NAKED FREEDOM
NOVEMBER 14, 2010. First Principles are not popular. They require coherent thought. People would rather focus on an example, a case, a scandal, and wring the most sensational possible conclusions out of it—thereby removing its connection to any principle.
They would rather measure time by one piece of gossip after another.
The result of this mental deficit is a kind of permission to let the future leak in as it will, until it becomes a river that takes us wherever it leads.
But suppose we are able to marshal our resources and think about the basis of the Republic?
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The rise of science has swept all before it. New inventions and technology have convinced the masses that science is synonymous with “workable,” “necessary,” and “governing.”
Therefore, when a person makes a decision that is obviously and clearly unscientific, and therefore self-defeating, friends and family and co-workers and professionals urge him to reconsider and change direction.
This pressure can nearly have the effect of law, and, in fact, legislatures have passed laws that support science and forbid challenging it.
At this point, I could cite various examples of false and deceptive science—I have maintained an enterprise, over the last 30 years, in which I document such cases. So I would have no trouble illustrating where and how science has been dressed up to look real, when it is actually hoax and fraud.
But here I don’t want to do that. I want to make a simpler point. It is framed by the question: how far does freedom extend?
Is it an act of freedom for a patient to deny a life-saving treatment widely accepted as such, and acclaimed as the only possible choice open to him in his circumstances?
Or is it an act of suicidal ignorance?
And if it is the latter, how might that modify what freedom consists of?
Suppose, for instance, a doctor diagnoses this patient with cancer and tells him that his only chance for survival lies in accepting chemotherapy?
And suppose the patient refuses?
Put aside, for the moment, the matter of whether chemotherapy would be effective. Ignore what other therapy the patient might favor.
Consider this extreme situation solely in the light of whether the patient has the right and freedom to discard his doctor’s sober advice.
This is precisely a test case, because widespread acceptance of what good science consists of is being challenged by a patient who has no medical background or expertise.
Actually, we don’t know whether the patient is challenging the science; we only know that, from the point of view of experts, that is what his refusal amounts to.
The patient is simply saying no.
Does he have that right?
Does he have the guaranteed freedom to make his choice, even if that choice leads to his death?
Should society have a higher right to countermand his decision?
In the future, we will see more and more test cases, and the tendency will be to rule out the patient’s liberty.
Therefore, we had better get it right now.
Freedom is freedom. If you limit it on the basis of science, or magic, or religion, and if you limit it for one person, you are setting a precedent that can limit it for others.
Try this example. I am standing on my own property. In my hands are blueprints I have made for my new house. I am already building it myself, alone. I am standing under the skeleton.
The city in which I live has a copy of the plans. Employees in the building department have determined, scientifically, that this structure will not stand. It will collapse.
My house will be erected in the center of an acre of land. If it falls, it will fall on me and no one else.
Sheriff’s deputies are standing on the edge of my lawn with weapons. They are threatening to come in and arrest me, before I kill myself under the falling beams.
Do they have the right to stop me?
Do I have the freedom to build my house exactly as I have planned?
We live in an age of official and unofficial meddling. Everyone believes he has the right to interfere in other people’s business, “for their own good.”
Such a belief has a twin—we must help everyone who needs it regardless of expense, regardless of where the money comes from, regardless of what the asserted need is.
Each belief re-enforces the other.
This is the society we are turning into.
Conversely, if we allow the patient to refuse chemotherapy, if we permit the builder of the crooked house to put up that structure, and if we are publicly willing to say we understand the consequences may be dire—and still, we are willing to forego interference, we are tacitly admitting that we don’t have to help everyone, everywhere, at any moment.
If we stand up and limit the amount of help we are willing to give “to everyone, everywhere, at every moment,” if we are willing to assert that limit publicly and specifically, then we are closer to admitting that individuals have the right and freedom to risk injuring or even killing themselves.
This is a crossroad.
Obviously, there is tremendous sentiment on the side of political correctness: we must interfere; we must intervene; we must save the misguided.
The same situation and issue is involved in the government’s foreign policy decisions. Are we obligated to intervene in every foreign war or massacre?
Whether you view history and the future through the eyes of policy or conspiracy, the result falling out of the hopper is the same.
To the degree that we abandon first principles and the philosophy of freedom, and allow, instead, a case-by-case carving up of the tree of liberty, we will end up with a hollow root, and that which we once cherished will be gone, a faint remnant of a forgotten era.
Despite the sentiments of utopians and rainbow seekers and all-enveloping do-gooders and apocalyptic enthusiasts, freedom always did have consequences. You can’t be for freedom and also insist on eliminating risk. And in the test cases, where the popular belief is that an individual, following a horrific strategy, is going to cut his chances of survival, you have to stand back. You have to learn that intervention is not the final answer, except if we want a society in which protection ultimately emanates from law backed up by the barrel of a government gun.
There are, and will be, increasing numbers of people who insist that protection must be the first principle of existence. They will dress it up, they will flood the decks with quasi-religious swill, they will carry out the mandate with a grave smile of purity, they will cite science, they will issue messianic commands, they will turn themselves inside out to protect Everything. Under the flag of a new dawn, they will insist.
Their lives are not their own. To imagine they are alive, they want yours.
Most readers will shrink away from my analysis. They would prefer not to consider these extreme test cases because, while the prospect of allowing someone the freedom to harm or even kill himself might be privately acceptable, to publicly state it is policy is going too far. Better to stay in the shadows.
However, consider this. If five years from now, the number of patients who can legally refuse chemotherapy is reduced, because new regulations have been put in place, then ten years from now, the number of patients who can, say, refuse vaccines might be reduced. And then, the number of patients who can refuse prescribed antidepressants might, in fifteen years, be reduced by similar regulations.
And then, on another front, the same basic concept that forbids a man from building a crooked house that might collapse on his own property is extended. He can’t smoke in his house. He can’t grow certain kinds of plants that might cause a random neighbor to suffer an allergic reaction. He can’t raise his voice to his children. He can’t own a bicycle unless he owns a helmet designed to government specifications.
And then, 30 years from now, every patient under the national healthcare plan must accept all drugs prescribed by a government doctor.
And no property owner can protest a microwave scan of his house that automatically records and collates unpaid tickets, private debts, owed taxes, and memberships in groups of any kind. He can’t drive his car out of his garage unless he is taking, on schedule, every drug his doctor has prescribed him.
Well, it’s good science. For the greatest good of the greatest number, it’s all been figured out and expressed in regulations.
When people don’t have the sufficient mental capacity to recognize or think cogently about First Principles, these are the consequences.
JON RAPPOPORT
Jon is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for home schools and adults. To inquire: qjrconsulting@gmail.com