Busting Myths about the State and the Libertarian Alternative

Afterword: A Personal Perspective

My conversion to libertarianism took place over the last few years. I began as a constitutional conservative, but my quest for intellectual consistency and a universal principle of justice wouldn’t let me rest there.

I liken my awakening to what happened to the character Neo in the movie, The Matrix. Neo ingests the “red pill,” which chemically severs his neural connections to the system run by intelligent machines, and enables him to begin to appreciate reality. He discovers that humans are connected neurally to a simulated world run by the machines—although humans are not aware of this—and that humanity is actually being used by the machines as a physical power source. There is probably no better analogy than this for how we were all educated, how we live under statism, and how a full appreciation of libertarianism can open one’s eyes.

My adoption of the libertarian philosophy has provided me with a number of intellectual and psychological benefits:

1. I am politically agnostic. I no longer care about distinguishing between, arguing about, or supporting political parties or candidates. To me, they’re all part of the problem, namely, the state. The differences among the various parties and candidates are trivial compared with the differences between statism and a voluntary society.
2. I have a crisper, more consistent view about morality, and what I am for and against. Once you absorb the NAP, it brings a great moral clarity to your life.
3. I am less preachy about the lifestyles of strangers. As long as someone is not interfering with my body or property, I don’t have any interest in interfering with theirs (the “live-and-let-live” principle).
4. I try to treat people as unique individuals, and not merely as replaceable members of categories.
5. I am completely against war and offensive projections of force around the world.
6. Most importantly, I have much greater faith in the ability of private individuals to solve complex problems facing humanity when left free to do so. When you better understand the role of entrepreneurial ingenuity in economic history, it gives you cause for great optimism (if we could just rid ourselves of the yoke of the state).

While I would dearly like to see our society evolve into a stateless society, I know that this is unlikely in my lifetime. However, being a libertarian does not mean that I will never be satisfied unless we have a stateless society; rather, it means that I object to every single instance of state action due to its immorality (as well as its economic indefensibility), and I will derive great satisfaction from the elimination or thwarting of each such instance. In other words, it’s not all or nothing that counts, it’s every single thing.

What ultimately drives me to be a libertarian? Murray Rothbard, the modern father of libertarianism, put it best when he once wrote that a genuine dedication to liberty “can only be grounded on a passion for justice . . . . And, to have a passion for justice, one must have a theory of what justice and injustice are.” As I’ve tried to detail in this book, I regard the state as the largest and most frequent and dangerous purveyor of injustice, and therefore playing some role in reducing this injustice is what drives me. As Rothbard went on to note, other lofty goals, such as the abolition of poverty, cannot be attained by man simply willing them, but rather they require a complex set of economic factors to operate in a certain way over long periods of time; on the other hand, injustices are deeds inflicted by one man on another and, since they are the actions of men, their elimination is subject to man’s instantaneous will. Per Rothbard again, “For instant justice could be achieved if enough people so willed.” Changing wills, then, is the libertarian mission.

If any of this seems interesting to you, then I invite you to get onboard!