Quotations Popular With Libertarian Evangelists p1

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This article is from the Libertarian FAQ, by Joe Dehn jwd3@dehnbase.fidonet.org, Robert Bickford rab.AT.daft.com, Mike Huben mhuben@world.std.com and Advocates for Self-Government http://www.self-gov.org/ with numerous contributions by others.

43 Quotations Popular With Libertarian Evangelists p1

The purpose of bumper sticker phrases is not to enlighten: it is to
misdirect and channel your thoughts. That's a prime need for evangelism, and
thus we see a lot of these from libertarian evangelists.

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

* "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws.
On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property
existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

This quote is one of the central ideas of "The Law", a piece of
philosophical propaganda full of errors and uncompelling arguments.
Let's start with a simple demonstration of its ambiguity. Did men make
laws to support or suppress life, liberty, and property? At first
glance, since we like those three glittering generalities, we'd say
support. But if we change the generalities and keep the "logic" the
same:

"Death, enslavement, and indigence do not exist because men have made
laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that death, enslavement, and
indigence existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first
place."

Now we'd say suppress. The fact is, this ringing statement can be
interpreted to praise or damn law supporting or suppressing any
generality.

Now, Bastiat does get more specific. If you read a few sentences
further into "The Law", he presumes natural rights from god, a simple
fallacy of reification (pretending an idea is a real thing.) But the
real source of rights is might. Individuals don't have rights to
protect their lives, liberty and property: they have miniscule powers
to attempt to create such rights. Law is an attempt to benefit those
within society by creating rights through conventions that reduce
in-society conflict and utilize combined powers efficiently. Bastiat
has the tail wagging the dog: collective rights being justified by
individual rights, when in actual society individual rights are
produced by collective might.

It's hard to accept philosophy like this which starts by preferring
imaginary rights to basic observable facts of society.

Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)

* "A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new
master once in a term of years."

When you contract for government services, you are a customer, not a
slave. If you think you cannot change with whom you contract, you have
enslaved your self.

Thomas Jefferson

* "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their
own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the
mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good
government." (First Inaugural Address)

Perhaps as an unreachable goal. Certainly Jefferson practiced
differently than this would seem to imply he thought. For example,
Jefferson supported compulsory tax-supported schools and kept slaves.
Jefferson was very much a political pragmatist full of such
contradictions, as any non-hagiographic biography will tell.

But if you want get into a founder quoting contest, Ben Franklin wrote:
"Private property ... is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the
Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even
to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public
Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling
the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the
Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just
Debt." We could find quite a few other appropriate quotes with a little
searching.

Libertarians might endorse their interpretation of the initial quote
without the backing of Jefferson: if so, let them present a working
example of such a government before we take it as more than a utopian
ideal.

* "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of
himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or
have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history
answer this question." (First Inaugural Address)

History shows that the USA has been one of the best governments, by
most people's standards, even libertarian. The last sentence indicates
that Jefferson intended these as rhetorical questions, not as
statements against all government. He also said (in the same address:

"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to
change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of
the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is
left free to combat it."

Jefferson clearly had more confidence in government than the initial
quotation out of context would imply. If libertarians want to adopt
this position (as some do), they'd be better off supporting it with
something more than an appeal to the inconsistent authority of
Jefferson.