Many Paths To Liberty

This is the speech I delivered at the opening ceremony for the Free State Project’s 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum this past weekend in Nashua, New Hampshire.

This speech represents maybe the first of two important parts in articulating a vision for a free society, nay a true society, for anything else is no society at all. It is my intent, in the not too distant future, to write a description and defense of the second part. That second part, maybe more important than this first, is the correct theological and philosophical foundation on which to build a view of individual rights, surely also to be all the more controversial than this.

As Alan Schaffer, President of the Alliance for Separation of School and State illustrated immediately after my speech (I’ll paraphrase), the rights are the can, the beliefs are the contents. But moreso, I say, they’re also the table on which the can sits, and the floor on which the table sits, and so on.

But I’ll get to that later. First, the speech… Part 2 of 1… Enjoy…

GREETING

Good morning and welcome to the Free State Project’s 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum!

My name is Varrin Swearingen and I am, again, serving as President of the Free State Project. On behalf of the Free State Project, I’d like to welcome all of you to this 3rd Annual New Hampshire Liberty Forum. It’s good to see you all here. Who was here at last year’s Liberty Forum? I wasn’t, unfortunately. I was at the first one, though. Was anyone here for that?

Well, I’m setting a rather unpleasant Liberty Forum trend. It seems I can’t come to this event in perfectly good pain-free health. Two years ago, while I was snowboarding in Alaska, I got into a fist fight with the planet and broke my arm in the process. So I was wearing a brace for Liberty Forum.

This year, about two weeks ago, I went to the hospital to take a nap. Has anyone ever taken a little nap at the hospital? Ya know what happens during a hospital nap? They stab you! So I’m still recovering from my stab wound.

I’ll spare you the details but I’m moving kinda slow, and I can’t sit upright for long. Reclining, on the other hand, works well, so if you’re looking for me, I’m probably stealing the recliner in the board room.

INTRODUCTION

This year’s Liberty Forum theme is Many Paths to Liberty and I’d like to use that theme as a springboard for this little sermon to the choir.

Liberty is a common vision we all share. The many paths are the different ways we go about attaining liberty. The Many Paths idea sent me on a train of thought that I’d like to share which I hope you’ll find helpful.

I’m about to do something that might be a little unpopular here. For the next few minutes, I’m going to talk about two controversial topics: beliefs, and differences. These topics could easily get me in hot water, but before you load your weapon, or, for those of you whose weapon is already loaded, start aiming it at me, fear not, I’ll get to our common interest in liberty soon enough.

First, I’d like to give a few definitions and discuss the relationship between belief and behavior. Then I’ll review how some differing beliefs result in the recurring destruction of liberty and why it’s important that we correctly address this problem. Then, I’ll get to the fun stuff. I’ll defend the case for freedom as the framework for the peaceful coexistence of diverse beliefs, and share a bit about how our differing beliefs can actually be an advantage in advancing the cause of freedom – the Many Paths to Liberty we follow.

DEFINITIONS

Before we begin, I’ll define some terms. It’s not my intent to argue over definitions. Philosophers spend lifetimes doing just that and I only have 20 minutes, so I’ll give you rough definitions and hope that’s good enough.

Belief happens when a person becomes convinced something is true. This doesn’t mean it is actually true. It does mean that some person is convinced it’s true.

Truth is that which corresponds with reality. It might be even better understood by what it’s not: error.

Behavior is what we do.

Belief can be in something tangible such as the existence of yourself or the chair your sitting on. It can be in something not easily or directly observed such as a God, the future, or a dwarf planet we just haven’t found yet. It can even be in something as absurd as aliens or the right to free education at your neighbor’s expense.

I tend to use the words belief, faith, and even religion interchangeably even though some would say that’s incorrect. Some definitions of religion include the belief in the existence of a soul, spirit, or deity of some sort. Faith, according to some definitions, might not necessarily imply something spiritual, but often includes belief in things without substantial proof. While some atheists might snipe at me for calling them religious, I can credit them for having more faith than me. The point of all this is not to pick a fight, but to state this important fact: we all believe many things, and many of them are different. I’ll do my best to stick to the word belief today.

I should note that I’m not a relativist when it comes to truth. I believe the existence of passionately held conflicting beliefs does not mean there is actually more than one reality or more than one conflicting truth. The law of non-contradiction applies to all of reality. I would say there is just one reality – one truth, but we believe different things about it. Those beliefs can be erroneous, truth cannot. So again, I’ll be using the word belief today in recognition of these points I’ve just made.

BELIEF AND BEHAVIOR

I believe much or even most of adult human behavior is guided directly or indirectly by belief. Breathing, for example, is our most basic physiological need and is usually guided unconsciously. But even it can be affected by what we believe. During in-flight turbulence, one person might gasp, believing they are in danger, while another laughs, believing they’re having a fun ride. Most other behaviors are affected by belief to an even greater degree. Allow me to give an example that comes from an environment familiar to me that you might get a kick out of.

Back in the mid-90’s, I flew the Embraer Brasilia which is a 30-seat turboprop regional airliner. Modern airliners use hydraulics to power some or all of their flight controls, landing gear and brakes. Most airliners have three independent systems that are numbered. The Brasilia, on the other hand, had only two independent systems, and for some reason, they chose to label them with colors instead of numbers. There was the green system and the blue system. The hydraulic fluid itself, by the way, is actually purple.

Now I have to relay one more technical detail here. Though the systems were mostly independent, it was possible for fluid to transfer between the systems in small quantities. Repeatedly cycling the parking brake, for example, would result in a little bit of fluid from the green system going into the blue system. There were quantity gages in the cockpit so you could actually see the change in quantity.

Now I didn’t do this myself, but I heard the story from someone who was involved. One day, a brand new flight attendant got onto a Brasilia all happy and ready to go fly. She introduced herself to the Captain and told him she was new. He noticed her positive can-do attitude and asked her for a favor. He said, “Can you go back and flush the lavatory a couple times?” She gleefully said, “Sure!”

While she was gone, he told the First Officer to play along. After she was done, he called her back into the cockpit. He asked her how many times she flushed the lavatory. She said twice. He then proceeded to explain that she needed to do it a couple more times. “See this gage here? This tells the fluid level in the blue hydraulic system. They call it that because it uses blue fluid, you know, from the lav. Sometimes it gets a little low on the ground and flushing the lav adds a small amount to the tank. See, the level here is a little low, so can you flush it a few more times?”

She was very excited to help out. While she was gone, the Captain cycled the parking break several times so some more fluid would go into the blue system. She came back up to look at the gage and said, “Hey that’s amazing. I never knew that!” On the next leg, he repeated the ritual. Finally he told her just to come up, look at the gage, and to do it herself if she thought it needed more. By the end of the trip, he and the First Officer were in stitches.

But what was really a riot was hearing the story from the next crew she flew with when she explained to them that the airplane must be broken because flushing the lav wasn’t filling the blue system.

Now we’ve all been the subject of practical jokes, and some of the best ones come when you believe something that isn’t true and it results in some comical behavior like frantically flushing the lav, or searching for a left handed monkey wrench or any number of candid camera-worthy pranks. Those kinds of jokes work precisely because belief generally determines behavior. Our flight attendant friend believed that flushing the lav refilled the blue hydraulic system.

Of course, it’s not just funny behavior that belief influences. In fact, it’s nearly all behavior. We turn the key to our car, flip light switches, and even eat food because we have learned, that is we believe, that those behaviors produce the results we desire.

BELIEF AND THE DESTRUCTION OF LIBERTY

So what does this have to do with the destruction of liberty? Beliefs sometimes influence behavior that violates individual liberty.

I’ll take for granted here that all of you have at a common understanding of at least the basic principles of individual rights. A right is violated when someone behaves – takes action – in a way that violates a that right. Rights aren’t violated by mere belief, but by the behavior that belief influences.

Having demonstrated that belief determines behavior, we can draw this summary conclusion: that the person who is violating another person’s rights does not believe in that person’s rights with enough strength to prevent them from violating those rights.

This doesn’t just happen in one way, though, and it’s helpful to understand the differences if we want to make any progress in persuading people that individual rights should be respected. I’d like to describe three different ways in which beliefs causes the destruction of liberty. First, there’s ignorance about rights. Second some believe that there are no individual rights. And third, some believe it’s acceptable for rights to be trumped by a stronger belief, usually something passionately held by the believer. I’ll spend the most attention on that third group.

I should note that there is another possibility that could apply in any of those three cases and that is that the person is actually unaware of their behavior itself. That’s a different problem not directly related to beliefs about rights, so I’ll set it aside for now.

To expand on this, I’ll start with ignorance. Some people simply have never given the idea of rights any substantial thought. In fact, I think this is true of a lot of people. They’ve mostly ignored the topic of rights or don’t really understand it. These people are not intentional rights violators, they simply don’t give rights any thought when they do things.

Often, those who are ignorant about rights tend to be aware of their behavior but not aware that it’s problematic. In many cases, explaining the concept of individual rights would be sufficient. It’s important not to be condescending, but to be informative and educational. Encourage them to learn and think about their own rights and the rights of others. We should be actively reaching out to these people because they are numerous and are likely easily persuadable.

Next, there is a segment of people who hold a well defined belief that there is no such thing as individual rights as we know them. These people are not only intentional rights violators, they actively oppose the very idea of individual liberty. Fortunately, I believe they’re very few in number. Unfortunately, they’re not very persuadable. Their underlying beliefs are very different from ours.

Lastly, are people who do have a fairly well defined sense of rights, but they have a different problem. They believe that their beliefs are more important than your rights. In other words, their belief in rights exists but is weaker than their stronger belief in something else. That something else could be any number of things from do-gooder socialist economics to drug prohibition to gun grabbing, and so on.

People who fall into this category are intentional rights violators and they generally understand themselves that way, excusing their violations based on the importance of their beliefs and a pragmatic or ‘flexible’ view of rights. I suspect they make up the overwhelming majority of intentional rights violators. For that reason, I’d like to spend a bit more time making a case for freedom that might be persuasive to that audience.

The paradigm here is that it’s acceptable for passionately held belief to trump or abridge the rights of others.

There are an ever growing number of examples of this paradigm. Banks, politicians, and troubled homeowners believe it’s more important to to keep people in their homes even if they can’t afford them than it is to respect your right to the fruits of your labor. People of many stripes believe their idea of a monogamous heterosexual marriage is more important than the right of free association, and now, people who believe in homosexual marriage are jumping on that very same bandwagon. People who believe guns or drugs are a gateways to violent crime see their goal of prohibiting those items as more important than your right to possess or use them in a way that doesn’t violate the rights of others.

Accepting this paradigm is dangerous. It requires no paradigm shift at all to transition from mortgage bailouts, marriage laws, and drug and gun prohibition to acts of terrorism and war. Terrorists believe just as passionately as economists, politicians, preachers, and safety advocates that what they’re doing is good, and more important than your rights. Unfortunately, this paradigm is destructive to peace, prosperity, and ultimately life itself.

While we might not be able to change other peoples’ beliefs, we can influence them.

The problem with their current vision is everyone plunders everyone. We’re in that situation presently.

First, someone gains competitive advantage. They get their way by violating individual rights in support of their passionately held belief. Second, everyone else, sensing the unfairness of that act, decides to do likewise. At that point, plunder is no longer competitive advantage; it’s the minimum acceptable standard.

Then, having established the acceptability of violating rights in support of passionately held belief, the door is open to the supposed legitimacy of ever more grotesque rights violations. Several middle-eastern Islamic theocracies come to mind. Their recognized governments plunder the very life out of people to force their passionately held belief in some form of Islam onto everyone. Our government is not yet so oppressive, but it operates in the very same paradigm.

FREEDOM AS THE FRAMEWORK FOR PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE OF DIVERSE BELIEFS

It’s important to note that this problem only exists when we believe different things. If we all believed the same thing, there would be no rights violations. A remedy for this problem is to present freedom as the framework for the peaceful coexistence of different beliefs.

Instead of arguing that your belief, even your belief in rights, is true, point out your different beliefs and use that as a proof that different people do believe different things.

Show them that the acceptability of violating rights to support passionately held belief is destructive to society and to their own beliefs.

And, finally, explain to them that by stopping the plunder, and eliminating the ever more dangerous erosions of liberty, they can actually more effectively live out their beliefs.

They would be free to find like minded people with whom they could work freely, effectively, and voluntarily to pursue their vision for themselves and the society at large within the framework of freedom that is only limited by respect for individual rights. If their ideas are persuasive, they will no longer have to force anyone to believe them.

Freedom – respect for individual liberty – is the only peaceful solution to this problem, and it can only happen when people believe that, as passionately as any of their beliefs may be, it’s wrong to allow those beliefs to lead to violations of the rights of others.

BELIEF LEADING TO DIFFERENT PATHS TO LIBERTY

Now, I’m sure you all are wondering how that relates to Liberty Forum and the Free State Project in general?

Differing beliefs is not unique to those who violate rights. We all tend to strongly respect individual rights, but that doesn’t mean we all believe the same thing. In fact, there are some startlingly conflicting beliefs passionately held by people right here in this room.

The beauty of this is that, having accepted the proposition that it’s wrong to allow our beliefs to cause us to violate another person’s rights, we tend to work not to seek government favor for our beliefs, but to oppose government oppression of them. We have different beliefs leading to different tactics and issues that we focus on, but we share a common respect for individual liberty. So when one of us champions an issue we strongly believe in, the rest of us can at least nod our heads in agreement with the ultimate goal.

This is very different from those who allow their passionately held beliefs to violate individual rights. They agree only with others who share an interest in their specific niche. When others pursue their different passionately held beliefs at the expense of individual liberty, there is no such agreement, only conflict.

Free State Project participants agree to exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty and property. That agreement is another way of saying we agree to ask government only to protect individual rights, nothing more. That agreement enables us, despite our vastly differing beliefs, to work together in ways those opposing freedom cannot. Instead of working against each other, as inevitably happens when fighting over which rights to violate, we work together to protect everyone’s rights.

That idea is no longer just a dream, it’s a reality. We’ve seen it demonstrated repeatedly over the last several years, both within the community of FSP participants, and even outside it. For example, the Real ID bill and HCR6 brought together people with dramatically different beliefs to oppose government encroachment on individual rights. One passed, the other didn’t, but rest assured opposition to federal government violations of individual rights will continue. FSP participants have made the difference in many other issue-based victories involving opposition to or reduction in government violations of rights on issues such as taxes, education, guns, licensing, and so on.

And, of course, Free State Project participants have cooperated on campaigns resulting in election to public offices ranging from school boards, to select boards, to budget committees, all the way up to state representative. And, by the way, five victories out of 25 FSP-early-mover state representative races suggests we may have a lot more realistic opportunity to succeed than we originally thought. That’s exciting to me.

The Free State Project itself doesn’t actually engage in any of those activities – you do. We recognize that you all believe a lot of different things, and will take many paths to liberty. This weekend we’ll hear from people taking these many paths to liberty, including people who are working in New Hampshire in diverse ways, and some not necessarily focused on New Hampshire. And there are even a couple of people presenting this weekend who think we should be doing all this somewhere else. That ought to be entertaining and I’m actually looking forward to hearing them speak.

The Free State Project itself simply seeks more people who are ready to make this agreement – to come to New Hampshire and work together towards creating a society in which we all respect individual rights – where the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty and property. We have the right idea, the leverage, and the benefit of experience and success. All we need is more of you.

So what can you do to help make the Free State Project more successful? Here are three things that you can do. Every person in this room can do at least one of these things, if not all three.

1: Volunteer. The Free State Project organization can always use more volunteers. We try to be as organized as possible but it continues to be challenging to manage a large number of volunteers. If you want to volunteer, it’s best if you are a self-starter, have some good ideas, and are at least persistent enough not to let yourself fall through the cracks. I’ll confess I’m not the best volunteer manager in the world, so I ask for your patience. If you offer to help and tell me what you’d like to do or what your idea is, odds are good we’ll put you to work. You can reach me at president@freestateproject.org or find me this weekend, you know – on the recliner, and we can discuss your ideas.

2: Donate – We just adopted a budget for our new fiscal year which starts next month. We will go about raising money for that budget soon. But we have recently uncovered a unique opportunity that I hope will interest all of you. Our cost to find new participants is typically in the $50 – $100 per person range. That sounds high, but it’s really not when you consider what we’re asking them to commit to. The problem is that we have had almost no luck finding predictable, and highly expandable sources of participants at that cost. Usually we quickly hit a glass ceiling where additional spending results in a decreased rate of return.

Well, we believe we’ve found such an expandable source which could potentially bring in as many as 1,000 new participants this year on top of what we already expect, but only if we have the money to fund it. If you’ve already done the math, you know I’m asking for upwards of $100,000 solely to mine this source of new participants. You can make your check for $100,000 payable to Free State Project and deliver it to myself or Jean Alexander. We do, of course, take smaller donations. Consider sponsoring new participants for $100 each, or share one with a friend. If everyone in this room did that, we could have hundreds of new participants in a very short period of time and that would be very exciting. I should stress that this source already has a proven track record of success and is partly responsible for the sign-up rate increasing significantly within the last several months.

3: Pick a path and take it. Wherever you are, find some way that you want to work towards the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty and property. And don’t just think about it, do something about it. Even a simple action like forwarding an email to friends or writing a letter to the editor can be very effective. And if you don’t have any ideas of your own … as though that would apply to anyone in this room … find someone else’s great idea and offer to help them. Your contributions will be greatly appreciated and very effective because, in the end, though we’re all taking many paths, the destination is the same – Many Paths to Liberty.

Thank you very much for all you do and welcome to the Free State Project’s 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum.

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