WHAT IS THE PROPER RELATIONSHIP AMONG PEOPLE IN A COMMUNITY
INTRODUCTION
There are several times in history when the general violence of military, charismatic, or religious dictatorships has given way to reason, freedom, and liberty. People got together, considered reason and human behavior, and agreed or imposed a more benevolent system of governing – Ancient Greece and Rome, England after the Magna Carta, and the most celebrated, America. Some of these instances were more reasonable or free than others, but you get my point. Self-determination, and human interaction based on the consent of all involved, feels natural and moral.
Why is this so...and, can an investigation of the reasons for this apparent truth, give us information to use in deciding the proper role of government? Today we live in an age of relative liberty – more people than ever, around the globe, are free to pursue their personal interests and survival. But current examples in North Korea, Sudan, and Syria should prove that those who love liberty need to be vigilant.
We should decide proper ethics based on existential truths. What is it to be human? What is the nature of social interaction? Why do human communities organize and what are proper and improper limits on member's behavior? Finally, why do these systems seem to fail when the community gets to a certain size?
SOME TRUTHS ABOUT HUMANS
Let's first define a human. The definition of any object requires a genus and a species. That is, to what recognizable class does it belong (genus), and what essential characteristics differentiate it within that class (species)? For humans, the genus is animal and the species is rational. Humans are defined as rational animals. Other animals have interesting degrees of intelligence, but humans can not only sense and perceive, they can conceptualize and create abstractions. These special mental abilities define what it is to be human and they are the special tools of survival that humans possess. Should they not then, be the basis of organized interaction within human communities?
When I study the nature of a lion and ask what characteristics has evolution selected to create a thriving and reproducing community – I think about the vitality of a mane or musculature, the sound of a roar, or the length of a tooth or claw. With humans, the study is primarily about the unique ability to reason. I may be stronger, but you can think – you can create a spear, a bow and arrow, or gunpowder.
What is the nature of this mental power? It's actually quite simple to describe with an example – keep thinking conceptualization means categorization. My dog can understand, “go lay on the couch.” But she can't understand concepts and abstraction. She can't think about couch as brown, four legs, suede, is really only big enough to be called a love seat. With practice she can recognize "brown," or "four," but she cannot relate them as identities of objects. She also can't abstract to furniture, in the living room, made by Ethan Allen, needs a Scotch-Guard spray, etc. Because humans can work thru all those permutations of concept and abstraction, we are different in the animal world. This difference, this true nature of the object, is the basis for deciding what systems of human interaction, and at the most organized level, government, are appropriate and suited to the true nature of humans.
BEING ALIVE MAKES A DIFFERENCE
We have established that a human is a rational animal, and that to live as a human, is to survive thru the use of one's rational faculty. I hope you notice that there is very little plain opinion so far, only a recognition of existence.
Inanimate matter doesn't need to do anything to exist, it changes form but continues to exist. The existence of a rock is unconditional. Only life is conditional and requires some level of self-sustained and self-generated action to stay alive. Simple organisms; single cells, plants, and simple animals use chemistry – more complex animals add instinctive (genetically predetermined) behavior, higher animals add conscious choice based on responding to environmental stimuli, and humans add reason.
“Human Rights” are conditions of existence required by humans to live according to their nature. If the special nature of a human being is the ability to reason, then “Human Rights” must be the establishment of conditions that allow humans to use their reason to survive. This is the basis of sustaining human life and includes the freedom to use one's mind to judge, without the threat of force or fraud from others.
Force and fraud are the enemies of reason. Rational minds are forced to make bad survival decisions when confronted with force and fraud. The application of force or fraud is an attempt to substitute earlier, non-human, evolutionary strategies, for the unique human tool of reason. Victims of force or fraud have a right to respond with the same, if reason tells them it is the best course, but unregulated retaliation is not life enhancing in a community. So, civilized people establish a subgroup within the community. The citizens give up the right to use force because it gives an advantage to everyone in the community. They give a subgroup, we call government, the sole legitimate right to use force. It's a reasonable and civilized proposition, but it has inherent dangers.
Governments established by free people don't produce wealth. They don't produce anything. The power of government is not the power of production. The necessary and only power of government, is the power to coerce, to use force. At it's best, this scenario leaves reasonable people free to pursue their lives with less interference from bad people. At it's worst, the people in charge become the bad people – individuals, groups, or even majorities use their power for selfish or altruistic reasons.
This is the reasoned argument for government and the caution of what always seems to happen when this community subgroup gets too full of itself. The last section of this paper will explore why it always seems to go wrong.
EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENT POWER
That part of Enlightenment philosophy that dealt with politics, advocated by implication, if not explicitly, that rulers should be temporary, and drawn from the governed population. No more governors based on heredity or the ability to use force. The rulers should work for the community.
The other great creation of the Enlightenment was the constitutional republic form of government because it recognized and tries to overcome the dictatorship of a majority. Ideally, in a constitutional republic, the democratic majority chooses government personnel, but those representatives are limited, in what aspects of community life they can address, by a founding document. That way the majority cannot elect a bunch of scoundrels that will pass laws that favor the electing majority and, therefore, insure the re-election of the scoundrels. Sound familiar?
That was the great contribution of Enlightenment thinkers, and was, in large part, the intent of America's founding fathers. So what happened?
The answer to this question is just an opinion and has two parts. The most enlightened group in history, some of the greatest minds of their time, the members of the American constitutional convention, allowed a contradiction so fundamental, so obvious, so heinous, as to undermine the great work they were doing. They allowed slavery and the slave trade. Yes, I know, in retrospect, it seemed necessary to create the republic at all. I'm not going to argue the politics. I only point out that this decision is one of the sources of what I see as the source of negative changes in our history. You can't claim and then use the moral high ground when your origin is immoral - it's contradictory.
The second influence is a number of national crises, during which the voting citizens overlooked what they knew was wrong because of fear and a desire for predictable safety. These incidences include the extra-constitutional activities of several administrations: Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War to curtail opposition in the border states, the establishment of a private Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 in response to several generations of unstable currency, FDR's social and works programs as a response to the depression and dust bowl, the constitutional amendment that finally made income tax legal as a response to the increased cost of government due to FDR's social programs and WWII, the massive increase in social and military spending during the period of about 1950 to the present in response to fears of social unrest and Soviet expansion. My purpose is not to comment on the morality or efficacy of these choices – only to say, that this is what led to the dramatic change in the expectations that citizens have of their government.
CONCLUSIONS
O.K., now come the opinions. I've tried to establish an objective basis for proper government by exploring the nature of humanity and human communities. Now I will end with the conclusions and questions I draw from this analysis.
It seems to me that one particular type of person/group is most dangerous in the present cultural climate. I am very suspicious of people who seem to worship altruism. It seems to me that in the current culture, altruists are more interested in using government to force others to fund their pet projects, and to use the moral pedestal they see themselves on, to gain political power. If you care about helping people who deserve help, as I do, you can organize like- minded people and get the job done. If you choose, instead, to lobby politicians to take tax money coercivly from unknown people to fund your project, you are a thief. Remember the only power a government can use is the power of coercion, because in the social compact, individuals give up the right to the use of force and allow the government to use force as an agent of the individuals it represents. If this system allows politicians to take wealth from all thru taxation, in order to satisfy the beneficent desires of some group that will then help to re-elect them, then the system has sanctioned theft thru a complex and convoluted process that successfully hides the truth from the general voting public.
" You can't damn me, because I am advocating for those who have so much less wealth and access to power than you or me." No reason, no analysis, no discussion of who receives and who pays, no ethics, no right or wrong; only altruism is right, I am right because it appears that I don't benefit myself.
The tax and debt coffers of the U. S. federal government are the ultimate resource for groups to exploit. Now that the accepted nature of politicians has moved from, the temporary service of those who are otherwise engaged in life, to the career politician who will give you things if you promise your vote, all is eventually lost without a fundamental shift in ethics. We have become a country in which the government can do anything in any area, and so, we become a dictatorship of the shifting majority.
We cannot continue to exist as we are if basic, unchangeable principles are not enshrined in a culturally acceptable document and respected. You think this is dogmatic, you ask whose principles shall we enshrine? I say principles that are based on the true elementary nature of the participant entities. I established the nature of man, communities, and government. The controlling principles should be based on those truths.
If you find any merit in these arguments, I ask you to notice another truth. Fundamental ideas will not carry the day in a political fight. Politics is not a cause, it is the effect, the end result of ideas that permeate a culture. To change the way people vote you must change the premises upon which they make their decisions. You want your neighbor to vote for the best person, the person with real integrity, you have to convince them that the best guy is not the one who is going to give them perks – that the best system is one in which politicians have no power to grant perks.
Study the ideas of freedom and liberty – the INTERNET gives you quick access to ideas. Don't accept anything without critical thought – beware opinions without critical analysis. Talk to your friends who want to live, those that want to support themselves and their families without imposing on others. Advocate to remove barriers to reasonable people of all sexes (yes, this definition has expanded beyond the binary), races, and those who hold any idea (philosophical, political, or religious) that does not sanction force or fraud. Liberty does not require you to agree with all or any ideas except the prohibition on the use of force and fraud.
Now go make your loved-one a sandwich.
