Libertarian philosophy teaches us that
it is always a criminal act for an individual or a group to initiate
force against another individual or group unless such force is
directed at those who have first initiated force.
In a group of five people, it is
morally criminal for three to force the other two to live by their
choices; the reverse is also criminal, should the two have bigger
guns than the three. From this, we immediately see that democracy is
a criminal enterprise, no better than despotism; both will be
rejected out of hand by a thinking person.
Natural law makes it plain that there
is no number at which an individual wrong becomes a collective right.
Should I tell you that I want you in bed and asleep at 9:00 p.m.
every night, you will correctly reject my attempt at enslaving you to
my will. Should I manage to get three, or three hundred, or three
hundred thousand to agree with me, it makes no difference - I am still acting the despot.
When we write these principles large,
across a society of 308 million people, we will ultimately find that
it is morally criminal for a large group within the whole to empower
a much smaller group with the authority to apply force, up to and
including deadly force, to require one group to act to
the harm or benefit of another group.
Yet that is exactly what we do,
election to election, constantly shifting back and forth between
tyranny that says you must do this or tyranny that says you must do
that. This results in a society that is never at peace, for each
group comes to resent the power the other has exercised over it since
the last election. This is what democracy produces: mob rule on a
massive though slow-moving scale.
All the while, each side insists that
its agents in the government pass laws that will convenience them by
eliminating that which they find inconvenient. One does not want to
work for his daily bread, so he votes for the ones who are least
morally troubled by sending people with guns to take money from
others to give to him. Another does not want to be troubled with
guarding his own safety, so he sends people with guns to collect
money for an ever-increasing police and military force to keep him
safe. The first finds that, eventually, those who sold the chains
that bind him to his own indolence for a handful of votes run out of
other people's money, and his life is ruined. The other looks into
the sky and finds himself looking into the eye of a drone, put there
to keep his keepers safe, instead of him - and from him - though they
mouth their innocence.
Instead, the libertarian knows that one
way of life cannot be found that will please everyone, even if it is
for no other reason than that the individual did not make his own
determination, even if he would have come to the same conclusion. He
understands that there is only one absolutely common interest among
men and women in a society: that they be allowed to pursue their own
happiness without interference from those who would take by force any
part of their property - tangible, such as money and houses, or
intangible, such as time and peace of mind.
Therefore, in a properly ordered
society, government is limited to doing nothing at all except
applying the threat of force before the fact and the application of
force after the fact when theft, fraud, or assault is considered or
carried out by one against another. As soon as it goes beyond this
function, it becomes itself the criminal.
We prevent this nightmarish, destructive cycle by establishing laws that empowers government to function in its only proper role, and then insist that those who would occupy an office prove how they would be the best choice to do only those things. In such a society, every candidate's position would be the same, just as every job applicant's position is the same - it is one that says "Yes, I will do what your system requires, and here is why I will do it better than the rest."
