Because I’m both a Libertarian and a loudmouth, I’m frequently hit with questions about libertarianism (and the Libertarian Party). Recently this one came up:

“What is the most controversial belief of Libertarians?”

Could it be our support of immigration freedom (and, generally, freedom to travel)?

Or our demand for separation of school and state?

Perhaps our hard-line support for gun rights?

Or our stand for legalization of all drugs?

How about our advocacy for keeping the government out of the sex lives of consenting adults (including marriage, and including sex for pay)?

Or our belief that who you do or don’t do business with — including for healthcare and retirement — is your decision and no one else’s to make?

My answer: It’s all of those, and others. But it really boils down to one issue.

The most controversial belief of libertarians (and partisan Libertarians) is the belief that you’re generally both more entitled and more qualified to run your life than someone else is.

Who considers that belief controversial? “Mainstream” politicians and their supporters.

Why do they consider that belief controversial? Because they consider themselves entitled and qualified to run your life for you, whether you like it or not. And, of course, to bill you for the costs of their supervision.

Politics isn’t persuasion. Politics is force.

Whether the issue is immigration, or education, or self-defense, or drug use,  or sex, or commerce, or, heck, what color you paint your house or how long you let the grass on your lawn grow, the political approach is not to present an argument and trust you to make the right decision. It’s to decide “for” you, then beat you down if you disobey (or fail to pay them for their services).

Libertarianism — even the “political” variety — isn’t really very political at all. It’s anti-political. As one fun meme puts it, libertarians are “diligently plotting to take over the world and leave you alone.”

Libertarians only recognize one valid constraint on your actions: A universal, mutual constraint against aggression, also known as initiation of force.

The simple version, courtesy of Matt Kibbe: Don’t hurt people, and don’t take their stuff.

When you throw the first punch, or pick someone’s pocket, or otherwise forcibly interpose yourself between someone else and that someone’s life, liberty, or property, you’re not running your own life. You’re trying to run theirs.

And that’s the only thing libertarians agree you should be stopped from doing or penalized (in a manner consistent with restitution, not “punishment”) for doing. Even if it’s “for their own good.”

If you’re down with that idea, congratulations: You’re a libertarian.

If you’re not down with that idea, I hope you’ll think it through more carefully.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “The Most Controversial Belief,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader [Iowa], 04/15/19
• “The Most Controversial Belief,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Plaquemine, Louisiana Post South, 04/17/19
• “The Most Controversial Belief,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Gonzales, Louisiana Weekly Citizen, 04/17/19
• “The most controversial belief,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 04/17/19
• “The Most Controversial Belief,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Columbia, South Carolina Panorama [web and print] 04/20/19
• “The most controversial belief,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sanford, North Carolina Herald, 04/26/19

On April 11, the ongoing saga of journalist and transparency activist Julian Assange took a dangerous turn.  Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, revoked his asylum in that country’s London embassy. British police immediately arrested him — supposedly pursuant to his “crime” of jumping bail on an invalid arrest warrant in an investigation since dropped without charges but, as they admitted shortly thereafter,  actually with the intent of turning him over to US prosecutors on bogus “hacking” allegations.

The US political class has been after Assange for nearly a decade.

In 2010 WikiLeaks, the journalism/transparency service he founded, released information revealing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as State Department cables exposing — among other things — Hillary Clinton’s attempts to have American diplomats plant bugs in the offices of their UN counterparts (Clinton, at one point, tried to raise the possibility of having him murdered for embarrassing her so).

In 2016, WikiLeaks released Democratic National Committee emails — provided by an as yet unidentified whistleblower — exposing the DNC’s attempts to rig the Democratic presidential primaries in Clinton’s favor.

At no point has Assange been credibly accused of a crime. He’s a journalist. People provide him with information. He publishes that information. That’s an activity clearly and unambiguously protected by the First Amendment.

Even if Assange was a US citizen, and even if his activities had taken place in territory under US jurisdiction, there’s simply no criminal case to be made against him.

So they’re manufacturing one out of whole cloth, accusing him of “hacking” by asserting that he assisted Chelsea Manning with the technical process of getting the 2010 information to WikiLeaks.

But once again: Assange is not a US citizen, nor at the time of his alleged actions was he anywhere that would have placed him under the jurisdiction of the United States.

Even if he did what he’s accused of doing, the current state of affairs is the equivalent of the city government of Chicago asking Norway to extradite a French citizen on charges of not cutting the grass at his villa in Italy to the specifications of Chicago’s ordinance on the subject.

There are certainly criminal charges worth pursuing here.

The US Department of Justice should appoint a special counsel to probe the Assange affair with an eye toward firing, seeking the disbarment of, and prosecuting (for violations of US Code Title 18, Sections 241, Conspiracy Against Rights, and 242, Violation of Rights Under Color of Law) the DoJ bureaucrats who hatched this malicious prosecution.

The first step in the process, though, is for US president Donald Trump to pardon Julian Assange for all alleged violations of US law on or prior to April 11, 2019.

Assange is a hero. Time to stop treating him like a criminal.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Assange is a hero, not a criminal,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Helsinki, Finland Times, 04/12/19
• “Pardoning Assange would be the first step back toward rule of law,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Arab American News, 04/12/19
• “Pardoning Assange a step back to rule of law,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Cook Islands News, 04/12/19
• “Pardoning Assange Would be the First Step Back Toward Rule of Law,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Antiwar.com, 04/12/19
• “Pardoning Assange Would be the First Step Back Toward Rule of Law,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 04/12/19
• “Pardoning Assange Would Be The First Step Back Towards Rule of Law,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pakistan Today [web and print], 04/14/19
• “Pardon Assange, then probe his prosecution,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 04/14/19
• “Pardoning Assange: the first step back toward rule of law,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times, 04/15/19
• “Assange is a hero,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kingston, Jamaica Observer [web and print], 04/15/19
• “Pardoning Assange Would be the First Step Back Toward Rule of Law,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 04/17/19

“Congressional Democrats and Republicans,” reports ProPublica, “are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.”

Specifically, the  House Ways and Means Committee just advanced a bill perversely called the “Taxpayers First Act.”  If passed by Congress and signed into law, it would become illegal for the IRS to “compete” with private sector tax preparation services like H&R Block and Intuit (the owners of TurboTax) by allowing taxpayers to skip those middlemen.

This is actually the status quo, not by law but by agreement between the IRS and the US tax preparation industry, which knocks down billions every year preparing and filing returns. If you want to file directly with the IRS, you have to do it on paper, by snail mail.  And the industry spends lots of money lobbying to keep it that way. Hence, the effort to write the deal into law.

On one hand, given a choice of filing through a private company whose advertised mission is to save me as much money as possible, or through a government agency whose job is to wring as much money out of me as possible, I’ll pick the private company every time.

On the other hand, the tax preparation industry is a parasite on top of another parasite. The tax system feeds on you. The industry feeds on the tax system.

You’ve probably heard political candidates promise to make your tax return “so simple it will fit on a postcard.” Ever wonder why they never deliver on that promise?  These companies don’t just lobby to be the middlemen in a complex system, they also lobby against legislation that would simplify the system (potentially making their services unnecessary).

Speaking of which, Congress isn’t the only government body at work on this subject. The IRS itself is working on a new version of the W-4 form that employees must complete to have the “right” amount of tax withheld from their paychecks.

USA Today‘s article on the new W-4 project says that filling it out will “be a lot like doing your taxes again. … The new [draft] form referenced up to 12 other IRS publications to fill it out. It was so complex and different from the previous W-4 form that Ernst & Young worried employees would struggle to fill it out correctly and employers may need to offer training beforehand.”

If there’s anything worse than the government stealing a piece of every dollar you earn, it’s the government forcing you to do a bunch of paperwork — or pay someone to do that paperwork — to make sure they get “enough.”

Frankly, I’d rather be mugged. Same scenario, but muggers aren’t quite as smug and rude about it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “The Government is Hard at Work Keeping Tax-Preparation Complicated and Expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 04/09/19
• “The government is hard at work keeping tax preparation complicated and expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orange County, California Register, 04/10/19
• “The Government is Hard at Work Keeping Tax Preparation Complicated and Expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 04/10/19
• “The government is hard at work keeping tax preparation complicated and expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Inland Valley, California Daily Bulletin, 04/10/19
• “The government is hard at work keeping tax preparation complicated and expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Torrance, California Daily Breeze, 04/10/19
• “The government is hard at work keeping tax preparation complicated and expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Los Angeles, California Daily News, 04/10/19
• “The government is hard at work keeping tax preparation complicated and expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 04/10/19
• “The tax preparation industry leeches money off taxpayers,” by Thomas L. Knapp, University of New Mexico Daily Lobo [web and print], 04/11/19
• “The government works hard to keep tax preparation complicated,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times, 04/12/19
• “Tax prep complicated and expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sanford, North Carolina Herald, 04/13/19
• “The Government is Hard at Work Keeping Tax Preparation Complicated and Expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 04/15/19
• “The Government is Hard at Work Keeping Tax Preparation Complicated and Expensive,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 04/15/19