If you’re reading these words, you are almost certainly doing so because you chose to. What motivates you? Maybe you have a desire to liberate the oppressed. Or maybe your eyes have been opened to so much wrong in the world—and that attacks on human freedom are the underlying pattern.
Whatever the case, no one is holding a gun to your head.
Put in starker terms, the pattern is this: Too much of the world operates according to the threat of force. Those who see this pattern note that certain people consistently violate a moral principle. There are variations on what to call the principle, but the idea goes something like this:
One ought never to threaten or initiate force against innocent people.
This is usually referred to as the nonaggression principle (NAP).
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