Are you really Pro-Liberty? Walter Williams lays it out
A BRILLIANT piece. Simple yet powerful including the definition of rights starting with self-ownership.
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You own yourself and you alone are responsible for your actions, and for producing enough economically to support yourself and your actions.
Do they have rights? Absolutely, but those rights are subordinate to their respective guardians. If the State wants to sue to assume guardianship and thereby take on that role for children or invalids when such need arises, I see no problem with that and no conflict with Williams' statements.
You made a flat statement that sounds nice, but is questionable on many grounds.
Public streets? We can imagine a science fiction world of pure laissez faire, but it would be just that: science fiction. We have a huge public sector, and always have. Williams accepts that as a given, while stating obliquely that we have an obligation to pay via taxation for "necessary" government services.
We say as a mantra that government must be limited to army, police, and courts of law. Ayn Rand said that and no conservative of stature has disagreed yet. We dislike the income tax, even though it was a proper amendment to the Constitution. All taxation is theft, if you accept the premise. Even John Marshall's famous dictum - The power to tax is the power to destroy - has relevance to that amendment and why we dislike it. But the fundamental contradiction in the Constitution has never been seriously address. Even here, the two discussions did not go far.
What is the relevance of all of that here? Walter Williams' essay sounded nice until you examine it for content.
The problem with conservatives, as Ayn Rand pointed out 70 years ago, is that they have no consistent philosophy to inform their political theories, so they advance a mix of "traditional" adages that simply cannot work. They are as lost as the liberals, only lost down a different path.
I agree, but in the 80s I thought real competition for telephone service would not be possible in my lifetime because you'd have to find some way to run the wires in parallel and invent and open protocol for all the phones to talk to one another. I'm a sci-fi fan.
"For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, food assistance, or any other good or service whether a person can afford it or not does diminish someone else’s rights—namely, their right to their earnings."
That contradicts the earlier statement that we have an obligation to pay taxes for "necessary" things, so that is not legalized theft.
Also, it ignores "the forgotten person" (which is why she is forgotten). Williams acknowledges that you have a right to irrational discrimination on the basis of your right to freedom of association, but does not identify the fact that mandated medical care, mandated schooling, and all the rest, deny freedom of association to the providers. (Ayn Rand wrote about "The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine" i.e., the doctor whose life is now handed over to others.)
"To condemn legalized theft is not an argument against taxes to finance the constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government. We are all obligated to pay our share of those."
Williams accepts some implicit status quo Constitution understood by "most" conservatives, but never identified explicitly. We have had at least two discussions here on contradictions in the Constitution. Just to take one relevant here, the Bill of Rights guarantees you a jury trial in any civil suit involving more than $20. Forget the actual dollar amount. By what right am is money taken from me to provide you with a negotiated settlement of a private dispute?
I do note that Williams' arguments will be ignored by the Tea Party, a majority of whom believe that Social Security and Medicare are good programs.
As for "offensive" speech on college campuses or anywhere else, I have to agree with the principle that the obnoxious should be silenced for the public good. Here in Austin, we had a street corner preacher with a megaphone who shouted his gospel. He even accosted women verbally, calling them whores of Babylon if they looked like prostitutes to him. This was downtown central, Sixth and Congress. In the building that I was guarding, one of the tenants moved at the end of his lease to get away from the racket. To me, the preacher was clearly violating the rights of other people by depriving them of the value of their property. His shouting the gospel was no different than releasing noxious fumes into their offices. His verbal assaults were only less threatening than waving about a gun, but not different in principle.
For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, food assistance, or any other good or service whether a person can afford it or not does diminish someone else’s rights—namely, their right to their earnings.
You wrote: "That contradicts the earlier statement that we have an obligation to pay taxes for "necessary" things, so that is not legalized theft."
Read the statement again. It simply says that one right can not diminish another.
"Williams acknowledges that you have a right to irrational discrimination on the basis of your right to freedom of association, but does not identify the fact that mandated medical care, mandated schooling, and all the rest, deny freedom of association to the providers."
It doesn't support the notion either. Just because he doesn't specifically address the topic of your choice doesn't mean he supports it either. Again, you're reading far too much of what you want into the article that simply isn't there, but don't construe that for implicit acceptance. For a more thorough examination of his views, go read more articles from this author.
"Williams accepts some implicit status quo Constitution understood by "most" conservatives, but never identified explicitly."
Good grief, what a stretch. The entire article refers to the US Constitution. Anyone who wants to can go read it (the Constitution). It is remarkable not only for its thought, but its brevity as well.
"By what right am is money taken from me to provide you with a negotiated settlement of a private dispute?"
If you agree that the Court system is available to everyone for such contract resolution, you also agree to provide for public access to that venue via taxation. That is why many contracts also provide for private arbitration as an alternative road. Again, you're reaching.
"I do note that Williams' arguments will be ignored by the Tea Party, a majority of whom believe that Social Security and Medicare are good programs."
A broad generalization if I ever heard one. And are you talking about the "official" Tea Party - the one co-opted by the left or the real "Tea Party" that gathered on the Mall tens of thousands strong? I know many who self-identify with the aims of the Tea Party and believe Social Security and Medicare are States issues - not the purview of the Federal Government.
"As for "offensive" speech on college campuses or anywhere else..."
As with any right, it ends where it begins to infringe on someone else's right. In practical terms, that means that there are appropriate times and places and means for expressing one's opinion. Does the preacher in your example have the right to stand in public places and preach? Yes, he does. Does he have the right to use a megaphone to do it? That's where we start to get into a real question because by the same token, protesters often use megaphones to address their groups. Speech may be obnoxious, but the general principle is that if we can reasonably ignore it, we really don't have much of a claim that it is infringing upon our rights. And when that same megaphone then gets mounted to a building to project a call to prayer every day at all hours of the day, I think that at that point it becomes a public nuisance and can be Constitutionally restricted as falling outside the bounds of protected Speech.
"To condemn legalized theft is not an argument against taxes to finance the constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government. We are all obligated to pay our share of those."
This is where I see a twist in the clear pro-liberty message of this article. There are clear problems with calling healthcare a right. But I do not thing all cases of using taxpayer dollars to buy someone else's healthcare, education, disability insurance, etc are theft. If doing it provides benefits similar to jails (a huge if b/c social programs often do not work), then I cannot see funding them as theft more than punitive programs. This argument seems to me to say gov't can't do anything that remotely smacks of being helpful. The Constitution only allows, this argument goes, to do things that hurt people. I understand the emotional part of this reaction, since gov't promises to take over huge areas of people's lives, and many people seem to like it. But like how I think right is sacred, so is theft. We shouldn't call gov't actions we think are a good idea "rights" or actions we don't like "theft".