What is Libertarianism

What is Libertarianism and why is it the fastest growing political party in America?

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that bases itself on the belief that Liberty is the most valuable of our natural born, or if your religious, god given rights. It projects that the main role of government is to preserve these rights and that giving up these rights for a feeling of security is counterproductive.

But is this true? What even is a natural born right anyway?

In the US we generally think of our natural born rights as that of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as stated in the US Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson the full line reads “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But it truly is much more than that, it’s freedom of expression, freedom of religion, The Freedom to Access Information, it’s freedom to be yourself and do what you want to do. Put simply, natural born rights are the rights we all have at birth. They aren’t granted to us by anyone, unless you’re religious then they are granted by whatever god you choose to believe in. They can’t be given by the government or by other people, but they can be taken away, they can be taken away by force. By government or by individuals who have the ability to push around others. It is for this reason that government was created to begin with, at least in the US’s case, and in most first world countries today. But it wasn’t always that way, for most of the short sliver of time human civilization has existed on this planet governments were created as a way to control the masses. Before the rise of free market capitalism the only way for an individual to gain large amounts of wealth was by stealing from or enslaving others. There are many ways this was done, some of them not as obvious as others. But that is a conversation for later. Today most countries exist, at least in theory, to protect these rights. A change that whether you like it or not was set in motion only 240 years ago by the very document that popularized the idea of unalienable Rights.

That same document go’s on to say “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The key word here is consent. We all have to agree to be governed. But it’s not that simple, I don’t know about you , but i don’t remember being given the opportunity to opt out or even choose what government i would fall under. We are stuck with the luck of the draw. something I hear far too often from people on just about every end of the political spectrum is if you don’t like it, you should leave. But where are you supposed to go? There isn’t anywhere on earth today that doesn’t fall under some form of government and even if there was, how would you get there, and what would you do when you got there? You would be alone. Even if we  assume the meaning of this statement is to go to a different country there may not be one you like and if there is, who knows if they would even let you in. No we are stuck where we land, I think those of us who landed in democratic first world countries are extremely lucky. So lucky in fact that we take so much of our freedoms for granted. Dick Cheney said “It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.” I’ve recently been reading a book called Shadow of the Conqueror by Shad M. Brooks. I’m Not finished with it and I won’t spoil anything. But there is a point possibly more I haven’t got to yet that deals with a generation coming into adulthood that has no first hand experience with the tyrants rule. They see the good the parts of the tyrants rule but don’t seem to understand what made it so horrible.

I believe that this is happening all over the world. But I also believe that it is fixable and preventable by doing a better job of teaching history. That’s part of why I created yearnfree.com I’m not going to go into the education system yet though that’s a topic that will get it’s own piece, probably several actually.

Now James Madison said in the Federalist papers a statement about the difficulty of creating a government. He writes “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” So then the problem here is how do you create a government with enough power to control those it governs while not having the power to infringe on the rights of its citizens. I believe that in order to solve this great problem we must first determine which services are actually necessary to be carried out by the government. Then limiting government to only these things. This is what it means to be a libertarian.

While sum claims to know the answers to these questions (who knows maybe someone out there does) I don’t believe that we as a party know the answer to this question fully. I hope that I can help start the conversations that get us there.

The second part of the original question is why is the libertarian party the fastest growing party in America, possibly in the world?  

There are several reasons but you probably know one of them whether you realize it or not. Just ask yourself why you’re here. It could be purely curiosity but I don’t think so. You’re probably here because you’re looking for something. You’re fed up with the two major political parties that are dividing the country, have no logical consistency and never seem to make any progress in the right direction. Which brings me to the next reason the party is growing, logical consistency. Whether you agree with it or not the libertarian party has a moral compass that always points to freedom first. That means that the principles are consistent so we don’t have policies that contradict each other. That’s something that at least as far as I’ve found so far no other party in America has managed to match.

I hope you found this piece to be informative and possibly even got you thinking a little differently. I have a lot more to talk about, I’m just working on organizing the way I present these topics moving forward. In the meantime if you would like to learn more you can check out my reading list here https://yearnfree.com/reading-list/ or headover to https://www.lp.org/issues/ to learn a little more about what we believe.

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