Reasoning for Human Freedom

I wrote this to a friend regarding some political issues. He brought up the issue of abortion so I spoke to that. Then I spoke to the issue of the economy and political freedom in general.
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The current politics and categories are so polluted with conflicting positions that it is impossible to even use the terms liberal and conservative and convey any meaning. Further, both parties are statist and therefore fascist in the philosophical meaning of that term. I hate those terms and wince whenever anyone applies them.

I've finally come down to this. "I'm for individual rights and that's it. You sort it out!"

Individual rights include the right of a woman to her body. The minute she gets pregnant, she isn't to be a slave to government's edicts the next 9 months - forced to gestate a fetus. She has to evaluate whether she wants or is able to raise a child or to provide for the child in some other way. Sometimes abortion is the appropriate choice.

The entire idea of life beginning at conception, the position of many conservatives, is a major injustice to women and their closest piece of property, their body, and it causes a big legal mess. Rights are something that apply to independent, living human beings. Ultimately they are grounded in the fact that a man has a particular kind of consciousness that requires freedom to think and choose. The creation of a right by the government on the part of a fetus now places the pregnant woman legally in conflict with her own body. Whose rights dominate? The woman or her fetus? How ridiculous is that?

The entire regulation of the economy is a sham too. All the economy is at root is a person responding to his circumstances in order to make a living and survive as a human being to the best of his ability. Some people find a job which someone else has created when he started a business. Other people start a business and perhaps create a job. Their existence depends on them continually responding to their circumstances. This is especially true for the business owner who has more at stake in that he has to keep his business going which, as a consequence, keeps his employees going.

The idea that a government can pass laws that will work to improve this process is ludicrous with a minute's thought, yet no one questions this. The individual must respond to his circumstances and the government says it has to be a certain way. For the individual, this just becomes another part of his circumstances and so he seeks a way to survive given that.

Since the government's regulations are for purposes other than any particular individual's survival, they never match because the government cannot operate at the level of looking at the situation on the ground, so to speak. Further they introduce the issue of force and this sets off another, very harmful factor.

Given that a human being has free will, he depends on his mind to determine the best course for his well-being, in the fullest possibility of the meaning of that term. He is constantly making plans and choosing among alternatives. Once force is introduced, he is no longer fully able to do that. His plans become distorted by the fact that he has to do a particular thing that the government forced upon him. Thus the choices available become different and they become limited and skewed from what they could have been had he been free. This is the consequence of compulsion.

(By the way, if the government is so all powerful and wise and our leader-in-waiting practically deified, why are they and he not taking responsibility for the effects of their actions? Ever think about that?)

Responsibility is only possible if a man is able to choose. What this means is that he has to deal with the consequences, the effects, of his choices. If he is forced to do something, then there is no question of right or wrong or of a good or bad choice. He is compelled to comply. (It is free will, by the way, that gives rise to morality, the science of right and wrong, good and bad. A moral code is a set of principles that guide a person in making sound choices for his life, a human life.)

Thus force deprives a man of responsibility in a particular area. In one respect, he is no longer human. A being without free will is not a human being.

(And this gives us an insight as to why our leaders are never really responsible for their choices. Force present anywhere in a society dehumanizes all who allow it. As Martin Luther King so aptly said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." It is actually more than just a threat. To the degree it is allowed, it becomes man's inhuman being.)

Thus we see an increasing amount of human life not being responsible - not being fully human, if you get my drift. The more force is involved in a society, it means that increasingly people are unable to be responsible because they are not able to evaluate alternatives and then choose what they consider is the best one given their situation. Thus we see, and will increasingly see, human beings acting more like the lower animals rather than human beings. They don't think because it is not a value in a force dominated society. Since it is less and less possible to be fully human, then why bother. Bring on the sex, drugs and rock & roll.

Thus, I am for the complete separation of church and state, health and state, education and state, architecture and state, economy and state, everything and state. The purpose of the state is to protect individual rights and the right of every human being to freely choose the course of his life and thus be responsible for the consequences of his choices.

So called "helping" people then is not the role of the government. It is the role of private individuals and their organizations who want to do that. In a free society, the standard of living rises increasingly quickly over time and is real since the dead weight of government is not present. Thus increasingly there are resources to help the poor and the least among us. But to use the government to force this result ultimately means that all of us become dependent on the government. At that point, we are all poor and the "least among us." In fact, we are not really human beings although we may look like and talk like human beings do.

It is one of the great ironies of human society that the more force is lived with in a society, the more the calls for benevolence, generosity, love for one's fellow man and all kinds of calls for taking care of each other.

The turning point for any man occurs when he accepts it. It isn't the enforcer that makes the essential difference. Evil has no ultimate power. It can exist only as long as his victim accepts his power. It is essentially parasitic. So long as a man fights against force with every fiber of his being, his spirit is still that possible to a human being. The minute he accepts it, he's done. He's a "dead man walking."

If that isn't radical, I don't know what is. Call me a radical for freedom. I stand for the possibility of all people realizing, to the fullest extent possible, what it is to be human.

Does this make sense to you?