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Responses to Pooklekufr Constitutionalism

(Remember: this is a repost from my other blog)

Woo hoo! I got some responses to my first 2 lessons in Pooklekufr Constitutionalism. Pastorius commented to the first lesson,

Hi My Friend,It's 3:21 in the morning where I am. I should be asleep. But, I just wanted to say, as silly as your name is, "you are doing good work." Your statement, "Humans require the freedom to THINK and act without coercion," is a succinct way of putting an idea that I have been trying to get across on my website. I have stated the idea that humans need a "zone of privacy", or prayer, in order to be "creative". I believe we need to be creative in order to act.I believe that when it says, in the Bible, that we are "created in the Image of G-d, it means that we are created to be Free and Creative as He Is.This requires a "zone of privacy", or prayer, or, as you say, "freedom to think".Those three simple words (freedom to think) are more important than most people ever imagine, and they will become ever more so, as technology pervades every aspect of our lives in the coming century.Keep up the good thinking, my man. You are on to something important beyond your wildest dreams.

As Mark Twain said, "I can live for two months on a good compliment." Thank you, Pastorius! Plutosdad responded to the Pooklekufr Constitutionalism quiz:

I don't know "why" people think that way, but they make me sick. One friend of mine even side "well the Communists throught spreading Communism was the right thing to do too" I could not believe it. I believe every person and even animal on earth has an inherent desire for freedom. But many on the Left don't believe it, even though they call themselves liberal.Of course, these same friends say Bush is evil because 16,000 people died, yet they all have books on Che Guevara on their bookshelves.I actually have come to believe the statement from Star Trek that so many socialists believe "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few" is wrong, and really probably always wrong. I think now "the good of the many depends on securing the good of the few, because they are one and the same". i.e. there is no choice and they are wrong to even see them as two different "goods".Issues such as abortion can be seen as protection of liberty of the few (the fetuses, or babies to pro-life people).

Pluto's Dad, you got it. A group of people is nothing but a bunch of individuals, all of whom require freedom for their survival. There can be no such thing as "collective good" that overrides the individual good of all the people in the "collective." It is this principle, the harmony of justly understood self-interests (self interests that don't require the violation of the rights of others), that allows men to survive without continual bloodshed. It is also the principle by which government is limited in its ability to play different constituencies off of each other in a game of privilege seeking.

Each individual and group of individuals also possesses irrational self-interests which can only be obtained by force. It is in your rational self interest to respect the equal rights of others (their requirement of freedom); it is in your irrational self interest to rape every woman that comes along, burgle a few elderly people, rob some banks, and steal some Jaguars (the car, not Seigfried and Roy's).

 In a society respecting equal freedom, the principle that law exists only to protect the equal rights of each individual, your action can only be done illegally and you will be imprisoned for it. More importantly, if you attempt to use force against others by proxy of the government, both you and the government official who has violated his oath of office by performing a crime, would be imprisoned. The government in a society respecting equal freedom could no more rob some to pay others than could you.

But not all cases of the violation of the rights of others are so blatant as rape and armed robbery. It is similarly in your irrational self interest to demand that people who want to buy your goods pay more than they would pay voluntarily- by such a demand, you declare that you wish to violate the rights of some, to protect yourself. This demand can only be accomplished by force- you must threaten your customers somehow. In a society respecting equal freedom, a man who hires a gang to threaten his customers would be imprisoned.

As you can see, the irrational self-interests are only able to be achieved by force. In a society repecting equal freedom, they are crimes.

But what if a society begins to reject the principle of equal freedom? What if, as you said, some people come to think that their goals outrank the freedom of others, and so believe they have a right to force others to do their bidding for the "greater good" beside which freedom pales?

At first, such a society will find the very mildest impositions of irrational self interest expressed. The corn or wheat farmers will claim that they only want their customers to pay a little more, renters will claim they only want their rents a little lower, shop-keepers and maids and dog-groomers and parents and non-parents will also present their minor impositions of the rights of their neighbors.

Every single group has irrational self-interests that would require harm come to all other groups. Each of these groups will make a convincing case for the good that will come to them from this legislation, for it will be true: in the short-run, they will in fact benefit. What else is to be expected from robbery, but that the robber will indeed benefit from his actions until he gets caught, or people begin arming themselves?

One of these requests, the one which is most politically expedient to grant, will become a law. The group may be a ethnicity that demands special privileges, or an industry viewed as vital for the national economy, or it may just be the combined voices of many people. It will become politically expedient for the government to help one of these groups by proxy. In effect, the privileged group will have hired a gang to force others to do its bidding. Rather than use the gun itself, the privileged group lets the government hold it to the heads of its consumers.

As long as the society holds a modicum of respect for equal rights, such acts of violence by proxy will be hindered. But to the degree that it is believed that the good of some groups is more valued than the harm it will bring to other groups, more and more egregious examples will occur. This is natural: when it becomes politically expedient to claim your "greater good" outranks others, what else is to be expected but the injustice will rise along with the claims?

Eventually, as respect for equal rights dissolves, the claims of "greater good," and the impositions of physical force, spiral higher until the claims are in inverse proportion to the injustice they produce. In searching for utopia, the society will produce a hell on earth. As LGF poster JustDanny said, "They want Utopia but aim for Somalia."

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at March 30, 2005 15:04 EST | Permalink | comments |
pooklekufr constitutionalism

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