Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899 — John Shaqi
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
management of his affairs, particularly to stand between him and the
"rapacity" of the corporations organized to supply the necessaries of
life at the lowest cost; it builds fleets of cruisers and vast coast
fortifications to frighten away enemies that never think of assailing
him, and to inspire them with the same respect for "the flag" that he
is supposed to feel. Indeed, there is hardly a thing, except simple
justice, cheap and speedy, that it does not provide to fill him with a
love of his country, and to make him ready to immolate himself upon
her altars.
But I can not repeat with too much emphasis that every expenditure
beyond that required to maintain order and to enforce justice, and
every limitation of freedom beyond that needful to preserve equal
freedom, is an aggression. In no wise except in method does it differ
from the aggressions of war. In war the property of an enemy is taken
or destroyed without his consent. In case of his capture his conduct
is shaped in disregard of his wishes. The seizure of a citizen's
property in the form of taxes for a purpose that he does not approve,
and the regulation of any part of his conduct not violative of the
rights of his neighbors, are precisely the same. If he is forbidden to
carry the mails and thus earn a living, his freedom is restricted. If
he can patronize no letter carrier but the Government, to which he
must pay a certain rate, no matter how excessive, he has to a degree
become a slave. The same is true if he can not employ whomever he
pleases to cut his hair, or to fix his plumbing, or to prescribe for
his health. Still truer is it if he is obliged to contribute to a
system of public education which he condemns, or to public charities
which he knows to be schools of pauperism, or to any institution or
enterprise that voluntary effort does not sustain. In whatever way the
Government may pounce upon him to force him to work for some one
besides himself and to square his conduct with notions not his own, he
is still a victim of aggression, and the aggression is none the less
real and demoralizing because it is not committed amid the roar of
cannon and the groans of the dying.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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