Saturday, June 24, 2006

For Equality; Against Privilege

I am always looking for ways to make voluntarist, or libertarian, points with the maximum punch. I like to emphasize that, in briefest form, voluntarism can be said to be:

For equality, and
Against privilege.
By equality, I mean what Roderick Long (drawing on John Locke) says here and here. Long makes a crucial point about equality, "the unknown ideal," that all advocates of liberty should digest.

By privilege, I refer to the literal meaning of the word. As the American Heritage Dictionary points out, the word derives from:
Middle English, from Old French, from Latin prīvilēgium, a law affecting one person : prīvus, single, alone + lēx, lēg-, law.
A privilege is a favor from the state made possible either by taking something from someone else or by prohibiting others from engaging in an otherwise legitimate activity.

A world with Lockean equality and no privilege would be a voluntarist, or libertarian, world.

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