Suppose you are walking down the street and pass by an alley. Something catches your attention and you peer into the darkness. You find a man with a gun to his back. The man holding the gun is tearing into the other man’s pockets. At this point, you’ve made an obvious assumption – one man is being robbed by another man. You yell at the gentleman holding the gun, “Get out of here! Quit mugging that man!” The man with the gun responds, “Why do you assume I’m robbing him? He’s letting me borrow money.” Do you believe this? What gives you the impression that he is indeed robbing the man and not just borrowing money from him?

If you were to see a woman with a knife to her throat with a man forcing himself on her, why would you assume it is rape and not love-making? How can we tell the difference?

The assumptions we made above about the man being mugged and the woman being raped were indeed correct. What gave it away? Well, in the first instance it was the gun in the back. In the second it was the overpowering with a knife to the throat. We made correct assumptions because we recognized the aggressive force taking place and identified victims in both scenarios.

When aggressive force is used against someone, they are by definition worse off. If they were not made worse off, you would not have had to use violence against them. A “trade” involving a gun to the back is no trade at all. Sex with a knife to the throat is not sex; it’s rape.

Again I have to wonder, what makes us believe that citizens want the trillions of dollars in government “services” they are forced to consume each year? How can we know that citizens are made better off by these services? I cannot deny that citizens want roads, education services, retirement plans, health care and the like, but it does not follow that demand for these services means a demand for forced consumption of these services at non-negotiable prices. Precisely because we genuinely want things like roads, health care, and education, what does it say about the government’s ability to provide these goods and services that they must use the threat of prison in order to complete the “sale?”

For example, I want a retirement plan, but if it were my choice would I choose to “invest” in social security? You may want an education for your child, but if left up to you, would you purchase the education services of your local school district? Sure, many of us love eating hamburgers, but should government produce hamburgers and force us to pay for them?

Here is the reality: when government provides goods and services, we get them whether we like it or not, whether we use them or not, and regardless of any other options that may exist. We cannot control how much we consume, the quality we receive, nor the manner in which they are delivered. And forget about having an option to pass on the purchase.

If we must be forced under threat of jail and violence to pay for government services, why is it assumed that we are made better off? If we actually wanted these goods and services, would we have to be coerced into such a trade? Does the local grocery store force me into shopping there – whether I like it or not? Am I threatened with prison to trade with the movie theater across the street? Did Apple force me into buying my iPod? Imagine if Apple attempted to operate like government by giving consumers no ability to abstain from trading. Instead, they sent bills to millions of people who never ordered an iPod. Can you imagine the outcry from consumers? Yet the old couple down the street say nothing when they are forced to pay for a light-rail project they’ll never use.

As in the mugging and rape examples, we were able to recognize the victims as victims because they were being forced to do something against their will. This force was necessary because the victims were revealing to the aggressors that the interaction was making them worse off. If left alone, the victims would not have willingly agreed to participate in either of the interactions. Thus, the very fact that the government must threaten us with prison in order to “sell” us their services reveals that we would not make these trades if left up to us.

When I take action in my life – going somewhere, not going somewhere, doing something, not doing something, buying something, not buying something – I am attempting to improve my situation, otherwise, I would not have taken the action. My action is displaying a preference. When I am forced into changing my course of action from what I wanted to do, I am made worse off.

At this point, I know what you’re thinking. “But Justin, I do things that I don’t want to do ALL the time!” I know, and so do I. Do I want to clean the dishes every night? Do I want to come into work every single day? Do I want to shell out all the cash I do to buy gas for my car? No, but I do these things anyway because the alternative is worse. I’d rather do the dishes than be a jerk to my fiancée (and sleep on the couch). I’d rather come into work even when I don’t feel like it because unemployment is a worse alternative. No gas means no car, and I’d rather drive than use the alternative transportation options. This is fundamentally different than saying “I’d rather give up my money to the guy who mugged me because living is better than dying.” Revealing a preference because of aggressive force or violence is not the same as revealing a preference through a mutual, voluntary interaction. A preference that is revealed through aggressive force is at the very least distorted and at most completely manufactured. Either way, it cannot be considered a genuinely revealed preference.

Another objection might be that we popularly elect politicians who then choose what goods and services we must consume. If we don’t like it, we’ll elect new ones. But this objection fails when broken down to what it really implies: rule by the whims of the majority. If majority rule is how people prefer to buy goods and services, why not take a poll every time you go to the grocery store or shoe shopping? Whichever pair of shoes gets 51% of the votes you will be forced to buy at a price you have no say in. Worse still, you must wait four years before the majority picks another pair of shoes for you. How about letting the majority rule on which career path you take? Take a poll before going into college and whatever the majority says, you must do. Didn’t want to be a biology major? Too bad. Didn’t want to go into the PhD program? Oh well, 51% said so. We inherently recognize the absurdity of majority rule when it comes to many of our personal decisions. If 51% is a terrible way to make personal choices as mundane as what pair of shoes to buy, why overlook its consequences when it comes to the really big stuff? Why accept it when it comes to our health care? Or our children’s education?

In short, there is no reason to believe people want government goods or services, at least in the capacity they are delivered today. How do we know this? For the same reason we know a woman with a knife to her throat didn’t want to have sex. The fact that these “services” must be forced onto the people through taxation and the threat of prison is proof that if let alone, we would not choose to consume them. Yes, we want many of the goods and services that government forces on us, but that does not mean we want them provided by the government, who offers us no control over the quantity, quality, or distribution of them. We are necessarily made worse off every time we are threatened to do something against our will. Government is the personification of this. It is the ultimate “offer you can’t refuse.” The quintessential “your money or your life” scenario.

Quite simply, it’s the difference between rape and love-making.

Here are a couple gems:

Scott Brown said he expects to be seated quickly in the U.S. Senate, but he was conciliatory on the question of what he will do there, noting that he voted for universal health insurance coverage in Massachusetts and wanted his election to encourage a new bipartisanship in Washington.

[emphasis mine]

And here’s a juicy quote:

“We’re past campaign mode: I think it’s important for everyone to get some form of health care,” Brown told a news conference Wednesday morning. “So to offer a basic plan for everybody I think is important. It’s just a question of whether we’re going to raise taxes, we’re going to cut a half at trillion from Medicare, we’re going to affect veterans’ care. I think we can do it better.”

[emphasis mine]

So here we have your typical socialist believing that every American DESERVES health coverage and that his version of socialism is “better.” This should come as no surprise, he touted it on his very own campaign website!

Yet another example that voting for the guy who is only 90% socialist means you still receive a true blue socialist every time. Keep voting for evil Republicans and you’ll continue to get evil choices.

One day you go and check the mail. Inside you find a bill from your neighbor for $300. The bill reads, “One month’s defense services…… $300.” This perplexes you to say the least. You don’t recall ever entering into an agreement with your neighbor for his services. Not even a verbal one. A strong sense of injustice overwhelms you, but before you walk next door to give him a piece of your mind, you realize who you are dealing with and back off.

Now you are indeed benefiting from your neighbor’s incredible home defense system and self-defense capabilities. That is a fact. However, you never asked for it, nor did you agree to it after the fact.

When you finally work up the courage to discuss the issue with your neighbor, he thankfully keeps his cool and shows you a contract he wrote out for you. “The contact is right here my friend. It describes the service I’m providing you and the rate at which you are billed. I think $300 per month is MORE than fair” he says.

Swallowing very hard, you reply, “But I never consented to this contract — neither before you installed your system, nor after. And look, my signature is nowhere to be found on that piece of paper.”

This argument is not good enough for your neighbor and he, quite predictably, sticks to his proverbial guns. He claims that despite the fact that you never consented to this agreement, it still stands because there is no question that you benefit from his home defense services. In fact, “I’ve been watching over your house just as much as my own for the past month,” he says.

What sort of recourse do you have in this situation? Your neighbor is not going to back down, and he is much stronger than you. He never comes out and says it, but implicitly you fear he will take the $300 if you don’t willingly give it up. You must take this case to court and convince a judge that this type of contract is illegal. You never consented to it, your signature is nowhere to be found, and you don’t accept his services. At this point it is fair to say that the injustice is plain to see. A contract forced on someone else is not a contract. It is force.

I bring this example up because although we can all agree that you do in fact gain from your neighbor’s home defense system, it is immoral for you to be forced into paying for something you never consented to, nor ever asked for. Your neighbor was in the wrong when he tried to give you the old “offer you can’t refuse” bit.

The part that still confuses me is why Constitutionalists don’t see this parallel when debating limited government and the so called “social contract” in general, and the Constitution in particular. Lysander Spooner wrote about the “Constitution of No Authority” way back in 1867. It was obvious to him even back then that you cannot impose a contract on people who had nothing to do with it.

If forcing a contract on someone is so plainly wrong in my above neighbor example, when the victim is so clearly benefiting from the contract, knows the guy, and is friends with him, how can we possibly say that the government can make and enforce contracts on us against our will? The only possible way to justify such force is to say that the government owns all the land in America. It is to say that you are merely renting the land you live on and all the things you own. That you don’t have the final say over your own body and your own property.

If you’d like to believe such nonsense, go ahead. I choose to believe I own my body and all my property and that no one, no matter what kind of uniform they are wearing can force me into a contract I had nothing to do with, nor consented to. And yet that is the situation we face everyday. We pay for services we never requested, for prices we never agreed to, from people we never met.

….. on second thought, you better go back and reconcile with your neighbor. Pay him now, because he might be your best friend when the government bureaucrats start looking for more money to feed their bankrupt beast.

Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch resistance to Nazism from 1940 to 1945 was pronounced and fairly successful. In Norway, for example, teachers refused to promote fascism in the schools. For this, the Nazis imprisoned a thousand teachers. But, the remaining teachers stood firm, giving anti-fascist instruction to children and teaching in their homes. This policy made the pro-fascist Quisling government so unpopular that it eventually released all of the imprisoned teachers and dropped its attempt to dominate the schools. … In Copenhagen, Danes used a general strike to liberalize martial law. …

But, surely the most amazing but widely neglected case of nonviolent resistance against Nazi Germany was the protection of Jews and other persecuted minorities from deportation, imprisonment, and murder. … Gene Sharp shows how the nations which nonviolently resisted National Socialist racial persecutions saved almost all of their Jews, while Jews in other Nazi-controlled nations were vastly more likely to be placed in concentration camps and killed. The effort to arrest Norway’s seventeen hundred Jews sparked internal resistance and protest resignations; most of the Norwegian Jews fled to Sweden. … When Himmler tried to crack down on Danish Jews, the Danes thwarted his efforts. Not only did the Danish government and people resist – through bureaucratic slowdowns and noncooperation – but, surprisingly, the German commander in Denmark also refused to help organize Jewish deportations. This prompted Himmler to import special troops to arrest Jews. But, in the end almost all Danish Jews escaped unharmed. …

The omnipresent pattern … is that totalitarian governments are not omnipotent. They need the cooperation of the ruled to exert their will. If a people denies cooperation, even a government as vicious as Hitler’s, bound by few moral constraints, might be unable to get what it wants.

Let me give you a simple example. You’ll often hear folks in the “tea party” crowd protest the impending government takeover of health care. Among the reasons for being against socialized medicine, the inconsistent tea partier will invoke morality.

A popular line of thinking goes like this: “I should not be forced to buy politically controlled health insurance simply because I’m alive and breathing.” Another goes this way, “How come Nancy Pelosi is allowed to point a gun at me and force me to buy a product from her, but I can’t point a gun in my neighbor’s face and force him to buy a product from me?”

Truth be told, both arguments are valid. And if made from someone who was actually consistent, they’d have merit. However, coming from the mouths of limited government (a.k.a. central planning and taxation only for things they like) tea party people, it’s rubbish. If I were an intelligent leftist, I would easily point out the inconsistency in a conversation that would go like this:

Tea Partier (TP): Obama care is immoral because Nancy Pelosi and friends are forcing us to buy politically controlled health insurance just because we’re alive.

Intelligent Leftist (IL): You believe it is immoral for Congress to pass a law forcing every American to buy whatever Congress considers to be health insurance? I don’t understand.

TP: Yeah. How come the stupid liberals in Congress are allowed to stick guns in our faces and force us to buy a product from them when I can’t stick a gun in my neighbor’s face and force him to buy a product from me? Where do they get off with this type of power? It is SOOO unconstitutional!! And besides, I’m a man. I shouldn’t be forced to pay for a woman’s c-section or birth control! And she shouldn’t be forced to pay for my Extenze! It’s unfair!

IL: No, it is absolutely fair! You are better off if you buy health insurance. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to force that on you? Besides, there are plenty of things that you are forced to purchase under threat of jail that you tea partiers don’t seem to mind.

TP: No way! We don’t believe in that type of governmental power… it’s UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!

IL: What’s the difference between you being forced to purchase health insurance for your own good and you being forced to purchase roads and road repair for your own good? You don’t seem to mind that Governor Bill Ritter has what you call a gun to your head, forcing you to buy road construction from him. You also don’t seem to mind that the local police chief forces you to buy his services. How do you explain that?

TP: Well, that’s all okay. We don’t mind paying for those vital services, we need those things.

IL: So you don’t mind being forced to buy things against your will, as long as they are services you approve of. That’s convenient. I happen to approve of forcing everyone to buy health care. Surely you wouldn’t also reject forcing everyone in a school district to buy the services of their local schools would you?

TP: Well, that’s different! Kids need to be educated!

IL: I don’t see how that’s any different than health care. Roads, police, fire, schools, health care and the like are all things that benefit everyone. We are all better off if we are forced to buy them. You can’t be a freeloader!

TP: But….. but….

IL: It’s pretty obvious that you would like to just pick and choose what you are paying for. You can’t have it both ways, it doesn’t work like that.

….This is when a consistent person steps in and says, “Yes, we all would prefer to pay only for those goods and services we found worthy of our hard earned money. And no that’s not possible with government. But I’ll give you a hint as to what institution allows for everyone to purchase only what they want, and to never be stolen from, no matter the pretense….”

MARKETS YOU FOOLS!

What this line of argument is doing is equating legislation with virtue. The entire basis of this argument is that we need to follow the law no matter what. In the mind of the person making this argument, whatever the laws are, they are moral.

This means that it is immoral for me to pull a gun on my neighbor and force him to buy health insurance from me, not because it’s inherently wrong to pull guns on innocent people and force them to do anything, but because it is unlawful for me to do such a thing. However, when Nancy Pelosi pulls a gun on my neighbor and forces them to buy health insurance, that will be a moral act when Obama Care passes — because, after all, it will be the law.

Now I won’t even bring up slavery, fugitive slave laws, or Jim Crow laws because that’s just too easy. Instead, I’ll bring up instances where these same conservatives will not hide behind the law. Which  is typical of conservatism — believe something when convenient only — not universally.

Gun control. Having laws restricting certain guns that look scary is moral right? I mean, they call them ILLEGAL firearms for a reason, keyword ILLEGAL. (Ever hear a leftist say, “I’m not against guns, I’m just against ILLEGAL guns.”)

Nanny state laws. Seat belt laws, helmet laws, smoking and drinking laws, and soon to be laws against fatty foods…. clearly not bending over for the nanny state is immoral. It’s the law!

Here’s one you’ll often hear from conservatives: when confronted with government controlled health care, you’ll often hear the conservative lament not being able to buy insurance across state lines. Just once I’d love to hear a leftist reply, “Well, buying insurance across state lines is illegal. The mere fact that you want to buy ILLEGAL insurance shows your disrespect for the law. You’re a criminal at heart.”

While we’re on the topic of health insurance, do you think the leftists in Canada regard their countryman as criminals for wanting to spend their money on illegal private health insurance? I wonder what they think of the folks who fly to the U.S. to get illegal treatment?

Truth is, morality is independent of whatever legislation is on the books. An immoral act does not all of the sudden become moral when it becomes law. Nancy Pelosi has about as much right to force insurance on my neighbor as I do, regardless of the law. Does my wanting to be left alone from health insurance controls make me a criminal?

Lastly, when some version of Obama Care passes down the road, and it just so happens to contain a provision for tax-funded abortion, what will conservatives do?  Did abortion become a moral act after Roe v. Wade?  If and when our tax money goes to fund them, will conservatives shrug their shoulders and mutter, “too bad, it’s the law.”

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi likened the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

That quote pretty much sums it up. Nothing more needs to be said.

Lee said Hasan had hoped Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars.

But…. I thought they hate us for our freedom?

Not convinced?  Perhaps you should read Bin Laden’s own words in this Fatwa issued in 1998.  Notice there is no mention of bikinis, booze, pornography, freedom, women drivers, or voting.  Just a lot of talk about American (western) occupation of their land and killing millions of their people.

I would argue that there are massive unintended consequences with our interference abroad, just as there are massive unintended consequences every time we interfere with the economy.

“They hate us for our freedom” is just another platitude as empty and silly as “hope and change.”

But Ari ended up going far beyond the point I was trying to make. I realize I’m not the best, most clear writer out there, but I’m still a bit baffled by Ari’s response.

The point I was trying to make in my original post was that if one is claiming to be principled, or that they claim to hold certain values as principles, then they must apply their principles universally. To me, a principle is distinguished from a preference in that a principle is applied to all people, at all times, in all situations.

I was hoping that after someone read my post, they would try to pinpoint their first principles and apply them universally to see where it would take them.  I feel it is extremely important to have a foundation for which the rest of our beliefs build from.  And again, my first principle to which all my beliefs stem from is the principle of self-ownership.  When I said applying self-ownership is sometimes scary, I meant that the conclusions we draw like “taxation is theft,” and ultimately that of a stateless society can be uncomfortable for many people.

Although I hope that someday everyone would agree with my first principles, I never intended to convince anyone of the validity of self-ownership.  In fact, if a leftist were to say to me that one of their principles is that no person should ever go hungry — and the leftist applied that principle universally to justify theft of food — that would be a principle.  (A morally disgusting one anyway).

My problem with both Republicans and Democrats is that the political process forces them to abandon their principles when they become too costly to hold.  I was merely trying to get across that abandoning principles from time to time indicates that it is a preference, not a principle.  I have more respect for the leftist who comes right out and declares everyone has a right to a job and food – and is consistent – then all the Republicans out there who claimed limited government is a principle, and then held their tongues during 8 years of George W. Bush.

As for my principle of self-ownership being “pulled from nowhere,” I obviously disagree.  And so would John Locke.  Locke is the first person to put the idea of self-ownership into words.  He said, “every man has a Property in his own Person.”  After Locke, came many others who expounded on self-ownership theory and natural rights in general, including Henry David Thoreau, most of the founding fathers, tons of abolitionists, and various other libertarians, many of whom are in the Austrian school of economics.

To have such problems with the idea of natural rights as Ari has is still puzzling to me. Although I do realize that objectivism requires ridiculously complex, long-winded pronunciations on concepts that could otherwise be boiled down to a simple one or two sentences.

I would like to close by stating that in my humble opinion, the best way to come to a philosophy is to start with a few core beliefs and then extrapolate universally from there.  Being as complex and nuanced as Ari tends to be is okay when you get further down the line and into the nitty gritty stuff.  However, something as simple as “I own myself” needs neither complexity nor any nuance.

Furthermore, if Ari does not believe that he owns his own body, then who does he believe owns it?  (his wife perhaps??!)