. . . and by the time it's done, some of you whom I love and care for deeply will
likely think quite differently about me, figuring that I'm not the guy
you thought I was. You will be incorrect in that assessment, but the
subject incurs such deep emotional reactions that it tends to induce
tunnel vision. If I turn out to be right, the loss that I suspect will
occur will hurt deeply, but it is a price I am willing to pay in order to take my position on the right side of history as well as be
true to my convictions regarding life, property, rights, and my Christian
faith.
It is a face filled with murderous fury. The lips are fully retracted in a straining grimace that reveals both rows of teeth clenched under enormous pressure. The eyes evince a complete abandonment of reason and its replacement with mindless rage. The eyebrows are furrowed into a gun sight “V”, the muscles in the cheeks and neck stretching skin as the body fights the restraining arm that keeps the target out of reach. The nostrils are flared, making way for the adrenaline-induced rush of oxygen needed to carry out the attack.
Little more than 10 minutes in a make-up artist's chair, just long enough to outfit the teeth with bloody, swinging viscera and a tangled shock of stringy, lice-infested hair, and you would have the complete image of a mad, human cannibal in a low-budget horror movie.
In a word, the face is . . . hideous.
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It is a face filled with murderous fury. The lips are fully retracted in a straining grimace that reveals both rows of teeth clenched under enormous pressure. The eyes evince a complete abandonment of reason and its replacement with mindless rage. The eyebrows are furrowed into a gun sight “V”, the muscles in the cheeks and neck stretching skin as the body fights the restraining arm that keeps the target out of reach. The nostrils are flared, making way for the adrenaline-induced rush of oxygen needed to carry out the attack.
Little more than 10 minutes in a make-up artist's chair, just long enough to outfit the teeth with bloody, swinging viscera and a tangled shock of stringy, lice-infested hair, and you would have the complete image of a mad, human cannibal in a low-budget horror movie.
In a word, the face is . . . hideous.
It is the face of a woman, and not even in the movies have I seen anything more disturbing or other-worldly than the look of insane, paranoiac ferocity on the face of Margaret Doyle, owner of Espresso-A-Go-Go Coffee Catering. Standing only inches away from the rapacious visage is a beefy policeman. His posture clearly shows that he has been brought up short by what he sees. It's obvious that he is struck dumb, having a difficult time processing what he is seeing. He isn't alone; I've looked at the picture a number of times, and am still having a hard time believing what the camera says.
Tellingly,
there is another picture of Ms. Doyle in different section of the publication where I saw this vision of madness,
one that was taken later in the day when her mood was “greatly
improved”.
Frankly, that picture brings little comfort after seeing the one on the front page.
Frankly, that picture brings little comfort after seeing the one on the front page.
When
I look at this face, I see something deeply troubling. And so should
you, for it is the face of a philosophy that would handily destroy anything or anyone that stands in its path as it seeks an unnatural power . . .
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It seems there are often huge matters that rest on small points. The meaning of commonly heard terms that are commonly misunderstood is an example. Before I can effectively go any further, I have to clarify the meaning behind two such terms: "rights" and "property".
Rights. Mentioned by many, understood by few. They are used as a social and political weapon by the intellectual slovenly, by the selfish and self-serving, by the lazy, and by the entitled. They are largely ignored by the satisfied, by the comfortable, and by the complacent. They have become a term that creates a kind of mental nausea among the thinkers, whose dyspepsia results from seeing something so precious treated with such contempt and ignorance.
What is a right?
A right consists of the power to act, unfettered by constraint or coercion on the part of another. This reality means that a right must be viewed from two perspectives - ours, and others. From our perspective, a right is positive in its construct. I have the right to pursue happiness, meaning I am free to take any action I wish in seeking to be happy, so long as that action does not prevent someone else from doing the same. From the perspective of others, this right is negative in its construct, meaning no one can restrict my actions taken in the pursuit of being happy unless I have first done the same to someone else. As has been attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. "Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins". Such an elegant method of conflict prevention can only be the work of a genuinely righteous philosophy.
Understand this clearly: A right does not exist if it requires another to involuntarily surrender their property for the right to be exercised. Plainly said, no one has a right to anything that belongs to another.
This understanding will prevent you from falling for lies such as "You have a right to health care." You do not have a right to health care. The materials and skills needed to provide it belong to someone else. You have no more right to a doctor's medical materials and skills than you have a right to his iPod. What you do have is a right to enter into a voluntary relationship with a doctor and purchase his materials and skills, as well as his iPod if you are both so inclined.
From this, it is plain that rights are inextricably bound to the concept of property. If there be no property, there is nothing about which rights need be concerned. Therefore, we cannot properly understand rights without understanding property.
Property consists of both tangible and intangible possessions. Your car is a tangible possession. Your time is an intangible possession. Both are your property. Property is every material thing you have earned and been given, plus everything over which you were created with direct control. Your ideas, your clothes, your words, your tools, your desires, all are your property. To help understand the import of property, imagine that someone has asked you to describe your life. Stop a moment and rehearse your answer; then consider how much of what you have said involves your property. Fact is, you can't even carry out the exercise without involving your property, because to do so will involve the expenditure of time and the expression of your thoughts, both your property.
Stripped of every material possession and reduced to a vegetative state by injury that leaves you with nothing but autonomic functions, you would still have physical life, life that is yours exclusively - life that is your property..
Reducing the matter to its simplest expression, you cannot have life without having property.
Rights are the mechanism by which we defend our property - and therefore our life - against the criminal incursions of those who would make what is ours theirs, without our leave. With life and property come rights, and with rights, life and property are maintained.
More later . . .
What is a right?
A right consists of the power to act, unfettered by constraint or coercion on the part of another. This reality means that a right must be viewed from two perspectives - ours, and others. From our perspective, a right is positive in its construct. I have the right to pursue happiness, meaning I am free to take any action I wish in seeking to be happy, so long as that action does not prevent someone else from doing the same. From the perspective of others, this right is negative in its construct, meaning no one can restrict my actions taken in the pursuit of being happy unless I have first done the same to someone else. As has been attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. "Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins". Such an elegant method of conflict prevention can only be the work of a genuinely righteous philosophy.
Understand this clearly: A right does not exist if it requires another to involuntarily surrender their property for the right to be exercised. Plainly said, no one has a right to anything that belongs to another.
This understanding will prevent you from falling for lies such as "You have a right to health care." You do not have a right to health care. The materials and skills needed to provide it belong to someone else. You have no more right to a doctor's medical materials and skills than you have a right to his iPod. What you do have is a right to enter into a voluntary relationship with a doctor and purchase his materials and skills, as well as his iPod if you are both so inclined.
From this, it is plain that rights are inextricably bound to the concept of property. If there be no property, there is nothing about which rights need be concerned. Therefore, we cannot properly understand rights without understanding property.
Property consists of both tangible and intangible possessions. Your car is a tangible possession. Your time is an intangible possession. Both are your property. Property is every material thing you have earned and been given, plus everything over which you were created with direct control. Your ideas, your clothes, your words, your tools, your desires, all are your property. To help understand the import of property, imagine that someone has asked you to describe your life. Stop a moment and rehearse your answer; then consider how much of what you have said involves your property. Fact is, you can't even carry out the exercise without involving your property, because to do so will involve the expenditure of time and the expression of your thoughts, both your property.
Stripped of every material possession and reduced to a vegetative state by injury that leaves you with nothing but autonomic functions, you would still have physical life, life that is yours exclusively - life that is your property..
Reducing the matter to its simplest expression, you cannot have life without having property.
Rights are the mechanism by which we defend our property - and therefore our life - against the criminal incursions of those who would make what is ours theirs, without our leave. With life and property come rights, and with rights, life and property are maintained.
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With the possible exception of someone stumbling over this blog accidentally, all of you who read this know the author to one extent or another. Perhaps we have "met" in the old sense, face to face; perhaps we are Facebook friends and haven't had the pleasure of a personal meeting yet. Regardless, all of you possess sufficient evidence to know that I exist.
I am alive and breathing.
I have life.
I own things.
I have property.
I have the legitimate power to act against anyone who would attempt to take any of my possessions against my will.
I have rights.
Because I am limited in my abilities to provide every service I may require or want in order to maintain or improve my physical life, I enlist the aid of others by entering into voluntary exchanges of property, giving something I possess in trade for something they possess. It may be money in exchange for a meal, or time in exchange for companionship. Through every day of my life, I am exchanging some portion and form of my property with others who are doing the same with me. In all cases, if done morally - which can only be done when the arrangements are voluntary, otherwise theft has occurred - the goal is mutual benefit.
I need others to help me with my life.
Because I cannot own everything I may need during the course of life, and because the things I do own cannot be expected to last forever without wearing out or breaking down, I must exchange some of my property with those who can assist me in the provision and maintenance of my possessions.
I need help with my property.
Because I have property, I have rights, rights which allow me to defend myself against the actions of those who would attempt to create an involuntary relationship with me, wherein their objective is to gain ownership of my property through fraud, theft, or violence. They may misrepresent themselves or their possessions as they seek to sell me something. They may break into my dwelling while I am away and steal things that I possess. They may hold a gun in my face and demand my wallet.
I cannot reasonably expect to defend myself with complete success against all such criminal incursions. There are any number of situations where my success is beyond my abilities.
I need help in enforcing my rights.
For these reasons, the members of a society form voluntary relations in order to carry out commerce and develop friendships, as well as governments to aid in the preservation of the rights that make voluntary relations safe and successful. A properly ordered society will have both of these in proper balance, with the former playing a much larger role than the latter, for the only legitimate function of the latter is the protection of the former. Government's job, then, is to guard the sanctity of our rights against intrusion by those who would keep us from doing what we please with our own property, so long as what we please does not prevent others from doing the same with their property, or place their property at a risk for which we cannot compensate.
We have property. We have rights. When did we get them?
For these reasons, the members of a society form voluntary relations in order to carry out commerce and develop friendships, as well as governments to aid in the preservation of the rights that make voluntary relations safe and successful. A properly ordered society will have both of these in proper balance, with the former playing a much larger role than the latter, for the only legitimate function of the latter is the protection of the former. Government's job, then, is to guard the sanctity of our rights against intrusion by those who would keep us from doing what we please with our own property, so long as what we please does not prevent others from doing the same with their property, or place their property at a risk for which we cannot compensate.
We have property. We have rights. When did we get them?
More later . . .
