Freedom, Liberty, the Principle of Non-Aggression, what they mean in the context of groups

Now both the dictionary definitions for both the words, freedom and liberty, are similar, and in common parlance, are used interchangeably.

freedom:

noun 1.the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint: He won his freedom after a retrial.

2.exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.
3.the power to determine action without restraint.
4.political or national independence.
5.personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery: a slave who bought his freedom.

liberty:

noun, plural lib·er·ties. 1.freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2.freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3.freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4.freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty.
5. permission granted to a sailor, especially in the navy, to go ashore.

There are two “manifestations” of freedom from my perspective.

One is described simply like the dictionary definition, and refers to a state where one is not enslaved, in which one can go about his business freely.

The other is more spiritual, more philosophical.

For the more “earthly” one, describing the external conditions under which one lives, it would be a state in which natural individual rights are respected. The best explanatory term for that I’ve seen is the “principle of non-aggression“.

The best description of that is found here. It is an ethical stance regarding a person’s dealings with other human beings:
http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Principle_of_non-aggression

The non-aggression principle (also called the non-aggression axiom, or the anti-coercion or zero aggression principle or non-initiation of force) is an ethical stance which asserts that “aggression” is inherently illegitimate. “Aggression” is defined as the “initiation” of physical force against persons or property, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property. In contrast to pacifism, the non-aggression principle does not preclude violent self-defense. The principle is a deontological (or rule-based) ethical stance.

That web page also provides a more extensive examination of the principle, and answers the most common objections, and some that are not so common.

So the goal is a culture, or society, that adheres to this principle. It recognizes that any rule By which we guide ourselves involves aggression. Fraud is recognized as a kind of aggression.

Having five tons of gold more than your neighbor or five square miles of real estate more than your neighbor is NOT aggression, unless you STOLE it or got it with theft by FRAUD. (sorry for caps for emphasis)

Here’s another description of the principle, including a definition of aggression to help clarify.

A group with voluntary membership and based on what both parties (or more) agree by contract, however the parties regard such an arrangement as binding, these are “groups” that are perfectly compatible with the NAP (non-aggression principle).

However, when a “group” begins to enforce actions upon one or more members that was not of mutual prior agreement, this is aggression. A code enforcement officer comes to your house and tells you there’s a new law, and your house is painted a prohibited color, so you have to paint it. (This is an actual law in my municipality). If you don’t paint your house a different color, you get a fine. If you don’t pay the fine and don’t pay the house, you eventually lose your entire house. This is a taking. This is theft. This is aggression. Non-aggression is better.

But WHO IS any such “group” anyway? It’s a “collection” of individuals who think that theft of THEIR stuff by force is NOT okay but if they get together a great big gang and call it a “government”, then it’s okay because there is more of them than you.

That’s why groupthink is dangerous. You had Jim Crow in the Old South because there was more of “us” than “them”. But even so we had to make laws to make “some of us”

BUT even in areas where there was more of “them” than “us”, it was already the “law of the land”, the dictatorship of the majority became the dictatorship of the minority, and the ones that would “do the right thing” were prohibited by law from doing it. By the force of a gun and illegal activities protected by law.

Such is the end of all groupthink collectives.

Individuals are what count. Culture has influence, but individuals have changed culture over and over again in history.

In fact, it is through individuals that God has wrought spectacular advances throughout history. Guttenberg, Isaac Newton, Roger Bacon, Michael Faraday, and so on. Nicolas Tesla was a loner.

Eguene Mallove broke free from thinking what was best for his “collective” and quit so he could blast MIT for lying about the success they had seen with the low-cost high-energy processes like the ones announced by Fleishmann and Pons. So he founded the Infinite Energy Foundation and a Magazine to promote the new technology.

Related articles

• The non-aggression principle: (trutherator.wordpress.com)
• Zero Aggression Project – The Zero Aggression Principle (libertarianhippie.com)
• Practical Libertarianism: Peace Keepers vs. Police (ericpetersautos.com)
• The Non-Aggression Principle may need a broader definition of aggression. (onesquarelight.wordpress.com)

Reply to a Skeptic

Michael Faraday (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My answer to a libertarian who is also a skeptic of the Bible, of God….

There you go again, talking about stereotype Christians that only exist in the caricatures you’ve been taught in government indoctrination centers (aka “public schools”) and government-financed young-adult indoctrination centers (aka “universities”).  My point was not to convince you of anything except that your holier-than-thou view of Biblical Christian belief manifested in your vocabulary bounces off the intended target, because you’re talking about tings that Bible-believers do not do or believe.

A few hair-brained idiots like the one group you mentioned as if it were typical, even with the billions in warped publicity they got, is only able to get two or three dozen followers, and half of those are the guy’s own family. It shows a nonsensical view to say these are typical or even to use them as a counterpoint to belief. Your mentioning them (in context) is like me saying I’m not an atheist because I don’t believe I should massacre 20 million people. Ad hominem arguments are irrelevant. But you have brought morality into the argument of an existential question (Does God exist?), so I’ve included commentary about it.

Another stupid view of which it is true that many Christians hold, is that all the award is in the afterlife. My life has had big disappointments, as has your own, but my life is super-grand. “Delight thyself in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart”. (If your delights are warped it’s not “in the Lord”).

Your comments about burning in hell also show a misunderstanding of the whole thing. If an oven is real, denying its existence is the psychosis. I didn’t ask you to become a believer, obviously you’re not ready and may never be. I just wanted to knock down some ridiculous stereotypes that torture the minds of some unbelievers who have been schooled in same. NOBODY except demons and devils wants you to burn in hell, for example, it was not even made for humans. See, there’s a lot you don’t know about this and it shows when you get into the caricatures.

The caricatures show a bit of doubt about one’s own views on the subject, an aversion to how thinking people like Isaac Newton or Michael Faraday or Mother Theresa or William WIlberforce or Dr. Livingston would believe in a LOVING God that wanted them to help others.

A wonderful world is indeed where people take responsibility for their actions. Thinking that the Bible says otherwise shows a polar opposite understanding of its messages. “God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man seweth, that shall he also reap”. Believers hold it true more than you, because they know they have to give account. But without that, it just bubbles over as an effect of the belief. Like Mother Theresa might say, What else was she going to do? Or Dr. Livingston, the scourge of slavers everywhere, What else?

Your last paragraph does not seem to have any logical connection to the conversation. Christ HATES predation and thievery and ROARED against the money changers in the temple TWO THOUSAND YEARS almost before you were ever born and before Ron Paul‘s presidential campaigns. He is pleading with us to stop this theft and oppression of the poor.

LASTLY, since you wanted to take the conversation in this direction, I did not, keep in mind that the absolute worst regimes for murder and plunder and atrocity in the entire history of mankind has been the officially ATHEIST regimes. They did not permit religion to have any visible influence at all.

By their fruits ye shall know them.

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Libertarians vs. People Who Love to be Told What To Do

Michael Faraday (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now the other stuff.

>>You believe there should be no laws or regulations on drugs? legal or illegal?

Illegal: What is more dangerous? Drugs or the drug wars? Ron Paul questioned the audience at a debate once: If drugs were legalized today, would you rush to get heroin tomorrow? Why should we create an 1000% profit margin for the bad guys?

Legal: What good does it do? It creates an artificial barrier to (a) you getting the drugs you need because the supply is artificially and unfairly limited to keep up profits and help Big Pharma (Oh, you thought they were to stop big mean Pharma from poisoning you?) and (b) it makes the gullible consumers of government-approved media feel “safe” because good old Uncle Sam is “protecting” them.

>>(For instance, since Coca Cola would no longer need to accurately list their ingredients, an addition of some addicting agent, say, cocaine, would be OK with you?)

Do you have any reliable idea about what aspartame (approved by the FDA) does to you. Is that okay with you?

>>Since we are not going to be interfering with auto manufacturers, airbags would not need to be effective, or even installed.

And the Tuckermobile could have been the dominant auto today, still innovating, and who knows if we’d already have skyways instead of highways and skyports instead of carports…

>>You would rely on your church for providing your hospital care.

Like before LBJ messed it all up, and the Catholic hospital he worked at never turned away anybody for lack of money, and before billions of dollars pumped up the demand side of hospital care with free money from a bottomless payer. That payer confiscates whatever it can get and has a backup printing press when honest people run out of money.

My dad was a union welder and pastor, but the church was in one of the poorest neighborhoods in St. Louis, and

My life with a single, poor, Mom after the Dad left was not bereft of health care. Stitches in my jaw once when I fell, an infection, a family doctor that was

(1) affordable and

(2) had an office in a black area, full of sick folks, and

(3) I know he took care of a lot of people free. Free. Just like the our neighborhood lawyer, one Keifhauver or something like that, good man, he did pro bono all over the place for the poorest of us. Tried to help bad guys turn around, let them off near my Dad’s church, hoping they would wander in and change… Some do sometimes..

Everybody was a lot healthier then too. We didn’t see so many fat folks then. People ATE healthier food, didn’t get sick as much. Except for places in the world where government cronies confiscate their “fair share”.

>> Would you be in favor of dropping all highway speed limits?

Do you know how they set speed limits today? You think it’s experts judging “safe”? It’s REVENUE. Confiscation excuses. That’s why they love red light cameras. It’s revenues. And they hit the poor the worst, and we know you love that, because when health care is rationed, the rulers get the best care and poor get leftovers.

Some use a different method. They measure traffic speed on a road and set the limit at a high percentile, say 90 percentile, meaning whatever makes lawbreakers and gets revenue from 10% of the drivers.

Almost all people drive reasonably. There are private farms and roads and how often do you think people drive crazy on them?

>>State universities and colleges would be disbanded? Public education would be eliminated, and there would be no way of knowing how your hot dogs are made.

Speaking of hot dogs, that’s just a bunch of pure baloney. Best thing that could happen to education, and black folks and poor folks are demanding more charters, for a little bit more freedom.

Where would be today without the unfettered, unchained education of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon and Michael Faraday? The Pilgrims made sure they had schools so the kids would be able to read the Bible. Literacy around 1900 was around 95% in the Protestant nations, about 80% in the Catholic countries, and 30% elsewhere.

St. Patrick led the entire island of Irish to Christ without government help and taught them to read and write without government help and they saved the Greek and Roman classics without government help and without robbing their neighbors like governments do. That’s right, Rome couldn’t help him because they were busy watching the Vandals and the Visigoths burn their books, including Augustine’s.

So when Charlemagne looked for somebody to bring learning back to his dominion, he looked north to the Irish and the British who had been infected by the Irish with education.

Christian schools produce graduates that score way better than the government schools, and home schoolers are walking home with the academic prizes and winning academic competitions and moot court debates in multiple times their numbers.

>> Unions could use secondary boycotts? Bribery of public officials would become SOP, and prostitutes can be recruited in the church Sunday Schools.

Unions are a racket the hurt the poorest of the poor, making the marginally employable into unemployable, and limiting productive activity that could raise all boats for everybody.

Bribery of public officials is done today, except it’s done in “legal” ways handled by the legislators, PLUS there’s no way or reason to bribe a government official that doesn’t exist. You have to bribe somebody in the free market instead by offering him something of real value.

Prostitutes won’t be looking in Sunday schools for their john’s, they’ll wait till the guys are away from their wives and their Moms, just like today.

On 9/26/12 1:56 PM, Bill wrote:

You overreact.

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Rick Warren’s Bible Illiteracy Campaign, and KC Brownstone’s Scientific Illiteracy Campaign

 

Statue of Isaac Newton at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Note apple. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

K..C Brownstone writes in her blog about the Christian Post report that Rick Warren says he wants to solve a Biblical illiteracy problem: http://kcbrownstone.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/rick-warrens-illiteracy-problem/

In view of Rick Warren’s flip-flop about homosexual marriage, and his approach to using government money confiscated (“stolen”) from other people to fund his projects, one must ask about his own Biblical illiteracy. His problem with Biblical literacy is most visible in the fact that he quotes liberally from 15 different translations of the Bible in some of his books and pretends they are equally valid.

Most of us would question whether a hippopotamus and an elephant and a behemoth are the same animal, and whether a hippos

That’s one issue. Then Brownstone does an association-link with another issue and says Rick Warren “has a lot to do” with a “scientific illiteracy” problem. Seeing that she brings Darwinism-deniers into the mix and mentions Ken Ham, presumably she sees rejection of Darwinism as scientific illiteracy.

Well, well. That’s news to Isaac Newton and his friends in the heavenlies right now, and it’s causing a laugh riot for a battalion of angels who are also sad to see people who believe in theories created by men who denied Creation and went trying to find a different explanation.

Scientists that believed in the Biblical history of the week of Creation, in fact, have numbered in the tens of thousands in recent centuries, including some of the most outstanding in today’s science textbooks that scrupulously avoid mentioning their declarations of Creation faith. Many are listed at the Institute for Creation Research web site: http://www.icr.org/article/185/

Blaise Pascal, Kepler, Kelvin, Michael Faraday, Pasteur, Linnaeus, the list goes on and on.

So was Isaac Newton afflicted with “scientific illiteracy” for believing in the six days Creation?

Oh wait! You say it’s because he hadn’t come across the brilliant “discovery” of natural selection by Charles Darwin?

New? Hah. Greeks in the 5th and 6th century wrote various similar theories. There have been various version of “Darwinian” theories since Darwin, too.

Maybe, just maybe, Darwin knew about them. One wrote about animals over time having descendants that were different, and all animals were related. Yes, we were not taught this in our public schools.

We were never taught about the strong faith of the founders of the main branches of science of today. “Historically ignorant” science books taught us that Columbus “proved” that the world was round, whereas in the real world every knowledgeable person around the world knew this from the times of the ancient Greeks, and it’s even in a verse in Isaiah.

Not that the tautologies used to stamp Darwinism into young minds are any good explanation.

Here you can find a list of modern scientists who believe the Bible, meaning they believe what it says, including Creation: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2761001/posts

They are many, and the list is growing leaps and bounds as young scientists with open minds discover the facts that were not taught them in college courses, or they apply the logic rules they learned to the issue.

Nobody can accuse Michael Crichton of “scientific illiteracy” but he is so accused of same in the mix because in said article anybody who doubts the unquestionable dogma of global warming is so accused.

He exposed it for what it was, and that was before Climategate exposed the fact that they have to commit fraud to make the thing stick. There is one guy who tore into the infamous Climategate study, tore the methodology to shreds, who now advertises himself as a “convert”, never mind he was recorded as saying he believed in it, just that it needed better methodology. Never mind his own study has been exposed as having its own ugly and untenable and indefensible practices.

Back to “scientific illiteracy’. NASA’s scientists with all their billions of years of wisdom, made predictions for the magnetic field strength of the planets Uranus and Neptune. What a surprise, they were orders of magnitude wrong, wrong, wrong.

Creation scientist in physics and large-scale magnetic phenomena, and inventor with dozens of patents with his name on them, Russ Humphreys, made a different prediction. He was spot on.

His predictions about the rapidity of the decline in the magnetic field of Mercury, also very very close to what it turns out to be, show there is some prediction power in believing that Genesis One is a historical narrative that tells us how God did it.