The Dos and Don’ts of Talking Liberty

The future of freedom and liberty depends on our ability to convey the immeasurable benefit of freedom

Jeffrey A. Tucker of FEE

Nearly everyone knows there is something wrong with the world as it is. The liberty-minded person believes that he or she knows a major part of what is wrong. There is not enough flexibility and adaptability in the structures of government that presume to manage the social order. State systems have made life rigid and regimented–replete with regulations, taxes, mandates, and prohibitions–with the cost that too many people are excluded, demoralized, and impoverished. For moral and practical reasons, this situation must end.

In other words, freedom is the answer.

We recall the moment when we discovered this. The light flicked on. The shades came off and the world looked different from before. Our lives changed. How can we help others arrive at this point?

The short summary of what we believe: the astonishing rise of government power over the course of the last one hundred years has truncated freedoms, human rights, and prosperity along with all the fruits of the human spirit. Government is the main enemy, but government hides under cover of social contract, social justice, democracy, religion, security, and a host of other changing veils.

All of this is clear to those steeped in the tradition of liberty-minded thought as it has gradually emerged over the centuries. But it is obviously not clear to the vast majority of the human family, who continue to live under the illusion that giving government more power will magically cure society’s ills by infusing us with a greater reality of fairness, justice, morality — or whatever they claim.

How best to correct this error? How best to share this knowledge? How best to bring others along to the same understanding?

Here are ten rules–five don’ts and five dos. And I know: every libertarian reader of this article is immediately saying “Don’t tell me what to do!” …..
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