Customer Reviews

The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State

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This volume is an essential collection of the profound works of Auberon Herbert, the fountainhead of "voluntaryism." Herbert took Herbert Spencer's famous law of equal freedom, and extended it to its full extent. As a result, Herbert concluded, as Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, et al, have since, that physical force is evil, and that the only legitimate, or at least, acceptable use of force is in defense. Moreover, Herbert concluded that it was illegitimate for *anyone* to utilize force, even government agents. Therefore, all forms of government intervention beyond the basic protection of individual rights is both illegitimate and immoral, including taxation. In fact, he even offers a 29 point case against all taxation in one particular piece. In place of coercive government, Herbert proposed defensive services financed voluntarily, and indeed, this is the only moral method. Throughout the work, one is consistently delighted by Herbert's firm and eloquent advocacy of individualism, rationality, responsibility, and progress. Admirers of Ayn Rand and Objectivism should especially enjoy this work. Above all, Herbert's writings are delightful and often deeply moving pieces of work, and I can only hope that friends of liberty and reason become more acquanted with them in the future.

Essentially this book is a must read for any believer in freedom. Not your Hindu/Buddhist freedom from attachment but rather the freedom all individuals have (should. in most or all cases) over their faculties and the products of there faculties, obviously so long as this freedom is respected in all other individuals.

As for this books merits, they are so plentiful that it would be easier to discuss it's faults.

However I'll leave that for another person more critical than myself as I hold to the belief that every person would benefit greatly from one reading of this fine work so I have no wish to detract from it.

It's your choice and thats the point.

This book of essays had an effect upon me similar to that of the New Testament. It changed my outlook forever. (By the way, a total change of outlook is the actual meaning of the word 'repent'.)