From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Date: Fri Oct 30 1998 - 12:15:41 MST
J. Maxwell Legg wrote:
> Michael Lorrey wrote:
>
> > No No No. You missed the most important difference. In the first
> > definition, it applied to the individual, while the second refered to
> > the 'producers' as a common group. This is the essential incompatibility
> > of libertarianism and socialism. Libertarianism declares that the prime
> > political unit is the individual, while socialism declares that the
> > primary political unity is the community or society, thus letting in the
> > buggaboo of coersion of the individual by the tyranny of the masses.
> >
>
> Can you give net refs as to how this Libertarianism doublethink came
> about where the word *political* (i.e. I think of it as describing an
> aspect of people's connections) came to focus on a node within the
> connections rather than the collective. If I were to use an analogy, the
> concepts of a jukebox, genre, playlist or database springs to mind as
> words on one end of the scale where the adjective *political* would
> reside and words like individual, song or field appear at the other end.
> Thus to me a song isn't a set and an individual isn't his connections.
> My PC isn't a primary internet unit because before I used the internet
> my PC did other things. I know there are differences between adjectives
> and nouns and that confusion between the two can lead to delusional
> thinking, but even though I also know the Nazis were deluded in their
> thinking about race, etc., this plural/singular (i.e.,
> political/individual) definition mix up that you point to has me
> perplexed.
Political, referring to the primary residence of rights. Socialism denies the
concept of Natural Law, and states, as Mao said,"Justice comes out of the
barrel of a gun". This is known as the Force Doctrine. Since a majority can
always overpower an equally equipped minority, majority rule as the source of
all rights is merely a voice vote in what would otherwise be civil war.
Socialism says that since the State, as the representative of the majority,
can impose its will on all, it is the source of all rights. Libertarians state
that since all rights are Natural, i.e. humans as individuals posess them as
a result of either evolution or 'creation' by a creator, and the State only
posesses authority as delegated by the individual, that the tyranny of the
majority is morally wrong. Laws should not exist to restrict the rights of the
individual any further than to prevent infringment or harm to the rights of
another individual. Force should only be used in the defense of the rights of
the individual.
Mike Lorrey
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