Monday, January 18, 2016

Western Civilization: Individual Liberty Part Three; When It Goes Too Far

Individual liberty is one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization, but many members of our society take it too far. Despite the fact that in general we value individual rights and do not (again, in general) require the subordination of the individual to the "greater good", sometimes we have to look at how specific actions affect the greater community. 

One example is taxes. There is a vocal, if numerically insignificant, segment of the population that does not believe that taxes are legal and object strenuously to the imposition of any taxes. This goes hand-in-hand with a belief that the federal government does not have authority to enforce any internal laws and that the county sheriff is the highest authority in the land. Many of these people are fiercely independent, ultra-individualists if you will. But there has to be some central authority, it is unrealistic to believe that if we were all free from national and state government "interference", including regulations and enforcement. Absent a legitimate government, ad hoc "governments" will spring up. There are abundant examples of what happens when there is either no government or it breaks down:

  • The "Wild West" - there was little to no law in the new and unorganized territory, but people made their own law. Those with the most guns made the rules
  • Somalia - after years of civil war, the country degenerated into numerous competing warlords and militias, including religious groups
  • Mafia strongholds - ineffectual police departments allowed the rise of criminal gangs, which for all intents and purposes, ran their neighborhoods and sometimes whole cities
  • Middle Eastern nations where dictators were toppled - the freshest examples are Libya and Syria, although Iraq and Afghanistan fall into this category as well. Religious sects and ethnic groups carved out their own areas of influence. The Kurds took advantage of this opportunity to begin to found their own state - and then there's the so-called Islamic State - groups that moved into the leadership vacuum and imposed their own "order". 
  • Even going farther back, virtually every one of the medieval kingdoms in Europe or Asia was the descendant of somebody who was strong enough, or had enough backers, to impose his will over everyone else. 
It is human nature to chafe against somebody - whether it be the parents of a typical teenager, the sergeant over a group of soldiers, the manager of a retail establishment, the assistant principal in high school - telling us what to do. And the government is certainly in the business of telling us what to do! And we don't like it, especially when we think our way is better. But government, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If there is no government, something or someone will step in to order things to their liking, usually at the expense of someone else. Do those who oppose the authority, or even the very existence, of government imagine that we would all live peacefully side-by-side, everyone respecting the rights of everyone else? History, as illustrated by the above examples, teaches otherwise. Does anyone imagine that if tomorrow there was no central government that the "independent" ranchers out West wouldn't be fighting each other to guarantee that their own interests would be safe? And that anyone (Native tribes, small landholders, town dwellers) who got in their way would be dealt with? Might would make right. In a few generations, the descendants of whoever had the most guns and supporters would be the new "government". 


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