[1] In defense of limited government.
To show that the Democratic Party in the USA is problematic it is necessary to bring together these ideas:
(1) The contrast between "positive" freedom, the right to exercise political power, from "negative" freedom, the right to be left alone by others exercising political power.
I need to show that John Locke idea of the State of Nature not only does not depend on his empiricism, but in fact contradicts it. In terms of the State of Nature, John Locke is a thoroughbred rationalist. Laws of reason exist for him in the state of nature.
(The state of nature and the reality of people wanting to preserve their life and property is not a imaginary state, but rather the state of every person that gets up in the morning as they race to get their first bowl of cereal.)
I don't need to refute Rousseau's State of Nature and the basic Noble Savage paradigm. A simple visit to Somalia will do that for anyone in doubt. [From Doubt to Danger.]
[The reason why the State of Nature is ignored by intellectuals today is because their "State of Nature" (benign ) turned out to be false. So instead of accepting the truth of John Locke, they ignore the idea completely.]
[2] John Locke admits a Torah government is different. So after we get the John Locke democracy, we still have to deal with Torah law for Jews. John Locke admits this. Right now I am simply trying to get to John Locke. Locke says: "The Jewish commonwealth to which the laws of Moses were issued was an absolute theocracy, in which the magistrate—the chief legislator—was God. So there was there no distinction
between religious law and civil law; there could be capital punishment for religious offenses because the latter were also civil offenses. This doesn't hold for any Christian commonwealth.)(Toleration. Section 7)
The way I deal with this is Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai-- (that is dorshin taama dekra--). He holds that we use the reason for the verse the determine how the verse is applied. I.e. an early version of natural law. (note [1])
--in this area I need to deal with the fact that natural law is not the same as Kant's moral autonomy (John Locke's natural law is heteronomous; Kant's is autonomous.); plus the issues involved in the fact that freedom which I am defending here has nothing to do with democracy at all; and even less to do with equality. Freedom and equality are exact opposites. I am going to have to work this out later. This will take some time.--In fact today I skipped learning Talmud in the morning because I wanted to start this long process already.
[3] One challenge to Liberal Democracy comes from Muslims. Personally I spent years living in an Arab village and was friendly with the two muftis [sheiks] and their children. One of their children had gotten a law degree from the University of Cairo and with him I discussed politics and religion at length, (every day over a few years.) So you could say I understand something about the danger and threat of Islam to Western Civilization and all humanity.
I know about what Muslims actually do, not just what they say In America most people know what Muslims say. That is not the same as what they do.
John Locke: "An evil that is less visible but more dangerous to the
commonwealth occurs when men [i.e. Muslims] claim for themselves and
their co-religionists some special prerogative that does in fact
conflict with the civil right of the community but is covered
over with a glittery show of deceitful words. For example: a
sect that teaches explicitly and openly that men aren’t obliged to keep their promises (to infidels)." I might add that Islam holds that a all non Islamic governments should be overthrown by force. They hold there is no crime in murder of Jews and Christians.
These beliefs are threats to civil society. According to John Locke people with such beliefs should not be tolerated.
[4] I need also to defend John Locke democracy from the challenges from Nietzsche and Freud. That is: I need to refute Nietzsche and moral relativism.
(He held there are no objective moral values. You make your own values)
Moral objectivity is proven by Professor Michael Huemer thus:
Moral objectivity (like objectivism in general) is entailed by the law of excluded middle and the correspondence theory of truth, along with a couple of what seem equally obvious observations about morality:
(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgments correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)
Also the basic claims of the Democrats is that: (1) all truth is relative to the interests and perspective of the person. (2) There are no universally valid truths.
(3) There are no absolute truths.
It looks like in each case you have to exempt the claim itself from the scope
of its application. But then you have given up the claim, for the
claim was supposed to be universal in in its application.
As for Freud. There is no reason to challenge him because everything he says is pure pseudo science. There is no conceivable observation that could refute him. He can explain everything with his theory. Therefore it is the very essence of pseudo science.
[5] Also I need to refute the idea that perception determines reality.
People who profess "perception determines reality" don't actually believe it or act on it. We never hear "George W. Bush has his reality about the Iraq War which is is valid in its own way as my own," we hear "George W. Bush lied about the Iraq War." If perception really determined reality, the easiest route to social justice would be to condition disadvantaged groups to perceive their realities differently.
[6] I also need to refute legal positivism as opposed to natural law--against Mill.
Now Mill claims the principle of utility to be the first principle of morality and itself not in need of proof. But if the principle that we ought to promote happiness is acceptable as a first principle--if, that is, it does not require to be proved--then why the principles of justice (we ought not to steal, to break agreements, to punish the innocent, etc.) should not equally be accepted as first principles becomes obscure. Why does the utilitarian feel that just action needs to be justified while benevolent action does not?
[7] To see how the principle of limited government of John Locke was incorporated in the Constitution of the USA, you need to see the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
That means the USA government can not take more power that that which is given to it by the constitution.
Dr. Kelly Ross writes: "This (the Tenth Amendment) was regarded by ..[many] involved in the writing of the Constitution as the capstone of the whole project, affirming that the federal government had only limited and enumerated powers. It was the ultimate principle preventing the United States government from acquiring absolute and unlimited powers. It is thus the ultimate nightmare to the partisans of tyranny, of statism, of absolute power, of a police state, of socialism and communism, of social engineering (whether secular or religious), or of those who simply want to be able to do anything to buy their way into power and pay off their friends."
[8] The basic concept of natural rights is written in the Constitution in the 9th amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Dr Ross writes: "Here it is obvious that just because a right is not listed in the Constitution, that does not mean that it does not exist. Indeed, it cannot even be argued that rights listed in the Constitution are more important than the ones not listed, for this would be to "disparage" the others."
Many Jews sadly feel that rights are granted by government.It is just the opposite. Rights are inherent. Just that because people want to live in a civil society they give up certain rights --like the right to punish criminals--in order to form a perfect society.they do not give up any rights or powers to the government except what they have stated. This makes me wonder what most Jews did during American History class.
[9] I will also have to show the reason can perceive values. In this I will have to deal with the apparent conflict between Kant and Michael Huemer. But for a long time I have held this is really no conflict. Kant had been stuck in a concept from Hume that reason can perceive only contradictions. This is clearly not true--since as Kant noticed right away--we have synthetic a priori knowledge. So Kant made structures in perception. But the basic approach of Hegel Michele Huemer and Brian Caplan is with Kant himself--that reason perceives a lot of stuff besides contradictions!!
Just with Kant reason places structure on what it perceives.
[10] "Natural rights"
Dr. Kelly Ross: Another recent conception of "positive" liberty, which gets confused with the "natural rights" advocated by Locke and Jefferson, are "welfare rights" such as a right to a job, a right to medical care, a right to adequate housing, a right to disability payments, a right to child support (from the government in default of a "deadbeat" parent), a right to be cared for in retirement, etc. The problem with "welfare rights" as positive "liberties" is that, while they might enable the beneficiary to do what he wants, they must be applied by the threat or the use of force against the freedom and/or property of others. A "right to a job" means that somebody else must be required to provide the job. A "right to medical care" means that somebody else, doctors and nurses, must be required to provide that care. These kinds of rights thus will either effect "involuntary servitude" on the part of employers, doctors, nurses, etc."
[11] The use of force is not a natural right in the state of nature. Sorry it took me this whole essay to get to that one simple point. In the state of nature you have the right to protect your life and your possessions from the force of others. And you can use force to protect yourself and your possessions. But you can't use force to get the possession of others. And that is why the Democratic party in the USA is Satanic. It uses force or the threat of force to get possessions of people to redistribute them. And do so in the name of Justice. This is pure Marxist Socialism.
In the state of nature to get possession one has to work--not use force applied against others.
note [1] Natural rights come from the concept of natural law- which in turn comes from the idea that human beings can perceive objective morality.]
Bibliography
Von Mises
Kant
John Locke, Two Treaties and Toleration.
Hobbes
Professor Kelly Ross
Professor Brian Caplan
Professor Micheael Huemer.
Professor Searle
Habermass.
Professor Steven Dutch
Isaiah Berlin
To show that the Democratic Party in the USA is problematic it is necessary to bring together these ideas:
(1) The contrast between "positive" freedom, the right to exercise political power, from "negative" freedom, the right to be left alone by others exercising political power.
I need to show that John Locke idea of the State of Nature not only does not depend on his empiricism, but in fact contradicts it. In terms of the State of Nature, John Locke is a thoroughbred rationalist. Laws of reason exist for him in the state of nature.
(The state of nature and the reality of people wanting to preserve their life and property is not a imaginary state, but rather the state of every person that gets up in the morning as they race to get their first bowl of cereal.)
I don't need to refute Rousseau's State of Nature and the basic Noble Savage paradigm. A simple visit to Somalia will do that for anyone in doubt. [From Doubt to Danger.]
[The reason why the State of Nature is ignored by intellectuals today is because their "State of Nature" (benign ) turned out to be false. So instead of accepting the truth of John Locke, they ignore the idea completely.]
[2] John Locke admits a Torah government is different. So after we get the John Locke democracy, we still have to deal with Torah law for Jews. John Locke admits this. Right now I am simply trying to get to John Locke. Locke says: "The Jewish commonwealth to which the laws of Moses were issued was an absolute theocracy, in which the magistrate—the chief legislator—was God. So there was there no distinction
between religious law and civil law; there could be capital punishment for religious offenses because the latter were also civil offenses. This doesn't hold for any Christian commonwealth.)(Toleration. Section 7)
The way I deal with this is Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai-- (that is dorshin taama dekra--). He holds that we use the reason for the verse the determine how the verse is applied. I.e. an early version of natural law. (note [1])
--in this area I need to deal with the fact that natural law is not the same as Kant's moral autonomy (John Locke's natural law is heteronomous; Kant's is autonomous.); plus the issues involved in the fact that freedom which I am defending here has nothing to do with democracy at all; and even less to do with equality. Freedom and equality are exact opposites. I am going to have to work this out later. This will take some time.--In fact today I skipped learning Talmud in the morning because I wanted to start this long process already.
[3] One challenge to Liberal Democracy comes from Muslims. Personally I spent years living in an Arab village and was friendly with the two muftis [sheiks] and their children. One of their children had gotten a law degree from the University of Cairo and with him I discussed politics and religion at length, (every day over a few years.) So you could say I understand something about the danger and threat of Islam to Western Civilization and all humanity.
I know about what Muslims actually do, not just what they say In America most people know what Muslims say. That is not the same as what they do.
John Locke: "An evil that is less visible but more dangerous to the
commonwealth occurs when men [i.e. Muslims] claim for themselves and
their co-religionists some special prerogative that does in fact
conflict with the civil right of the community but is covered
over with a glittery show of deceitful words. For example: a
sect that teaches explicitly and openly that men aren’t obliged to keep their promises (to infidels)." I might add that Islam holds that a all non Islamic governments should be overthrown by force. They hold there is no crime in murder of Jews and Christians.
These beliefs are threats to civil society. According to John Locke people with such beliefs should not be tolerated.
[4] I need also to defend John Locke democracy from the challenges from Nietzsche and Freud. That is: I need to refute Nietzsche and moral relativism.
(He held there are no objective moral values. You make your own values)
Moral objectivity is proven by Professor Michael Huemer thus:
Moral objectivity (like objectivism in general) is entailed by the law of excluded middle and the correspondence theory of truth, along with a couple of what seem equally obvious observations about morality:
(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")
(4) So some moral judgments correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth)
(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)
Also the basic claims of the Democrats is that: (1) all truth is relative to the interests and perspective of the person. (2) There are no universally valid truths.
(3) There are no absolute truths.
It looks like in each case you have to exempt the claim itself from the scope
of its application. But then you have given up the claim, for the
claim was supposed to be universal in in its application.
As for Freud. There is no reason to challenge him because everything he says is pure pseudo science. There is no conceivable observation that could refute him. He can explain everything with his theory. Therefore it is the very essence of pseudo science.
[5] Also I need to refute the idea that perception determines reality.
People who profess "perception determines reality" don't actually believe it or act on it. We never hear "George W. Bush has his reality about the Iraq War which is is valid in its own way as my own," we hear "George W. Bush lied about the Iraq War." If perception really determined reality, the easiest route to social justice would be to condition disadvantaged groups to perceive their realities differently.
[6] I also need to refute legal positivism as opposed to natural law--against Mill.
Now Mill claims the principle of utility to be the first principle of morality and itself not in need of proof. But if the principle that we ought to promote happiness is acceptable as a first principle--if, that is, it does not require to be proved--then why the principles of justice (we ought not to steal, to break agreements, to punish the innocent, etc.) should not equally be accepted as first principles becomes obscure. Why does the utilitarian feel that just action needs to be justified while benevolent action does not?
[7] To see how the principle of limited government of John Locke was incorporated in the Constitution of the USA, you need to see the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
That means the USA government can not take more power that that which is given to it by the constitution.
Dr. Kelly Ross writes: "This (the Tenth Amendment) was regarded by ..[many] involved in the writing of the Constitution as the capstone of the whole project, affirming that the federal government had only limited and enumerated powers. It was the ultimate principle preventing the United States government from acquiring absolute and unlimited powers. It is thus the ultimate nightmare to the partisans of tyranny, of statism, of absolute power, of a police state, of socialism and communism, of social engineering (whether secular or religious), or of those who simply want to be able to do anything to buy their way into power and pay off their friends."
[8] The basic concept of natural rights is written in the Constitution in the 9th amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Dr Ross writes: "Here it is obvious that just because a right is not listed in the Constitution, that does not mean that it does not exist. Indeed, it cannot even be argued that rights listed in the Constitution are more important than the ones not listed, for this would be to "disparage" the others."
Many Jews sadly feel that rights are granted by government.It is just the opposite. Rights are inherent. Just that because people want to live in a civil society they give up certain rights --like the right to punish criminals--in order to form a perfect society.they do not give up any rights or powers to the government except what they have stated. This makes me wonder what most Jews did during American History class.
[9] I will also have to show the reason can perceive values. In this I will have to deal with the apparent conflict between Kant and Michael Huemer. But for a long time I have held this is really no conflict. Kant had been stuck in a concept from Hume that reason can perceive only contradictions. This is clearly not true--since as Kant noticed right away--we have synthetic a priori knowledge. So Kant made structures in perception. But the basic approach of Hegel Michele Huemer and Brian Caplan is with Kant himself--that reason perceives a lot of stuff besides contradictions!!
Just with Kant reason places structure on what it perceives.
[10] "Natural rights"
Dr. Kelly Ross: Another recent conception of "positive" liberty, which gets confused with the "natural rights" advocated by Locke and Jefferson, are "welfare rights" such as a right to a job, a right to medical care, a right to adequate housing, a right to disability payments, a right to child support (from the government in default of a "deadbeat" parent), a right to be cared for in retirement, etc. The problem with "welfare rights" as positive "liberties" is that, while they might enable the beneficiary to do what he wants, they must be applied by the threat or the use of force against the freedom and/or property of others. A "right to a job" means that somebody else must be required to provide the job. A "right to medical care" means that somebody else, doctors and nurses, must be required to provide that care. These kinds of rights thus will either effect "involuntary servitude" on the part of employers, doctors, nurses, etc."
[11] The use of force is not a natural right in the state of nature. Sorry it took me this whole essay to get to that one simple point. In the state of nature you have the right to protect your life and your possessions from the force of others. And you can use force to protect yourself and your possessions. But you can't use force to get the possession of others. And that is why the Democratic party in the USA is Satanic. It uses force or the threat of force to get possessions of people to redistribute them. And do so in the name of Justice. This is pure Marxist Socialism.
In the state of nature to get possession one has to work--not use force applied against others.
note [1] Natural rights come from the concept of natural law- which in turn comes from the idea that human beings can perceive objective morality.]
Bibliography
Von Mises
Kant
John Locke, Two Treaties and Toleration.
Hobbes
Professor Kelly Ross
Professor Brian Caplan
Professor Micheael Huemer.
Professor Searle
Habermass.
Professor Steven Dutch
Isaiah Berlin
