The Philosophy of Freedom

by Caleb Nelson

  · “Cooperation” means persuasion and voluntary participation, but they mean obedience to their laws.

  · “Equal educational opportunities” means everyone is free to pursue education, but they mean that everyone is forcibly educated by the State.

  · “Full employment” means every able person who wants to can find work, but what they actually mean is to expropriate money to provide everyone an income whether they can do a job or not.

  What we must do is fling their words back at them and expose them as the cultural parasites they are. We must also take control of the words we use and not let the enemies of freedom tell us what to say. Instead of fighting for “Entitlement reform” we can change our words and fight for “Entitlement security.” Instead of a “Flat Tax” we can advocate for a “Fair and Equal Taxation.” Instead of “Immigration Reform” we must talk about “Immigration Freedom.” Instead of “Free Health Care” we must fight for “Health Care Freedom.” In place of “Education Privatization” we must push for “Education Freedom.” We must take the “Pro-choice” language of the abortion movement and apply it across the board: Pro-Choice Education, Pro-Choice Business, Pro-Choice Taxation, Pro-Choice Health Care.

  THE TYRANNY OF NEED

  “Need is the deception for entitlement.”

  [326] - Rick Koerber

  “Where there is suffering, there is duty.”

  [327] - George W. Bush, 1st inaugural address

  A need maintains your nature. There is actually very little that humans need to maintain their nature. Physical needs include food and shelter. Spiritual needs include rights and healthy human interaction. Thus, unless need is actually referring to one of these, it is a deception.

  Today, need is used as a weapon. It is an ultimatum that allows no argument, no recourse, and no logic. If your neighbor has a need, it is claimed, who are you to deny, on any grounds, that you must be the one to provide it?

  There is no such thing as a right to man-made goods and services. Period. Yet, need is used as the weapon against those who have by those who haven’t, against those who produce by those who consume, by those who seek power against the population, by those who feel against all reason.

  “The city needs a trail system.”

  “The public needs government radio and television.”

  “The artists need a paycheck.”

  “The elderly need welfare.”

  “The sports team needs a stadium at public cost or on public lands.”

  Need is used as the final argument, the claim on an unearned guilt accepted by the productive for being good; it is their penance for the crime of achieving while others have not achieved.

  The meaning of justice is to seek and grant only the earned, in matter and spirit.

  The opposite of justice is to reward evil and penalize virtue. Yet, this is precisely how statists define justice. Or as it’s more commonly termed, social justice—appropriating wealth from those who earned it to give it to those who didn’t.

  This tyranny of need is not confined to the political realm. It can be seen almost daily in personal and work relationships. The “Need Card” is played constantly to escape responsibility and to dictate the actions of others. Most often, if we examine our own use of the word need, we will find that, in reality, a more accurate word would be want or prefer.

  “I need to go home guys. My wife is making me.”

  Why would we use that language? To escape the responsibility that leaving is our choice, to assign blame for the situation to another person, and possibly because we don’t have enough confidence in our relationship with our friends to state the truth. Many of us aren’t used to using responsible language, such as, “I’m getting tired, guys. I want to go home now and see my wife. That’ll make her night.” “I prefer to go home now, guys. My wife is expecting me.”

  What is usually described as a need is often not a need at all. Disregard for the seriousness of the concept of need cheapens it, and makes our actual needs blur with our perceived needs.

  Dora the Explorer, a popular children’s cartoon, featured a character who tries to thrive on the tyranny of need. “We need your help!” is a common refrain she used instead of, “We want to cross the river and would love to borrow your boat. What would it take for you to help us?” Even a simple, direct question, “Will you please help us?” would be preferable to asserting a claim on someone’s life (i.e. time, property, ability) solely by virtue of one’s need.

  It might not seem important to learn to scrub our language of certain words and phrases, but watching our language is a way to train ourselves to watch our thoughts. Thoughts have consequences. Thoughts lead to actions. Actions lead to habits. Habits make up one’s character. One’s character determines one’s life. If we can keep our language from violating principle, it becomes easier to keep our actions from doing so as well.

  Need does not grant rights nor take away the rights of those who are not needy. When need is your standard of value, you are living by the Communist ideal of “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” This is the exact opposite of capitalism, “Each may act according to his ability; to each as he earns and deserves.”

  The reality of this world is that life is unfair and lots of people draw short straws from nature and circumstance. Some are born with debilitating diseases, malformed limbs, brain defects, or under a totalitarian regime, or to families who can’t feed them. No amount of human action can stop the inherent unfairness of real life. Such differences of birth and circumstance are not a valid reason for the coercion of those who have different circumstances. It is a valid reason, however, for education, for private charity, and for compassionate people to engage in persuasion and service.

  THE SMEAR CAMPAIGN OF EXTREMISM

  “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

  [328] - Barry Goldwater

  By itself “extremism” has no meaning. Extreme is an adjective and must be used to describe an extreme of something. To understand it one must ask, “An extreme of what?” The answer given today is, “Of anything!” This is the proclamation that an extreme of anything is evil because it is extreme. This is absurd because it holds degree as the essential characteristic of something, not its nature. It holds the amount of something as the substance of something. It is to put emphasis on ripeness while disregarding whether the characteristic of ripeness is referring to a rotting corpse or piece of fruit. As Ayn Rand asks, “Are an extreme of health and an extreme of disease equally desirable? Are extreme intelligence and extreme stupidity—both equally far removed ‘from the ordinary or average’—equally unworthy?”

  [329]

  In a discussion about the conflict between Israel and Hamas, movie director Rob Reiner “was quite clear about his belief that Hamas must be eliminated. He then went on to compare Hamas to the Tea Party, stating, ‘anytime you’re dealing with an extreme group, you cannot negotiate with them, and the way to do it is to eliminate it.’”

  [330] He made no distinction between the “extremism” of a terrorist group who wants to wipe Israel from the map, and the “extremism” of a group who wants more constitutionalism and less taxes.

  Suppose a man was engaged in the act of beating you up in the street—that is “extreme” behavior. If I came along and saw this and used force to stop the man from beating you up—that is also “extreme” behavior. Yet, would you call your attacker and defender both evil because they were both equally extreme in their actions? Or is one clearly morally superior in his actions?

  As an example of this intentional and widespread campaign to paint uncompromising positions as “extreme,” and thus as dangerous, naive, and stupid, take a story reported by The New York Times on March 29, 2011. Democratic Senators were caught discussing secret marching orders before a conference call with reporters. The Senators didn’t realize that s
everal of the reporters were already logged into the call, and they began discussing just how they wanted to verbally paint the GOP, House Speaker John Boehner, and the Tea Party. The article reports that, “Mr. Schumer told them to portray John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. ‘I always use the word extreme,’ Mr. Schumer said. ‘That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week . . .’ ‘We are urging Mr. Boehner to abandon the extreme right wing,’ said Ms. Boxer, urging the House to compromise on the scale of spending cuts and to drop proposed amendments . . .”

  [331]

  What is such an anti-concept as “extremism” intended to accomplish in politics? The most important and foundational political issue today (really the only one) is freedom vs. statism. For many decades, Progressive statists have sought to implement welfare statism one step at a time, enlarging governmental power slowly, but inexorably. This program required that the concept of capitalism be wiped out of existence. Since statism cannot win in an open debate, the history, principles, and nature of capitalism had to be distorted, smeared, misrepresented, and removed from public discussion. The plan is to have statism win by default.

  Two more meaningless concepts used for this purpose are rightists and leftists. Generally, these terms are used to mean those who support capitalism and socialism, or conservatism and liberalism. But, what happens when attempts are made to falsely associate racism and violence with rightists? Then we get a new spectrum (given to us as the choice since World War II); the choice between an extreme of Communism on the left and an extreme of fascism on the right. This false dichotomy perfectly serves the goals of the statists because it removes the concept of capitalism from public discourse. It removes the choice of “Dictatorship or freedom?” and replaces it with the choice of “Which type of dictatorship—that of the rich (fascism), or that of the poor (Communism)?” There is no meaningful distinction between either side because they belong to the same philosophy; both the left and right wings are attached to the same statist center.

  The comparison of Communism on the left and fascism on the right is completely false because the actual issue is individual rights vs. totalitarianism, or man vs. the state, or capitalism vs. socialism. An essential characteristic of both Communism and fascism is man’s subordination to the state or collective. Yet, if we accept that these are the two “extremes” to be avoided, then what is left to us as the safest course? The middle ground, we are told—that of safely undefined “moderation.” This means, in practice, moderate amounts of corporate welfare and special privileges for the rich, moderate amounts of freedom and slavery, of justice and injustice, of security and terror, of rights and brute force.

  [332]

  What is the sensed meaning of “extremism” when it is used? What are we supposed to feel that it means? Hatred, intolerance, bigotry, racism, calls for violence, and crazy theories. What is the actual meaning of “extremism” as commonly used? It actually means the condemnation of any uncompromising stand on anything; yet, compromise is unacceptable in morality, as any compromise means a surrender to evil. There can never be any compromise on truth or morality. Thus if the smear of “extremism” is directed at any uncompromising stand, then that smear is in truth directed at any profound conviction, any loyalty to principles, any dedication to truth, any person of integrity.

  Collectivism is bankrupt as an ideology in part because it has nothing more to offer as a solution than “moderation,” and no loftier ideal than that of “compromise.”

  THE APOTHEOSIS OF COMPROMISE

  (Apotheosis—the exaltation of a subject to divine level; in Greek apotheoun: “to deify”)

  True compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. In practice, it implies a common principle unifying the two parties and the recognition that each party has both a valid claim and a value to offer the other.

  In the purchase of a home, the buyer and seller may compromise, settling voluntarily on agreed terms to exchange the ownership of the home. The basic principle is trade. If the seller does not agree to sell, there can be no exchange. If the buyer does not agree to the price, there is no exchange.

  There can be no compromise, however, between a mugger and his victim. Even if the mugger only wants to take a few dollars, the result is not compromise but total surrender by the victim to the use of force by the mugger. The mugger and the victim have no common unifying principle on which to voluntarily agree. There can be no compromise on the principle of individual rights—between freedom and government controls. The surrender of just “a few government controls” is not a compromise because there is no unifying principle between the parties of the government and the individual citizens; it thus constitutes the surrender of the entire principle of individual rights.

  Compromise is an impossible concept when dealing with fundamental principles. How would you define a compromise between reason and irrationality, life and death, or truth and error? What if NASA decided to compromise a little on the hull integrity of its space shuttle? What if a drug manufacturer compromised a bit on the content of your medication? “Times have changed. We all have to be flexible. We can’t be tied down by rigid principles,” the character of Henry Rearden is told in the movie Atlas Shrugged II. His response is perfect: “Try pouring a ton of steel without rigid principles.”

  Today, when we hear of compromise in politics, in most cases it is not a legitimate concession or trade that is implied, but an actual betrayal of one’s values and principles. The use of compromise in this way is immoral because it insists on substituting some subjective whim in place of basic principles.

  [333]

  When a bill is stalled or fails to pass a branch of Congress, the first volley in the obligatory blame-game is usually moral outrage that the other party refused to compromise. Compromise is held up as the moral standard of governance; each party gives up just enough of what they want so that the other party will agree and therefore avoid gridlock. The very fact that both sides speak of compromise so frequently, betrays the fact that they have no consistent rational philosophical base; for if either one claimed to be right, then to compromise would be to sell out their beliefs. But this is not the case. At their philosophical cores, Republicans and Democrats believe in the same principle of statism. Other than on a few issues, the only way the two parties differ is by the methods they use to accomplish their Progressive goals.

  The great lack of principled ideas in the modern political arena can be illustrated by looking back to a Presidential campaign debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. In this debate, the great climax of the nation’s compromising political parties can be seen in the fact that these two candidates had nothing to debate about—they agreed on almost everything!

  According to Nixon, “Senator Kennedy and I are not in disagreement as to the aim . . . the question is the means.” In other words, they had the same goals, and differed only in discussing how they were to compromise on the means of achieving those goals. “Whether it’s in the field of housing or health or medical care or schools or the development of electric power,” Nixon went on, “we have programs which we believe will move America . . . . The test of a program is how much you are spending.” Nixon had no alternative to offer America other than, “Senator Kennedy would have the federal government spend more than I would have it spend . . . . Senator Kennedy too often would rely too much on the federal government.” By what standard, beyond your feelings, Mr. Nixon, do we know it is too much? No answer.

  Nixon attempted a last-ditch effort to appeal to fiscal conservatives, but it was disingenuous and fell on deaf ears, “But it is essential that [the President] not allow a dollar spent that could be better spent by the people themselves.”

  [334] (Who gets to decide which way is the best way to spend a dollar? Not its owner, of course. The government does.)

  “In any compromise between food and poison,
it is only death that can win.

  In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

  [335] - Ayn Rand

  Saul Alinsky recognized the importance of the word “compromise” to his Progressive activism. “To the organizer,” he wrote, “compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation. It is making the deal, getting that vital breather, usually the victory. If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise for 30 per cent, you’re 30 per cent ahead.”

  [336]

  This idea has been used with devastating effects to erode freedom and personal responsibility. “Compromise” must come to be used in the reverse way to gain liberty back. Instead of compromising our freedom with Progressives to merely slow the advance of tyranny, we must demand that they compromise with freedom. Demand 100% freedom and when they give us 30%, we will be that much freer. Demand complete school and teacher choice, and call it a victory when more charter schools open up or students are allowed to transfer to another school that better meets their needs.

  The results of elevating the idea of compromise to such celestial heights is that, more and more, many voters are expressing hopelessness in the political process. Rather than supporting a candidate whose principles they agree with, voters are reduced to lamely trying to vote for the “lesser of two evils.”