NOT A NAYSAYER AT ALL

For over three decades I have written columns for the Register,as well as
free-lancing for various other publications. During this time I have not
changed my mind on fundamentals. I still consider it true that human beings
ought to have their right to liberty respected and protected and that to do
this is the essential function of the legal system.

What has been pointed out to me on and off is that most of what I opine is
of a negative kind: Don't do this, don't do that; if you do that worse will
happen; if you do that worse will happen. Like America's 30th president,
Calvin Coolidge, I'd rather have government do nothing more than "secure
these rights," namely, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to use
the exact phrase of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

Well, is this negativism? It is vis a vis government's role in society. It
says it ought to be limited to rights protection. Consider this kind of
negativism toward the role of the military or the police. It would advocate
having the military confine itself to defending our country and the police
confine themselves to fending off crime.

Indeed, any conception of the limited use of physical force in the
governance of a society would have to be negative. What else did slaves want
but to have government stop supporting slavery, to have people stop
enslaving other people? All our outcries to criminals are negativist: Do not
rape, assault, murder, kidnap, rob and otherwise violate our rights!

I could write a column every hour earnestly singing the praises of various
human beings doing all kinds of marvelous, creative, decent things
throughout this society, as well as many others. I could also sing the
praises of decent prosecutors, judges and police officers who confine
themselves to doing their proper jobs.

It is just that the greatest threat to all the potential for decency and
civility in society is governmental misconduct, political tyranny,
despotism, what have you. That is because government is the only agency that
conducts its business by the use of force; and that is one of the most
hazardous ways of acting toward people.

So I call attention to and fiercely protest coercive government more often
than I praise all those who deserve praise for their wonderful, creative,
productive, generous, courageous, prudent and other virtuous conduct. There
is a division of labor here, as well as in other places in the market place:
I have had in my life direct and very instructive experience about the
massive loss of individual liberty and how that undermines all decent human
endeavors.

First, I had my attention called to this when I was a boy in Budapest,
Hungary, where the Stalinist puppet government ruled with ruthless force.
Second, I also experienced a version of fierce coercion from another
social-political source in my own home under the rule of my father, an
avowed anti-Semite and avid Nazi-sympathizer.

That double-barrelled lesson has helped me to focus on this matter, not
because it is the most important human issue - it really isn't - but because
it is one of them, the one that concerns public affairs most directly. Some
of us need to address it in each generation and commit ourselves to
vigilence so that we and our offspring can flourish in society as human
beings and not as domesticated animals who are being cared for, more or less
roughly, by some elite group of politicians and their henchmen.

Let me just say, for the record, that someone who champions the rights of
individuals isn't at all negative about human community life; quite the
contrary. Such a person merely takes to its logical conclusion the sound
understanding that the most important political value is the protection of
those rights.

Others can focus on their matters, I have my hands full with this one.