‘Anyone who appeals to freedom as a reason for war has to support and favour freedom. He has to favour the exercise of freedom over one’s just property. He has to favour the absence of unjust attacks and infringements on one’s life, liberty, and property because that is what freedom means, correct? Not so. Politicians constantly make the appeal to freedom while simultaneously supporting the state’s multiple infringements upon life, liberty, and property.

What are we to think of this blatant contradiction? We can conclude that our rulers are hypocrites. This is true. They pretend to favour freedom while their every act undermines it. Whenever they invoke freedom, watch out. They are talking about other things, things that are not freedom, things that go against exercising one’s free will over one’s property. Their aim is to sabotage freedom.

Our rulers are even worse than hypocrites. They falsify the meaning of freedom in three distinct ways. Without shame, they claim that the democratic process sanctions the laws they pass. They claim, in other words, that since the democratic processes (including majority rule) are lawful, freedom is not infringed by the laws that are passed via these processes. Then they claim that democracy guarantees freedom, meaning that democracy is what gives human beings their rights through its processes. Finally, they claim more generally that democracy is freedom and freedom is democracy.’

What Defending Freedom Really Means