Freedom and Virtue
Posted by JohnBrown 10 years, 8 months ago to Philosophy
Is a high degree of responsibility necessary for the people to live in freedom? Do the people have to be responsible, honest, and hard-working—in a word, virtuous—before they can handle freedom? It can be a chicken-and-egg argument, certainly. Do the people lose their virtue and then lose their liberty? Or, do they gradually lose their liberty and then lose their virtue, in proportion? The cause and effect is important, because it provides a clue about how best to restore freedom. If the former, then the people must be taught virtue again, presumably by the State. But this approach is hopeless and absurd. Or, the people might somehow be drawn again to religion and absorb the moral teachings therein.
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
—James Madison
In any case, if the people lose their virtue and then lose their freedom, there would need to be a moral revival before we could return to freedom. But if the people lose their liberty and then their virtue, the approach is more straightforward: set them free. When people are free to face the full consequences of making poor or immoral choices; when sloth, greed, envy, lying, cheating, stealing, unreliability, and broken promises have real social and economic consequences, they will be induced to become more virtuous. When the State penalizes saving and investment, when it taxes incomes and wealth away, and when it provides unearned benefits for free, it not only discourages positive, productive behavior, it rewards bad character at the same time. It subsidizes bad behavior.
To reward responsibility and penalize irresponsibility, we don't need a moral revival first. Just set everyone free. Let people make mistakes, let them live by their own choices. Let them learn, let them experiment, let them cooperate. Wards of the State are not self-reliant, competent, independent individuals. In freedom, individuals build good character. In freedom, relationships are strengthened; societies become more virtuous. Harry Browne wrote an article on this topic that addresses the issue quite well.
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
—James Madison
In any case, if the people lose their virtue and then lose their freedom, there would need to be a moral revival before we could return to freedom. But if the people lose their liberty and then their virtue, the approach is more straightforward: set them free. When people are free to face the full consequences of making poor or immoral choices; when sloth, greed, envy, lying, cheating, stealing, unreliability, and broken promises have real social and economic consequences, they will be induced to become more virtuous. When the State penalizes saving and investment, when it taxes incomes and wealth away, and when it provides unearned benefits for free, it not only discourages positive, productive behavior, it rewards bad character at the same time. It subsidizes bad behavior.
To reward responsibility and penalize irresponsibility, we don't need a moral revival first. Just set everyone free. Let people make mistakes, let them live by their own choices. Let them learn, let them experiment, let them cooperate. Wards of the State are not self-reliant, competent, independent individuals. In freedom, individuals build good character. In freedom, relationships are strengthened; societies become more virtuous. Harry Browne wrote an article on this topic that addresses the issue quite well.
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"Faith designates blind acceptance of certain ideational content, acceptance induced by feeling in the absence of proof. - Leonard Peikoff
"The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only is a short-circuit destroying the mind.
--Ayn Rand
Refusal to make judgments over right/wrong, good/evil is pro-chaos stagnation. A stagnant society is a dying society. The chaos becomes more and more prevalent as a society's order comes unravelled.
I reject that definition as wholly false. The dictionary doesn't try to pigeon-hole faith in this manner and I would ask that you not do so either. Faith is action towards an anticipated but not yet realized result. That's it. It is simple and not mystic. Faith isn't limited to the sphere of the divine - it is a product of man's inability to discern the reality of the future and instead forces man to speculate on the possibility instead.
The example about jumping out of a plane is pure hyperbole and especially ridiculous to anyone who believes in God. Faith would be jumping out WITH a parachute: you have full expectation that the parachute will open but until it actually does, you have only anticipation - not reality. Looking forward to a future event and acting to reach it is faith.
Faith becomes reality once the goal is achieved. It is when you prove that A = A. Until that happens, you only theorize it. You act with faith to put forth effort and expend the resources necessary to test the theory. A person under the influence of fear doesn't act to test the theory - regardless of how logical the idea is. A fearful person never opens his own business despite a great idea. A fearful person never climbs into the plane to go skydiving. A fearful person never takes risks - despite the logic that tells him that the payout is worth it. Fear stymies logic.
Jan
(In fact, most immigrants to the US in the 19th and 20th century were tired of the paternalism prevalent in Europe. Although I had heard the Irish brought with them the idea that gov't should take care of people, but I don't know if that is true!--My Italian grandparents were given a book by Customs, stating that the streets in America were not paved with gold, as they might believe, but if they worked hard and saved for the future, they would do well)
Anyway, it's obvious the French Revolution degenerated in "The Terror" and "The Paris Mob" (Mob Rule) and eventually a takeover by someone who was needed to establish order out of chaos. The fact that he then set out to conquer the rest of the world might teach us something of the psychology of those whose dominance is at the same time necessary but can lead to a concentration of power.
Our founders were perplexed at the difference between the two revolutions, Madison thinking it might be that individuals, acting alone, can show restraint, whereas people acting as a group--mob, do not have the same restraints
Your assertions not withstanding, I am NOT an anarchist as you would apparently define that word. I am a student of "anarchology", a word which I carefully define as "The study of why and how spontaneous order arises in societies without coercive rulers." This is a most fascinating subject for which much empirical data is available in addition to the many scholarly works by Rand and numerous equally worthy thinkers such as von Mises to name just one.
You apparently lump both coercive and non-coercive governance (the latter also frequently being referred to as voluntary cooperation) under one moniker - "government". Both I and Wikipedia would disagree, but hey, if that works for you, knock yourself out.
So, in the hope of finding some common ground, let me be clear about this. I have no objections to voluntary governance (let's just call it "objectivist government", if you will). It is only the coercive kind which I object to on the basis of both reason and the seemingly overwhelming empirical evidence of its abject failure.
It's very interesting that you mention Joan d'Arc, as she was a quintessential example of faith. She saw a vision and moved forward with the intent to carry it out. She had faith that she could accomplish the goal and dispelled the fear that prevents many from doing the same. Faith is the opposite of fear.
I see people all the time who despite rationally acknowledging that one path is better, lack the drive or motivation (I call it faith) to change - to take the path. They are _afraid_. Reason is critical to identifying the path, but faith gets you moving down it.
But your question as to cause and effect is interesting, and decidedly hard to answer.
Perhaps if we compare the American Revolution (unique in the history of mankind) and the French or Russian Revolutions, we can at least obtain some of the understanding needed to add focus to your question.
France had a large population of dependent people, unused to self-reliance, and choice-making.
(To Be Continued)
"Stepping into the great unknown can be a terrifying thing when one is relying on only a vision for a guide." That's why man makes plans. To carry out his visions. You can build a plan from your faith, but without reason, you might as well have no plan. Faith, in and of itself, will not see you delivered from a concentration camp, build a tidy retirement, flee a police state. Look to History to see this. Even Joan of Arc had goals and worked to achieve them. I think for the wrong reasons, but...
After good and evil are clearly delineated, then we must have a society that values the good and encourages the good.
But reason is not everything. There must also be faith. I think many choices are clear and obvious, but people lack the faith to pick the road with the better destination because the path may be difficult or somewhat nebulous. Stepping into the great unknown can be a terrifying thing when one is relying on only a vision for a guide.
If life is what we want to achieve (long range) for ourselves than it is the source we must secure and it must be our focus; to hell with the would be tyrants and the unvirtuous if it is the source of life they wish to cut off as their means of short range survival.
, he sees an opportunity. To assume people will behave rationally and morally in all cases would be naive. Heck, even locks on doors don 't keep thieves away, they just deter
I continue to be very interested in Ms. Rand's writing, both fiction and scholarly. A few months ago I read Atlas Shrugged again; for the 4th or 5th time? I visit Galt's Gulch and other sites, read and listen to other philosophers, economist and commentators to expand my understanding of this crazy world we live in.
Rest assured that when I express an opinion, it is my own; one arrived at from decades of study and contemplation, not just a dogmatic repetition of of something I read. Shown an unfamiliar concept, I will attempt first of all to examine its merits, not to get into dead end arguments with others so I can hang on to old beliefs, but for the pure pleasure of intellectual discovery. Hey, even at my ripe old age, I might learn something! LOL
With that, I wish you all the best, keeping in mind not our differences over petty semantics, but the fact that we are traveling the same road, driven by our shared desire for freedom and a better world.
We see these effects in the degree of recovery in the Communists nations. Those that were taken over at the end of WWII, but had a good measure of freedom before that, have much more freedom now in general (Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) than is found in countries with a longer history of communist control, such as Russia, Belorussia, and Ukraine. Even many Russians who have come to the USA have a very hard time with truly respecting the property rights of others in my experience as an example of the moral conditioning they had living under communism. It is not that they thought that communism was right so much as that there was no reason to respect the value of property when all of it was owned by the state.
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