This is an excerpt from part two of my talk with Dr. Gerard Casey on his book Libertarian Anarchy. Enjoy. -P
Gerard: I would suggest that while somebody can say that they don't accept the non-aggression principle– saying it is one thing, living it out in reality is another. And I doubt if there's anybody who can actually go through life without living that. I mean, you take your average academic in the days when you got paid by check and you went into your mailbox at the end of the month expecting to find a check in there. Right? And there wasn't any. And you said, “Oh where's, where's my month's pay?” And they said, “Oh, well, we just made an arbitrary decision not to pay anybody this month.” Okay, very quickly you would find that person using the language of “You can't do that. That's not right.” . . .
Penjammin: “It's an injustice!”
Gerard: . . . So it's not absolutely impossible that somebody could do this, but I think it's practically incoherent. That's the way [I would] put it.
Penjammin: I think the word you use in your book is self-stultifying.
Gerard: Hey, I told you I could write in those days. Self-stultifying huh?
Penjammin: That's very good. I like that one, too . . . I think most people would agree, almost immediately, that: “I don't want to be aggressed against, so I'm not going to aggress against others.” There's the principle of reciprocity that you talk about in your book as well there. But then they say, “Well, when it comes to the government that's different.” So why think it applies to the government, to government actors? And what difference does it make if it does apply to them?
Gerard: Oh, well. And then the question was, “Well, why should it not?” In other words: “What makes what makes them so special?” That comes down to the basic question, of course, for anarchy, which is “What is it that gives one person or a group of people the right to make laws backed by force or the threat of force- which is aggression of course because if you don't obey the law, in the end they're going to come and either lock you up or take your property. That's aggression, and it only works in one direction from their point of view . . . they have the right to do this to you, but you don't have the right to do it to them. And we say, “Well, why is that? What remarkable quality- is it your superior intellect?” Well, looking at your congress and our in our parliament, I think the answer to that is fairly clear . . .
Penjammin: [laughs]
For more Gerard Casey, check out The Liberty Classroom. Also, hear the episode below.
Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves, enjoying life in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “about” above). Get his eletters at penjams.com/subscribe.