To Begin the World Over Again

THE CASE FOR A NEW START

But when government itself makes it a practice to initiate physical coercion, or to legalize its initiation by others, it defaults on its sole sacred function which is to protect its citizens from initiated force. We declare that throughout the world, governments exhibit this evil. Respect for reason demands that we set forth the evidence. To wit:

Throughout the world, all nations pay lip service to rights in their constitutions, but then permit groups, even their own governments, to take them as sanctions to violate individual rights. This corrupts the meaning of rights which, when correctly understood, are possessed only by individuals. Correctly induced, rights protect the individual from the group, especially that largest and most powerful of groups—government. Yet throughout the world, all governments, without exception, have institutionalized the violation of the individual rights of their citizens.
Property rights mean that individuals have the right to dispose of the product of their labor, or their earnings from it, as they see fit, providing they do not infringe or threaten the rights of others. Property rights protect individuals from slavery—slavery in any part of their lives, or in any portion. Property rights are moral sanctions for individuals to seek, gain, and dispose of the product of their work—not sanctions for some group to expropriate and dispose of it. Yet, throughout today’s world, throughout history, that evil is seen.
In all the world’s nations, debased governments, and the groups they enable, regulate all sectors of their country’s life, including, in many nations, matters of religion or conscience. In developed nations, endemic public-private-sector cronyism produces corruption, coercive monopolies, and legalized plunder. Vast fiscal constituencies require countless government agencies and ever mounting debt. Cradle-to-grave dependence on government makes self-reliance—once a matter of cultural pride in more enlightened nations—a lost virtue. Pillaging by rampant pressure group warfare enervates entire cultures. Throughout the world, these depredations are seen.
We support efforts to roll back them back incrementally. But repressive social systems are continually reinforced by the entrenched bureaucracies that led to them in the first place and are determined to keep them that way. For this and other reasons, repressive socioeconomic systems, once entrenched, are virtually irreversible. Attempts to effect change with incremental improvement can help to control damage and alleviate human suffering but cannot bring about lasting change. History has always demonstrated this.

We declare that if political freedom is the goal, that is, freedom from initiated coercion, then the world’s populations have only one course of action. That course is to start over in new places, from scratch, with constitutions banishing the initiation of force throughout the realm, including the most common source of initiated force, that from government against its citizens. This course is what our new nation, [Name], is taking, and this Declaration of Freedom is the preamble of [New Nation’s] constitution.

THE CASE FOR A NEW START

Throughout the world, all nations pay lip service to rights in their constitutions, but then permit groups, even their own governments, to take them as sanctions to violate individual rights. This corrupts the meaning of rights which, when correctly understood, are possessed only by individuals. Correctly induced, rights protect the individual from the group, especially that largest and most powerful of groups—government. Yet throughout the world, all governments, without exception, have institutionalized the violation of the individual rights of their citizens.
Property rights mean that individuals have the right to dispose of the product of their labor, or their earnings from it, as they see fit, providing they do not infringe or threaten the rights of others. Property rights protect individuals from slavery—slavery in any part of their lives, or in any portion. Property rights are moral sanctions for individuals to seek, gain, and dispose of the product of their work—not sanctions for some group to expropriate and dispose of it. Yet, throughout today’s world, throughout history, that evil is seen.
In all the world’s nations, debased governments, and the groups they enable, regulate all sectors of their country’s life, including, in many nations, matters of religion or conscience. In developed nations, endemic public-private-sector cronyism produces corruption, coercive monopolies, and legalized plunder. Vast fiscal constituencies require countless government agencies and ever mounting debt. Cradle-to-grave dependence on government makes self-reliance—once a matter of cultural pride in more enlightened nations—a lost virtue. Pillaging by rampant pressure group warfare enervates entire cultures. Throughout the world, these depredations are seen.
We support efforts to roll back them back incrementally. But repressive social systems are continually reinforced by the entrenched bureaucracies that led to them in the first place and are determined to keep them that way. For this and other reasons, repressive socioeconomic systems, once entrenched, are virtually irreversible. Attempts to effect change with incremental improvement can help to control damage and alleviate human suffering but cannot bring about lasting change. History has always demonstrated this.