Personal Responsibility

I declare:

• the fact of my personal responsibility to acquire or create concepts to understand the world and communicate that understanding.
• the fact of my personal responsibility to create satisfying conditions (whether local or global) for myself and others.

– Note: The word “responsibility” here refers not a duty but rather a “response-ability” and a simple truth: if you want a better world, you must act in ways that are more likely to bring such a world into being. To deny one’s personal responsibility is simply to deny one’s options or the meaningful difference between them.

Personal Independence

I declare:

• the fact of my cognitive and moral independence based upon my own values and judgement.
• the fact of my political independence to set the foundations and context for my own political relationships and to give proper and useful names to behaviors that do or do not conform to my ethics and consent.

– Note: The word “independence” here refers not to an isolation or self-sufficiency but rather a simple truth: your decisions are made in reference to your own values and analysis, to the degree that you are awake, conscious, and thinking. To deny one’s independence is simply to deny one’s own personal values and judgement.

Personal Ethics

I declare:

• my intention to help build and maintain relationships and institutions — be they social, educational, economic, political, legal, or otherwise — that conform to my ethics and philosophy.

Social Contract

I declare:

• my respect for each sane and innocent individual — my intention to treat each sane individual as independent, with the ability, when innocent, to meaningfully and materially withdraw consent from the relationships or institutions that each finds thonself in or under — and my intention to treat each such person as the owner of thon’s own body, being free to choose what to do with one’s own body and life, so long as one doesn’t initiate or apply excessive force, threat, or fraud against others or their (justly acquired) property.
• my intention to conform to the non-aggression principle — that is, to not initiate force, threat, or fraud against others or their (justly acquired) property. (The issues of just acquisition of property and limitations on ownership are worthy of debate and negotiation. The Georgist/geolibertarian position seems to be superior to the roughly Lockean position, if executed well.)
• my intention to reduce unnecessary force, threat, or fraud when possible.

Terminology

I declare:

• myself and every sane and innocent human to be a _sovereign person_, defined to be a person with autonomy and authority over oneself, not being rightfully subject to or owned by any other person or institution, owing allegiance to no one except to those one determines for oneself. A sovereign person may levy defense of thonself and thon’s (justly acquired) property, conclude peace, contract alliances, engage in commerce, freely associate and disassociate with others as one pleases, choose what to do with one’s own body (including what to eat or not, what drugs to take or not, whether to wear clothes or not, and whether to end one’s life or continue or extend it), and so on. Others may apply social pressure in response to these choices, but they may not legitimately respond with aggression (that is, initiation of force, threat, or fraud).

Notes on Consent

From the US Declaration of Independence, we read that “Governments … [derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Well, consent must be revocable, or able to be withdrawn, in order to be true consent. If one cannot say “no”, then no true consent is present. Our current government thus does not have our consent since we cannot withdraw our material, monetary support without facing the threat of force and violence or its execution. Taxes are extortion and theft, even if most people are happy to submit. (There are better ways to pay for services that have true demand.) Having to leave the country, and leave your loved ones, family, friends, culture, job, etc, only to find another similar government somewhere else, is too high of a bar for measuring consent.

As things stand, most governments are a protection racket — an institution that provides protection with the threat that if you don’t pay for the protection, you will be punished or possibly killed if you resist. This is a moral contradiction and a political failure. We can do better than this.