Dear Reader,

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Last week’s letter on free speech and property rights sparked more feedback than anything I’ve written in years. 

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Many of you wrote to say it clarified something you’d always felt. 

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Others penned long rebuttals insisting I’d missed the bigger point…

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That words have power, and people who speak irresponsibly bear guilt for the harm that follows.

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I read every single one of them.

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I’m not walking back anything I said. 

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I firmly believe there’s no such thing as a “human right” floating around untethered to anything else. 

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Every right rests on a foundation – and that foundation is property rights. 

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But I also believe that rights have a flip side, and that’s what today’s newsletter is about.

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The Flip Side of All Rights – Responsibilities

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Rights and responsibilities are flip sides of the same coin.

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You have a right to your voice, and a responsibility to use it wisely. 

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You have a right to your body, and a responsibility not to destroy it.

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You have a right to your labor, and a responsibility to provide and be a good steward of your wealth. 

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Every right carries with it a corresponding responsibility.

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Using your rights without accepting that responsibility is an abuse of your rights.

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But here is the key distinction:

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It is perfectly possible for me to abuse my rights… without VIOLATING anyone else’s.

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If you use your right to free speech to try to convince someone to commit a crime – say, to punch someone else in the face…

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You’ve abused your right to free speech.

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But if that person actually commits the act, they are the one who violated that person’s rights.

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Both things can be true at the same time.

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The difference is about more than just semantics…

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It’s about the line where the government should step in.

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The Government’s Purpose – Protecting Against the Violation of Rights

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The Founding Fathers believed that one of the only legitimate reasons for a government to exist was to protect against the violation of property rights.

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When the state starts punishing people for merely abusing their rights – when no one else’s property or person has been harmed…

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We begin sliding down a very slippery slope.

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Of course, at this point, we’re already halfway down that slope.

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You can see it clearly in the government’s attempt to legislate what people do with their own bodies.

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I’m talking about drugs.

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Do I support you taking drugs? No, that’s a great way to destroy your life.

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Is a drug habit an abuse of the right to your body?

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Yes, it is a complete abdication of the responsibility you have to your own body.

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But it shouldn’t be the government’s place to legislate that.

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And in fact, the government’s attempt to outlaw this self-destruction has produced far worse consequences.

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• Over $1 trillion spent since Nixon declared the War on Drugs ($44.5 billion in the 2025 Federal Drug Budget alone)

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• 43% of all prison inmates locked up for drug-related offenses

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• A persistent increase in drug overdose deaths over the past 25 years, with over 100,000 dying every year.

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Meanwhile, entire nations have been torn apart.

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Cartels now control swaths of Mexico, killing tens of thousands in battles with rival gangs and police.

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And who’s responsible for the rise of the cartels? The government.

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As Milton Friedman said, by making drugs illegal, the government has been effectively protecting the drug cartel. 

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“In an ordinary free market business—let’s take potatoes, beef, anything you want—there are thousands of importers and exporters. Anybody can go into the business. But it’s very hard for a small person to go into the drug-importing business because our interdiction efforts essentially make it enormously costly. So, the only people who can survive in that business are these large, Medellin cartel kind of people who have enough money so they can have fleets of airplanes, so they can have sophisticated methods, and so on.

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In addition to which, by keeping goods out and by arresting, let’s say, local marijuana growers, the government keeps the price of these products high. What more could a monopolist want? He’s got a government who makes it very hard for all his competitors and who keeps the price of his products high. It’s absolutely heaven.”

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~Milton Friedman

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By trying to outlaw vice, the state didn’t eliminate it – it just handed it to the most violent people on earth.

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That’s what happens when government tries to legislate responsibility instead of protecting rights.

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It breeds black markets, corruption – and tyranny.

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History tells the same story in a thousand forms.

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In Genesis, Joseph warned Egypt of a coming famine. 

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The Pharaoh prepared – the people didn’t. 

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They saw the government storing grain and assumed it would take care of them.

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When the famine hit, they sold first their money, then their livestock, then their land – and finally, themselves.

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They didn’t lose freedom overnight. They traded it away, one responsibility at a time.

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That’s how it always happens.

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When people surrender responsibility, the state doesn’t just take their duties – it takes their rights.

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But something even deeper happens too.

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When the government steps in to “protect” us from the consequences of our own choices, it also robs us of the very freedom that makes moral choice possible.

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Freedom, Virtue, and Choice

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How can you be moral if you were never given the freedom to choose to be moral?

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Virtue requires freedom.

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If people are no longer free to do wrong, they can no longer choose to do right.

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As C.S. Lewis once wrote:

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“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right.

If a thing is free to be good it’s also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible.

Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”

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~C.S. Lewis

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You can choose to do the right thing and uphold your responsibilities…

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Or you can choose to ignore them and abuse your rights.

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