16A024 The Great Non-Sequitur by Jim Davies, 7/5/2016    

It's Independence Day as I write, so I dusted off that old Declaration and found no improvement since I wrote The Source of Evil a dozen years ago. Just in case you missed that one, I thought to bring its highlights to your attention before firing up the barbie.

The axiom on which freedom rests is that of self ownership for all. You and I each have the natural right to own and operate our own lives (and therefore, nobody else's.) That premise cannot be refuted explicitly without assuming it implicitly, so it's an axiom. A fixed point. A true truth, underlying all others.

Jefferson, however, while doing so less precisely, put it much more colorfully: "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." He allowed in the concept of creation, which is an altogether unproven hypothesis, but perhaps he may be forgiven that since few doubted it at that time, but otherwise it's not just true but moving; his words stir the gut. Life! Freedom! The pursuit of happiness! (Not its achievement, but its pursuit.) This was a tract, a grand motivator, a whipper-up of emotions. Being a politician, he was good at that.

From that sublime high point the Declaration then plunges to the non-sequitur of this ZGBlog's subtitle: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted..." Notice, this is a further item in his list of "self-evident truths" but no, he's dead wrong. That is not self evident at all, and is certainly not a "truth." It simply does not follow that the right of self ownership needs securing by government.

It was true (in 1776 as today) that governments exist - "are instituted" - but not one of them anywhere had as its raison d'être the task of securing those rights of the people they ruled - absolutely the contrary, in fact. So the statement is false, even if it's read literally to mean just that they are instituted, without inferring that they ought to be. And the whole thrust of the Declaration is there ought to be a government in these Colonies whose purpose is to protect those rights, rather than a government which, by a "long train of usurpations" violates them instead.

So, does the self ownership right need "securing"? Sure it does, for today, as then, it is being violated all over the map, every day. It is absolutely true in theory, but very widely denied in practice. By whom? - by all and any who impose their will upon a human being, by force or the threat of it. That is, who use such coercion to govern us. They need securing, but absolutely not by any group of people whose whole nature and purpose is to violate them! The non sequitur is simply gross, and it's really amazing that in two and a quarter centuries the stirring choice of words in this document has so seldom been spotted for the smokescreen that it is.

The job of securing the universal self ownership right in practice as well as theory will, in the coming zero government society, be achieved in three simple ways: (i) by the universal re-education without which the ZGS will not come into being anyway, and which will cause everyone to know and accept that he or she has the right to control himself but nobody else; (ii) by the operation of an efficient, fair, free-market justice industry to rectify any violation of rights, and (iii) by the widespread and unfettered ownership of guns, to discourage such violation in the first place.

That an otherwise intelligent and industrious people could swallow Jefferson's blatantly illogical non-sequitur and accept as their rights-securer the very kind of outfit that was most likely and best suited to violate them instead, is one of the greatest tragedies of history.