If any one of these natural rights may be arbitrarily taken from him by other men, all of them may be taken from him on the same reason.
Lysander Spooner
The Public Record
Lysander Spooner was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tradition.
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No one of these rights is any more sacred or inviolable in its nature, than are all the others.
The denial of any one of these rights is therefore equivalent to a denial of all the others.
The violation of any one of these rights, by lawmakers, is equivalent to the assertion of a right to violate all of them.
Plainly, unless all a man's natural rights are inviolable by lawmakers, none of them are.
It is an absurdity to say that a man has any rights of his own, if other men, whether calling themselves a government, or by any other name, have the right to take them from him, without his consent.
Therefore the very idea of a lawmaking government necessarily implies a denial of all such things as individual liberty, or individual rights.
The most tyrannical government will, therefore, if it have any sense, leave its victims enough liberty to enable them to provide for their own subsistence, to pay their taxes, and to render such military or other service as the government…
But it will do this for its own good, and not for theirs.
In allowing them this liberty, it does not at all recognize their right to it, but only consults its own interests.
Now, sir, this is the real character of the government of the United States, as it is of all other lawmaking governments.
If the authority be vested in the government, the governmnt is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with.