However, millennia of state coercion has lowered individual expectations of freedom, and eliminated the desire to pursue a principled morality in society today. Most individuals base their political opinions not on what is right, but on what is the most expedient way to make the state function in their favor. This has resulted not only in an unjust society and legal system, but in an atmosphere of pressure-group warfare, where all battle all for government favors, in an aristocracy of political pull. Several specific institutions are directly indicative of this: health care, education, property rights, and social welfare.

Health Care

The concept of ñhealth care as a rightî has existed since the dawning of the industrial revolution, when expensive new treatments emerged to allow individuals a longer life than ever believed possible. The very fact that these treatments were revolutionary and new required their immense costs. In America, primarily around the time of the Great Depression, the concept that income should not play a part in oneÍs ability to obtain health care gained a wide following. Such a viewpoint asserted that because all individuals have a ñright to lifeî that by restricting treatment only to those who could afford to pay for it, that the doctors and hospitals who delivered treatments were violating the rights of the poor.

This point of view has pretty much become the societal norm these days. Unfortunately, such a belief not only enslaves doctors and hospitals to the sick and invalid, but annihilates the concept of rights. The ñright to lifeî is not the same as the theoretical ñrightî to be kept alive, which the ñfree health careî supporters pursue. Such a belief enslaves all to all, by assuming that by failing to save a life one is guilty of murder. But this is in fact the same philosophical position which is behind most other state activity: protecting the weak and enslaving the strong. It results in a society where success is regarded as evil, and punishable through government penalties and social ostracism. It is alive and well in America today.

Education

Such beliefs are even more ingrained in the field of education. State education has existed for thousands of years in human societies. ItÍs primary role was to educate the masses to fight in the wars waged between the aristocracy. It isnÍt too much different today.

The concept that education as a right is based upon the belief that individuals must be taught what their rights are in order to be free to exercise them. This is not only a contradiction, but an evil attack on the concept of freedom. Freedom and rights are self-evident to any conscious being. Any human who wishes to live on Earth must live as an independent entity. When a child is born, no outside entity is obligated to maintain its life.

If a child cannot educate himself, his parents can teach him how to survive and how to protect his rights as a human being. If he wishes to learn more than these fundamentals, and his parents are incapable of providing such skills, it is his responsibility to employ others in his acquisition of knowledge. Whether working whilst being educated or obtaining assistance from family and friends, this is a very viable and necessary part of being human. If there are no family or friends available or capable of assisting him, and he nonetheless requires assistance in obtaining or funding an education, there are always productive men and businesses willing to train and mould ambitious individuals who would like to learn the skills necessary to make a living. Such is the reason that large corporations and innovative businesses are the single largest contributors to universities and technical collages - contributing more than governments and students combined.

Tricking individuals into believing that education can possibly be free whilst still being just is an ugly contradiction, because it either enslaves the teachers or (as in our society today) enslaves the businesses and individuals who fund the teachers. It is every individual's personal responsibility to educate themselves, if they wish to be human, to live on Earth, and live without coercion from those who must otherwise keep them or provide for them.

Property Rights

The state has consistently denied the concept of property rights throughout history. Whether annexing land under the guise of ñprotectingî it or controlling whether or how a man can dispose of that which he has produced, it denies every other right, including the right to life. In order for human beings to live, they must produce and consume their own means and ends. In the most simple form, they must grow and consume the food their body needs. If individuals do not have a right to the food they produce, can they possibly have a right to be alive? And yet, production of wealth in any form is the means by which one survives ¿ whether that wealth is used for staple foods or housing or land or satellites.

However, states have controlled whether and how men can dispose of the wealth they have created throughout human history. In primitive societies, farmers and land owners had to provide a portion of the food and products they created to the ruling aristocracy. Today, the state is integrated into every form of commerce, and not only controls what form a manÍs products can take, but to whom he can sell them, how much he can charge and how much of his profits he may keep. So long as there are men who are productive enough to maintain their lives on what remains, society has remained prosperous. But in states where government property control exceeds a certain level, such as in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, wide-scale death and famine has resulted. Thus, any control which the state exercises in the production or disposal of oneÍs property is destructive, and can only result in the denial of oneÍs right to life.

Social Welfare

Social welfare is a concept which has been around for centuries, but has only been truly institutionalized in America for less than one century. ItÍs premise is that the right to life means the right of all individuals to an equal life, whether they can maintain it or not. The practical results of this premise include income support for the needy, social and material support for the disabled, and the integration of health and education into the realm of state responsibility.

The most common assertion of supporters of social welfare is that ñevery person in society matters, and must be helped if they cannot help themselves.î Unfortunately, this creates a conflict: if one is unwilling to help oneself, what right does one have to live? Rights can only exist for conscious beings who are capable of understanding and defending them. The mentally disabled, animals, the permanently handicapped, and those with no survival skills, are thus given direct assistance by by the state with which they obtain the ends needed to survive.

This activity is unjust because it assumes that the value of a being is separate from their value as individuals. Human beings are only valuable so far as they value themselves or so far as their associates value them, just as plants and animals and antiques are only valuable so far as their possessors or owners value them. Individuals who insist that every life is valuable do not have the right to force those who disagree with such a premise to provide the care for the lives they refuse to value. If one wishes to provide charity and assistance to the needy, one cannot justifiably coerce an unconcerned individual into participating in the activity. It is the right of every individual to set their own hierarchy of values, and if oneÍs hierarchy includes only oneÍs immediate family ¿ or even just oneself ¿ it is oneÍs right and privilege to maintain only those values with whatever proportion of energy one wishes. Forcing one to maintain what one does not value only breeds resentment and apathy, and destroys the very significance of the value which would otherwise exist.

For example, if a child is born into poverty, and no individual knows this child, it has no inherent right to be assisted. If an individual or institution exists which wishes to extend assistance to those in need whom otherwise have no care-giver, they must pursue this desire on their own ¿ because it is their desire and no one elseÍs. But in the state welfare system which exists in most industrialized societies, this concept is never scrutinized, because the stateÍs ability to coerce support out of those who do not value that which they are supporting is taken for granted. Such activity results in furthering the apathy and vice which create the needy and disabled which the state continues to support. Even those who are involuntarily subjected to dire living conditions cannot expect the support of those who have been given no rational grounds to value them, and must turn instead to those who do value them, or to whom they might offer a value. If they have no value to offer, do they really wish to live?

. . .

Like all matters in human events, the subject of the role of the state is a moral issue. In addressing moral issues, one cannot be practical, but must instead be principled. A principled morality does not allow compromise, whether it is compromise in barter or, in the case here, in deciding how much control a government can be granted. Most individuals do maintain a semblance of respect for human life and independence and freedom, but assume that some degree of controls are necessary or good. This is a compromise. It is the introduction of a toxin into an otherwise healthy philosophical meal. When one mixes any amount of poison with oneÍs food, the only result is eventual death. The only thing that smaller amounts of poison result in is a slower and more painful death.

State involvement in the economy, in any form, only results in the destruction of rights, the annihilation of life, and the end of freedom. So long as we tolerate a mixture of freedom and controls in the production and maintenance of our livelihoods, we tolerate injustice, coercion and corruption. It is on a desert island that man needs his means of survival the most. Why, in a prosperous society, are we so willing to let these means be appropriated by men with dubious goals and only guns to back them up? If justice matters, it is the responsibility of every individual to uphold his right to life, and all its derivative rights, including the right to produce and keep what is his, and pursue and create the conditions which lead to his happiness, by himself, for himself, in a society of free and independent entities.