Wendy McElroy Blog Post: All politicians and candidates threaten my freedom
Paul Wakfer
http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3121 In fact, the reader is
urged to first read the original in full before my analysis and critique
below. Please recall from the description of this group: "The aim is not
to criticize/blame, but rather to discover/elucidate a
consistent/complete philosophical basis for a fully self-ordered free
society."
Wendy McElroy wrote:
> I start with the definition of _political office_ as "a position of
> power over the lives of others which is usually attained through the
> electoral process; sometimes the position is appointed by another
> politician who was elected." So far, it is not clear if the position
> described is one of just power or not.
Actually, even before any consideration of "just power" (in quotes
because it has no intrinsic meaning), is the consideration of "power",
particularly as related to political power, and the consistency and
clarity of its standard definition. Here are a few parts of its
definition from: /Webster's Third New International Dictionary,
Unabridged/ . Merriam-Webster, 2002.
http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (5 Mar. 2010).
1 a : a position of ascendancy : ability to compel obedience
b (1) : a military force or its equipment
2 a (1) : capability of acting or of producing an effect
b : political sway : social sway
3 a (1) : a delegated right or privilege
b : a document conferring legal authority
c : legal authority
The critical differences within some of these definitions and the
critical ambiguity in the meaning of power is the question of whether or
not the person with the alleged power is willing and able to use
physical force to compel another person (as only in 1 b (1). If s/he is
not willing and able, and that is the extent of hir power, then s/he is
actually without power in any real sense, since any person can totally
ignore such a person with impunity. It is only when there is someone
else, an *enforcer*, who is *persuaded* by such a person with alleged
power and *is* therefore willing and able to use physical force to
achieve the compulsion that one needs to be concerned about the person
doing the persuasion. So it is of paramount importance to realize that
without *enforcers* to do their dirty work, all holders of political
office are essentially powerless.
> That evaluation rests on questions such as "over whom is the power
> wielded?" and "how is it maintained?" _If_ the politician claims
> jurisdiction only over the lives of those who voted for him or who
> agreed to abide by the outcome and _if_ his office is financed only by
> voluntary payments, then there is no libertarian objection to the
> politician's power.
While it may be true that there is no "libertarian" objection, this
statement simply illustrates the weakness and incompleteness of
libertarian philosophy. In fact, there will be a totally reasonable
objection to the entire situation and a negative social preferencing of
all those who take part in it by any rational person. I need to simply
ask: Would you, Wendy, want to have such people who so recklessly
delegate control over their lives as your friends, neighbors and those
with whom you attempt to exchange values to mutual advantage?
> It would be akin to a power-of-attorney through which you transfer
> some control over your life to someone else.
It is not really the same because the elected politician is generally
given a much wider mandate over the lives of people, even if only those
who voted for hir, whereas powers of attorney are usually very limited
in scope.
> Of course, like a power-of-attorney, you would have the right to
> cancel the arrangement. The ability to rescind consent is
> part-and-parcel of what it means to have inalienable rights:
Please see my writings at selfsip.org where I strongly criticize the
idea of "inalienable rights" (and the very notion of "rights" itself).
Particularly: http://selfsip.org/critiques/declarofindepen.html,
http://selfsip.org/dialogues/rbarnett/nri.html and
http://selfsip.org/fundamentals/socialmetaneeds.html
> the rights belong to the individual, to exercise or not, to assign or
> to reclaim.
No. To say there is any such "right" to cancel or rescind a contract
violates the essence of the liberty to contract. Since any such
cancellation will generally be harmful to the other parties to the
contract, it can not reasonably be any absolute entitlement. Rather, the
methods by which a Contract may be canceled/rescinded and any associated
penalties need to be detailed in cancellation clauses within the
contract. This is all made very clear in my Natural Social Contract
document http://selfsip.org/solutions/NSC.html, with reasons why this is
the only kind of contract that a reasonable person would execute given
in the annotation for the definitions relating to Valid Contract.
> The 19th century American anarchist Lysander Spooner explained this
> limitation: "No man can delegate, or give away his own natural right
> to liberty . . . or to give to another, any right of arbitrary
> dominion over himself; for that would be giving himself away as a
> slave. And this no one can do. Any contract to do so is necessarily an
> absurd one and has no validity."
Although I have great respect and reverence for Lysander Spooner, in
this respect he erred. Any attempt to so restrict a person must
necessarily restrict hir entitlement to contract with any other person
for any purpose whatsoever. Spooner or anyone else simply saying this is
"absurd ... and has no validity" does not make it so. Please examine the
foundation and logic of my treatise deriving and defining Social
Meta-Needs for my logical arguments and, if you can, refute them. There
is no logical reason why a person should not be able to contract with
someone to be hir guardian/owner. The only thing that would be
irrational (perhaps "absurd"), but still not invalid by any logic, would
be to not have a clear cancellation clause in any such contract. It may
help here to note that such contracts are entirely similar in *type* to
personal service contracts.
> The foregoing description of a "just" politician doesn't describe any
> currently existing one. All politicians today assume office with the
> claim of having jurisdiction over the lives of people who did not vote
> for them, of people who opposed them or did not vote at all. The
> question for libertarians is: how can one human being properly assume
> immense power over the freedom and person of unconsenting others. If
> rights, like freedom of speech and association, are inalienable and
> equal-to-all, then how can _you_ cast a vote that transfers control
> over _my_ rights to another person? Especially, how can you do this
> against my will and over my protest? For a libertarian, the answer is
> clear. You cannot transfer or nullify another person's rights by
> making an X on a ballot. All you can do is enable a power-seeker to
> assume _a patina of legitimacy_ when he claims jurisdiction over and
> uses force on the unconsenting.
>
> That patina is the consent of the majority, or democracy, which is the
> sworn enemy of individual rights. In his treatise _No Treason_,
> Spooner explained, "A man's natural rights are his own, against the
> whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether
> committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man,
> calling himself a robber, ... or by millions, calling themselves a
> government."
Again Spooner erred by not clearly stating the essential difference
between the actions of the robber and of the millions (of voters). To
wit: the robber either uses or threatens the direct use of force upon
the victim or property of his theft, whereas the millions of voters
neither use force nor threaten its use against anyone. Within the State,
it is only the enforcers who use or threaten direct physical force on
others and it is only those enforcers who are logically guilty of
violating the liberty of others. It is easily seen that the voters and
politicians are actually not infringing the liberty of anyone, by the
simple thought of imagining that no one will consent to act as an enforcer!
> The "principle that the majority have a right to rule" merely divides
> society into "two bodies of men" - masters and slaves - and, so, both
> negates individual rights and cements conflict into society.
>
> Every person who is a politician or who seeks political office is a
> threat to my freedom and safety. It does not matter whether the
> power-seeker is a Republican or a libertarian, a Democrat or a
> tea-bagger. It does not matter whether he whispers reassurances of
> "good intentions" or crosses his fingers while taking a public oath of
> office to uphold laws that violate my rights. (With the exception of
> the Bill of Rights, the Constitution that politicians vow to enforce
> authorizes extensive governmental powers like taxation.) All that the
> whispers and insincere public oaths prove is that the politician is a
> bald-faced hypocritical liar and, so, even less worthy of being
> trusted with power. The libertarian truth is that /no one/ has a right
> to assume power over my peaceful actions; such positions of unjust
> power must be eliminated, not reformed, because they are inherently
> and systemically *wrong*.
Once again Wendy also does not clearly differentiate between the power
of persuasion and the power of physical force. No politician has any
power over any person except by the use of other persons who act as
enforcers. The politician can say and write whatever orders and
requirements s/he likes, but without the enforcers anyone is totally at
liberty to ignore those orders and requirements.
I will not further comment on the remainder of Wendy's generally fine
and important blog post. My purpose here was only to point out some of
the fundamental problems with ideas which Wendy is describing little
differently then most other libertarian writers/thinkers. It is my
fondest hope that Wendy will appreciate that none of my points above are
"nit-picking", but rather are serious philosophical points that she and
all libertarians should carefully consider. I look forward to her
response in dialog to this critique.
--Paul Wakfer
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