“The end of the law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. … For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be where there is no law: and is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists.”
– John Locke
“But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“All men are, or ought to be free, possessing unalienable rights, and the high and noble qualifications of the laws of nature and of self-preservation, to think, and act, and say as they please, while they maintain a due respect to the rights and privileges of all other creatures, infringing upon none.”
– Joseph Smith Jr.
My Political Philosophy
I strive to judge every policy not upon popularity but upon principle. I believe that timeless universal moral laws govern our nature, including our exercise of force, and that our happiness depends upon our conformity to those laws. Although I don’t claim to understand their details perfectly, I’ll attempt to express their generalities through these points below.
- God-Given Rights. We each have equal God-given (or natural) rights, of which the most basic (from which others derive) include rights (1) over our selves, (2) over the fruits of our labors, (3) over our children, (4) to contract with others, and (5) to defend against others’ aggression. These rights imply both (A) self-ownership and (B) non-aggression.
- Rights-Defense. Unilateral force is justified not against every wrong but usually only as a necessary last resort in defense against aggression. Proven aggressors may be justly punished with appropriate restrictions upon their own rights, whether their property (via fines) or their liberty (via imprisonment) or, in rare cases, their lives (via execution).
- Defensive Agents. We may justly exercise our rights to both contract and defense together to charter rights-defending agencies like states, which serve us by (1) clearly codifying innate boundaries between our innate rights, (2) impartially judging when people are unwilling/unable to respect those boundaries, and (3) effectively administering justice.
- Wise Statecraft. States operate best with maximal decentralization, in which individual households mostly govern themselves and maintain most authority, smaller jurisdictions are served (not ruled) by larger jurisdictions, and authority is divided both vertically and horizontally, including robust checks-and-balances plus wise due-process-of-law.
- Civil Disobedience. Whenever states enact laws that exceed authority or otherwise violate rights, we are not morally obligated to obey them—but, unless such laws require us to defy God, it’s usually best to obey them while striving to correct them. Whenever states grow tyrannical systematically, they illegitimize themselves and justify our rebellion.
Most of these points derived from Christian doctrine into libertarian (or classical liberal) philosophy, which inspired America’s founders. They are principles that the U. S. Declaration of Independence proclaimed boldly as self-evident truths and/or that the U. S. Constitution implemented wisely to establish the free compound republic that we now enjoy.
On Representation
I relish feedback from people, and I’ll strive to always give it the respect that it deserves, but I’ll always ultimately vote on principle not popularity. I agree with British statesman Edmund Burke that “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
David for Liberty 