Freedom vs. Security

People seeking the means to protect their own, such as those who developed the Lex Mercatoria (Laws of Merchants.)

 

Somebody brought that up once and it was quite interesting. But that was still a government. It just wasn't an elected government, or one claiming divine right. It was basically just all the guys who were so rich that they could effectively make the laws, doing so. Still a governing body.

 

It was self-government, it was not a state with a monopoly on the legal use of force nor did it have jurisdiction over any area effectively eliminating competition. They could protect property rights through a private justice system intended to protect private property, rather than a public justice system that serves the political class and their desire to obtain more power and influence.

 

I agree with pretty much everything you said, with the exception of:
"Social security is no different than property rights in this regard, except that it helps more people."
This statement is demonstrably and totally untrue. While it is certainly true that property rights are something necessarily enforceable by the State, calling them the same as Social Security is asinine. Property (like life and the liberties spelled out in the Bill of rights) exists before and outside of the State. And in fact any right is necessarily something that exists without the Government. And the sole proper role of Government is to keep individuals from infringing on these natural rights of individuals. Social Security is antithetical to this idea. This Pozi Scheme takes one's property and gives it to others. When the exact same formula is applied by a banker, they are sent to jail. It's further ironic that you compare property rights and Social Security, since SS relies on an ignoring of property rights. If my treasure can be taken at gunpoint, and distributed to whomever a third party sees fit, I do not own that property. Even if it is withheld from me for my own benefit (and no sane person believes this to be how SS works) the definition of ownership says that I do not own this property. So calling the two the same is ludicrous.

 

"i'm guessing you're referring to the "detain anyone bill?" the bill that lets them use military action to eliminate targets shown to conclusively have ties to alciada?"

Well, interesting guess. See, I can't properly make a guess as to what you're talking about, because your entire post was completely incomprehensible. My point (as I clearly said it was) was to point out the utter hypocrisy of the American Left is claiming to favor liberty over security in some cases, but not in others. The quote that I cited, and then you cited me citing, was originally made by Benjamin Franklin, and is currently dragged out by the Left whenever a Republican proposes an expansion of police power. So again, I have no idea what you were trying to make, but that was my point.

 

Of all the liberals on here, you're my favorite. Yes, I have favorites.

You have a good heart, Daybreaker. You're not out there calling people names and demonizing people that don't agree with you and all of your posts are reasonable--even if I don't always agree 100%.

Thanks for posting.

 

What do you mean when you say "necessarily enforceable by the State". You can't mean logically necessary because I can think of other ways to enforce them. You must just mean that you think that, in the actual world, a state is required to enforce property rights. But there are examples in the actual world where property rights have been enforced without anything recognizable as a state. I guess I have to ask what you mean by state.

 

I agree. Daybreaker is one of the coolest leftists I've encountered.

 

freedom disappears? Only if you expatriate.

 

To understand the pragmatic balancing act between liberty/freedom and security, one simply needs to refer to Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The Leviathan, the powerful state which establishes a sovereign that Max Weber would likely later define as a polity with a civil government that maintains a monopoly on the use of force, derives from the idea that citizens relinquish nearly all their rights, including to a large extent, liberty and freedom, for the benefit of the state. Bearing in mind that Hobbes, while a realist, is also a liberal, one can deduce that the ideals upon which Liberalism builds off of epitomize achieving a cohesive middle ground in this regard, with The Federalist accurately framing this idea in the context of American political philosophy.