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Being a Good Neighbor from the Nursery to the Vote
by Henry Whitney (libertarian)
About The Author
After almost 20 years as a linguist in Papua New Guinea, I now work as a mechanical editor. My competition is in India. I don't make a lot of money, so I have no vested interest in protecting big business. But I have also found that poor people can be greedy, so I don't automatically assume that the poor are right and the rich are wrong. Our goal as Christians is not to build a moral or just or even Christian society. It is to introduce people to Jesus. We can best do that by being good neighbors, an activity that is simple but not easy. About The Column
Jesus told us to be good neighbors -- to do for them what we would have them do to us. These are things we teach kids in nurseries: keep your hands to yourself and tell the truth. It doesn't matter what relationships we're involved in, the rules are the same: don't touch people's bodies or property without permission, and don't tell lies to or about them. To the degree that a society obeys those rules, its people are free from assault, theft, fraud, and slander. Absent those threats, people can live together in peace and prosperity. But everyone wants to be an exception: "These things are fine most of the time, but ..."Wrong. It always works. This column is designed to show how and why.
Justice from the Bottom Up
Published: March 24, 2009
Why the current court-jail "justice" system cannot work. What should replace it and how it would work.
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