| iambinarymind |

trueloveisafire:

booksofthought:

A good definition of liberty.

Just last night, someone asked me what I meant when I spoke about “freedom”. I’d never stopped to consider an actual definition for the term. After a bit of hasty consideration, I offered the following: Freedom is the absence of outside coercion.

Of course, I then had to elaborate on what I mean by “outside” (that is, anything but oneself) and “coercion” (by which I mean an original act of physical violence by one toward another to achieve a result; a violation of the non-aggression principle).

I don’t consider advice or yelling to be coercion. People have the right to speak as they want, regardless of whether or not I agree. Can speech be harassment? Sure. And the use of threats of violence is something I need to consider further. But I would be walking on a slippery slope if I began parsing speech between “non-violent” and “violent”.

Anyway, just a bit of synchronicity that I would need for the first time to consider a definition for “freedom” last night (and I just posted about this over on Twitter), then this morning this pops up on my dash.

To continue down this most important line of thinking (what freedom is and how the implementation of self-ownership derived private property rights along with the non-aggression principle would play out, including your thoughts on speech), I highly recommend reading the two following books in order:

#1 - “For A New Liberty” by Murray N. Rothbard (Free ebook download here: http://bit.ly/FANL-MR - A free audiobook version can also be found either at mises.org or just search YouTube)

#2 - “The Ethics of Liberty” by Murray N. Rothbard (Free ebook download here: http://bit.ly/TEOL-MR - Again, a free audiobook version can also be found either at mises.org or just search YouTube).

Us liberty lovers are growing in numbers faster than ever! Keep spreading the message of individualism/liberty/voluntaryism/freedom. The revolution is between the ears. :)

(via informationaction)