Libertarian Island

[Tim Nerenz for Congress]

Alone on an island, one has no choice but to be libertarian; self-sovereignty is the only kind there is.

The question of where rights come from is answered definitively, as our island dweller is endowed with a complete set of natural rights even though there is no one else to grant them. Freedom is complete, and the self-owned islander who produces in surplus can not possibly be considered greedy, heartless, selfish, or evil for his extraordinary productivity.

It is only when a second person arrives on the island who demands to live off the surplus of the first that the libertarian’s self-sufficiency is suddenly called selfishness. The irony of envy is that greed is always assigned by the demander, and selfishness is the accusation hurled by those who insist their own needs must be tended at the expense of others.

When a third person arrives on the island armed with laws and guns and chains, he taxes the property of the first to give to the second under terms imposed by force of law and the threat of imprisonment at gunpoint. We call him government.

The amount to be confiscated from the first is determined by vote of all three. This is what democracy looks like. The admonition “no man is an island” is most urgently advocated by that third guy on it, the one whose livelihood depends on convincing the second guy he cannot survive without the looting of the first.

The island of three – one to produce, one to depend, and one to regulate - is the prism by which both our modern-day Republicans and Democrats view the world. They fuss over who gets to be the third guy on the island, differing only in how much they will take and what they reward and punish with the takings.

Neither abides by the Constitution they have sworn to defend, and both use the law as a weapon against the people. Both embrace a crony corporatism that defeats free market capitalism’s liberation of the human spirit.

Dependence is an unnatural state. It is created by excessive government and perpetuated by the continued expansion of government power. America has been turned into a nation where that first person on the island is vilified, the second is canonized, and the third is revered. That is the twisted morality we call progressive.

A libertarian Island of Three would be different; all would be self-sufficient, self-owned, and self-governed equals. Our vision for America is not just three, but three hundred million free first persons, to whom dependence is a temporary and episodic condition.

We would prefer a government small enough to exist unseen; with laws few enough that we could actually know them and abide by them. Anarchy can also be millions of laws and regulations so complex that none of us could possibly be law-abiding.

We believe that markets regulate better then men; not because we read it somewhere, but because we have lived with our eyes open. We believe that government is necessary only to protect individual rights; not to herd people into groups to be collectively gifted or punished by force. We believe that freedom is the natural state of mankind; that volition is what is meant by the “image of God”. Many conservatives share our vision of America; many more say that they do.

Government and Liberty are two opposite destinations; it is not possible to seek one without leaving the other behind. Libertarians and liberals divide over which way to go; libertarians and conservatives divide over the length of the journey. We are about to begin the New Year 2012, a year when critical elections will decide both direction and length of the journey we will take as a nation.

Be informed, be involved, and be invested in liberty. Choose your island.

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.