kylejack
01-08-2008, 11:46 AM
In the conflict of ideas, there are so many confusing dynamics playing against each other, making it hard to determine what the just and moral course is. In the battle between freedom and security, it is difficult to know which is the correct path. To learn what’s wrong with America and why we’re having trouble finding the answers to our pressing questions, we have to delve deeper.
America faces many problems, but the root cause of many of our conflicts is the notion, still accepted by many, that there are individual rights. The concept of individual rights has been suggested throughout history by various philosophers, writers, and nayer-do-wells, but it took firm root in the United States from the very beginning. The founding documents of the country expressed the sentiment that all men are created equal, and that they are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was a very dangerous package to offer citizens of a new country. With no real template to work from, they were taking a gamble hoping that newly free people would contribute to society rather than pursuing their own health and well-being. It seems apparent that the founders did not adequately ponder the potential consequences of this, and their decision would have long-lasting negative consequences that continue to this day. Thankfully, this offer of individual rights was not absolute. The founding fathers had at least a basic understanding that society as a whole would need to ensure individual rights were not granted to all for the experiment to be even a marginal success.
The institution of slavery maintained a permanent labor class to ensure that important work was not left undone. This allowed a single family on a plantation to tend to a far larger field of crops, which benefited the entire nation in the form of expanded volume and reduced cost for food, clothing, and other crucial crops like tobacco. A burgeoning nation such as ours rested on very tenuous ground, particularly as our allies were thousands of miles across an ocean, so an effective and efficient food supply was of critical importance. Slaves helped to ensure that the country never starved. One issue faced was deciding who could be made a slave and who was to be considered a free man. Fortunately, there was a simple solution. Since most land and other property were already owned by white men, it was determined that they were the most natural leaders. The fact that blacks were enslaved by white men made clear that they were of an inferior status. A color-coding system was instituted, whereby those with dark skin were deemed to be the slaves to be employed, supervised, cared for, and fed by the white landowners. While many among the slaves despised this situation, it ultimately helped society as a whole, and it is difficult to imagine how they could make a living on their own anyway. After all, where is one to live without property? Aside from that, the desires of the slaves themselves are ultimately not relevant. Serving society’s interest was ultimately the most important thing, regardless of any slight the slaves felt. The most enlightened slaves understood that serving the interest of society as a whole was more important than their own personal independence, and that white male land-owners were better suited for making decisions than they themselves were.
Also important was the individual rights withheld from children. For a nation that would soon be learning to industrialize, having a sea of workers with small fingers and bodies was of critical importance. Only a small body could fit into the dangerous crevices of some machines, and servicing these machines was important work that kept the country’s economy moving. Had individual rights been granted to children, it might not have been so easy to get them working the important 20 hour shifts in the factory making shoes or whatever other important product was being manufactured. As children are produced from the bodies of adults, adults naturally have ultimate dominion over them. They wouldn’t be alive without the actions of their parents, so they should ultimately serve their parents’ interest until they reach the age of majority, at which time the collective interest determines their best use in society.
Another important distinction made was that between men and women. From the early days of the country’s founding, and indeed for centuries before, it was understood that while men were suited to lead, women were better suited to keep after the domestic responsibilities, and to raise children. Women were not given equal individual rights because it was understood that they might choose to do something other than their natural biological imperative. While women are often confused about their own desires for their life, it has been proven throughout much of history that they are most effective at maintaining the home and raising children, with teaching and sewing being two notable (yet still related) exceptions. Granting women the right to do jobs that men do creates a stark imbalance in the homes of America.
In recent years, many of these important bulwarks against wholesale individualism have been abandoned. Society as a whole is suffering thanks to this long-standing and ever-increasing notion that human beings have individual rights. Blacks and women fought long battles to assert individual rights for themselves, and the results for society have been disastrous. Food and clothing prices have climbed, and real wages have declined as women and minorities have entered the environment of paid labor. With so many more potential workers to choose from, an employer does not need to pay as much to find an employee. As wages decline, households find themselves with no parent at home to take care of the house and the children. With slavery now abolished, this puts a household in a tough financial position. Hiring a live-in maid or a nanny can be a very expensive endeavor, and that potentially leaves another household without a woman taking care of it. Many of the more enlightened parts of the Muslim world understand this problem and maintain control over their women. Women are not allowed to leave the house without their husbands, and they are expected to take care of the household duties and rearing the children, rather than venturing out into the world to do a man’s job.
Additionally, the public has been granted dangerous rights, like a right to privacy. The notion that society should not be able to know what an individual is doing with his or her life is absurd on its face. Knowing what an individual is doing at every moment is the best way to determine if that individual is benefiting society. An individual who is not benefiting society must be encouraged to engage in productive behavior. If he continues to do things that do not benefit society (like watching movies for entertainment as opposed to education, or playing a board game with his friends) he needs to be re-educated in the proper manner of serving society. An individual who continues to serve his own interests must be eliminated for the benefit and promotion of the society. Allowing an individual right to privacy obviously makes enforcement of such a policy far more difficult, and quite frankly there is no important reason that an individual should be granted a right to privacy. Privacy for individuals never promotes the collective interest.
Also absurd is the notion that individuals should have an individual right to freedom of speech. Speech is a very dangerous tool, and no individual should be permitted to question the system of governance that the collective society has decided upon. To allow such speech tears at the very fiber that holds the collective society together. Even to allow a person to express an emotion such as sadness is dangerous for a society interested in maintaining the health and well-being of its members. Emotions often spread in a contagious manner, so any negative emotions need to be eliminated before they harm the society as a whole, depressing productivity and immobilizing important members of society.
The right to bear firearms allegedly granted by the Constitution is also a fairly ridiculous construct. The language of the Amendment clearly indicates that the right is a collective right held by well-regulated militias, that is, the enforcement arm of the collective interest. Clearly it does not serve society’s interest to have individuals who are armed and able to kill members of the society without the permission of the collective interest. There is no valid reason for a person to ever be armed unless he is acting as an agent of the collective interest. Indeed, if the collective interest determines that a person is not serving society and needs to be eliminated, allowing them to be armed so that they might defend their life is patently absurd. An individual should never have the need to defend himself so long as he serves the collective interest efficiently and obediently, and it is the collective interest that ought to determine when he has served his purpose, not the individual himself. To think that we could end up with millions of unliquidated and unemployed senior citizens to care for thanks to an individual right to bear arms defending them is a daunting thought indeed. The collective interest must be served by doing away with such persons before they become a burden on society. Developing a mock home where the elderly are allegedly taken may help to quell some of the outrage expressed by persons with individualist sympathies, if they are too numerous to eliminate.
Thankfully, there are new limitations being imposed on individual rights which might help to stop the harm being done to society in the name of individual rights. Legislation passed by the Congress and signed by the President limits the supposed right to privacy by allowing the President to conduct some surveillance without having to notify a court. Other legislation passed has suspended in certain circumstances the right to habeas corpus, allowing the President to hold dangerous persons without having to bring charges against them. Free speech zones have been established at various times and places in the country that allow individuals to express themselves without polluting the rest of the society with their thoughts, though these too will hopefully be done away with and replaced with a policy of eliminating individuals who say things that might harm the social cohesion of the society. Indeed, any controversial speech should be treated as subversive for safety’s sake. It is not always easy to determine if speech is subversive when first uttered, and it often resonates long after it has been spoken, so silencing any speech that comes close is an important objective to maintaining a stable and productive society. Ultimately, speech should be considered just as dangerous and extraneous as firearms.
Furthermore, there are now rumblings in Congress to socialize the nation’s healthcare in some way or another, allowing the government to determine who gets care and when, promoting the health of society as a whole. Many have high hopes that this will eventually result in a government very interested in the exercise and personal habits of members of society. The government has also engaged in torture of enemies of the United States for the purpose of extracting information about future terrorist acts. This torture is critically important to promote our intelligence interests, and similar tactics should be employed for domestic criminal enterprises as well. Catching one burglar is a good thing, but using information from enhanced interrogation of that burglar may lead to several more arrests of potential burglars. Removing the right of habeas corpus for these criminals as well seems to be an excellent idea.
An important goal for the near future will be to impose more direct democracy on the country, allowing a majority vote to appropriate property and to make decisions on which individuals have served out their purpose. Also important will be enlisting all citizens into the military to support incursions into another nations to appropriate natural resources. Individuals in other countries are no more deserving of an individual right to life than individuals of this country, and if taking their oil or food benefits society as a whole, it is not only just but a moral imperative that we invade the country and appropriate the resources in question. Of course, disposing of the individual or individuals who own the resources is an important initial task, because there will always be resentment when an unenlightened individual has his property appropriated by the collective interest.
The writer Ayn Rand has said that an individual is the smallest minority, and that one cannot be said to be a defender of minorities if one is not a defender of the individual(1). This is true, which is why it is so important that we do away with individual rights. Minorities and individuals should not have any rights that do not promote the interests of society as a whole, and an individual will rarely choose on his own to help society, so force is the only alternative to compel his action. In some cases of great need, it may even be necessary to directly appropriate an individual’s property and dispose of the individual so that the individual’s property can be used by the society as a whole without burdening the society with the task of caring for the newly-homeless individual. This must be done with the most careful tact and compassion, not for the individual, but for the society that stands to benefit. One person’s suffering is acceptable if it promotes the interests of the society as a whole, and even the individual’s suffering can be dealt with diligently by disposing of the individual. It is important to develop a thick skin for dealing with the suffering of individuals, because otherwise it becomes too easy for the society to falter when too much attention is paid to the suffering of a particular individual. If an individual becomes too great a burden on society, he must be eliminated before he endangers the rest of the society.
It is critically important that we do away with the notion that individuals have individual rights, before some of these individuals decide to do away with society. The tyranny of individualism cannot be allowed to survive if society is to function diligently and efficiently. The notion that individuals can do what they want so long as they do not hurt others must be smothered, and indeed, some individualists must be smothered if we are to make progress into a brave new world where society is more important than the individual. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani perhaps put it best when he said that, “What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”(2)
(1)Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet, 1964.
(2) No author cited. (2004, March 20). 'Freedom Is About Authority': Excerpts From Giuliani Speech on Crime. New York Times.
Retrieved January 7, 2008, from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...750C0A962958260
America faces many problems, but the root cause of many of our conflicts is the notion, still accepted by many, that there are individual rights. The concept of individual rights has been suggested throughout history by various philosophers, writers, and nayer-do-wells, but it took firm root in the United States from the very beginning. The founding documents of the country expressed the sentiment that all men are created equal, and that they are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was a very dangerous package to offer citizens of a new country. With no real template to work from, they were taking a gamble hoping that newly free people would contribute to society rather than pursuing their own health and well-being. It seems apparent that the founders did not adequately ponder the potential consequences of this, and their decision would have long-lasting negative consequences that continue to this day. Thankfully, this offer of individual rights was not absolute. The founding fathers had at least a basic understanding that society as a whole would need to ensure individual rights were not granted to all for the experiment to be even a marginal success.
The institution of slavery maintained a permanent labor class to ensure that important work was not left undone. This allowed a single family on a plantation to tend to a far larger field of crops, which benefited the entire nation in the form of expanded volume and reduced cost for food, clothing, and other crucial crops like tobacco. A burgeoning nation such as ours rested on very tenuous ground, particularly as our allies were thousands of miles across an ocean, so an effective and efficient food supply was of critical importance. Slaves helped to ensure that the country never starved. One issue faced was deciding who could be made a slave and who was to be considered a free man. Fortunately, there was a simple solution. Since most land and other property were already owned by white men, it was determined that they were the most natural leaders. The fact that blacks were enslaved by white men made clear that they were of an inferior status. A color-coding system was instituted, whereby those with dark skin were deemed to be the slaves to be employed, supervised, cared for, and fed by the white landowners. While many among the slaves despised this situation, it ultimately helped society as a whole, and it is difficult to imagine how they could make a living on their own anyway. After all, where is one to live without property? Aside from that, the desires of the slaves themselves are ultimately not relevant. Serving society’s interest was ultimately the most important thing, regardless of any slight the slaves felt. The most enlightened slaves understood that serving the interest of society as a whole was more important than their own personal independence, and that white male land-owners were better suited for making decisions than they themselves were.
Also important was the individual rights withheld from children. For a nation that would soon be learning to industrialize, having a sea of workers with small fingers and bodies was of critical importance. Only a small body could fit into the dangerous crevices of some machines, and servicing these machines was important work that kept the country’s economy moving. Had individual rights been granted to children, it might not have been so easy to get them working the important 20 hour shifts in the factory making shoes or whatever other important product was being manufactured. As children are produced from the bodies of adults, adults naturally have ultimate dominion over them. They wouldn’t be alive without the actions of their parents, so they should ultimately serve their parents’ interest until they reach the age of majority, at which time the collective interest determines their best use in society.
Another important distinction made was that between men and women. From the early days of the country’s founding, and indeed for centuries before, it was understood that while men were suited to lead, women were better suited to keep after the domestic responsibilities, and to raise children. Women were not given equal individual rights because it was understood that they might choose to do something other than their natural biological imperative. While women are often confused about their own desires for their life, it has been proven throughout much of history that they are most effective at maintaining the home and raising children, with teaching and sewing being two notable (yet still related) exceptions. Granting women the right to do jobs that men do creates a stark imbalance in the homes of America.
In recent years, many of these important bulwarks against wholesale individualism have been abandoned. Society as a whole is suffering thanks to this long-standing and ever-increasing notion that human beings have individual rights. Blacks and women fought long battles to assert individual rights for themselves, and the results for society have been disastrous. Food and clothing prices have climbed, and real wages have declined as women and minorities have entered the environment of paid labor. With so many more potential workers to choose from, an employer does not need to pay as much to find an employee. As wages decline, households find themselves with no parent at home to take care of the house and the children. With slavery now abolished, this puts a household in a tough financial position. Hiring a live-in maid or a nanny can be a very expensive endeavor, and that potentially leaves another household without a woman taking care of it. Many of the more enlightened parts of the Muslim world understand this problem and maintain control over their women. Women are not allowed to leave the house without their husbands, and they are expected to take care of the household duties and rearing the children, rather than venturing out into the world to do a man’s job.
Additionally, the public has been granted dangerous rights, like a right to privacy. The notion that society should not be able to know what an individual is doing with his or her life is absurd on its face. Knowing what an individual is doing at every moment is the best way to determine if that individual is benefiting society. An individual who is not benefiting society must be encouraged to engage in productive behavior. If he continues to do things that do not benefit society (like watching movies for entertainment as opposed to education, or playing a board game with his friends) he needs to be re-educated in the proper manner of serving society. An individual who continues to serve his own interests must be eliminated for the benefit and promotion of the society. Allowing an individual right to privacy obviously makes enforcement of such a policy far more difficult, and quite frankly there is no important reason that an individual should be granted a right to privacy. Privacy for individuals never promotes the collective interest.
Also absurd is the notion that individuals should have an individual right to freedom of speech. Speech is a very dangerous tool, and no individual should be permitted to question the system of governance that the collective society has decided upon. To allow such speech tears at the very fiber that holds the collective society together. Even to allow a person to express an emotion such as sadness is dangerous for a society interested in maintaining the health and well-being of its members. Emotions often spread in a contagious manner, so any negative emotions need to be eliminated before they harm the society as a whole, depressing productivity and immobilizing important members of society.
The right to bear firearms allegedly granted by the Constitution is also a fairly ridiculous construct. The language of the Amendment clearly indicates that the right is a collective right held by well-regulated militias, that is, the enforcement arm of the collective interest. Clearly it does not serve society’s interest to have individuals who are armed and able to kill members of the society without the permission of the collective interest. There is no valid reason for a person to ever be armed unless he is acting as an agent of the collective interest. Indeed, if the collective interest determines that a person is not serving society and needs to be eliminated, allowing them to be armed so that they might defend their life is patently absurd. An individual should never have the need to defend himself so long as he serves the collective interest efficiently and obediently, and it is the collective interest that ought to determine when he has served his purpose, not the individual himself. To think that we could end up with millions of unliquidated and unemployed senior citizens to care for thanks to an individual right to bear arms defending them is a daunting thought indeed. The collective interest must be served by doing away with such persons before they become a burden on society. Developing a mock home where the elderly are allegedly taken may help to quell some of the outrage expressed by persons with individualist sympathies, if they are too numerous to eliminate.
Thankfully, there are new limitations being imposed on individual rights which might help to stop the harm being done to society in the name of individual rights. Legislation passed by the Congress and signed by the President limits the supposed right to privacy by allowing the President to conduct some surveillance without having to notify a court. Other legislation passed has suspended in certain circumstances the right to habeas corpus, allowing the President to hold dangerous persons without having to bring charges against them. Free speech zones have been established at various times and places in the country that allow individuals to express themselves without polluting the rest of the society with their thoughts, though these too will hopefully be done away with and replaced with a policy of eliminating individuals who say things that might harm the social cohesion of the society. Indeed, any controversial speech should be treated as subversive for safety’s sake. It is not always easy to determine if speech is subversive when first uttered, and it often resonates long after it has been spoken, so silencing any speech that comes close is an important objective to maintaining a stable and productive society. Ultimately, speech should be considered just as dangerous and extraneous as firearms.
Furthermore, there are now rumblings in Congress to socialize the nation’s healthcare in some way or another, allowing the government to determine who gets care and when, promoting the health of society as a whole. Many have high hopes that this will eventually result in a government very interested in the exercise and personal habits of members of society. The government has also engaged in torture of enemies of the United States for the purpose of extracting information about future terrorist acts. This torture is critically important to promote our intelligence interests, and similar tactics should be employed for domestic criminal enterprises as well. Catching one burglar is a good thing, but using information from enhanced interrogation of that burglar may lead to several more arrests of potential burglars. Removing the right of habeas corpus for these criminals as well seems to be an excellent idea.
An important goal for the near future will be to impose more direct democracy on the country, allowing a majority vote to appropriate property and to make decisions on which individuals have served out their purpose. Also important will be enlisting all citizens into the military to support incursions into another nations to appropriate natural resources. Individuals in other countries are no more deserving of an individual right to life than individuals of this country, and if taking their oil or food benefits society as a whole, it is not only just but a moral imperative that we invade the country and appropriate the resources in question. Of course, disposing of the individual or individuals who own the resources is an important initial task, because there will always be resentment when an unenlightened individual has his property appropriated by the collective interest.
The writer Ayn Rand has said that an individual is the smallest minority, and that one cannot be said to be a defender of minorities if one is not a defender of the individual(1). This is true, which is why it is so important that we do away with individual rights. Minorities and individuals should not have any rights that do not promote the interests of society as a whole, and an individual will rarely choose on his own to help society, so force is the only alternative to compel his action. In some cases of great need, it may even be necessary to directly appropriate an individual’s property and dispose of the individual so that the individual’s property can be used by the society as a whole without burdening the society with the task of caring for the newly-homeless individual. This must be done with the most careful tact and compassion, not for the individual, but for the society that stands to benefit. One person’s suffering is acceptable if it promotes the interests of the society as a whole, and even the individual’s suffering can be dealt with diligently by disposing of the individual. It is important to develop a thick skin for dealing with the suffering of individuals, because otherwise it becomes too easy for the society to falter when too much attention is paid to the suffering of a particular individual. If an individual becomes too great a burden on society, he must be eliminated before he endangers the rest of the society.
It is critically important that we do away with the notion that individuals have individual rights, before some of these individuals decide to do away with society. The tyranny of individualism cannot be allowed to survive if society is to function diligently and efficiently. The notion that individuals can do what they want so long as they do not hurt others must be smothered, and indeed, some individualists must be smothered if we are to make progress into a brave new world where society is more important than the individual. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani perhaps put it best when he said that, “What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”(2)
(1)Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York: Signet, 1964.
(2) No author cited. (2004, March 20). 'Freedom Is About Authority': Excerpts From Giuliani Speech on Crime. New York Times.
Retrieved January 7, 2008, from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...750C0A962958260