Communism, democracy, socialism, fascism, capitalism, syndicalism, anarchism ? the names of political, social and economic ideas. There are volumes written about each of them and they have influenced peoples? thinking and actions for more than two centuries, sometimes with good effect and sometimes bringing horrific results. Although each claims as its ultimate goal the happiness, prosperity and well-being of all humankind, these ?isms? are the source of much of the tension and discord in the world, and within our own country. Which, if any of them, is valid? Which should we embrace and support?
To reach the right conclusion we must ask some more questions ? the right questions. Public schools typically neither teach nor encourage this. In this series I will ask questions, propose answers and invite discussion. My criteria are 1) what makes sense and 2) what is supported by evidence, reason and universally-accepted ethics.
You may be surprised by what you discover.
First Question: What Is the Most Fundamental Statement That Can Be Made About People in the Context of Civics and Society?
All people have rights.
Sounds simple enough, doesn?t it? In reality this is a very recent and very radical idea. In fact, many people in the world today don?t believe it and there is no country in the world that doesn?t violate this principle at some level. Yet this notion must be at the very core of any discussion of political or economic systems.
Second Question: What Are Those Rights?
The Declaration of Independence says that they are ?life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.? That covers a lot of ground and some of it is open to interpretation. Perhaps we should approach this from a different angle. Rather than attempt to enumerate our rights ? an impossible task ? it would be far simpler and much more effective to define their limitations.
I see them this way:
1) No person may harm or threaten to harm another or another?s property.
2) No person may may create or maintain a hazard or a nuisance.
?Hazard? in this case means a condition that threatens imminent harm to another or another?s property. A ?nuisance? is a condition or activity that is at once objectionable to others and both impossible to ignore and inconvenient to avoid.
Richard Maybury, author of the Uncle Eric series, puts it this way:
No person may encroach unreasonably on the person or property of another.
These are the only reasonable limitations to the things we may do; no person has the legitimate power to interfere with us as long as our actions lie within these boundaries.
It is important here to identify the nature of rights. As mentioned, we are supposed to have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On top of that, we sometimes hear of rights to ?adequate housing?, education, a job, etc. The list keeps growing, but no one takes the trouble to define their terms. That?s important. If we don?t define our terms, we may end up talking about different things without realizing it. Here?s my working definition:
A right is the legitimate power or authority to do a thing without first requiring the permission of another.
Standard dictionaries define the term similarly. Please note that this means that rights pertain to actions and not things. When we speak of a right ?to? a thing we mean that we have the right to obtain it or use it.
Classes of Rights
There are two kinds of rights: human, or natural rights and civil, or political rights.
Our human rights allow us to do anything whatsoever that does not harm or offer to harm another or another?s property, or does not create or maintain a hazard or a nuisance. That?s it.
Political rights attend citizenship. Voting, for instance, is a right available only to citizens.
When people talk about the right to health care, to minimum wages, to adequate housing, etc. (which can be found in certain modern declarations, such as the United Nations? Universal Declaration of Human Rights), they are really talking about access. Access cannot be understood to be a right if another must pay for it. It is properly understood as an entitlement, not a right, and it invariably divides a population into classes ? those who are entitled to something (the privileged nobility) and those who must pay to provide the entitlement (the serfs). It matters not that the modern nobility are not wealthy patrician landowners, as in the past. As Karl Marx observed, it is the economic relations that matter (he did, inadvertently, get some things right).
I may have a ?right? to health care, education, etc. As long as I can pay for them, no one can deny them to me. To suggest that I have a ?right? to such things even if I can?t pay implies that it is acceptable for me to take whatever is necessary from another to pay for them. Even if I don?t take it myself, but do it by proxy (having the state compel others to pay for them by taxation), it is still larceny. In his little book The Law, a civics classic much ignored in conventional schools, Frederic Bastiat put it this way:
It is a bad law which ?? benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.?
The legitimacy of any political or economic ?ism? depends entirely on where it stands with respect to these principles. If the lofty goals of a system cannot be reached without violating one or more of them, then it must be discarded and we must continue our search until we find one that doesn?t.
Next: Democracy
Tags: About, Critically, Government, Thinking ?
Source: http://news-society.co.cc/thinking-critically-about-government/
trutv scotty mccreery rascal flatts tru tv ancestry adhd marmite
?Copyright 1997-
