David McElroy

For too long, many who believe in individual freedom have been intimidated about asserting the morality of one simple truth: Nobody has the right to forcibly take things from another person — even if the majority decide it’s a good idea.

For centuries, slavery has existed in this world. Ever since one man discovered the ability to force other men and women to do his will, people have been enslaving each other. It wasn’t an issue that affected just one race or nationality or religion. At one time or another, people of every group have tried to enslave people who they deemed unworthy of being free.

For most of human history, nobody much questioned this barbaric practice. Even in the Bible, it was routinely accepted as the natural course of life. The practice wasn’t condemned or praised. It was merely a natural fact of nature, as far as anyone seemed to understand.

It wasn’t really until the 19th century that things started changing. Until that time, a few slaves had escaped, of course. Brief (and largely unsuccessful) slave rebellions weren’t terribly uncommon. What happened to change everything, so much that there are remarkably few people today who would defend the practice?

Keep Reading

The great science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was one of my first favorite writers, back when I started reading his juvenile fiction when I was about 12 or 13. I had no idea that he had already arrived at some of the conclusions it would take me decades to find.

There’s a widely held belief that Heinlein was a libertarian, but that’s much more complicated than most people think. He was pretty much an outright socialist in the early decades of his life, then a hardcore cold warrior after that. Still, libertarian themes emerged, most famously in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”

Whatever he was in the early parts of his life, he gave us some of the best literary efforts on ideas related to freedom. I was reminded of that earlier this week when I saw this quoted, which comes from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long“:

Keep Reading

When I attended a meeting earlier this week about a new sales tax for my suburb, there was a continuing theme that was disturbing. What I heard from supporters of the tax was bad, but what I heard from opponents was just as bad, because many of them were hypocrites.

In order to sell the tax, politicians are throwing out bait in the form of various projects that they promise to do with the money. The disturbing thing I heard from many tax opponents is that they’re adamantly against the tax, but they want the projects done anyway.

We’re a nation of people who have had costs disconnected from benefits — to the point that most people don’t seem to make the connection anymore. People want good things to just magically happen. It doesn’t occur to them that it’s their responsibility to find a way to provide what they want. They’ve been trained to believe that The Government will take care of everything.

You can see how out of touch people have become by looking at things said during the health care debate last year. Many of those who opposed the Democrats’ efforts to take over even more huge chunks of the medical system didn’t seem to understand that much of what they have now is already “socialized medicine” — and nobody better threaten to take it away from them.

Keep Reading