinks are important and workable, and they are indeed part of the libertarian movement message. Precisely what they are isn't quite clearhe writes that "people want quality of life, economic growth, and good government. All three of these can be helped on some margins by utilizing market forces, deregulating, and increasing freedom. Libertarianism should focus on these margins, and accept that the all-too-popular vision of radical freedom and minimal government at all costs is not wanted by enough people to actually matter."

It sounds like what Ozimek really should be concluding, if he indeed believes that stuff about bettering the world through "utilizing market forces" etc. is that people and politicians that are not libertarian should be more libertarian. And that's what libertarians are trying to accomplish.

What advantagefor the libertarian as opposed for the Ozimekanfrom pursuing a narrower vision of freedom and limited government is not clear from this essay. Nor is it clear exactly what ideas of the libertarian movement he is recommending jettisoning, or keeping. (While Ozimek isn't rigorous on this point, he seems to be implying that somehow the existence of very libertarian people or arguments is harming the cause of slight libertarian improvement. I addressed whether libertarian extremism, that is, a full or radical version of the small-government vision, was harming the movement writ large last year. I didn't find the case proven.)

Libertarianism certainly hasn't cleared the field in American political culture yet. But to be held to such a standard, when 20 years ago it was considered so unknown and insignificant that publications of the stature and focus of a Forbes or Politico would never have bothered running articles about how and why it's allegedly failing and fading, is its own kind of victory in political culture, and a necessary prelude to more important ones.

See the original post:
Libertarianism Does Not Yet Rule America. Libertarians Know That. That's Not a Reason for Them to Abandon ... - Reason (blog)