Via WRSA, this discussion was seen.  A few quotes from it, and then some remarks.

he’s yet another member of team “let’s create a state powerful enough to give me everything i want without realizing that such a state is also powerful enough to take everything i have.”

(or worse, knows this full well but presumes that it is he and his who will be wielding the whip hand and doing the taking and determining “the collective good.”)

but his argument is far more revelatory than i suspect he realizes and in it we may see both his incomprehension and the nasty shark smile of a desire to dominate by violence.

note that he cites “society” and “democracy” but not the rights that prevent democracy from devolving into that most vicious and inescapable of tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority.

and one sees glimmers of how chris sees the exercise of political power’s manifestation: to threaten violence to demand that the state do things for you. and this is telling. for the true reason for an armed populace has nothing to do with that. it is, in fact, the precise obverse.

the purpose of an armed populace is to PREVENT the state from doing things to the people against their will.

So far so good, and we can’t find anything with which to disagree.

where chris and many others like him go awry is that they do not understand rights. rights established under free contract may be positive, but just societal rights are always negative.

they state: i possess agency and so long as i am peaceful and do not violate the rights of others to such agency and property i am to be left alone to do as i will. nothing more. (but certainly nothing less)

chris and other big statists like him seek to enshrine into society some set of “positive rights” such as a right to education or to healthcare or to housing.

such rights are always and inevitably antithetical to the actual liberty of a republic because a positive right demands that others perform services or cede property to you whether they wish to or not.

this violates their basic (negative) rights to personal agency.

[ … ]

so here is the thought experiment:

if the rights of the individual are paramount, so must be the individual’s right to protect them.

to argue otherwise is to place the prerogatives of the state above the rights of the people.

and that is tyranny.

try to imagine a situation in which we the people fully cede a monopoly on the capability of effective defense against the state and still retain the ability to exercise our “right and duty” to “throw off such government and provide new guards for their future security.”

what real fundamental argument can one make that the state must have the power to subdue its people by violence and that the citizenry must be prevented from possessing the power to resist such predation?

try to imagine what such a state would look like and how you as a citizen could possibly trust it.

I take him to be a classic libertarian.  He says, “where chris and many others like him go awry is that they do not understand rights. rights established under free contract …”  And neither does the writer, I claim.

The contract is between the people.  Rights are not established in that contract.  Rights are recognized in the covenant, along with stipulations, blessings and curses.  Those curses (setting up a new system of government) are outlined in the very founding document of the country.

The writer makes some legitimate logical points when he observes that we should try to imagine what an all-powerful state would look like and why we should trust it.  However, he goes badly wrong when he says “what real fundamental argument can one make that the state must have the power to subdue its people by violence and that the citizenry must be prevented from possessing the power to resist such predation?”

That’s an easy answer.  The philosophical question of ‘The One and the Many” has been debated for as long as mankind has existed.  Recall the discussions of Parmenides, Socrates and Plato on the state, nature of reality, philosophers as kings, and other related topics.

The writer has no answer except to say that individual liberties are paramount.  We’re left with one side singing “nah nah nah nah boo boo, I’m right and your wrong, and this is my view.”  The other side repeats the song, and we’re back where we started.  Competing world and life views.

I am not a libertarian.  I am a Christian.  I honor the Lordship of Jesus, who is The Christ, the only sovereign of heaven and earth.  Individual liberties are not paramount.  The collective is not paramount.  Only the law-word of God is paramount.

Rights and duties come from the Almighty, and from nowhere else.  They come from God, and God alone.  He is the only sovereign and potentate.

I strongly recommend R. J. Rushdoony’s book “The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy.”  But in lieu of having this at your fingertips (you should order it), here he gives a very brief primer on his views of government.  Sphere authority.  Vocation, family, church, neighbors, etc., etc., with the state being only one of a number of governments over mankind, and not the ultimate authority.

He points out that the word sovereign is nowhere located in the founding documents, a statement that surprises the judges before whom he has testified as an expert witness in defense of home schooling, as the founders were studious to avoid it.

Two sovereigns cannot coexist.  If you want to listen to a 30 minute summary of Hegel, the roots of statism, the notion of the state as sovereign, the failure of the church, and proper government of man, you can do no better than this audio.  It will be the best 30 minutes you’ll spend this week.

That’s a promise.