Voluntaryists are advocates of non-political, non-violent strategies to achieve a free society. We reject electoral politics, in theory and in practice, as incompatible with libertarian principles. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitmacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods invariably strengthen that legitmacy. Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which State power ultimately depends.
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last update: Monday, August 25, 1997
Nightmare of government "compassion"
NO LAW AGAINST MERCY
Jailed for Sheltering a Child from the State
by Barbara Lyn Lapp and Rachel B. Lapp
(reviewed by Jim Powell)
Who says issues of justice can best be resolved in legislatures
and courts?
Back in 1993, Child Protective Services officials charged New York welder Donald Stefan with child abuse, and his son Billy was committed to a boys' "home," although he emphatically denied that he had been abused by his father. He did testify that while subject to the government's "care," he was isolated, beaten and drugged.
This book offers a dramatic account of how the Stefan family sought help and found the courageous Mennonite Lapp sisters. Inspired by their religious principles and by individualists like Lysander Spooner, Henry David Thoreau, Frederic Bastiat and Rose Wilder Lane, they did their utmost to obtain justice for the Stefans. Jailed for their efforts, they refused legal assistance and cynical plea bargains--and were ultimately vindicated.
Power, this compelling story shows, is especially odious when wielded in the name of compassion.
"The authors' battle to protect a boy and his father from the state--and to remain unbowed in the face of its mistreatment - touches the heart and inspires the reader on every page. Such heroism, which reveres and defends the higher law, is tonic that will reawaken slumbering hearts and bring tears to dry eyes."--Sheldon Richman, author of SEPARATING SCHOOL AND STATE
PT7390 (hardcover) 428p. $19.95
Available from: Laissez Faire Books
SELF-HELP
by Samuel Smiles
foreword by Lord Harris
(reviewed by Jim Powell)
A society is likely to remain free and prosperous when people
embrace self-help, rather than sitting around waiting for
government jobs, housing or anything else.
This book, first published in 1859, provided much inspiration during the heyday of British classical liberalism. It originated as talks which journalist Smiles (1812-1904) gave at evening classes in Leeds, England. SELF-HELP reportedly sold over 250,000 copies, and Smiles went on to write many more books about enterprising people struggling upward.
The book profiles hundreds of inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers and authors, mostly humble-born. "The spirit of self-help," Smiles declares, "is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling.... Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless."
As Smiles makes clear, a free society depends on the minds and hearts of people. "No laws, however stringent," he says, "can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action.... What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be but the outgrowth of man's own perverted life, and though we may endeavor to cut them down and extirpate them by means of Law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of personal life and character are radically improved.... Daily experience shows that it is energetic individualism which produces the most powerful effects upon the life and action of others, and really constitutes the best practical education...."
Says Lord Harris: "This packed gallery of lives provides not only an extensive library in a single volume that would cheer the castaway on a desert island. In addition, because of its unfading emphasis on the triumph of the human spirit over the challenge of change and adversity, it is for my money the nineteenth century handbook best suited as a universal lodestar for the next millennium."
SH7140 (paperback) 250p. $14.95
Available from: Laissez Faire Books
Back in Print!
How states got to be the biggest robbers & murderers
introduction to the Free Life Edition by Charles Hamilton
introduction to this edition by George H. Smith
(reviewed by Jim Powell)
Over the years, many writers have claimed that the state has some
kind of noble mission. But few have seen things with such
blazing clarity as the German classical liberal sociologist Franz
Oppenheimer (1864-1943) who had a significant influence on
individualist Albert Jay Nock.
It's such a treat to read Oppenheimer because he always focuses on the key issues. For instance: "There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others."
Oppenheimer nails the state as a parasite. For example: "The State is an organization of the political means. No State, therefore, can come into being until the economic means [private sector] has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery."
The book illustrates Oppenheimer's finding that the state "can have originated in no other way than through conquest and subjugation." He draws on vast historical knowledge, and the book is worth reading for the dramatic examples alone. They come from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, Greece, Rome, Assyria, Persia, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Russia, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Mexico, the United States and African kingdoms like Dahomy, Mabunda, Benin and Ashanti.
Oppenheimer offers about as colorful a description as you're likely to find about the sordid process of state-building. "The first stage," he says, "comprises robbery and killing in border fights, endless combats, broken neither by peace nor by armistice. It is marked by killing of men, carrying away of children and women, looting of herds, and burning of dwellings." You should see how he describes the coming of taxes and judges.
The introductions by Hamilton and Smith tell a great deal about
how Oppenheimer relates to the history of liberty.
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