Quote:
Originally Posted by DGthe3
What do you mean by liberty and protection? Protect them from bad air quality? Freedom from foreign oil dependency? The Government has other things in mind than reducing consumer choice when they make these laws.
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Camaro5 members come here to learn about the 5th generation Camaro rather than political philosophy. However, if they do not understand the basics of political philosophy or if they advocate an improper political philosophy, we will see the end of the 5th generation Camaro and no 6th generation Camaro...until people rediscover a rational political philosophy.
By individual liberty I mean each citizen must be free to think and speak and act without being coerced by anyone. If a citizen is threatened by another, then he is not a free man. The purpose of government is to intervene on behalf of the citizen to stop the coercive threat...or punish someone who has initiated force against another citizen.
This is the only justifiable reason for government. Since members of society grant government with a monopoly on the use of physical force, society must strictly delimit what a government does. Defending each citizen and his/her property is the ONLY justifiable role of government.
Yet today the government has moved far beyond its proper protective function. Rather than protecting citizens from force & fraud, the government attempts to do all things for all people: provide housing, food, jobs, pensions, education, health, mail, libraries, roads -- really everything.
But when a government goes beyond its proper role as protector against initiatory force and fraud, it necessarily initiates force and coercive threats against citizens. Why? Because the government itself is not productive, so it must target the productive members of society, confiscate their earned wealth, and redistribute this to favored members of society.
At that point anything goes. If a certain segment of society doesn't like big, powerful cars, they lobby government to end production of those cars. The reasons are endless: global cooling, global warming, ozone depletion, protecting polar bears, saving whales -- whatever the duped public will accept.
The bottom line is a 6-pack GTO or a Daytona Charger or a ZL1 Corvette could never arise from a collectivist society. Only a society that honors & protects individual rights can give birth to a GTO, Charger & Corvette because the voluntary interaction among citizens makes this possible.