First Principles
29th April 2010
A society is formed by the voluntary bonding of individuals into overlapping, ever-changing groups whose members strive to serve each others’ emotional and material needs. Government — regardless of its rhetoric — is an outside force that cannot possibly replicate societal bonding, or even foster it. At best, government can help preserve society — as it does when it deters aggression from abroad or administers justice. But in the main, government corrodes society by destroying bonds between individuals and dictating the terms of social and economic intercourse — as it does through countless laws, regulations, and programs, from Social Security to farm subsidies, from corporate welfare to the hapless “war” on drugs, from the minimum wage to affirmative action. On balance, the greatest threat to society is government itself.
And that is libertarianism in a nutshell.