Saturday, January 24, 2009
Question
If people can't be trusted with freedom, how can they be trusted with power?
Labels:
economic freedom,
power,
the state
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Proudly delegitimizing the state since 2005
"Aye, free! Free as a tethered ass!" —W.S. Gilbert
"All the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and . . . the State should be abolished." —Benjamin Tucker
"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." —James Madison
"Fat chance." —Sheldon Richman
—Henry David Thoreau
"Free association . . . the only true form of society."
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
11 comments:
I make this exact comment all the time with no answer from statists that makes sense.
Lock them up in freedom power cages!
But but but... THINK OF THE CHIIIILDREEEEN!!!
Fingolfin, they'll just have to fend for themselves.
If we could just have the "right people" in power, things would be wonderful. There would be no need for freedom. Right, Sheldon?
Are there "right people"?
I was being facetious. But I think that's exactly what many people believe. I remember when I was a child my parents said that the only way communism could work is if God was in charge. That reasoning applies to any form of monopoly government. So, there are no "right people" that are fit to govern anyone else.
I think the implication is: *You* can't be trusted with freedom, but *I* can be trusted with power.
Current research indicates that thirty-eight percent of all wrong-thinking people are right.
Damn that must be a profound question (for statists)!
Hat tip to ya on that one Sheldon.
When I was still in high school, before I became fully convinced of the necessity of the anarchist position, that basic ultimatum kept coming up in my thinking. I was trying to hold on to minarchist thinking (though I didn't call it that, it was a very loose kind of constitutionalism) but the foundations were rapidly slipping away. When I finally confronted the question, the last bits broke. I've never been able to reconcile the basic ethical, consequential and moral considerations in my thinking with any kind of political government, and I do not think it will ever be possible.
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