Delusions of an Anti-Absolute Liberty Statists

Sometimes we have to stoop down to the level of misguided, anti-reason statists like the main subject of this blog. On February 28, a Facebook friend posted a link on my wall. Apparently he was asking for my opinion on a blog article written by a statist who absolutely believes that liberty is not absolute. I decided to delete the link and then sent a private message to my Facebook friend.

Here’s what I said:

The blogger is a great context-dropper. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s a good example of a chimpanzee using a computer. We don’t just oppose the RH bill because “it’s a tax-funded, state-driven program.” It’s very much clear that he didn’t read the bill. Or if he did, he doesn’t have enough brain cells to understand that bill’s impact on his life, freedom, rights and future. We oppose the bill because it is against our rights, freedom and future. Because it seeks to control the entire industry, the entire medical profession, and the entire education sector. It doesn’t take a lawyer or a law expert to understand this. But I don’t expect the leftists and some half-wit Filipinos to grasp the bill’s effect on their lives.

Here’s the full text of the hilarious blog I’m talking about (it’s authored by a self-proclaimed atheist code-named Curious Pandesal):

Delusions of Absolute Liberty

By Curious Pandesal

You got to hand it to the anti-reproductive health fanatics. From ridiculous assumptions such as the Reproductive Health Bill legalizing abortion, immediate population depletion to out of vogue assumptions that population development programs are not important, absurdities, logic cartwheels and random religious invocations are gifts that just keep on giving.

The latest addition to their arsenal of slippery slope arguments, appeal to emotion, selective observation, red herrings, appeal to motive, wishful thinking (this one is a winner)… is “liberty.” Yes, folks. They took Papa Oreilly’s lessons to heart and are now rebranding “liberty.”

The few Ayn Rand purists on “common good” – that common good should be left to the private institutions and not to the government – are opposing the RH Bill because it’s a tax-funded, state-driven program. They are opposing the Reproductive Health Bill because they don’t like government meddling. They should just promote the fabled Laissez-Faire; no more of this pretentious anti RHB drama.

A snapshot of reality should tell you our current oligarchs have no problems in raising prices of basic services, averting regularization of employees and paying less taxes than the middle class citizens. The little glimpses of “common good” can be seen from their charities , hardly a dent in their big pockets. Sometimes you get decent employment, but anyway…

Our “democratic” government encourages the wealthiest to acquire government positions. Your average LGU official is a tad wealthier than his constituents and our last five presidents belong to the wealthiest sector – any overflowing “common good” you’ve seen lately?

As if the asinine “don’t blame babies” and “sperm is holy” poetry failures aren’t enough, the less sophisticated religious bats have expressed their opposition (you’re infringing on my liberty!) with inane statements like:

Opposing the reproductive health bill in terms of “liberty (justice and freedom the Catholic way)” is forgetting you have an informal contract with society. Making a conscious decision to live with people, in an organic society with a government authority is trading some of your individual liberty to the social group or team you belong to in order to pursue a “common good.”

Democracy does not afford you 100% individual liberty. Democracy, ideally is the rule of the many who agree to a common decision. It is not the rule of all.

I don’t buy you your toothpaste, your deodorant, your antibiotics or your underwear, but you and I buy our safety standards for your toothpaste, deodorant, antibiotics and underwear. We buy our roads, our hospitals, our clean air, our water supply, our group safety from diseases and crime and our public education which will bring about the next intellectual force. You and I buy and invest in our next generation, but for some reasons you have – which are not supported by evidence but only your own wilful ignorance – you balk at the way you have been living.

There are laws and bills that potentially compromise your individual liberties to a dangerous degree and you are well within your rights and wits to oppose them. In the case of a reproductive health bill that aims to implement a state-funded program (the private sector is only good for monied people), why fight a bill that allows more families to exercise their reproductive freedom?

It’s not because your reproductive freedom is restricted.

It’s because you don’t want others to practice reproductive freedom although you share similar social contracts to the same government authority.

The hypocrisy never ends.

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Now here’s my take on that poorly argued blog. Only a few words is needed to debunk Curious Pandesal’s fallacious arguments, context-dropping and misrepresentation:

“Delusion of absolute liberty…” What a great way to context-drop and misrepresent someone else’s views. Is liberty absolute? Yes! Liberty simply means “state of being free”. If you’re not free, you’re a slave. Liberty is a RIGHT, because it primarily pertains to individual choice and actions. You are free to choose and to act according to your will or judgment. But are you free to kill or to loot? This is what the author of the sophistic blog doesn’t get.

So if liberty is absolute, does that mean we can transgress upon the rights of others? The answer is no. The author of the sophomoric and sophistic blog forgets one concept: THE PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT. In a free and ratio…nal society, a government is needed to police the affairs of its subjects, to protect contracts, to settle disputes through its courts of law, to protect individuals against gangs and criminals, and to protect the whole state against rebellion and invasion. Thus, a free and rational society requires an objective, rights-based code of law to: 1) limit the powers of the government, 2) define crimes and provide penalty therefor, 3) to define the state’s relationship with other states, and 4) to define the proper role of government.

So if the blog author kills his neighbor or loots the latter’s property, can he run scot-free and with absolute impunity? In a rational society with an objective and fully-defined criminal law, that blogger of that sophistic article would have to face the full force of the law. And under that society’s criminal justice system, that blogger, which is now called “suspect”, is entitled to all the rights of the accused, e.g., due process, right to counsel, speedy trial, and so on. Is this so hard to understand?

According to the blogger’s sophistic arguments (which are actually non-arguments because he’s simply barking at the wrong tree), Objectivism promotes “absolute liberty” that is inimical to individual rights and society. The real, actual target of his attack, if analyzed very carefully, is not “absolute liberty” or Objectivism or free market capitalism, but anarcho-capitalism, an anti-system that calls for the abrogation of government. Only a dishonest prick would agree with him.

Lesson: before you write a very fallacious, ill-researched article, know where your “enemy” is coming from. You cannot just make assumptions and them attack the same with your own baloney arguments. Capisce?!