The individual who dares to demand to be left alone and to assume responsibility for himself becomes a criminal.

Careless disregard for liberty allows politicians to promise anything in
order to be reelected. Inevitably this leads to a steady increase in spending,
forcing higher taxes, more borrowing, and inflation of the money supply.
Government by majority rule has replaced strict protection of the
individual from government abuse. Right of property ownership has been
replaced with the forced redistribution of wealth and property, without
concern for the individual producing the wealth.

Once the dictatorial power of a majority is accepted as legitimate, the
days for the Republic are numbered -- which is the case unless current trends
are reversed. The individual, throughout this century, has suffered greatly
from this dramatic change in attitude. The individual who dares to demand to
be left alone and to assume responsibility for himself
becomes a criminal. Amish farmers have been arrested for not paying social
security taxes, though they sought no aid from the government. Any
independence from government welfare programs is deeply frowned upon.
Those failing to keep financial records for the IRS are promptly imprisoned.

The good of "society" has replaced the notion that the individual has a
sacred right to live unmolested by government interference.
Today it is usual to assume that the government owns all that we
produce, and through government generosity we are permitted to retain a
certain portion. We routinely hear that if a particular tax is reduced, it will be
a "cost" to government. This concept must be changed if the idea of
individual liberty is to survive. There is no such thing as cost to government.

There is only cost to people. Government cannot grant to us our right to life
and liberty, it would mean that government controls all that we produce.

Sadly this is essentially the situation in which we find ourselves today.

Government's intrusive role has grown throughout the twentieth
century, while individual responsibility has correspondingly diminished. The
expansion of government control over our lives is both a result and cause of
individuals' assuming less responsibility for themselves. Failure today is
rarely blamed on the inadequacy of the individual; society and environment
are blamed for all our problems. Criminal acts are frequently excused as being
the result of "bad breaks." Justifying welfare on the needs of individuals has
been upheld and expanded by the courts.

Careless disregard for individual rights, concern for group demands,
and concern for the good of society have led to a steady erosion of privacy.
Billions of dollars are spent yearly keeping records for the government.

The people, like lambs, are innocently driven to the slaughter as they
conform to all the government regulations and record-keeping--records that
frequently are used against them in a court of law.
We all naively and obediently become tax collectors for the
government, turning over the loot that the politicians will waste as they
further destroy our right to live as we choose.

We keep volumes of financial records solely for the government's
benefit. We accept currency controls with barely a whimper. We allow the
FBI and CIA to snoop on everything and everybody, and rarely is the
snooping challenged on principle. The only challenge to the secrecy of
government action is whether the activity is supported by the right or left.

The Computer Age is now upon us, and this technology could easily
eliminate completely the privacy that should be cherished by all freedomloving
individuals. Like nuclear power, computer technology can enhance our
standard of living or destroy our freedoms completely. It is just a matter of
time until we have a mandatory national I.D. card.

Lie-detector tests and urine and blood tests are now common-place
and have been strongly supported by the Reagan Administration -- an
administration that championed limited government principles. Today the
government sends out planes and helicopters to spy on farmlands and
industrial plants, taking pictures while looking for information about drugs
and violation of EPA regulations -- regulations which no one clearly
understands.

It is inevitable that, once the concept of absolute individual rights is
ignored, with each attempt to solve a problem, two new ones replace it.
Malcolm Forbes was asked whether his listing in his magazine of the 400
wealthiest Americans would draw the attention of terrorists. His answer was
affirmative: "I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS."
Today the lack of understanding and respect for voluntary contracts
has totally confused the issue that in a free society an individual can own and
control property and run his or her business as he or she chooses. The idea
that the social do-gooder can legislate a system which forces industry to pay
men and women by comparable worth standards boggles the mind and further
destroys our competitiveness in a world economy.

Employee rights are said to be valid when employers pressure
employees into sexual activity. Why don't they quit once the so-called
harassment starts? Obviously the morals of the harasser cannot be defended,
but how can the harassee escape some responsibility for the problem?
Seeking protection under civil rights legislation is hardly acceptable. If force
was clearly used, that is another story, but pressure and submission is hardly
an example of a violation of one's employment rights.

The concept of equal pay for equal work is not only an impossible
task, it can only be accomplished with the total rejection of the idea
of the voluntary contract. By what right does the government assume the
power to tell an airline it must hire unattractive women if it does not want to?
The idea that a businessman must hire anyone and is prevented from firing
anyone for any reason he chooses and in the name of rights is a clear
indication that the basic concept of a free society has been lost.

In the name of equal rights, the State of Montana has forced insurance
companies to charge women additional premiums to make the fees equal
to those charged men, regardless of the economic realities that allow for a
lower premium.

Americans today have more people living on the street than ever
before, in spite of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to eradicate
poverty. Of course, logic tells us that if you subsidize poverty, you'll get more
of it.

New York City is plagued with thousands of street people. On cold
nights this tragedy is more apparent. Mayor Koch's approach to protecting the
"rights" of the street people is to sue hotels which refuse to house the
homeless tramps. Another attempt to solve the problem has been to round up
and force the vagrants into shelters -- to eliminate the embarrassment of
people dying on Wall Street. The American Civil Liberties Union has come to
the rescue, saying that "arresting" the homeless against their will violates their
rights as citizens -- a reasonable assumption. But the ACLU provides another
solution by claiming the
poor have "a right to a decent home." The problem, they state, is the failure of
government to provide (or steal) sufficient funds to build enough tenement
housing. This confused notion of rights regarding the New York street people
clearly demonstrates how poorly the concept of rights is understood America.

Much of the confusion over rights comes from the accepted idea that
"compromise" is the most noble trait of today's politician -- hardly a
characteristic of those who signed and defended our Declaration of
Independence. It is hardly reassuring that giving in halfway is the most
important political act of our twentieth-century politicians. Standing firm on
principles is viewed as illogical rigidity and dangerous to America. This idea
clearly ignores the fact that philosophy of compromise and acceptance of the
philosophy of pragmatism is a rigid philosophy in itself as a compromise
between socialism and individual rights. Although many justify
interventionism as a compromise between socialism and laissez faire,
interventionism is also a precise philosophy and not a compromise at all. It
requires a sacrifice from those who give mere lip service to the Constitution
and to the concept of individual rights.


Literary. Liberals who envy wealthy businessmen support free speech, but
advocate strict control over commercial speech. Conservatives, who defend
free commercial speech, carelessly support control over literary speech.
Somewhere in the twentieth century, we lost our way with accepting this
distinction.

The right of commercial speech and business activity are thought to be
something quite different from the right to publish whatever one desires and
live a lifestyle of one's choosing. The liberal has refused censorship of any
journalistic production, yet has never applied the same principle to the
entrepreneur who produces a commercial product rather than a book. It
doesn't bother conservatives to write laws regulating printed matter of a
sexual nature, which they see as offensive and harmful to society. Liberals are
unconcerned about their attack on the businessman's freedom of speech by
regulating ads for alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling, as well as controlling the
manufacture of consumer products.

Rules of fraud and product liability could surely be applied to
consumer goods, just as the rules of libel apply to the written or spoken
product. This discrepancy in dealing with commercial and literary speech
must someday be resolved if liberty is to be defended consistently.

When selected prosecution occurs, it is a clear signal that the concept
of equal rights is no longer honored. Today it is commonplace to select
special people and make them examples. It's the IRS's public policy to make
certain key community citizens examples in order to terrorize the other
segment of the population into submitting to the tax authorities.

In spite of the fact that even the IRS can't agree on the meaning of the
massive tax code and the regulations which are frequently never written, the
taxpayer is never excused for filing errors.