Is Individual Liberty Selfish?
Responding to the charge that it is selfish to invoke your rights
God-given rights are not selfish because, being universal, they do not elevate any one self above another
Conservatism regards human beings as inherently and equally valuable
Leftism regards human beings as varied in value, and valuable only insofar as they are useful
Intentions are irrelevant in politics; only results matter
Leftist policies invariably result in destruction; but leftists, being selfish, do not care
The following is my response to a friend’s contention that Conservatives are selfish for invoking their liberty/rights. This talking point was beginning to gain ground when I originally wrote this two years ago, but it has since metastasized. Truly it is said that a lie will go halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on.
Minor edits have been made for clarity and anonymity of the recipient.
Your assertion (that it’s selfish to invoke my rights) conflates two unrelated things -- liberty and selfishness, from which you draw the faulty conclusion that a defense of liberty is itself selfish.
This may be a reasonable conclusion when liberty gives one man an advantage over another, but such a notion is anathema to Conservatism. We Conservatives begin with the belief that God:
created every person,
values every person, and
does not play favorites.
This, combined with God’s role as the ultimate authority on all matters, forms the basis for our conclusions that:
every human being is inherently valuable,
this value is the same across the entire human race, and
a value granted by God may not be rescinded by man.
In better words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights [...]
When a Conservative references his God-given rights, he is not referring to something particular to him but something common to everyone. These rights do not belong to him because he is special but because he is human. His God-given rights are also your rights and mine and those of every other man, woman, and child on the planet.
And because they are commonly held by all people, they give no one an advantage over anyone else; thus, there is no context in which they can rationally be considered selfish.
Leftism, by contrast, takes the opposite approach. It rejects God, and thus has no basis for claims of inherent human value, rights, or equality of any kind. In place of God sits the State (or the Party, Dear Leader, etc.) that regards a man as valuable only insofar as he is useful. Once his use has been exhausted, he becomes pointless and finds himself shipped off to this or that prison camp, or simply taken outside and shot.
And why not? There is no God to say that his life was valuable, or that murder is wrong. In fact, there's no God to say that anything is wrong, so morality is replaced by pragmatism (ends justify means). If killing a man solves your problem, you kill him. As Stalin was fond of saying, "Death solves all problems. No man, no problem."
Am I going too far? Am I overstating the case? Not remotely. The history of the Left is one of oppression, terror, indigence, torture, and mass murder. It can't be honest about itself in a free society, of course, as most people are disinclined to knowingly vote for their own enslavement, but look at any institution firmly in the Left's control and you will find these very traits.
Strangely, this gruesome ancestry does not blunt the leftist propensity for self-congratulation. They love shout from the rooftops their supposed virtues. They defend the defenseless! They give voice to the voiceless!
But do they? Who are the defenseless and voiceless if not the unborn? Not only do leftists sanction their murder, they celebrate it. And just in case a child is fortunate enough to survive his would-be killer's efforts, the Left is moving to legalize the child's murder after birth, such is their regard for human life.
Despite all of this, those on the Left readily assure us that they mean well. Indeed, the more vocal of them seem spring-loaded to boast of their noble intentions. Given the evidence at hand, I think there's ample reason to doubt this alleged nobility, but regardless, the fact is that their intentions are actually irrelevant.
Intentions mean bupkis in politics, yet so many on the Left seem to believe that all the world's ills can be remedied with nothing but intentions. How exactly this works is unclear, although given the high degree of magical thinking already present, I don't suppose we should rule out the possibility of midi-chlorian involvement.
Whatever the case, leftists have very little concern about the material effects of their policies. The harm they invariably cause is disregarded, presumably because they mean well; a perspective that I suspect is not shared by those who suffer at their hands.
A minimum wage mandate, for example, might originate from a desire to help the poor, but its effect is to keep those with the least experience from getting any job, regardless of its starting wage. These are the very people the policy was supposedly intended to help, and yet they are worse off after the policy than they were before.
This is because economic realities cannot be overcome by good intentions (or by anything else). Yet the Left spends all its time playing God — believing it can redefine the fundamental laws of existence instead of realizing that it is hopelessly constrained by them. Its relentless attempts to overcome the insurmountable — to transcend its humanity and achieve deification — invariably wreak havoc far and wide.
Everywhere leftists interfere, chaos ensues and lives are ruined. Yet they proceed with no regard for the trail of destruction left in their wake, apparently believing that their (allegedly) good intentions somehow make it all okay.
And it is all okay so long as we ignore the dystopia we’ve caused and instead focus on the utopia we intended. No matter what happens, this approach will always leave us feeling really good about ourselves; and that, at least insofar as the Woke contingent of the Left is concerned, is the real purpose of politics.
But this is the epitome of selfishness. It exchanges other men's lives for the fleeting emotional high of self-congratulation. It trades doing good for feeling good; morality for moralization; righteousness for self-righteousness; justice for social justice.
Anyone genuinely concerned with helping others would at least do the work of finding out how to actually help (and how not to). Neglecting such basic practical realities in favor of good intentions is a quick way to find yourself complicit in all manner of evil. It’s not for nothing that the road to Hell is said to be paved with good intentions.