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From: power.Wbst@XEROX.COM
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Re: libertarianism
Message-ID: <12233501875.16.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sun, 24-Aug-86 22:32:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: RED.12233501875.16.MCGREW
Posted: Sun Aug 24 22:32:51 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Aug-86 19:33:46 EDT
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To: Hibbert.pa@Xerox.COM


    "This is an interesting argument.  I don't claim that individuals
    don't gain anything from society, but I do believe that groups of
    individuals have no rights they aren't ceded by their members.
    I'd be interested to see a further explanation of what rights
    groups should have over their members and why."

I've found it very hard to explain this position, yet it seems very
obvious to me.  I think it's because the things which I take for
granted are slightly different from the things that other people take
for granted.  One of these things is that there are no such things as
rights, and individuals can't cede to groups what never existed in the
first place.  What is a right?  Freedom of speech?  It doesn't exist.
People are murdered every day for saying the wrong thing.  If your
tongue is cut out, you can't talk.  Freedom from oppressors?  Supply
your own list of 100 counter examples.  Rights don't really exist.  It
seems fundamental to me, so I don't know how to explain it any better.

When we talk about the way to make a society better (having defined
better), we have to start from the way humans act and interact, not
the way they 'should'.  And because of the type of animal that a human
being is, his life is dominated by the groups around him.  People
behave very differently when they are in groups.  The bigger the
group, the more the difference.  People are still individuals in a
group, but they perform different functions - leader, conscience,
facilitator, worker.  The human animal is very flexible and can
perform more than one of these at a time, or even be one for a given
group and another for a different group.  Human beings fall into this
interactive pattern very naturally, because this is the way we are
made.  Society is the natural way for people, perhaps inevitable.
Individuals only rarely, extremely rarely, remove themselves
completely from society (small s: a group of people larger than the
immediate family).  To say that this society, which forms naturally,
is a figment while contending that only people acting on their own
means anything, is just wrong.  Society does force individuals to do
things, it always has and it probable always will.  Arguing against it
is like argruing that people shouldn't fall in love, or shouldn't be
sad if someone they do love dies.  Valid arguments can be made given a
set of values, but it doesn't change the facts.

As I said, this seems obvious to me.  Libertarians seem to deny this.
The system of a powerful central governing body (Government, church,
employer) is a central part of most peoples lives.  The exceptions
tend to be the leaders of these governing bodies (I guess it can be
argued that they are more dominated than anyone else. . .) or the
people that serve to fill the cracks between groupings - the wheeler
dealers, eccentrics, etc.  The system of a strong central Government,
with the heads democratically elected, has evolved because people,
even the workers, want to be hassled as little as possible, pure and
simple.  But they also don't want to concern themselves day in and day
out with the running of the society (because they're not leader or
conscience or facilitator).  The removal of power from the immediate
(employer, parish priest) to the far away (Washington) does a lot to
realize this ideal.  If you weaken the government enough, this system
falls apart.  The libertarians think they can weaken the government to
an amazing degree, but still have it be able to control the
corporations, the Mafia bosses.  I contend that if you weaken the
government this much, it will be unable to enforce due process, unable
to enforce the right of property, etc.

I guess if I had to sum it all up, I'ld say that libertarians are
reductionists, and see only the individuals.  I say that people behave
differently in groups, and society actually forms a meta-being.  This
isn't some subtle philosophical point, but (to me) an obvious truth.
Society (groups of people) has mores and values, habits and methods
that may or may not be similar to what individuals think or do.  -Jim
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