Liberty Relearned

The long-suffering people of Australia are once again being subjected to tyrannical restrictions of their individual freedoms in the name of fighting COVID. A recent AP article describes the recent protests of the COVID restrictions.  What's missing in the article?  Any mention about how the people of Sydney and other cities are made to suffer because of the revocation of their rights to free speech and assembly. Are these people selfish, foolish, or do they just want to be free to make their own decisions and make a living by the sweat of their own brow? 

While some restrictions to help ensure the health of the people might be in order, these restrictions do not come without a price.  What is the proper balance between the need for freedom and the need to keep people healthy?

The LR mission explained. 

To engage in civil, enlightened debate on what political direction is best for the United States, promote a better understanding of conservative/libertarian principles, and effectively express them to others in a thoughtful and insightful way.  Liberty Relearned’s goal is to help bring back liberty as the chief American value and to counter the misleading and destructive rhetoric of the far-left in America.

What Makes American Conservatism better than any other way?  Pt II.

What's the difference between American conservatism and the left? 

What was America really founded upon? Who are the true heirs of the American Revolution? 

To hear it from some people, you’d think that America was a terrible place with a terrible history with few redeeming qualities. Some of their points are valid, but they do not give a balanced perspective on our nation. Our Founding Fathers were men of wisdom and courage who sacrificed much and were prepared to give, even more, even their lives if necessary for us to gain our independence. That spirit of sacrifice, of putting liberty and freedom above our own lives and fortunes carries on to this day. No country has done more to further the cause of liberty than the United States. Our influence is global, literally, we’ve helped rewrite atlases, we’ve helped oppressive countries disappear and be replaced with more liberal ones. From freeing black Americans from slavery to freeing other nations from tyranny and oppression, America has always taken a lead role. We make and do cool stuff, like build the Panama Canal and send cars into space. We help the less fortunate in our own county and across the globe. Even when it comes to countries that we don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with politically, we offer them help in their time of need. In short, there is an awful lot to be proud of if you’re an American. That doesn’t mean we ignore the bad, or not continue to correct injustices, it means that our positive contributions and achievements far outweigh the negative, and for that, we should be proud.

"Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil.” -- Ayn Rand

We've all heard someone ask:  “Who are you to judge me?” or some variant of that question.  It's a defensive question usually asked by someone who reasonably expects to be judges harshly by their peers for some ethical or moral transgression. It's safe to say that someone secure in the notion that society or their peers would judge their actions favorably, is not going to pose this rhetorical question. A good retort to that question might be:  “Who are you that you are above judgment?” If we respect our peers, we respect their judgment, which sometimes means respecting unfavorable judgment.  While we reserve the right to reject their judgment, we cannot with integrity refuse to acknowledge their judgment.

Ayn Rand saw collectivism in all its forms as an impediment to human rights. "The good of society" cannot be the basis of rights, since society is merely a collection of individuals, and so the only proper rights are individual rights.  When we base rights on what is good for society, that begs the question:  Who speaks for society?  Throughout history, such people who claim to speak for society inevitably turn out to be tyrants. You have a few, even a single person, deciding what is good for the people.  Rand thought that people ought to decide for themselves, based upon rational self-interest.

While on the subject of rational self-interest, John Locke had this to say:

"Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other." ~ John Locke

Rand explained the motivations of such people playing fast and loose with the wealth of others:

“Humility and presumptuousness are always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling the space vacated by self-esteem in a collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the means to his ends. The more neurotic he is or the more conscientious in the practice of altruism (and these two aspects of his psychology will act reciprocally to reinforce each other), the more he will tend to devise schemes ‘for the good of mankind’ or of ‘society’ or of ‘the public’ or of ‘future generations’ —or of anything except actual human beings.”

When Ayn Rand immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union in early 1926, she essentially brought with her the collectivists' playbook.  She had a thorough understanding of their worldview, philosophy, and motivations. She had an uncanny ability to cut through the propaganda and concisely depict through her writing the collectivist (read leftist) mindset.  Today, we can see the Left is still using the same playbook, as their motivations and political goals remain the same. They retain all of the moral shortcomings that Rand wrote about over fifty years ago, including when in 1964 she wrote a chapter in her nonfiction book, The Virtue of Selfishness, which is a collection of essays written by her and Nathaniel Branden that lay out the principles that make up her Objectivist philosophy.  In her chapter/essay entitled “Racism,” she accurately describes the philosophical underpinnings of what we now know as Critical Race Theory and “Anti-Racism”.

In her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, the chapter entitled “Racism” immediately ties racism to collectivism.  She defines racism thusly:

“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social, or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors."

Memorial Day Message 2021

It's at this time of year that I reflect on those who made the ultimate sacrifice and why they did it. Moreover, what motivated the soldiers of America's past to take up arms and put their lives on the line?

This, we cannot know, not in every case.  We can surmise though, that many might nod in agreement when Ronald Reagan said these words in his “A Time for Choosing” speech:

“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin - just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.”

This was a sharp rebuke to those who suggested we should just leave Communist regimes like the Soviet Union have their way, and not antagonize them by building up our defenses here and abroad to contain their hegemony. To Reagan, and many of his generation, communism, and socialism equaled slavery-- not to a particular person, but to the state. What would the people of that era not so long ago make of the acceptance of Marxism and of collectivism we see among so many today? They would be shocked that Marxism, under the guise of Critical Race Theory, would be not just tolerated, but taught in today's military. They would be horrified at the go-along-to-get-along attitude towards Communist China, and the willingness on the part of so many to stay silent at the genocide, reeducation camps, and lack of personal privacy being perpetrated in that country, all in the name of box office receipts, television deals, and cheap labor. They might marvel at the reckless disregard the current government has for mounting debts, and their blatant attempts to bribe the people with the own money. They would be disappointed to see such a large percentage of the population blithely ignore the specter of inflation for their small slice of one multi-trillion dollar “stimulus” package after another. When those brave men enlisted in the military, would they have fought nearly as hard for the country we have now, where free speech is a privilege doled out by corporate oligarchs? Where the freedom of religion that so many fought and died for could be taken away with such ease for the cause of safetyism?...

We're in the endgame now with COVID.  What will it look like?  What should happen, what will happen? The masks are off (sort of) in most of the country.  What will happen to vaccination rates as a result?