The New Socialists

My good friend Rycke (pronounced Reeka) sent me the following some time ago. She and I think very much alike about many subjects, but especially about government; that it should secure rights, not violate them. Rycke sent me this message, but she was responding to a question in an email from another of her friends.

"Where do you go from here? If, as you say, it should be unacceptable to society that children are homeless, what would you do about it? What should society do about it?

"Society, not government. They are separate spheres of influence. Society is voluntary interactions between people, the 'private' realm. When people use force against one another in the private realm, they are being anti-social.

"Government is a legal monopoly on the use of force. It is the realm of forced interactions. Nearly everything it does is funded by force, so if you ask it to do anything, your are forcing others to pay for it, even if you pay for it, too. The only proper use of force is for defense of self and others: securing rights. '[T]o secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,' the Declaration says. government exists to protect society from its anti-social elements, who use fore and fraud against their fellows.

"When government expands beyond that purpose, when it's allowed to fund or do anything that enough of the right people think is a good idea, it becomes anti-social, because it is using force improperly and intruding on the social realm. It's pretty anti-social to force other people to fund your pet charity, or your business, or your lifestyle. It's pretty anti-social to tell other people how to run their businesses, apart from punishing fraud and noxious pollution. It's pretty anti-social to force other people to send their children to your schools, or to force other people to fund those schools. It's pretty anti-social to tell other people that they can't make, use, or possess particular substances; bust into their homes to search for those substances; kidnap them, steal their goods and money, and keep them in captive slavery, just for having those substances.

"Many people who support such things have called themselves socialists. But really, they and many of their so-called 'conservative' brethren are anti-socialists.

"As government grows beyond its proper bounds, society withers. As the use of force expands, voluntary social interaction is constrained. Those of us who want to restrict government to securing rights thereby want society to take back its realm from government. We are the new socialists."