A Case for Individualism, Individual Liberty, Individual Sovereignty

[Tom Palven]

Phihilosophers L. A. Rollins (The Myth of Natural Rights) and George H. Smith (Atheism: The Case Against God) found that a philosophical case for individual sovereignty goes back at least as far as John Locke in 1690 in The Second Treatise on Government where he said "...no body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself." Slightly later, in 1698 in Discourses Concerning Government , Algernon Sidney said "This will be evident to all who consider, that no man can confer upon others that which he has not in himself.". And still later, in a letter to Thomas Bayard in 1882, anarchist/abolitionist Lysander Spooner stated "No man can delegate, or give to another, any right of arbitrary dominion over a third person..."
Followed to it's logical conclusion this concept would endorse anarchism-- the end of big government and the US Empire. If this concept is both logical and ethical, which no one has yet refuted, lets bring it on.

[John A Roark]

Wasn't it Bastiat who said that no group could pass a law mandating what any one individual couldn't do on his own?
Sounds good to me. Besides, my favorite author, Heinlein, was a 'rational anarchist.' He said there is no such thing as society or the state--just a group of individuals in a conglomeration (he said it independently of Rand, BTW).
Big government, yes, but not an empire--sorry, but history does not support that.

[Tom Palven]

I don't know Bastiat. Just checked him out a little on Wiki. Says he was elected to the French legislature as a classical liberal. My, how times have changed. I'm wondering if there's a good word for reverse epistemology, the systematic loss or knowledge, or the systematic accumulation of BS and wishful thinking? Gonna hafta sleep on it.

[John A Roark]

Ah, Mr. Tom sir--read The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Great stuff, delimiting what a government can and cannot do.

[Tom Palven]

I agree with Bastiat's classical liberal, laissez-faire view that government actions are usually counterproductive to peace and prosperity, but disagree that "Each of us has a natural right- from God- to defend his person, his liberty, and his property", agreeing instead with Lou Rollins' The Myth of Natural Rights. My own argument has been, if people have inherent, God-given rights, what good did it do Jews and other minorities under The Third Reich?

I have carefully parsed Murray Rothbard's case for natural rights in The Ethics of Liberty, where he tried to make a case for rights without just saying "God gave them to us" and it reads something like "And so children, since we humans need to use our brains in order to survive, therefore we have rights." Rand does the same thing, only at greater length, without ever showing why I have more rights than my dog or a veal calf.

I bring this up not just to nitpick, but because I think that the argument for rights has been counterproductive to human freedom. "Rights" have become a mare's nest wherein legal rights, those rights guaranteed by government's, such as "the right to a living wage", "the right to keep and bear arms", and "the right to affordable health care" have been hopelessly confused with the alleged right to liberty. It is easier to make a case for liberty by showing that rights simply do not exist, and that no person or group of people can logically show how they acquired a right to coerce anyone else, i.e. to deprive them of liberty.

[Tom Palven]

BTW, I had heard Bastiat's terrific comment below, but had forgotten who had said it.

"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."