If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one – if he had the power – would be justified in silencing mankind. – John Stuart Mill
After thinking seriously about morality and ethics since my early teens, I eventually arrived about 15 years ago at a simple working definition of evil: “The attempt to inflict control upon others that they neither desire nor require.” If an individual wants to be controlled, giving it to him is not evil; if he needs to be controlled to stop him from harming others (or, if a child, himself), giving it to him is a necessity (though depending on how it’s handled, possibly a necessary evil or distortion of a necessity into evil). The right of the individual to be individual is otherwise inarguable; every individual has the right to survive, to follow his own path of growth and happiness, and to defend himself, so long as he affords others the same rights. Furthermore, these rights are indivisible and non-commutative; they cannot be subdivided, added to those of another or re-assigned to someone else. Each individual entity, no matter how large or small, has the same rights, and large groups do not gain more rights by adding those of their members together. The rights of each individual, no matter how small his minority group, are inalienable; even if he is the only representative of a wholly unique species, he would still have the same rights as everyone else, no matter how many “felt” or “thought” or “voted” that his rights should be abrogated (not even for “the public good”), unless (and only if) he abrogates the rights of another individual first (such as by violent attack). Violence is not the only form of evil, but it is the most severe, and even most of the non-violent forms are enabled by the threat of violence. Use of violence or threat of violence against an individual who has not himself violated or attempted to violate anyone else’s rights is always wrong and always evil, no matter how offensive, unpleasant, unpopular, weak, strong, poor, wealthy, stupid, intelligent or whatever he may be, and no matter which mores, rules, ordinances or laws he has broken.
There are those, possibly among those reading this, who would argue with some or all of this definition, who would like to pretend that there are certain “mitigating circumstances” or conditions under which some group has the right to inflict unprovoked violence upon another; they pretend that it’s moral to physically restrain him, violate his privacy, interfere with his interpersonal relations and private arrangements, steal his property or impede his free movement simply because he has done something or belongs to some group they don’t like. But that is a slippery slope indeed, because once we allow this the number of excuses for violence inevitably increases, and the size of the consensus needed to trigger the violence inevitably decreases, until we reach the nadir of America in 2013: a single individual can now inflict horrific violence upon anyone he chooses, so long as the aggressor has the right credentials and accuses his victim of the right “offense”. Nor are state actors the only ones who can get away with this; the right accusation by virtually anyone sets the machinery of the state in motion to crush the hapless individual hurled into it, and even many innocent bystanders who just happen to get in the way.
That last is the main reason that extremely large entities of any kind are dangerous, and need to be dismantled or at least heavily defended against. We all know what happens when a mob, an army, a large corporation, a government or other large, powerful entity actually intends to harm individuals or smaller collectives, but some of these are so large and ungainly that they cannot avoid harming others even when it isn’t intended. A bull in a china shop probably has no desire to break anything, but it’s exceedingly likely that he will; his size, strength, robustness and lack of agility combine to doom any of the comparatively small, fragile objects into which he cannot help blundering while attempting to operate in an environment to which he is unsuited. The same can be said of elephants stampeding toward a native village in a jungle movie; the panicked pachyderms merely want to save themselves from whatever has frightened them, and any destruction of breakable property and tiny humans who happen to get in their way is incidental. A government so large that it consumes most of its host-country’s gross domestic product in return for very little, and which limits individual freedom by its very existence, is much too large. A financial institution so huge that governments cannot prosecute it for flagrantly criminal behavior (due to fear of the economic repercussions) is dangerously huge. The fact that these institutions have millions of supporters is irrelevant; those numbers do not add up to greater rights than those of even the smallest, poorest, weakest individual they have harmed. It is long past time to either cut these leviathans down to size, or else to restrain them in such a way that their careless movements cannot crush us by the thousands without their even noticing.
Yes
I’ve always made a distinction between “power to” and “power over”. A good government, or organization, gives people the power to. Power to be more free, to enrich their lives. A bad government or organization is about power over. That sort of entity restricts, rather than supports.
A great example of a government practicing “power to” is the public library. These days, most everything else is power over.
Government doesn’t give me power. I don’t depend on government to enrich my life. I don’t depend on government to give me a single answer on how best to live my life – or to treat others.
Anytime an individual GIVES you something – he has power over you.
It is NO different with a government.
How does the government “enrich” my life by taking so much of my pay in taxes? With all my incomes – I make six figures and so does my wife. But I have a retirement – another full time job that keeps me away from home for MONTHS out of the year and I have a part time job also when I’m not on the road working my main job.
How does ObamaCare “enrich” my life or make it better when I already have health insurance that I pay for – which is now going to much more expensive once O’Care kicks in?
How has government influence in education made my children smarter than their grandparents were?
Government … SUCKS. Everything it does, every power it has comes from a sword.
Also – of all the governments in the world that have existed throughout history – I would say the United States government is perhaps the most noble. Now – that’s like saying that Billy The Kid was the most kind-hearted outlaw of the old west (but bear with me). If the U.S.A. can’t live up to the dream of a benign, responsible government – what government can? I know we have to have government – but perhaps government is something that we need to keep re-shaping on a regular basis – like trimming a tree – to ensure it doesn’t get out of control.
After Katrina – I looked at my wife and told her … “We’ve lost everything – and tomorrow we start to rebuild it.” I told her the government wasn’t going to come to our rescue – because the disaster was too big. I was wrong about that – the government did step and bailed out everyone. I didn’t accept their assistance because, by the time they stepped in, I was already well on my way to healing myself. That – and the fact that taking that money would have eliminated my right to bitch about the forced confiscation of my pay vis a vis TAXES.
But here’s the thing – did government really ENRICH the lives of those it bailed out with money? No – it did not. “Enrichment” doesn’t mean protecting one from harm. I submit – that everything I went through in rebuilding my house and life (by my own labors – helped by my family) – was more enriching than anything that government ever could have done.
The power to of the public library is only provided by the power over of government to steal money from citizens and use it to do things they wouldn’t voluntarily spend their own money on if given the choice. Everything the government does is its power over the smallfolk; the power to is just what thy use to make it sound nicer and further expand their power over.
1) Government power over can displace a greater degree of private power over. That’s the point of a Hobbesian Leviathan in the first place – and you don’t need to go as far as Hobbes to get that much.
2) Do you have contract enforcement in whatever system you’re imagining? Is that power to or power over? Once the contract is made, it’s power over – but when planning the contract, it’s power to. You simply couldn’t guarantee getting a result without contract enforcement, but with it, you can. This enabled something that wasn’t possible before. That’s the essence of power to.
3) Now, supposing you have contract enforcement. What keeps company towns from popping up? Indenturing? These are contracts, but these days are widely considered invalid. Do you think they’re hunky-dory? Until they were outlawed, they were common.
That the current government is way too big is a problem, but it WOULD be possible to swing the pendulum too far the other direction.
1) I agree it can, but in the real world it’s almost always a net increase in power over experienced in daily life.
2) I consider contract enforcement to be a form of power to (make credible contracts) created by the use of power over others in a consensual manner.
3) Nothing, and I don’t care if they do. I don’t have a problem with the contracts people sign themselves into; it’s their choice.
It’s no doubt possible to have too little government; I haven’t seen a case for that here, though.
Your earlier post gave the impression that you would not have stated the last sentence of this post here. If you own that I don’t feel the need to argue.
So, people who are not good at reading contracts are the ones you would let the corporations screw over. That’s exactly what the big corporations did to moderate income people leading up to the 2007 crash. Well, good to know.
1) People who sign contracts without knowing what’s in them are at least as responsible for being ‘screwed over’ as the people on the other side of the deal.
2) So you would deny such middle-class people their agency and legal right to make contracts? Are they allowed to vote as well, or aren’t you concerned they’ll make irresponsible decisions in that endeavor as well?
At LEAST as responsible – somehow – as the people who drew up the contracts, and the people who dismissed the fine print as details? Based on what?
On the fact that they sought out and ultimately signed a contract without knowing its contents. If you sign something without knowing what you’re agreeing to, the other side of the deal isn’t the one responsible for how hard you get dinged.
Oh, no doubt, some people are dumb as rocks about contracts. Like the suckers who let the banks talk them into taking out an ARM mortgage. But it seems to me, that we need to recognize that fact and deal with it, not dismiss such people as useless losers who deserve to be economically scammed. I’m sure boiler room salesmen in Florida agree with your ethos, however.
And does dealing with the fact of irresponsibility mean disallowing individuals to make some (possibly bad) choices as defined by the enlightened elites? If so, I’m again’ it!
>Kewilson @2:02
It might mean recognizing the externalities of certain contracts that would arise from one party’s predictable failure, and ensuring that some sort of accounting is taken for that. It might mean that efforts must be taken to mitigate the risk that people will enter such contracts without comprehending them.
Would you be against rules like those?
It might mean barring certain kinds of contract. We already ban slavery contracts. Are you against that ban? Where does the dividing line lie for you?
~~~~ separate question ~~~~
Enlightened elites. Hrm. Does the source of the rules change what rules are actually good or bad?
drachefly @2:29pm
You haven’t specified what those rules would look like, so there’s no way for me to say whether I would be for or against them Since I doubt they would actually prevent contract failures while restricting individual choice, I’d likely be opposed.
If (irresponsible) people should be stopped from making contracts with some externalities because they can’t be trusted to make the best decision, then why are they allowed to make decisions that are nothing but an externality (i.e., to vote)? If it’s the externality you really care about, there’s a better case to be made for removing the rights of irresponsible people to vote than to contract. Is that something you would favor? If not, why not?
“Slavery contract” is an oxymoron; slavery implies a lack of consent, a contract its presence. Semantics aside, what is it about a ‘slavery contract’ that you find objectionable? The length of the contract? The inability to back out?
The source of rules doesn’t matter to me, only whether they are consented to by those living with them. You propose swapping rules people agree to aide by (contracts) to those they do not (laws).
What? WHAT?
This is getting stupid.
Sorry, but I’m not interested in this conversation anymore.
What the bunch of you are arguing about, in the final analysis, is competence: And the root problem here is that our society has, most unwisely, decided that competence is generally represented by a line in the sand described by age, when we know, in point of fact, that there is no such defined relationship between age and competence. There are competent teenagers; there are incompetent adults. The idea that such capacities arrive simply as a matter of getting older is wholly false.
Because competence is defined wrongly, the idea that simply not understanding is irrelevant is harmful in our current context; because competence is defined wrongly, the idea that agency is automatically deserved is outright wrong.
First, there’s what we’d like to have, and second, there’s what we actually have. You can wish, agitate, and even conspire for the former, but until or unless that comes about, we have to deal with the latter. Perhaps the constructive thing to do is figure out how to do that successfully.
Oh, I completely agree; age is a pretty inaccurate marker for competence. But the notion of actually testing for competence, by any other metric, is widely considered vulgar when the implication is that (in)competence should limit your legal authority to make choices (i.e., to sign contracts or vote). There’s also the issue of whatever competence test is accepted becomes a political tool.
Who held a gun to the ignorant party’s head and forced him to sign the contract? Yeah – that doesn’t happen much.
Also – the Gulf Oil Spill – didn’t produce any long term environmental impact and we’re back to eating huge shrimp and oysters again. However – BP is still being milked of $$ by bottom dwellers with shaky claims to reparation. So there’s a case of a big corporation getting picked to death by the masses.
And you know what? It’s BP’s own fault for opening the door to paying damages. There’s legal limits already set on damages – and they should told everyone “see ya in court!”. They didn’t – they thought they’d be stand up guys by offering a sum of reparation above and beyond the legal limits – and now that has been turned into an infinite payout.
They were idiots – and they are paying.
Hell yeah. If they aren’t good at reading contracts they better damned well learn after getting screwed a few times.
Government doesn’t exist to protect idiots from themselves.
And …
Idiots exist to be taken advantage of.
That doesn’t quite sit right with me. Okay, governments shouldn’t save people from themselves (that’s a core argument against the War on Drugs and War on Whores), but why should that be seen as an excuse for unethical behavior?
Going back to the discussion from yesterday, couldn’t it be argued that too many people taking advantage of too many ‘idiots’ is what contributed to the economic crash, which ended up negatively affecting not just the ‘idiots’ but the rest of us as well?
Well this is one of two places where I part ways with libertarians. Society exists for the good of all, including the idiots, the undeserving, the ungrateful, the poor, the weird. I am very attracted to libertarian ideas about maximizing human freedom, but you all seem to have a blind spot when it comes to people who can’t or aren’t (fill in the blank). The guy who washes my dishes when I eat out is just as deserving of a good life as any of us, be he immigrant, parolee, or just not very bright. If people are poor at reading and understanding contracts, we need to deal with that, not just say “fuck em.”
So, what you are saying Krulac is that you justify the use of force–in this case a contract which in legalese does not say what the person thinks it says–to force them to do your bidding.
Government exists to protect people from predators of every sort, whether they use a gun or a briefcase. Your statement above shows you to be a friend only of your own liberty, no one elses. That makes you sir, a nascent despot, not a libertarian.
Go hang your head in shame.
So what is your solution? It appears that you would have some government functionary, with no stake in the results, substitute his judgment for the judgment of the parties signing the contract. Why on earth would you expect that to be an improvement?
Yes, public libraries are great, used to spend many a day in them when I was a kid (nowadays I’m too busy to make the trip, sadly.).
Thank you for including both forms of large organization oppression.
Oppression is oppression, and under a fascist system (such as we currently “enjoy”) the two are as inextricably interwoven as the symbiotic components of a lichen.
Dr Olson made the observation that many things that we rely on for modern society require a degree of compulsion to create. Roads, postal services, common defense, libraries… all of these are examples of services that would not exist absent coercion, because everyone would wait around for someone else to expend the time and effort to create them.
With that said, it is true that we are losing the distinction between services and items that a mutual government HAS to exert power to create…and services that are unnecessary, unwanted, and that society could well function without (e.g the control of vice).
I agree.
We have a corruption problem in this country. The leaders of big government and big corporation are working to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
Fundamental services that help build our economy are slashed (roads and schools). But random earmarks and pet projects run unabated.
Prosecution of vice fills corporate prisons. But corporate fraud results in taxpayer loans to the fraudster.
I agree that our government spends to much (see defense). But I’m not a libertarian, so see defunding of various programs as having varied effects both positive and negative.
Currently we have defunded any item that would be considered normal operation of the government and left only pork funded. Which seems like a suboptimal decision.
Well, Maggie, I read the National Review article this time. The author of the article slams Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; programs which have worked just fine for decades. Apparently the author is a denizen from some alternate-universe where these programs are operated out of back-alleys by Russian mobsters or something.
Frankly, if seniors have a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and the medical care they need, then these programs work, period. When seniors are homeless and starving, then and only then can the programs be considered a scam.
LOL – the social safety net hasn’t worked and – in any case my lady – that shit is about to come crashing down on your head.
Because we’re out of money and cruising on an empty tank. Ride stops at some point – then tell me how well it all worked out.
They also said that Assad of Syria would fall back in 2011. But two years later, he’s still in power. So forgive me if I don’t believe them when they say Social Security is failing.
Social Security (which is funded separately from the rest of the budget) is solvent through 2038 if we do nothing at all. It’s solvent longer than that if we raise the retirement age OR raise the cap OR both.
Somehow I never seem to get around to reading National Review articles… must be my short attention span.
I usually agree with my lecturers when they believe the legal and political system is the US as it stands is crazy, and Libertarians such as yourself being even more crazy, espousing individualism rather than public services which we are accustomed to over here .
However this post definitely makes sense and very easy way to explain to those who believe who should “let the government” do everything because for every piece of legislation which is passed, or every power handed over to a centralised body there are consequences, even unintended consequences, and when a system for delivering on whatever policy objective is established, it’s very difficult to take it apart again.
Take the Property Tax which is now being brought in over here, if the legislation behind it were to be removed, it would have to refund all those who have already paid the tax and it’s chaotic enough dealing with all the returns as it is, and this “difficulty” is removing it makes people acquiesce and just leave it in place.
Sorry Maggie. Evil occurs when you turn human beings into things rather than people. In order to inflict control over someone, you have to make that someone, in your mind, less than you are, i.e., less than human first. If you decide that they are not worthy of controlling their own lives, then you have made them into a thing that needs control, not a human being that needs respect.
And yet the evil itself doesn’t happen until the “control” is exercised.
Until that point – it’s all just thinking. So how is thinking evil?
The evil exists,:when you call a black child the N-word, or a hispanic child a the S-word; when you predicate your actions on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, or national origin. In neither case is your victim in your “control,” but by the Eternal they are harmed. It is called intent under the law, and intent changes murder to manslaughter, even though the result is the same. It is in making them inferior–which they are not–that evil is created. Or have you forgatten Jefferson’s Immortal Words in the Declaration: “We hold these Truths to be Self-evident; that all Men [and for that matter all of humanity] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness–”
Thinking can be evil because it sets your mind in a predisposition to act in an evil manner against your fellow human beings.
Please note (though I suspect that freegirard already knows this) that something can be evil without it being necessary that the government stops you from doing that thing. For instance, you can sit around and think that another race of people are inferior beast-men all you want. Yeah, it’s evil, and could lead to doing things which government should stop you from doing, but as long as all you do is sit around and think (or even talk, or good God, write), the government should butt out.
By the way: one of the great evils I find in most modern Libertarian thought, especially that contra-Marxist Ayn Rand, is that they take no consideration of what should happen to children other than “Oh, their parents will take care of them.” This is short-sighted, and a complete avoidance of responsibility by people who supposedly take pride in the fact that they take responsibility.
…for themselves. Take responsibility for themselves.
Yeah, why don’t you use that excuse to continue avoiding responsibility for other people. Are you responsible for your own children? How about children of other members of your family? The neighbor’s kids. If you answer no to these, I sure as hell don’t want you as my neighbor: I jwant someone who will take upon themselves the social responsibility, under the Social Contract–which is red letter law in the U.S.A. because John Marshall made it such in McCullough v. Maryland–to tell the kids to get the hell away from the water filled gravel pit, or quit playing in the street when their is intermittent and dangerous traffic.
Yes (but only as a default, my responsibility for them can be waived via adoption, no, and no.
1) I never signed or consented to any such contract; if it exists, it is defacto void.
2) People can voluntarily look out for one another without being responsible for one another; I take it upon myself to donate whatever little money I can scrape together to starving children in Africa, but I’m not actually responsible for them in any way. The same applies to the children of my friends, family, and neighbours.
Sorry Kevin, but that contract implicitly exists whether you signed it or not. That is what is meant by “red letter law.” It is the same as a verbal contract–which here in Colorado is law for anything other than real estate–or the implied contract when you use a ticket for a sporting event.
You should actually read someone besides the people who espouse this so-called anarchist-libertarian viewpoint, including Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and the founder of libertarianism, John Stuart Mill. People like Ayn Rand and most of the anarchist libertarians are just looking for an excuse to opt of their inherent responsibilities to the rest of society, without which, as Jefferson pointed out, you have governance by the strongest, not by who or what is right.
As per the actual definition of a contract as a voluntary agreement between two or more persons, my lack of voluntary agreement is sufficient to disregard the notion of a social contract as an actual thing, at least as regards to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
In each of those instances, both parties are voluntarily consenting to the transaction/activity in question; the ‘social contract’ and the responsibilities therein that you argue exist are, by your own admission “inherent”. If they’re inherent then I couldn’t have consented to them. If I couldn’t consent to them, then they’re not a “contract”. Hence, there is no social contract as you’ve laid it out.
I’ve never read any Ayn Rand. My question is this: why do I have responsibilities to relatively wealthy strangers (my neighbours) but not the poorest people in the world (strangers in other countries)? By what metric is such a social contract ‘right’? In this case, you’re simply using “social contract” as a polite euphemism for “things I want to force you to do at the end of a gun, but which I can’t support with any rational or moral arguments”.
The social contract exists in our Constitution and our Laws. Only if we had a “world government” would it extend beyond our territory.
As to the contract being a voluntary agreement between two or more people, you obviously have never dealt with water rights, which is a very serious subject here in the West. Multiple individuals, and the contract is binding as it is passed through land ownership, or sold to other entities. You assume a previous individual’s contract, whether you like it or not.
Anhd no, it is not a polite euphenism of things I want to force you to do at the point of a gun. It is the shared duty of all of the individuals under the social contract, in order to allow the larger society to function with anny degree of efficency.
Where in the US Constitution does it specify such a contract? Of course, it wouldn’t matter even if you produced the line-numbers; people consent to neither the Constitution nor Laws more generally (ergo there is no contract). Further, you had previously said this ‘contract’ was inherent; now you say it stems from the Constitution and Laws. Which is it?
Land is voluntarily bought and sold; hence, depending on the circumstances, this may count as a contract under the definition of the term. This doesn’t change the fact that people can offer no such consent to a ‘contract’ which is inherent or written into a Constitution or Laws (whichever story you want to roll with at the moment).
It’s a ‘duty’ which you define and which is backed by the threat of violence.
So now it’s about efficiency? If it were more societally efficient to murder all unclaimed orphans in a Thunder Dome-style mortal combat tournament, would the social contract dictate that? Just wondering.
It is implied, and Chief Justice Marshall made it the Law of the Land, in the decision of McCullough v. Maryland.
Two: that the exchange of land between individuals implies a contract, has been a set piece of common law going back centuries. And in Most states, exchange of real estate requires a written agreement to be legally recognized.
That duty you say is backed by a gun is actually backed by the “superior man’s” properly developed sense of morality, as Nietzsche stated at the end of The Antichrist, Aphorism 57. If you do not have a sense of duty, then you are still a child, not an adult, as everyone from Aristotle to John Stuart Mill has pointed out.
And as to Ayn Rand, I never stated you read her, stated that your beliefs follow the anarcho-libertarian philosophy she espoused, together with individuals like Robert Nozick.
By the way, your Thunder Dome reference is a complete non-sequeter, and has nothing to do with what this discussion is about. Quit trying to obscure things, and stick to the facts.
Oh, I see. It doesn’t actually state the contract or spell out what it’s content is. So not only do people not have a choice in entering or not entering this contract, they don’t even know what’s in it once limited by it. Remember how your position started as one of protecting people from entering contracts without knowing their contents? That seems a little ironic now, doesn’t it?
That’s right, because that exchange is a voluntary contract under the definition I provided quite a while ago. The differences between these exchanges and the social contract you’ve conjured from thin air do no meet this definition, and therefore can not be considered a proper contract under the definition of the term.
I see! If I refuse to pay my taxes, the men who break down my door and throw me in a cage will be armed with superior morals, rather than rifles. What a relief!
Oh, I have a well-developed sense of duty. I simply deny that it implies owing total strangers the anything but a respect for their rights. My duty to others certainly doesn’t relate to where they were born.
Your argument has been that there’s a social contract which is innate or mandated by the Constitution and therefore must be followed. You’ve denied that this contract simply represents your individual whims that you’d like to force others to live by. The Thunder Dome is simply a counter-example to those claims; under the exact same circumstances of origin, why wouldn’t you back the Thunder Dome social contract? I bet not (and hence, your arguments aren’t eve believed by you).
No, read; IT IS A PART OF FEDERAL LAW BECAUSE CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL SAYS IT IS IN THE SUPREME COURT DECISION OF McCULLOUGH v. MARYLAND, WHICH MAKES IT BINDING UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. Quit avoiding the facts because they don’t fit your limited worldview.
Ok, so the social contract isn’t the Constitution. Marshall ruledd that the Constitution was a social contract, but that doesn’t change the inconsistencies between the Constitution and the actual definition of a contract. “It is is because he says it is”, is an argument from authority.
No. It is an argument from authority only if the proposition is unproven. In this case it is not a proposition, it is a statement of fact, which you may not like, but it is still fact.
PS–If you have a “well developed sense of duty,” what might I ask is that duty to?
But your sole claim for the existence of a social contract so far has been that Justice Marshall ruled it so; that’s a textbook argument from authority, and your attempted defense a circular argument in and of itself. As an empirical counter-point to your argument, though, Buch v. Amory Mfg. Co. (1898) ruled that there is no duty to rescue others, even children.
I have a duty not to violates others’ rights, and to abide by my contracts and promises. Other things, like helping total strangers, is morally praiseworthy but not a duty.
Thank you Sailor. As usual, you are correct.
and for Kevin Wilson’s last reply to me, I’ll let Thomas Jefferson answer: as he so succinctly stated to Thomas Law in 1814, “But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties.”
In other words, you can’t have duties to your self, only responsibliity for yourself. Read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics.
Aw, thanks.
I would also invite all of you anarchist-libertarians to read Corey Robins latest blog entry, The Leopold and Loeb of Modern Libertarianism (http://coreyrobin.com/2013/05/09/the-leopold-and-loeb-of-modern-libertarianism/). It amazes me how many have selectively read Nietzsche to justify their elitist points of view,. It doesn’t surprise me how much they misunderstand that poor, tortured man. If you don’t believe me, read Aphorism 57 of the Antichrist, especially the last part about the duty of the superior man to lesser people.
“extremely large entities of any kind are dangerous, and need to be dismantled”
Ahh, but who will bell the cat? If only there were an organisation whose sole purpose and reason for being were to secure the common good of the people of a nation.
Unfortunately there is no such animal, never has been, and never will be.
Sorry Maggie, there is such a group: the American people. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Populi Custodibus. That is the way it is supposed to work. Unfortunately there are too many self-involved, “too busy to take the time,” “it’s not my problem,” individuals who are not doing their duty as American citizens. The biggest lie we have been sold over the last 32 years is that we can sit back, relax, and government will still work properly. to quote Jefferson:
“The mother principle [is] that ‘governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.'” –Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Edition 15:33.
We have let the government get out of our control; it is time to take it back.
About that bull in that china shop…
But mostly, I agree. It isn’t just government which can be evil, and The Market doesn’t make everything better because, you know, The Market.
Of course I’ve known for some time that you know this, but it’s good to state it flat out.