Individualism vs. Collectivism: No Compromise Possible

Collectivism does not cause the group to focus on the group. It is, in the end, only done through physical force by those who choose to make the individual focus on the group----or suffer the consequences. Voluntary cooperation with a group, or voluntary assistance to a group, is not collectivism. Collectivism is the generic term that includes, but is not limited to, Marxism, Socialism, and Communism.

You therefore do not "balance out" your right to be an individual, with the force behind a collective.

"There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction." [1]

Why is it a compromise of basic principles to "balance out" individualism with collectivism?

"Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members." [2]

Individualism goes back to the Protestant Revolution; but politically, individualism and "individual sovereignty" go back to the Enlightenment, derived from the concept of "natural rights" which collectivism denies.

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

 

[1] http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/compro…
[2] http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/indivi…

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Obama's Umbrella of Good-Will

Obama's good-will may be in his lack of pretension, and of political posturing, but what is it that people mean when they say they want him to succeed?

There is a lost art to communication. It seems to be in the area of saying what you mean.

As as example, I will paraphrase a conversation between Bill O'Reily and Glen Beck, on O'Reily's program "The O'Reily Factor".

O'Reily said he thought Obama was a good guy, but wasn't sure if he wanted Obama's policies to succeed. If Obama fails, his socialistic policies will be out in four years, and someone with better--hopefully free market--ideas would be elected.

Beck, looking a bit puzzed as to how to respond, said he wanted to see Obama succeed. Beck himself is a nice guy, who like Obama, basically wants to see an end to "left" and "right" political bickering, and thinks all politicians are capable of being up to no good, or even "scoundrels" if the opportunity arises.

O'Reily, taken aback by conservative Beck's wish for Obama's success, asked how Beck could wish to see the liberal/collectivist policies of our incoming President actually work. If they work, we would see more of them.

O'Reily meant, "How could Beck wish to see socialism flourish and be successful?" O'Reily himself has said he has no ill will toward Obama the man, who to all appearances seems to be much more psychologically honest than any politician we have seen in decades, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, but even he was decades ago.

Beck replied that he didn't wish to see the President fail, because it meant America would not rise from its financial mess; but you could by looking at his expression that he was still lost for the right thing to say under the circumstance. He was struggling to explain how a conservative pundit, himself, actually want BIGGER government to succeed? Beck's reply, again paraphrased, was that he wished no ill toward any one trying to succeed at an honest job, and wanted to see America succeed.

The communication gap here was that while Beck was talking about the job of the Presidency itself being an honest one, he could not gather his thoughts quick enough to say that a looter in an honest job is still a looter. It wasn't the socialism Beck wanted to succeed; it was only the idealism of a strong, good, morally honest America that he wanted to see again.

But that is what he failed to say on "The O'Reily Factor." Instead, in a wishy-washy way he said he wanted whatever Obama wanted because if Obama failed, America failed.

A certified public accountant, obviously someone with an honest profession, is a looter if he makes off with his clients' money.

A President is still a looter if he creates debt for future generations, robbing them of their ability to be free of the slavery of that debt. Our children and grandchildren, and probably our great-grandchildren, in other words our posterity, will be born as indendured servants of the IRS, or whatever government agency is collecting the debt-reduction taxes in the future.

That indenture may prevent our posterity from their own pursuit of happiness.

A President who today takes from you to give to me or my children what what we do not have, is a looter. A President who removes the roadblocks preventing me from becoming wealthier on my own, and acquiring on my own and for my children what you have is doing an honest job in his administrative capacity.

Beck really doesn't want socialism to succeed. The only people who want to see it succeed are those who think that dishonest people operating in a capitalist environment will be stopped in a socialist environment.

The only people who want to see socialism succeed are those who don't see what our first millionaire, Ben Franklin, saw; who don't see what men and women like Carly Fiorina, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Oprah, and two thousand seven hundred forty new millionaires per day (in the year 2000) see--that the fortune of America and its people is not made by redistributing wealth, but rather by its creation.

What Bill O'Reily really meant to say--but didn't--was that he wants the U.S. to succeed but not because of Obama's policies. What Glen Beck really meant to say was that he wanted Obama to succeed--in spite of his policies--for the sake of America.

Those are the things that I want for our nation, too. This really is a new era dawning, because it seems we have a President who, despite his own very leftist political leanings and beliefs, has the ability to unite Americans--for the moment at least--under his umbrella of good-will, lack of pretension, and lack of political posturing.

It still remains to be seen just what kind of leader Mr. Obama will be. A week before in innauguration he already muscled Congress into giving him the out-standing $35b, by threatening a veto he knew could not be overturned.

We have already seen him sidestep the issue of his alleged-Marxism, which began with his now-famous remark made to the now-famous Joe the Plumber (who is no longer a plumber, but a "reporter of the people" for Pajamas Media).

There is hardly a politician in Washington or elsewhere with any character-star-attraction like Obama's, who is rooting for outright capitalism except for media-darling Ron Paul, who, unlike Mr. Obama, "never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution."

If actions speak louder than words, Paul understands the art of saying what you mean.

But if is true about actions, President Obama will have the loudest voice in the world, and he will say through his collectivist actions precisely what he means.

I want his personal integrity to succeed; I want his charm and his ability to unite this nation, to succeed; I want to watch his family succeed growing into their new position as First Family; I want the "feel-good" metaphysics of Mr. Obama to succeed.

I do not want his socialism to succeed, and I sincerely hope that in some way, an idea of capitalism begins to creep into his policies. We've had "creeping socialism" for so long that we are now unable to stop it from steam-rolling over us.

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Laissez-faire At War Against Socialism

Try acting as a laissez-faire capitalist. It will get you a prison sentence for ignoring all the laws that prevent it.

On the subject of the economy, VP-Elect Biden is reported to have said, "We’re at war.” Biden told this to congressional leaders of both parties during their sit-down with Barack Obama in the Capitol, according to two sources familiar with the exchange.

Gene Healy at Cato at Liberty, writes "Libertarians and conservatives who fear that Obama’s inauguration heralds the coming of a new New Deal have new cause for discomfort, then. FDR’s embrace of the war metaphor was central to building support for the New Deal..."

I hardly think the "embrace of the war metaphor" is the heralding of the new New Deal--but it is most certainly coming, and it is going to hit American's swiftly. Obama already has asked for the $350 billion not yet spent so he has it on his first day in office. Thank that God, in whom we supposedly "trust", to have put some severe reservations about that money in the heads of even the liberal Democrats. They want it properly accounted for.

But there is no doubt it is coming. Obama has trumpeted loudly how about approximatly how much it is going to cost the taxpayer to pay for public works projects which will "pay off" quickly in the form of jobs created, in cash flow, and in such things as alternative energy, which of course the consumer will wind up paying twice for: once in the debt created by the loan, and once in the purchase of the product created.

And our children and grandchildren will pay off the loans that do not create direct profits, as a wind farm or some other means of production might. Someone will have to pay for the infrastructure rebuilding of roads and bridges, which, let's face it, really do need rebuilding.

But the Governors and the Mayors of America have been asked for their wish lists. Obama has already said many things will not be financed from this economic "stimulus" package.

But the fact that it already has a name--"stimulus package"--means the new administration won't have to give it a formal name, like the "New Deal."

Even the New Deal didn't spend as much of the GDP as a percentage, as did Eisenhower's interstate freeway system, which took 35 years to complete. When it was complete, Congress approved funding to go to work building a few more freeways, and upgrading the old ones.

"Roosevelt’s first inaugural address tends to be remembered as an attempt to calm the public, a warning against “fear itself.” The martial metaphors that appear throughout the speech make clear, though, that F.D.R. wanted fear replaced by collectivist ardor," Healy writes.

And what is it that Obama has already been saying? "The US economy will become 'dramatically worse', wrecking the dreams of a generation of Americans, if Congress does not act quickly to drive through huge fiscal stimulus plans, as fresh data showed deepening recession. He said the unemployment rate was at risk of reaching double digits and recession "could linger for years".

While very probably true, it is the rhetoric used in politics about such subjects that, Cato says, is good for nothing but "centralizing power."

How much centralization can a supposedly capitalist economy take, before it breaks down as the forces of collectivist policies clash like butting-heads against the free market ideas so well established and so taken to heart by the very people and corporations who actually make the economy profitable?

It does appear that the big corporations who are reaping billions of dollars are beginning to allow "czarism" to dictate how they operate. There will be a "car czar," for example. Of course, the CEOs and all those in the upper eschelons of the banking and mortgage systems have had to be rightly criticized for doling out hundreds of millions of that money in golden parachutes and bonuses.

But what about the bedrock of capitalism, the entrepreneur, the mom-and-pop operation, the proprietor? Will they be so willing to allow centralization to push them this way and that, when they all know for certain, knowledge gained by experience and from historical perspectives, that decentralization is responsible for profit-making and for profit-motivation.

No one can be too motivated when a czar is looking over your shoulder, and you and I know that such a czar and his/her soldiers can look over the shoulders of small businesses much easier than over the shoulders of the likes of GM and "banks that are too big to be allowed to fail."

Big business and our leaders, both left and right, including the avowed whom Socialist Obama hired who does not need Senate confirmation, are selling the small business owner and the Average Joe down the river.

I hope the Average Joe knows how to quit before he gets behind. He is already saving whatever money he can, rather than spending it. New savings accounts in banks jumped several-hundred percent over the last six months.

But the next thing you know, our New Socialist government will be taxing our savings to pay for the loans they are making because we are not spending our savings. Obama said to Katie Couric just yesterday, "Failure is not an option, not in America."

As far as his Marxist "spread the wealth" attitude goes, I think he intends to use every means at his disposal to spread the misery. He is a Constitutional Law professor, and a brilliant man. I have no doubt that America is going to see him use tricks of law we have not seen before. After all, he has not been sworn in yet, but plans to get his hands on the $350 billion one way or another. He has told Congress he will use his first veto on his first day in office--to get that money. Congress will cave, one way or another.

We should all buy gold, because our paper and coins will soon be worth nothing, comparatively. From 2000 to yesterday, the price of gold rose more than $549 from $280.10, to $829.57, or nearly 350%. Relative to the GDP deflator, the dollar only rose 19.82%.

What will the dollar be worth when Obama gets done manipulating it? The free market, left alone, tells the truth. When manipulated by government economic engineering, it always lies, relative to the free market.

We are at war, but it is the honest capitalist at war against the dishonest, and against the illegal usurping of his powers in the market place by government rules he cannot conform to without become a socialist himself.

Try acting as a laissez-faire capitalist. It will get you a prison sentence for ignoring all the laws that prevent it.

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Catholic Insistince on Altruism to 'Spread the Wealth'

The 'Common Good' is Coerced Altruism

I have a list of twenty two blogs I try to scan daily, but the demands of writing my own blog, of trying to get a distance-based academy organized, working a daily job, and attending AA meetings and doing AA service work does not give me much time for the other blogs. I have to pick and choose. Some days I find nothing worthwhile; other days, like today, I found something I like--the blog that teaches me something.

It was on the Acton Institute Power Blog, named after Lord Acton who "made the history of liberty his life's work; indeed, he considered political liberty the essential condition and guardian of religious liberty."

http://www.acton.org/research/acton/index.php

What was it I learned? That Catholics have used the common good "as an excuse for more government involvement in peoples’ lives and the installing of socialistic, 'spread the wealth' programs." Dr. William Luckey

I dashed off a comment at the end of his blog. In the "Academy Blogger" I have debated the issue of "altruism" as being (originally) the Catholic version of the "eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity." [emphasis added] see "altruism" http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html

The common good is therefor altruistic, requiring a lowest common denominator of the ego, common from one man to the next, a place where one must relegate his/her ego in order to eradicate self-interest, rational though it may be, or not; and where the common good is attained by devoting one's self selflessly--as if that is not an incomprehensible contradiction--in an act of totally "eradicating" the self.

This is most certainly not the same as what our Founders meant by the "general Welfare," when they wrote that phrase in the Constitution; it is the opposite. The "general Welfare" is the protection of the sovereignty of the individual, sovereignty composed of all the powers not delegated to nor prohibited to the Federal government or the governments of the "several States." Whatever is left over, (and almost everything was "left over" until the administration of FDR's "New Deal",) is necessary for the operation of a free individual.

We no longer retain the right to our individual sovereignty. But I have covered that a dozen times in this Blogger. The Choir Sings the Hymn "Individual Sovereignty" Power Reserved to the People, Respectively Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovere... Tocqueville and Individualism et al.

The "general Welfare" is justice in the political arena, which includes economics. The "common good" has become the language used to hide the injustice of imposed altruism.

Anything imposed against what is just, is coercion; anything imposed to insure justice, is not coerced. Each of these ideas is what it is by definition. You could turn each statement around and make the same arguments: Coercion is that which is unjustly imposed; coercion is not that which is justly imposed.

What is justly imposed must, by the same definition, take only as little from an individual's sovereignty as is needed for the "common sovereignty," i.e., government instituted of, by, and for the governed themselves.

It is true that there must be coerced "common good" among people who are not willing to abnegate their egos to society. The best of the recent examples of an uncoerced person was Mother Theresa, who we now know abnegated her ego to the will of a God who she thought, for twelve years, had deserted her. That, aside from the willingness of Jesus to be crucified for all others in the human race, is as altruistic as one can be and not be coerced.

But going that distance is much more than Dr. Luckey is talking about. "This [coerced] version of the common good is the foundation for some people’s idea of distributive justice, but actually it is based on the 'Robin Hood fallacy' of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor." [emphasis added]

What is distributive justice? "[T]he first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society." [emphasis added] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [see also No Justice in "Luck Egalitarianism" ]

How does Dr. Luckey know it is the Robin Hood syndrome? Merely "by reading Aristotle and St. Thomas. Both of those great thinkers say that government must rule for the common good, but both of them oppose 'common good' to the 'particular' or 'private' good. . . nowhere in Aristotle or St. Thomas does it say that the common good is the exclusive or even main province of the government. They merely give a negative prohibition that the state cannot make laws which are good for only one segment of society." [emphasis added]

One segment of society is exactly what distributive justice is about: the use of coercion to force altruism on those who have, for the benefit of those who have not.

Ayn Rand made an unwitting error in her Playboy interview of 1964. But her error was in not being able to see the future, and the rise of a popular Marxist like Barak Obama.

"Collectivism," she said, "as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead."

But in the very next breath she was absolutely correct, and she is still correct to this day; "But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism," she continued, "have not yet been discovered."

Forty-eight years later, her second statement is still correct, and that is why collectivism was allowed to remain alive: the world has still not "discovered" the nature and the source of capital.

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Al Gore and Coercion in the Free Market

Al Gore co-authored this with David Blood in The Wall Street Journal

"When greeting old friends after a period of absence, Ralph Waldo Emerson used to ask: 'What has become clear to you since we last met?'

"What is clear to us and many others is that market capitalism has arrived at a critical juncture. Even beyond the bailouts and recent volatility, the challenges of the climate crisis, water scarcity, income disparity, extreme poverty and disease must command our urgent attention.

"The financial crisis has reinforced our view that sustainable development will be the primary driver of economic and industrial change over the next 25 years. As a result, old patterns and assumptions are now being re-examined in an effort to find new ways to use the strengths of capitalism to address this reality. Indeed, at the Harvard Business School Centennial Global Business Summit held earlier this month, the future of market capitalism was one of the principal themes discussed."

What is very clear in Al Gore's mind is that market capitalism is engineered capitalism and has nothing to do with profit capitalists providing what the market--consumers--want. Rather, it has to do with what political engineers want. It is also very clear that the political engineering comes from the economic engineers who don't know laissez faire from socialism, men such as Henry Paulson and Allen Greenspan.

What form of oligarchy is this? It isn't the form of a democratic-republic, as our Founders invisioned, not when the majority of Americans demand that no bailout be contrived for the mortage industry yet our republic ignores the democratic wishes of free people who wish to remain free and contrive the bailout, anyway.

What form of psychological spin is Gore putting into our heads? Since when did capitalism need to be called market capitalism, and what other form is there, except the managed, mixed-economy we are now prisoners of?

Well, if by market capitalism Gore mean a market economy, he is way off base. A market economy cannot be politically engineered. It is "engineered" by the offerings of the producers in a relationship with consumers, who decide which produced offerings they will give their money to.

"A socialist economy, in contrast [to a market economy], is characterized by [ ] central planning. [G]overnment often is asked to intervene in the economy to correct situations in which the price system does not work. It regulates 'natural monopolies,' for example, and it uses antitrust laws to control or break up other business combinations..." [emphasis added] About.Com

"A 'natural monopoly' is defined in economics as an industry where the fixed cost of the capital goods is so high that it is not profitable for a second firm to enter and compete. There is a 'natural' reason for this industry being a monopoly, namely that the economies of scale require one, rather than several, firms. Small-scale ownership would be less efficient." http://www.progress.org/fold74.htm

"The great evil in economics is not communism, not socialism, not capitalism, not landlords or bosses, not unions, not feudalism or industrialization or automation, not progress or lack of it, and not any scarcity of natural resources. No, the great evil in economics is coercive monopoly." Fred E. Foldvary

But natural monopolies are not coercive. Communism and socialism and feudalism are coercive, and Gore's "market" capitalism is not capitalism because capitalism demands the admission that capital is property of its owner, not of the state. Only capitalists can create capital; government cannot. Gore and Obama treat capital as if it was a coercive monopoly, when in fact anyone can be a capitalist, and three quarters of all the business in this country is conducted by small business, not by natural monopolies nor by coercive monopolies such as first class mail deliverable only by the United States Postal Service.

Once again Gore gets it wrong when he may have valuable contributions to make. He does make people think, and that is a contribution; but he makes them think using the wrong terminology.

On National Public Radio International, I heard an "environmental artist" say--correctly--that we don't have global warming, that, instead, some places are warming, some are getting colder. Some places are getting hotter, and some are becoming wetter, some dryer. The Arctic may be melting, but Antarctica has 17 inches more ice than at any time since that continent's discovery, and from China to Colorado the winter of '07-'08 was the hardest on record. Lower temperatures had never been recorded in China; snow was still on the mountain peaks of Colorado in June. Fires in California, at an all-time high, are fanned by hurricane-strength Santa Anna winds.

The weather is changing, but you wouldn't get that simple message from Gore. And from his lips, and Obama's, to yours ears, you will never get the message that government intervention creates coercive markets, weighting down one part of it so that another must be offset by "redistributive" taxes, which then creates another anomoly in what ought to be a self-correcting market economy, but which has instead become a government-managed capitalism, masked by the word "market."

Government-managed capitalism is a contradiction of terms of the highest order; but to the degree that Marxists and other collectivists can get away with it, they can convince the economically illiterate that government controls are necessary.

And keeping people economically--and politically--illiterate is what the Fairness doctrine is all about, limiting free speech made by opponents of the left. Every Rush Limbaugh would necessarily, by law, be required to be followed by a Gore or an Allen Colmes.

And that would not be natural.

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