The Philosophy of Freedom

by Caleb Nelson

  There is another reason why attributing the source of rights to God is problematic—there is no empirical proof of the existence of God. We are not going to make arguments here for or against the existence of God. We are simply making the point that God’s existence cannot be proved empirically. In other words, God cannot be readily perceived by everyone through their five senses—those senses which humans use to perceive the world around them. Those who believe in the existence of God usually base their belief on things other than the basic five senses. Because those experiences are subjective and internal, they are not verifiable. Anything that is not external and verifiable to the common senses of everyone has no bearing on political principles, and no place in the making of a proper earthly government.

  The problems that follow basing rights on an unverifiable source are obvious. Any conflict about the substance of rights is because one group claims their god said one thing, and the other claims their god said differently. Claiming that Lord Voldemort granted you authority to kill all unbelievers would have just as much validity and evidence (none) as any other religious claim in the field of political philosophy. When a source is unverifiable by others, groups have no common ground upon which to settle their differences. With no way to verify which, if either, party is correct, there is an irresolvable stalemate, which history has shown leads very often to bloodshed and tyranny. Any secular tyrant can justifiably claim that rights bestowed by an invisible, improvable entity are null and void; if we try to claim the existence of rights from an unverifiable source, it paves the way for their destruction. Rights must be grounded in observable reality where they can be defended with reason and power. Remember, the source of our rights is not Government, and not God, but they are principles that we recognize as true by reason of our existence and of our nature as rational beings who exercise agency.

  FALSE RIGHTS

  The United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” is an illustrative example of the confusion of rights. Without giving the ideas in this declaration any deep thought, they may sound good and appeal to our sense of decency. They may sound fair, and most of them appear to be based on the three fundamental rights we’ve listed previously, but a close analysis reveals the rotten core.

  For instance, Article 17 throws in one little word that nullifies the right of property:

  (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

  Did you catch it? “Arbitrarily.” This implies that the right of property may be taken away if there is a reason that is deemed necessary by the rest of the people.

  One more before we move on:

  Article 26. (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

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  The U.N. declares education shall be free, but education isn’t free—it has a price. Like any other profession, teachers work for money. How will they get paid? If education is going to be free, then either teachers will work for free as slaves, or property must be appropriated by force from someone for the sake of another, in which case, it is still not free.

  Look at the next line, “education shall be compulsory.” Compulsion is force against the will. No matter your protestations, they declare that you will do what they say or they will punish you. You will submit to education or be fined, jailed, or punished in some other way. Your right to liberty has been denied; you must obey or face the consequences. Some would argue that education is good for you, it’s in your best interest, and they would be right (depending on the education). Nevertheless, the sentiment of any frustrated five-year-old child justly applies here, “You’re not the boss of me!” (Obviously parents have authority to mandate that their own children be educated until they are adults.)

  It is here we can apply the principle discussed earlier: Collective action has no unique moral authority. Just because it is the will of majority doesn’t make it right. As Margaret Thatcher expressed it, “Right and wrong are not measured by a headcount of those to whom that wrong has been done. That would not be principle but expediency.”

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  The majority may vote that Jews be forced to wear a yellow star on their clothes, or that homosexuals wear a pink triangle on theirs. They may vote for genocide, rape, and cannibalism. They may vote that everyone must tolerate all the actions of others, or else!

  Majority does not equal morality.

  Majority does not alter reality.

  Jefferson observed that, “The will of the majority . . . to be rightful must be reasonable.”

  [54] In other words, a thing is right (or wrong) no matter how many or how few people vote for it. Right or wrong must be gauged by a principled standard, not by a raise of hands.

  An important distinction is that although you have the right to life, you do not have the right to be provided the means of existence. You have the right to morally obtain and keep personal property; you do not have the right to be provided with property.

  “We believe that quality and affordable health care is a basic right” (Democratic Party Platform, 2009). Additional “rights” listed in this platform include the right to a good job and good pay, the right to education, the right to a retirement check, etc. As you begin to look at things like this with a critical eye, some questions should start jumping out at you, such as: How do you define terms like “good,” “affordable,” and “quality?” Who gets to define those words? Who must provide that “right?” How is it paid for? Is this moral?

  A much-touted false right today is sometimes couched in the term “economic rights.” This is the claim that man has a right, by virtue of existing, to man-made services or goods, such as clothing, food, housing, education, employment, medical care, retirement, or even daycare and high-speed internet.

  [55] There can be no such thing as a right to be given goods and services. It is a contradiction, for if someone has a right to be given something, then someone else has to be forced to produce and give it to him.

  A right to money? Someone must earn it for him.

  A right to a job? Someone is forced to hire him.

  A right to a home? Someone is forced to build it for him.

  A right to health care? Someone is forced to provide it for him.

  A right to education? Someone is forced to teach him or pay to teach him.

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  The Republican Party Platform of the previous year was almost as offensive through its contradictions and apologetic compromises. While it never explicitly calls these things “rights,” it advocates the same ideas with language such as “Education is a . . . state and local responsibility, and a national strategic interest” (GOP Platform, 2008).

  Remember the simple question to ask in order to determine if some idea, thing, or program is indeed a “right.” Even the most unfamiliar and uninterested in politics can easily ask it and discover the answer.

  The question to ask of a proposed right is: At the expense of whom?

  After answering this, you can know with utmost moral certainty the rightness of your position. If the answer to that question is anyone or anything at all, it is not a true right. The natural rights of life, liberty, and personal property are yours through the nature of your existence and are provided by no one.

  There is no such thing as a right which must be provided by someone else. This is the only possible non-contradictory explanation of rights.

  WHAT ABOUT COLLECTIVE RIGHTS?

  There is no such thing as collective rights. It is a contradiction. A collective, or group—be it a nation, a religion, a union, a family, a school, an economic class—is only a collection of individual human beings. The only possible way for a collective right to exist is if every single member of the g
roup has that right individually to begin with. Jefferson explained, “What is true of every member of society individually is true of them collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.”

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  A collective is not a thing existing in concrete reality, it is an abstract concept. It is not an entity, not an “it,” and therefore can have no attributes attached to it that are not represented in its constituent parts. The group must be boiled down to its most basic, irreducible unit before we can determine what the properties of its various parts would be. A collective cannot provide us with rights we do not already have. How could a group of people have anything more than what each individual brings to the table? Where would it come from? Do two people together have more rights than two people separately? If so, how did that happen? 1+1 does not equal 3 or more. There’s no visit from the Rights Fairy, no magical distilling of rights out of thin air. They are always attached to a person; the only source is the individual.

  REVIEW AND SUMMARY OF FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES

  We have shown that principles govern all of existence and that man must live by his own judgment and reason.

  Man’s life must be recognized as the proper standard of value. Morality consists of the principles defining the actions necessary to a prosperous and happy life.

  Since that life is sustained through thought and action, we conclude that man must have the right to think and act and keep the products of thinking and acting—his individual rights.

  Force is evil because it paralyzes man’s mind and his freedom to use it.

  We have therefore laid the foundation for the assertion that liberty is a fundamental social good. But what sort of association or society supports this idea? Which sort of government or social system is best designed to protect liberty and leave man’s mind free? Those questions will be answered, but only after we understand the concepts of government and social systems, as well as become familiar with the foundational principles of American political philosophy.

  Review

  Q1: What is the only thing that can keep us from acting on our own judgment?

  Q2: What is the test to determine if a “right” is actually a right?

  Q3: Can rights ever contradict one another? Why?

  Q4: What is the difference between a civil or legal right and a natural right?

  Q5: Why is the existence of collective rights impossible?

  Chapter 5: The Proper Role of Government

  “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

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  - Frederic Bastiat

  The philosophy of politics isn’t essentially a discussion of issues, but of principles. A concern with and application of principles is what is lacking in the modern popular discourse. Besides the subject of individual rights, the idea most avoided in popular dialogue is the principled question of the proper role of government.

  “Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government.”

  [59] - Barry Goldwater

  SHINYVILLE

  Imagine we are part of a new settlement of pioneers in an uncharted territory. We settle happily, call it Shinyville, and go about our daily business. If there is no established government among us yet, then what powers properly belong to each and every person? This question is extremely important.

  In this wild and primitive state, there is no doubt that each man would be justified in using force, if necessary, to defend himself against physical harm, against enslavement by another, and against theft of his property. He is also justified to punish an offender of any of these rights. For example, if you see a fellow pioneer break into someone’s home, it would be proper for you to stop him if you could and punish him appropriately. If he was trying to kill someone, or had killed someone, it would be justifiable to banish or execute him. As the character Malcolm Reynolds of the TV show Firefly said, “[If] someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill ‘em right back!”

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  As depicted in many Wild West films and novels, early pioneers did have to spend some time and energy doing exactly that—defending themselves, their property, and their liberty. However, in order to prosper, a man can’t be spending all his time guarding his fields and his family from attack and theft. So what does he do? He gets with his neighbors and everyone decides to hire a sheriff.

  Ta-da! Government is born!

  The individual citizens delegate to the sheriff their natural and obvious right to protect themselves. Now it is the sheriff’s job to do for them only what they had a right to do for themselves in the first place—and nothing more.

  Remember the “Divine Right of Kings” you may have learned about in history class in high school (or possibly from Monty Python and the Holy Grail)? That was a useful concept for the ruling class to perpetuate because:

  It made them accountable to no one on earth;

  If the commoner didn’t like what the King was doing—too bad! Because his power didn’t come from the people, but ostensibly from God.

  Keep in mind that Shinyville’s governmental power and authority is from the people who created it. America was the first country in modern times to recognize this principle.

  This is made clear in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, which reads: “WE THE PEOPLE . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The Declaration of Independence also states this principle when it says governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

  Let’s turn to former Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson (Eisenhower Administration) for the rest of the story taken from his speech on “The Proper Role of Government”:

  “The important thing to keep in mind is that the people who have created their government can give to that government only such powers as they, themselves, have in the first place. Obviously, they cannot give that which they do not possess. But now we come to the moment of truth. Suppose pioneer ‘A’ wants another horse for his wagon. He doesn’t have the money to buy one, but since pioneer ‘B’ has an extra horse, he decides that he is entitled to share in his neighbor’s good fortune. Is he entitled to take his neighbor’s horse? Obviously not! If his neighbor wishes to give it or lend it, that is another question. But so long as pioneer ‘B’ wishes to keep his property, pioneer ‘A’ has no just claim to it.

  “If ‘A’ has no proper power to take ‘B’s’ property, can he delegate any such power to the sheriff? No. Even if everyone in the community desires that ‘B’ give his extra horse to ‘A’, they have no right individually or collectively to force him to do it. They cannot delegate a power they themselves do not have.”

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  A nineteenth century French economist named Frederic Bastiat wrote a brilliant little pamphlet called The Law. We urge our readers to study this remarkable work in its entirety. It is available for free online.

  First, Bastiat defined what “the law” (i.e. government) morally is or is meant to be: “the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.”

  In other words, since a man has the right to defend his life, liberty, and property, he logically has the right to gather a group of men and “support a common force to protect these rights constantly.” This is the origin and meaning of free government, or “the law.” This “law” has no right to do anything else but what its individual members already have the right to do.

  Frederic Bastiat

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  LEGAL PLUNDER

  One of Bastiat’s most powerful ideas was called legal plunder. Man, he observed, can pursue a living through either of two ways: production or plunder, he can work or he can steal; and the only thing that makes people stop plundering each other is when it bec
omes more painful and dangerous than working honestly for a living.

  Bastiat described how, instead of being a check against injustice, the law often becomes the “invincible weapon of injustice.” When plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, then everyone tries to somehow enter into the making of laws. “According to their degree of enlightenment,” Bastiat said, “these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.”

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  Thus we see today the war of lobbyists and pressure groups that are the symptom of a mixed economy and a corrupt government which has the power to legally plunder some citizens for the benefit of others.

  How are we to identify legal plunder today? Quite simply, Bastiat said, “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” Legal plunder can be committed in a number of ways: “tariffs, . . . benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on.”5