First Principles of Liberty

Let's begin from first principles.

Every person has the absolute right to their own body; you own yourself. No one else has the right to own you. This is the right of self-ownership, and it is the basis of all human rights. Thomas Jefferson says we have the right to life. If others own us, if others have the power of life and death over us, we are denied our right to self-ownership.

Since I own my body, I have the right to decide what to do with it. It's mine. No one else has the right to do so without my consent. This is the right of self-determination. Thomas Jefferson says we have the right to liberty. If others have the power to control our actions, we are denied our right to self-determination.

Since I own my body and am the sole determiner of its actions, I also own the product of my labor. No one else has the right to demand labor from me. This is the right to property, which Jefferson replaced with the right to pursue happiness, because he didn't want slave owners thinking they had a right to own people. (Of course, Jefferson was a slave owner himself, and didn't do a very good job of living up to the ideals he wrote down. They're still good ideals.) If others have the power to confiscate our belongings, we are denied our right to property.

So every person has these rights, inherently. Inherent means existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute. One cannot separate these rights from a person, because these rights are part of person-hood. To deny these rights is to deny basic humanity.

Because these rights are inherent in all persons, they cannot be granted by the state. They may be recognized and enumerated for protection by a benevolent state, they may be ignored and infringed by tyrannical dictators, but they exist independent of the state.

The only restriction on the exercise of your rights is that you do not infringe on the rights of others. You may not kill or harm people, because this violates their right to life. You may not enslave people, because this violates their right to liberty. And you may not steal from people, because this violates their right to property.

From this, we derive the non-aggression principle, which succintly states that no person may initiate force against another person.

This, then, is the only crime: to initiate force against another person, depriving them of life, liberty, or property.

A government exists to use force. It funds itself through force. If its power expands beyond using that force to protect the rights of the people, it must be checked. And if it uses its power to deprive the people of life, liberty, and property, then it is no longer fulfilling the legitimate role of a government, but rather that of a criminal cartel.

There is one instance in which the state may exercise its power to limit the rights of people, and that is when those people are using force to infringe the rights of others. This is the putative purpose of the criminal justice system, and it is my intention to examine the United States criminal justice system from the paradigm of liberty described above, and to offer concrete policy solutions from the perspective of a formerly incarcerated person.