{"id":11402,"date":"2010-07-18T12:36:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T18:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oooorgle.com\/wordpress\/?p=11402"},"modified":"2015-07-18T06:41:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T13:41:24","slug":"stating-the-bleeding-obvious-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/stating-the-bleeding-obvious-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Stating the Bleeding Obvious (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/LarkenRose.com\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/images\/LawAndEthics.png\" alt=\"\" hspace=\"5\" align=\"left\" \/>LarkenRose.com<\/a> | My last &#8220;bleeding obvious&#8221; article addressed the absurd notion that anyone could ever be morally OBLIGATED to disregard his own moral conscience. But the concepts of &#8220;authority&#8221; and &#8220;government&#8221; depend entirely upon the insane notion that, at least in some cases, it is BAD for people to do what they think is RIGHT (if the politicians call it &#8220;illegal&#8221;), and GOOD for people to do what they think is WRONG (if &#8220;the law&#8221; commands it). Statism relies upon such insanity. But that is not the only way to demonstrate the insanity of the superstition called &#8220;government.&#8221; (This next one, many of you have seen before.)<\/p>\n<p>Question: Can you give to someone else a right that you don&#8217;t have?<\/p>\n<p>Here are your two possible answers:<\/p>\n<p>YES, I can delegate to others a right that I do not have. That would mean that even though it is IMMORAL for me to do certain things (committing theft, assault, murder, whatever), I can nonetheless bestow moral PERMISSION on someone else, giving them the RIGHT to do such things.<\/p>\n<p>Again, I hope I don&#8217;t have to go to great lengths to explain why such a notion is utterly insane. If you don&#8217;t understand it, don&#8217;t worry; I&#8217;ll just bestow upon someone else the right to bludgeon you with a club until you understand it.<\/p>\n<p>(There is a slight variation, which is equally insane, which is the idea that ONE person cannot delegate a right he doesn&#8217;t have, but that MULTIPLE people can delegate a right which NONE of those people possess. This is about as rational as saying, &#8220;No, I can&#8217;t give you an apple, because I don&#8217;t have one, but if I get together with some of my friends, NONE of whom has an apple, together we CAN give you an apple.&#8221; Right.)<\/p>\n<p>So that answer stinks. But here&#8217;s the only other option:<\/p>\n<p>NO, I cannot delegate to others a right that I do not have. As patently obvious as that is, consider what the logically implies:<\/p>\n<p>The people called &#8220;Congress&#8221; have NO rights that I don&#8217;t have. Who could have GIVEN them such rights, if no one can delegate a right he himself doesn&#8217;t possess? If I have no right to &#8220;tax&#8221; my neighbor, and you have no such right, who could possibly have given the people called &#8220;Congress&#8221; such a right? In short, NO ONE. You and I have no right to enact and enforce arbitrary &#8220;laws&#8221; on our neighbors. And neither do the people called &#8220;Congress,&#8221; because no one had the power to delegate to them such a right. You and I have no right to rob people, assault people, threaten people, etc. (We can only rightfully use force to DEFEND against an aggressor.) Ergo, the people called &#8220;Congress&#8221; have no such right to rob, assault, or threaten either, even if they call it &#8220;taxation,&#8221; or &#8220;law,&#8221; or anything else.<\/p>\n<p>Sorry, statists, but once again, your choices are either believe something insane, or abandon your statism; either you can give someone else the RIGHT to commit theft, assault, and murder, or &#8220;government&#8221; is completely bogus, because the people in &#8220;government&#8221; have no right to do ANYTHING that you and I do not have the right to do (because no one has ever had the ability to GIVE them such a right).<\/p>\n<p>Once again, the insanity underlying statism is pretty darn easy to expose, even if it&#8217;s rather uncomfortable for the indoctrinated to rationally consider. (Again, I was raised as a statist, and I vehemently resisted such obvious truisms for a long time, before giving up and choosing sanity.)<\/p>\n<p>Larken Rose<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.larkenrose.com\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.larkenrose.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><br clear=\"Left\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LarkenRose.com | My last &#8220;bleeding obvious&#8221; article addressed the absurd notion that anyone could ever be morally OBLIGATED to disregard his own moral conscience. But the concepts of &#8220;authority&#8221; and &#8220;government&#8221; depend entirely upon the insane notion that, at least in some cases, it is BAD for people to do what they think is RIGHT [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[400,213,244],"class_list":["post-11402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-obligation","tag-rights","tag-statism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}