Lysander Spooner was one of the interesting characters of the 19th Century – his writings are significant in libertarian thinking today. Anarchistic, entrepreneurial, an attorney – the man is really hard to put in a box. Here are a few of Spooner’s thoughts:
“If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury. If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.”
“Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally – perhaps more than equally, because more boldly – rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power.”
“Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.”
Spooner’s statements are hard to argue against – but remember, the man once started the private American Letter Company to compete with the US Postal Service. It went out of business not because it couldn’t compete, but because of lawfare -Congress, in 1851, passed legislation granting the USPS a monopoly.
Leave a Reply