Altruism

A philosophical doctrine in which the individual must subordinate himself to others; that man's purpose on earth is to serve other men ahead of himself; that a man's happiness can only be achieved by making others happy. It is a doctrine of dichotomy which from the outset dooms its parishioners to failure and hence enslaves them in pursuit of the unachievable.
It is the philosophy which is most beneficial to those who would rule the lives of other men. It is of no benefit to those who have no desire to control the lives, property and actions of other except as necessary to fulfill the terms of a volitional contract created for mutual benefit. In a society where the altruist philosophy is allowed to create rules with the force of law, there is no true freedom; what exists under the guise of freedom is a privilege which may be revoked at any time at the whim of the current crop of political thugs.

Collectivism (syn. Statism)

A collection of the philosophical doctrines which regard mankind as a herd animal to be enslaved and used as the means to some nobler end of a society's leaders. Collectivism subsumes political/philosophical systems including but not necessarily limited to Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and Socialism and is the opposite of Objectivism which holds each man's life to be an end in itself owed to no one. The hallmark of such systems is altruism.

Crime

Initiation of the use of force. This delineates the difference between real crimes and political crimes. Political crimes are those actions taken by individuals on a voluntary basis without coercive compliance of a victim, the so-called victimless crimes, e.g., drug sale and consumption, prostitution, gambling etc.

Freedom

Living in an environment in which one is not subject to the initiation of force. The condition of being allowed to freely choose one's course of independent action. Freedom's corollary is Responsibility. Note the reference to independent action; this is an action taken alone or in non-coercive alliance with others. In contrast, a criminal action is not an independent action; a criminal act requires the participation of a victim for its accomplishment.

Government

An instituted organization within a civilized society which performs one (and ONLY one) legitimate function; the protection of the rights of the members of its society. There is no other legitimate function of government. The only facet of one's right as an individual subordinated is the right to defend oneself. This is relinquished to the government primarily as its responsibility. This relinquishment does not preclude one from an act of self defense in the face of imminent threat.

Thomas Jefferson so succinctly and eloquently defined the purpose of a legitimate government in the Declaration of Independence as follows:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, . . ."

Protection of individual rights entails three functions:

Police to protect citizens from criminals within their own society
Military to protect citizens from criminals outside their borders (e.g., invading armies)
Courts to settle legitimate disputes between individual citizens, determination of the guilt or innocence of those accused of crimes, and the assessment of punishment for those convicted of crimes.

Man

A non-gender specific reference to a human being from before the days of politically correct speech when the masculine pronoun was used by default when the gender was unknown or unimportant. [This should put me on the hit list for the intellectually challenged (aka politically correct) crowd.]

Objectivism

The philosophy of Ayn Rand which teaches that each man's life is his own; that each man is free to pursue any chosen course of independent action; that each man is entitled to the product of his successes and responsible for the cost of his failures; that no other man is obligated to provide for him that which he cannot obtain by his own effort. In short, man's right to his life and property is inviolable.

Responsibility

Accountability for one's action and choices. Acceptance of the loss of popularity, property, trust, etc. which results from one's freely made choices and freely taken actions. The idea of responsibility also entitles the individual to total ownership of any profits and benefits derived from his choices.

Right

A term applicable only to an individual. As indicated in the Declaration of independence,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

In essence, the source of your rights is the fact that you are a human being. Your rights infer no obligation of you toward others except that of voluntary alliance, e.g., business partnership, marriage, financial contract, etc. and that you respect and not violate their rights (see counterfeit rights).

As a Libertarian (or libertarian thinker if you're not formally a Libertarian), it becomes important for you as the individual to make these distinctions in everyday conversations to stop the erosion of freedom. When people speak of rights using the word improperly in conversation, correct them. Eventually, they may come to intellectually differentiate.

For example, it is commonplace for people to assert that a police officer has the right to cite you for a traffic violation or arrest you on suspicion of a crime. He DOES NOT in fact have such a right; what he has is a legitimate AUTHORITY by virtue of his position in government as an officer duty bound to enforce the law.

By the same reasoning, a judge in the courtroom does not have any right to impose punishment; he has authority and responsibility derived from his position in government.

Likewise, politicians have no right to impose taxation; they have a self-designated (and therefore illegitimate) authority. Well, perhaps I'm overstepping here a little; it is not illegitimate when they have a unanimous vote of every person endowed with the right to vote and the continuing unanimous consent of the populace to levy taxes. It only becomes illegitimate when the consent ceases to be unanimous!

Similarly, Civil Rights as applied today has nothing to do with rights, it is entirely about political privilege. How do you make the distinction? Very simply; RIGHTS apply to all consistently; PRIVELEGE is discriminatory! And civil rights laws are discriminatory by political design!

So, to try and regain some of the ideas of freedom espoused by the Founding Fathers, use language correctly and require others to do the same. Make them respect proper use of the terms and perhaps they will begin to understand the terms and differentiate. It is to the distinct advantage of those in power that this NOT happen as it threatens their power base. To paraphrase Ellsworth Toohey, "We don't want any thinking men. You can't rule thinking men!"

One aspect of rights which was improperly given stature by an error of the founders was the idea of States' rights. Rights is a term only legitimately applicable to the human being as an individual. Rights properly relate to one's freedom to act for one's own interest, i.e., to act independently, for one's own good in accordance with one's system of values. Rights then necessarily apply only to a living entity possessing a consciousness with a rational capacity to choose a proper course of action, i.e., the ability to make value judgments based on existing circumstances and in accordance with its value system,. This necessarily means that rights pertain only to living things and even more narrowly, to living things having a specific attribute, i.e., the capacity for rational thought. Thus, government [the State], being an abstraction, an entity existing only in the conceptual capacity of such a rational being, cannot perform any rational process nor can it exercise judgment since it is not endowed with either capacity. Thus the founders' expression of the ides of States' Rights was a fallacious concept. In reality, they were improperly referring to the states' authority to govern.

Tax

Property demanded and collected by a government agency to finance government operation and other government programs.

Property taken in such fashion, i.e., by coercion, relegates government to the status of criminal since refusal to comply with the demand is subject to further confiscation of property and possible incarceration.

Have you ever wondered why there are tax courts separate from the civil and criminal courts?

It is because this is the only way to legitimize the current extortionary vehicle of property confiscation. In the tax courts, the roles of perpetrator and victim are reversed whereby the victim is made the defendant and the perpetrator is made the accuser. Were a tax case taken to criminal court and legitimately and properly presented, the government would be identified as the accused criminal and the citizen as the victim. Thus, to create the myth of legitimacy, the tax court system had to be created separate and apart from the criminal and civil courts.

Victimless Crime

A euphemism for political crimes. A crime involving voluntary alliance of two or more individuals without the initiation of coercion in an act which has been declared illegal by leaders politicians because it is something of which they disapprove or because they have been subjected to unfavorable publicity or pressure to condemn an act which cannot be rationally defined as a crime.

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