Topic: Force, Matches 7 quotes.

Two Types of Force

Force of the kind here discussed is of two types. There is repellent or defensive force. There is aggressive force. The latter is always evil. There are no exceptions. No man has any moral right to use aggressive force against any other man. Nor have any number of men, in or out of societal organizations, any moral right to use it. One of the most distressing fallacies having to do with government and liberty is the assumption that the state, an agency presumably of the people, has rights beyond those possessed by the people. For example, the state uses aggressive force against an individual, compelling him to exchange some of his income for the alleged prosperity of Tennessee Valley residents. No reasonable person would sanction such an aggressive action on the part of any single citizen. Therefore, no reasonable person can logically believe that any such control belongs to a multitude of citizens. From what source does this extracurricular “right” of the state to use aggressive force derive? It has no derivation. It is an arrogation. This arrogation is as untenable as the divine right of kings theory; indeed, it is the same thing with the divine excuse omitted.

Any person has the natural and moral right to use repellent or defensive force against any other person who would aggress against him. No person on this earth has any moral right of control over any other person superior to the defense of his own life and livelihood. Two persons banding together do not acquire moral rights of control over others superior to the rights held by each before their association. No increase in the number of individuals involved morally alters this in any way ... Rights not possessed by individuals cannot properly be delegated to an agency, political or otherwise. Society’s agency, then, will find the proper limits of its scope in exercising for everyone, without favor to any, the natural and moral rights inherent in its members.

Source: Leonard E. Read

Topics: Force; Rights

Law Is Force

Since the law organizes justice, the socialists ask why the law should not also organize labor, education, and religion.

Why should not law be used for these purposes? Because it could not organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice. We must remember that law is force, and that, consequently, the proper functions of the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper functions of force. When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They safeguard all of these. They are defensive; they defend equally the rights of all.

Source: Frederic Bastiat
The Law

Topics: Force; Law

Force cannot be used in the interests of freedom—except for self-defense and rebellion against slavery. This holds true whether the force is applied by a majority or a minority. It holds true whether the force is applied by a robber with a pistol or by a representative of the majority of the people who have voted to force other persons to do what the majority considers “best for them.” The theory now held in this country that the votes of the majority automatically insure freedom is incorrect. It is now leading us to our own destruction. Might has never made right. It never will.

This is not to deny that a republic or representative democracy is the most desirable form of government we have yet discovered. It is not to deny that freedom is safer in the hands of the many than in the hands of the few. But it is to deny that freedom is automatically safe just because the franchise has become widespread in America; just because we call ourselves “a democracy.” It requires more than a vote to preserve liberty; it requires understanding on the part of the voters; it requires the knowledge that all governmental decrees and actions must be grounded on moral and natural law if they are to benefit the people.

Source: Dean Russell
What Can I Do?, Essays on Liberty, volume 3

Topics: Force; Freedom; Voting

What is politically defined as economic “planning” is the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by government officials.

Source: Thomas Sowell

Topics: Economics; Force; Politics

The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.

Source: Rose Wilder Lane

Topics: Force; Government

What Is Liberty?

We have been talking, and we do talk very much, about this wonderful, this glorious, this most choice principle of liberty, for which we are willing to sacrifice all that we possess in a worldly sense, and that we are also willing to add in that sacrifice our own lives to defend it. What is it? What is this liberty for which we are willing to fight, for which we are willing to sacrifice life and all that we possess in the world? Let me tell you. It is simply the liberty of all mankind to worship God in righteousness; that is what it is; for all mankind to have the liberty to do right, the liberty to do good, the liberty to pursue happiness, in honor, in virtue and in uprightness. But it cannot for one moment descend in any degree to license or to infringement upon the rights of others. No man has any liberty to impose upon his brother, to rob or to steal, to lie or to bear false witness, or to injure or wrong his fellowmen. When we are talking of this great and glorious principle of liberty it is that we may be free to worship God and to love him with all our hearts and minds and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to protect the principles of virtue and honor throughout all the world. That is the liberty that we are looking for and that we are willing to fight for.

We are not trying to defend the liberty of mankind to be drunken, to be debauchees, to advocate crime, to interfere with the rights of others. This is not liberty. The law of nations, as well as the law of God, prohibits it, and it cannot exist except it exist contrary to the laws of righteousness and contrary to the principles of liberty that we are willing to fight for and that we are striving for.

Source: President Joseph F. Smith
General Conference, April 1918

Topics: Force; Liberty

Obviously, as a matter of logic, if conquest can give a good title to territory, then conquest is a legitimate means of getting good title to territory. This is the unholy rule of force, the unholy rule that “might makes right.”

This is the rule that has lain behind every great empire that has ever been built during the whole history of the world; it lies behind every great empire that exists today. There is nothing new in the doctrine, neither in the practice.

Under such a rule, war is and must always be the instrument of the growth of empire. Under such a rule nations rise and fall, as might advances or wanes. Under such a rule, safety in empire comes only to the power which is dominant in arms and resources.

But such a, rule of force, of “might makes right,” is Satan-born. It is not of God.

Obviously no great empire of conquest can sleep quietly and comfortably of nights if the have-nots swagger forth in search of more territory and are willing to fight for it.

Source: President J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
General Conference, October 1939

Topics: Force; Government, Power; War

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