Libertarianism, Virtue, and the Government... Inspired by Rand Paul speech from yesterday
I am breaking my posts from @dwinblood into subjects so people who are interested in only certain things I write can follow just my sub-accounts dedicated to the subjects they like. As such, this @becauseisaidso will take on the bulk of my critical thinking, philosophy, politics, etc. type of posts. It likely will be one of my most active accounts as most of what I write tends to be in this subject area.
Consider this the first post since I made the decision to repurpose this sub-account for this.
Today I watched a great speech by Rand Paul...
Rand Paul's BRILLIANT Speech on Libertarianism - 9:21
Watching this speech that Ran Paul gave on Libertarianism I was inspired by one particular are of what he spoke about.
The idea that Virtue is important. Often the question is "What is government going to do about it?" This is an increasing question and it is usually (I'd argue) misguided to push it on government to solve it.
Most problems are not something the government should be solving. We should be solving things ourselves, or together. It should be voluntary. There needs to be self reliance, self control, and self responsibility. You should be able to make choices. The consequences and benefits of those choices are your responsibility. They government should not restrict you from making choices.
The question often becomes "If the government doesn't restrict X won't everyone do X?" X in this case could be theft, murder, rape, prostitution, drugs, etc. Some of these things people do regardless of laws and restrictions. Some of these things may not hurt other people or may be completely voluntary exchanges yet when the government is asked to deal with it we suddenly have people being punished for situations where there is no victim.
No victim, no crime should be the law of the land.
So what about those things?
Virtue. People need to cultivate their own virtue. This does not require virtue signalling. In fact, people who virtue signal are often not particularly virtuous. If you are virtuous your actions will speak for themselves. It does not require you stepping up onto a podium and saying "Everyone look what I did!!!" A virtuous person does it because they believe it is the right thing to do. It should not be motivated purely upon wanting recognition, praise, or reward. Being the right thing to do should be sufficient.
The phrase that kept going through my mind after Rand Paul started talking about Virtue was this...
"The government cannot mandate virtue."
Rand Paul did not say this specifically, but this is what my inner voice kept saying to me.
Virtue is voluntary. It requires choice. The government mandate is nothing more than force. You do it or you get in trouble. Perhaps you do it as mandated. Yet this action had nothing to do with virtue. It had to do with compliance. It had to do with government removing any self responsibility from you. It also was others mandating what you are allowed to decide to do. Often these mandates involve things which harm no one. If they harm someone it may simply be yourself. Yet, other people decide you can't make such decisions for yourself.
I've spoken about how socialism is not compassionate before. I've mentioned that a person is only truly compassionate if they voluntarily do it on their own. If they are doing something because it was mandated/forced by government then the concept of compassion is moved from that. Compassion and Virtue both require choice. Remove choice and you kill compassion, and you kill virtue.
In my head again I see!
And yes I thought the exact same!
"The government cannot mandate virtue."
Love this post. I had had it in the back of my mind for a while to write up something on the same subject. I think about it often because I'm always interested in what the Founding Fathers would have to say about the hole we've dug ourselves into as a nation and one of the points they continually harped on was "Virtue."
John Adams said,
And to me that's just intuitive. Freedom requires responsibility. If the people of a nation can't, or won't, restrain their own behaviors, eventually circumstances will become unbearable and everyone will cry out for a government to stop the madness.
But I think you make a great point in saying that legislated morality isn't morality at all; it's obedience. This is the great point on which I diverge from the Christian right, although I would consider myself both definitely Christian and mostly conservative, at least in the old fashioned since. The Bible talks about changing the inner heart of man, not simply his outward behaviors. If we focus purely on "results" not only will people fall short of the mark, many of them won't understand why that mark was set as a goal in the first place.
Well said.
Yet, that is most of what government in the USA is now doing, as far as I can see. What else is The War Against Treatment (TWAT - what many refer to as the War Against Drugs, or WAD)?
Prohibition of alcohol proved to be a great wrong that people resisted. Other drugs are less popular. Prohibition isn't less wrong, for those things. It's just less unpopular.
Thanks!
I can't find a historical example where banning anything or prohibiting anything actually works.