From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
Clearly, socialism and individual rights are morally incompatible. The right to pursue your own happiness clashes with socialism’s collective moral vision, the demand to subordinate your self-interest to the collective’s central authority.**** Just as clearly, voluntary socialism is legally compatible with a government that constitutionally protects individual rights. In and of itself, socialism is not unconstitutional.
When, in the early 20th century, socialists began to turn to the government to impose their socialist creed on the entire society, socialism became unconstitutional. When massive government intervention arrived, such as the “anti-depression” policies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt (e.g, public-works spending, farm-price maintenance, wage support, forced unionization, unemployment insurance, Social Security), socialism ceased being a voluntary arrangement and became a threat to the lives, liberties, property, and personal pursuit of happiness of every individual in the country, including to the many people who never consented to join the socialism. Unconstitutional socialism grew in lockstep with the subsequent steady growth of coercive, government-imposed socialist programs (called the welfare state) over the following hundred years.
Today’s modern socialists have pretty much captured a major political party.*** Unlike the early American socialist movements of the 19th Century, which were essentially private and voluntary, today’s socialist movement has become a political movement geared to overturning today’s semi-free “welfare capitalism” and imposing full, undiluted socialism, by coercive tyrannical legislative means, on the entire American society. This political socialism is really just crime under cover of law, violates individual rights, and is thus unconstitutional in the U.S.
“The fundamental principle of America is the inalienable individual rights to life, liberty (including the right to earn and keep property) and the pursuit of happiness; i.e., the right of each individual to live and act by the judgement of his own mind, in pursuit of his own values and goals, without coercive interference from others, including the government, so long as his actions do not violate the same rights of others. In principle, the United States Constitution, following the Declaration of Independence, is designed to “secure these rights” by limiting the government to the protection of individual rights.*”
Oh, we’re just going to go and redefine and rewrite America’s founding documents. It’s Unalienable Rights, not Inalienable Individual Rights. See, when the crux of your argument is something you have to fabricate, you don’t have an argument. You have Moon Man talk. You can infer a level of individual autonomy in the intention of our founding fathers, but if they created the Constitution as some bastion of Libertarian freedom, they did a piss poor job of it by creating a freaking Democratic Republic as our form of government. It kind of necessitates collective action, collective understanding, collective compromise for the general welfare and common defense.
And what’s with this guy’s 1) Adoration for the Declaration of Independence? and 2) Treating it like it has any bearing on our government or the limits put upon it? No where in that document does it mention the individual or imply the individual. In fact it uses the word ‘people’ ten times, implying a collective grouping of persons involved in governing themselves. It’s in the very first freaking sentence: ‘The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…’
One people.
A collective group.
“Clearly, socialism and individual rights are morally incompatible.”
These types of statements are so stupid. 1) If it were clear, you wouldn’t feel the need to constantly scree about it. You do nothing to make it clear. 2) MORALLY incompatible? How can one make such judgement over two concepts with definitions so ambiguous as to be meaningless?
Furthermore, there are these things calls laws and rules which allow for two seemingly diametric concepts to coexist in relative peace, so long as those laws and rules are upheld and followed.
My individual right to pursue my life and goals without being interrupted or disrupted are not incompatible with my having municipal roads. My tax-funded military has yet to get in the way of me pursueing my personal interests. My public schools, universities and fire departments have yet to hinder my ability to obtain and retain my wants and desires.
No, it feels like it’s not as clear or incompatible as Mr. LaFarrera asserts. Let me read further to see if he changes my mind with facts and new information, hmm?
“…socialism ceased being a voluntary arrangement and became a threat to the lives, liberties, property, and personal pursuit of happiness of every individual in the country, including to the many people who never consented to join the socialism.”
1) How?
2) The policies and law were enacted by the government of the people, as part of our social contract, we elect representatives to our government to make decisions and pass laws in our stead. These ‘socialist’ laws and programs are not not enacted without consent. Just because a person, personally, doesn’t approve of something does not mean the thing done is done without consent. An individuals consent is implied in the social contract of being part of our collective whole. You want to enjoy the freedoms of our great land? You consent to being a member of our collect society. Democracy is going to democracy with or without individuals.
3) Also, his very next statement uses the words ‘Unconstitutional socialism’. When people use ‘Unconstitutional’ in front of something they simply do not like, that doesn’t make something unconstitutional. Our friend Darrell did this a lot on his own blog during the Obama administration, not to throw him under the bus. I just find it such a weird, inexplicable tactic to take. The arbiter of Constitutionality is the personal feelings of “conservatives” and “libertarians” it would seem to them. Our courts deem something unconstitutional. Social Security and other programs have been challenged. They have been upheld by the people tasked by our Constitution to determine if that thing adheres to the Constitution. If they say it’s constitutional, I guess it’s constitutional.
“Today’s modern socialists have pretty much captured a major political party.”
There we go redefining words again. Joe Biden winning the Democratic Primary would seem to be a clear indicator that the raving, frothing at the mouth socialists these guys seem so freaking scared of have not, in fact, ‘captured a major political party’. Words have definitions and though definitions change over time, they are not as mercurial as a Libertarian’s or Conservative’s Fee Fees.
Finally…
“so long as socialism was voluntary, it has always been constitutional.”
You know what the best way to answer the question would have been? Pointing to the Constitution where this was actually the case. People keep talking about how schools need to teach civics again. This guy certainly needs a refresher course on how government works in the United States. Making shit up isn’t what they taught me in civics. But, then again, I excelled in that class.
Mr. LaFarrera seems to have found an alternative to correct answers in his.
Taxes, regulation of commerce, and provision for the general welfare are in the Constitution. If the Founders didn’t like “Socialism”, why did they put it in the Constitution?