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Santa Clara County, CA March 2, 2004 Election
Smart Voter

Our Government vs. Religious Morality

By John H. Webster

Candidate for State Senator; District 13; Libertarian Party

This information is provided by the candidate
A Democratic Government like ours goes bad when it sees itself as the ultimate moral authority.
Our Government has a "Love/Hate" relationship with religion. It wants the people of this country to believe in a "life after death" where each person will be judged and punished or rewarded for the way they have lived their life. This belief system reduces the amount that people steal or kill even in situations where they know they won't get caught. It also prevents each of us from going on a rape and pillage rampage during the final weeks of our lives when we know we are going to die anyway.

What our Government can't stand is when religious "extremists" have the audacity to believe that there is a higher morality by which the Government itself is to be judged. It has even tried, somewhat successfully through its control of the schools, to raise an entire generation with the belief that Morality is Relative. It has done this in order to place itself as the Official Judge of what is right and good, and of what is Justified War versus Evil Tyranny.

After all, our Government has been elected by "The People".

The problem is that governments elected by the group mistakenly and fraudulently pass laws over things that the group doesn't even own. Its like if everyone in my household voted to use the neighbor's swimming pool. We might even allow the neighbor his one vote.

No, the neighbors property is not ours to vote on. We would be stealing away control from the rightful owner simply because we thought we had enough political clout to get away with it. We would be relying on the adage that "Political Might makes Right".

For a Government to survive it must accept the Truth that Morality is not relative; and that Political Might does not make Right. A system that relies on the alternative will predictably have continual confrontations to determine who has the most might. While many of these confrontations will be at the ballot box, when that fails for individuals and groups their only recourse is the ammo box.

What this means is that if our country is to survive in peace and liberty our Government must respect the Rights and Property of all, both citizens and non-citizens alike. Also, all interactions between that Government and individuals (other than those who have given up their Rights by violating the Rights of others) must be by mutually consensual agreements. These are basic Libertarian principles.

Examples of immoral Laws over things not owned by the public:

There is a whole slew of "Enforced Fairness" laws that are all bad laws. The only legitimate way to get these things accomplished is through public pressure from boycotts or picketing not through the law and the courts.

For example employment is a free consensual association supposedly protected by the Constitution and is not legitimately controlled by Government in any way (neither who is employed, what they are required to do, nor how much they are paid). If the employment contract contains words like "Equal Opportunity Employer" or "fair" then the Courts can help interpret the meaning of those words in that contract. Additionally the State could put restrictions on how the company interacts with employees if the company has previously entered into a contract with the State to become "Incorporated" and those restrictions were in that contract.

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