NIGHTWATCH
September 13, 2003, 04:55 AM
Albert Jay Nock, commenting on Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms,"
said, "There is no such thing, four or forty. Freedom has no plural.
Freedom either is, or isn't." Roosevelt, and successive executive
tyrants, have destroyed the meaning of freedom, making it a privilege to
be bestowed, regulated and even revoked at the discretion of government.
Since his presidency, generations of Americans have bought into this
philosophy, even embracing it as necessary to preserve freedom. In
truth, government only destroys freedom; it never protects it.
Freedom is a very simple concept. To understand it requires little or no
formal education. Once, while traveling across the sometimes desolate
roads of northern Arizona , my eight-year old daughter asked my wife,
"Mom, why do we have to have laws? Why can't we just be free?"
Many Americans persist in complicating freedom by attributing its
existence and survival to the vigilance of government.
Government responds, passing thousands of laws and creating layers of bureaucracy to
enforce them. Laws have no purpose except to confiscate, transfer, and
restrict property use, inhibit the movement of individuals, stifle
entrepreneurship and commerce, and increase the size and scope of
government. The end result is a calculated destruction of freedom.
The nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat understood how
the law subverts freedom, serving only the condescending tyrants in
government and their greedy masters in the worlds of business, commerce,
and finance. As Bastiat noted in The Law, "the tendency of the human
race toward liberty is largely thwarted," mostly by men who "desire to
set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate
it according to their fancy."
Bastiat was not unique in his thinking about government, the law and
liberty. The early nineteenth century was fertile with great minds who
shared his perspective on these subjects. Yet his words are spoken so
clearly and forcefully that, according to Walter E. Williams, "even the
unlettered can understand them and statists cannot obfuscate them." A
century and a half later, The Law remains one of the great books on the
subject of liberty.
After extensive study and research, Bastiat concluded, "for whatever the
question under discussion - whether religious, philosophical, political,
economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right,
justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade,
capital, wages, taxes, population, or government . . . The solution to
the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty." Yet for
all these potential problems associated with human relationships,
government intervention is seen as an indispensable component of success.
Since World War I, our government has used the excuse of "war" to attack
and destroy the freedom of the American people. Indeed, government has
waged nearly a century of uninterrupted war on freedom itself. Whether
"at war" with industrialization, economic calamities, foreign powers,
communism, drugs, poverty, or terrorism, endless opportunities have been
fabricated by our government to scare the hell out of people, solely to
facilitate the growth of its own power. As John Taylor said in Tyranny
Unmasked, "War is the casualty which most extensively transfers property,
and by that effect most sorely oppresses nations. It invariably generates
a class of men, who wish for its continuance, however injurious it is to
the people generally."
From http://www.stanley2002.org/
said, "There is no such thing, four or forty. Freedom has no plural.
Freedom either is, or isn't." Roosevelt, and successive executive
tyrants, have destroyed the meaning of freedom, making it a privilege to
be bestowed, regulated and even revoked at the discretion of government.
Since his presidency, generations of Americans have bought into this
philosophy, even embracing it as necessary to preserve freedom. In
truth, government only destroys freedom; it never protects it.
Freedom is a very simple concept. To understand it requires little or no
formal education. Once, while traveling across the sometimes desolate
roads of northern Arizona , my eight-year old daughter asked my wife,
"Mom, why do we have to have laws? Why can't we just be free?"
Many Americans persist in complicating freedom by attributing its
existence and survival to the vigilance of government.
Government responds, passing thousands of laws and creating layers of bureaucracy to
enforce them. Laws have no purpose except to confiscate, transfer, and
restrict property use, inhibit the movement of individuals, stifle
entrepreneurship and commerce, and increase the size and scope of
government. The end result is a calculated destruction of freedom.
The nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat understood how
the law subverts freedom, serving only the condescending tyrants in
government and their greedy masters in the worlds of business, commerce,
and finance. As Bastiat noted in The Law, "the tendency of the human
race toward liberty is largely thwarted," mostly by men who "desire to
set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate
it according to their fancy."
Bastiat was not unique in his thinking about government, the law and
liberty. The early nineteenth century was fertile with great minds who
shared his perspective on these subjects. Yet his words are spoken so
clearly and forcefully that, according to Walter E. Williams, "even the
unlettered can understand them and statists cannot obfuscate them." A
century and a half later, The Law remains one of the great books on the
subject of liberty.
After extensive study and research, Bastiat concluded, "for whatever the
question under discussion - whether religious, philosophical, political,
economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right,
justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade,
capital, wages, taxes, population, or government . . . The solution to
the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty." Yet for
all these potential problems associated with human relationships,
government intervention is seen as an indispensable component of success.
Since World War I, our government has used the excuse of "war" to attack
and destroy the freedom of the American people. Indeed, government has
waged nearly a century of uninterrupted war on freedom itself. Whether
"at war" with industrialization, economic calamities, foreign powers,
communism, drugs, poverty, or terrorism, endless opportunities have been
fabricated by our government to scare the hell out of people, solely to
facilitate the growth of its own power. As John Taylor said in Tyranny
Unmasked, "War is the casualty which most extensively transfers property,
and by that effect most sorely oppresses nations. It invariably generates
a class of men, who wish for its continuance, however injurious it is to
the people generally."
From http://www.stanley2002.org/