We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Social individualists of the world unite!

Social individualists of the world unite!
You have nothing to lose but your chains
and a whole world to win!

Although intended as a humorous meme-hack, the statement is also quite clearly true. The irony is that for individuals to preserve their individuality, they must unite with others to fight the collectivist political pressures that would deny that we are moral free agents and make us so much less than we are: to fight involuntary collectivism we must voluntarily act collectively.

And so that is why I set up Samizdata.net and lured others to dive into the blogosphere with me head first.

It was my attempt to give a platform to shout out to the world for like-minded individuals who rejected the intrusive force backed collectivist view of the world. We are not really trying to ‘convert’ people, though that would be nice, rather we are trying to change people’s meta-context and let the ideology take care of itself. That is our ‘mission statement’ if you like.

A meta-context is a person’s frames of reference through which they interpret the world around them. It is not an ideology or a political ‘ism’ or even a philosophy… it is ‘just’ a series of axioms and ‘givens’ that colour and flavour how you think about things and come to understand them via a set of critical or emotional preferences and underlying assumptions. We all have a personal meta-context.

For example, it is one of the reasons that although I have written many articles on Samizdata.net about the issue of private ownership of firearms in the USA, I very rarely discuss the Second Amendment. Why? Because an individualist meta-context does not have rights as something which are dependent on The State.

The Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal artifice, but it is not the source or reason that people should be able to own weapons as a matter not of privilege but by right. In fact, no state and its laws is the source of any right whatsoever: rights are objectively yours to begin with and are not given to you by anyone. Thus I will never argue an American has the right to own a gun because ‘it says so in the Second Amendment’ because they would have a right to do so even if it said nothing of the sort.

Yet that is not to say I think the Second Amendment is a bad idea, just that it is nothing more than a useful profane tool to secure an objective right, not a source of rights. To me as an individualist, I see do not see the state as central to my life or quite frankly to civil society… as I am not a fully convinced anarchist I do see some role for limited government in securing the rights of individuals, but just as an adjunct to far more important the networks that are primarily social rather than political.

And so if we are trying to change people’s meta-context to include more individualist and less collectivist frames of reference, then it behoves us to use phrases which assist in this process rather than those which are loaded with ‘trigger words’ that may well get our views unhelpfully pigeonholed in places that does not really reflect where we are coming from. Now I certainly regard myself as a libertarian of the minarchist flavour… what is sometimes called a ‘Classical Liberal’. However the term ‘libertarian’ is increasingly loaded with meanings that generate more heat than light, and thus I have started using the term ‘social individualist’ rather than ‘libertarian in Samizdata.net’s introduction in the sidebar. We have not changed… certainly I have not… and I intend to continue arguing that the term ‘libertarian’ can only be used correctly to describe people who promote the individual liberty to chose how you interact with the world via social interaction rather than force backed political interaction. Just as Living Marxism changed its name to Spiked in order to shed the ‘baggage’ of the term ‘Marxism’ without actually changing a thing ideologically, we started life as ‘Libertarian Samizdata’ back in our early days on-line and then just became Samizdata.net in order to better reach beyond the worthy true believers. We are no longer Libertarian Samizdata but our thinking is really no different to when we started.

Yet if the term ‘libertarian’ gets in the way of what we are trying to do, it is time to start de-emphasising it. I am still a member of the executive committee of the London based Libertarian Alliance and I still regard myself as a pukka libertarian. But a more accurate description of my views than just the broad church of ‘libertarianism’ would be that I reject collectivist views of the world as utterly falsified, but at the same time I do not regard individuals as atomised objects existing in splendid isolation. Unless you live alone in a log cabin in the middle of Canada subsisting on nuts and moose meat, you are an individual within a social environment: a civil society. And it is the extent to which you can freely act within civil society as an individual pursuing self-defined ends by right, without political coercion or permission, that is the measure of whether you are free or not.

Additionally, I have long regarded socialism as the most ironic use of language in the history of mankind, given that it means to replace social interaction with entirely political interaction. It is time to reclaim the word social and reject the newspeak inversion of it into meaninglessness.

And it is addressing those issues that make this a social individualist weblog.

55 comments to Social individualists of the world unite!

  • Russ Goble

    Great article. We are, sadly, in an idealogical struggle that is as much about reclaiming language from the folks straight out Orwell’s head as we are in an ideological struggle.

    One thing, I would note, is the phrasing of the 2nd Amendment actually lends credence to Perry’s post instead of acting as a counterpoint. It, along with the other amendments in the original U.S. Bill of Rights, are written in the negative. It says “Congress shall pass no law abridging the right to bear arms” or “the right to free speech”, etc. It is written this way specifically to note that these are rights that we are born with and that we are saying that the government we are forming will not step on those rights. Now, clearly, in practice it hasn’t worked out that way due to concepts like state’s rights, community standards and what not. But, the U.S. Bill of Rights is important in the way it’s written and not just the end result. The U.S. founding fathers very much meant to convey the idea that rights are ours to be given away, not the other way around.

    I’m sure Perry knew this and probably left this out so as to not muddy the waters of his article, since, in practice, the 2nd amendment has acted more as a limitation on government restrictions of gun ownership than an absolute preventative of such measures. Still, it’s always a good civics lesson to note that the framers of the U.S. really did intend for a truly limited government, one MUCH more limited than the one we ended up with.

  • Andy Duncan

    Hi Perry,

    Couldn’t we also try to take back our name, “Liberal”? It was our name originally, until the non-revolutionary middle-class socialists stole it from us, in order to undermine us. They’re now doing the same trick with “libertarian”, with the oxymoronic “libertarian socialist” phrase.

    If we were to collectively call ourselves “individualists” (what ironic John Motsonian word fun! :), it’ll be odds on that before five years are up, we’ll have “socialist individualists”.

    You could even have some current members of New Labour re-branding themselves, with the very term, to get out of their current hole! 🙂

    Though maybe it’s too late for “Liberal”, as especially in the US, the “L-word” has got too laden with politically correct socialist baggage? But it’s the perfect word. Alas, if “Liberal” is out of reach, I also fear for “Social”. With “Social Justice”, “Social Worker”, and all the other appalling misuses of this word by the Guardianistas of the world, it may be a long time before we can rescue this important English word.

    Though in a cunning plan to save it, how about a new name for a “Classic Old Whig Libertarian Society Individualist Party”, to really hack the socialists of this country off, if we herdless cats were ever able to form such a thing? Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: “The Social Liberals”! 😎

    I’d love to see Polly Toynbee’s face, if that political party were ever to see the light of day 😉

    Rgds,
    AndyD

  • The word ‘social’ in any description of political values, including ‘social individualist’ leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

  • Andy Duncan

    PS> Can I take that back about Polly Toynbee’s face? I’ll never love to see it, except under one condition. Staring back at me on the stern deck of a ferry to France, on a one-way ticket, never to return. Ah, what a glorious day that would be for British freedom! 🙂

  • You write: “Thus I will never argue an American has the right to own a gun because ‘it says so in the Second Amendment’ because they would have a right to do so even if it said nothing of the sort.” Oh? Tell that to a resident of England. They supposedly have the same rights. Tell that to a resident of DC.

    The Second Amendment is there to PROTECT that right, because once a society no longer BELIEVES, that right is otherwise dead. England exemplifies this. Even the people who OWNED handguns didn’t believe that they had a RIGHT to them.

  • I dunno, Perry. Your aim is admirable, but the term “social individualist” reminds me of a couple of jokey headlines:

    “Anarchists’ Convention Disorganized”

    “Poor Turnout At Apathy Rally”

    The word “libertarian” screams for retirement. It was never an attractive name, nor easy to pronounce, and it’s too easily confused with “libertine.” But apart from reclaiming “liberal,” I can’t see a clearly preferable alternative.

  • Becky

    Perry wrote:
    “In fact, no state and its laws is the source of any right whatsoever: rights are objectively yours to begin with and are not given to you by anyone.”

    What exactly does this mean? That rights are mystical things which exist as trascendental objects above and beyond society? And which particular rights are objectively mine to begin with? The right to murder anyone who pisses me off? How do I know which rights are mine? Are there any guiding principles? If so, from where are they derived?

    Perry wrote:
    “Now I certainly regard myself as a libertarian of the minarchist flavour”

    I interpret that to mean that you are in favour of the idea of a state, however bare-bones. That there are some things that it is best that a state should do. I imagine (correct me if I’m wrong) that these things are a judicial system, policing and defence. Would you argue that these things are best done by the state (or delegated to the private sector by the state, which comes to the same thing) and paid for by its citizens in a non-voluntary manner (i.e. taxes of some description)? If so, wouldn’t this amount to collectivist coercion? If so, then would it be correct to say that you are not opposed to collectivist coercion per se, as a principle? If so, at what point and for what services does collectivist coercion become necessary?

    Not trying to be provocative – well yes I am, but I’m genuinely interested in your answers.

  • Walter MacG

    There once was a libertarian,
    by the name of Perry de Havilland,
    he learnt the word meme,
    was never quite the *same*,
    and used it again and again again.

  • Becky

    Perry again:
    “The Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal artifice, but it is not the source or reason that people should be able to own weapons as a matter not of privilege but by right.”

    What is the source or reason? And is there any limit to this “right”? Should we be allowed to possess any weapons we like, including weapons of mass destruction? If not, why not? And if this right is circumscribed, so that it doesn’t include nuclear weapons, for instance, what is the ontological status of the circumscription? Is it, too, something that is just “there”, like my rights appear to be?

  • Noble aim, I too think the word libertarian needs to be retired. Taking back the word liberal in the form of “classical liberal” might be a good bet.

    Like, Perry, I am for very limited government, not for none at all, as I am not an anarchist.

    As far as taxes, they are a necessary evil (in some form) to fund government. There are however far better ones than the current system(s). I have one such proposal in my book Statism Sucks! Ver. 2.0.

  • Scott Cattanach

    “Libertarian” still has its uses – just try calling yourself an “anarchist” w/o people assuming you spent your weekend trashing the local Starbucks to protest the lack of govt control of foreign trade.

  • Theodopoulos Pherecydes

    I don’t happen to believe that men and women are born or endowed with certain inalienable rights. I believe that we are (and always have been) born with varying degrees of strength and intelligence: that these distinctions inevitably lead to the emergence of A Big Man and that in modern societies all we call “civil” descends from this secondary position and is political by necessity. Surrendering our individuality to any collection of persons that mitigates the power of The Big Man is a choice between two evils. The only “justice” we can hope to render by our political activities is a rough equality of starting points and the maximum protection from the exercise of arbitrary power.

    There are no ideals, there is only the agon. ~(:-c) Gun’s up!

  • Scott Cattanach

    What is the source or reason? And is there any limit to this “right”? Should we be allowed to possess any weapons we like, including weapons of mass destruction? If not, why not? And if this right is circumscribed, so that it doesn’t include nuclear weapons, for instance, what is the ontological status of the circumscription? Is it, too, something that is just “there”, like my rights appear to be?

    Privately owned nukes? Sure. I trust Bill Gates with the bomb more than I trust Dubya. Keeping it in your basement is like pointing your gun at my head – its a specific threat to the life of someone else (if it goes off, I die). You can own a gun, but not point it at me (even if you swear on a stack fo Bibles not to pull the trigger). You can own a nuke, but not store it where I vaporize if it goes off.

  • Andy Duncan

    Becky writes:

    What exactly does this mean? That rights are mystical things which exist as trascendental objects above and beyond society? And which particular rights are objectively mine to begin with? The right to murder anyone who pisses me off? How do I know which rights are mine? Are there any guiding principles? If so, from where are they derived?

    As a little light reading, and if you’re genuinely interested in objective knowledge while you continue your discussion with Mr De Havilland, you may like to consider the following books:

    First, Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Before reading this, you may wish to consider tackling Ayn Rand’s own Atlas Shrugged, a fictional account of her philosophy of Objectivism. BTW, unless you’ve already read Atlas Shrugged, you’ll also find it a goldmine for attacking us libertarians in the future, as it contains many concepts many of us believe in. Though be careful. There are many who’ve started Atlas Shrugged as devout socialists, and ended it as libertarians. Though I suspect you’ll be strong enough to resist its mind magic 🙂

    For a different approach to philosophical objectivity, I must also recommend Sir Karl Popper’s Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. This is a difficult book, one I had to re-read several times, to understand. If you find the same difficulty, I also recommend, to prepare yourself, you try Sir Karl Popper’s earlier seminal works on the Open Society and Its Enemies, both Parts I and Part II. Part I, on Plato, is particularly good. You may even be happy to hear that Karl Marx comes out of it quite well, in Part II! 🙂

    BTW, if you should find Ayn Rand’s Objectivism interesting, and wish to continue your research, I’d be happy to hear your opinion on her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I’ve not got round to reading this myself yet, though it is on my “to do” list. Let’s have a race to see who can finish it first! 😉

    Well, the 19:06 from Paddington calls. Good reading, and au revoir.

  • Hmm, so basically it’s like Bill Hicks said:

    “People who hate people, come together!”

    “NO!”

    “Damn, we almost had got a meeting together…”

    Sorry, couldn’t shake that bit out of my mind, so I decided to foist it on you all.

  • Becky,

    What exactly does this mean? That rights are mystical things which exist as trascendental objects above and beyond society? And which particular rights are objectively mine to begin with? The right to murder anyone who pisses me off? How do I know which rights are mine? Are there any guiding principles? If so, from where are they derived?

    I’m not Perry, but I’ll take a stab at these questions. My view is that yes, rights do transcend society. Thus, they are natural, i.e., they exist due to the nature of man, and they exist prior to the state, the society, the tribe, and the collective.

    Rights are simply barriers to coercion. They are lines drawn in the sand beyond which outsiders cannot cross without impinging on you and the fruits of your labor.

    Since rights can only be understood only as what others may not do to you, rights can never be an another person’s property. They are not wants, desires, or privileges. One cannot claim a ‘right to education’ as that is a claim on others’ services. Rights are simply barriers against the outside so that the mob may not take what is yours.

    When I say that you have a right to life, I mean that others may not aggress against your life. When I say you have a right to your property, I mean that others may not take your property without your permission.

    Further, there cannot be any ‘right to murder’. Not only does that phrase imply an entitlement to an act against another, but also it is a violation of the victim’s right to life.

    If you agree that individuals are owed freedom from violence from the day they are born, then you agree with Perry (and myself) that rights are objective and exist prior to society.

  • Tony H

    I’m sure Theodopoulos is correct in that it is difficult to argue that in a state of nature, humans have any inherent rights at all. However, I suggest it is reasonable to propose that some inalienable rights follow from a state of civilisation. This connects with Perry’s reference (in an excellent essay) to the US Bill of Rights. I’m open to correction from constitutional experts, but I understood that the US Bill was based quite closely upon our own 1689 Bill of Rights; and it is crucial to considerations of UK firearms regulation that the Bill of Rights, in protecting citizens’ rights to bear arms and not to have their property confiscated, was not a grant but a RECOGNITION of pre-existing rights.
    It might be of interest that during the run-up to the 1997 Firearms Act, the librarian of the House of Commons felt compelled to issue a brief document (Ref. 4321 97/3/14HA BKW/aor. 4th March 1997) commenting upon the relationship of the proposed Act to the Bill of Rights, but said it would need testing in court. I don’t think it ever was properly tested in court.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Becky, good question. Andy Duncan already gave a great start above in answering it. Those, who like the American Founding Fathers, believe in natural rights as pre-dating institutions like governments believed that Man, given the creature that he (assume I being non-sexist here) is, is possessed of certain characteristics leading to the need for rights.

    To survive and flourish, humans need to be free to use their minds. They need to be free to secure and protect what they have created. And they need to be free to be able to transfer, trade and transmit said property to others.

    Hence the rights to life, liberty and justly acquired property. Rights can be seen as stemming from the conditions for survival and flourishing. It is of course, a different issue as to exactly how those rights are enforced in practice. Libertarians of all hues will differ a lot about that.

    However, just to muddy the waters a bit more, some libertarians do not believe that natural rights exist at all, though some may think of them as a sort of noble lie. There are utilitarian libertarians, “consequentialists,” etc. Some do not think there is any particular aspect of human nature which could generate something like a right, although I happen to do so and think Ayn Rand had it right when she centred the need for rights on Man’s being a being of volitional consciousness.

    For recommended reading, check out the classics, such as Tom Paine, John Locke, or in our own recent past, Murray Rothbard.

    JP

  • The Second Amendment (like all the others in the Bill of Rights) is simply an underlining or emphasis of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

    And please, let’s not get back into that childish and hysterical “so I suppose you want to be allowed to own an ICBM?” hypothesis. It’s really silly.

    Personal armament and personal WMDs are different issues completely. Unfortunately, it’s a straw man argument that we gun nuts get dragged into all too often.

    Anyway, I have to go off and put in some practice with my AK-47 now…

  • Russ Goble

    Becky asked: “What exactly does this mean? That rights are mystical things which exist as trascendental objects above and beyond society? ”

    Well, yes that’s exactly how rights should be viewed. Your straw man of “the right to murder” is rediculous as that right could also be called “the right to remove other people’s rights.” Perry also talks of “civil society.” We can assume that a civil society wouldn’t be very civil if individuals had the right to randomly take rights from other people.

    Of course, a lot of this is a chicken and an egg story I suppose. If rights are there to begin with, but you need a government to gurantee the security of those rights, do you really have those rights to begin with? The answer to that question hurts my head and is actually irrelevant. The fact is we all live under some sort of government. It would be a good thing if, in the context of that society that controls that government, the given assumption was that individuals had pre-existing rights that cannot be taken away. Would this be a “nobile lie”? I don’t know, that’s for philosophers to figure out. But, the assumption should be that a government’s power is given by a society of individuals exercising their rights of self determination in an organized manner.

    Presently, most elected politicians of every stripe believe “rights” to be given by the government. And they view the government as the starting point and the end point of civil society instead of it merely being an organizational tool OF civil society. That is, I think, what Perry is getting at. If government is the “end all/be all” of a civil society, then politics is the essence of life. I believe that’s exactly the opposite of how most of us would like it.

  • Perry, good points, well taken.

    I’ve been grappling with the fitting of libertarianism into my cosmology for a while. I’m a big fan of Hayek — of whom Kirk said “everybody thinks the old man is a conservative, except himself.”

    The link between ideological conservatism and libertarianism is fraying on this side of the pond; a lot of the internet influenced libertarians are becoming staunch advocates of pr()n and pot – which is a pretty attractive platform for a college sophomore but it doesn’t give mayors, governors and senators a lot of advice on how to run things. It’s funny – staunch social and political conservatives don’t get too freaked out when I admit to strong libertarian tendencies, but died-in-the-wool libertarians go into something resembling an epileptic seizure… This movement toward ideological purity doesn’t bode well for libertarianism; it trends toward increasing fragmentation and diluted power.

    In your case, I don’t know if “social individualist” is philologically appropriate; Burke might agree with the concept, but it puts you more in the conservative tradition, than the pr()no and pot tradition. Watch out, or you might lose your Big “L” card.

  • George Peery

    This post seems to cover much the same ground as “What Samizdata is all about”, 18 June. There’s probably a good reason for that, although it doesn’t jump right out at me.

  • Liberty Belle

    Becky is also a very active little pincher over on Front Page Magazine’s article about the traitor Rosenbergs. Busy, busy, busy.

    We all have the human (or animal) right to self-defence, according to our resources – claws, teeth, (in the case of the wolf family) packs, cleverness, communications. Things evolve. If owning a nuclear weapon for my own defence means owning a nuclear weapon, then yes, I have that right. Nuclear weapons have been invented. I’d be very interested to hear the opinions of other Samizdatas, pro and con, though.

  • George Peery: this article was to explain why I changed the introduction in the sidebar. Some Samizdata readers seems to notice if I so much as change a comma and promptly fire off an e-mail… so I thought I have better explain it before I got buried under a blizzard of pixels

  • Carpe Toro

    Not being familiar with Becky, or whether she is indeed a “very active little pincher” I read her questions another way:

    What of that Creator mentioned in the U.S. Constitution? Is there room for the idea of an omnipotent personal intelligence as the source of these inalienable rights within the libertarian/liberal-in-the-original-sense/minarchist model?

    Johanthan Pearce made a near pass at this when he mentioned the Founding Fathers and the idea of people as “creatures” but didn’t address the Creator concept directly. I’d be interested to know what Samidatistas and their readers have to say on this.

  • Becky: rather than just repeat Andy Duncan’s reply, I will just say that is fairly close to my views. If you really want to understand the ideas behind what I think, just read Karl Popper.

  • George Peery

    “Becky has asked,

    “What exactly does this mean? …

    “I’m not Perry, but I’ll take a stab at these questions. My view is that yes, rights do transcend society. Thus, they are natural, i.e., they exist due to the nature of man, and they exist prior to the state, the society, the tribe, and the collective. … ”

    There’s some really good stuff that’s been said here, by Jonathan W., Jonathan P., and others. [Sorry I don’t seem to know how to make or preserve the italic font on this site.]

    The Natural Law tradition, justifying those innate rights of individuals – rights conferred by “nature and nature’s God” (as Jefferson wrote) – is a rich and ancient one stretching back at least to Thomas Aquinas. Please forgive me if I put in a plug for my head of state, G.W. Bush, who repeated has evoked this tradition as a justification for certain aspects (often controversial) of America’s foreign policy.

  • Perry,

    I don’t know about meme-hacks and meta-contexts, but I do agree that political rights can be said to pre-exist the individual.

    Strictly speaking, they have their genesis in the adaptivity of the human psyche. The only force or fact that truly pre-exists the psyche is Nature. Society, and all that is social in man, flows from the adaptive – or evolutionary – strategies he employs. Since Nature varies in different regions so the human psyche varies and so societies vary. This really is the most basic sociobiology.

    The society into which an individual is born is a mean adaptive expression of his or her forebears. As such it is a formed environment including. in a somewhat attenuated fashion, its legal and constitutional framework, however crude or sophisticated that may be. A new-born child is not yet assailed by environmental influences. But they come swiftly enough and impress upon him or her ever more, but never all, of their manifold characteristics. These, in due course, will even include the notions of individual and group rights, moral constraints and responsibilties as understood in the West. So, Perry, in that much you are correct about their pre-genesis to the individual.

    But there is a second and more intriguing sense in which this is at least partly true. Rights and morals are socially created. But rights differ from morals insomuch as they are tinged by the special and entirely individual desire to be free and unencumbered. This does not mean a state of freedom from moral constraint, which is what the left calls lifestyle freedom. That, to paraphrase the gutsy American net journalist, Fred Reed, is no better than “a bull session in a sophomore dorm”. No, it means a freedom from possession, be that at its most crude, from the dominance of man or man’s institutions or, at its most subtle, from the environmentally-formed personality itself. The former gives us the free-born American citizen for whom the Constitution was written. The latter tends inward to that which is most original or essential. It is characterised by self-consciousness and attended by self-will.

    This high freedom is not attainable in our customary, mechanistic state of consciousness. Knowledge of it burns inside every one of us, all the same. It informs the aspirational language in which all those who love freedom, including Libertarians, struggle to express their beliefs.
    Is it an evolutionary psychological artifact, or an illusion like everything else, or is it divine? I do not know. But freedom is real, not an illusion, and superior in all measures to any collectivist ideals.

  • On the use of the word “libertarianism” have a look at the interview with Richard Maybury in the spring issue of Freedom Network News

    Maybury says: “The philosophy of liberty is probably the most maligned, most misunderstood in all of history, and its enemies plan to keep it that way. This is why I almost never use the word libertarian, or libertarianism.
    Notice the difference between asking a person, do you believe in these two laws? versus, do you believe in libertarianism?
    Try it yourself, put those questions to people you meet.
    That is what statists have done to the word libertarianism. They have successfully discredited the entire philosophy America is supposed to stand for, and replaced it with statism.”

    And the two laws are:

    ”The first law is, do all you have agreed to do. The second is, do not encroach on other persons or their property.

    These two rules, the essence of libertarianism, are taught by all religions. Atheists agree with them, too.”

  • George Peery

    A problem with libertarianism is that it fails to explicitly embrace the rule of law, which may or may not reflect what you or I have “agreed to”, but without which our freedoms are at best contingent. See (for example) this recent book by Fareed Zakaria.

  • Jacob

    Russ Goble put it very nice:
    “Of course, a lot of this is a chicken and an egg story I suppose. If rights are there to begin with, but you need a government to gurantee the security of those rights, do you really have those rights to begin with? ”

    Where governments do not exist force rules, and rule by force is anathema to rule by right. The concept of natural rights is useful only as basis for re-organizing a society and a government, for limiting the otherwise overwhelming physical power of the government.

  • George Peery

    Jacob, one would think that if natural rights did nothing more than “limiting the otherwise overwhelming physical power of the government”, then natural rights would be a very good thing indeed.

  • Nate

    Becky,
    The Founders that codified such rights intended to do so as restrictions on the government, not on the people. The idea of “natural rights”, as has more or less been explained by others here, is that by the very nature that each and every human being is an agent of free will, then we all have (first) the right to self determination. From this right all other rights exist as corollaries. Consider the 2nd ammendment which has sparked some of this controversy. Perry is right that the US Bill of Rights does not *grant* this right to the citizens…it already existed and in the absence of any government, one would still have the rights to bear arms. Thomas Jefferson in his personal writings mentioned much on the nature of natural rights and the establishment of government. From the perspective of the founders, man does not surrender these rights by participating in civil society. As others have said, there is obviously no right to murder. While I understand the point you are trying to make, that hyperbole really contributes nothing to an otherwise rational discussion.

    On the topic of minarchism, like Perry, I consider myself a minarchist and yes, those functions (judicial, executive, and defense) are the legitimate (but not necessarily exclusive) domain of the state. The state would need funding to act in these roles. Taxation can have degrees of choice in it, though. For instance, the lottery system is used by many states to augment revenues and is completely voluntary. Furthermore, while not voluntary, sales taxes do at least have some element of personal choice and as such I would prefer them to more coercive measures such as income tax.

    Tony H,
    From my readings, the US Bill of Rights was indeed heavily influenced by the English Bill of Rights. Many of the early US court cases make references to English common law as part of their verdict. And this gives an answer also in part to Becky’s question about restrictions on ownership of weapons. I have read many arguments that the scope of “arms” would be equivalent to the weapons available to the infantry. Again, most of those arguments are derived from English common law and the tradition of the militia.

    Scott,
    Well said! Assuming that I would not be infringing on copyright, I plan to use that in further discussions with friends.

  • Kelli

    I’m going to leap (a bit late) to Becky’s defense. Belle, others, do you really want the psycho up the street, the one with three rusted pickups in the front yard, cooking up homemade nukes? I think a good case can be made that as the world has become more crowded and technology has brought the joys of WMD within reach of the Walmart crowd, collective security needs necessarily impinge upon the rights of individuals to own and bear substances that could wreak havoc on us all. A gun is not an ICBM.

    On a lighter note, however, I’ll offer a story from over the weekend related to the creeping influence of this site on my thinking. There we were at a friend’s suburban dinner party, when the subject turned to NYC’s recent ordinance outlawing that vile habit, smoking. I have never smoked, and have precious little tolerance for it, but I detest the law as schoolmarmy and ill-judged (to put it mildly) and predicted it would not last. This shocked and horrified the couple to whom we were speaking. Why, the husband noted, he had read that people were giving cigarettes up all over Manhattan rather than be put out of their favorite nightspots. Really? I asked, my reading indicates that business receipts at bars are down 20-30%, as people find it’s just as easy (and much cheaper) to smoke and drink at someone’s apt. Furthermore, I added (only half kidding) that anyone with half a wit in NY would take up the practice as a form of protest.

    I later learned that the husband was in dutch with the wife as he had recently taken up smoking (again) and was “trying to quit.” Hypocrisy, thy name is suburban liberal!

  • George Peery

    As a right-winger and ex-smoker (but not a libertarian), I agree with Kelli that New York City’s pervasive ban on smoking is absurd and worrisome. In a free society, there are certain habits and customs that – by reason of their long-standing continuity with the past – should be presumptively legitimate, in the general sense (there may be specific, limited exceptions). Mayor Bloomberg’s policies smack of tyranny.

  • Theodopoulos Pherecydes

    I get the uncomfortable feeling when reading some comments about “rights” that I’m surrounded by Platonists: that there are still people who believe that every horse is, imperfectly, a reflection of the ideal horse and that every right is a reflection of the ideal right. But we are all Aristotelians now.

  • I get the uncomfortable feeling when reading some comments about “rights” that I’m surrounded by Platonists: that there are still people who believe that every horse is, imperfectly, a reflection of the ideal horse and that every right is a reflection of the ideal right. But we are all Aristotelians now.

    How so?

  • Kevin L. Connors

    An entertaining article, Perry, full of fire and passion. However, it harkens back to your equally quixotic push a year or so ago to reclaim the term liberal. Then, as now, we have a hard enough time getting people to understand the concepts without playing with the semantics.

    But I will agree that the term libertarian doesn’t seem to be capturing to many imaginations. Your suggestion, however, is even more lame. Try using the term social individualist at a cocktail party and watch people’s eyes glaze over.

    I have an alternative suggestion. A label for us that is both succinct and so noble as to be unasailable. How about:

    Jeffersonian

  • Guy Herbert

    Very late to this discussion, and far too much in it to discuss properly in a short post. A few scattershot observations.

    One can (and should, in my view) restrict government and preserve individual fredoms without any need to accept a doctrine of natural rights.

    The mystical, deistic form in which the Framers of the US Constitution put their work was appropriate expression for the time (and possibly still works well because of thr religiose nature of American society), but we can accept similar norms without adopting the same justification.

    A claim that certain rights are “natural” works as well for any arbitrary set of “rights”. The neo-socialist proponents of the rights of stakeholders in business have are on as solid ground as those who say there is a natural right to bear arms. The naturalness of such rights is just as obvious to true believers in each.

    Andy Duncan’s equation of Popperian and Randian objectivisms seems perverse.

    And as for words:

    “liberal”- so poisoned by multiple meaning that it is unsafe to use outside the most careful discusssions.

    “libertarian” – -“-arian” sounds doctrinaire, tecnical. To be avoided as a label for people or broad positions rather than specific policies.

    “social individualist” I quite like, but again it’s terribly technical, and it rather risks elision as social(individual)ist.

    Aren’t there some variations on “free” available? It is a fairly well understood word and lacks the connotation of control and enforcement built into rights and isms.

  • Liberty Belle

    Kelli – No, of course I don’t want the psycho up the street with three rusty pickups in his yard cooking up nuclear weapons. For one thing, he wouldn’t know how and it wouldn’t work if you bought one from him.

    It’s a vexing question, though. Probably, our right to firepower should be limited to the amount of firepower it would take to defend our lives and property. That means we would have to accept that limit – and that would be imposed by and enforced by … governments.

    On the other hand, from an American point of view, the people’s right to bear arms is to hold in check any over mighty governments of the future. If the government has nuclear weapons, you are not going to be able to do much to curb it with a handgun.

    I am British and the only weapon allowed the citizenry by this over mighty and dangerous government is the Stone Age option: rocks.

  • Andy Duncan

    Johnathan Pearce writes:

    For recommended reading, check out the classics, such as Tom Paine, John Locke, or in our own recent past, Murray Rothbard.

    Hi Jonathan,

    If you’re still reading down this far, on the thread, do you (or does anyone else?) have any particular Murray Rothbard recommendations? One of the problems I have with Ayn Rand is her skirting of the issues of children, ill people, and old people (or what Richard Littlejohn calls “Old Laydees and Baybees” 🙂

    Even in Atlas Shrugged, the only children I can recall, this fine London morning, are those unfortunate offspring of some useless bureaucrat who die in the train tunnel fire. I’d like to be a full Randite von Miseian, but I have to walk on the wild side of Popper Hayekism, to in some way cope with orphans, children with stupid parents who spend their education money on beer, adults too stupid to arrange health insurance, and frail old people who’ve been forced to rely on government pension poverty, because the government have stolen all of their life’s savings via the tax system.

    I’ve heard Mr Rothbard squares the circle here, and gets Ms Rand off the hook, thereby closing off the escape route of Kinnockite socialists who say, “we may take 60% taxes off you, but at least we look after the Old Laydees and the Baybees. Don’t grow old under a Conservative government, etc, ad nauseam.”

    Is there one “classic” Rothbard book, I can get my teeth into first, to find out how he does it? (like Herr Von Mises’ “Human Action”?) (What I’m particularly interested in are principles and actual fully-worked policies to overcome the Old Laydees and Baybees problem.)

    Guy Herbert writes:

    Andy Duncan’s equation of Popperian and Randian objectivisms seems perverse.

    The word perverse seems a bit strong, Guy. I wrote “For a different approach to philosophical objectivity…” (my italics). In hindsight, maybe I should’ve written entirely different approach, rather than the weaker different approach, but even the original doesn’t seem like equation to me. Alternative, perhaps.

    But, for clarification, for Becky, if you’re still reading this, Rand and Popper take two completely different approaches to Objective knowledge, which are in no way related as schools of conception. But they both do throw interesting light on different aspects of the problems of how the human consciousness can interpret any knowledge as objectively true (or in Popper’s case, “not yet falsified”).

  • Guy Herbert: Andy Duncan’s equation of Popperian and Randian objectivisms seems perverse

    Not at all. Both take objective views of reality and both views can be used to derive the notion of rational objectively derived rights, an thus within the context of discussing what I wrote the point seems very apropos. That is not to say the philosophies are the same (but then Andy never said that), just that they tend to take you to many of the same conclusions.

    I am a Popper-head myself (and a former Objectivist Randroid).

  • Paul Coulam

    Is there one “classic” Rothbard book, I can get my teeth into first. Andy Duncan.

    The clearest statement of the Rothbardian system is to be found in ‘The Ethics of Liberty’

    both views can be used to derive the notion of rational objectively derived rights. Perry de Havilland.

    Both views cannot, of course, be right. Popper is right and the Randian view is false.

  • Guy Herbert

    Clearly I must re-read my Popper. I can’t think where he makes the leap from metaphysics to morals.

  • Andy Duncan

    Cheers Paul!

    Mr Bezoz will be receiving my order, pronto.

    “Popper is right and the Randian view is false.”

    In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves, “Whoah!”! 🙂

    As a woolly quasi-Randite neo-Popperite, if such a thing is even logically possible, I bow to your conviction. It’ll be interesting to see any purist Randroid reply 🙂

    In the meantime, I hope to acquire some of your strength of purpose once ‘The Ethics of Liberty’ arrives.

    I’m finding ‘The Order of the Phoenix’ very put-downable, and I’m looking forward to the reading the eminent thoughts of Mr Rothbard! 😉

    Nice one,
    AndyD

  • David R Beatty

    Carpe Toro,

    A Creator is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

  • Guy Herbert

    Quite correct Mr Beatty. My apologies to all.

    Nonetheless, constitutional rights are often discussed as if they were special cases of the inalienable rights alluded to in the Declaration. And such has been the tenor of at least some of the discussion in this thread.

  • Guy Herbert: What Popper’s or Rand’s views were on morals is not actually that interesting to me. It is using their approaches to make up my own mind which I find more useful. Pancritical Rationalism matters more than its fallible authors.

    Paul Coulam: Whilst I agree, the fact is both ways do end up with objectively derived morality and that was the point that matters to me. Brian Micklethwait is a self-described ‘moral relativist’ and yet someone ends up with very similar conclusions… I am more concerned that people end up with individualist conclusions than that they get there ‘correctly’. If they get there because they read it in a fortune cookie, I can live with that.

  • Paul Coulam

    If they get there because they read it in a fortune cookie, I can live with that. Perry de Havilland.

    Yes Perry is right about this and this view is, of course, Popperian. We can assume anything we like, such as liberal individualism, if our assumptions are true then they will withstand any attempted refutations. Popperians are precisely interested in sorting truth from error. Randians, by contrast, insist that only the Randian philosophy is an acceptable method of coming to the right conclusions. That their conclusions are often right despite the falsity of their philosophical method shows that you do not need a valid argument to arrive at a true conclusion.

    As a woolly quasi-Randite neo-Popperite, if such a thing is even logically possible, I bow to your conviction. It’ll be interesting to see any purist Randroid reply 🙂 Andy Duncan.

    Andy, such a thing is indeed logically possible but certainly not advisable. If you want to see a Randist attack on Popper then look at Nicholas Dykes ‘A Tangled Web of Guesses’ published online on the Libertarian Alliance’s philosophical notes. Dykes is so hopelessly wrongheaded here that reading this finally convinced me of the falsity of the Randian way and the superiority of the Popperian method, which was the exact opposite of the effect he intended.

  • Paul P

    What about Free Democrats like the German libertarians as we believe in democracy which is fully checked by liberty rights enshrined in the constitution? The term ‘social individualist’ seems a bit odd and might be mistaken for ‘socialist’ by many.

  • Guy Herbert

    Well, I’d have had myself down as a Popperian, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.

    Reasoning and conclusions purportedly reached by that reasoning amounting to statements of fact may be independently falsifiable. However, I don’t think I’m willing to admit moral propositions as capable of test in the same way, so for them the way we get there is pretty important. (Though we might get to the same prescriptive rules by different methods.)

  • David Mercer

    I seem recently to have evolved into a Popperian Kritarchist.

  • David: Well that is not such a terrible thing in my books!

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Paul Coulam’s comment on the Dykes essay is interesting. I downloaded the Dykes article and mean to read it this weekend. See whether I agree with Paul later.

    Andy D, someone above beat me to the punch. Check out Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty. Also try David Kelley’s book, “Unrugged Invidualism”. Writers such as Tibor Machan are also very good at dealing wth issues such as how one deals with issues such as handicapped people, minors, etc.

    Like Perry I don’t get too fixated on how someone arrives at an intelligent view of the world, so long as they get there in the end. However, I suspect that Rand’s derivation of “natural rights” from looking at what Man needs to survive and flourish probably intermeshes quite a lot with other more “consequentialist” foundations of libertarian theory.

    And of course Brian Mickelthwait of this parish has pointed out in an LA pamphlet that taking account of the consequences of an action is itself a moral issue. (Like on Iraq, for instance).

  • Ron

    “Social Individualist” is an oxymoron.
    “Rights” belong to those how have the conceptual ability to understand what that word means in the specific context of an individual’s state of existense. It is defined by the nature of what we are as beings and regulated by the environment (the universe) in which we exist.
    Finally it is sad that the most important tool (language) in dealing with each other and to communicate concepts, in order to utilize that which our environment provides, is constantly being manipulated for the worse, making the proper and efficient dispensing of information more difficult than it needs to be. Then we find ourselves discussing wether we can use this word to discribe something, or has it’s original definition been corrupted, and now we must find another word, which takes preciuos time away from teaching proper concepts.
    I’m glad I found this site. It is good to find others who care about individualism!