Untitled from objectobot on Vimeo.
There is a few objective issues out there in the world, and by objective I mean that the truth is discoverable by scientific or logical processes. Rights, I believe is such an issue. They are an inherit fact of human nature and thus discoverable.
So I am surprised that judge Napolitano, a defender of freedom and individual rights would make such obvious errors.
Judge: “We have natural rights by virtue of our humanity, and government essentially negates those rights. Some of those rights should be negated, like the right to kill, and steal and harm.”
This is a classical liberal, collectivist trick which people fall for all the time. But Jon Stewart did not even get to setup the trap, the judge sets it up him self, and jumped right into it. What is the trap or trick? Well, it goes something like this. Since society via the government can limit your right to kill or steal, then it means that society via the government can limit any of your rights, so drop the delusion that you have rights, rights are whatever the society decides. This is a horrible error on part of the Judge, such logic leads to arbitrary unlimited governmental power. Jon Stewart nails him on this later in the show.
Jon Stewart: ” As soon as you build an army you say, well that means government is not always inherently evil, we need it to help us sometimes, so now we are just arguing how much.”
Jon uses this same trick. He essentially says, when we as a society decide that we need government to help us when we build an army, we as a society can then decide to get government involved in any manner of ways. Judge has nothing to say at this point, and it is all his own fault. He has already coincided that society can limit your right to kill and steal by setting up an army, now it just a matter of what else people want to vote for.
Off course this is not true, and a good defender of freedom and rights would explain it, which the judge does not, very disappointing. The truth is that there is no such right to kill, and it is not society, that forbids you to kill. What forbids you to kill is the inalienable individual right of the other man to live. Any alleged right, such as the right to kill, which necessities the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
Jon Stewart then continues: “one of the things that I think enhances freedom are roads… infrastructure in someway enhances freedom.”
Enhances freedom of what? Freedom of movement right? But they are talking about rights and political freedom. What freedom means in the context that they are talking about is freedom from physical coercion, or freedom from compulsion, freedom from being physically forced. But Jon switches to talk about freedom of movement? Yes roads, increase freedom of movement, more accurately ability of movement. But so do cars, and airplanes. And technology increases the freedom of communication, and freedom of pretty much anything. So again by Jon’s definition of freedom, government has no limit to what it can get involved in. Computers increase the freedom of communication, and cars increase the freedom movement as well, and food increases the freedom from hunger. So why don’t we have government make all those things? Oh, that’s is right because when that has been tried, it has been a monumental disaster, leading to starvation in case of food. So much for freedom from hunger. If you are going to measure freedom in this way, then you must compare it to the alternative, the private sector production of the same freedom. The only way government can increase freedom is if it could be demonstrated that the freedom created from government involvement is equal to or greater than the freedom that otherwise would have been created if resources had been left for the use of the private sector, then you could say that government has created more freedom. But Jon doesn’t do that, he just asserts. If you actually compare the private sector production in any industry to that of government, you will find that moving from private to government production actually drastically decreases the freedom that is produced in that industry. And if you are going to actually consider the actual contexts that they where talking about, and not go on straw-man tangents like Jon Stewart does, then you will discover that governmental road construction decreases political freedom. If government forces you to pay for a road or bridge in some area that you will never go to, and you have no right to disagree to paying for this project, then you are not really free from coercion are you?
Jon Stewart: “What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?”
What and evasive question. Obviously the same thing that happens to losers that are picked by the government. What the judge was saying, and Jon ignored is that the losers and winners, independent of what happens to them, should be picked on a voluntary basis by the people rather then on a force basis by bureaucrats. As far as what will happen to the losers, well I am sorry Jon but we do not live in heaven, there is no paradise. If you look overtime, and get a sense of what actually happens, the well being of ordinary people, has been dramatically improved precisely by a type of economic system where decisions about winner’s and losers are left to the free market.
