THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 852, December 20, 2015 The important question is not "What's your religion?" but "How do you feel about the Bill of Rights?"
Whither Now, libertarian?
Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise What IS the NAP and who IS a libertarian? The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) is highlighted in red in the following statement.) "A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim." "Whither Must I Wander" is a song composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams whose lyrics consist of a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson entitled Home no more home to me, whither must I wander? See below Lew Rockwell's "coming out" of the immigration closet and embracing of Hanns Herman Hoppe's closed-borders position has (once again) split the libertarian community. Every pseudo-libertarian xenophobe, racist, NAP hater and wanna-be control freak has now jumped onto the bandwagon of this once respected and distinguished libertarian and, like Rockwell himself, they have openly exposed their long hidden, secret prejudices and suppressed contradictions by calling upon government to forcibly close, seal and lock down the borders—so that no one can enter or LEAVE this country-wide FEMA camp without permission from tax supported, armed government bureaucrats. To their OWN citizens! Ludwig von Mises, himself a refugee from Hitler's ambitions, would be appalled at what his student has done! Worse yet, Rockwell has betrayed not only his education master but the Institute that he started in Mises' name. As happened during previous splittings of the libertarian community, the good news is that these UN-principled Libertarians-In-Name-Only (LINOs) have stopped hiding from those of us who still embrace the Non-Aggression Principle and are sovereign individuals seeking personal liberty and the individual Rights of Life, Liberty, and Property. That leaves us, the remnant who still embrace the Non Aggression Principle, with the following questions: Whither Now? Is there something better than what has obviously failed? Should we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results? Perhaps instead we should ask: What *IS* the absolute bare minimum that Voluntary Groups of any size--two people or more--need to agree upon, in order to live together peacefully and productively? R. Buckminster Fuller offered some advice: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." L. Neil Smith BUILT a new model 30 years ago when he prophetically wrote:
That is the opening line to an amazing, very short and succinct Political Statement titled The Covenant of Unanimous Consent and is explicitly based on the moral concept embodied in the Non Aggression Principle . Want to know more about this Covenant? I wrote an introductory article titled "The Bare Minimum", published at: THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 791, October 5, 2014 http://ncc-1776.org/tle2014/tle791-20141005-02.html and updated since then on my website at: http://tinyurl.com/The-Bare-Minimum "The Bare Minimum" explains WHY the NAP is necessary—but not sufficient—to successfully built a pre- and/or post-apocalypse community. The article also contains additional links to other Covenant articles, some that I have written and others that I have collected in one place. To live together peacefully and productively: Follow the Precepts of the Covenant and no "government" will be necessary; So whither now, libertarian? Will you continue the futile effort of trying to stop a government that is hell-bent to tyranny and beyond the point of no return? Or will you heed the advice of Buckminster Fuller and look to a new model such as that created by L. Neil Smith and explicitly based on the Non Aggression Principle? Will you continue to live and associate with un-trustworthy, UN-principled LINOs or seek out other Covenant Signatories and quietly build Covenant/Supersedure communities against the day when government finally runs out of other people's money as happened when the Berlin Wall came down? We do indeed live in interesting and challenging times. Live Long and Prosper,
HOME no more home to me, whither must I wander? Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces, Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,
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