Tuesday
June 17, 2014
615pm - 745pm
North Scituate Library
(more info)

You Can’t Defend Your Rights
Unless You Know What Rights Are

Why do people risk their lives crossing the ocean in rafts and small boats to escape to the United States – and why don't people risk their lives trying to get into Cuba? Why were people willing to dig tunnels or scale the Berlin Wall, risking death by a sentry's bullet to escape from East Berlin-and not rush to move into East Berlin? Why do women, and sometimes men, risk their lives to escape domestic abuse? What is it that the United States, West Berlin, and being out of the reach of an abusive partner offer to any person?

Freedom.

• Why do we need freedom? (answer)
• What threatens freedom in a country or in an abusive relationship? (answer)
• What is admirably unique about the United States that so many risk their lives coming here? (answer)
• Does the protection of individual rights guarantee success? (answer)
• What happens if someone doesn't want to do the thinking that leads a better life? (answer)
• How would you ever figure out who gets what in a statist, "entitlement" society? (answer)
• Are there such things as group "rights"? (answer)
• How do you rescue a society headed toward tyranny? (answer)
• What are individual rights? (answer)
• With individual rights, how do you deal with your neighbors? (answer)
• Why might one not achieve happiness in a free society? (answer)
• What can you do to preserve individual rights? (answer)

Why do we need freedom? (back to top)
The foundation for freedom is grasping that just to live, let alone flourish, you need to be free to use your own judgment, to think and plan your life longer range, to identify your own personal private goals (a career, a romantic partner, friends and loving family, leisure activities), and then to act on your own judgment, to pursue your goals.

What threatens freedom in a country or in an abusive relationship? (back to top)
The notion that your life does not belong to you – that it belongs to the state (or the abusive partner) and that, to the extent you can make some of your own choices, it is by permission of the authority. Suppose you want to be productive. The authorities tell you what you can and cannot produce. They regulate you and tell you what you can keep by their permission – and they take a chunk through "taxes", fees, inflation, penalties, or other means. Or an abusive spouse tells you what you can do, how you can do it, when you can do it and with whom; you don't matter.

When you don't own/direct your own life in a society, to the extent that a society offers no LEGAL protection for you as an individual, you are living, not by right but by permission, which means, to that extent, as a slave. You are property partially owned and controlled by the state bureaucrats, the authorities. They claim the fraudulent "right" to "redistribute" the fruits of your creative ambition and effort, your property.

What is admirably unique about the United States that so many risk their lives coming here? (back to top)
The United States is the first country in history that is based on the idea that you are not just one cog in the wheel of some amorphous collective controlled by some insecure, self-loathing, envious tyrant, but rather, you have an inalienable right to your own life, liberty and the pursuit of your private, personal happiness. This is individualism. You have the same right as anyone else in such a society – to use your mind to pursue your dreams. And that makes for better relations with your friends and neighbors. Nobody is legally pick-pocketing one another. Each is free to pursue his own dreams, given that he respects the same rights in his neighbors.

Does the protection of individual rights guarantee success? (back to top)
No. No one is infallible. No success can be guaranteed. What is guaranteed in a society that respects individual rights is that if you succeed through your own efforts, you are the rightful owner of the products of your effort. You can take your success as far as you set your ambition; you can pursue your dreams. (You also can choose not to put in the effort and then suffer the consequences.) And your neighbor has the same rights. That makes for two free people and again, better neighbors.

What happens if someone doesn't want to do the thinking that leads a better life? (back to top)
When someone doesn't want to use their rational faculty properly, when they choose to act irrationality, nature doesn't reward them with success. If they chose not to work, not to plan longer range, not to discover how to guide their lives more rationally, they may try to pawn the responsibility off to you. Such people often loudly demand an imaginary "right" to a home, to food, to health care (yes, health care is not a “right”), to an education, to family care, to home aids, to a government job, to a "fair" wage, to transportation – to money from your pocket. They demand, not the right to pursue their own happiness, but the right that you provide them their happiness (which can't be done psychologically). Their need becomes a ball and chain around your ankle. You become a slave to the extent that the bureaucrats in office make such bogus "rights" into law. Their "rights" violate your individual rights; they claim a "right" to enslave you.

How would you ever figure out who gets what in a statist, "entitlement" society? (back to top)
Which of these claimants "deserves" what, and how much, and for how long – of your wealth? Who decides? There is no rational, objective way to fairly make such determinations, since the producers of the wealth are the proper owners, not the gloating, self-righteous redistributionists. Such an entitlement society quickly descends into "whoever has the most pull." Furtive "backroom deals" and "political favors" determine who gets the legally stolen goods. This is a corrupt system. In a free, civilized society, individuals benevolently give charity to whatever cause(s) they deem worthy. Voluntary charity is proper and moral. And not everyone is worthy of charity.

Are there such things as group "rights"? (back to top)
No. The individuals in such groups have inalienable individual rights, however the collective, the group, has no rights that can violate individual rights. Today you have the spectacle of otherwise peacefully co-existing or cooperative groups at war with one another, each demanding their own special fraudulent "rights": "rights" of farmers, "rights" of ethnic groups, "rights" of genders, etc. This is a society headed toward self-destruction, toward tyranny. Individuals have rights; not groups. All rights belong equally to all men.

How do you rescue a society headed toward tyranny? (back to top)
You need to clearly know what individual rights are, how they relate to your happiness, what the enemies of individual rights are saying to muck up the thinking around individual rights, and how to protect and defend your right to your life, liberty and pursuit of your happiness.

What are individual rights? (back to top)
In Ayn Rand's words, "Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival." She defines rights as " a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context."

Individual rights are inalienable, not subject to a majority vote. The majority has no "right" to vote away the rights of the minority. Individual rights are moral principles guiding and protecting your freedom of thinking, judging, and acting on that judgment to pursue your own personal happiness at no one’s expense. And they apply equally to all within that society. The concept of individual rights is a positive moral concept, saying to anyone living in a society in which individual rights are protected by law, that you have a right to your own life, the freedom to think and to pursue your dreams. Individual rights preserve everyone's rights. They tell the government: "This is my sphere of freedom into which you cannot meddle; you are there to protect my individual rights, not to violate them."

With individual rights, how do you deal with your neighbors? (back to top)
Individual rights offers guidance on how to treat others – you must respect their right to their personal life and choices. And it bars both sides from the INITIATION of force or fraud against each other's choices. Relationships are voluntary, with mutual consent. This results in a much freer, happier society.

Why might one not achieve happiness in a free society? (back to top)
In a free society you are free to pursue your happiness and it's true that not everyone will achieve it. Some will choose not to be virtuous – they will choose to throw their lives away by making repeatedly poor decisions (e.g., drugs, alcohol, stealing), some will suffer tragedies, some will work hard and not succeed. But the freedom to succeed is still there as a protection in such a society. And those individuals will have more opportunity to correct their irrational choices, or errors of knowledge, or missteps, or to overcome tragedies. They will be much better off in an individual-rights-respecting society than in Communist Cuba, East Berlin under Communism, or in an abusive relationship. In the later, the abused is free to escape an abusive partner. As we all know under Sharia Law, the law itself is abusive to women. There is no escape. In a free country, the law is on the side of rational individuals.

So . . . What can you do to preserve individual rights? (back to top)
Freedom is the fertile soil for benevolence. Socialism, fascism, theocracies – statism of any kind, in the name of "helping society," is the fetid soil of hatred of one's fellow man – it pits man against man, in increasing poverty, depletes motivation to excel, gives envious, self-deceptive tyrants what they want – power and control, providing the illusion of self-esteem, respect and admiration.

Obama's "hope and change" is his hope for power and control over your life. He is pulverizing individual rights right before your eyes. The only proper function of a government is to protect individual rights.

Don't let your freedom, and the freedom of your loved ones slip away. Don't give bureaucrats the "right" to enslave you into involuntary servitude by creating bogus "rights" that strip away individual rights. Don't let them directly or indirectly confiscate your earnings and destroy your prosperity in the name of the collective, the public good. Fight for your happiness and the happiness of your children. It is the best gift you can give yourself and them. Defend the only system based on the recognition of your right to your own life – defend individual rights and Capitalism.

This upcoming election is crucial to preserve freedom. Spread the word; support individual-rights-protecting candidates. And bring your neighbors and friends to the polling booth to rescue our country.