Comments (4)

• Barry Loberfeld

  FROM "What About the Poor?":

  Society will starve the poor, but the State won't. How did it come to that? Mostly from the premise If government doesn't do it, it doesn't get done. But if we followed that consistently, we'd wind up right back with the "failed model" of socialist state planning of production and everything else, e.g., Stalin and Ceausescu's prohibition of abortion or the Chinese Communists' imposition of (even late-term) abortion. It is a premise refuted by an insight from an American Founder. We know Madison and his politics of limited government, we know Jefferson and his morality of individual rights, but we often forget Paine and his philosophy of the primacy of society over the State:

  A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all parts of a civilized community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their laws; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost every thing which is ascribed to government.

  
  

  We don't need state charities for the same reason we don't need state churches, state families, or state anything else, i.e., we don't need state socialism because we already have civil society. Government, organized armed force, exists only to provide governance -- basically, defense against the violent criminal element (domestic and foreign, e.g., bin Laden). Condemning limited government for not performing the functions of the charity, the church, the family, the firm, the school, and the other organs of the body politic is like condemning the skeleton for not performing the functions of the brain, the heart, the stomach, the liver, the lungs, and the other organs of the body proper. Freedom is the framework that secures all other virtues.
  
  

  Published: April 9, 2009 9:24 AM

• Gil

  Is one of the favourite TV shows of Libertarian happen to be Bonanza? The Cartwrights, who are private landowners, must feel a great deal of self-satisfaction going to Virginia City as free men to see the life in statist 'big-smoke' and to see those who have to abide by guvmint rules and regulations.

  Published: April 9, 2009 10:33 AM

• Jason Gordon

  Chodorov presages the very conflict between individual and collective at the heart of what postmodernism "revealed".

  Lefties see inherent individual subjectivity as a defect that prevents their collective dream from manifesting.

  
  "Deep down, cats yearn to belong to a common purpose -- they yearn to be herded. Yet, cat consciousness hasn't evolved to where all cats are permitted to come to this realization. Perhaps tragically there is a fundamental element of catness that prevents them from attaining their highest purpose."

  Published: April 9, 2009 12:40 PM

• pbergn

  Excellent, excellent article! So appalingly true even today!

  Published: April 10, 2009 12:32 AM