The Canadian Farce of Rights and Freedoms #2

Rights and Freedoms Permissions in Canada.

If you are a classically liberal thinker like myself you probably believe in the notion of unalienable rights, which is to say Rights as a precondition to living ones life as a man; To me and those like me rights are an intrinsic necessity to living as opposed to merely existing in this world.

Well, the talking heads that wrote and lawyered the Charter don't believe in Rights like that. As a matter of fact I don't think they believe in Rights at all, only the power of the state.

The second sentence of the Charter is called "Rights and Freedoms in Canada" now that is a tall order, or at least you would think it would be a hard thing to cram into a single solitary sentence but the sentence really has nothing to do with Rights and freedoms and everything to do with who will allow you, and when you will be allowed to have rights and freedoms.

It states in full; "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

This is the first of many caveats in the Charter, and like all the others it is strategically placed to nullify any statement that could give the impression that Rights and Freedoms are a part of human nature as opposed to a permission granted to men at the whim of the state/government/some random constitutional lawyer.

Read that sentence. If you do so without mincing words you will immediately recognize its intent. Were you to simplify the sentence , boiling it down to its absolute meaning it would read... The Government has decided exactly what permissions you have to act and live your life and it will also decide when you will be permitted to do so.

In other words... your rights are what we say they are when we say they are.

So much for the "Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms".

The Canadian Farce of Rights and Freedoms

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a document that chains the people of Canada to a contradiction riddled and unapologetically statist perversion of the concepts of individual freedom and liberty.

"Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"

This is the first line of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

So, in a document that claims to innumerate and codify the rights and freedoms of the people of Canada the first sentence contains a statement which, if examined rationally and without compromise, would lead to such a host of contradictions that the whole thing ought to have been thrown out of any 1st year law class.

Principle is defined in part as; a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived:

If it is true that Canada recognizes the Supremacy of God then which God?

No, there is no scope here to quibble and claim as many progressively minded people do that the statement is a generalization regarding the spiritual nature of any and all belief in a supernatural deity or notion, because to claim that is to allow a multitude of contradictions.

Remember the word "principles"? Well religions in Canada - which are the earthy manifestation of "God" - who according to our charter is "supreme" - don't recognize or even allow the same principles to be exercised. While some sects of the Christian religion recognize in principle (and action) the right of two men or two women to marry, the Catholic God most certainly does not; and that is one of the more benign contradictions of the notion of "principle" that this fallacious statement incurs.

Who's principle wins?

What sort of principle (fundamental, primary, or general law or truth) if any is upheld?

If you claim that the sentence is merely a recognition of spirituality what principles do we hold as true and which ones are the ones our nation is actually founded upon?

If we as a society get to pick and choose which "principles" we allow our nameless, faceless, secular Deity-thing to actually count as our founding principles why do we bother even trying to shroud the first sentence of this aberration of Rights in a spiritual cloak in the first place?

As for the remainder of the sentence, I have no complaint with the principle of "the rule of Law". That is not to say that I don't have issue with the things that we have been saddled with as "Law" but I'll get into those points as I delve further into this despicable document.

Destroyer.

I haven't been writing much lately, and although the new job has something to do with that I'm beginning to recognize the other main contributing factor, and that is what I'm focusing on today.

Basically I'm feeling politically disenfranchised, which is to say that the harder I look at society, the accepted system of morality and state of government the more it upsets, disgusts and alienates me.

As much as I believe that a properly constrained government is achievable, I am more sure each and every day that such a thing can not be created within or upon the current framework of any western democratic state. The Keynesian economic morass, corrupt political principles, moral bankruptcy and culture of entitlement both within these governments and within the general population makes the dream of building a laissez faire "purse" out of this "sows ear" a practical impossibility.

The whole mess needs to be destroyed, wholly and utterly destroyed. But more than the real and actual act of destruction is required, it must all be tied explicitly to the flawed premises that predicate the need for destruction.

In economics the boom and bust of our Keynesian economies must be explicitly tied to the idiocy of fiat currency and deficit spending, while at the same time the strength and self-correcting nature of a free market must be championed. The lunacy of handing economic control to elected but clueless officials or government bureaucrats should be writ large in the blood and sweat of the failures of that system. The businessman should take his rightful spot as the champion of the economic world and the politician and the bureaucrat should be relegated to purely political issues.

In politics we must kill the idea that government is an institution responsible for providing anything except a framework within which our individual rights (life, liberty and property) are protected from the initiation of force. It can not accomplish that goal by promising to serve any but the interest of the singular individual. No man, no group and no interest, however seemingly noble can ever be championed over the individual. There can be no law upholding the "rights" of women, or gays or consumers or blacks, or the poor, as each and every one of these demographic groups is explicitly consumed by the term "individual" and to rule in the favour of a single group is to destroy the rights of every individual outside of that group.

Our morality needs to be tied to this world, to our lives and to our purpose. This world is where we need our morality and what we need our morality for is living, not some absurd promise of an afterlife, or as some cosmic balancing act. Once that simple principle is recognized it is quite easy to see that the moral object of our lives is in the living, and that living with joy, and purpose is the good. All moral acts are those that serve us individually in the true achievement of our own happiness and our own goals and our own purpose.

Morality is not a floating abstraction that can be summarized in a few simplistic edicts. We exist as thinking rational individuals and as a result our morality must be based on the situations we find ourselves in. To declare "thou shall not kill" as a moral imperative, is an abuse of thought that demands that every moral man submit and become subservient to any immoral brute.

Perhaps the cornerstone of all of this is the need to recognize that the mere act of mortal existence, which is to say, drawing a breath as a human being entitles us to nothing. Even the unalienable rights of life, liberty and property must be secured somehow. Nature does not grant the right to live, only the ability to seek to live, nature will not give us liberty, only the ability to create liberty and nature will not bestow upon us property of any sort, only the will to create it in our own name for our own use.

The world as it is, as we have made it (thus far) is one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with reason, nature and the facts of reality. Our current societies (all of them) are a perversion of misguided morality, incorrect economic theory, corrupt politics and undeserved rewards. It all needs to be destroyed. It must be destroyed, before it can be replaced with;

• a moral code based on mans life and the living of it,
  
• an economic system based on and working in coordination with markets and market forces,
  
• politics based on and in service to individual rights and only individual rights and,
• the rational and selfish rejection of entitlement in favour of self-reliance and productive effort in all aspects of our individual lives, whatever our ability.
  

Being Dog Walked to the Ultimate Inversion

This is disgusting.

We have already determined the legal ages of certain aspects of our society, and this is reasonable. Although one might argue about the arbitrary establishment of a certain age for certain privileges, the need to have an appropriate level of maturity is not in question in most cases.

The reason that we have set 16 as the age limit for driving is because the majority believe that at that age most teens are mature enough to be given the responsibility. McGuinty decided that that was not good enough and instituted the graduated licencing system citing facts which listed young drivers as being more liable to be involved in an accident. Now he's extending the reach of the nanny state even more. Changing the rules again, shifting the goal posts away from personal responsibility. More control for the state, less responsibility for individuals. Death by a thousand cuts along the long road to the ultimate inversion.

Paternal is too timid a term for this school marm turned political hand holder.

Look at this legislation closely and you will see that the driving force behind this, and the graduated licence system is a deep distrust of the ability of individuals to act reasonably and rationally. It also incorporates the deep seated belief that the job of government extends far past protecting the rights of citizens to the belief that government needs to must protect its citizens from themselves.

That kind of forced benevolence is one shackle short of a set of manacles. McGuinty and all those who think like him would have us behave like dogs on a chain, with the great hand of government holding the other end, ready to haul us up short should we happen to stray off their preferred path. Actually, in McGuinty's case it is worse. Having already told us to "heel" he feels the need to constantly pull the chain tighter till we are choking in obedience.

The thing a statist like McGuinty will never understand is that individual liberty and freedom not only means that you can do all that is legal but it also allows that you as an individual have the ability to make a mistake, regardless of the consequences. Indeed, consequences that are understood and known beforehand are a mark of a free society. Not allowing an individual to make a mistake is a sign of totalitarianism.

This guy has to go.

More Government Never Made Anyone Free

I agree with Michael Den Tandt’s article here, when he says that Canadians aren’t buying what politicians are trying to sell in this country but, as usual I take a more extreme view of what is needed to rectify the problem and I see in Mr. Den Tandt's solutions more problems still.

He starts with the sacred cow of Canadian politics, health care and admonishes the MP’s to “increase private-sector involvement” but then he himself raises the spectre of the evil corporations taking control… Newsflash for , well, practically everyone in Canada… Businesses especially large ones have an economy of scale and a method of operation that make things more affordable and their processes more adaptive than both government and smaller operators.

Don’t believe me? Go to your local Mom and Pop shop and buy practically anything… Now find the same product at Wal Mart and tell me which is more expensive. This isn’t just a fluke it is an actual principle of business economics and a central feature of a capitalist (as opposed to socialist) system.

Next Mr. Den Tandt asks for an increase in the GST back up to the 7% that it was before the current government cut it to 5%. I want to connect this with points #5 which is to “Stop taxing artists, musicians, actors, novelists, filmmakers and poets for their first $30,000” and #6 which adds farmers into the mix.

Now if you are going to rely on taxation as Mr. Den Tandt seems want to do, then what sense does it make to cut in one place just to gouge in another? He might also want to look at the tax rates. If he did he would see that people who make $30,000 a year are already taxed very little, in this country but the GST he wants to increase is a consumption tax and hits everyone (and cutting it helps everyone) equally. If Mr. Den Tandt really wants to help these people who are… wait for it… actually small business owners, then he would instead be calling for an elimination of corporate taxation instead on trying to game a broken system.

The third point he makes is to call for government to “Get behind renewable energy, in a serious way.” Mr. Den Tandt should check the figures. The cost of producing Wind & Solar energy is at least 5 times what it is for traditional sources. Scrap this greenista pipe dream and move toward building new and cheap (in terms of the cost of energy) nuclear power plants. Oh, and do it through private business so it will be done in a timely manner and on or under budget.

Point number 4 is to get back to “Participaction”… Seriously that is not really what we need, although exercise is good and it is good to encourage people to do it what is needed is some serious consideration of changing the Canadian diet. Paleo is the way to go in my opinion, but failing that we need to eat real food, not the processed, carb-laden, gluten-soaked crap that we have been feeding ourselves. In my opinion the Canada food guides reliance on carbohydrates over protein and healthy fats to generate energy is the single greatest cause of the obesity in our society today. But in the end there is no place for the government to tell people what they must eat or how they must live. These decisions must be based on the individuals desire and that can't be institutionalized.

Although I already touched on points #5, this time I’ll tackle it from another angle altogether. Artists, musicians, actors, novelists, filmmakers and poets do add considerably to the cultural richness of any society but here’s the rub. In order for this contribution to be real, lasting and honest the people, individuals within the society have to support them.

I know what many of you are thinking, how does that differ from Mr Den Tandt’s point?

Well, he is asking for the force of a government gun to take tax money, to FORCE us to support them. I am saying that in order to survive the artists, musicians, actors, novelists, filmmakers and poets must produce a product that people WANT.

If any other business (and these occupations all fall into that category) were to try to demand subsidies, on the basis that no one will willingly buy their products, so we all ought to pay for them to continue to make something no one wants, the uproar would be deafening. But that is exactly what artists ask for time and again and what Mr. Den Tandt supports in this article.

Next the author calls for Canadians to “Get back to the basic values of thrift, hard work, responsibility and politeness…” in and of itself this request is not terrible but then it becomes so when he adds… “Start by passing a law that says parliamentarians must show personal respect toward each other in the House. But then extend it beyond that. Canadian children are graduating high school with great technological skills but lacking some of the basic tools of deportment.”

Pardon my lack of deportment Mr. Den Tandt but WTF do you think gives government the right to regulate manners? This is nothing short of some sort of Victorian puritan fascism. Who’s manners? Are we talking High society etiquette here or something less stringent? Do we need a Manners Czar and Behavioural Police Mr. Den Tandt? To hell with that Jack!

Next Mr. Den Tandt calls for one of the half measures that characterizes both the right and the left in this country… He wants the long gun registry cancelled. Here’s the thing, the exact same reason that the Long Gun registry is a farce and a huge waste of taxpayers money also applies to hand guns and every other prohibited weapon in the country. At its root it is an attack on property rights. Beyond that principle it is ridiculous to label a weapon as dangerous. The weapon is a tool just like any other it has no will it can not BE dangerous in and of itself.

Additionally it is a bald-faced application of the concept of a thought crime to deny any adult the ownership of a weapon because he/she might kill someone with it. Why don’t these prohibitionists come out and say what they mean…

“No, you can’t own that 357 magnum because I think you are a killer and I don’t want you to have one. Yes the rifle is okay, as long as we know, because you won’t be able to kill as many people with that”

Do you see how insulting that is? It’s like telling people they can have a computer but no internet access because they would only surf kiddie-porn if they could get on the net.

The ninth point starts off well, calling for an end to the Reserve system. Mr. Den Tandt correctly recognizes it as the reason that in a country like Canada with all its wealth and promise there are little pockets of the third world and they are the Indian reserves. I also agree with his call that the law be applied equally to all.

As for the last point it is useless window dressing. You can make people “swear” to do anything but you can’t actually MAKE them abide by that oath.

Canada has to become a place where the people coming to its shores see enough value in it to change their ways. They ought to respect the culture of the country and more than that, have come here for its freedoms (not its social programs). Being a Canadian should be their highest priority their most fervent wish. They should want to change their culture for the better. Honour killings are a crime and they should be treated as such with the full weight of the law behind their prosecution, not empty rhetoric.

On the whole I’m disappointed in this list. If this is the sort of thinking that passes for innovative and progressive in this country then we are hurting. Less government, not more is the way to develop economically, socially and culturally. Stop looking to the government to solve your problems or to implement your pet solutions. Stand up for yourself, stand up for individualism and individual rights and check your premises.

More government never made anyone free.

Fighting for Freedom (The new American Revolution)

After months of trickery, bribes, backroom deals and outright lies, the Healthcare bill passed in the Congress yesterday.

American's will now have to fight for their freedoms.

The question is how to do so?

The answer seems so stunningly simple and obvious; massive civil disobedience against government healthcare. Do the ruling elites have the ability to function if two million TEA partiers refuse to pay income tax or buy "mandated" insurance? How about five million or so FOX viewers? How about 20 million Rush Limbaugh listeners? Courts would be paralyzed, all government functions would be shut down and there are not enough ACORN and SEIU brownshirts to enforce obedience (I doubt they are more than fair weather friends who would melt away at the first serious sign of opposition anyway).

As America goes so do we in Canada (and the rest of the world), so we need to see that light of freedom. Keep up the good fight.

A true plan to revive the economy

Stockwell Day is now Canada's Treasury Minister, and will have to make cuts to government spending amounting to about 8% to reduce spending by $19 billion over the next five years. To make this palatable to voters and the opposition parties, transfer payments are to be considered "untouchable". There is a lot of fat in terms of programs which are either not delivering what is promised, have outlived their usefulness or are mismanaged and can be reorganized to run more efficiently. Consider that large corporations like Canadian Tire or Wal-Mart typically only have five layers of management, while government departments have convoluted structures with multiple layers of management (reputedly as many as 30, but I'll leave that as anecdotal until I see proof)

I think the emphasis on protecting transfers is wrong headed, but that is because I don't see the idea of the State seizing wealth and property from the productive to give to political rent seekers and the non productive as being a proper role for the State.

However, given political reality, cutting transfers to individuals would be electoral suicide, so about $61 billion is untouchable.

We can still look at other areas like transfers to governments (especially governments with their own sources of revenue like offshore oil or hydro), which gives us another $46 billion to work with.

Subsidies should be cut for another @ $30 billion

Crown corporations should be cut as well, since that provides another $8 billion

Adding that up, we can get $84 billion in cuts. Sustained for six years this would allow the entire national debt to be paid off, and if the program is sustained for 12 years then all unfunded liabilities (CPP, pensions, etc.) are also covered.

Not included in this virtuous circle is the possibility of reductions in operating expenses due to the ending of so many programs, and of course the reduction of the $30 billion/year in debt payments. Real tax cuts can be made from the savings here, energizing the economy and in all likelyhood speeding up the entire process through increased tax revenues.

Here is a real program to get behind: don't leave the debt to our grandchildren but pay it off before our children leave school!

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

W.E. Henley

Resist...

Thanks to avgleandt

The Nature of Governments

We’ve heard it all before… “Government is a necessary evil.” Well, that is a lie, and a dangerous lie at that.

By implication the statement seems to say that if we dumb humans could only get it right we could exist in a society free of government. This is the anarchist dream, but even they recognize the need for the protection of rights, for national and personal security. However, their solution is not governmental but private. They say that a society let a man hire a company to protect his rights that he could be safe, that he would be protected.

Of course that all falls disastrously apart when Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith each having hired different security forces both maintain their rights have been violated and each attempts to have the other arrested for the transgression. Protection Company “A” plus Protection Company “B” minus the stability of a single government equals bloodbath.

Alternatively such anarchy panders to the far too human tendency toward the principal that might makes right and gangs, private armies and warlords turn the anarchist utopia into a Hobbesian life, cruel, brutish and short.

On the other side of the coin is the belief that Government, (still as a necessary evil) is what makes a society, that it is an end in itself, that it is more important than any one man. The socialist and communist while promising that someday the state will “whither away” still believe in it indeed they make it the causus beli of their society.

In following the false notion of collective rights, they come to believe that in order to provide what is “good” to “all” it is necessary to destroy the concept and meaning of the individual. “You” as an entity do not exist. You are a cog in the wheel, insignificant when measured against the needs of others. What others? The others. What need? Their need. Who is the “all” that they are working so hard for? Why it’s anyone but you, the individual.

So where does this leave us? Well, to be honest, metaphysically it leaves us way, way back before government and politics and society ever enter into the picture, but that is a subject for another day so let me just make a “simple” assertions here.

The previous two extremes attempted, or claimed to protect mans rights. What essential right is it that the Anarchist and the Socialist seek to protect? Mans right to life.

Life is the right from which all other rights spring, be they true rights like liberty and property or false printing press rights like the right to healthcare or to a job.

Can one sell a right, or hire it out? Certainly not.

Who has a life worthy of the term right? Society, a nation, some group, government or gang? No.

Only an individual can possess rights and no individual can ever hold his rights higher than the rights of another. And it is that principle that brings us to the nature, purpose and necessity of government.

Government is necessary to protect the rights of individuals, to ensure that their rights are held on par with all other individuals. No mans position, strength, wealth, need or wants can ever place his rights above the rights of another man. That assurance is the sole function of government, it is not evil, it is just and proper and rational.

How a government approaches the defence of individual rights defines its nature. The anarchist disallows government as the arbiter of disputes and consequently the protector of rights, so rights are destroyed.

The socialist perverts the concept of rights and applies it to some nameless, faceless undefined collective making slaves of all.

The welfare statist attempts to make rights out of needs consequentially following the socialists path to hell.

And finally religionists of whatever political persuasion subverts mans right to live his own life for the commandments of some supernatural fairy tale and the promise of something better when he is dead..

So the next time you hear someone say that government is a necessary evil ask him to name which evil he prefers more, slavery, servitude or death.

Hippocrates Shrugged

In Obama's America, health care manages you...

45 percent of American physicians “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement”

In the event that this 45% of doctors follow through, that would leave the rest not in a profession but in virtual slavery.

EDIT
An excellent post from F.I.R.M. (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine) to add fuel to your intellectual fire.

Getting away from it all: more about sea steading, micronations and finding a physical Galt's Gulch

The discussion on Libertarian seasteads, space colonies and micronations is opening up again on the blog "Next Big Future" This link is to only one of the articles, others exist here and here.

The basic argument is how could freedom loving people escape from the current mess of redistributive politics? Simply up and leaving civilization isn't much of an option, every piece of the land area of Earth has been claimed by one State entity or another, and even the open oceans are patrolled by navies eager to exert the sovereign power of the State wherever resources and trade routes exist that can benefit the State.

While it is possible to find some very out of the way area that has essentially been abandoned by central State control, there are probably good reasons for this, including relative inaccessibility, lack of resources and the presence of competing non state actors attempting to create their own areas of control. The determined freedom seeker would have to be extremely tough, resourceful and willing to battle it out with FARC, the Taliban or similar groups, as well as doing without hot and cold running water.

I suspect only the very smallest minority of readers fall into this category, so joining the John Galt strike and making provisions to disconnect yourself from the grid through some form of urban homesteading is probably the most realistic path open to the majority of readers.

There is the delicious irony of turning the various memes of the Progressives against them while becoming a successful citizen of  the distributed or virtual "Galt's Gulch". Generating your own energy and home schooling your children to "reduce your carbon footprint", growing your own produce to "only eat food from within 100 km" and other activities that increase your standard of living while reducing your tax contributions to the State; now we are starting not only to join John Galt, but also his confederate Ragnar Danneskjöld, who recovers wealth from the looters.

For people determined to build real as opposed to virtual or distributed Galt's Gulches, there are a few possible options left. A billionaire or corporation with libertarian inclinations might choose to "buy" a small city or create the physical infrastructure of a self contained city within a city (something along the lines of the classical Arcology concept). Encouraging migration of like minded people to single geographic areas might also work to build a voting block which could swing elections, and this moment in history could make it possible, considering the collapse of housing values in many parts of the United States. (The downside is most of the collapse is in the Democrat controlled "Blue States", so even fully libertarian municipalities would be held hostage by intrusive State governments).

The timeline to create a Galt's Gulch is very tight, with an apocalyptic financial crisis looming in the relatively near future. US Medicare is projected to go bankrupt in 2016, and Social Security soon after. The increase of the annual deficits by the Obama administration to almost 2 trillion a year means the United States itself could exhaust the accumulated stock of American wealth in under 25 years, much sooner once the unfunded liabilites are factored in. Certainly the surviving institutions of the State will take extreme measures to maintain their hold on power as the economy crumbles under them, and we need to get ready not only to survive and repel the agents of the State desperate to seize our wealth for their own survival, but also the chaos that will follow the collapse.

Charter cities in the desert, sea steads, urban homesteads and other nodes of civilization need to be prepared, and more importantly, people need to be prepared and educated to survive the new realities. Every attempt to meld anti-politics (i.e. the John Galt Strike combined with creating the best Galt's gulch that is physically possible) with local political action to reduce the power and effects of the State from intruding into your lives will serve to soften the blow when it does come.

Freedom is a self help project!

It Really Is That Simple...

H/T Kelly

Liberties

The gulf between any progressive modern liberal and any laissez faire capitalist is as wide as one single word. The word is liberty.

A laissez faire capitalist speaks of liberties which are prohibitions placed on the state and all other men for the benefit of the individual. The right to life, liberty and property, properly construed limit the civil authority and civil interactions in the favour of the individual.

A progressive modern liberal uses the word to describe liberties that are claims made against the freedoms of some or all of the individuals within a polity. Who makes these claims? Well, society does. Who is society? Well, comes the answer, we all are... collectively

But that answer is and must be a lie.

Societies are made up of individuals, that is the one and only non-divisible entity within them. A demand made by "society" is nothing more than the force and will of some applied against the individuals. Some of this force is applied by politicians to satisfy the nebulous and whim-driven "will of the people" (which amounts to some of the people, some of the time) and some is applied by, of and for the political class, the politicians, the influence peddlers and pressure groups.

Almost as damaging as this force is the philosophical attachment of these two concepts to polar opposite connotations. The branding of the classic (real) liberties as "negative" and the progressive (false) as "positive" has become, in my opinion, the most astounding piece of doublespeak ever accomplished.

The subliminal assurance is that with "positive liberties" we are gaining freedom, with "negative liberties" we are loosing them.

But when one realizes that you can not, by definition, use force against the will of some in order to claim you are granting a "liberty" to all, it becomes obvious that "society" as an entity is undefined and undefinable and declaring a liberty in its name is at best utterly senseless and in fact it is utterly impossible.

With this realization comes the revelation that the only true unit of measure in a "society" is the individual. As a corollary it is realized that anything done for "society" as a whole will necessarily violate the real liberties of the individual. The liberty to live life in the manner of your choosing. The Liberty to be free of compulsion, fraud and force. And finally the liberty of all men to own, in the purest sense of that word, all that they create and all that they earn.

These liberties make no demand on other men.

So the next time someone says that 'such and such is a right or ought to be a right' ask yourself what this right demands, who it demands payment, sacrifice or duty from, and judge accordingly.