25A023 "Freedom" to Torture, Steal and Kill? by Jim Davies, 6/10/2025
 

In my 2014 STR column Liberty, Rooted in Rights comes this:

So we believe in a thoroughgoing liberty, as a matter of philosophy, universally applicable. Everyone else wants liberty for themselves, but casually limits the liberty of others. We don't. That's the difference.

"Everyone else" (ie, non-Libertarians) includes people working or voting for government; a large portion of our present society. And they all want to be free. To be unfettered, to do what they want. So are there to be no limits, in the coming zero government society?

Joe Sixpack really dislikes his mother-in-law, she's a pain in his neck. He likes freedom. Is he free to drown her?

Greb de Monay enjoys his IRS job, intimidating people of far greater worth than himself into parting with what they earned. Is he free to go on stealing it for his employer, who uses some of it to pay his salary? - to torture his victims mentally, as they worry about the penalties pending if they fail to cooperate?

Rebel groups often arise, aiming to replace an existing régime - but using "FREEDOM!" as their slogan; meaning, they wish to be free to rule in its place.

From the viewpoint of the aggressor, all that is about freedom. Totally perverted, but still about being unshackled to do his own will. Surely there must be some moral or legal limits; yet if freedom is limited, it's no longer freedom! Quite a dilemma.

It's a known dilemma, and some have reasoned that "freedom" is unlimited while "liberty" has some restrictions for the benefit of the rest of society. America's founders referred to their creation as "liberty" for that reason, they say. They wrote some laws to limit the powers of their new government.

I don't buy it; the two terms mean the same thing - they differ only in the route they took to enter English. "Liberty" comes from the Latin libertas, imported to English by the Roman conquerors and polished a bit by the Norman French ones a millennium later; while "freedom" was used by the Saxon and Viking settlers, who came after the Romans left; freiheit now being the German word, frihed the Danish and frihet the Swedish. Roman influence had trouble crossing the Alps.

Resolution without law will happen this way.

First, everyone will graduate from a freedom school like TOLFA (or if not, there will be no ZGS anyway.) That means everyone will understand and accept that they, individually, are solely responsible for their own lives but have no right to govern anyone else's. So Joe, above, will know that though he may go on disliking his mother in law, she has an absolute right to go on living. Greb, likewise, will know and accept that he and his employer have no right to raid the property of anyone else, and so quit his job.

When all like him have quit too, government will cease to exist and the ZGS will begin. With all its members understanding and accepting that they and everyone else are, by right, free. Free to do anything they wish - except, therefore, to interfere with anyone else's life.

Resolution accomplished.

It's a resolution without law, or any external force. The motive power comes from within, and must do so; hence the need of re-education. Now, does that lay me open to a charge that I want to change human nature, which would be clearly impossible? - no. Human nature is already inherently selfish: we each arrange matters to serve #1 first, however much we may try to disguise the fact. So this blends perfectly with human nature as it actually is.

And there's nothing wrong in that; on the contrary, there's a very great deal of good in it! If fully and perfectly done, it would mean that every person in society is busy maintaining and improving his own life and circumstances, without depending on outside help. I can see no better way for that society to prosper - nor any better way to equip its members to donate assistance to the few unable to help themselves.