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By Root 741 0

matrix has survived solely on subsidies, grants, and loans totaling more than $25 billion throughout its existence (with that amount growing with the immense bailout payments bequeathed in the wake of the recession beginning in 2008). Despite these handouts, train ticket prices have continued to grow over the years. The cheapest ticket from New York Penn Station to Washington, D.C., Union Station is $144 for a round-trip ticket. A quick online search for an airline ticket from New York to D.C. during the research for this book came to a grand total of $139 round trip on JetBlue, meaning it is cheaper (and thus more cost-efficient) to travel on a privately owned airline than on a land-based railroad owned and operated by the government. Until the government has legitimate competition, or abdicates control over transportation altogether, these escalating ticket prices will continue to inflict and restrict your natural right to move and travel.

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“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free.”

In 2009, Roxroy Salmon, a married father of five children and human rights activist, was ordered to be deported from America. A Jamaican national who had resided in America for more than thirty years, Salmon had been found guilty of drug possession and sale of narcotics nearly twenty years ago. Unfortunately for Salmon, drug offenses were made a grounds for deportation pursuant to a law passed after the commission of his crimes, and the preservation of families could not be considered in making the decision whether to deport or not. According to the government, the interest in keeping families together could not override the “public necessity” of immigration policy. Sadly, this is no isolated incident. A study conducted by the Homeland Security Department showed that from 1998 to 2007, 108,434 parents of American-born children were deported.12 How can a country which prides itself on a respect for liberty adopt a policy which tears families apart, leaves children without parents, and treats the right to travel as subject to the government’s whim?

As the above story suggests, the most egregious violation of the right to travel experienced in recent years is controlled immigration policy. Immigration limitations fundamentally inhibit a person’s free will to come and go as he or she pleases. Because the right to move is a natural right, it is not limited to just American citizens. Rather, the right to move is so fundamental, it is possessed by all human beings—whether they are immigrants or not. While private landowners have the right to prevent or allow “immigrants” (or anyone) from coming on their land, based upon fundamental principles of property, the government does not enjoy a similar right: To suggest otherwise is to say that the government itself somehow “owns” our country, and possesses property rights to it. Upon what legal basis does government property ownership rest? It can have no basis whatsoever; the government can only vest property rights in itself by providing just compensation. Any argument that the government has the property right to exclude rests in turn upon the socialistic claim of collective ownership.

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Moreover, if I am desirous of citizens of another country traveling through my property, say to pursue employment, I should be free to grant them permission. The government cannot limit this property right by circumscribing the right of others to travel freely. If the state wants a solution to the unlawful stream of immigrants in and out of the country, then it can simply abide by the Natural Law and let them enter legally.

More fundamentally, there can be no such thing as American exceptionalism. We, as Americans, are not worthy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness merely by virtue of being born in the United States of America; these rights do not depend upon American citizenship for their existence. They are self-evident. In fact, our nation was built on the promise of freedom, not just to those who were born here, but to all those struggling under the yoke of