“Libertarianism: The radical notion that other people are not your property.”

We don’t know who first said those words. But we’ve seen the bitty meme circulating the social media sites recently. Could people finally be catching on? Probably only the “radicals”…

But it sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? A kind of “do unto others…but not without their permission.” Of course, there are other ways to express this basic idea too: live and let live…to each his own and his own to each…and our personal favorite, mind your own [insert expletive of choice here] business…

Alas, some people can’t just leave well enough alone. They feel the need, the compulsion, the “hand of history,” as Tony Blair once called it, to “do something.” Whether or not that something is the right thing is, to their mind, beside the point. Just so long as it’s not nothing…

That’s the real problem with statism, Fellow Reckoner. All its various machinations are, in one way or another, inherently prescriptive. You try to mind your own business. You try to live a quiet and decent life…but there’s always someone telling you there’s a better way: their way. Oh, and they’ll be needing your money and/or person to make it happen.

But how can anyone possibly claim the right to tell you how to live your life… and to force you to do it?! Seems a tough point to win, no? What about self-ownership? What about the non-aggression principle? What about “live and let live” and all that?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought he found a workaround: The “Social Contract” he called it in his waffling 18th century treatise of the same name. In a nutshell, the social contract holds that, because we are considered part of “society,” we must therefore accept the terms – whatever they may be – of that “society.” In other words, it posits an implicit consent on the part of the individual to be governed by the state…simply because the state exists, and because the majority have so willed it.

Call it “tyranny of the mob-jority.”

But what kind of contract is this, Fellow Reckoner? A “contract” that makes up for lack of consent by simply presupposing it, is no contract at all. What kind of court would uphold such a flimsy non-agreement…besides one owned and operated by the beneficiaries of such an absurd ruling?

Not that the enthusiastic Genevan is solely to blame. He was simply building on the misguided works of previous meddlers. Hobbes gave mens’ rights to the government. Locke gifted them to God (But which God? Interpreted by whom? And what for the agnostics?) Few left them in the hands of free men themselves.

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