Sunday, February 26, 2006

Weekend free for all

Your chance to say whatever you want...

Posted by The Game at 9:44 AM

4 comments:

The Game said...

no one has anything to say?
this site is getting sad...

February 26, 2006 10:55 PM
Anonymous said...

You took your trip to Hawaii and the scatterbrains all found something shiny to look at.

February 27, 2006 12:09 AM
Mike M said...

Jim, I haven't been back to the site since before your last response to that second amendment post a little over two weeks ago.

Your response was thoughtful, but sidestepped my key points, which I may not have emphasised properly.

I didn't wish to imply individual and group rights are mutually exclusive, my point is that much opposition to things like private property and the second ammendment derives somehow from the socialist premise that power flows from the top down, or, the individual has rights only as a member of a group or institution. My belief is that individuals posess basic rights, from which all other rights and responsibilities derive, and can collectively delegate (but retain responsibility for) those rights to a group of which they are a member.

In this case, we delegate our right to defend ourselves to a dedicated group to do the big stuff for us (the military) but in so doing, we do not lose that right as individuals.

Does that difference make sense?

I never said or intended to imply that all group activity is bad. To the contrary, specialization of labor is essential to a modern society, there's too much to do. We can't do it all ourselves.

I think the problem comes from when people (like governments) start to believe, "Some things work better when controlled by the group, therefore ALL things should be controlled by the group," and numerous variants along that theme.

Or, stated another way: The default assumption that a transfer of authority and responsibility from the individual to the group is always a good thing.

Yes, I know "default" and "always" in this case are redundant, but I leave them both there in case there are less-educated people here who will assume anything other than what I explicitly say here, like stupidly assuming that I am saying every liberal believes that or that I think the opposite, retorting I believe the opposite to be universally true.

February 27, 2006 12:28 PM
Mike M said...

In other news...

Anybody near Huntington Beach should go see the National Pro Paintball League event next month.

February 27, 2006 12:31 PM

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