All evil starts with one person threatening to hurt another person. The purpose of government is to threaten to hurt people (that's what makes it different from any other organization). Thus, the only way that government can not be evil is if it only threatens to hurt people who threaten to hurt other people. When government undertakes any other activity, it becomes a source of evil.
Tue, 22 Dec 2009
Fri, 18 Dec 2009
A society of libertarians is not an oxymoron. Libertarians aren't loners; in fact we're usually even more socially oriented than socialists. What we are is individualists; meaning that all relations between individuals should be voluntary. Socialists think that it's acceptable for some relations to happen at the point of a gun. Note that someone may hold individualist and socialist ideas; while they may think of themselves as pragmatic, compromising towards a worthy goal; instead they're just confused. You can't compromise on a principle, otherwise you lose it entirely. For example, it's wrong to kill; thus it's wrong for a group to kill; thus it's wrong for a government to kill; thus capital punishment is wrong. At best it's a cheaper method of life imprisonment -- but when you compromise your principles to save money, you are not principled at all.
