Is the Case for Liberty Too Extreme?

If there is one label more than any other that principled advocates of individual liberty are often stamped with it is that they are "extremists." You are so extreme, it is said. What is wrong with a compromise between personal freedom and some "reasonable" degree of government regulation, welfare legislation, and social intervention?

The first question that should be asked back when confronted with such an accusation is: With what is the friend of liberty being asked to compromise? The real answer, of course, is that the friend of liberty is being asked to compromise with the use of coercive force in human relationships.

Freedom or Coercion in Human Affairs

The simple fact is that human association may be based on peaceful and mutually beneficial agreement and exchange, or it may be based on one party in this human relationship threatening or using force to make the other party do something that he would not willingly do if he were free from the danger of violence.

Freedom is important not because a person might want to say, "yes," to an offer that has been made to him, but because he might want to say, "no." If an individual cannot say "no" without being threatened with some form of physical harm from the other person in the relationship, then that individual is not free.

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