On Substack Notes, kulak points out that the beliefs that led to the American colonists taking up arms against King George’s government don’t expire:
A statue idealizing the individual minutemen who would compose the militia of the United States.
Postcard image of French’s Concord Minuteman statue via Wikimedia Commons.
One of the things that drives me nuts about people who claim to subscribe to modern libertarianism (as opposed to the American Revolutionary ideology) is the claim to be “peaceful” and “antiwar”
Libertarianism isn’t antiwar. The American founding values aren’t antiwar. They never have been. It is a permanent declaration of war.
Live Free or Die
Sic Semper Tyrannis.
“Thus always to tyrants”
When does “always” end? NEVER
If those values succeed then 10,000 years from after your descendants have forgotten the name of America itself, they will be killing tyrants and carving their hearts from their chest.
Libertarianism is not “peaceful” it is a declaration that no peace shall ever exist again. That a free people will never have peace with any who’d seek to rule them. Eternal civil war against all would-be tyrants from the pettiest to the most grandiose.
The “non-aggression principle” does not state that the libertarian my never aggress against another … It states only that he may not aggress FIRST, afterwards any and all aggression, even the most disproportionate, is permitted.
“Taxation is Theft” is the claim that a tax collector or government agent paid out of taxes has the same moral status as burglar/home invader caught in your child’s bedroom. It is the claim that that those who benefit and enable the welfare programs paid out of your taxes have the same moral protection from your wrath should you gain the upper hand as a mugger actively threatening you with a gun lest you hand over your wallet.
“Taxation is Theft” necessarily justifies just as revolutionary and total a upset in the political order as “Property is Theft” did … because theft inherently is a violation of your extended person to be resisted without restriction. And just as the Communist claim of “property is theft” justified the most total and brutal wars in human history to destroy the social order (and social classes) who made “property” possible. Libertarianism and “Taxation is Theft” must necessarily justify just as extreme a charnel house to render “Taxation” impossible.
“Live Free or Die” is necessarily, and has always been a declaration of war upon those who would choose not to “live free”, or remain loyal to a tyrant or master.
The founding fathers didn’t make nice with the Loyalists who remained faithful the crown: They ethnically cleansed large portions of them equal to 4% the US population (notably the Loyalist Dutch of New York), confiscated their lands, and drove them into Canada, several mothers with babes nearly starving. Then they invaded them again in 1812. (Read Tigre Dunlop’s interviews with the survivors in Canada in “Recollections on the War of 1812”).
What Loyalists who managed to remain in the US did not regain full rights as citizens until after the war of 1812, almost 40 years after the revolution.
So if you claimed to believe in “Libertarianism” or the American Revolution, ask yourself: “Do I really believe in Liberty and the American Revolution? Or am I a just a flavor of Progressive Democrat who thinks the income tax should be slightly lower?”
Signed,
A Canadian Descended from Loyalists
