| | | What is the basic difference between the American Right which believes in the Sovereignty of the Individual and the Left which believes in the Sovereignty of the Collective? The two are diametrically opposed to each other.
The Right believes the USA is a limited Republic, a representative form of government limited and established by our Constitution, that exist only to secure and protect the rights of the individual.
This From the Declaration of Independence: 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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The Left believes the individual's rights are granted by the Collective, society as a whole, and the individual serves at the behest of the Collective and for the benefit of the Collective. Societies rights supersede the rights of the individual. Society, the Collective, is viewed as an entity in itself separate from the individual.
Individuals are expected to see themselves not as individuals but as a part of society or the Collective.
The head of this society or Collective entity is the Government.
This view of the purpose of government inevitably leads to the rule of a few who claim to know the true needs of the collective and have the physical power of Government to enslave the masses to their own purpose. This becomes evident when the government begins to rule against the will of the people.
It is a totally different mindset.
The American Left are currently known as Progressives. The leaders of the Progressives seek to control every aspect of individual life such as education, economics, health and religion through the power of and the authority of the Government. All of this done in the name of what is best for society as a whole or "the collective" and at the cost of individual liberty.
Individualism the Enemy of All Forms of Collectivism .......................................by Richard Ebeling
This is why all forms of collectivism – philosophical, religious, political, or economic – reject and condemn all philosophies of political and economic individualism. Philosophical individualism argues that "society" – any formed and continued association of people for shared or mutually advantageous purposes – does not exist and does not have a reality independent of, or separate from, the individual human beings who comprise the participants in these associative relationships.
Political individualism insists that nations and states do not have an existence independent from or superior to the individuals who may be members of a particular nation-state. The purpose of the political authority is to secure and protect each individual's right to his life, liberty and honestly acquired property (i.e., property acquired through peaceful production and voluntary exchange).
Government's purpose is not to make the individual a slave or a sacrificial animal to some declared "higher cause," because there are no higher causes separate from the purposes, values and goals that individuals choose for themselves and non-violently pursues through their actions and interactions with others.
Economic individualism emphasizes that production, work, and creative and innovative entrepreneurial discovery are the results of individual effort and imagination. The "nation," the "society," does not produce, work or create. Individual human beings do these things and they do not happen separate from these individual actions and activities.
Economic individualism explains that order and coordination of the actions of multitudes of tens of millions of people do not required government central command or regulatory dictation or direction. From the time of Adam Smith, economic individualists have shown that a system of individual rights, voluntary exchange, and associative interdependence through division of labor – what Adam Smith called a "system of natural liberty" – brings about self-interested incentives and opportunities for individuals to mutually improve their own lives through a network of trades and transactions that rebounds to the benefit of all, without the imposed and compulsory political hand of governmental control.
Philosophical, political and economic individualism, rightly understood, is the ethical and practical bulwark against collectivism and its demands for compulsory sacrifice for imaginary "higher goods" or "greater causes" that justify the denial or reduction of human freedom to the limits of what the collectivist controllers permit.
The philosophy of individualism is the foundation of a free society; it is the basis of a community of men that does not require or demand the sacrifice or enslavement of some for the one-sided benefits of others. Individualism is the premise of a morality for mankind that recognizes and respects the liberty and dignity of every human being. It is the ethical philosophy of freedom. |
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