The Greater Good of the Greater Number

[Keith Broaders]

The American Founding Father wanted to create a land of liberty where the unalienable rights of the people would be secure and people would able to enjoy a perpetual state of peace, prosperity and freedom.

They knew that men and women were created equal in the sight of God and that in order to create the environment that promote would freedom and individual responsibility it would be necessary to prevent the abuse of governmental power.

They believed that individuals had the God given right to life, liberty and property and responsibility to respect the life, liberty and property of everybody else.

Men were to be held individually responsible for violating the rights of others. They did not believe that the government that they had created could possess power that they themselves did not have,

If an individual did not have the authority to violate the unalienable rights of their neighbor, the government that they created could not assume that power.

Violating the rights of another is a crime, whether it is committed by a person or a government.

Benjamin Franklin once said “He who surrenders a portion of his liberty to obtain temporary security, receives liberty or security”.

The advocates of freedom believe that only individuals have rights and government only have privileges that are granted to them by the people.The enemies of freedom believe that groups have rights and that the people have privileges granted to them by the government. They believe in the supremacy of the group and that the individual must be willing to be sacrificed for the greater good of the greater number. The Collectivist believe that the ends justify the means.

In order to promote the security of the group, individual rights must be suspended. When the rights of the individual are respected, a person is not guilty and can not be held accountable for a crime that they have not committed. When an individual in a collectivist state poses a threat to the domestic security, they are dealt with before they have committed a crime. The collectivist believe that if future violence can be prevented by incarcerating innocent people that the ends justify the means.

If we as individuals can not initiate force against another individual, how can we delegate that power to our government that we ourselves do not possess? When a nation attacks us, we have every right to defend ourselves, but we are not authorized by the Constitution to initiate force until we have become the victim of aggression.

The collectivist believe that man is not capable of governing himself and that only a handful of elite intellectuals are capable of knowing what is best for the people.