By any objective standard, the freedom movement has, over the past fifty years – if not the entire history of mankind – been an utter and complete failure. More than fifty years after the publication of seminal works clinching the case against State control, the power of the State continues to grow. State control remains either complete or rapidly growing in education, health care, child care, power generation, media, industry and many other sectors. Libertarian candidates are virtually invisible in the political arena, and during the countless conversations I have had with countless non-Libertarians over the past twenty years, I have yet to meet one who is even vaguely familiar with basic concepts of freedom, such as the evils of taxation, the liberty of the free market, or the violent nature of government power.

What has gone so wrong? Why have ideas which are true, logical and proven by history had so little effect on society? Why have we lost so completely?

To view my answer within a context we are all familiar with, let’s look at the last major success in the limitation of state power, which was the abolition of slavery – not in America, which was the result of a corrupt civil war – but in the rest of the Western world.

Abolitionists did not condemn slavery because of its economic inefficiency, or by arguing that agriculture survived quite nicely before the introduction of slaves, or by making the case that slavery should be ameliorated, or reformed, or its evils reduced to some lesser degree.

Instead, abolitionists won over the hearts and minds of mankind by thundering, over and over, that slavery was a moral evil that had to be ended regardless of effects. They did not discuss costs and benefits. They did not say that the slave-owners should exercise less control over their slaves. They did not argue that slavery be should reduced to some prior historical level. No, they simply and passionately stated, over and over, for years and years, that it was an absolute moral evil to treat people as property. They did not consider slavery an institution which could be changed for the better. It could only be abolished utterly. For over a hundred years, they refused to give a single inch regarding the utter moral evil of slavery.

And they won.

That is a positive example. Let’s look at a negative one. Soldiers have always been relatively easy to recruit – and even when they have not, the imposition of the draft has easily made up for the lack of volunteers. In the First World War, it could be said that, due to nearly a hundred years of peace in Western Europe, the boy-soldiers who flocked to the Front knew nothing about the real conditions of combat. However, since the rise of "war-nography," or graphic novels, movies and documentaries about war, no young man can claim ignorance about the violence, madness and confusion of combat.

Thus on the positive side, we have a social movement – abolitionism – which succeeded by unflinchingly, persistently and passionately condemning the absolute evil of slavery. On the negative side, we have young men willing to give up their limbs, minds and lives because society tells them that being a soldier is the highest moral good.

These two examples – and there are many more – illustrate one basic point.  As advocates of freedom, we have failed because we have argued from the head, rather than from the heart. To generalize broadly, we have argued for economics and efficiency, rather than morality and integrity. We have argued that the government should be limited, or restrained, or reformed, because it doesn’t deliver on its promises, or is inefficient, or is self-serving, or other such drab and lifeless reasons. This is the same as arguing that slavery should be reduced somewhat because it is economically inefficient. It is not a call to arms. It is an invitation to yawn.

People will do anything to believe that they are good.

Men will die and kill for the State, if they believe that a good man fights for his country. People will surrender more than half their income to the State, if they believe that the State is helping the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, or other such nonsense. They will cheer blank-eyed murderers if they are convinced that a good person "supports the troops." They will give up their liberties if they believe that doing so is "patriotic."

We have so much to learn from our enemies, from those who have successfully controlled the public discourse for the past century. Look at the invasion of Iraq. It was presented in purely moral terms. Hussein is evil. You don’t approve of him, do you? He wants to kill us. You don’t want Americans to die, do you? Remember 9-11. You don’t want that to happen again, do you? Therefore, let slip the dogs of war!

There is only one solution. We must take aim at the only soft belly the Leviathan possesses. We must reclaim the language. We must take back the moral core of the debate.

We need to explicitly state that our cause is a moral cause. That we are fighting as the civil-rights leaders fought. As the anti-slavery crusaders fought. Not for incremental gains. Not to educate our enemies or sway the undecided with statistics and economics – but to end the State, the greatest moral evil in the history of the world. With our words, our moral certainty, we rise to do battle with the State itself, which slaughters the helpless by the hundreds of millions. Our enemies are not self-interested politicians, or smarmy leftists, or smug right-wingers, or manipulative statists, but the ‘moral’ underpinnings of the most evil scourge that mankind has ever faced. Our enemy is a murderous social institution that does more killing, maiming and soul-destroying than slavery ever did. The beast we face slays, diminishes and throttles us from the cradle to the grave, and preys on us with the guns and clubs of soldiers, police and prison guards. We rail against leaders who care for us only to the degree that a farmer cares for his livestock, and who no more think of freeing us than a farmer thinks of liberating his cows.

This is my solution. It is time for us to get angry, get motivated, and get busy. We have to get over the idea that educating people will save us. A lack of knowledge is not the problem. After a century of explosive State growth, the fall of totalitarianism in Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, endless newspaper articles detailing government corruption, rising debt, falling services and unjust wars, the time is long past for people to begin questioning the moral nature of the State. A man in 1940 may be forgiven for thinking that smoking is harmless – today, he is simply a fool. Hayek and Rand were writing far in advance of history in the 1940s. By now, the evidence has been in for decades, and anyone who continues to believe in the virtue of the State is a self-blinded dupe. We have not failed because people don’t have the knowledge. We have failed because people still believe in the morality of the State. We offer a difference in degree, not in kind. It is not education that we must pursue, but moral praise and condemnation.

We must draw the line, and refuse to step across. The time for action is now, because the hour is growing late. If we do not change our course – and fast – liberty will not survive another generation. If we act, we shall all play a part the salvation of civilization, in freeing people’s necks from the tightening noose of the State. We shall save the soldiers from the shrapnel, the children from hunger, the old from poverty, foreigners from our bombs, the young from ignorance, and civil society from a slow slide into totalitarian savagery.