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| Quotations - General | [Quote No.41584] Need Area: Friends > General
"[National Strength, government, politics and the voters:] The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing." - Theodore Roosevelt
The 26th President of the United States of America, (1901–1909).
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| [Quote No.41585] Need Area: Friends > General
"[All politicians and voters should remember...'The Ten Cannots':]
1--You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
2--You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
3--You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
4--You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
5--You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
6--You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
7--You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
8--You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
9--You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.
10--You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." - Rev. William John Henry Boetcker
1873
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| [Quote No.41588] Need Area: Friends > General
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government purposes are beneficent...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding." - Justice Louis Brandeis
1928
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| [Quote No.41589] Need Area: Friends > General
"Freedom requires unflagging devotion and unflappable courage. In fighting for freedom we must 'never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never...never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill
British Prime Minister during World War II.
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| [Quote No.41590] Need Area: Friends > General
"Find out just what the people will submit to and you will have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass
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| [Quote No.41591] Need Area: Friends > General
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become the unwitting victims of the darkness." - William O. Douglas
(1898 – 1980), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1939-75).
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| [Quote No.41592] Need Area: Friends > General
"I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth." - Thomas Jefferson
(1743 – 1826), American Founding Father, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). Quote of his to Gideon Granger, 1800.
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| [Quote No.41593] Need Area: Friends > General
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." - Thomas Paine
1795
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| [Quote No.41594] Need Area: Friends > General
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and thus clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken
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| [Quote No.41595] Need Area: Friends > General
"Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?
Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate person's rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minmal state is justified as well as right. Two noteworthy implications are that the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection.
Despite the fact that it is only coercive routes towards these goals that are excluded, while voluntary ones remain, many persons will reject our conclusions instantly, knowing they don't want to believe anything so callous towards the needs and suffering of others. I know the reaction; it was mine when I first began to consider such views. With reluctance I found myself becoming to be convinced of Libertarian views, due to various considerations and arguments." - Robert Nozick
(1938 – 2002), American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' (1971). Quote from his book, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia'.
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| [Quote No.41599] Need Area: Friends > General
"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of actions of any of their number, is self protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." - John Stuart Mill
'On Liberty', 1865.
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| [Quote No.41602] Need Area: Friends > General
"Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)." - Robert Nozick
(1938 – 2002), American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' (1971).
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| [Quote No.41603] Need Area: Friends > General
"From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time." - Friedrich August Hayek
Famous economist and social-political theorist.
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| [Quote No.41604] Need Area: Friends > General
"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal." - Friedrich August Hayek
Famous economist and social-political theorist.
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| [Quote No.41606] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Equality of treatment under the law:] Thus no member of the commonwealth can have a hereditary privilege as against his fellow-subjects; and no-one can hand down to his descendants the privileges attached to the rank he occupies in the commonwealth, nor act as if he were qualified as a ruler by birth and forcibly prevent others from reaching the higher levels of the hierarchy through their own merit. He may hand down everything else, so long as it is material and not pertaining to his person, for it may be acquired and disposed of as property and may over a series of generations create considerable inequalities in wealth among the members of the commonwealth. But he may not prevent his subordinates from raising themselves to his own level if they are able and entitled to do so by their talent, industry and good fortune. If this were not so, he would be allowed to practise coercion without himself being subject to coercive counter-measures from others, and would thus be more than their fellow-subject." - Immanuel Kant
(1724 - 1804), German Philosopher, considered one of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment.
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| [Quote No.41607] Need Area: Friends > General
"Moral philosophy sets the background for, and boundaries of, political philosophy. What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus." - Robert Nozick
(1938 – 2002), American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' (1971). Harper's magazine, in reviewing 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia', stated ‘No contemporary philosopher possesses a more imaginative mind, broader interests, or greater dialectical abilities than Robert Nozick.’
Quote from his book, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia'.
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| [Quote No.41608] Need Area: Friends > General
"Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible..." - Robert Nozick
(1938 – 2002), American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' (1971). Harper's magazine, in reviewing 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia', stated ‘No contemporary philosopher possesses a more imaginative mind, broader interests, or greater dialectical abilities than Robert Nozick.’
Quote from his book, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia'.
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| [Quote No.41609] Need Area: Friends > General
"The [libertarian] minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we please, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more? Or less?" - Robert Nozick
(1938 – 2002), American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' (1971). Harper's magazine, in reviewing 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia', stated ‘No contemporary philosopher possesses a more imaginative mind, broader interests, or greater dialectical abilities than Robert Nozick.’
Quote from his book, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia'.
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| [Quote No.41610] Need Area: Friends > General
"Through the evolutionary process, those who are able to engage in social cooperation of various sorts do better in survival and reproduction.
" - Robert Nozick
(1938 – 2002), American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' (1971). Harper's magazine, in reviewing 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia', stated ‘No contemporary philosopher possesses a more imaginative mind, broader interests, or greater dialectical abilities than Robert Nozick.’
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| [Quote No.41623] Need Area: Friends > General
"The US Declaration of Independence spoke of the unalienable human rights to life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness...Not the PROVISION of happiness - especially when what government thinks is happiness, might be unhappiness to others. So we need the freedom to chase our own individual versions of happiness, that's all. Any more and government destroys the happiness of some, or even up to most, of those it professes it wants to make happy." - Anonymous
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| [Quote No.41624] Need Area: Friends > General
"People who are hungry and out of a job [and jealous of those that aren't] are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
US President
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| [Quote No.41625] Need Area: Friends > General
"The Goal Is Freedom: For Equality; Against Privilege - Reclaiming a lost ideal.
The freedom philosophy can be boiled down to two phrases: for equality, against privilege.
Intuitively, this should sound uncontroversial. We just finished celebrating the Fourth of July, which commemorates the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson’s elegant statement of the freedom philosophy proclaims: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. But since then the idea of equality has acquired many meanings that either work against the freedom philosophy or give it weak support. So how can it be a pillar of liberty?
As Auburn University philosopher Roderick T. Long wrote in ‘The Freeman’ (‘Liberty: The Other Equality’), notions such as equality under the law and equality of freedom fall short as libertarian ideals. After all, we could be equal under unlibertarian law (everyone gets drafted) or we could all have an equally small area of freedom (everyone may do whatever he wants between noon and three on alternate Wednesdays). That would be equality of a sort but not liberty.
--Economic Equality:
The objections to economic equality are well known. Since in the free market unequal incomes are to be expected as a result of variations in talent, ambition, energy, health, luck, perception of consumer preferences, and so on, economic equality could be attempted (but not achieved) only through monstrous and continuing aggression by government officers. Something approaching equal poverty might be achieved (the political elite would no doubt be more equal than others), but equality at a decent level of prosperity is beyond the State’s ability, as Cuba and North Korea illustrate.
This would seem to leave little content for Jefferson’s ringing phrase. But Long shows that this is not the case. There is a significant sense of equality that gets short shrift in political philosophy, most likely because it is the libertarian sense. We do our cause an injustice by neglecting it.
The best-known formulation of this sense is from John Locke, Jefferson’s inspiration for the Declaration. Long writes:
‘Locke defines a state . . . of equality as one wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection. . . . ‘
In short, by the equality of men Locke and Jefferson meant not that all men are or ought to be equal in material advantages, but that all men (today it would be all persons, regardless of gender) are equal in authority. To subject an unconsenting person to one’s own will is to treat that person as one’s subordinate — illegitimately so, if we are all naturally equal.
Locke reinforced his thought thus:
‘[B]eing all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. . . . And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.’
Long goes on to say that this Lockean equality (it can also be found in earlier writers, such as the Levellers, a group of English laissez-faire radicals) provides a powerful underpinning for the freedom philosophy:
‘The upshot of libertarian equality, equality in authority, is that government can possess no rights that its subjects lack–unless they freely surrender such rights by ‘deputation, commission, and free consent.’ Since I have no right over anyone else’s person or property, I cannot delegate to government a right over anyone else’s person or property. . . . Libertarian equality . . . involves not merely equality before those who administer the law, but equality with them. Government must be restrained within the moral bounds applicable to private citizens. If I may not take your property without your consent, neither may the state.’
Frederic Bastiat made the same argument in his great work ‘The Law’.
--Anti-Privilege:
Opposition to privilege is simply the corollary of libertarian equality. If all are equal in authority, then no one may live at the expense of others without their consent. The word ‘privilege’ is often used equivocally, but it has its roots in the idea of legal favoritism. It is composed of ‘privus’, meaning single, and ‘lex’ or ‘lege’, meaning law. Thus a privilege is a government act that (forcibly) bestows favors on one person, or the few.
Historically, government’s primary function has been to exploit the industrious–anyone who works and trades in the market–for the sake of the political class, which prefers collecting subsidies to earning wages or profits. (This original class analysis was formulated by the laissez-faire theorists Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, students of the economist J. B. Say, in the first half of the nineteenth century). The privileges take the form of tariffs, licenses, monopolies, land grants, [patents], and other subsidies. These enable favored interests to increase their incomes beyond what the market would provide, either by forcibly extracting wealth from producers or by barring them from competitively serving consumers. The name for this privilege-based system is mercantilism [or ‘crony capitalism’], and in many ways it lives on today even in market-oriented economies, which is why they are often called mixed economies.
The privilege part of the mix is a rank injustice against all honest industrious people and a violation of the principle of equal authority that animated so many early Americans.
Champions of liberty have a constant challenge in finding fresh and compelling ways to teach their philosophy to people with different perspectives. I have a hunch there is an audience looking for a philosophy that embraces equality of authority and opposes privilege." - Sheldon Richman
editor of ‘The Freeman’ and TheFreemanOnline.org, and a contributor to ‘The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics’. He is the author of ‘Separating School and State: How to Liberate America's Families’. Posted May 11, 2012 but this ‘TGIF -The Goal is Freedom’ article originally ran July 7, 2006.
[http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/equality-privilege/ ]
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| [Quote No.41626] Need Area: Friends > General
"When we say that one has the [unalienable human] right to do certain things we mean this and only this, that it would be immoral for another, alone or in combination, to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof." - Father James A. Sadowsky
(1923 - ), Jesuit priest and professor of philosophy, at Fordham University from 1960.
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| [Quote No.41627] Need Area: Friends > General
"What we have in the debate between equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and therefore equal treatment or equal outcome is a clash not between two liberty interests, but rather between two rights-claims – one negative (genuine), the other positive (counterfeit). All that is required for the exercise of a negative right (to self-ownership and, redundantly, liberty and one’s legitimately acquired belongings) is other people’s noninterference. ('When we say that one has the right to do certain things we mean this and only this, that it would be immoral for another, alone or in combination, to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof,' writes James A. Sadowsky, S.J.) But the fulfillment of positive rights requires that other people act affirmatively even if they don’t want to — say, by providing products or paying the bills. If one person’s freedom depends on the infringement of someone else’s freedom, the first claim is illegitimate. To hold otherwise is to reject the principle of equality." - Anonymous
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| [Quote No.41628] Need Area: Friends > General
"Liberty: The Other Equality - Equality of authority:
Equality is an ideal upheld by a number of ideologies, but nowadays it is seldom associated with libertarianism or classical liberalism. Indeed, both libertarians and their critics typically think of equality as an ideal in tension with the ideal of liberty [individual freedom] as libertarians understand it.
But what is meant by ‘equality’? Some thinkers draw a distinction between formal equality and substantive equality, where formal equality means something like mere equality [equal treatment] before the law— the same laws applying equally to everyone — while substantive equality [equal outcomes] requires abolishing, or at least greatly reducing, differences in wealth, opportunity, or influence.
The latter sort of equality [substantive equality – equal outcomes] — we might also call it socioeconomic equality — is obviously incompatible with libertarianism, at least if such equality is sought through coercive legislation.1 Legislation aiming at socioeconomic equality is rejected by libertarians as an unwarranted and socialistic interference with the [unalienable human] property rights of individuals [who own themselves and therefore the effect of their own choices and effort].
Equality before the law [equal treatment], by contrast, is generally embraced by libertarians. But by itself there is nothing especially libertarian about it. Anatole France once wryly remarked that the law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, a line often invoked by socioeconomic egalitarians scornful of merely formal equality. But libertarians have equal reason to find such formal equality inadequate. As economist Murray Rothbard noted: ‘[T]he justice of equality of treatment depends first of all on the justice of the treatment itself. Suppose, for example, that Jones, with his retinue, proposes to enslave a group of people. Are we to maintain that justice requires that each be enslaved equally? And suppose that someone has the good fortune to escape. Are we to condemn him for evading the equality of justice meted out to his fellows?’2
If neither substantive socioeconomic equality nor formal equality before the law captures what libertarians think matters in politics, it’s tempting to conclude that equality is not a central libertarian value at all.
Yet earlier thinkers in the libertarian tradition placed far more emphasis on equality. Thomas Jefferson in the ‘Declaration of Independence’ famously wrote that ‘all men are created equal’; in the original draft he went still further, writing that ‘from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable,’ thereby making equality the basis and foundation of our rights.3 What sort of equality is Jefferson talking about?
It is generally recognized that John Locke’s ‘Second Treatise of Government’ stands foremost among those ‘elementary books of public right’ on which Jefferson relied in writing the ‘Declaration’; and Jefferson’s notion of equality is indeed derived directly from Locke’s. Locke defines a ‘state . . . of equality’ as one ‘wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection . . . .’4
In short, by the equality of men Locke and Jefferson meant not that all men are or ought to be equal in material advantages, but that all men (today it would be all persons, regardless of gender) are equal in ‘authority’. To subject an unconsenting person to one’s own will is to treat that person as one’s subordinate — illegitimately so, if we are all naturally equal. Hence any interference with another person’s liberty violates the Lockean conception of equality: ‘[B]eing all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. . . . And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.’5
No wonder, then, that Jefferson should find it natural to maintain, a century later, that human equality is the foundation of our rights against one another.
Locke in turn was simply developing the ideas of an earlier group of English radicals with the decidedly egalitarian name ‘Levellers’. These ‘Levellers’, whose leaders included John Lilburne, William Walwyn, and Richard Overton, emerged during the English Civil War of the 1640s as the first mass libertarian movement. ‘Levellers’ was not actually their preferred name for themselves; indeed, they penned tracts with titles like ‘A Manifestation from [Those] Commonly (Though Unjustly) Styled Levellers and The Levellers (Falsely Socalled) Vindicated’. Their discomfort with the name stemmed from the fear that they might be interpreted as demanding the forcible abolition of inequalities in wealth, a goal they expressly repudiated: ‘We profess therefore that we never had it in our thoughts to level men’s estates, it being the utmost of our aim that the commonwealth be reduced to such a pass that every man may with as much security as may be enjoy his propriety [i.e., his own property and property rights].’6
Yet the name ‘Leveller’ suited them nonetheless, for while they did not seek socioeconomic equality, they were passionately devoted to equality in authority. Overton, for example, maintained that ‘by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom,’ so that ‘bellows-menders, broommen, cobblers, tinkers, or chimney-sweepers’ are ‘all equally freeborn’ with ‘the greatest peers in the land.’ John Locke, Hence, Overton inferred, ‘ No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s,’ and every man is ‘a king, priest and prophet in his own natural circuit and compass, whereof no second may partake but by deputation, commission, and free consent from him whose natural right and freedom it is.’7
This form of equality goes well beyond mere equality before the law. If the rulers of a state require that everyone worship Shiva, then in some sense they are treating all the citizens equally (assuming they also worship Shiva themselves); but they are nevertheless not respecting equality in authority, because they are arrogating [To take or claim for oneself without right] to themselves, and denying to others, the authority to decide whether Shiva will be worshipped. Rather than merely requiring the equal ‘application’ of the laws, equality in the libertarian sense places restrictions on the ‘content’ of those laws as well, ruling out forcible subordination of any kind. This point of view is entirely consistent with the legitimate ‘defensive’ use of force; such force restores equality in authority rather than violating it. But any initiatory use of force involves treating other people as though they were ‘made for one another’s uses,’ and so is forbidden as an affront to human equality. Those who see only two forms that equality can take — substantive socioeconomic equality and formal equality before the law — have neglected the possibility of libertarian equality, which is substantive but not socioeconomic.
--Libertarian Equality:
What are the political implications of this third kind of equality? The upshot of libertarian equality, equality in authority, is that government can possess no rights that its subjects lack — unless they freely surrender such rights by ‘deputation, commission, and free consent.’ Since I have no right over anyone else’s person or property, I cannot delegate to government a right over anyone else’s person or property. As nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat eloquently stated:
‘If every person has the right to defend — even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.’8
While libertarians disagree with one another as to how much, if any, of one’s natural liberty it is proper or needful to surrender to government, all libertarians agree in seeking to ‘minimize’ the inequalities in authority existing between the average person on the one hand and the functionaries and privileged beneficiaries of the state on the other.
Neither socioeconomic equality nor equality before the law measures up to the radicalism of libertarian equality, because neither socioeconomic equality nor equality before the law goes so far as to call into question the existing power structure. Both forms of equality call on the rulers to ensure that equality (of the favored form) prevails among the ruled, while assuming all along an inequality in authority between rulers and ruled. (The fact that the ruled are eligible for elective office does not erase this inequality, since those who make it into the ranks of the rulers must necessarily be a small minority of the populace.) As philosopher Antony Flew writes, under a system of governmental regulation ‘what the various ruling elites determine to be fitting . . . may or may not turn out to be equality between all those who are so dependent. But as between those who give and those who receive the commands . . . there can of course be no equality at all.’9
Libertarian equality, by contrast, involves not merely equality ‘before’ those who administer the law, but equality ‘with’ them. Government must be restrained within the Thomas Jefferson moral bounds applicable to private citizens. If I may not take your property without your consent, neither may the state.
Hence it is libertarianism, not statist socialism, that deserves the title radical egalitarianism. Liberty is the truest form of equality.10
--Notes:
--1. It’s worth remembering that pursuing socioeconomic equality through ‘peaceful’ and ‘voluntary’ means is entirely compatible with libertarianism. For a fuller discussion of this point, see Roderick T. Long and Charles W. Johnson, ‘Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ www.charleswjohnson.name/essays/libertarianfeminism.
--2. Murray N. Rothbard, ‘Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles; with Power and Market: Government and the Economy’, scholars’ edition (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2004), p. 1219, http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chapl6d.asp.
--3. Thomas Jefferson, Original Draft of the ‘Declaration of Independence’, http://classicliberal.tripod.com/jefferson/origdecind.html.
--4. John Locke, ‘Second Treatise of Government’ II. 4, www.lonang.com/exlibris/locke/loc-202.htm.
--5. Locke, ibid., II. 6.
--6. ‘A Manifestation from Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, Mr. William Walwyn, Mr. Thomas Prince, and Mr. Richard Overton (Now Prisoners in the Tower of London), and Others, Commonly (Though Unjustly) Styled Levellers’ (1649),www.constitution.org/lev/eng_lev_ll.htm.
--7. This passage is from what is perhaps the most delightfully titled political treatise ever written:
Richard Overton, ‘An Arrow Against All Tyrants and Tyranny, Shot from the Prison of Newgate into the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House of Lords, and All Other Usurpers and Tyrants Whatsoever; Wherein the Original, Rise, Extent, and End of Magisterial Power, the Natural and National Rights, Freedoms and Properties of Mankind are Discovered and Undeniably Maintained; the Late Oppressions and Encroachments of the Lords over the Commons Legally (By the Fundamental Laws and Statutes of This Realm, As Also By a Memorable Extract Out of the Records of the Tower of London) Condemned; the Late Presbyterian Ordinance (Invented and Contrived by the Diviners, and By the Motion of Mr. Bacon and Mr. Tate Read in the House of Commons) Examined, Refuted, and Exploded, As Most Inhumane, Tyrannical and Barbarous, by Richard Overton, Prerogative Archer to the Arbitrary House of Lords, Their Prisoner in Newgate, for the Just and Legal Properties, Rights and Freedoms of the Commons of England’ (1646), www.constitution.org/lev/eng_lev_05.htm.
For further discussion of Overton see Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, ‘Self-Ownership and Consent: The Contractarian Liberalism of Richard Overton,’ ‘Journal of Libertarian Studies’, Fall 2000, pp. 43—96, www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_1 /15_l_2.pdf.
--8. Frederic Bastiat, ‘The Law’, trans. Dean Russell (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1998 [1850]),www. econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss2a. html.
--9. Antony Flew, ‘The Politics of Procrustes: Contradictions of Enforced Equality’ (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1981), p. 12.
--10. For a fuller discussion of libertarianism’s egalitarian dimension, see Roderick T. Long, ‘Equality: The Unknown Ideal,’ ‘Mises Daily’ Article, October 16, 2001, http://mises.org/story/804." - Roderick T. Long
‘The Freeman’, October 2005, Volume: 55, Issue: 8 [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/liberty-the-other-equality/ ]
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| [Quote No.41629] Need Area: Friends > General
"Freedom of Association:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association." - United Nations
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights - Article 20.
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| [Quote No.41631] Need Area: Friends > General
"Freedom of association correctly understood has two aspects: each person has a right to say yes and a right to say no to invitations from others to associate. Each person has a right to associate, for legal purposes, with any other person who is willing to associate with him. If any person is refused the right to say no to an offer of association, he does not have freedom of association." - Charles W. Baird
professor of economics emeritus at California State University at East Bay.
‘The Freeman’, May 07, 2012.
[http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/attack-on-freedom-of-association/ ]
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"Equality has always been a popular political catchcry. But if you stop to think about it, it is necessary for the people calling for it to be more specific. Why? Because it is impossible to have equality in regard to both treatment and outcome - unless everyone starts out equal to begin with. If they begin as unequal then either the treatment is equal and therefore the outcome is still unequal or the outcome is equal but to get there the treatment is unequal. Therefore anyone wanting equality and demanding it from their politicians must decide which type of equality they want. Is it equal treatment under the law or equal outcome under the law? Equal treatment is very easy to see and to achieve. Equal outcome, on the other hand, is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, especially for any length of time.
To decide then which equality is appropriate, either equal treatment or equal outcome under the law, would require each individual to carefully examine and debate just what individual, unalienable, human rights can’t be violated, even by a majority in a democracy, and whether these rights should be equal for all.
After many years of careful philosophical, political and economic reading, discussion and soul-searching, I currently believe the only ethical position I can support, consistent with the time-tested dictum, 'Treat others as you would like to be treated', often referred to as ‘The Golden Rule’ and found in nearly all religions throughout the world, is that each individual has equal, unalienable (cannot be denied even by a majority vote), human rights to life, liberty (freedom from force, the threat of force or fraud), the pursuit (not provision) of happiness and private property and equal treatment under the law (that therefore does not guarantee equal outcomes, as that would necessitate unequal treatment and thereby deny to all, the other equal individual rights).
Of course, these rights do not stop individuals from freely choosing to help others. I believe that should be a private, personal choice. These rights only stop others, individually or in groups – including democratic majorities, from forcing other individuals to help others, for example in communist and socialist doctrine, as expressed by Karl Marx’s phrase, ‘From each according to their abilities; to each according to their needs’. These rights would still allow people to try to persuade, as persuasion does not involve force, the threat of force or fraud, and in fact would guarantee that as a human right." - Ben O'Grady
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of www.imagi-natives.com
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"We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies." - Pythagoras
(circa 582 BC – circa 496 BC), Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
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| [Quote No.41639] Need Area: Friends > General
"...he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." - Pythagoras
(circa 582 BC – circa 496 BC), Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
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"It is requisite to choose the most excellent life; for custom will make it pleasant. Wealth is an infirm anchor, glory is still more infirm; and in a similar manner, the body, dominion, and honour. For all these are imbecile and powerless. What then are powerful anchors. Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake....virtue is the only thing that is strong; and that every thing else is a trifle." - Pythagoras
(circa 582 BC – circa 496 BC), Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
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"Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many." - Pythagoras
(circa 582 BC – circa 496 BC), Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
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"If thou intend to do any good; tarry not till to-morrow! for thou knowest not what may chance thee this night." - Pythagoras
(circa 582 BC – circa 496 BC), Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
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| [Quote No.41655] Need Area: Friends > General
"Rejoice not in another man's misfortune!" - Pythagoras
(circa 582 BC – circa 496 BC), Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
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"Those alone are dear to Divinity who are hostile to injustice." - Pythagoras
(circa 582 BC – circa 496 BC), Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
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"Rights:-
Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states; or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or (not) be in certain states.
Rights dominate modern understandings of what actions are permissible and which institutions are just. Rights structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape of morality as it is currently perceived. To accept a set of rights is to approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain view of what may, must, and must not be done...A distinction between negative [not to do, have, be] and positive [to do, have, be] rights is popular among some normative theorists, especially those with a bent toward libertarianism. The holder of a negative right is entitled to non-interference, while the holder of a positive right is entitled to provision of some good or service. A right against assault is a classic example of a negative right, while a right to welfare assistance is a prototypical positive right." - Stanford University
Quote from the 'Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'. First published Mon Dec 19, 2005; substantive revision Sat Jul 2, 2011. Retrieved May 18th, 2012. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/ ]
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"Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." - Bible
Romans 13:8-10. In his epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul mentions five of the Ten Commandments and associates them with the neighborly love commandment, often called 'The Golden Rule'.
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| [Quote No.41668] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Sometimes called 'The Golden Rule':] Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." - Bible
Gospel of Matthew 19:19 King James Version.
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| [Quote No.41669] Need Area: Friends > General
"[An individual's unalienable human right to liberty-freedom is so important legal systems enforce this with a writ of ‘habeas corpus’. It is...] A legal term meaning that an accused person must be presented physically before the court with a statement demonstrating sufficient cause for arrest. Thus, no accuser may imprison someone indefinitely without bringing that person and the charges against him or her into a courtroom. In Latin, 'habeas corpus' literally means ‘you shall have the body’." - The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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| [Quote No.41670] Need Area: Friends > General
"Communism is in conflict with [unalienable human rights inherent in] human nature." - Ernest Renan
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| [Quote No.41671] Need Area: Friends > General
"Communism teaches and seeks two objectives: unrelenting class [envy and therefore] warfare and the complete eradication of private ownership [of self and property]." - Pope Pius XI
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| [Quote No.41672] Need Area: Friends > General
"Communism is the death of the [individual] soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of [group in the form of state government] tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal." - Adlai E. Stevenson
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| [Quote No.41673] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Karl] Marx was wrong; jealousy and pride, emotional forces, are just as responsible as hunger and necessity for our actions; they explain the whole of History, and the initial fall of man." - Eugene Ionesco
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| [Quote No.41674] Need Area: Friends > General
"Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: 'No man should have so much.' The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: 'All men should have as much.'" - Phelps Adams
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| [Quote No.41676] Need Area: Friends > General
"Communism and fascism or Nazism, although poles apart in their intellectual content, are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority [or being that superior authority over others and therefore able to use that power to control others and their possessions]." - James A. C. Brown
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| [Quote No.41677] Need Area: Friends > General
"Justice is [nearly] always naive and self-confident; believing that it will immediately win once recognized. That is the reason why the forces of Justice are so [often] poorly organized. On the other hand, the Evil [individual or group - even political party or government] is cynic, sly and fantastically organized. It never ever has the illusion of the ability to stand on its own feet and to win in a fair competition. That is why it is ready to use any kind of means without hesitation. And of course it does - [nearly always camouflaged] under the banners of the most noble ideas." - Vladimir Bukovsky
(1942 - ), a leading member of the Russian dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist.
Bukovsky was one of the first to expose the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the Soviet Union. He spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and in psikhushkas, forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals used by the government as special prisons.
He is a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
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| [Quote No.41678] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Beware calls for excessive law and order, lest you lose your freedom altogether:] The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might, and the Republic is in danger. Yes - danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without it our nation cannot survive." - Adolf Hitler
Leader of the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party before and during the Second World War.
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| [Quote No.41679] Need Area: Friends > General
"Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy
US President
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| [Quote No.41680] Need Area: Friends > General
"Don't listen to what the Communists say, but look at what they do." - Nguyen Van Thieu
the President of South Vietnam.
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| [Quote No.41681] Need Area: Friends > General
"In examining any dictatorship, there are two good tests. Firstly, what is the relation between the rulers and the proletariat or common people? Are the rulers members of the proletariat, as they would have you believe? Do they even identify their interests with those of ordinary citizens? The truth seems to be that, no matter where you find them, the so-called proletarian dictatorships are actually controlled by a small elite who ordinarily lose little sleep in worrying about the rights of the common man. Secondly, have the proletariat any effective say in what the rulers do? In the proletarian dictatorships I am familiar with, ordinary people enjoy little or no control over their Government or over their own lives and futures." - Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
(1919 – 1980), the last Shah of Iran who ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. This is a quote from his book, 'Mission for my Country', published 1961, page 162.
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