The Libertarian Brand

by Laurence M. Vance

While U.S. presidential elections are held every four years, U.S. senators serve a six-year term, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives are elected every two years. A midterm election is an election where the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are up for election, but the president is not. These elections always occur two years after a presidential election. As they gear up for the midterm elections in November, Democrats have three problems: a historical problem, a retirement problem, and an image problem.

The Democratic brand

Historically, the political party of the president does poorly in the midterm elections. Since 1946, the average midterm loss for the president’s party is 25 seats. Democratic presidents Harry Truman and Bill Clinton both began their first term with Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress, only to see Republicans take control after the midterm elections. Republican president Dwight Eisenhower likewise began his first term with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, only to see Democrats take control after the midterm elections. Democrat Barack Obama presided over a devastating loss of Democrats in the House in his first midterm election and in the Senate in his second midterm election. Republican president George W. Bush lost his Republican majority in both Houses of Congress during his second midterm election. Republican Donald Trump saw his Republican majority in Congress evaporate when Republicans suffered a crushing defeat in the House in the midterm elections of 2018. According to the American Presidency Project, only two presidents — Bill Clinton (1998) and George W. Bush (2002) — have seen their party gain House seats in a midterm election.The libertarian brand is known for its simple, consistent, and principled perspective on the issues.
[Click to Tweet]

Democrats also have a retirement problem. As of the end of 2021, one Democratic senator and 19 Democratic House members have announced that they will not be seeking reelection. Democrats are currently tied with Republicans in the Senate and only have a nine-seat majority in the House. This is troubling for Democrats because congressional incumbents had a 96 percent win rate in the 2020 election. Thirty-eight states had a 100 percent win rate in congressional races.

Indeed, wide name recognition, usually coupled with coffers full of cash, means that few things in life are more predictable than the chances of an incumbent member of Congress winning reelection. Even though Democratic voters now outnumber Republicans by nine percentage points — the largest Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012 — some Democratic strategists are already predicting a shellacking in the midterm elections. According to Gallup, “President Biden has lost more public support during his first several months in office than any U.S. president since World War II.”

But what Democrats really have right now is an image problem. The Democrats have always been the party of liberalism, progressivism, collectivism, socialism, paternalism, abortion on demand (at taxpayer expense for low-income women), organized labor, public education, universal health care, higher taxes on “the rich,” anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, the welfare state, environmentalism, government-funded child care, increased government regulation of the economy and society, income-transfer programs, and alternative lifestyles. However, over the past few years, the Democratic Party has also embraced the social-justice movement, defunding the police, the transgender movement, critical race theory, cancel culture, wokeism, and, most recently, lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates.

The Democrats last year were also embroiled in an intra-party feud over a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the size, scope, and cost of a massive legislative package of social spending priorities. Then they suffered humiliating losses in the “off-year” state elections in Virginia and New Jersey. In analyzing why they lost the Virginia governor’s race, Democratic Party strategists — as pointed out by David Siders, national political correspondent for Politico — discovered that “the Democratic Party’s entire brand was a wreck.” According to Douglas Schoen, a political consultant who served as an adviser to President Clinton, “It’s clear that Americans are turning against a Democratic Party that they feel has become more attuned to the priorities of progressives and less focused on addressing the concerns and frustrations of the broader American electorate.”

The New York Times editorial board even opined: “A national Democratic Party that talks up progressive policies at the expense of bipartisan ideas, and that dwells on Donald Trump at the expense of forward-looking ideas, is at risk of becoming a marginal Democratic Party appealing only to the left.” New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has said that Democrats need to recognize that swing-state voters “are not liberals, are not woke and do not see the world in the way that the people who staff and donate to Democratic campaigns do.” “I think what we have to do as a party is battle the damage to the Democratic brand,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison.

Speaking on PBS NewsHour, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville blamed “stupid wokeness” for his party’s disaster in the off-year elections. He termed the “defund the police” idea “lunacy” and suggested that progressive Democrats “need to go to a woke detox center” and “get rid of this left-wing nonsense, this claptrap I hear.”

The Republican brand

Before examining the libertarian brand — which is far and away the best alternative to the Democratic brand — it might be a good idea to briefly look at the Republican brand. This is because most Americans believe that the Republican Party is the polar opposite of the Democratic Party, at least on most issues. Republicans have cultivated this image and maintained this façade by using libertarian rhetoric. The truth, however, is that Republicans are philosophically not much different from Democrats, regardless of how often and how loud they recite their conservative mantra about the Constitution, federalism, the free market, limited government, traditional values, free enterprise, a balanced budget, individual freedom, free trade, property rights, and a strong national defense.

Republicans believe that some Americans should be forced to pay for the health care of other Americans through Medicare and Medicaid. Republicans support refundable tax credits that give some Americans tax refunds of money paid in by other Americans. Republicans support the government taking money from those who work and giving it to those who don’t by means of unemployment benefits. Republicans support federal subsidies to certain occupations and sectors of society. Republicans believe that some Americans should be forced to pay for the education of the children of other Americans. Republicans support the government taking money out of the pockets of Americans who “have” and giving it to other Americans who “have not” via Social Security, WIC, TANF, SSI, food stamps, and Section 8 rent subsidies.

In a nutshell, although Republicans may disagree with Democrats on the amount, they believe that the government should take money from some Americans and redistribute it to other Americans. They have no philosophical objection to government income-transfer programs. No one should ever think that the objections of the Republican brand to the size, nature, scope, and efficiency of government programs is based on any real principles.

The libertarian brand

Contrary to the Democratic and Republican brands, the libertarian brand (not necessarily the Libertarian Party) is intellectually rigorous, moral but not moralist, philosophically consistent, simple without being simplistic, and a bulwark of liberty, property, and peace. “Libertarianism,” as concisely stated by Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob Hornberger, “is a political philosophy that holds that a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life, as long as his conduct is peaceful.” This means that, in a libertarian society:

• people are free to engage in any economic enterprise or activity of their choosing without license, permission, restriction, interference, or regulation from government as long as they don’t commit violence against others, violate their property rights, or defraud them.
• people are free to accumulate as much wealth as they can as long as they do it peaceably and without committing fraud.
• buyers and sellers are free to exchange with each other for mutual gain any product of their choosing for any price, without any interference from the government.
• charity, relief, and philanthropy are entirely voluntary activities.
• people are free to pursue happiness in their own way, provided that they don’t threaten or initiate violence against the person or property of others.
• people are free to live their lives any way they choose as long as their conduct is peaceful.
• the voluntary, private, peaceful activity of consenting adults is none of the government’s business.

The libertarian brand is known for its simple, consistent, and principled perspective on the issues.

Welfare. All welfare programs should be abolished, from food stamps to job training to unemployment compensation. All charity should be private and voluntary.

Education. All public schools should be closed. Education should be completely separated from the state. All schools should be privately operated and privately funded.

Gun control. All gun control laws should be eliminated, the ATF should be abolished, and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) should be shut down. Every American has the natural right to possess any weapon on his own property or the property of anyone else that allows such weapons.

Free trade. All Americans should be able to freely engage in commerce with foreigners without being hindered by tariffs, quotas, barriers, regulations, restrictions, or dumping rules. Free trade needs no trade organizations, trade agreements, or trade treaties.

The free market. The free market is not truly free unless it is completely free of government regulation and interference. Laissez faire is natural, just, and moral.

The minimum wage. The minimum wage should be eliminated. All wages and benefits should be negotiated between employers and employees without any interference whatsoever from the government.

Medicaid and Medicare. Both programs should be abolished. The government should have nothing to do with health care and no American should be forced to pay for the health care of any other American.

Social Security. Not only should Social Security not be saved for future generations, it should be eliminated for current beneficiaries. It is immoral to take money from those who work and give it to those who don’t — even if the government does the taking.

Victimless crimes. Because every crime needs a tangible and identifiable victim who has suffered measurable harm to his person or measurable damages to his property, there should be no laws against prostitution, gambling, pornography, or drug possession, use, and distribution — unless such actions involve violations of the personal or property rights of others.

Foreign aid. No country should receive foreign aid from the U.S. government in any amount, at any time, or for any reason. Like domestic charity, foreign charity — including for disaster relief — should be entirely private and voluntary.

The income tax. The income tax doesn’t need to be reformed or made flatter, fairer, or simpler; it needs to be abolished. All Americans are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor and spend their money as they see fit.

Family leave. Government should not mandate that any company provide paid or unpaid family. All benefits should be negotiated between employers and employees without any interference whatsoever from the government.

Farm subsidies. Not only should the government not subsidize farmers (or any other sector of the economy), it should have nothing to do with agriculture. Farming should be treated as any other business.

Foreign policy. The United States should remain neutral and not intervene militarily or otherwise in any country. All U.S. bases on foreign soil should be closed, and all U.S. troops should be brought home. The military should only be used for defensive purposes and should never fight foreign wars.

Anti-discrimination laws. Since discrimination — against anyone, on any basis, and for any reason — is not aggression, force, coercion, threat, or violence, the government should never prohibit it, seek to prevent it, or punish anyone for doing it.

The Constitution. The federal government should strictly follow the Constitution. Although others may say this, only libertarians have the courage to point out that this would entail a 95 percent cut in the federal budget.

These libertarian principles and perspectives are unchangeable and nonnegotiable. They cannot be compromised without doing irreparable harm to libertarianism.

Harming the brand   

Democratic and Republican smears of libertarians are common and to be expected. Libertarians are said to be naïve and utopian. They lack compassion for the poor. They are isolationists. They are libertines and hedonists. They don’t believe in moral absolutes. They disdain organized religion and reject traditional values. They are materialistic. They celebrate greed and selfishness. These are all misconceptions, fallacies, caricatures, or falsehoods.

Some individual libertarians might be, believe, or do some of these things — just like some Democrats and Republicans might also — but they have nothing to do with libertarianism qua libertarianism. Libertarianism has nothing to do with one’s lifestyle, tastes, vices, sexual practices, traditions, values, religion, social attitudes, or cultural norms. Libertarianism is not “rugged individualism,” “unrestrained freedom of speech,” “survival of the fittest,” “unfettered capitalism,” “every man for himself,” or “dog eat dog.” Libertarianism has nothing to do with anarchy, nihilism, relativism, antinomianism, or hedonism.

The libertarian brand should be associated with individual liberty, private property, peaceful activity, voluntary interaction, laissez faire, personal freedom, financial privacy, individual responsibility, free enterprise, free markets, free speech, free thought, free association, freedom of conscience, and a free society.

Unfortunately, it is often libertarians themselves who harm the libertarian brand. Some libertarians have simplistically defined libertarianism as socially liberal and economically conservative. Others have implied that libertarianism is a particular social attitude or lifestyle. Some insist that libertarians must be in favor of same-sex marriage and abortion. Others maintain that libertarianism is incompatible with religion. Some supported the draconian government response to the COVID-19 “pandemic” in the name of “public health.” Others have defended U.S. military actions overseas in the name of “national security.” Some are nostalgic for Ronald Reagan, even considering him to be “an honorary libertarian.” Others have called for a universal basic income.

There is one issue, though, that most libertarians who deviate from libertarianism have in common: support for “school choice”; i.e., government-funded vouchers for students to use to pay for education at a school of their parents’ choice. Vouchers are touted as a way to rescue children from dangerous and failing public schools and put them in private schools where they can be educated instead of indoctrinated. Although I am not the least bit interested in defending public education, there is nothing libertarian about government educational vouchers. There is nothing special about the business of education that necessitates that the government be involved in it. Parents have the choice right now where and how to educate their children. The fact that they may not have the money to pay for their choice does not mean that the taxpayers should pay for it. Giving one group of Americans the choice of where to spend other Americans’ money to educate their children is immoral and unjust. If vouchers were used for anything but education, they would be denounced as an income-transfer program and a subsidy to private industry. Once government vouchers for education are deemed to be acceptable, no reasonable or logical argument can be made against the government’s providing vouchers for other services. Education should be completely separated from the state.

A plea

Libertarianism need not and should not be fused with any personal preference, school of aesthetics, or extraneous ideology. It should not be complicated by imposing a slate of approved opinions on top of the core teaching of our philosophy. We simply need plain old libertarianism, with no labels, no caveats, and no apologies. Libertarians need to be consistent and present a united front against statism in all its forms.

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life, as long as his conduct is peaceful. Thus, as long a person doesn’t murder, rape, burglarize, defraud, trespass, steal, or inflict any other act of violence against another person’s life, liberty, or property, libertarians hold that the government should leave him alone. In fact, libertarians believe that a primary purpose of government is to prosecute and punish anti-social individuals who initiate force against others.

What are some policy ramifications of what has become known as the libertarian “non-aggression principle”?

People should be free to engage in any economic enterprise without permission or interference from the state. Thus libertarians oppose all occupational licensure laws and all economic regulations of business activity. Libertarians also believe that people have the right to keep whatever they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their own money–spend it, invest it, save it, hoard it, or donate it.

This then means, necessarily, that libertarians are ardent advocates of the free market, which is simply a process by which people are interacting peacefully with each other for mutual gain.

What are some specific applications of libertarian principles to real-world problems?

Education: libertarians call for the complete separation of school and state, which means the repeal of school compulsory-attendance laws and school taxes–that is, the complete end of all governmental involvement in education. This would mean a completely free market in education, in which consumers decide the best educational vehicles for their children and entrepreneurs (both for-profit and charitable) are meeting the demands of the consumers.

Social Security: an immediate repeal of Social Security, which is simply a coercive transfer program in which older people are able to steal from young people. Again, people have a right to their own earnings. If a person fails to provide for his retirement, he must rely on the charity and good will of his family, his friends, his church groups, or people in his community. Libertarians believe that it is morally wrong for a person to use the state to take what doesn’t belong to him.

Welfare: immediate repeal of all welfare primarily on moral grounds but also on the terribly destructive aspects of government welfare programs. People have a right to their own earnings and no one has the right to take someone else’s money against his will. Moreover, no one is made a better person because the state is taking money from one person in order to give it to another person. Finally, government welfare creates a sense of hopeless dependency on the welfare recipient.

Drug laws: the decades-long war on drugs is immoral and has proven to be highly destructive. People have a right to engage in peaceful, self-destructive behavior as long as their conduct is peaceful. Drug addiction should be treated as a social, medical, psychological problem, not a criminal one. Legalizing drugs would immediately put an end to drug lords and drug gangs and the violence associated with the drug war–that is, the burglaries, robberies, thefts, etc. associated with the exorbitant black-market prices that drug users must pay to finance their habits.

The IRS and income tax: repeal them and leave people free to keep the fruits of their earnings and decide for themselves how to dispose of their wealth.

Gun Control: People have a right to resist the tyranny of their own government and to protect themselves from the violent acts of private criminals.

Environment: Governments are the great destroyers of the environment. In fact, most environmental problems can be traced to public, not private, ownership of resources. The solution is to privatize public property to the maximum extent possible.

Health Care: the crisis in health care, especially with respect to ever-rising prices, is due to heavy government involvement in health care–Medicare, Medicaid, and licensure laws. These laws and programs should be repealed in favor of a totally free market in health care.

Immigration: Libertarians oppose any controls on the free movements of goods and people, both domestically and internationally. People have the right to move and to improve their lives.

Foreign Policy: Libertarians oppose involvement in foreign wars as well as all foreign aid. The U.S. government should be limited to protecting the nation from invasion but should stay out of the affairs of other nations.

Civil Liberties: Libertarians are firm advocates of the First Amendment and the procedural aspects of due process of law, such as the rights to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, and in criminal cases the right to an attorney, notice and hearing, and trial by jury.

With the tragic exception of slavery and several minor exceptions, the philosophy on which the United States was founded was, by and large, founded on libertarianism, especially with the ideas in the Declaration of Independence and the limitation on powers in the Constitution.

In 1890 America, for example, the following government programs were virtually nonexistent: income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, economic regulation, occupational licensure, a Federal Reserve System, conscription, immigration controls, and gun control.

In the 20th century, the American people abandoned libertarianism in favor of the socialistic welfare state and the controlled or regulated society.

Thus, the intellectual and moral battle for the third century of our nation’s existence is between those who favor liberty — libertarians — versus those who favor state control of peaceful activity — “statists.”

Foundation for Economic Education

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life, as long as his conduct is peaceful. Thus, as long a person doesn’t murder, rape, burglarize, defraud, trespass, steal, or inflict any other act of violence against another person’s life, liberty, or property, libertarians hold that the government should leave him alone. In fact, libertarians believe that a primary purpose of government is to prosecute and punish anti-social individuals who initiate force against others.

What are some policy ramifications of what has become known as the libertarian “non-aggression principle”?

People should be free to engage in any economic enterprise without permission or interference from the state. Thus libertarians oppose all occupational licensure laws and all economic regulations of business activity. Libertarians also believe that people have the right to keep whatever they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their own money–spend it, invest it, save it, hoard it, or donate it.

This then means, necessarily, that libertarians are ardent advocates of the free market, which is simply a process by which people are interacting peacefully with each other for mutual gain.

What are some specific applications of libertarian principles to real-world problems?

Education: libertarians call for the complete separation of school and state, which means the repeal of school compulsory-attendance laws and school taxes–that is, the complete end of all governmental involvement in education. This would mean a completely free market in education, in which consumers decide the best educational vehicles for their children and entrepreneurs (both for-profit and charitable) are meeting the demands of the consumers.

Social Security: an immediate repeal of Social Security, which is simply a coercive transfer program in which older people are able to steal from young people. Again, people have a right to their own earnings. If a person fails to provide for his retirement, he must rely on the charity and good will of his family, his friends, his church groups, or people in his community. Libertarians believe that it is morally wrong for a person to use the state to take what doesn’t belong to him.

Welfare: immediate repeal of all welfare primarily on moral grounds but also on the terribly destructive aspects of government welfare programs. People have a right to their own earnings and no one has the right to take someone else’s money against his will. Moreover, no one is made a better person because the state is taking money from one person in order to give it to another person. Finally, government welfare creates a sense of hopeless dependency on the welfare recipient.

Drug laws: the decades-long war on drugs is immoral and has proven to be highly destructive. People have a right to engage in peaceful, self-destructive behavior as long as their conduct is peaceful. Drug addiction should be treated as a social, medical, psychological problem, not a criminal one. Legalizing drugs would immediately put an end to drug lords and drug gangs and the violence associated with the drug war–that is, the burglaries, robberies, thefts, etc. associated with the exorbitant black-market prices that drug users must pay to finance their habits.

The IRS and income tax: repeal them and leave people free to keep the fruits of their earnings and decide for themselves how to dispose of their wealth.

Gun Control: People have a right to resist the tyranny of their own government and to protect themselves from the violent acts of private criminals.

Environment: Governments are the great destroyers of the environment. In fact, most environmental problems can be traced to public, not private, ownership of resources. The solution is to privatize public property to the maximum extent possible.

Health Care: the crisis in health care, especially with respect to ever-rising prices, is due to heavy government involvement in health care–Medicare, Medicaid, and licensure laws. These laws and programs should be repealed in favor of a totally free market in health care.

Immigration: Libertarians oppose any controls on the free movements of goods and people, both domestically and internationally. People have the right to move and to improve their lives.

Foreign Policy: Libertarians oppose involvement in foreign wars as well as all foreign aid. The U.S. government should be limited to protecting the nation from invasion but should stay out of the affairs of other nations.

Civil Liberties: Libertarians are firm advocates of the First Amendment and the procedural aspects of due process of law, such as the rights to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, and in criminal cases the right to an attorney, notice and hearing, and trial by jury.

With the tragic exception of slavery and several minor exceptions, the philosophy on which the United States was founded was, by and large, founded on libertarianism, especially with the ideas in the Declaration of Independence and the limitation on powers in the Constitution.

In 1890 America, for example, the following government programs were virtually nonexistent: income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, economic regulation, occupational licensure, a Federal Reserve System, conscription, immigration controls, and gun control.

In the 20th century, the American people abandoned libertarianism in favor of the socialistic welfare state and the controlled or regulated society.

Thus, the intellectual and moral battle for the third century of our nation’s existence is between those who favor liberty — libertarians — versus those who favor state control of peaceful activity — “statists.”

This post was written by: Future of Freedom Foundation

The Future of Freedom Foundation was founded in 1989 by FFF president Jacob Hornberger with the aim of establishing an educational foundation that would advance an uncompromising case for libertarianism in the context of both foreign and domestic policy. The mission of The Future of Freedom Foundation is to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government.

When new libertarians join the libertarian movement, they are inevitably hit with a fork in the road, one that all of us libertarians have confronted after discovering libertarianism. That fork is this: Should I become a libertarian reformer or should I become an advocate of liberty? 

No matter how much the reform crowd might protest, reform is not freedom. That’s because reform leave infringements on liberty intact and simply tries to modify them. 

Freedom, on the other hand, necessarily involves the dismantling of infringements on liberty, not their reform. As each infringement is dismantled, the individual experiences the exhilaration of being a bit more free and ardently desires to dismantle the next one. The process continues until all infringements on liberty have been dismantled, in which case people experience what it’s like to live the lives of free men and women.

If all that we libertarians accomplish is reform of the welfare-warfare state way of life under which we live, at best we will have improved our lives as serfs but we will not have achieved our freedom.

The analogy I like to use is slavery. Suppose we were able to use a time machine to transport today’s reform-oriented libertarians back to Alabama in 1855. They would be calling for reforming slavery by enacting laws banning lashings, requiring shorter work hours, and providing for better food, housing, and healthcare.

Those would be improvements in the plight of the slaves, and they undoubtedly would be appreciative. But it would’t be freedom. Freedom would require the dismantling, not the reform, of the structure of slavery.

The reform-oriented libertarian would respond: “We have to be practical and pragmatic. We are not going to end slavery overnight. People would never accept that. If we call for the end of slavery, people will just tune us out. Newspaper editors won’t publish our perspectives. People won’t vote for us. We will end up with few supporters and be ineffective.”

All that might be true, but the fact remains that reform of slavery would not be freedom. To attract more people to the cause of freedom, it it necessary to continue making the case for freedom, even if it appears that no one is interested.

Moreover, there is no way to know how close we might be to arriving at a critical mass of people who could bring about a paradigm shift toward liberty in America. We might be a lot closer than we think. The only way to enlarge the number of people who want freedom is by making the case for freedom.

Suppose, for example, a libertarian is addressing an audience of 100 people who have never heard of libertarianism. The reform-oriented libertarian would say, “We need to go slow here. We need to stick with reform so that we don’t scare anyone off. Let’s just make the case for school vouchers and health-savings accounts rather than the case for separating school and state and healthcare and state.” 

Let’s assume that 25 people in the audience respond enthusiastically to the talk and become reform proponents. What difference does it make with respect to freedom? None! Because the public-schooling system and the public-healthcare system, which are both severe infringements on liberty, would still be left intact. Achieving freedom requires a separation of school and state and a separation of healthcare and state, the same way our ancestors separated church and state. That necessarily means making the case for ending all governmental involvement in education and healthcare, just as our ancestors did with religion.

Let’s assume that only 2 people in that audience are intrigued by the idea, decide to explore it, and become libertarians.That means we are that much closer to arriving at the critical mass of people needed to bring a societal paradigm shift to freedom.

In fact, imagine if our ancestors had not separated church and state. Today, we would be living in a religious mess that would be comparable to the mess we have in education and healthcare. And there would be libertarian reformers advocating reform of the public-church system. But those reforms would not be freedom. Freedom would entail ending all governmental involvement in religion.

Obviously, making the case for liberty is much more difficult than making the case for reform. Reform makes a person feel okay because his basic paradigm is not being shaken. Making the case for liberty makes a person think at a higher, more profound level, one that entails a dismantling of what he is accustomed to.

But there is no other way. To achieve freedom, we need to attract more people to our cause who understand freedom and who want it. To accomplish that entails exposing people to the case for freedom. If all that we do is make the case for reform, all we will do is attract reformers to our cause. That might make our serfdom more palatable. But it’s not freedom.

Jacob G. Hornberger, FFF

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life, as long as his conduct is peaceful. Thus, as long a person doesn’t murder, rape, burglarize, defraud, trespass, steal, or inflict any other act of violence against another person’s life, liberty, or property, libertarians hold that the government should leave him alone. In fact, libertarians believe that a primary purpose of government is to prosecute and punish anti-social individuals who initiate force against others.

What are some policy ramifications of what has become known as the libertarian “non-aggression principle”?

People should be free to engage in any economic enterprise without permission or interference from the state. Thus libertarians oppose all occupational licensure laws and all economic regulations of business activity. Libertarians also believe that people have the right to keep whatever they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their own money–spend it, invest it, save it, hoard it, or donate it.

This then means, necessarily, that libertarians are ardent advocates of the free market, which is simply a process by which people are interacting peacefully with each other for mutual gain.

What are some specific applications of libertarian principles to real-world problems?

Education: libertarians call for the complete separation of school and state, which means the repeal of school compulsory-attendance laws and school taxes–that is, the complete end of all governmental involvement in education. This would mean a completely free market in education, in which consumers decide the best educational vehicles for their children and entrepreneurs (both for-profit and charitable) are meeting the demands of the consumers.

Social Security: an immediate repeal of Social Security, which is simply a coercive transfer program in which older people are able to steal from young people. Again, people have a right to their own earnings. If a person fails to provide for his retirement, he must rely on the charity and good will of his family, his friends, his church groups, or people in his community. Libertarians believe that it is morally wrong for a person to use the state to take what doesn’t belong to him.

Welfare: immediate repeal of all welfare primarily on moral grounds but also on the terribly destructive aspects of government welfare programs. People have a right to their own earnings and no one has the right to take someone else’s money against his will. Moreover, no one is made a better person because the state is taking money from one person in order to give it to another person. Finally, government welfare creates a sense of hopeless dependency on the welfare recipient.

Drug laws: the decades-long war on drugs is immoral and has proven to be highly destructive. People have a right to engage in peaceful, self-destructive behavior as long as their conduct is peaceful. Drug addiction should be treated as a social, medical, psychological problem, not a criminal one. Legalizing drugs would immediately put an end to drug lords and drug gangs and the violence associated with the drug war–that is, the burglaries, robberies, thefts, etc. associated with the exorbitant black-market prices that drug users must pay to finance their habits.

The IRS and income tax: repeal them and leave people free to keep the fruits of their earnings and decide for themselves how to dispose of their wealth.

Gun Control: People have a right to resist the tyranny of their own government and to protect themselves from the violent acts of private criminals.

Environment: Governments are the great destroyers of the environment. In fact, most environmental problems can be traced to public, not private, ownership of resources. The solution is to privatize public property to the maximum extent possible.

Health Care: the crisis in health care, especially with respect to ever-rising prices, is due to heavy government involvement in health care–Medicare, Medicaid, and licensure laws. These laws and programs should be repealed in favor of a totally free market in health care.

Immigration: Libertarians oppose any controls on the free movements of goods and people, both domestically and internationally. People have the right to move and to improve their lives.

Foreign Policy: Libertarians oppose involvement in foreign wars as well as all foreign aid. The U.S. government should be limited to protecting the nation from invasion but should stay out of the affairs of other nations.

Civil Liberties: Libertarians are firm advocates of the First Amendment and the procedural aspects of due process of law, such as the rights to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, and in criminal cases the right to an attorney, notice and hearing, and trial by jury.

With the tragic exception of slavery and several minor exceptions, the philosophy on which the United States was founded was, by and large, founded on libertarianism, especially with the ideas in the Declaration of Independence and the limitation on powers in the Constitution.

In 1890 America, for example, the following government programs were virtually nonexistent: income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, economic regulation, occupational licensure, a Federal Reserve System, conscription, immigration controls, and gun control.

In the 20th century, the American people abandoned libertarianism in favor of the socialistic welfare state and the controlled or regulated society.

Thus, the intellectual and moral battle for the third century of our nation’s existence is between those who favor liberty — libertarians — versus those who favor state control of peaceful activity — “statists.”

This post was written by: Future of Freedom Foundation