God gave each of us the right to protect ourselves, our freedom, and our things. These are the three most important things you need to live, and keeping any one of them going depends on keeping the other two going. What are our faculties if not an extension of our uniqueness? And what is property if not a way to show what we can do? If everyone has the right to defend himself, his freedom, and his property, even with force, then a group of men has the right to form and support a common force to defend these rights constantly. So, individual right is the basis of both the justification and the legitimacy of collective rights. And the common force that protects this right for everyone cannot be used for anything other than what it stands for. Since it is against the law for one person to use force against another person’s person, freedom, or property, it is also against the law for the common force to be used to destroy the person, freedom, or property of individuals or groups for the same reason.
In both cases, this kind of use of force would go against our main idea. We have been given the power to fight for our own rights. Who will have the nerve to say that we have been given the power to take away the equal rights of our brothers? Since it is illegal for one person to use force to violate the rights of another, doesn’t the same rule apply to the common force, which is just an organized grouping of the individual forces?
If this is true, nothing could be clearer than this: the law sets up the right to legal protection that everyone has by nature. It is when separate forces are replaced by a single force. And this common force is only allowed to do what each individual force is allowed to do by law and nature: protect people, their rights, and their property; uphold each person’s rights; and make sure that justice rules over us all.
A fair and long-lasting government
If a country was built on this idea, I think there would be order in how people think and what they do. I think that such a country, no matter how it is governed, would have the simplest, most easily accepted, economical, limited, fair, just, and long-lasting government possible.
In this kind of system, everyone would know that he has all the rights and responsibilities that come with being alive. No one would argue with the government if his person was respected, his work was free, and the fruits of his work were safe from all unfair attacks. If we did well, we wouldn’t have to thank the government for what we did. On the other hand, if we failed, we wouldn’t blame the state for it, just like farmers wouldn’t blame the state for hail or frost. This idea of government would only be felt through the safety it would bring, which would be a blessing that can’t be measured.
If the government didn’t get involved in our private lives, our wants and how we got them would happen in a logical way. We wouldn’t think that poor families would try to learn how to read and write before getting food. Rural areas would not grow at the expense of cities, and cities would not grow at the expense of rural areas. We wouldn’t see the big changes in capital, labor, and population that happen when laws are changed.
These moves made by the government make our sources of life uncertain and vulnerable. Also, these acts make the government take on more responsibilities.
The complete break of the law
But the law does not stick to what it is supposed to do. And when it has gone beyond what it should have done, it hasn’t been about small or debatable things. The law has gone even further, going against what it was meant to do. The law has been used to do the opposite of what it was meant to do: to destroy the justice it was meant to protect and to limit and destroy the rights it was meant to protect. The law has put the power of the whole group in the hands of those who want to use other people’s lives, freedom, and property without risk. In order to protect it, it has turned theft into a legal right. The government has made legal self-defense a crime so that it can be punished.
How has this law-breaking been carried out? And how did things turn out?
Two very different things have messed up the law: stupid greed and false altruism.
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