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Author: The Libertarian Homeschooler

Where Do Our Rights Come From?

Written by The Libertarian Homeschooler on . Posted in Conversations With My Boys, Liberator Online. No Comments on Where Do Our Rights Come From?

Where Do Our Rights Come From?

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Me: What would you say to someone who said rights come from the government? Young Statesman (then 13): Well, it seems like we get our rights from government, and I think that’s a common misconception. The Young Statesman Contemplates RightsMe: Why is that? YS: Because the government is charged with protecting our rights. That’s their job. I think that’s why people get confused. Me: So how would you explain to someone what rights are and where they come from? YS: I would explain that there are positive rights and negative rights. Negative rights are a duty to refrain from encroaching on the life, liberty, or property of another. Me: Is that why they’re called negative rights? YS: Yes. They’re negative because they’re saying what you can’t do. Negative rights are natural to every person. We have these rights just because we are people. We don’t have to enter into contract for these rights. Me: So what another person has the right to expect you won’t do? YS: Yes. So I have the right to expect that I won’t be killed, enslaved, or robbed. Life, liberty, and property. Positive rights are different. Positive rights say you have a duty to provide someone with something. Me: How do you come about having a positive right? YS: If a negative right was infringed upon, you have a positive right to restitution. You can also contract for positive rights Me: Can you take away a peaceful person’s negative rights? YS: No. If your negative rights haven’t been infringed upon and if you have no voluntary contract, then you have no positive right to a good service or anything like that. Me: So what if I were to say that what you say about rights makes sense, but I still think rights come from the government? YS: A legitimate government is just a group of people who have voluntarily gotten together to protect their rights. The rights that existed before the government came into being. Me: Is there any great difference between a legitimate government and a voluntary mutual aid society that agrees to help one another protect their property? YS: No. A legitimate government upholds people’s property rights and is voluntary. It doesn’t have a band of enforcers to force you the be part of their system. That violates the rights it claims to protect. If the government violates the rights it claims to defend it’s not legitimate. I should be able to say that I do not want their services. If you aren’t able to opt out, what are you? Do you have your liberty? Slaves aren’t able to opt out, are they? We just have a slightly bigger pen.

Libertarian Parenting

Written by The Libertarian Homeschooler on . Posted in Conversations With My Boys, Liberator Online, Libertarianism, Marriage and Family. No Comments on Libertarian Parenting

Libertarian Parenting

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Me: What are the rules of the house? BA (10): Do not encroach on the person or property of another. Do all you have agreed to do. [We took those rules directly from Richard Maybury.]11988564_10104815737879530_1104378496462959819_n Me: Who has to obey the rules? BA: Everyone in the house? Me: Me and Dad? BA: Yes. Me: What if you don’t want to obey those rules? BA: You can ask if you can change the rules. Me: Who would you ask? BA: It depends on who is in a good mood. Me: Young Statesman, what are your thoughts? What if you don’t want to obey the rules? Do you only lose the constraint? YS: You lose the protection that the rules provide you. Me: What does that make you? YS: An outlaw. Fair game. Me: So, BA, what would you think if we said, “Great. You don’t want the constraints or the protection of the rules, there are more of us, we’re going to take your stuff!” BA: I’d be like, “That was a bad choice. I take that back.” Me: So you think those are good rules. BA: Yeah. Me: Are they rules you’ll take with you into adulthood? BA: I think so. Me: What if you met someone who didn’t obey those rules? BA: I would be quite upset. Me: What would you call that person? BA: A thief. Me: Are you free to leave the family? YS: Yes. I’m not going to. Me: So you’re here voluntarily? YS: Yep. Me: How can that be? What recourse do you have? Isn’t it dangerous just to leave? YS: You would help me find a good home that suited me better. Me: That’s true. That’s a big part of being a member of this family. You are free to go. Your father and I both agree on that point. He is free to leave, I am free to leave, you are free to leave, your brother is free to leave. How do you think it impacts our parenting to know that we have agreed that you can walk away–right now–and not look back? YS: It makes you think about your actions and consequences. Me: Does that make us perfect parents? YS: No. Me: Why don’t you leave? YS: Because I love you all and you are my family. Me: What if we were oppressive? YS: You aren’t so how would I know what I would do? Me: So if we were prone to being oppressive we wouldn’t give you the option to walk away. YS: Right. If you’re going to be oppressive you aren’t going to give the kid the option to safely walk away. Me: But you’re given the right to walk away when you’re eighteen, right? Earlier if you become an emancipated minor. So eventually everyone has the right to rid themselves of relationships they find abusive or broken. We’ve just given it to you earlier. Why would we do that? YS: Because you want to be respectful of me. Me: It also keeps us honest. Knowing that you can leave us. It levels the field. What if I couldn’t leave my marriage to your father? YS: That would make you a slave and he could do anything. Me: Would that be healthy? YS: No. You couldn’t do anything. You would have no power. Me: There has to be balance. We decided early on that our relationships had to be balanced. You had to have the right to leave. Your father and I agreed to that with one another. That’s our agreement. If one of us refuses to make leaving the family a safe option for a child, the other is the fail safe. They will guarantee your safe departure and survival until you are old enough to make it on your own. Are there other adults who would assist you if your dad and I suddenly lost it? YS: Yes. Me: Miss Katy, Miss Alison, Miss Karen, Mr. Jamie, The Whites, Scott. Would they help you? YS: Yes, they would. But I’m not leaving. We have this conversation about every six months. Just so he knows his father and I remain bound by this rule. We check in. They know the rules of our union as a family and they know that removing themselves safely is an option guaranteed to them as members of this family. Particularly as they become young adults with all that adulthood brings with it, I think having the option to walk away is fundamental.
You can't force someone to learn

You Can’t Force a Person to Learn Something

Written by The Libertarian Homeschooler on . Posted in Conversations With My Boys, Education, Liberator Online. No Comments on You Can’t Force a Person to Learn Something

You Can’t Force a Person to Learn Something

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Me: Can I force you to learn something? The Young Statesman (then 12): No. You can not. Me: So, if I sat you down and did chemistry lessons with you and threatened to…. You can't force someone to learnYS: Take something away? Me: Yes. Take something away. If I threaten to take something away if you don’t do well on a chemistry test I give you will that make you learn it? YS: I’ll learn it, I’ll spit it out, and then I’ll forget it. Me: Isn’t that learning? YS: No. That isn’t learning. That’s wasting time. Me: What if I gave you an incentive to do well on a chemistry test. Will that make you learn it? YS: If I don’t want to learn it, I won’t learn it. I’ll just memorize it, spit it back out at you, and forget it. Me: What about subjects that are important? YS: Important to whom? Me: To many adults. YS: Does that mean it’s important to me? If I don’t want to learn it, I will not learn it. Me: Some people say if you don’t learn a thing when you’re young then that field will be closed to you when you’re older. YS: Like what? Me: We could say science. If you aren’t exposed to science when you’re young…. YS: You won’t be exposed to it again? You weren’t exposed to libertarian thought and Austrian economics when you were young and look at you. You’re running a page with over 25 thousand likes. Me: What you’re saying is that I’m teaching people about liberty and Austrian economics and I wasn’t exposed to it as a child. YS: Right. You were never exposed to that when you were little. Just because you weren’t exposed to it then doesn’t mean you won’t be great at it later. Me: You’ve watched me teach myself, haven’t you? YS: I have. I’ve watched you teach yourself a lot. I’ve watched you teach other people, too. Me: You’ve watched me tutor. You’ve been in the room with me when I’ve tutored. What have you learned by watching students struggle with subjects they’ve been told are “important” but aren’t aren’t important to them? YS: They want to make their teachers happy but the subjects aren’t important to them so they aren’t going to excel. Daisy was an artist. They were trying to cram all sorts of other stuff into her. Me: What did that do to her? YS: You had to re-school her. Me: What do you think was the most important thing for her? YS: Art. She was a wonderful artist. You let her focus on that. Me: Someone had told her it was more important that she be a mediocre, miserable student than a fantastic artist. One would have to be blind to miss that she was an artist. YS: She was told doing what she was good at wasn’t as important as what the teachers thought was important. Me: And what did the teachers think was important? YS: Everyone being the same was important. Following the curriculum was important. Art wasn’t important. Me: It’s like a factory isn’t it? It makes one product. YS: No variations. All the same thing. Me: Does that work with people? Who does it reward? YS: The state gets a nice new batch of uniform people. Me: What happens to people like Daisy who are brilliant in something the school doesn’t value? YS: Their talent gets squashed. I’ve noticed that you tutor the brilliant people. It’s the creative people who don’t do well in the school system. Me: I would say that every child I’ve tutored had a burning passion that was being neglected or misdirected or devalued. I don’t think there’s one child I’ve worked with who wasn’t obviously being sold short. Can you imagine being a fantastic artist and having to sit in classes that bored you, that you weren’t interested in, that you actively hated and that you were failing every day of your life? YS: I can not imagine how bad that would be. That would basically be the first eighteen years of your life thrown away. Me: It would be worse than wasting it. It would be eighteen years of being told that you weren’t good enough. It would be a daily attack. We were talking about whether or not you can force a person to learn something. YS: You can’t force a person to learn something. Me: I was required to teach Daisy certain subjects. Do you think they stuck? YS: No. She probably forgot them. It was probably a big waste of her time and your time. Me: What do you think she remembered? YS: That you let her do what she loved to do. That you understood what her talent was. Me: I wish we had spent more time on art with her. YS: She was a lot happier here than in school.
War on Drugs Is a War on Us

What Do You Think About the War on Drugs?

Written by The Libertarian Homeschooler on . Posted in Conversations With My Boys, Drugs, Liberator Online. No Comments on What Do You Think About the War on Drugs?

What Do You Think About the War on Drugs?

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Me (The Libertarian Homeschooler): What do you think about the war on drugs? War on Drugs Is a War on UsYS (Young Statesman, 14): I think it’s none of the state’s business what we can or cannot put into our bodies and what we can or cannot do with our money. Me: But a lot of people die from drug overdoses. For whatever reason you aren’t likely to do that, but shouldn’t other people be protected from drugs and drug overdoses? Should they just be thrown to the wolves? Don’t we care about them? YS: You’ve made a emotional argument. Me: How do you combat that? YS: You could say, “Are you saying it is the responsibility of the state to protect people from making bad choices?” Me: Right. That’s the argument that the state should protect people from bad choices wrapped in a veiled personal attack: “You don’t care about other people. You’re a bad person.” But there’s another argument. Who determines what goes into your body? Who owns your body? That’s the most compelling argument. YS: Do you own you or does the state own you? Me: Yes. I think that’s the most important argument. Property rights. Who owns you? That can get lost. Why did it become difficult when it became about you caring about other people? YS: Because it became an emotional argument. Me: How did it feel when it became an emotional argument? YS: Oh, God. Not this again. Me: It’s a trap. YS: It makes your brain stop working as well. Me: What do you have to do when faced with a emotional argument? YS: Think about the argument that’s being given to you. You have to make it about property rights again. Me: Is that because most arguments boil down to property rights? YS: If you’re arguing about feels, it’s because the other person is trying to shut the argument down. Most arguments are actually about property. You have to remove the emotion. You can’t follow that trail. That’s not the real argument. Me: Is it possible that the other person doesn’t know the real argument? They don’t know what’s at stake? YS: Yeah. They think it’s about protecting people from a small danger but there’s a bigger danger. You are trying to show them the rest of the picture. Yes, it’s important for people not to overdose but property rights are more important. Me: The denial of property rights, in my opinion, is the greatest evil. When we deny people their property rights we have to tell lies and create systems to justify the denial. Those lies and those systems lead to violence and slaughter.
Who Owns You

Who Owns You?

Written by The Libertarian Homeschooler on . Posted in Communicating Liberty, Conversations With My Boys, Liberator Online. No Comments on Who Owns You?

Who Owns You?

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Me: Who owns you? Baby Anarchist (10): Me. I own me. Me: Can someone else sell you?Who Owns You? BA: No. Me: Why not? BA: A living person is his own property. Me: Can someone else rightfully take away your life if you are being peaceful? BA: There’s no rightful way to encroach on a peaceful person. Me: Can someone else rightfully stop you from peacefully owning your rightfully acquired property? BA: No. No one can stop you from keeping the thing you have peacefully gotten. If you’ve earned it, traded for it, been given it as a gift, it’s yours. Me: Can someone else rightfully stop you from making a peaceful contract with another person? BA: Nope. You’re peacefully doing it. It’s not hurting anyone. There’s no reason they should stop you. Me: So no one is allowed to take away your right to make contracts? BA: No one is allowed to take away your right to make contracts. You own you. No one can take away your right to enter into contracts. Me: Did you know that years ago it was illegal for black persons to enter into marriage contracts with white persons? BA: During slavery? Me: After slavery. When they acknowledged that people were not the property of other people. BA: That doesn’t make sense. If you are your own property then you can enter into contracts. Me: If someone else can stop you from entering into a contract what does that make you? YS (14): A slave. Me: Is yesterday’s decision (2015 Supreme Court decision regarding marriage equality) about love, son? YS: it’s about self ownership. Me: Why did it have to be couched as a decision about love? YS: Because people won’t respond to self ownership. Me: Why don’t they want to hear that they don’t have self ownership? YS: It’s complicated and bad. Me: Love is nicer but the reality is people who own themselves are not denied the right to enter into peaceful contracts that don’t encroach on others.
homeschool

Do We Homeschool?

Written by The Libertarian Homeschooler on . Posted in Conversations With My Boys, Liberator Online. No Comments on Do We Homeschool?

Do We Homeschool?

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. The Libertarian Homeschooler (Me): Do we do school at home? The Young Statesman (YS): No. homeschoolMe: Do we homeschool? YS: No. Me: Do we unschool? YS: No. Me: What are we doing? YS: Not fitting in that box everyone likes things to fit things in. Me: What are some words that would describe what you do from day to day? YS: I’m doing. I’m not learning about what I want to do, I’m doing what I want to do. Me: Like what? YS: Accompanying choirs. Proctoring. Performing. Composing. I’m working for people who do what I want to do. Me: And they’re helping you decide how to spend your time and where to put your effort. This is what we’re doing with our older son and what we’re starting with our younger son. It’s not school, it’s not homeschool, it’s not unschooling, it’s not waiting, it’s not preparing. It’s none of that. It’s figuring out what they’re interested in, how they want to serve others, who they want to be, and assisting them as they go about creating themselves and their work. If they need something as they go, we help them get it. Whether it’s competency in algebra, speech lessons, table manners, an internship with someone who is familiar with development and PR, a seminar on cottage industry, dancing lessons, composition curriculum, a trip to the organ builder, whatever. We facilitate. We help them picture where they’re going and help them make the vessel that will get them there. We find people to teach them how to navigate, to sail, to take to the oars when the wind won’t serve, and help them recalibrate as they go. We’re not homeschoolers. We’re dreamers and we’re ship builders and we’re navigators.