1.
A child of mine who married a person with religious beliefs different from mine would probably make me very uncomfortable by doing so.
2.
A government may justifiably make war against another government in order to bring about the adoption of desirable social and political values in the society ruled by that government.
3.
A member of a particular cultural or religious group should accept most or all aspects of the group’s identity as a package: at least in general, she or he should neither ignore them or seek to change them.
4.
Engaging in sex is wrong if one seeks to prevent conception.
5.
A society whose leaders speak frequently about the importance of freedom need only fear attacks from those who hate freedom.
6.
An entity that offers vital services to the public must be able to require everyone to pay for its services to keep some people from being “free riders.”
7.
Big business and government ordinarily work hand in hand, though one partner is sometimes more powerful than the other.
8.
Birth and breeding fit some people for positions of command and others for positions of service.
9.
Business organizations and non-profits are more effective when headed by powerful leaders who are readily obeyed by their subordinates than when responsibility for making decisions is widely shared.
10.
Businesses that are “too big to fail” should be bailed out at taxpayers’ expense if they seem likely to collapse
11.
Children should generally be subject to the authority of their parents until they are economically self-sufficient.
12.
Citizens suspected of involvement in terrorism should not receive the same procedural protections as those accused of other crimes.
13.
Collective bargaining is often a fair, appropriate way for workers to protect their interests in relation to managers and investors.
14.
Corporations that perform tasks the government judges to be important should receive subsidies if they need support in order to perform these tasks.
15.
Criminal penalties should be used to discourage people from consuming chemical substances widely agreed to be harmful.
16.
Dissent regarding political, scientific, and cultural issues helps to keep a society healthy.
17.
Expressing opposition to the policies of a society’s dominant institutions is disloyal and should be actively discouraged.
18.
Going to war saps a society’s resources and leads to dramatic increases in government power.
19.
Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
20.
Government is necessary to keep people from experiencing dire poverty and economic vulnerability.
21.
I can reasonably force other people not to copy books, music, or industrial devices and processes I have created, whether or not they use their own possessions to do so, whether or not they have agreed not to do so, and whether or not I have placed them so that they can be obtained and become someone else’s property.
22.
I should participate in and support social institutions that assist people who are poor, sick, or handicapped.
23.
I would be uncomfortable if a child of mine married a person of the same sex.
24.
If a business pollutes the air I breathe or the water I drink, I should be able to hold it legally accountable by suing it for damage to my body or my possessions.
25.
If economic arrangements were significantly more just than they are at present, it would be much easier than it is now for people to work in partnerships or cooperatives or to work for themselves.
26.
If I vote in an election for officials of a government, I am agreeing that the government rightly exercises authority over me.
27.
If there were no government, life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
28.
In cases in which people wrongly cause harm to others, the primary focus of the legal system should be on securing restitution for those who have been harmed.
29.
In the absence of privileges secured by the state (such as subsidies or monopoly or oligopoly privileges), the price of a product will frequently tend toward the price of the labor required to produce it.
30.
In today's economy, managers often make agreements with workers on terms they would resent if their roles and those of the workers were reversed.
31.
In Western societies today, big business is a persecuted minority group.
32.
Increased surveillance protects everyone’s security and threatens only those who wish to conceal inappropriate behavior.
33.
Individual women and men should be able to define their own social roles without regard to gender expectations.
34.
It is a good idea for a government in today’s world to maintain a very large military establishment in order to be ready to mount a defensive war at any time.
35.
It is appropriate for someone to pick and choose from among the elements of a cultural or religious tradition with which she or he decides to affiliate.
36.
It is especially important that people have access to weapons to protect themselves against authoritarian violence by the state.
37.
It is important to try to keep assumptions about the group or groups to which a person belongs from getting in the way of seeing the person in her or his particularity.
38.
It is morally appropriate to attack noncombatants in order to hasten the end of an otherwise just war.
39.
It is perfectly appropriate to engage in sex in order to experience pleasure or to bring the participants closer to each other, whether or not one also seeks to procreate.
40.
Legal restrictions on media content are appropriate if they are designed to protect children.
41.
It is reasonable to restrict people’s access to accurate information during war-time for their own good.
42.
Threatening to use weapons of mass destruction against noncombatant populations is reasonable if doing so seems likely to prevent war.
43.
It is sometimes morally acceptable to use force (perhaps, if not necessarily, up to and including forcible exile or execution) to compel someone to follow the dictates of a government she or he does not accept—just because they are the dictates of that government.
44.
You are obligated to accept someone’s positional authority only if you’ve consented to it, and even then only if that person asks you to do something that is not immoral.
45.
Laws and social norms protecting freedom of speech should safeguard only the expression of true beliefs.
46.
Letting people fend for themselves without help from others is often appropriate because it will promote the efficient use of resources and weed out the unfit.
47.
Most people in developed countries today are too lazy or unskilled to work without the supervision of managers.
48.
One government’s use of force against another often breeds resentment and provokes retaliation even by people with no love for the government under attack.
49.
Only people who share my religious views can experience ultimate fulfillment.
50.
Ordinary workers lack the talents, skills, and temperaments they would need if they were to try to organize their work-lives and make managerial or executive-level decisions.
51.
Parents should be free to decide whether the education their children receive is provided by government-approved schools.
52.
People should be able to move freely around the world in search of work, not limited in their search for work by borders.
53.
People should be expected to follow the established traditions of their cultures and acknowledge their value.
54.
People should be subjected to legal penalties for distributing texts or images others find offensive.
55.
People who work at a large corporation or non-profit should be entitled to take it over if it is primarily supported by tax dollars or if it is wealthy because of markets skewed in its favor by government-granted privilege.
56.
People who wrongly cause harm to others deserve retributive punishment.
57.
People with the capacity to deploy vast quantities of military power should use that power to promote stability, trade, and democracy around the world.
58.
Presuming I accept money or other benefits from a government, I cannot reasonably challenge that government’s legitimacy.
59.
Preventive military action against a society or group not engaged in active preparation for an attack can be appropriate.
60.
Privileges conferred by the state lead to unequal, exploitative exchanges.
61.
Professional managers are vital to the success of a typical for-profit or not-for-profit organization.
62.
Representing the conscience of a community, a jury should judge the law as well as the facts in a legal case.
63.
Rich societies should share wealth with producers in poor societies by allowing free entry to the goods and services they produce, rather than imposing trade barriers on them.
64.
Self-employment or work as a member of a cooperative or partnership is generally preferable to working for a boss, all other things being equal.
65.
Sex must take place inside marriage in order to be morally responsible.
66.
Sexual expression is only morally legitimate between two people of different sexes.
67.
Should one of my children marry a person from a different ethnic group, I would be uncomfortable.
68.
Since the air and water are common resources, businesses should be free to “pollute” them.
69.
Someone should be able to homestead land and acquire title to it when the legal owner doesn’t cultivate or otherwise use it for a reasonably long period.
70.
Someone who is using her own possessions or is using the possessions of others to which she has voluntarily been given access should be subject to no legal penalties for distributing any text, image, or sound she likes.
71.
Sometimes, a corporation can benefit the public most effectively when it enjoys a legally guaranteed monopoly.
72.
States may sometimes justly use military force to promote the business interests of their citizens.
73.
Laws and regulations which politicians say are designed to restrain big business often serve to protect the interests of big business.
74.
The authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple is an inherent part of reasonably ordered human society (even if it should be limited because of its potential for abuse).
75.
The belief that people should be basically equal in social status is morally reprehensible—destructive of freedom and social authority.
76.
The distribution of wealth and power in many societies in today’s world reflects systematic theft of land and other resources, to the predictable advantage of those who hold political and economic power.
77.
The emergence of a government, an entity with a monopoly of force, in a given territory is inevitable.
78.
Government central planners can often set production levels and determine distribution patterns for goods and services more rationally than producers and consumers can do so.
79.
The government should be able to draft people to serve in the military.
80.
The masses are inferior: all the improvements in their conditions which they simply take for granted they owe to the efforts of people who are clearly better than they are.
81.
The need to protect people from violence justifies a government in claiming a monopoly of force in a given territory
82.
The objectives politicians say they are pursuing when they call for war are usually the objectives they really are pursuing.
83.
The occurrence of large disparities in wealth in a community rarely if ever leads to undesirable consequences for most members of the community.
84.
There are good reasons for me to support arrangements in accordance with which people who can’t afford decent health care can obtain it anyway.
85.
There is no particular moral reason for me to help people who cannot help themselves.
86.
There is no way effectively to provide goods and services like roads, lighthouses, defense, the prevention of pollution, and protection against economic insecurity without government.
87.
Those in a typical modern society who are the wealthiest are also likely to be the most creative, gifted, dynamic, and achievement-oriented.
88.
Those who oppose a government’s policies during war-time should be silenced.
89.
To ensure that people grow up embracing common values, it is crucial that everyone be required or heavily encouraged to attend government schools.
90.
To ensure the safety of ordinary people, the state should confiscate privately owned weapons or strictly regulate their use.
91.
Torture is an appropriate tool for information-gathering in war.
92.
True monopolies cannot exist in a free-market economy and ours is a free market economy, so no true monopolies exist in our economy.
93.
Tariffs and subsidies should be used to encourage people to buy the products of domestic rather than foreign manufacturers.
94.
Using military force in far-away lands is often necessary to protect a society against future attack.
95.
Vigorous social authority—embodied in the family, church, and other mediating institutions—is a bedrock of the good society.
96.
Wealthy people often use their influence over the government to gain legal privileges for themselves and take resources from poor, working class, and middle class people.
97.
Were it not necessary to restrain the penchant to abuse power, patriarchal monarchy would be the only reasonable form of government.
98.
Whatever means necessary should be used to promote the practice of a dominant religion to ensure cohesion and the widespread acceptance of moral requirements.
99.
When it seems that someone else might react violently to something a public speaker says, the speaker should be forced to stop speaking.
100.
When people have done wrong, it is appropriate to limit their freedom for the specific purpose of fully rehabilitating them and ensuring that they have adjusted to the challenges of life in society.
101.
When people work in sweatshops, it’s often because violence engaged in or tolerated by the state has made it hard for them to support themselves in other ways.
102.
When politicians and generals say that the rules of civilized warfare are being respected in a military conflict, we can usually believe them.
103.
Where it occurs, the large-scale ownership of land reflects military and political effort—it is initiated and maintained by force.
104.
While they should feel free to offer advice, parents should not typically use emotional or economic pressure to control adolescents’ sexual activity.
105.
You should not be subject to legal penalties just because you consume a chemical substance.
106.
States have the right to control their borders and determine who does and does not enter their territory
Individualist anarchist great Lysander Spooner's classic critique of the U.S. Constitution: "No Treason No.6: The Constitution of No Authority" in the new and handy Pocket Subversion Edition. Also featuring Roderick T. Long's "Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections". 