Tag Archive for freedom at Zeal For Truth

Tag Archive for 'freedom'

Why Ron Paul Won in 2008

Published by Colin June 5, 2008 in Essays, Politics and Current Events. 40 Comments

With a headline like this, it must be first mentioned that this is not a paranoid conspiratorial piece on how delegates were STOLEN (all caps), votes weren’t counted or the major media somehow sabotaged the Ron Paul campaign. Rather, it is important to take a realistic look at the goals that Ron Paul’s campaign set out to accomplish, and examine how he fared.

First of all, did Ron Paul actually enter this election to win? Before we start getting our competitive juices flowing, just think about what Ron Paul stands for and what a realistic assessment of this kind of “victory” would have meant. He would have gone to the Oval Office with a congress that absolutely hated and loathed him, departments that feared him and would fight him as though their jobs were at stake (which they would be) and a public (after fickle popular support had waned) which was bewildered with the kind of radical policies and actions that were coming from the president. A Ron Paul presidency may have destroyed the best fruits of his candidacy.

Ron Paul’s campaign has always been a bottom-up phenomenon. Secondly, it is a more purely philosophical and ideological agenda - rather than a pragmatic political one. While many have criticized that this is a bad thing - is it not more beneficial in the long-term to sacrifice an election in order to generate hundreds of thousands of individual awakenings to liberty?

Rather than being humble, Paul was being very honest when he said countless times that the campaign wasn’t about him, but about the people who supported him. Paul’s campaign jarred the intellectually lazy and cynical over a few months (which may have been all they needed), and made them take a moment to consider what freedom, consitutionalism and liberty really mean. He showed us what a free society should look like.

This is key, because rather than end up in a politically neutered position of central power, Ron Paul has lit the spark of changed hearts and minds. And for those that have not changed, especially many conservatives, they have had to reconsider what kind of GOP they now support. Paul’s campaign was in the spotlight for enough time to act as a mirror against the new GOP - and show conservatives just how long it’s been since they took a good look at themselves - many of them no longer recognizing their own faces.

Ron Paul’s expectations have been wildly exceeded by his campaign. For the first time in decades, there is an active block of people who are learning about the evils of central banking, empire-building and welfarism. These aren’t the crazies and kooks who were in the cracks of society, burying guns in Idaho - these are regular folks, who work regular jobs and have become evangelical about the message of freedom.

This movement, which has been scattered and divided across the spectrum: libertarians, constitutionalists, republicans, democrats, independents, anarchists and even some former socialists have been united under Paul’s big tent platform. And while it may be easy to ridicule the conspiracy theorists, it is a testimony to the movement that they now join with college professors, intellectuals and businessmen. Or the atheists, homosexual activists and objectivists now aligning with radical Christians and New Agers. These people now realize that they have more in common than they once thought - and while disagreements remain, there is now more than a undefined dissatisfaction with what has happened in America, but a visible way out.

John McCain or Barack Obama will go to the White House in 2008. But their policies, which favour a continuation of America’s slow decline into the also-rans of history, will prove Ron Paul right again. People like BJ Lawson, Murray Sabrin and Carl Bunce are setting themselves up as future advocates. Many of these would have never thought to seek political office, but have been inspired by the optimism and hope that Ron Paul exampled.

Ron Paul won in 2008, by taking the exact opposite approach of most politicians. Instead of coalition building, compromising, pandering and standing for nothing and everything at the same time, Paul explicitly denounced the problems we have created and boldly proclaimed the solutions found in freedom and liberty. Ron Paul has mobilized many in the coming generation to build a better future. This long-term investment may not have resulted in an immediate gratification, but over time, compounded with interest, this movement may very well pay off.

Global Warming: The Real Crisis

Published by Sadie December 18, 2007 in Politics. 30 Comments

Global warming is perhaps the most discussed “global” issue in news media today. Turn on the radio, television, or hop onto the internet and somehow the issue of global warming is waiting to be debated or touted as the impending crisis of the 21st century. However, the real crisis behind the issue of global warming is freedom.

Never mind that global warming proponents would like to control your car, where and how often you drive, how much energy you consume, where you live, and all things livestock related, society nods their head and tips their hat to such notions. After all, no one really minds as long as these are suggestions or “encouragements.” Enthusiasts discuss their ideas and most people replace at least one light bulb in their house.

Politicians around the world are lobbying for better climate control laws via global treaties such as the Kyoto Treaty. In fact, the U.S. Congress is working on legislation surrounding climate change. However, aside from emission-control state laws most legislation has a small trickle down affect being aimed at corporations rather than individuals. The hat tipping and light-bulb changing continues and family life is relatively unimpacted.

Stop to consider for a moment what would happen if these aforementioned “encouragements” became law. How these laws would be enforced? The only way to enforce climate change laws is to restrict the freedom of individuals. Once a suggestion becomes law, the choice to comply is removed or rather, it is becomes a non-choice of compliance or penalty. Perhaps many people would not mind small penalties for using non-incandescent bulbs in their homes. In fact, most people don’t mind that cars are mandated to be more fuel efficient. Yet, the philosophy behind global climate change legislation is dangerous. The implication behind the “need” for such laws is that of removing the choice from individuals and giving control to governing authorities.

It grows immediately more concerning when such ideas potentially impact entire families on a personal level. Recently, politicians and professors in both Australia and Britain suggested that population control and baby carbon taxes should be strongly considered. Australian editor, Michael Cook explains:

The Aussie proposals may sound wacky, but in truth they are the logical conclusion to today’s trend for measuring humanity by its waste and ‘carbon footprint’. After all, if human life is seen as fundamentally polluting, then why shouldn’t the creation of new human life be viewed as irresponsible and problematic?

The viewpoint of regulating individual actions is based on the idea that others have the right and responsibility to control your choices and penalize you accordingly. It goes beyond choosing to calculate your carbon footprint to deciding who has a right to reproduce and breathe air. It assumes that life is owned by a collective group of strangers rather than one’s self.

“While every individual should be cherished, mankind’s reproduction is akin to the replication of a virus. We are swamping the planet and devouring its resources.”-North West England MEP, Chris Davies

The first loss of personal freedom may just be a light bulb, or car, however it when carried further it will inevitably lead to the marginalization of the natural rights to life and liberty and possibly the loss of both.

Valuation

Published by cchrisr October 31, 2007 in Philosophy. 5 Comments

The problem with values is that they are dependent upon specific beliefs. For instance, the concept of valuating concepts depends upon the belief that concepts can be evaluated and “judged” according to some set of principles. There is also the dependency of those particular principles. Theoretically, if the required beliefs are removed, the values based on them should fall, much like the removal of a foundation.

This is one of the premises behind Nietzsche’s sustained attack on Christianity. According to John Wilcox’s seminal work on metaethical analysis of Nietzsche, Truth and Value in Nietzsche, this attack centers around five beliefs: the existence of God, the existence of another world, free will, a moral order to the world, and a purely moral motivation. While each of these would be worth exploration, for now we will focus on one in two parts: freedom and the will.

Freedom
Nietzsche is dead-set against any kind of real “freedom” in actions. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche writes that the new doctrine of the “immoralists” is that “no one gives man his qualities–neither God, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself” (VI, 8). The last part is important here: one does not even give oneself one’s qualities. In other words, one is unable to determine who/what/how one is. In Human, All-Too-Human, Nietzsche iterates the same concept of Laplace: “In looking at a waterfall we imagine that there is freedom of will and fancy in the countless turnings, twistings, and breakings of the waves; but everything is compulsory, every movement can be mathematically calculated. So it is also with human actions…” (106). There is no freedom in Nietzsche primarily because the will is not a faculty of one’s actions. In other words, one does not will. Instead, one’s will compels one to action; there is no real choice because it had been decided before a choice was even possible.

Der Wille
Nietzsche conceives of the will differently than most Westerners have in the past two hundred years. As I mentioned just above, the will is not an agent of action for Nietzsche. The ability to choose one’s fancy (e.g. caesar vs ranch dressing) is not really a matter of the will.

This misunderstanding began back before Plato and Socrates as thinkers began to associate the will as the cause of an action. This transformed into the idea that the consciousness was the actual cause. Finally, in Descartes, we have the ultimate error: the ego (the self) as the cause of an action. Nietzsche writes in Twilight, “Men were considered ‘free’ so that they might be judged and punished–so that they might become guilty: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness (and thus the most fundamental counterfeit in psychologicis was made the principle of psychology itself).” In other words, for the values of “good and evil” in the bad conscience of Christianity to work, it required man to be responsible for his actions, which further required the will as an agent of the self.

Values
In order to understand what Nietzsche means by his title Beyond Good and Evil as well as his designation as an “immoralist,” one must understand how Nietzsche conceives of the will and freedom. Nietzsche is not advocating a view “beyond morals” at all, but rather a view in which guilt is redeemed as a result of the will. Nietzsche’s concept of redemption can be seen in both Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Antichrist: “To redeem what is past in man and to re-create all ‘it was’ until the will says, ‘Thus I willed it! Thus I shall will it!’” Redemption in this perspective of Nietzsche I am presenting (there are other ones that may all be contradictory) is the value of affirmation. The final stage of man is not the lion who roars “No!” to laws but rather the child who innocently speaks “Yes!” to new values. This is why Nietzsche respects the Jewish priests and Paul even though they become the epitome of ressentiment: they created values.

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