Happy recluse

I don’t see that you want to reduce suffering. I see that you want to control everyone with the (stated) goal of reducing suffering. The liberal argument never calls upon us to give to charity; it never calls upon us to work charitably. The liberal argument demands that government take control of people so it can spend the citizens’ money in the way it sees fit. If liberals were truly interested in reducing suffering, they’d work to develop charity. But their first goal is not to reduce suffering. It is to control other people.

Conservative or libertarian philosophy, as I understand it, holds that society arose to protect individual rights. By banding together we can produce a military to protect us from invaders and police to protect us from internal crime, so that we are all free to live as we choose.

Borrowing from Immanuel Kant, there can be only ONE right. A multitude of rights, such as the right to an education, to health care, to a job, etc., contradict each other. For example, my right to health care forces you to pay taxes that reduce or remove your right to an education.

Since a “right” is a freedom of action such that one’s action doesn’t interfere with someone else’s freedom of action, that singular right must be the right to be left alone. This right is the only one that can be exercised equally by everyone at the same time. This right is fundamental and basic. It is a natural right.

As I live I realize that I can interact with others in society through contracts to improve my own life. I hire you to educate my children, for example. In your agreement to the contract you pledge to give up some of your right to be left alone during certain hours of the day for specific purposes—so that you don’t become my slave—and in turn I give up my right to be left alone, i.e., my money used to pay you. Thus, everyone’s amount of the right to be alone is always constant. I “sell” my right to be left alone, to perform specific tasks, in order to get your right to the money you promised in the contract.

The only valid reason government has to take any of my money, property or time is to insure protection of my right to be alone and the rights you traded in any contracts we have together. Thus, a government may tax me for a police force, military, penal institutions, courts, etc.

There is no justification for the government’s taking my money to educate your children or provide your health care because you have no rights to those things in the first place. Such alleged rights interfere with my right to be left alone, and so they cannot be genuine rights in the first place.

Reducing suffering, helping needy people and the like are not rights that can be forced against me, but they are moral obligations. I have a moral duty to help other people.

I know that liberals are unsatisfied with a mere “moral obligation” to help other people. Liberals and socialists are unsatisfied if they cannot compel people to give up money for their worthy causes. Naturally people are charitable. There are countless instances where we are charitable simply because human beings are “bent” to help each other. The book, Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks, cites instance-after-instance where conservatives are clearly more charitable than liberals. Again, this evidence shows that liberals are not interested in helping other people so much as they are interested in forcing the rest us to help other people, but only as liberals see fit.