Frankly Existential

My Journey to Libertarianism

In 2018 my senior class was called down to the cafeteria for an assembly. We had some local official come in preaching about the right to vote and democracy and blah blah blah. We were all given voter registration forms and the chance to register. Some of us were already 18, some 17 so they had to wait a bit longer for their registration to kick in. I registered as a Republican. I was told the beliefs of the Republican party were those of limited government, and promoting economic and social liberty. Sounded great to me so I signed off immediately. I bought into the lies of the GOP and had I known better then I would have registered Libertarian to begin with.

I slowly lost my views in place of party loyalism, the party is always right and always reflects what I actually want. “They know best,” I thought. I was and avid Trump supporter for most of his first term though towards the end of it I grew more and more disappointed, reluctantly voting for him in his 2020 election, and hopped on the rigged election bandwagon when he lost. I played into the conservative views, praised Reagan, and we know from my post A Critique of Contemporary Conservatism what that changed into, but it never felt right. Trump expanded the government, encouraged oppression of the individual, limited free trade, and overall went against what I believed in. It didn’t feel right to me to align myself with that side anymore.

This was the time in my life I actually begun engaging in political and economic philosophy. I began identifying as a Classical Liberal, embracing those 18th century views, mostly influenced by John Locke. Through Locke I was able to better clarify my views on liberty, personal freedoms, and property rights. I stuck with this identification for quite some time, but began shifting to more deep libertarian principles. I dug deeper, discovering an ideology known as Minarchism. My core belief that the government should remain as limited as possible was always a part of my political journey, only not knowing how small it could realistically be. As a Minarchist I believed that the government’s only justifiable job was to lead the courts system, provide national defense, and enforce property rights. A seemingly perfect balance. They made sure that everyone played by the rules, avoided rights infringements, and kept the people safe from external threats. Since then, I have moved further, though I still greatly sympathize with the Minarchist philosophy.

I discovered Murray Rothbard, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Ludwig von Mises, among others, and began investigating the philosophy of the Anarcho-Capitalists and further Agorism. While Agorism is often associated with left-wing libertarians, I would not consider myself as such. Murray Rothbard has been of particular influence on my political and economic views. I wanted to start slow and picked up his book Anatomy of The State. That work got me going. It pulled me from Minarchism, teaching me that a Minarchist state is still a state after all, and its existence itself still thrived on rights infringements. From an ethical standpoint, property rights were paramount as they provided the rational foundation of bodily autonomy, and the right to ones own body is the most immediate natural right that all people possess. In order to prop up a state or government, as well as to maintain one, it is necessary that it infringes on the property rights of its citizens. In its interest in self-preservation, the state takes its citizens’ money by force through taxation. The phrase “taxation is theft” is often laughed at, but what would you call someone who says “pay me this money or I’ll lock you up” but a thief? At the very least it is extortion given it is taken under the threat of violence.

I suppose I’ll touch a bit on Agorism too since I mentioned it earlier. Agorism promotes the use of counter-economics, the use of black and grey markets, as a means of weakening the power of the state. When the state loses control over economic matters, which they have no right to control in the first place, their power weakens as a result of getting less money. I support this for a couple reasons. First, it maintains the libertarian tenet of free markets. The market is truly free when it is not bound by regulations. Transactions are consensual and nobody is being harmed. Second, it is a nonviolent means of revolution. I don’t support violent uprisings against the state, as that is hypocritical to the libertarian defense of property rights. Consensual market transactions that do not profit the state are in this sense a moral good.

So this brings me to where I am today holding the core values of anti-war, property rights, bodily autonomy, free markets, and anti-state. I officially registered with the Libertarian Party, though I still have my criticisms of them as well. I do believe that more people embracing these views would greatly benefit the nation politically and economically, and I do hope to see these views implemented in our system during my lifetime. I’m young so there is still hope for that. Libertarian philosophy is one of peace and prosperity. The more I study the more I see it as the only hope for a better society. I’ll expand on more libertarian ideas in greater depth in the future, but for now, thank you for reading.

Be well.