Why True Advocates For Liberty Focus So Strongly On The Power of Ideas

By Chris Rossini

Did you ever build a house, and when it was completed say to yourself: "I have a great idea. I should build a house."

Of course not!

The idea always comes first.

The actions, the circumstances, the effects never precede the idea. So if circumstances are bad, it necessarily means that bad ideas preceded them. Somewhere, the truth has been missed, or ignored, or neglected. This is why true advocates for Liberty are always hyper-focused on sharing the ideas of freedom.

Not "spreading" freedom.

Not "imposing" freedom.

Not "granting" freedom. 

Liberty already is. It's the natural condition of every individual. The bad ideas of power have merely concealed it from view.

The ideas of Liberty are incredibly simple. Everyone is born free, but that freedom has some very simple limitations -- the person and property of other individuals.

To put it bluntly: Keep your hands off other people and their stuff.

No aggressive force. Just voluntary interactions and exchanges with others.

Force (if it is ever to be used) is to defend yourself and your property from others who may decide to aggress against you. That's the purpose of force --- to repel aggression.

There are no exceptions for aggression either. You can't call a gang of people "government" and just give them permission use force against others on your behalf.

No contracting out of your tyranny.

Obviously, one look at all the circumstances happening in the world, and you find out very quickly that the ideas of Liberty have many competitors. Force is the name of the game all over the world. The only question is who wields it, and who is on the receiving end.

Bad ideas. Bad results.

The worst of humanity is put on display every single day....all for the purpose of gaining control of the reins of power.

It should not surprise you that the peddlers of the ideas of power take a different route. They seek to force their ideas on everyone else. Everyone must comply because they say so. There are so many examples that one can write a whole book on the repeated failures of this approach.

But whether it be the Jacobins of the 1700's, the Bolsheviks of the 1900's, or modern-day Neoconservatives, they all seek to forcefully re-make others, and they all fail spectacularly despite all the precedents set before them.

This is not the road for the advocate of Liberty. The libertarian merely expresses and explains what it means to live a life of freedom and then leaves it up to the listeners to decide. What the listeners decide to believe is 100% up to them.

It's up to everyone individually to embrace the ideas of Liberty. There is no magic wand. There is no white knight who is going to gallop in on his white horse to set everyone straight. For that would be tyranny as well.

Liberty is a FAR superior idea to power. 

That truth is sufficient.