Unbeknownst to me, women were marching topless in Central Park on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009. I support their cause because this is an issue of Liberty. I like breasts as much as the next guy and I hardly believe any man would be too opposed to women walking around topless. Now, not all women are equal and there are breasts that we want to look at that those that we’d rather not. Different people like different things. But, the point isn’t whether men like breasts or not.

This is an issue of Liberty.

Because of that, it doesn’t matter if your breasts or young and perky or old and saggy. There should be no reason why women or men should not be allowed to walk around topless or even bare naked. As long one is out in a public place, there is no legitimate reason to disallow anyone from presenting themselves in any way they wish.

If one is on private property and the owner of the property doesn’t want it, they can ask that you be clothed and in the same light, if they allow you to be naked, you can be naked within their property.

There are some who believe this is wrong as the Daily News article quoted:

“This is extreme liberalism and why America’s in decline,” shouted one woman, who said she was a doctor but declined to give her name. “It’s degrading to women to tell them to expose their breasts publicly.”

America is in decline for many reasons–none of which is due to excess Liberty. The women’s opinion is as valid as anyone else’s opinion. Other women might say its degrading to tell them to hide their breasts in public! Is there something wrong with breasts? Why should women be forced to hide them? All such opinions are valid. The beauty of Liberty is that nothing is judged on opinions. It is a matter of property rights. We own our bodies and if we want to put clothes on it, we can; if not, we should also be allowed to do so.

The opinions of the majority change with the times. Natural rights do not.

France has a law that specifically states women are allowed to be topless. While I agree with the idea of the law, I do not support having a law that tells us what we can do. A system of governance that starts writing laws for what we are allowed to do is a bad precedence. We should be allowed to do whatever we want as long as no one else’s Liberty is violated.

While I have no intention of telling my mother, sister, cousins, girlfriend, or friends to go walk around topless–nor do I want to see all of that, it doesn’t give me the right to tell them they can’t do it. Whether I like it or not is irrelevant. We have no right to control another person’s Liberty.

That’s what this issue should be about. It isn’t about whether women should bare their breasts in public or not. It is about whether we live in a nation founded on Liberty or not.

I was going to go to bed and perhaps have an early rise in the morning but, I decided to surf Facebook and found myself tagged to a note on someone’s thoughts about capitalism. I had debated this person on the topic of Obama’s economic policies in the recent past. What was obvious from the debate is that I am in support of Liberty and freedom and he is in support of central planning and big government.

It is certainly not rare to have big government supporters in the State or city of New York. Since Obama has become President, I have become more and more a fish out of water when it comes to political debates. Where everyone was against Bush’s idiotic policies, no one dares criticize the Messiah’s idiotic policies. The scariest thing is that they don’t see the similarities.

I consider myself a student of Mises and have learned a great deal from economists, philosophers, and statesman–not statists–who are knowledgeable of his work. While Mises has long ago refuted Marx, it has not stopped the boneheaded Marxian ideas from spreading.

So, while every centrally planned form of government has failed since Marx and before Marx, we are still debating whether a free society is the best one to live in. It was Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. In that sense, all Marxists are insane–and so are their policies.

My motivation to write this instead of sleep was from a Facebook note. This note came about because of a quote I posted by Henry Hazlitt:

“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.”

The author of the Facebook note was outraged. Before I had read this note, I did not know the author was a Marxist. I knew he supported big government and believed it to be a good idea to steal from one group to give to another–in this case it was stealing from the poor to give to the rich or what is known as bailouts.

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Arguing the case for Liberty is never easy. People say they want to be free and know they should be free. It is the means by which we want to get there that is misguided. We will willfully violate Liberty as a means to achieve a free society.

The idea that we can violate Liberty in order to have Liberty is ridiculous. The Western world has taken freedom for granted. We know that a free society is the only humane way to live. What we don’t know realize is that our societies have become less free over time–less humane.

Not only have we not kept our houses in order but, we go around telling everyone else how they should live. Those living in glass houses should not throw stones. We force our way of life on everyone else and expect them to like it. We forget that Liberty means we can live one way and our neighbors another.

We have decided that temporary safety is more important than lasting Liberty. Whether the monsters are terrorists or financial crises, we want protection from them at the expense of our freedoms. So while we say we respect personal Liberties, we act in the exact opposite.

We should stop lying to ourselves and admit it: we don’t believe in freedom. We just give it lip service. Deep down we may still know that Liberty is right but, we have lost our understanding and respect for Liberty. The following are seven reasons for Liberty that will try to reawaken the free spirit inside all of us.

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The single biggest debate topic I have with my European friends is about guns. I have already written about the guns after discussing it with them. No one has changed their minds since. My political stance on every issue revolves around the protection of Liberty.

From what I have gathered, Europeans treat guns as if they were nuclear weapons. While I do not disagree that guns can kill people and have been used to kill people, I do disagree that we should have laws against guns. There are many reasons for this line of thinking. The most important one being that owning a gun does not directly harm anyone and disallowing someone to own a gun is a violation of Liberty.

I refuse to take away any Liberty. I do not believe you can take away some Liberty so that some other Liberties can be protected. That is what the recent debate was about. I first head this argument after a few beers–perhaps some tequila as well–but, I still understood that owning a gun is not a violation of Liberty.

The credit for the argument that the act of owning a gun is a violation of Liberty–and that being why I should be against guns–goes to my German friend who is also teaching me German. Her argument is that guns have no purpose outside of killing. Because its only purpose is to kill, it is a violation of the Liberty.

I do not know if gun technology is useful for anything else. I’m not that knowledgeable about guns. No one knows if gun technology can be useful in the future. I can accept that guns have no use other than killing–whether in defense or aggression. The part where her logic falls through the floor is claiming that ownership of a gun is violating Liberty.

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I have nothing against this guy representing the DSA but, his ideas of socialism are pretty funny to those of us who understand free markets and liberty. Beck’s use of the M&M’s were pretty funny. The man clearly undermines the idea socialism and enforces the principles of freedom when he talks about the M&M’s.

Socialism cannot work. It has never worked. The two parties are indeed both socialist as Beck points out. The oddity of the Democrats fighting with the Republicans where one calls the other socialists when they are both one and the same.

I saw some signs for socialist gathering on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I found it insane that the socialism movement is taking hold. The economic crisis was created by the idea of big government. The world’s biggest problems are a result of big government. Why in the world would anyone think we can create a government run by angels?

This appears to be a time in history where there is room for new discussions on the role of government and whether slavery is better than freedom. It wouldn’t take a genius to choose freedom over slavery except when you use synonyms for slavery such as socialism, communism, marxism, etc.

The man also doesn’t know much about economics as he refers to the misguided principles of Keynes. We don’t need a bigger stimulus, we need less government for the economy to recover. True free marketers can preach this all day long but, the proof will be in the pudding. If the economy does recover, it will be despite of the socialist actions. Chances are, the economy will tank into the abyss because of all this government spending. We’ve been here before and it didn’t work last time either.

We need to choose liberty.