Insanity

[fpb]

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/09/18/my-money-i-deserve-to-keep-it-all/
Yes, look at those words. Someone really imagines that he has made the world, given himself birth, created the regulated and protected environment in which he operates, granted his father and mother the great privilege of giving him birth and spending immense amounts of their time and effort bringing him up, policed the streets so that he could go to work safely, set up the opportunity to work profitably, produced everything involved in the transactions, and, above all, created a regulated and lawful environment in which work could be carried out and its results peacefully claimed without dispute or seizure. Someone, in short, imagines that anything in the world is really "his".

A further depth of delirium lies in the probability that this same maniac also imagines himself to be Christian.

It is not I, it's not even Socrates or any other sage, who answers him - and ought to silence him, if he were sane: it's Scripture. And here I will use text-proofing, since there is no doubt that this passage is at the heart of Christian thought. First letter to the Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 7: For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? What is Christianity about, if not gratitude: gratitude to God for creating us, but also gratitude to each and every one of the hundreds of people and things to whom we owe debts we shall never repay? Did you make yourself? No. Did you ask to be born? No. In that case, accept that you are a part of a community, of a descent and of a state of public order, to which you owe so much that if it did not exist you would not exist either.

(I will add that if you are insane enough to think that you owe nothing to anyone but yourself, you make yourself incapable of friendship, of companionship, of all the things that humans need as much as they need air and water. But that would be to try to reason, and you cannot reason with a madman.)

This moron argues that the individual comes before the State. That is not only false - no individual predates the society they live in - but stupid: it is a chicken-and-the-egg question. The State and the individual come together, as part of a whole. Every man is born into a community, for otherwise he would not be born at all. Every community has a law and an authority to enforce it, and to which individuals resort in distress or perplexity; nobody, but nobody, does everything by himself. I am willing to bet that our lunatic, if anyone ever did anything that he interpreted as a violation of his rights, would not hesitate a second to race for the nearest lawyer and the nearest court. And yet he claims to owe nothing to the State.

But that would be reasoning, and there is no reasoning with madmen. And thanks to the crazed talk of the Tea Party, who can't imagine why others would see them as near-terrorists, a good deal of the American right is in a state of clinical insanity. I just hadn't seen it stated quite so baldly before.

Comments

[stahlhelm.livejournal.com]

"It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it."

Let them guess who said that. I tried to comment, but it seems that you have to be an invited member of HotAir.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to Google and I am going to guess that the villainous, tyrannous "statist" (an adjective/noun that always indicates folly in the user) was George Washington. If not, Jefferson.

Let's hear from all precincts

[notebuyer.livejournal.com]

Like these guys: "The State cannot intervene in the areas where the initiative of individuals, communities and undertakings is sufficient." . Or this group, who evidently don't realize that society is prior and determines what rights people have:

Hence, the social order and its development must invariably work to the benefit of the human person if the disposition of affairs is to be subordinate to the personal realm and not contrariwise, as the Lord indicated when He said that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.(6)

This social order requires constant improvement. It must be founded on truth, built on justice and animated by love; in freedom it should grow every day toward a more humane balance.(7) An improvement in attitudes and abundant changes in society will have to take place if these objectives are to be gained.

DON'T PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH

[fpb.livejournal.com]

First and last warning. Putting words in my mouth is a deleting offence as far as I am concerned. NOW SHOW ME WHERE I SAID, IMPLIED OR SUGGESTED THAT "that society is prior and determines what rights people have". If you cannot see the abyssal difference between that and "That is not only false - no individual predates the society they live in - but stupid: it is a chicken-and-the-egg question. The State and the individual come together, as part of a whole", then I have no desire to continue this discussion.

Re: Let's hear from all precincts

[fpb.livejournal.com]

First point: nothing you say has the least relevance to the proposition that an individual "deserves to keep" all "his" money; as if the existence of law and the State to enforce it had nothing to do with the very existence of what he has the nerve to call "his". You don't own anything except by decree of the laws. You recognize this every day by the mere forms of the papers you write and sign. Only property within the ambit of the laws is legitimate; what a thief calls his own is not his own. And you don't get to pick and choose which laws you obey, whatever Thoreau (in the same fraudulent pamphlet in which he claimed that the murderous John Brown was a fine fellow!) may claim. You may try to change the laws, but until they are there you obey them. Otherwise you are a terrorist.

Re: Let's hear from all precincts

[fpb.livejournal.com]

In this matter, I am certainly no lover of the South Tyroler minority in our north, and you will not hear me speaking of them with approval often. But their former political leader, Sylvius Magnago, once put the Northern League's leader Umberto Bossi, who was agitating for a "fiscal strike", in his place, with a few pregnant words: "My fatherland is Austria, but I am a citizen of Italy. And citizens pay their taxes."

Re: Let's hear from all precincts

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Second point: who judges where the initiative of individuals and communities is sufficient? As it happens, there is an organization in my country, supplying protection services and various sorts of business, which would be very happy to be left alone by the State and not suffer its interference. It is called the Mafia.

Re: Let's hear from all precincts

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Third point: no individual pre-exists society, and society has to exist for any individual to have any rights. That is because the recognition of rights and duties is simply the way in which society deals with the individual. It is in so far as a human being lives with other human beings that he has rights and duties - emphasis on DUTIES; we hear far too much about "rights" in our time anyway. The very notion of liberty means nothing whatsoever to Robinson Crusoe, unless and until he meets Man Friday.

Re: Let's hear from all precincts

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And if you have an issue with that, tell me what Jefferson and the founder meant by claiming that "all men are created equal?" Certainly not that they are created the same; and indeed they qualified their statement immediately by saying "and endowed by their Creator with certain [and] inalienable rights". That is, all men are equal in the way that society is to treat them, in the way that the law is to deal with them, in the way that they consider and deal with each other. That is, equality of rights presupposes a society. What would that mean to Robinson Crusoe? He would have no rights, because he could claim nothing from anyone; and no duties, because nobody could claim anything from him. The desire to survive, which is the driving force of Robinson until he meets Man Friday, is neither a right nor a duty, but an urge.

Re: Let's hear from all precincts

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And if you have a problem with the distinction between duty and urge, I will point out to you that hunger - the most immediate and basic of urges - does not imply either that bread is or can be got, nor that anyone will feed you. You may simply go on hungering till you starve. The right to life is an entirely different thing, which only comes into effect when there is a legal order to whom one can appeal to enforce it. In other words, the right to life refers, not to the urge to go on living, but to the duty of an existent social order to prevent unnecessary death. It presupposes society, social order, and law.

Re: Let's hear from all precincts

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

"It is in so far as a human being lives with other human beings that he has rights and duties - emphasis on DUTIES."

Now you're speaking my language. People come together in groups to help each other, and I was born with a debt to those who came before me who laid the groundwork for the life I have. Family, community, peers, etc. Recognition of this spurs me to serve others in the same way, for we are all in this together.

The state and society, the government and markets, are intertwining cogs that need and give context to each other. When people scoff at the notion of "country" or "state" or "public" I may simply tell them, "but...those things include YOU."