Is limited government immoral?
Posted April 9th, 2008 by atrickpay
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The following quote is from a book that I'm listening to called The Market for Liberty by Morris and Linda Tannehill.
"The very word government means some men governing--ruling over others. But to the degree that men are ruled by other men, they exist in slavery. Slavery is a condition in which one is not allowed to exercise his right of self ownership, but is ruled by someone else.
Government, the rule of some men over others by initiated force, is a form of slavery. To advocate government is to advocate slavery. To advocate limited government is to put oneself in the ridiculous position of advocating limited slavery."
Thoughts?
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The word Government...
The word Government... Govern = to control; ment = mind. The word government actually means mind control.
"It is like a finger pointing away to the moon, don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all the heavenly glory." - Bruce Lee
Damn
So that is our problem!!
Read Complete Liberty
Great Read. Check out CompleteLiberty.com by Wes Bertrand.
Market For Liberty is a Great Book
Anarchy is not what most people think. It is very gentle and just. Market for Liberty is a great read to just show one of may ways how a truly free society can function without monopoly power of force given to the state. I encourage everyone to read this great book.
It changed my life for the better.
No more tweedledee or tweedledum.
What you are describing
sound suspiciously like a Republic. The Republic was never meant to have monopolic power of force. The problem with Anarchy is that there are people involved. Where you have people, you have screw-ups. True anarchy would have no method of control over undesirables, or over people who seek vigilante justice, and are mistaken about their target. Under what scenario is a complete lack of government advisable? I am truly curious.
'Live for yourself, there's no one else more worth living for,
Begging hands and bleeding hearts
Will only cry out for more...'
Anarcy always leads to
Anarcy always leads to dictatorship or oligarchi. It is always brief and never lasts.
http://video.google.com/v...
And how do you describe our present government?
Dictatorship or oligarchy? Sure as hell doesn't look limited to me. The problem with limited government is that it doesn't stay limited.
That is a myth...
As far as I know, you are correct that that that is how it always has occurred in the past.
The reason was because the majority of people believed that a government was absolutely necessary.
However, to say that it will always occur like that in the future is very ignorant.
Just imagine when the majority of people realize that the government is not needed...
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If interested in the free audio-book. click on the link in the original post.
You sound like the Communists who say
Communism is wonderful, you'll see when there is a REAL Communist country. Anarchy is a variation on this theme. It could exist in perfect conditions, conditions which, as you know, will never exist.
'Live for yourself, there's no one else more worth living for,
Begging hands and bleeding hearts
Will only cry out for more...'
A) Communism was terrible in theory,,,
and thus B) it followed that it was atrocious in practice.
That is a poor analogy to anarchy because A) is dissimilar.
You need to do more research
a total lack of government is called anarchy. Few people here would advocate that. The purpose of the Constitutional Republic is to strike a balance between anarchy and mob rule, and in the process to preserve the individual liberties of the soveriegn People and protect them from harm perpetrated by those who are either amoral or insane. Amazing how far we've gotten from that, isn't it?
In its true form, the Republic is governed by the sovereign People, spoken for by their elected representatives. The mass brainwashing and cultural degredation of our society in the last 100 years has all been designed to shift our thinking from that of soveriegns to that of subjects.
Unfortunately, it's working.
'Live for yourself, there's no one else more worth living for,
Begging hands and bleeding hearts
Will only cry out for more...'
I realize that not many
I realize that not many people on here advocate it.
I myself just realized about three months ago that government was not needed (after coming across scholars such as Hoppe, Long, Rothbard, D. Friedman, Molyneux, Spooner).
Good on you
Add to your anarcho-capitalist reading list: The Discovery of Freedom, by Rose Wilder Lane, and a science fiction novel by J. Neil Schulman called Alongside Night. Also, ironically, see Harry Browne's campaign book, Why Government Doesn't Work -- I always thought he made a much better case for anarchy with the book than he did for his own presidential candidacy.
Glad you added Spooner...
That man (and everything he wrote) epitomizes what American liberty USED to be all about. My kind of "radical"......
http://groups.yahoo.com/g...
Thats why you have the
Thats why you have the constitution. To restrict the government.
2 posts LOL by one click...I must be a magician.
Thats why you have the
Thats why you have the constitution. To restrict the government.
How's that working out for you?
:-)
http://groups.yahoo.com/g...
lol
that is funny.
Government which governs
Government which governs LEAST governs BEST!
as for me and my home, we shall worship the LORD
is not the government that governs least...
no government at all?
If so, I would have to agree that that would be best!
If you have the freedom
If you have the freedom to change the terms of your slavery, can it be called slavery? We are supposed to be able to govern ourselves. We have long lost that ability.
I fear a revolt among slaves could be bloody as hell. We better try to regain our ability to renegotiate the terms of our slavery. And soon.
Long Live the Revolution! (Please let this War be bloodless.)
"We have long lost that ability."
Comrade,
I do not give you leave to speak for me. I have not lost the ability to govern myself, I have been successfully controlling my primal nature for decades now, and am still fully equipped to think of the consequences of my actions and accordingly check my impulses.
Viva Agora!
Professor Bernardo de la Paz
www.citizenduquesne.org
I have no desire to speak for you
That is for our government to do! Or so thinks the masses.
It is not my place to tell you your sexual preference is wrong or that the food you eat is harmful. It is not my place to force you to wear your seatbelt or force you and and an entire city to let me into your home to look for guns.
We have let this go on too long. It may be too late. Your freedom to "think of the consequences of my actions and accordingly check my impulses" is at risk here.
Your ability to freely think and argue has already been compromised. They have just not come up with a good enough reason to put you away.
An Arab man today, may be a dissident libertarian tomorrow.
It was pleasant talking with you. Long Live the Revolution.
If government is immoral,
then limited government is also immoral, but limitING government is therefore perfectly proper and moral.
However, simply having the name "government" does not make an organization immoral. Immorality is defined by behavior. If a body of men initiate force, then they are bandits. If they act purely defensively, then they are good guys. A government that does not steal (tax), enslave (draft), or murder (wage unjust war) can be considered to be moral. So far, no such government has arisen on Earth, although the governments of the USA and of the Helvetian Confederation have come pretty close.
Viva Agora!
Professor Bernardo de la Paz
www.citizenduquesne.org
USA, in the beginning , yes
now, by no means! It's as bad in some states as it is in Germany now.
Libera me, let the truth break, what my fears make--Leslie Phillips
If limiting...
If limiting government is wrong, I don't want to be right!
However
The idea of a limited government that STAYS limited may be unrealistically utopian.