On September 11, 1960, the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) – a still active conservative student organization – drew up a document in Sharon, Connecticut that still provides some of the best general ideas to which the broad conservative-libertarian movement owes. to be founded “Eternal truths” indeed have deep roots in the long-standing concept of freedom, most notably, John Locke’s theory of natural rights in “The Second Treatise on Civil Government”.
The Sharon Statement asserts that everyone has the right to “exercise free will” and to be “free from restriction by arbitrary force.” This opinion of natural sounds as unchangeable and present in every man as a result of his nature, not by governments or other members of the society granted. Whoever, whether private or public, violates these rights, such party acts at discretion and must be controlled.
This idea also fundamentally implies the Lockean view of rights as entailing only negative obligations from others; the right to life means not having the right to take life at will. The right to property means the right not to be expropriated.
Locke understood the protection of private property and the freedom of individuals to use it nonviolently as they pleased to be the cornerstone recognition of all natural rights. The Sharon Statement drafters; they wrote “freedom is indivisible and political freedom cannot last long without economic freedom”. If one of the main liberties enforced by government is the right to property, then taking away that liberty necessarily implies taking away the natural rights that Locke envisioned.
How does government protect natural rights? The drafters of Sharon’s scheme recognized that the government would only “protect those liberties through the maintenance of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice.
In fact, according to Locke, the only right delegated to the government of nature is the right to directly punish violators of their rights. When he enters government, he ceases to be the final judge in cases in which he has been injured, and government assumes the function of arbitrator. But each no, delegates other rights of government. Government must keep mind, body, and property safe from external coercive imposition, but must do nothing more and remain legitimate.
Understanding the sanctity of the right to property from government intervention, the Sharon Statement recognized the government’s interference with the market as a clear case of violation of property rights. They unequivocally stated that “economics is one” behavioral economy investing, free supply and demand. the system is consistent with the requirements of personal liberty and constitutional government.
Locke agreed. Free markets are the natural outcome of individuals, so that only the owners of things are recognized, either by virtue of the nature of the state, or acquired by others through legitimate commerce. It is the property of no one but man to ultimately determine how his goods are to be used. All coercive force with the free market is tyrannical and a betrayal of the Lockean principles of natural rights upon which America was founded.
Defending a proper understanding of natural rights, the sanctity of private property, and the free market, Sharon’s Statement is well aligned with the Lockean intellectual tradition of libertarianism and applies this tradition to today’s struggle against big government intervention.
