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What do you value? What’s important to you in life? I can name a few things that are important to me: liberty, peace, respect, human rights. Some people don’t value those things, or at least, they’re lower down on their list of values. Instead they value things like certainty, convenience, and even feeling good, and their own ignorance.
Now a lot of people will say that they value liberty, but once you get into it a little more closely, you can see it’s not quite so true. So let me as k you: did you ever value liberty enough to say “Free Irwin Schiff”, a man who was in prison because of his belief in property rights – his belief that his money and other people’s money, shouldn’t be taken from them by force, and used as collateral to fund central banks, and fund expansive, endless wars.
Did you ever value liberty enough to say – at least just say the words – “Free Ross Ulbricht” – a man who provided a service for hundreds of thousands of people, a man who provided a service that was very much in demand, the service of allowing people to buy and sell drugs on the Internet.
The thing is, if you value certainty over liberty, then you must either value your ignorance, pretending that humans rights abuses don’t happen, because of institutions such as taxation – or, you must value the certainty that human rights abuses are going to happen, because that’s exactly what does happen, when you give people the power to rule over others.
Liberty is dirty; you don’t get any guarantees in liberty. Sometimes liberty is even violent. But you know, liberty also gives you personal responsibility – that’s the thing. That’s the great lie; that’s the great trick. Because what they’ve told you is, by giving up some of your liberty, you’re actually going to limit your personal responsibility, which is something that can never, ever be true. Nobody can ever take that power from you – nobody can ever take the fact that you are captain of your own soul, that you are architect of your own destiny. And any responsibility that you have, for the rest of humanity, can never be delegated to someone else. It cannot.
Whether you choose the certainty of domination, the certainty of people abusing their power, or you choose liberty – that beautiful chaos, that beautiful space that allows the human race to transform, to transcend, to create something new and different – whatever you choose, I advise you to choose. Because people may call you many things. They may call you delusional, a pinko, an idealist, a fool, a warmonger, a violent sociopath. They might even call you a freedom fighter. But, as long as you choose, they will never call you the worst of all insults. They will never call you wishy-washy, they will never call you vague, and they will never call you indecisive.