Freedomvrights.com
Writings and Publications by Joseph B. H. McMillan
Unless Republicans and Conservatives Adopt a Sound Set of Principles, they are Destined for the Political Scrapheap.
by
Joseph B.H. McMillan
The rejection of gay marriage in California brought into stark contrast America's wholesale rejection of McCain and Palin.
Apart from the fact that Republicans
put up the most unlikely and unattractive candidates, they showed themselves to
be devoid of any Principles that informed their beliefs and actions – and the
electorate, quite rightly, rejected them.
Yet, what happened in California shows that the majority of people in America instinctively recognize that there are, or must be, certain fundamental principles that should inform their beliefs.
The problem is that
politicians are either too stupid to recognize any such Principles, or too
cowardly to embrace them.
In fact, I expect that
most politicians don’t even know what a principle is, so let me provide a
definition.
A principle is “a
fundamental truth or proposition on which others depend; a general statement or
tenet forming the basis of a system of belief; a primary assumption forming the
basis of a chain of reasoning.” [Shorter
There are many ways to
express the same thing. For example, a principle is also “a fundamental cause or
basis of something; a primary element, force, or law determining a particular
result.” [Also from the Shorter
But principles are NOT the
same thing as virtues, or even values, and they are certainly not the same
thing as policies. All these things are empty rhetoric unless they are
underpinned by Principles.
Philosophers throughout
the ages have sought such principles, or more accurately, that one fundamental
principle that would provide the foundation for morality. They were looking for
what they called an “absolute postulate.”
Albert Schweitzer put it
this way. "In every effort of thought about ethics there is to be seen,
distinctly or indistinctly, the search for a basic principle of morality, which
needs no support outside itself, and unites in itself the sum total of all
moral demands. But no one has ever succeeded in really formulating this
principle."
Democratic/Liberal Principles
Democrats, or more
properly Liberals, have nevertheless embraced a singular ‘principle’ which,
“distinctly or indistinctly”, informs the rationale for most of their ‘beliefs’
and policies – the Utilitarian ethic of the Common Good.
But the Common Good is not
a principle.
That is easy to
demonstrate – simply ask, why not a free-for-all? Since many who subscribe to
the Common Good also embrace the theory of evolution, why seek to undermine the
rationale of that theory – the survival of the fittest?
In order to invoke the
Common Good they need to identify the principle, or principles, that takes us
there.
Many have tried, but the
most persuasive was someone few outside academia have probably ever heard of –
Jeremy Bentham. Bentham coined the phrase “the greatest happiness to the
greatest number.”
Yet, most people in the
Western World are governed by and, perhaps unconsciously, live by Bentham’s
‘principle’.
The principle which he
claimed underpinned the Common Good is the pursuit of pleasure. He claimed that
human beings are governed by the pursuit of pleasure, and the avoidance of
pain.
Bentham said this: "Nature has placed mankind under
the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall
do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of
causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do,
in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our
subjection, will serve only to demonstrate and confirm it."
He thus constructs his "principle of utility" on
the basis that man is on a relentless quest to satisfy his lust for pleasure
and happiness.
And
what is this principle? "By the principle of utility is meant that
principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according
to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the
party whose interest is in question." And, "a thing is said to
promote the interest, or be for the interest, of an individual, when it tends
to add to the sum total of his pleasure: or, what comes to the same thing, to
diminish the sum total of his pains."
In short, what Bentham was
saying is that because a car runs on gasoline, it’s sole purpose is the
consumption of gasoline – as much gasoline as possible. It simply didn’t occur
to him that a car may have some other purpose.
But Bentham didn’t invent
the ‘religion’ of the pursuit of pleasure and happiness.
In explaining the significance of Adam and Eve eating the
fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Philo Judaeus of
But Philo clearly saw the
dangers of this mindless pursuit of pleasure. “And those who have previously
become the slaves of pleasure immediately receive the wages of this miserable
and incurable passion.”
Yet, the attraction of the
pursuit of pleasure and happiness is its simplicity – even the dumbest can
identify with it!
And those who do embrace
it assume an aura of arrogance that is matched only by their ignorance – I call
it the arrogance of ignorance!
That sums up the Liberal
Fundamentalist mentality; a mindless pursuit of pleasure “in all [they] do, in
all [they] say, in all [they] think.”
The Common Good leads to
Authoritarianism
But as Bentham tried to
‘think’ through his principle he discovered that not everyone lusted after
pleasure, while others were so eager to lap-up as much as they could that they
disregarded the pain they could inflict on others by this mindless indulgence.
Hence Bentham calls forth
government, and hands them two electrodes: one for the infusion of pleasure,
the other for inflicting pain – ironic, isn’t it?
Bentham
says this: “The business of government is to promote the happiness of society,
by punishing and rewarding. That part of its business which consists in
punishing, is more particularly the subject of penal law. In proportion as an
act tends to disturb that happiness, in proportion as the tendency is
pernicious, will be the demand it creates for punishment. What happiness
consists of we have already seen: enjoyment of pleasures, security from pains.”
Having handed government
the instruments of oppression, the electrodes, Bentham then sets about devising
a system of indoctrination and punishment to assist government in achieving
what he has decreed is the object of humankind: happiness - his idea of
happiness – which, if not voluntarily embraced, must be imposed by the
electrodes.
Welfare and the Common Good
Unfortunately for those
who embrace the notion that the highest ideal of the species is the indulgence
of their primitive carnal instincts which thus somehow enhances the Common Good
of the species, in practical terms it leads to huge discrepancies which tend to
the opposite effect. Some people are just better equipped, more ruthless, and
more cunning than others in attending to the business of enhancing their ‘happiness’
and pleasure.
So we end up back at the
survival of the fittest – regulated to an extent by government applying the
electrodes.
But that is not what
Liberals want; that is not what they consider to be the Common Good. They want
government to apply the pain electrode to punish those who achieve too much ‘happiness’
by accumulating too many goodies. To do so, they want government to apply the pain
electrode where it will be most effective – in their pockets!
And the pleasure electrode
needs to be applied to compel those too greedy for their own ‘happiness’ to
derive happiness from the forced exercise of compassion towards those less
effective in attending to the business of their own pleasure.
Mostly, this has been
achieved without any pretence at finding some ‘principles’ to justify this
re-distribution of pleasure and happiness. All they needed to do was convince a
sufficient number of people that their happiness, or welfare if you like, was
being inhibited by others getting too much – and that’s not fair!
A “Theory of Justice” as
Justification for Welfare
But there was one
modern-day philosopher who sought to identify ‘principles’ to justify this
re-distribution of pleasure, happiness, and by natural consequence, wealth. He
was John Rawls, a professor at
Yet, to do so, Rawls turns
the whole concept of Principles on its head. He doesn’t demonstrate that
certain principles lead to a certain conclusion through a “chain of reasoning”.
Instead, he uses an artificial chain of reasoning to construct his principles.
Now please bear with me as
I try to rationalize Rawls’ ‘theory’ – it is convoluted.
His objective was this: "My aim is to present a conception of justice
which generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar
theory of the social contract as found, say, in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant."
That's just great! He wants
to build a high-rise on top of the foundations of the crumbling mud huts built
by the likes of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant.
But Rawls' “guiding idea
is that the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the object
of the original agreement.”
Rawls wants to find some “principles of justice” people would
choose to advance their interests in consort with others.
At least he is looking for
some “principles” that everyone could
consent to on which to construct his 'house of justice', or 'high-rise of
justice'.
"Thus we are to imagine that those who engage in social cooperation
choose together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic
rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits."
So we are still only at
page 11, of some 600 pages, and already Rawls has decided on the answer. "Rights and duties and ... the division of social benefits."
But let’s look at how
Rawls turns the whole concept of Principles on its head by using a ‘chain of
reasoning’ to come up with his ‘principles’ rather than the other way round.
He does it in a number of
stages.
First, he hides a group of
people behind a "veil of ignorance"
from where they will choose a set of principles. These people are "moral", "rational", and have "a
sense of justice."
Quite an assumption! Not
quite reflective of the population at large, except the ignorance part.
Anyway, this group of
people would not know their place in society, their physical or mental
attributes, the actual state of the society they would enter, or even what they
would regard as good or bad, what Rawls calls their "special psychological propensities." In other words, your
average 'dick'.
In this way, argues Rawls,
none of the group can make decisions on the principles of justice which would
advantage him or her, because they don't know where they will end up.
Rawls argues that
principles would then emerge based on this ‘agreement’ made between free and
equal people.
We then compare these
principles with our own conceptions of 'justice', and start going back and
forth between our own intuitive concepts of 'justice', and the hypothetical
principles, until we reach agreement. This Rawls calls “reflective equilibrium.”
Rawls says that these
principles would come as close as we can get to a “voluntary scheme.”
"In this sense," says Rawls, "its [society’s] members are autonomous and the obligations they
recognize self-imposed."
The thing that puzzles me
about Rawls is his use of a hypothetical veil of ignorance to construct his
Theory of Justice. Why use a hypothetical ignorance when all he had to do was
go down to
Nevertheless, let's just
see what sort of “theory of justice”
ignorance comes up with.
Rawls claims that this
‘chain of ignorance’ would come up with two principles supplemented by two
"Priority Rules".
"First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most
extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar
system of liberty for all.
"Second Principle: Social and economic
inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both, a) to the greatest
benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just saving principle, and
b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity."
Then we have the Priority
Rules.
"The First Priority Rule (The Priority of
"The Second Priority Rule (The Priority of
Justice over efficiency and Welfare). The second system of justice is lexically
prior to the principle of efficiency and to that of maximizing the sum of
advantages; and fair opportunity is prior to the difference principle. There
are two cases: a) an inequality of opportunity must enhance the opportunity of
those with the lesser opportunity; b) an excessive rate of saving must on
balance mitigate the burden of those bearing this hardship."
I can just see the man in
the street trying to work his way through all this nonsense.
‘I really want to save
every penny I can to give to my children, so they don't have the same hassle
with banks, jobs and making a living. So let me consult Rawls’ oracle. If I am
to have an excessive rate of saving, which I suppose must mean more than the
average, it must "on balance
mitigate the burden of those bearing this hardship." Now I wonder who
would bear this hardship other than me; I deprive myself of things for the
benefit of my children, so surely I suffer the hardship?’
No! says Rawls. Those who
save less or nothing for their children leave their children with less liberty
of opportunity, because "the second
principle of justice is lexically prior to the principle of efficiency and to
that of maximizing the sum of advantages; and fair opportunity is prior to the
difference principle."
Got that?
Well, it's because the
second principle of justice is lexically prior. And the second principle says
that "social and economic
inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both, a) to the greatest
benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just saving principle, and
b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity."
You see, if you save too
much you do two things.
First, you are not
spending money, which makes companies selling baseball caps, sports shoes, or
hamburgers, very unhappy. If too many people did that, these companies would go
out of business, and that of course would be bad for employment, or so we are
told. Convenient for big business!
Secondly, by your
sacrifice, you will have put your children in a more advantaged "social and economic" position. You
would be creating an "inequality."
Horror of horrors!
And the inequality you
have created doesn't "enhance the
opportunities of those with less opportunity," and neither does it
"mitigate the burden of those
bearing the hardship."
What this nonsense means
is this: a justification for government to take your money when you die; a
justification for death, or inheritance, tax;
and a justification for ‘welfare’.
Because you can be sure of one thing: big business is very keen on ‘welfare’. ‘Welfare’
ensures that money you would otherwise save for your children is distributed to
others so that they can waste it on baseball caps, sports shoes, and
hamburgers, and make those companies very wealthy.
If this is not what Rawls
was trying to say, it only goes to show how ridiculous his “theory of justice” really is. Rawls does
not come anywhere near to meeting Schweitzer’s basic requirement for an
Absolute Postulate, which must be “something
elementary and inward, which, once it has dawned upon a man, never relinquishes
its hold, which as a matter of course
runs like a thread through all his meditations, ...”
Rawls’ ‘principles’ would
run riot through most peoples “meditations” as they tried to fathom out what on
earth these ‘principles’ mean.
But when it comes down to
it, Rawls’ Theory of Justice is nothing more than an apologetic for the Welfare
state. He simply tried to provide some flesh to the Utilitarian ethic of the
Common Good by constructing a fanciful hypothetical situation, full of flimsy
assumptions, from which he claims would emerge the ‘principles’ that he needed
in the first place in order to transform the Common Good into a synonym for the
Welfare state.
Of course, nobody took any
notice of his ‘principles’, except those huddled in the hallowed cloisters and
ivory towers of the academic world. Why bother with such convoluted ‘reasoning’
when there is the mob to do it for you?
Conservative Principles?
So, do Republicans and
conservatives have any better principles?
Regrettably not!
Republicans and conservatives want the ‘right’ to pursue pleasure, or
happiness, without the attendant Liberal ‘principle’ of the Common Good.
They make a lot of
virtuous noise about values, especially Judeo-Christian values, without having
the faintest idea of what they mean by values. They confuse values with
Principles.
And even when some do
profess to advance some ‘principles’, the ‘principles’ amount to nothing more
than a few mixed-up policy proposals – Ron Paul and Fred Thomson come to mind.
Low taxes and small
government, the most often advanced Republican/conservative ‘principles’, are
not principles. To claim that we should have low taxes and small government
they have to demonstrate why – what Principles lead to that conclusion? It
should read like this: ‘We should have low taxes and small government because
…’
There should be “a chain
of reasoning” from basic Principles which demonstrates that those Principles
inevitably and logically demand the outcome of low taxes and small government.
But Republicans and
conservatives are bankrupt when it comes to articulating any such Principles.
And this leads to some
curious contradictions.
Let me take one example –
education v. health.
As I recall, every single
Republican contender for the presidential nomination supported ‘collective,
socialized education’ through a public school system. Yet, the majority of
parents in the
Effectively, parents
simply cede the larger portion of their responsibilities and obligations
towards their children to the state, without even hesitating for a moment to
ask themselves whether the state is in fact better suited to the task than they
are.
California ranks about 46th
in the US in the amount of money it spends on the public school system, and it
spends (even taking into account the Budget cuts proposed) some $10,000 per
child – some $1,900 less than the national average. That makes the national
average around $12,000 per year.
Parents could educate
their children very effectively at home for a fraction of that amount. There
would also be many subsidiary social and economic benefits in doing so.
As Henry Fielding said, “public schools are the nurseries of all vice
and immorality.” And we know that is true. That is where children are
exposed to drugs, violence, sex, alcohol etc, and exposed to the influence of
the least desirable and morally vacuous of their peers. Educating children at
home would thus have an almost instant impact on juvenile crime, teenage
pregnancies, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and even more importantly,
increase educational standards across the board.
Of course, should some
parents still want to subject their children to a collective, socialized
education in some institution, they would be free to do so, although they would
have to pay for it themselves.
Parents’ educating their
children themselves would also have the benefit of denying the state the
opportunity to indoctrinate these inquiring little minds with nonsense. John
Stuart Mill said this about the state’s role in educating children: “a general State education is a mere
contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the
mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in
government, .. in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes
a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.”
It seems to me that
parents have an obligation to protect their children from some institution
establishing a “despotism” over their minds and bodies?
Economically, the benefits
would be huge, and instant – and dovetail perfectly with professed conservative
‘values’ – low taxes and smaller government.
Now compare this support
for collective, socialized indoctrination of children in some institution of
neglect with the total opposition to ‘socialized health care’ by most
Republicans and conservatives.
Unless at least one parent
is a medical practitioner, parents are simply not equipped to provide their
children with medical care. Even if parents educated themselves to the level of
the average medical practitioner, they still could not get the prescription
drugs they would know their children need in order to deal with a particular
ailment.
Now I don’t actually
support either socialized education or socialized health care, but I think the
argument for the latter carries far greater weight than the argument for the
former. And it starkly demonstrates the contradictions that infest an ideology devoid
of any sound Principles.
Principles
So that still leaves us
with our search for Principles; Principles that can determine the scope and
limits of government, as well as basic morality.
To do so, we have to go
back to a time when the same set of competing ‘ideas’ held sway – the pursuit
of pleasure versus fundamental Principles. That time was about two thousand
years ago when the pursuit of pleasure and the exercise of state power were the
cornerstones of the
Not only did Philo recognize
the emptiness and vanity of the pursuit of pleasure, he also recognized that
the human race had already been gifted those fundamental Principles from which
all other laws flow, and also, which form the basis of what we recognize as
obligations and morality, and thus, from which the scope and limits of
government should be determined and dictated.
Philo says this: “For it was suitable to [God’s] own nature to
promulgate in His own Person the heads and PRINCIPLES of all particular laws,
but to send forth the particular and special laws by the most perfect of the
prophets … to be the interpreter of His holy oracles.” [my emphasis]
Yes, Philo was talking
about the Ten Commandments!
But what is important to
note is the distinction Philo draws between the Ten Commandments as the “heads
and PRINCIPLES of all particular laws,” and the laws which flow from those
Principles by way of interpretation and understanding of the Principles.
The jurist RWM Dias, in
his book Jurisprudence, says this: “The Jewish doctrine … possesses the insight
to lay equal stress on immunity from power and restraint in action.”
He adds, “[the Jews]
desired a society in which Pharaohs had no place, one which owed allegiance
solely to God and was governed by His laws. Sovereignty resides in His law
which, by virtue of its origin and intrinsic righteousness, cannot be altered
by human institutions. So great, however, was the insistence on freedom that
even this law had to be freely accepted by the people. The foundations of
modern democracy and possibly the earliest version of the social contract …
would seem to lie here.” [And no!! I’m not advocating some sort of theocratic
state, as will become clear]
Now, if we apply Philo’s
distinction between the PRINCIPLES of The Law, and the laws which derive from
them by interpretation and understanding of the underlying PRINCIPLES, we see
that The Law means the Ten Commandments.
The magnificence of this
distinction is that the laws which derive from the Principles are dynamic.
Although the underlying Principles are immutable, the laws, the morality, and
the structure and scope of government which derive from them are sufficiently
flexible to adapt to changed circumstances.
In fact, I would go even
further. I would argue that changed circumstances, and continued reflection
building on earlier interpretations and understanding of the underlying
Principles, themselves reveal a deeper understanding and thus interpretation of
those Principles. In other words, the Principles themselves are so profound
that they contain meanings and insights which have not yet even dawned upon
mankind.
If that is the case, and I
believe it is, then these Principles must have preceded, and stand apart, from
the human species, yet we are equipped to discover and interpret the deeper
meaning of those Principles as the human species develops.
But do these Principles
presuppose a belief in God? Would adoption of the Principles underlying the Ten
Commandments effectively institute a theocracy?
I say no! The genius of
the Ten Commandments is that although they are said to emanate from God, that
very construction was necessary to emphasize individual freedom and equality.
Yet, at the same time, they also tend to the conclusion that the Principles
themselves exist independently of mankind thus providing a basis for the belief
in God, even evidence of the existence of God.
And most remarkable of
all, science is now tending to suggest that the human brain is ‘programmed’
with a “morality module” that I believe will, in the end, prove to be modeled
on the Principles contained in the Ten Commandments. [I have dealt with this
issue in my IC article Are We Genetically
Programmed by, and with, the Ten Commandments? so I won’t repeat the
arguments here]
Before I get onto the
Principles themselves, however, let me refer to the most spectacular and world
changing instance of interpretation of the Ten Commandments (The Law), which
was coupled with an impressive demonstration of the interaction and
interdependence of the Principles underlying The Law.
At about the same time as
Philo was drawing his distinction between the Principles and the subsidiary
laws which derive from them through interpretation, not far away on a Mount in
the
Before Christ begins His
revelation of a new interpretation of the Ten Commandments, He first asserts
their immutability. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, ‘Till
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
law, ‘till all be fulfilled.” [Matthew 5:17 & 18]
Christ then proceeds to
identify some of the laws Moses previously derived from the Ten Commandments,
and provides a new interpretation. Hence we see Christ saying “Ye have heard
that it was said by them of old time, …” followed by “But I say unto you, …”
In a later exchange,
Christ makes the point even more dramatically. “Moses, because of the hardness
of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it
was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for
fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth
her which is put away doth commit adultery.” [Matthew 19:8 & 9]
So, was Christ saying that
the only grounds for divorce can be adultery? What, for example, would be the
situation where a woman is regularly subjected to physical violence by her
husband? Does she simply have to endure such physical abuse?
This is where the
interrelationship between the Principles comes into play. Although Christ
doesn’t specifically address that issue, he does demonstrate, also in relation
to the Seventh Commandment (Adultery), how this interrelationship operates.
“Ye have heard that it was
said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you,
That whosoever looketh upon a woman TO LUST AFTER HER hath committed adultery
already in his heart.” [Matthew 5:27 & 28 – my emphasis]
Now, Christ does not say
that simply looking at a woman, even to admire her grace and beauty, amounts to
adultery. The qualifying words are “to lust after her”.
To covet means to “desire
with concupiscence [Eager or inordinate desire; immoderate sexual desire, LUST];
desire sexually.” Or, “have inordinate or culpable, especially sexual, desire.”
And lust means to “have a
strong or excessive (especially sexual) desire.”
So we see that Christ was effectively
interpreting the Seventh Commandment in light of the Tenth Commandment: “Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbours’ wife, … nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.”
Let me illustrate the
point by reference to the Eighth Commandment (Thou shalt not steal) being interpreted
in light of the Tenth Commandment.
If my neighbor buys a new
car and I go round to see it, and admire it, think even that I may some day buy
a similar car when I can afford it, I have not breached the Tenth Commandment.
If, however, I become consumed with jealousy and desire, and begin to imagine
and plan ways to steal his car, I have trespassed over the bounds of the Tenth
Commandment, and have ‘stolen’ his car in my heart.
In effect, my inordinate
desire leads to concrete planning to satisfy my desire to have his car. In
certain circumstances, for example if I recruit another to assist me in my
scheme, I could be charged with what we call today a criminal conspiracy. In
the case of terrorism, the standard is even lower.
That is what Christ was doing:
demonstrating how the Principles underlying The Law all interrelate, thus
providing enormous scope for interpretation.
So, if we go back to the
question about whether a woman could divorce her husband where he has subjected
her to physical abuse, even though he has been scrupulously faithful, the
answer must be yes. That would be as a result of the husband breaching the
Sixth Commandment (the Principle prohibiting violence), and the Fifth
Commandment (Honor thy father and thy mother), because the husband renders it
impossible for the children of the family to honor a father who physically
abuses their mother (and, as I shall demonstrate, the Fifth Commandment
represents the Principle that the father and mother have strict obligations
towards each other, as well as towards their children).
In such a short exposition
I can’t do justice to the full magnificence of what Christ bequeathed us in
helping us to understand the Principles and interrelationship of the Principles
of the Ten Commandments, but I hope it gives a flavor of what I am getting at.
Ten Secular Principles?
I have already set out the
secular Principles which derive from the Ten Commandments in my series of
articles here on IC titled The Ten
Principles of Freedom, so I shall not labor the arguments. I set out more
detailed arguments in my books Freedom v.
A Tyranny of Rights, and Escaping
In summary, these are the Principles:
- No other human being can tell me what to do without my consent.
- No other human being can compel me to serve what he has created without my consent.
- No other human being can compel me to enter into any obligation without my consent.
- No other human being can compel me to work for him, or take my income or property, without my consent.
- The family, the union of a man and a woman to create new life, being the only discernible purpose of life, and the only means of perpetuating human life, is sacrosanct.
- Do not use or threaten violence.
- Do not cause or be party to a betrayal, sexual or otherwise, of your own or any other person's family obligations.
- Do not interfere with the property of others.
- Don't be dishonest.
- Do not use your freedom to interfere with the freedom of others.
Now, the important thing
to recognize is that the Principles are interrelated and interdependent. One
Principle cannot be used as a shield against breach of another. [As an aside, I
should invite readers to compare these Principles with the ‘principles’ derived
from Rawls’ ignorance theory]
The first four Principles
are what I call the Equal Freedom Principles. They are a form of pure
Libertarianism. But they DO NOT stand alone.
They represent the opening
words of the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal. And they
form the basis of what Dias identified as the “immunity from power” aspect of
the Jewish doctrine. They establish individual freedom.
Principle 5 is the bridge,
so to speak, between the Equal Freedom Principles and Principles 6 to 10.
Principle 5 establishes
the basis on which human beings will consent to take on obligations voluntarily
– by the creation of human life. These obligations include obligations which
precede the union (like abstinence), obligations during the union towards each
other (like non-violence, fidelity, the creation of trust, an effective division
of responsibilities etc), and the additional and fundamental obligations that
arise from the creation of life (meeting our obligations towards that life,
self-sacrifice, educating that life, and so on).
Principles 6 to 10 then
set out the additional obligations which flow from the obligations assumed
under Principle 5; obligations between the parties to the union, and between
them and the life they create, as well as obligations towards the rest of
humanity on a reciprocal basis.
Principles 5 through 10
form the basis of what Dias identified as the “restraint in action” aspect of
the Jewish doctrine.
Now, I am not arguing that
these Principles should supersede the Ten Commandments. What I am arguing is
that these are the only Principles that all human beings could consent to,
short of claiming some authority to have power over other human beings, or
short of claiming that the creation of human life attaches no obligations to
those who do so, or short of claiming that they have some natural authority to
kill or inflict violence on other human beings without cause, or to destroy
their own or some other family to satisfy their own primitive instincts, or to
take the property of other human beings without cause, or to deceive other
human beings when it suits them, or to exercise their freedom in a way that
deprives others of their freedom.
But I emphasize again, these
Principles, like the Ten Commandments themselves, are interdependent and
interrelated.
Yet, these apparently
simple set of Principles, when even superficially understood, form the basis of
all human obligations, everything we recognize as morality, and are the only
Principles that can insure our individual and collective freedom while at the
same time permitting us to submit to a limited and well defined form of
government – a form of government limited to the obligations we assume by
agreeing to these Principles, just as the Israelites agreed to the Ten
Commandments several millennia ago.
The Principles underlying
the Ten Commandments are universal, and timeless. And they are, or should be,
conservative Principles. They also satisfy the so-called separation of Church
and State, while not simultaneously creating conflicting Principles between
those who subscribe to a religion and those who do not. Although they also
provide a basis on which to determine whether a religion should be accorded
that status. A religion could only be accorded the sacrosanct status religions
enjoy today if it’s doctrine did not require, or call for, a breach of any of the
Principles of Freedom.
Conclusion
Normally, the last section
would have been the conclusion to an article such as this. But on this occasion,
I thought a discourse between me and a critic of the Ten Principles may be
informative.
The critic claimed that he could never agree to the first 4 Principles, the Equal Freedom Principles – in spite of the fact that they are the very foundation of the Declaration of Independence. The reason, he said, was because they mean that no one could, for example, be compelled to effectively dispose of his garbage - because no one could tell them that they ought to do so.
This was my response:
“Let be please briefly illustrate how such things would be addressed by a system that implemented the Ten Principles. Principle 5 provides that the creation of human life imposes certain obligations on those who create that life. One of those obligations is to protect our children from health hazards. Now if my neighbor simply started dumping his garbage in the street outside my home, that would attract rats, bring the risk of disease, and threaten my children’s health. In short, my neighbor would be interfering with my freedom to meet my obligations towards my children. That would be a breach of Principle 10 – someone using his freedom without regard to my freedom as defined by the Ten Principles. That, in turn, would impose an obligation on me to clean up his mess, or pay for it to be cleaned up, in order to meet my obligations towards my family. That would be a breach of Principles 3 and 4, by imposing on me an obligation without my consent, and compelling me to use my labor or resources to clean up his mess.
“Further, it would breach Principle 6 – my children would be threatened with physical harm.
“Now, since we have agreed to these Principles, and agreed to award government the authority to compel us to honor the obligations we assume under the Principles, government would in fact owe me an obligation to compel that person to clean up his mess, or to take money from him so that someone else can clean up his mess.
“The way you have applied the Principles is precisely what I say can’t be done, and would breach the Principles: that is, argue that by virtue of Principle 1 no one can tell me what to do, so I’ll dump my garbage anywhere I please, irrespective of other people, the effect it may have on them, or the effect on their obligations and freedom.
“So the Principles have in fact the exact opposite effect to what you claim.”
In conclusion, therefore, my case is that we have been gifted the only Principles that can ensure our individual and collective freedom while simultaneously enabling us to consent to the authority of a form of government, but only on the limited basis provided by the Ten Principles of Freedom, Principles founded on the Ten Commandments, The Law.
So the choice is clear! Submit to mob rule, or adopt those Principles gifted us by God. And even for those who find the idea of God offensive, Principles that would protect their freedom to ridicule the very idea of a God.
That is the Republican and conservative challenge. But from what I saw in this election cycle, I suspect they are not up to the task. They are too busy banding about meaningless ideological slogans. Their ignorance and arrogance will be their undoing!
Copyright © Joseph B.H. McMillan 2008 All Rights Reserved
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