The Sandra Bullock movie “Miss Congeniality” hilariously lampooned the vapid plea for “world peace” by beauty contest contestants. But that’s really what libertarians want.
First and foremost, libertarians want an end to the most destructive government program of all, war.
But libertarians also recognize that forcing people to purchase things they don’t want or need, like “public” education, health care programs or bankrupt retirement plans, forcibly prohibiting peaceful activities like taking medicine without permission from a doctor or accepting a wage below the arbitrarily imposed government minimum, or forcibly mandating people to associate with others against their will are all just as unpeaceful, i.e. warlike, as sending armed men in government costumes into a field to slaughter each other.
In all of these cases, force is initiated against the innocent, which is, by definition, war. Peace is not possible until all legalized aggression is abolished, and peace reigns over all human endeavors. To the obtuse cry, “There ought to be a law,” libertarians respond “Let there be peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.”
Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.
LOL… in government costumes to kill each other off… I like that… that’s all they are is “costumes” but with real bullets… that kill and annihilate….. Yes it is this LEGALIZED bullying that is disturbing and not identified for what it is BULLYING… we want to stop that in our schools… but how when we keep perpetuating by modeling it and condoning it,,, even worse yet by expecting it as the desired behavior… sports, business, medicine, war, golly… did you expect a different result? or outcome? that’s the definition of “insanity”… which pretty much describes our present state of affairs in America… 🙂
Yes, the bullets soldiers use are real, as are the bullets in the guns of the police when they come to get you if you do not pay the taxes used to subsidize public schools, whether you use them or not, or if you buy medicine from someone the government hasn’t authorized, or if you fail to follow any other of the government’s edicts. The barrel of a gun, with real bullets, is behind every action of the government, whether it’s waging war or managing health care. That was the point of my post.