The Philosophy of Liberty
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Philosophy of Liberty | Worker’s Rights | Get Out of Jury Duty | Is Conscription Slavery?
A few years ago, Ken Schoolland published a wonderful book, called The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey.
It has, as a foreword, a neat little narrative that was turned, by a friend, into a nearly perfect video summary of the very foundations of your natural rights:
If you can’t watch a video right now, you can see it in pictorial form…just click each illustration to see the next one.
To understand the Philosophy of Liberty, is to see why individual freedom is essential to the rightful organization of society, itself.
The Philosophy of Liberty is Based on the principle of Self-Ownership.
You Own Your Own Life
To deny this is to imply that another person has a higher claim on your life than you do.
No other person or group of persons, own your Life nor do you own the lives of others.
You exist in Time:
Past, Present, Future
This is manifest in…
Life, Liberty and the product of your Life and Liberty
To lose your Life is to lose your Future, to lose your Liberty is to lose your Present
… and to lose the product of your Life and Liberty is to lose that portion of your Past that produced it
A product of you Life and Liberty is your Property
Property is the fruit of your labor, the product of your Time, Energy and Talents
Property is that part of Nature which you turn to valuable use
Property is the property of others that is given to you by voluntary exchange and mutual consent
Two people who exchange Property voluntary are both better off or they wouldn’t do it
Only they may rightfully make that decision for themselves
At times some people use Force or Fraud to take from other without voluntary consent
The initiation of Force or Fraud –
To take life is murder,
to take liberty is slavery
and to take property is theft
It is the same whether these actions are done by one person acting alone, by the many acting against the few or even by officials with fine hats
You have the right to protect your own Life, Liberty, and justly acquired Property from the forceful aggression of others
And you may ask others to help defend you
But you do not have the right to initiate force against the Life, Liberty and Property of others
Thus, you have no right to designate some other person to initiate force against other on your behalf
You have the right to seek leaders for yourself but you have no right to impose rulers onto others
No matter how officials are selected, they are only human beings and they have no rights or claims that are higher than those of any other human beings – regardless of the imaginative labels for their behavior or the number of people encouraging them, officials have no right to murder, enslave or to steal
You can not give them any rights that you do not have yourself
Since you own your life, you are responsible for your life
You do not rent your life from other who demand your obedience…
…nor are you a slave to others who demand your sacrifice
You choose your own goals based on your own values
Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and grow
Your actions on behalf of others or their action on behalf of you is virtuous only when it is derived from voluntary mutual consent… for virtue can exist only where there is free choice
This is the basis of a truly free society. It is not only the most practical and humanitarian foundation for human action, it is also the most ethical
Problems in the world that arise from the initiation of force by government have a solution
The solution is for the people of the earth to STOP asking government officials to initiate force on their behalf
Evil does not arise only from evil people, but also from good people who tolerate the initiation of force as a means to their own ends
In this manner, good people have empowered evil people throughout history
Having confidence in a free society is to focus on the process of discovery in the marketplace of values rather than to focus on some imposed vision or goal
Using governmental force to impose a vision on other is intellectual sloth and typically results in unintended, perverse consequences
Achieving a free society requires courage…
…To Think, To Talk, and To Act
Especially when it is easier to do nothing…
Philosophy of Liberty | Worker’s Rights | Get Out of Jury Duty | Is Conscription Slavery?
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This site has its origins before the word “Blog” existed. Back then its owner, Kaz, was simply thought of as having a website that published socio-political articles with regularity…But the only real difference was that the RSS/XML protocals were not yet used this way.
The website was known as Site of the Sentient, a reference to the famous Words of the Sentient, that Kaz had been editing for years previously.
When some random portal site hijacked the domain siteofthesentient.com, it was a dark time for the human knowledge quest. Fortunately, But Now You Know is striving to take up the slack, and even has some revamped versions of the original articles, for example Conscription, is it Slavery, and How to Get Out of Jury Duty, and be a hero instead of a bad citizen.
Kaz is a writer, graphic artist, and supplements his income by being a hardcore senior web developer.
Along with this blog, you can track his efforts with the dedicated facebook page here.
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Words of the Sentient- Tolkien, on Government
- Criminals Are Never Disarmed — Robert Heinlein
- Power Attracts the Corrupt — Frank Herbert
- Under Democracy — H.L. Mencken
- Guard Your Enemies from Oppression —> Thomas Paine
- Your Right to Not Support Evil
- Global Warming Shamanism
- The Squeaky Wheel…May Be Foolish
- Disarming the Victims
- The Inconvenience of Too Much Liberty
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But Now You Know 
my private property was taken by government officials. One of their own redeveloped a legally non conforming lot adjoining mine. He purchased it from the Mayor. First he built a nonconforming pole barn, I was advised he was going to build a living quarters in the upper story, He trucked in massive amounts of fill dirt and altered the direction of the roof surface and graded the dirt so that all storm water diverted onto my private property. The next year he built a new home again trucking in fill dirt and altering the roof surface to divert all storm water onto my property. My property lost value, he basically turn my property into a ditch. The building permits issued by the city are fraudulent. State of Iowa law has strict regulation for redeveloping a legally non conforming property. No structures can be built with a larger footprint that the existing structures. This was completely disregarded by officials. He went to get the redevelopment recorded on the county plat map and was denied. They determined his remedy was to eliminate me from my private property. He began applying chemicals to the 300′ common boundary. The chemicals caused me severe skin condition. I was denied any protection of the law. I was denied filing a trespassing complaint against this neighbor. I was charged multiple times with violations of fabricated laws and ordinances. I could not get a trespassing complaint filed against this good old boy to literally save my life. After suffering for over five years waiting for the law to protect my person and my property. It was determined that this neighbor had no intention of stopping the chemical exposure. I had only two options available. Take up arms or flee and seek justice when I recovered. I was blind and homeless the following four years. I regret not taking up arms as this man is a danger to society. I still seek justice for the violation of my Constitutional Rights.
hi. tanx alot. this video clip was treffic.
im living in iran, and as you know we are fighting with our government to be more free. we need liberty.so i will show this to some of my friends too, cause this is such a encouraging thing to us.
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Great cartoon video, and great post with the text. I’ve been tweeting it for a while now, it’s very popular, and gets Re-Tweeted often.
Welcome to Twitter, have fun. Thank you for following, and for the inspiration.
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absurd thought –
your supreme God says
liberty is a bad thing
man must be under control
micromanaged by the state
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Kaz, this is terrific! Thanks! Only one suggestion, “Schoolland” in the introduction has 2 l’s. :) The new language editions of the Philosophy of Liberty are getting a terrific audience in Germany (#1), U.S. (#2), and China (#3) along with a hundred other countries. Looking for great impact, I hope. Many thanks to you for all your great work for liberty! Aloha, Ken
The typo in your name is fixed, sorry ’bout that.
Just had some fun watching it in other languages…