There are, of course, many problems of personal liberty, wrote Murray Rothbard, which cannot be subsumed under the category of ‘involuntary servitude.’
Freedom of speech and press have long been treasured by those who confine themselves to being ‘civil libertarians’ — ‘civil’ meaning that economic freedom and the rights of private property are left out of the equation.
But we have already seen that ‘freedom of speech’ cannot be upheld as an absolute except as it is subsumed under the general rights of property of the individual (emphatically including property right in his own person).
In this week’s chapter of the audiobook presentation of For a New Liberty, Rothbard applies the libertarian principle of property rights to the following ‘civil liberties’:
- Freedom of Radio and Television
- Pornography
- Sex Laws
- Wiretapping
- Gambling
- Narcotics and Other Drugs
- Police Corruption
- Gun Laws
Chapter 6 of the For a New Liberty audiobook is now available for podcast or download.
Next week:
Chapter 7, “Education” …
(And if you don’t want to wait for the free audio, you can always purchase the new, hardbound edition of Rothbard’s manifesto here.)
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Human law-makers spell out their laws in enormous detail. They attempt to cover every situation and every permutation of events. They always get it wrong, of course. There are always some situations that they did not foresee. Clever lawyers always find loopholes and criminals escape justice, because the wording of the law is not right. Human laws constantly need to be updated and reformed.
This continuous law reform creates full-time work for the law-makers and lawyers, but creates a lot of confusion for ordinary citizens. The law is constantly changing so they are uncertain about what is a crime. The law gets incredibly detailed. The result is that even lawyers do not fully understand the law. Human law is strangled with confusion.
God has a different approach. He did the task once and got it right (Blessed Economist).
There is also the fact that bureaucrats cannot stand to have any action that is “unregulated”, any endeavor about which “there is no law”.
Oh, and there is no god.
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