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  IGNITING LIBERTY

  VOICES FOR FREEDOM

  AROUND THE WORLD

  Adam Barsouk, Jake Dorsch,

  Mamela Fiallo Flor, Luke W. Henderson, Bryce Jackson, Donald J. Keller,

  & Martin van Staden

  Foreword by Larry Sharpe

  2018 Candidate for

  Governor of New York

  Copyright © 2019

  All rights reserved – Champion Books

  First published by Champion Books in January 2019

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from the publisher.

  Champion Books

  A product of Being Libertarian LLC

  177 Webb's Mill Road, Suite #3 Floyd, Virginia, United States of America

  www.beinglibertarian.com

  ISBN: 9781793165039

  Champion Books is the publishing arm of Being Libertarian LLC, a Virginia-based international libertarian media company dedicated to the spread of the ideas underlying a free society and the development of new, active voices for liberty.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover by Martin van Staden and Adam Barsouk

  Editors

  Adam Barsouk

  Production Editor: Igniting Liberty

  Martin van Staden

  Editor in Chief: Being Libertarian

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Editors’ Introduction

  I. Founding Principles

  Freedom: The Embattled Champion of Human History

  Becoming a Libertarian

  The Case for a Libertarian Ethic

  The Rule of Law as Applied Libertarian Jurisprudence

  II. Society and Culture

  The Empirical Case for Guns

  Family as the Foundation of a Free Society

  The War on Drug Users (and Taxpayers)

  How the Killer Whale Challenged and Changed Human Rights

  III. Free Markets, Free People

  Depressions, Recessions, and Libertarian Positions

  Why Government Has No Place in Healthcare

  Protecting Free Trade from Protectionism

  IV. Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

  The Pro-Life Position from a Libertarian Perspective

  The Pro-Choice Position from a Libertarian Perspective

  America’s Worst Fitness Coach

  Conquering Genes, Governments, and Graves

  V. Freedom From Around the World

  The Right to Life Under Socialism

  Ukraine: The Forgotten, Modern-Day Freedom Fighters

  Trump, Russia, and What Putin Gains if Mueller Succeeds

  The Politics of Race and Property in South Africa

  VI. Individualism and Innovation

  Music Without Intellectual Property

  How Good Intentions Can Squash Innovation

  The Digital Age Returns Education to the Individual

  Contributors

  Foreword

  Most people who know of me, know about my political trials and tribulations and usually see me as a political thought leader of the liberty movement. Yet I came to these ideals not as a theoretician or politician, but from a real-life perspective after decades in the business world. I was first introduced to the philosophy of freedom through Robert Ringer, a financial guru – not through the likes of Mises, Rothbard or Bastiat.

  Therefore, it has been relatively easy for me to simplify the libertarian message, and make it accessible to everyone, because I have never been caught up in all the politics of it. Once you realize that the true philosophy of liberty lies not merely in politics, but in everyday life, everything becomes clearer. I’ve often said that the movement is not just about liberty and rights, but about the pursuit of happiness. Liberty is the means to that end. Unfortunately, too many libertarians get that wrong.

  Freedom is also essential to modern business leadership. Post-industrial leadership is all about enabling your team to be proactive and to quickly respond to change. With every day, innovation accelerates and businesses are expected to become leaner and more efficient.

  Libertarians have often been painted as these “anarchist” or “stoner” types. Can libertarians really run businesses? Absolutely! In fact, most modern successful businesses are headed by libertarians. These pioneers understand a simple equation:

  Personal Freedom + Accountability + Transparency = Innovation

  This is the key to modern business success.

  The libertarian movement is also about modern government. The left wants to be your mother and give you everything. The right wants to be your father and protect you from everything. Both sides stifle the individual and, in turn, erode our great American culture.

  Libertarians want to be your brother or sister. We want to love you, but not dominate you or deprive you. And when you are in trouble, we still want to be there to help. The government’s role should be protecting the rights of the individual when they are attacked by the local bully, not enforcing the personal whims of the victors of the last election. Respect for the individual and their rights will allow all to grow and prosper. Liberty is the future of effective government.

  The authors of this book get it right. I know the authors through our shared arduous journeys in the social media landscape. Social media is one of the toughest realms to master, but it also holds the most potential to influence all people and change the world. That is where we, the liberty movement, must hone our skills. As we traverse haters, lovers, bots and trolls, we must try to understand and sway everyone we can. The powers that be, the lobbyists and major political parties, have the money to own the airwaves. But we own the truth. On social media and in this book and others like it, we shall spread this truth far and wide. As long as people are deprived of freedom and happiness, we shall carry on the fight.

  This book discusses both the theory and applications of liberty. It explores how people think within the movement, and outside of it. It tries to empower all of us to find common ground and move forward together.

  The writers of this book are individuals. They provide their individual takes on the many shapes that liberty can take. The reader will find that he or she may resonate with certain ideas, and less so with others. But the reader will surely be challenged to contemplate all the roles for liberty in our lives. And that is crucial.

  The authors examine what others call “common sense” and question it. They look at axioms and test them. They look at norms and confront them. In some cases, you will agree. In others, you won’t. In some cases, you’ll see the struggles that you and those you know and love have gone through (and how the government likely made them worse). And in other cases, you won’t feel a connection at all. But you will be forced to think, and you should savor that opportunity. I did. It’s worth the read because you’ll mull over the topics for days after. You might even change a perspective you’ve held all your life.

  So please continue to pursue your happiness, your way. And don’t tread on anybody… unless, of course, they are consenting adults.

  Larry Sharpe

  2018 Libertarian Party Candidate

  for Governor of New York

  Editors’ Introduction

  “From a small spark may burst a great flame.”

  - Dante Alighieri (c. 1300)

  Over one hundred years ago, Vladimir Lenin penned The Spark, prophesying that his communist dream would catch on like wildfire. From that spark sprung an inferno of parasitic ideologies and governments, which, in the century that followed,
scorched half the world, killing millions and enslaving billions. In 1990, with the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the world let out a collective sigh of relief as the inferno of authoritarian collectivism was finally pronounced dead. Almost three decades later, we now know this sigh to have been premature. The forces of socialism, cronyism, nationalism and statism continue to jeopardize freedom around the world. No country, however “Westernized” or “progressive,” is immune to the rising flames.

  We must fight fire with fire. We must ignite liberty.

  Igniting Liberty: Voices for Freedom Around the World is a collection of exclusive essays by collaborators from four continents, of diverse religious perspectives, ethnicities, backgrounds, careers and walks of life. We are united solely by a commitment to reigniting the spark of freedom. There is no greater goal, higher moral, or worthier purpose than returning to individuals their right to live their lives how they see fit. It is the difference between humanity and barbarity, innovation and stagnation.

  In the ensuing chapters, we defend freedom for all reasons, in all sectors, for all people, everywhere around the globe. It is especially rare to find, in our day and age, credible voices that can tunnel through propaganda and “alternative facts” to bring you the unencumbered truth. We have medical workers championing individual choice in healthcare, economists validating the free market, and voices from around the globe discussing the respective histories of their homelands. We explore why healthcare costs are so high, why governments are so ineffective, and why unshackling the free market and the individual is the best way to save our fledgling democracies.

  To appreciate freedom, one must first escape the mindset of captivity. By systematically and unwaveringly exposing the truth, we hope to help our society shed the Stockholm syndrome of statism.

  Even within the liberty movement, there is ample room for disagreement and discussion. Igniting Liberty seeks to foster such informed discussions, so much so that our authors offer opposing viewpoints on key issues so that readers may form their own conclusions. Ultimately, however, we aim to reveal a vital truth that has been deliberately hidden by politicians, corporations and the other forces that be: there is more that unites us than divides us. All citizens of the world want freedom, innovation and opportunity. All of us share these fundamental values. Igniting Liberty aims to consistently apply these shared values to all political and social issues under the Sun.

  As the editors and drivers behind Igniting Liberty, we must thank all the collaborators for the months tirelessly spent working on their contributions that helped make this a book worthy of any reader’s library. We also thank Larry Sharpe, who today is making waves in the American libertarian movement, for agreeing to and timeously writing the foreword.

  Nicholas Woode-Smith, Arthur Cleroux, and Vinny Marshall have assisted us at various junctures with the logistics and procedures associated with publishing the book – and this is Champion Books’ first ever publication – and to them we are indebted. Finally, we thank Being Libertarian LLC, its directors, staff, and volunteers, for offering us the platform to undertake this initiative and helping us make it a success.

  Igniting Liberty is a must-have manifesto for the advocates of liberty, and a great introductory gift for those not yet acquainted. The compelling, original arguments and powerful statistics laden within the pages ahead can give you the upper-hand in a debate, or even turn the greatest liberty-skeptic into a believer.

  Whether you know it or not, somewhere deep inside, on some intimate frequency, you too hear freedom’s call. Help us kindle her flames, so that liberty’s pyre may burn bright and ward away the darkness of tyranny. Only together can we ignite liberty.

  Adam Barsouk

  Martin van Staden

  The Editors

  I. Founding Principles

  Freedom: the Embattled Champion of Human History

  Adam Barsouk

  “HE WHO KNOWS HIMSELF KNOWS GOD”

  In a near poetic example of irony, this forward-thinking phrase actually originates from the Quran, a document that has been misused for centuries to subjugate the individual in the name of God. Muslims need not feel singled out—they belong to but one of thousands of confident belief systems, and more broadly, cultures, that have been employed since the dawn of man to enforce social order and deprive the populace of their natural rights. Karl Marx, who, like a drug addict, never worked a day in his life, identified religion as the “opium of the masses” before going on to found a quasi-religion of his own. As different as they may appear, the opium fiend, monk and communist do, in fact, represent heads of the same hydra. The devout ideologue (whether religious or social) toils and perishes in pursuit of another’s masqueraded purpose, while the hedonist rejects the existence of purpose altogether. Neither is the closer to realizing his or her own interests, but both play very well into society’s exploitive grasp. Liberty is the individual’s only defense from the ceaseless attack on both fronts.

  EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY

  Nearly all civilizations known to man were born of a stratified culture and organized religion (often independently of one another), indicating that these ingredients are an evolutionary necessity. To study humanity, one must understand that culture is merely an expansion of the toolbox man uses to conquer his world, governed by the same evolutionary pressure as his physical traits.

  Evolution states that every being has an inherent goal of self-propagation. Of course, genes and proteins do not consciously decide to propagate, but those with enhanced survival are passed on and therefore become more common. This theory, which in science extends from molecules to organisms (like ourselves) to entire universes, can be also extrapolated to culture (the term ‘meme’ is actually the cultural equivalent of a gene[1]). Certain beliefs, practices, or societal organizations (memes) can be more adaptive towards the survival of its practitioners than others and therefore passed on through generations just like genes. Adaptive is not synonymous with morally good or reprehensible—it simply means that said trait contributes to the survival and expansion of the society which practices it and therefore contributes to the survival of the human race.

  The haphazard trial-and-error is a universal reality of life, impervious to the suffering of its victims. Billions of species, civilizations, and peoples have fallen under its gaze. As a random process, it is also indifferent to any anthropogenic concept of “fairness.” No matter how much we delude ourselves as a society, natural selection is as true today as ever. Lamenting one’s birth into poverty holds as much credence as bemoaning the demise of the dinosaurs at no fault of their own.

  It is only through this objective lens that the story of mankind begins to crystallize. Despite its “heartlessness,” evolution has raised us from squabbling in the dirt to building skyscrapers that reach for the sky; from pitifully adapting to a changing planet to shaping the world around us. Yet Rome was not built in a day (though, ominously, it did collapse on one).

  The natural state of man is free—free to innovate and survive, or free to perish. Such freedom is closely mirrored by the life of the original hunter-gatherer, a survival strategy employed for nearly 90% of humanity’s history.[2] The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was one of small, egalitarian groups, similar to today’s “extended families,” which reciprocally assisted one another, e.g. the men hunted, the women gathered.

  Everyone contributed according to their strengths, while those who failed to do so were expelled. Moreover, since everyone was related, one’s interests were vested in the survival of his or her tribesmen. While Karl Marx misidentified the hunter-gatherer lifestyles as “primitive communism,” its tenets of “he who does not work, shall not eat” (another wise religious aphorism, this time from the New Testament) were actually the foundations of the trade-based economics that would later bring men to unimaginable heights.

  THE ORIGINS OF GOVERNMENT

  All this changed with the development of agriculture, a far more productive source of nutrition, but one
which requires scarce, fertile territory. Society evolved from migrating groups to settled, single-family homes, and the individual became ever more important. These individuals now had an incentive to defend their land and crops, and the economic surplus to do so. Thus, the foundations of the State were the same then as now: the protection of property rights from foreign and domestic threats. Greater food availability drove a population explosion, and of the ensuing competition were born the first examples of record keeping, a judicial system, and total war.[3]

  This was a time before men learned to appreciate the long-term benefits of innovation and commerce, and were thus easily tempted by the short-term spoils of war: namely, slaves. Governments now took upon the role of enforcing the hierarchical subjugation of foreigners, peasants, and women for labor. Seeing as the growth of these states had outpaced their moral mandate and justification, statesmen had to invent their own mandate to rule, which often manifested itself in religion. The surpluses of improved agricultural technology and war, rather than being invested back into the economy, were sequestered into the construction of ever larger temples and pyramids as demonstrations of the state’s unquestionable, God-given authority. Although, over time, the organization and titles of this system evolved to keep up with technological developments, its foundations have remained largely unchanged for over three millennia.

  Rather ironically, such lavish demonstrations of power often bankrupted and ultimately destroyed the state they were intended to preserve. In the jungles of Cambodia, one can find the ruins of Angkor Wat, the largest religious complex in the world, which about a millennia ago, belonged to the largest city in the world: Angkor Thom, the capital of the Khmer empire. Many of us have never heard of the Khmer, because, over but a few generations, their awesome temples were lost to the entropy of the forest. Imagine the surprise of the French colonizers, arriving in Cambodia (then and now one of the most impoverished nations on the planet) to stumble upon the crumbling remains of a once haughty civilization. Perhaps, had the Khmer used their manpower, elephants, and sandstone to develop infrastructure and trade routes rather than temples, Cambodia could still be a world superpower today. The symbols of the Khmer, such as the seven-headed snake, ominously adorn the tombs and sparse structures of present-day Cambodia. Imagine a future where the United States Bald Eagle is but a relic of a long-forgotten past, serving as a reminder of the frailty of civilization.