The Freedom Minute

Philosophy

What is libertarianism?

First, you should know what it is not. Subscribing to libertarianism is not the same as being a conservative or Republican as they are currently understood and practiced in the United States. True, some philosophical beliefs overlap, but there are just as many areas of disagreement as there are agreement. Likewise, being a libertarian is not the same as being a liberal or the newer, more acceptable term, progressive. You might hear that libertarians are “classical liberals” but that is different than the modern day term “liberal”. Again, there is much overlap between the beliefs of libertarians and liberals, but again also much disagreement. Most importantly though, libertarianism is not a belief that “you can do anything you want and no one has the right to tell you otherwise”. As you will see, libertarians believe that the laws that govern civilized society should be designed to ensure that individuals are free to pursue their own lives in whatever manner they see fit so long as they respect the equal rights of others. This is a far cry from “do anything you want”.

So what exactly does it mean to be a libertarian? In a nutshell, libertarians believe first and foremost that individual rights are supreme above all else and with those rights comes the responsibility to respect the equal rights of other individuals. This idea is not a new idea, it can be found throughout recorded history. For example, when the Golden Rule admonishes us to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, it is an expression of the sanctity of each person’s individual rights and that no one has the right to violate another’s individual rights.

To put it another way, libertarians believe that we own ourselves. When you think about it, that statement must be true. For if it is false, it would mean that someone else, or some group of people own us. And since the vast majority of people in the world believe that owning another person is morally wrong, we must therefore own ourselves.

But what does that mean exactly? First, it means that we own our bodies and our lives. So long as we do not impose on anyone else’s individual rights, we have a right not to be intentionally killed or injured by another and no one has the right to imprison us or restrict how we live our lives. We also have the right to the fruits of our labor, for if we own ourselves, we alone have the right to that which we rightly acquire through our personal efforts. This is commonly referred to as the right to property. And with that right comes the right to not have your property confiscated by any individual or powerful group only to be transferred to someone else.

There are a number of other core principles that most libertarians agree on. I will not detail all of them here, but I list a few important ones below:

Limited Government – Governments are made up of people, and although individual people have rights, governments do not, in and of themselves, have rights. Since no one person has any greater rights over any other person (no one owns anyone else), no group of people can have any greater rights over any one individual (no group can own anyone else). If a group of people in a society were to have rights above or in addition to the rights they have as individuals, then the members of that group would have greater rights than other individuals in that society and would have the right to impose their will upon them. They would, in a sense, have a right of ownership over others in society and we all agree that this would be immoral. The logical conclusion here is that the only moral governments are those whose functions are limited to protecting the rights of the individuals in society. And while the individuals in the society can charge the government with certain functions, those functions must in no way restrict the individual rights of the citizenry. Any government that goes beyond those limits is, by definition, immoral.

Free Markets – The right to property entails the right to freely exchange that property with others by mutual agreement without interference by others. If others have a right to interfere in this transaction, then they must, by definition, have some right of ownership to you or your property. Again, we have seen that such a right of ownership over another person or their property is immoral. Therefore no one has the moral right to interfere in the free exchange of property between individuals. This free exchange is the necessary basis to create wealth, the means by which individuals improve their lives and pursue happiness.

Market Forces – This is sometimes referred to as spontaneous order and is not necessarily limited to economics. The basic principle is that when thousands or millions of individuals make individual choices and coordinate their actions with each other to achieve their own individual purposes, the outcome is more successful, more orderly, than could otherwise be achieved by a central authority. One way to understand this idea is to consider how law, language and money came into being. They were not created by any individual or small group of planners. They evolved spontaneously through a series of individual interactions that, over time, organized them into the institutions we see today. And as imperfect as this process may be, libertarians understand that it is the best and most peaceful way for individuals to interact.

I trust that you now have a better understanding of what it means when we say “libertarian”. Perhaps you have even realized that you intuitively held some of these beliefs, you just didn’t know what to call them. If you would like to learn more, I recommend the following:

Libertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz

Libertarianism in One Lesson by David Bergland

Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution of the United States of America

The Worlds Smallest Political Quiz