Do You Believe in the Zero Aggression Principle?

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ajax
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Do You Believe in the Zero Aggression Principle?

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You know yourself. You want to be free. With your freedom, you can pursue happiness, in whatever form that takes, so long as you don’t hurt others.

If you’re like most people, your personal values include the Golden Rule or something very close to it. In other words, you have enough empathy to realize that others want that same freedom to pursue their happiness.

But when you enter politics, whether you’re conservative, progressive, or independent, it’s extremely likely your political actions contradict the Golden Rule! This may be news to you! After all, you’re a decent and smart person. But if you want to harmonize your political actions with your moral values, this site is for you!

We are voluntaryist libertarians. We believe in and promote the Zero Aggression Principle (ZAP), which says…

Don’t threaten or initiate force.

This means…

Force must be limited to defensive purposes (such as criminal justice)
People must be free to follow their conscience, provided they respect the equal rights of others
There are NO political exceptions: We must NOT ask politicians to initiate force against others, even for “good intentions”

The ZAP is a Silver Rule partner to the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule has many forms, but it basically says, “Treat others as you want to be treated.” However…

This can be difficult in practice. What if others don’t want what you want? So we advocate the ZAP as a Silver Rule…

Don’t hurt others. If you don’t want people to tread on you, don’t tread on them.

This is much easier to do. You already live your life this way, unless you’re a sociopath. You don’t use force to make people obey your preferences, do you? But please notice that politics and “government” operate on the exact opposite principle…

One side, the majority, gangs up on the other side, the minority, to make them do things against their will.

In other words…

We all behave like sociopaths whenever we use politics and government to impose our preferences on others.

We think this political approach to governance is inherently immoral

Political government is violence based. This requires conflict and violation. This destroys human happiness. But…

Political government is also inherently impractical

Any system funded and executed using threats of violence is freed from the need to perform well. This is inherently unpragmatic. It wastes resources and destroys prosperity.

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