Re: The Bill of Rights
Mr. Russo:
Just wanted to say I enjoyed your recent article on the historical
context of the Bill of Rights. I agree with you that our opponents
are essentially to us what the British Empire was to our forebears.
In fact, I wrote an article that tried to make a very similar point
recently, where I argue that we should look at the designs of
Washington as not those of our own government, but as those of a
foreign government:
http://blog.6thdensity.net/?p=983
I also agree totally that rights are something that individuals must
defend. In fact, in many ways the enumeration of them in the Bill was
a key weakness of American liberty, not only because they got defined
down to meaninglessness, but simply by the fact that we were convinced
that a third party institution could better defend those rights than
we, ourselves could. As citizens, our power lies in our spontaneity,
our sense of community and mutual aid, and our fierce identities as
individuals with families, among many other things. There was never,
ever any way that any institution, democratic or otherwise, could ever
have preserved our freedom; they're just too static, and they always
end up defining their missions for their own, rather than for
instrumental, purposes.
Accordingly, I'm starting to embrace a libertarianism that downplays
to the point of irrelevance the whole concept of rights, which merely
seem to institutionalize what should be a dynamic, social process of
having people work together. There are no guarantees in life: the
sooner we embrace that, the sooner we can live in a world that
reflects reality, as opposed to this fake one that governments,
corporations, and other institutions constantly want us to live in.
The doctrine of institutionally guaranteed rights is, in my
increasingly certain opinion, a sham: a way to get us to act in
predictable ways that allow for the consolidation of power, which is
always the ultimate trump card over any "contract". Is any contract
with the government, implied or otherwise, even possible?
Our salvation lies in the disruptive nature of unplanned, hayekian
society (orderly in it's own way, not merely for the purposes of those
who rule or even our purposes necessarily). Hence, yes, I am an
anarchist, as you may have guessed. :-) We need to start getting
uppity, and soon, and stop letting "the political process" have the
final say in how we'll live.
Anyway, just some thoughts I felt like sharing, thanks for your
attention and the quality content week after week!