Use of Force

By Tom Rhodes 2/24/2012


The one and only requirement to be a member of the Libertarian Party is to take a pledge, affirming that you do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. This is a short summary of the non-aggression principle. This is based on a very old assumption. That man is a rational being.


This is a moral stance, choosing to move a relationship outside the realm of reason into the realm of physical violence – is immoral among rational human beings. This is based this assertion on the self-evident fact that your faculty of reason, your ability to integrate the data of your senses into concepts (from which you make decisions regarding goal-directed actions), is your only means of long-term survival. It is not moral and just to use force to effect social or political change.


If there is a human conflict there are only two way to resolve that conflict: reason or force. Force has a physical component, but this does not mean all manifestations of force involve a physical component. Theft is force, because it deprives people of assets rightfully theirs. Fraud is force, because it is a form of theft. The use of a threat of force to coerce a response it is still force.


Our Declaration of Independence was a confirmation of the non-aggression principle. We declared our independence using reason and logic and offered a clearly non-violent means to establish sovereignty from England. England, then initiated force, not reason, to attempt to instill its will on America. The use of force in response to England’s aggression was moral and just, as the use of force for self-defense is not immoral.


Democrats, Statists, socialists, leftists, and progressives of all type, realize that they cannot win based on logic and reason, so they continually resort to force to impose their will on others. Obamacare is a prime example. Education, reasoning, and communicating of all types have failed to convince a significant portion of the population to voluntarily purchase health insurance. People doing careful risk analysis sometimes choose not to purchase insurance despite what the left think is in their best interest. The idea that some people may make reasoned decisions that don’t conform to what statists think are best, and then choose to act or not act in what they feel is their individual best interest galls at statists. Having failed to convince the people they now resort to force.


Since statists cannot persuade the people through reason and they force them to comply with statist wishes; Statists contradict the recognition of reason as the only moral method achieve political or social goals. We see this almost every day. Democrats cannot persuade the voters to do as they wish, they use the courts or executive orders to force their demands – demands that run contrary to individual reason. Pointing at your citizens the gun of government mandate, telling them they’ll do as the government dictates no matter how injurious to those citizens those dictates are, is violence. It is the kind of violence that makes liberals insufferably self-righteous and arrogant when they hold political power.

If you accept the fact that all people are discrete individuals, sole owners of themselves, and not the property of another, you then accept that you cannot live another person’s life, thus you cannot presume to force others to comply with your wishes. Your inalienable rights to your person and to the results of your labor are violated when force is initiated against you.


Obamacare and other crony Democratic tyranny conform to no morally acceptable philosophical justification. Statist force is not rational, or moral. Statists, specifically liberals, use force for the singular purpose of molding and shaping a disinclined public to their statist ideology. They are content and willing to lie, to defraud, to steal in making their case, but if necessary they are just as content to make you comply. In the history of implementing leftist ideology is also the history of the most violent forceful revolutions and governments in the history of the world. The more socialistic a government is the more violently forceful it is.

Failure to accept liberal ideology, regardless of what personal harm it may bring you, if you choose not to obey, liberals will see to it that you end destitute, imprisoned, or dead. These are actions they will happily initiate and they also they’ll expect you to thank them for doing it; it’s for your own good after all.


Reason and logic dictate that economically, low taxes, free enterprise, and economic freedom provide the best overall quality of life for more people in a society than any other system. This is proven historically and objectively.





Reason and logic are discarded because economic freedom and liberty also imply economic responsibility. This means that a certain portion of society, when granted economic freedom will fail to support themselves, and suffer. Although overall more people will be better off Liberals use this as an excuse to throw away reason and logic, and employ despotic methodologies to control the people through emotion.


It is this reasoning used to “mandate” every person by virtue of being alive, purchase health insurance. The idea is that because we must Force people (through taxes) to provide charity, to pay for health care goods and services for those who cannot or will not take responsibility for themselves, thus they have the right to force everybody to purchase insurance. Logic and reason and a failure to accept that people are free to make choices, and prosper or suffer as a consequence of those decisions, grants liberals the impudence to justify the use force to enforce their morals on everybody else. Because they believe people won’t make choices they think are best, and failing to use reason to convince people to make choices they think are best, liberals simply abandon reason and use force.


If you believe that it is morally acceptable to use force, or the threat of force, to achieve political or social goals then you can justify the Obamacare mandate. If however you believe that people have unalienable rights, you cannot justify the Obamacare mandate.


The people of the USA have spoken using reason, we selected through elections, representatives to thwart the policies and objectives of the Obama administration. Having failed to use reason and logic to convince the people through their representatives to implement laws that Obama and the leftist in the Democrat party want, they now resort to force, ignoring the rule of law, ruling by executive order, and bureaucratic fiat, not legislation. Because our representative government didn’t produce the results the Obama administration wanted, they have proven to be willing to abandon the constitutional checks and balances and resort to force not reason to get their way. The dictates of the Obama administration forcing churches to purchase and provide goods and services that are clearly historically against both their conscience and beliefs by fiat not law is one example. The creation of positions that can impose such “regulations” through bureaucracy rather than legislation, are evidence that statists of both parties don’t want to even bother with reasoning and persuading the people, but instead prefer the use of force.


This is a return to the ruling class and clear usurpation of individual liberty. Statists are concentrating power in ruling elite by trading individual liberty for “security” using force not reason. They failed using reason and persuasion, and since they believe that the ends justify the means they accept resorting to force. The results, if history is any indicator, will be tyranny not security. Of course tyranny by a few ruling elite with general mass privation is the norm for mankind throughout its entire history; liberty, freedom, and relative luxury that it produces are the historical exception. The only faster way to tyranny than the slow socialization of a republic, is anarchy.