... Thus, for example, health care was declared by Bill Clinton during the 1992 election campaign to be "a right, not a privilege" — a neat dichotomy which verbally eliminates the whole vast range of things for which we work, precisely because they are neither rights nor privileges. For society as a whole, nothing is a right — not even bare subsistence, which has to be produced by human toil. Particular segments of society can of course be insulated from the necessities impinging on society as a whole, by having someone else carry their share of the work, either temporarily or permanently. But, however much those others recede into the background in the verbal picture painted by words like "rights," the whole process is one of differential privilege. ...
— Thomas Sowell, 'The Vision Of The Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy', 1995, p.100
A long standing dishonesty among the American public (and most of the world) is the false claim that
human rights include a certain
quality of life, or
outcome — i.e. that an
individual's rights place an
obligation on others to provide for
their needs.
This is so obviously contradictory, it is surprising what lengths so many will go to in their attempts to delude themselves that it is somehow true.
The contradiction is too obvious to be honestly ignored. That is, if you have
a right to
other people's labor to satisfy
your needs, why do they
not have
a right to
your labor to satisfy
theirs? To put it another way, if you have
a right to, say,
'free' medical care simply because
you need it, as so many wish to pretend, why don't the individuals that provide that
'free' care (whether unpaid medical staff, or taxpayers) have the
same right to make you
their servant, simply because
they need it?
There is no honest answer to explain the contradiction highlighted by such questions, despite the convoluted rationalizations that many will immediately spin to justify the
individual rights violations entailed by
any supposedly free government provided service — if government gives
any service for free to some group of individuals, other individuals are being made slaves to them, regardless of how one describes the relationship.
Typically, people pretend that because one person is suffering and another is not (that one person's well being is higher than another's) that is enough to justify
the initiation of force via the political process, to force one person to serve another. But this clearly does not make it right — that is, human suffering or need does
not somehow magically
create a human right.
Certainly, the vast majority of people would
not want
their time and effort to be seen as something
owed to others
as a right, yet when that majority wants something from a minority among them, they ignore their hypocrisy and
pretend their desire to engage in
rent-seeking is
moral (while simultaneously complaining when others attempt to get special treatment from government,
of course).
Human rights can be reduced to one simple idea: if others
do not leave you alone, it is
moral for you to fight back — that is, to defend yourself by retaliating with
force.
In other words, other than for purposes of restitution, it is contradictory to claim that
any action can be
morally required of you by others without your consent. Individual rights create
the restriction that one is
morally obligated not to harm or harass others — not that one is
morally obligated to serve others. Obviously, again, there is no such thing as
a right to be served by others (that would be slavery). Therefore, any law that
requires an action which is not part of a restitution is immoral — like creating a legal requirement for some group to provide or pay for some service for others without the
unanimous consent of the group. In short, it should be obvious that law cannot
morally be used to
initiate force, and so
any law which does so
must be immoral.
Notice that this simple idea includes rights violations from externalities, like pollution —
measuring the harm is complicated (like if someone is running a loud smoking car in a driveway near you, or polluting the groundwater you use for drinking), but
the principle of individuals being prohibited actions that harm others is not complicated.
It is important to emphasize that
legally requiring actions by some individuals without their consent, to provide some service
by right to others,
completely destroys the principle of individual rights. That is, such a use of force makes every individual's freedom of action, and so their fundamental right, conditional on the
dictates of government — in no way can this be defined as
freedom, or consistent with the recognition and protection of individual rights. You are
not free, and so have
no rights, if government can claim your time and effort for others
by right.
The ultimate end result of such a principle is the numerous bloody dictatorships that have always existed, epitomized by North Korea.
In principle there is no difference between such brutal regimes and other socialist states, regardless of the obvious differences in practice. That is, such bloody dictatorships have simply taken the principle that
individuals owe service to others as a right to its logical conclusion. Once such a principle is accepted,
every individual's life belongs to the state — with
any supposedly justifying need, the state is then
obligated to dispose of the time and effort of its citizen's lives to protect an individual's supposed
'right' to receive service (and if nothing else, people have certainly demonstrated the ease with which they can invent nonsensical
rights to service).
On what grounds can one argue that North Korea is immoral, for example, when one
accepts and defends the principle that the state can dispose of one's time and effort against one's will
simply because of another's need?
North Korea simply applies that principle
in all cases, and jails anyone who refuses to submit — after all, under the principle that the state can dispose of your time and effort based on the needs of others
by right, the refusal to submit constitutes
a violation of another individual's rights — that is,
it is a legitimate crime under the principle. There is no escaping this obvious conclusion. If others can demand your time and effort
by right, then it is
criminal for you to refuse — just as it is criminal to steal another's property which belongs to them
by right. This is what it means to claim that something
is a right.
So to those who say that one has
a right to medical care, for example, what would you say to criticize North Korea? —
"Oh, they've just gone too far." ? (!!)
Really? Why? Aren't they just being
more consistent?
Perhaps you would say —
"North Korea is immoral because they closed their border, and don't allow people to migrate." ?
But why does the government of North Korea
not have
a right to prevent people from leaving by closing their border, if those who wish to leave owe their services to others
by right? How could a country possibly enforce such a right
without closing its borders?
In short, it is impossible for an
honest person to criticize a brutal dictatorship like North Korea, after having accepted on principle that one can have
a right to the time and efforts of others (via some service like medical care). Everything North Korea has done follows directly from that principle
to the extreme, and as
contemptible and unjust as such a country is, the only way to attack such regimes is with a clear defense of
man's right to be left alone — that is, with an attack on the irrational altruist ethic of self-sacrifice, and the false and nonsensical claim that there is
a supposed right to the involuntary servitude of others.
It is fascinating that people seem to believe that such an enormous perverse
debasement of individual rights will somehow
never harm them.
And notice that there is nothing new in the claim that individuals have a right to the involuntary servitude of others — the Democratic party insisted that explicitly over 50 years ago in their party platform of 1960.
The Democratic Party Platform of 1960
clearly states the contradiction of a supposed
right to service, claiming as a value and support for
"our open society which places its highest value upon individual dignity", as opposed to the Communist world where
"the rights of men are sacrificed to the state", while the same platform also supported an
"Economic Bill of Rights" — i.e.
a right to the
forced labor or agreement of
other individuals, directly contradicting the supposed recognition of the value of individual dignity by demanding the sacrifice of the rights of men to the state.
It is just our old friend the Orwellian double think again —
my freedom requires your oppression --
http://archive.is/RRUpE
Democratic Party Platform of 1960
July 11, 1960
...
The Communist World
To the rulers of the Communist World: We confidently accept your challenge to competition in every field of human effort.
We recognize this contest as one between two radically different approaches to the meaning of life—our open society which places its highest value upon individual dignity, and your closed society in which the rights of men are sacrificed to the state.
We believe your Communist ideology to be sterile, unsound, and doomed to failure. We believe that your children will reject the intellectual prison in which you seek to confine them, and that ultimately they will choose the eternal principles of freedom.
...
Control of Inflation
The American consumer has a right to fair prices. We are determined to secure that right.
Inflation has its roots in a variety of causes; its cure lies in a variety of remedies. Among those remedies are monetary and credit policies properly applied, budget surpluses in times of full employment, and action to restrain "administered price" increases in industries where economic power rests in the hands of a few.
A fair share of the gains from increasing productivity in many industries should he passed on to the consumer through price reductions.
The agenda which a new Democratic Administration will face next January is crowded with urgent needs on which action has been delayed, deferred, or denied by the present Administration.
A new Democratic Administration will undertake to meet those needs.
It will reaffirm the Economic Bill of Rights which Franklin Roosevelt wrote into our national conscience sixteen years ago. It will reaffirm these rights for all Americans of whatever race, place of residence, or station in life:
1. "The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation."
...
Minimum Wages
2. "The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation."
...
Agriculture
3. "The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living."
...
Small Business
4. "The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home and abroad."
...
Housing
5. "The right of every family to a decent home." Today our rate of home building is less than that of ten years ago. A healthy, expanding economy will enable us to build two million homes a year, in wholesome neighborhoods, for people of all incomes.
...
Health
6. "The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health."
...
Mental Health
Mental patients fill more than half the hospital beds in the country today. We will provide greatly increased Federal support for psychiatric research and training, and community mental health programs, to help bring back thousands of our hospitalized mentally ill to full and useful lives in the community.
7. "The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents, and unemployment."
...
Education
8. "The right to a good education."
...
None of the supposed eight
'economic rights' listed above, from the Democratic Party Platform of 1960, can properly be considered
a right (i.e. creating
a crime, if they were
not provided), since each one has nothing to do with
freedom of action, and cannot be achieved without the
forced participation of other individuals. Each one claims a supposed right to a
quality of life, or outcome, which does
not exist in a state of nature, since it is a product of human effort and cooperation.
Here is an excellent definition of man's rights by Ayn Rand, from the chapter
'Man's Rights', from her book
'The Virtue of Selfishness'. She wrote this essay back in 1963, and she included a description of the Democratic Party Platform of 1960, as an example of the destruction of the concept of
individual rights --
https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/Mans-Rights
http://www.aynrand.org/novels/virtue-of-selfishness
...
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.
There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right
to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life
means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to
take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the
fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.)
The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom
from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive — of his freedom to act on his own judgment,
for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on
them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights,
no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product
of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object,
but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn
any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and
to dispose of material values.
The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day.
In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of
God—others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man’s nature.
The Declaration of Independence stated that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Whether one believes that man is the product of a Creator or of nature, the issue of man’s origin does not alter
the fact that he is an entity of a specific kind—a rational being—that he cannot function successfully under coercion,
and that rights are a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival.
“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man.
Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it
is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to
keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids
him the irrational.” (Atlas Shrugged.)
To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically,
there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man’s rights:
the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these
two—by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first.
...
It was the concept of individual rights that had given birth to a free society. It was with the destruction of individual rights
that the destruction of freedom had to begin.
A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done
by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country’s wealth is accomplished by
inflating the currency—so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process
entails such a growth of newly promulgated “rights” that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed.
Just as bad money drives out good money, so these “printing-press rights” negate authentic rights.
Consider the curious fact that never has there been such a proliferation, all over the world, of two contradictory phenomena: of
alleged new “rights” and of slave-labor camps.
The “gimmick” was the switch of the concept of rights from the political to the economic realm.
The Democratic Party platform of 1960 summarizes the switch boldly and explicitly. It declares that a Democratic Administration
“will reaffirm the economic bill of rights which Franklin Roosevelt wrote into our national conscience sixteen years ago.”
Bear clearly in mind the meaning of the concept of “rights” when you read the list which that platform offers:
“1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.
“2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
“3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.
“4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition
and domination by monopolies at home and abroad.
“5. The right of every family to a decent home.
“6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
“7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents and unemployment.
“8. The right to a good education.”
A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear: At whose expense?
Jobs, food, clothing, recreation (!), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are man-made values—goods and services
produced by men. Who is to provide them?
If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be
no such thing as “the right to enslave.”
A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort.
Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness—not of the right
to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make
him happy.
The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him);
it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
...
Here is Rand Paul attempting to explain to Bernie Sanders the problems with declaring that one has a right to medical care
--
Sanders is incapable of responding, other than to try to avoid the issue by getting one of the doctors invited to speak to state that she does not
'feel like a slave'. Well,
of course not — doctors that participate in government provided health care are being paid by taxpayers from
forced tax collections — obviously they are a beneficiary here (at least to the degree that government
actually pays). That
some doctors do not
'feel like slaves' does nothing to refute Rand Paul's point, which is that to claim something is
a right means that it can be
morally taken by force, regardless of how many are willing to give it up
voluntarily.
And notice
the comment from Debra Draper, from the
U.S. Government Accountability Office, regarding the
difficulty that
Medicaid beneficiaries have in finding a physician, since many physicians simply
refuse to see them because of the low Medicaid reimbursement rate (and this is only expected to get worse) —
https://www.google.com/search?q=doctors+refuse+medicaid+patients
So much for the government's ability to provide
free medical care — doctors simply stop providing the care if they feel the compensation is too low, regardless of how many may claim they do not
'feel like a slave' or that they will treat patients without payment.
And note that this video was
not put together by an opponent of Bernie Sanders — it is a video Sanders had created and placed on
his own YouTube channel.
Bernie Sanders is
proud of such behavior, and thinks that voters should be
inspired by it. Well, of course many voters are — just
not those that have a real understanding of
human rights, and the destructive track records of world governments in their various attempts to provide so-called
'economic rights' (
the Scandinavian countries included — despite Bernie's repeated praise of them).
Here is a funny and mocking video from
Stefan Molyneux, entitled
'The Truth About Bernie Sanders', in which he points out the
obvious and idiotic fallacies that Bernie Sanders has repeated throughout his career — no surprise there, since they are the same fallacies the Democratic party has been repeating for many decades, as shown by the main points from their 1960 party platform quoted above. It is especially comical that Sanders was a registered
independent for much of his career, given that his positions are so slavishly conformist — Bernie's core positions have been Democratic Party positions for decades, and prior to Sanders first taking political office as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981.
Stefan Molyneux repeatedly points out the obvious childish appeal of Bernie's
'you have a right to free stuff' talk. Molyneux's nice encapsulation of Bernie Sanders at the close of his video is transcribed below
--
"So, I mean look, Sanders has other public positions, they're exactly what you expect — 'rich bad, I'll give you free stuff', rinse, wash, repeat, same thing over and over. So, look, people have been writing saying: 'What is your opinion on Bernie Sanders?' He's ... I mean I hate to say it (laughing) ... I went and reorganized this presentation so many times ... because ... he's boring (laughing), he's predictable, and dull.
"Like all socialists he's completely divorced from physical, economic, and human reality — but is very in tune with the discontented greed of the masses that anxiously look for scapegoats for their own irresponsibility, and beg for politicians to give them free goodies that will be stolen from everyone's future children.
"The fact that a socialist has recently surpassed potentially brain damaged Hillary Clinton in favorability polls doesn't surprise me, given that the United States has already a massive number of socialist policies in place. What's interesting is that Sanders is not even trying to hide his socialist agenda, unlike other politicians, yet his popularity is surging in the very country that fervently opposed the Soviet Union for decades. 'Socialist' is a dirty word for a reason, but heeyyy at least he's honest.
"I recently put out a video on the causes behind the collapse of Greece, and it's called 'The Fall of Greece, Prepare Yourself Accordingly'. I strongly recommend that you watch it, because I fear the same trend is repeating itself in the United States.
"When someone offers you something for free, it starts off as a cobweb and it ends as a chain. It's like a bad habit — it starts as a cobweb, ends as a chain. It's like an addiction to a drug — starts as a high, and ends with a crash and destruction. The true freedom in life — what makes you truly free, as in liberated, not deluded — what makes you truly free, is understanding that there is no such thing as free. There's no such thing as free in this world, and everyone who tries to tell you that there is something that you can get for free, is giving you the drug called delusion in order to enslave you forever."
Here is an informative display of the dishonesty that explains the appeal of Bernie Sanders. Quoted below are two comments to Stefan Molyneux's video above, from a YouTube user in defense of Bernie Sanders — notice that even though Stefan spent a good portion of his video addressing how wealthy individuals change their behavior in response to higher tax levels, this individual simply ignores those inconvenient points, and pretends that the government will have no difficulty in raising the revenue required by the extravagant social agenda of Bernie Sanders.
Note that the difficulty of raising government revenues by simply
raising taxes on the rich is well documented — never mind that it is unfair, and so
immoral, as welfare state zealots try
desperately to ignore. See my post here, for example —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/11/real-ignorance-with-bill-maher.html
And of course, there is the
even more obvious attempt from this Bernie Sanders defender, in the second comment quoted below, to
pretend that Sanders is
not offering
free stuff (like education and medical care) to certain voters. Of course,
someone is going to pay, just
not those Bernie is pandering to — they will in the end, as Molyneux went to great lengths to point out, but it will be
in unintended consequences (normally in reduced quality or availability, as Medicaid patients already face), allowing Bernie's supporters
to pretend it was
free to them.
In short, it is a bald-faced lie to insist that
'No one is claiming this will be free', because Bernie would
raise taxes on the wealthy, as the author of the comments below wrote — Bernie repeatedly states emphatically that we have
a right to medical care and that higher education should be free, and the
only people that such obvious nonsense appeals to, are those that want
someone else to pay for their supposed 'right'. I mean, who does the author of these comments think that he is fooling? Are all Bernie Sanders supporters
this dishonest?
If Bernie Sanders clearly stated that
everyone would pay a dramatic tax increase to pay for his agenda,
no one would support him. That
the wealthy would pay for Bernie's agenda, making it free to Bernie's supporters, is the
whole point, and it is the
only reason that
anyone touts the
supposed virtues of Bernie Sanders
--
Tw4tch s 2 months ago
Stefan is clearly clueluess on Bernie Sander's policies. Something he is being called out on in the comments and dislikes of his videos. The only people this coward responds to are the vaguest of comments. Bernie will get money for education from taxing the speculation of Wall Street and by taxing billionaires at least as much as their own employees are being taxed. Do your research, Stefan and #feelthebern
Tw4tch s 2 months ago
+DamonM Roger *No one is claiming this will be free.* Scandanavians have plenty of money after taxes, after education and after going to the hospital. What America isnt tell us is that we have a higher personal debt for the average citizen than any Scandinavian country, yet we are still the richest country in the history of the world. Where is all that money going?
Here Molyneux responds in detail to much of the criticism to
'The Truth About Bernie Sanders' —
https://altcensored.com/watch?v=z1jCSfySGtk
In a previous post regarding Noam Chomsky's complete lack of credibility, I quoted a large section of Ayn Rand's essay
'Collectivized Ethics', from her book
'The Virtue of Selfishness', since that essay so eloquently describes the contemptible and perverse psychology so widely displayed by Chomsky and many others like him, in their massively confused zeal to pretend that the
initiation of force can be moral. It is especially perverse in Chomsky's case, since
he repeatedly argues that the U.S. is the leading terrorist state. Chomsky
really seems convinced that a
leading terrorist state should have massive control over its citizens. See my previous post for details —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/06/noam-chomsky-losing-all-credibility.html
And just like Chomsky, Bernie Sanders provides an excellent real-life example of Ayn Rand's description of
so-called humanitarians in her essay
'Collectivized Ethics'. It is
so easy to
pretend to be a humanitarian, when it costs
you nothing, and even profits you with political power via control over dull ignorant voters, while your
sole course of action is to
force the redistribution of the labor of others.
Someone else does the work, but
you can take the credit — while a slavish and obsequious public praises you for
'caring solely about what is best for people'.
Here is a perfect demonstration of that slavish obsequious public — Sarah Silverman's comment in this video that Bernie is
'not for sale' is especially ironic, given that Bernie has spent his political career pandering to the ugly envies of
the worst voters (again, not exactly what one would call
independent) —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvJ5vdIUksM
In closing, here is the relevant portion of Ayn Rand's essay
'Collectivized Ethics' again (this deserves to be re-read)
--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OvL1_89QDs
http://www.aynrand.org/novels/virtue-of-selfishness
...
Since nature does not guarantee automatic security, success and survival to any human being, it is only the dictatorial presumptuousness
and the moral cannibalism of the altruist-collectivist code that permits a man to suppose (or idly to daydream) that he can somehow
guarantee such security to some men at the expense of others.
If a man speculates on what “society” should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men’s lives belong to society and
that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose of them, to set their goals or to plan the “distribution” of their efforts.
This is the psychological confession implied in such questions and in many issues of the same kind.
At best, it reveals a man’s psycho-epistemological chaos; it reveals a fallacy which may be termed “the fallacy of the frozen abstraction” and
which consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs—in this case, substituting a specific
ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of “ethics.” Thus, a man may reject the theory of altruism and assert that he has accepted a
rational code—but, failing to integrate his ideas, he continues unthinkingly to approach ethical questions in terms established by altruism.
More often, however, that psychological confession reveals a deeper evil: it reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men’s capacity
to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.
Humility and presumptuousness are always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling the space vacated by self-esteem
in a collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the
means to his ends. The more neurotic he is or the more conscientious in the practice of altruism (and these two aspects of his
psychology will act reciprocally to reinforce each other), the more he will tend to devise schemes “for the good of mankind” or of “society”
or of “the public” or of “future generations” —or of anything except actual human beings.
Hence the appalling recklessness with which men propose, discuss and accept “humanitarian” projects which are to be imposed by political means,
that is, by force, on an unlimited number of human beings. If, according to collectivist caricatures, the greedy rich indulged in
profligate material luxury, on the premise of “price no object”—then the social progress brought by today’s collectivized mentalities consists
of indulging in altruistic political planning, on the premise of “human lives no object.”
The hallmark of such mentalities is the advocacy of some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs or means.
Out of context, such a goal can usually be shown to be desirable; it has to be public, because the costs are not
to be earned, but to be expropriated; and a dense patch of venomous fog has to shroud the issue of means—because the means are to
be human lives.
“Medicare” is an example of such a project. “Isn’t it desirable that the aged should have medical care in times of illness?” its advocates clamor.
Considered out of context, the answer would be: yes, it is desirable. Who would have a reason to say no? And it is at this point
that the mental processes of a collectivized brain are cut off; the rest is fog. Only the desire remains in his sight—it’s the good,
isn’t it?—it’s not for myself, it’s for others, it’s for the public, for a helpless, ailing public ... The fog hides such facts as the enslavement and,
therefore, the destruction of medical science, the regimentation and disintegration of all medical practice, and the sacrifice of the professional
integrity, the freedom, the careers, the ambitions, the achievements, the happiness, the lives of the very men who are to provide that
“desirable” goal—the doctors.
After centuries of civilization, most men—with the exception of criminals—have learned that the above mental attitude is neither practical
nor moral in their private lives and may not be applied to the achievement of their private goals. There would be no controversy about
the moral character of some young hoodlum who declared: “Isn’t it desirable to have a yacht, to live in a penthouse and to drink champagne?”—and
stubbornly refused to consider the fact that he had robbed a bank and killed two guards to achieve that “desirable” goal.
There is no moral difference between these two examples; the number of beneficiaries does not change the nature of the action, it merely increases
the number of victims. In fact, the private hoodlum has a slight edge of moral superiority: he has no power to devastate an entire nation and
his victims are not legally disarmed.
It is men’s views of their public or political existence that the collectivized ethics of altruism has protected from the march of civilization
and has preserved as a reservoir, a wildlife sanctuary, ruled by the mores of prehistorical savagery. If men have grasped some faint
glimmer of respect for individual rights in their private dealings with one another, that glimmer vanishes when they turn to public issues—and
what leaps into the political arena is a caveman who can’t conceive of any reason why the tribe may not bash in the skull of any individual
if it so desires.
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