The Online Freedom Academy
For some time now I have been meaning to share this website on Galt's Gulch. I first came across it in 2006 and have used it has become my favorite tool for teaching the NAP.
SOURCE URL: http://www.tolfa.us
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Then I went back and answered as I supposed an anarchist would and scored 99. No comment.
#6 So, you have the right to do anything you like with your own life. Are there any limits at all on that power?
One of the multiple choice answers to that question is:
Only that I am forbidden to harm someone else.
If you choose that answer it comes up with:
No! Who said anything about being forbidden? - Forbidden by whom? And by what right? Restudy Segment 1 please, then try again.
Interesting. What if you considered it a rational conclusion that it is wrong to harm someone else and recognize that "axiom" (by their usage of that term) as a limit on your "power"? The forbidding we are contemplating here comes from yourself as a logical step in framing a rational morality. And that is wrong?
Who are these guys?
I avoid committing acts of aggression against others lest they do the same or worse to me.
It really becomes that simple in the end.
OCCAM'S RAZOR.
What is becoming rather tiring about these type of questions is that they are defensive or argumentative but lack any real value because the questioners are continuously inventing "gotcha" scenarios which they have not thought through or placed in their proper context. From here on out I am not going to respond to this type off "what if" scenarios. Sorry, but you'll just have to work them out for yourself. It's easy to do. Just replace "what if?" with "how could I effectively deal with [insert your scenario] in a stateless society?".
- "Only that I am forbidden to harm someone else.
If you choose that answer it comes up with:
No! Who said anything about being forbidden? - Forbidden by whom? And by what right? Restudy Segment 1 please, then try again."
So, the "teaching" material says that if you believe that you are prohibited from harming another, then you need to be "retrained" - who says you're prohibited, etc. That's fallacious reasoning. If I'm free to choose, and I believe in NAP, then ipso facto I'm prohibited as that is a core premise. But that premise is fallacious as it calls for me to choose for another. That if I believe in NAP, then the only reason to use force against another is to pro-actively prevent the use of force against me, thus I've made a choice for the other person that they are going to use force against me. Thus, I've removed their liberty and assumed it myself.
And, if you're not prohibited, then what stops anyone from just becoming the biggest baddest ass on the block? It is in their interest to subjugate others to serve them, so why not?
And if I'm able to use force in some circumstances and not in others, then who arbitrates on whether it was a proper use of force?
Reading "The Virtue of Selfishness" may help you begin to figure out the answer to that one.
"If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door—or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages.
The use of physical force—even its retaliatory use—cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. Whether his neighbors’ intentions are good or bad, whether their judgment is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice—the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another." Virtue of Selfishness
At it's most fundamental, that "higher" entity is culture. What values have been ascribed to by the populace and are fostered in the teachings and traditions that are imparted on the young. One of the most effective ways to impart culture is through religion.
Don't get me wrong, I am a great admirer of Ms. Rand and her work, but that does not render me incapable of questioning her or of independent thought.
In the process I have come to conclude that initiating aggression against others is wrong on principle - no exceptions. Coercing others by proxy under color of "government" is worse - it is the cowardice of bullies and the predation of sociopaths.
At this point, it's all hypothetical what the results would be if we eliminated government. But my hope is that people would step up to the challenge and find solutions to prevent future tyranny. Without the collusion of the media, politicians and courts, I find it hard to believe that a true sociopath could rise to power and wealth without showing his/her true colors. It would be our responsibility individually to not trade with bad people, and to warn others. (I think a society-wide public feedback system could be of benefit. Sort of like eBay's feedback on transactions, but covering more of life's interactions.) If freedom didn't succeed, and we wound up back where we started, at least we tried, and hopefully we learned something that can guide our actions in the future to better preserve freedom.
How would any man, woman or would-be gang go about amassing the fortune required and gaining enough of a strategic advantage to hijack anything in a society without central banks, fractional lending, limited liability, crony-capitalism, eminent domain, taxation, inflation, limits on gun ownership or all the hundreds of other coerced mechanisms of the state?
It is a fascinating question which I have been pondering for decades and for which I have never been able to come up with an answer that stood up to scrutiny and so far neither has anybody I asked.
Let me put it to you this way:
Why on earth would I, having succeeded brilliantly at amassing a substantial fortune and gaining social prominence by voluntary cooperation, creativity and plain hard work, want to risk all that on hiring, feeding and equipping enough thugs to become a much reviled war lord?
I'll answer your question - the same reason that most that gain power and prestige use coercive force, to maintain it.
Here we go again, applying statist conditions to a non state situation and making unfounded assumptions about how wealth is built. I have built and lost considerable wealth several times. In every instance, I built those businesses in spite of numerous legal and regulatory hurdles and lost them because of political and legal shenanigans placed in my way.
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I believe both Objectivists and Anarchists want the exact same thing: a voluntary system of order. Anarchy is not per se against hierarchy or leaders, but only against coerced relationships. If you take away the element of force and make funding voluntary (as the founder of Objectivism advocated, and as Anarchists advocate), I don't particularly care if you call it "anarchy" or "government" or "a duck," I'm going to be pleased, and I think those Objectivists and Anarchists who aren't caught up in semantics will be also.
Please don't forget how America started. That American Revolution was not masterminded by a government threatening force to fund and fight the battles. That was a voluntary association of people who valued freedom. It would be nice to have that again someday.
As I said, Ayn Rand wrote that government should be voluntarily funded, not supported with coercive taxes. If we get that, we will have the same problems, benefits and opportunities that the Anarchist approach would produce. What if a bunch of us withdrew our support for the current government, and began paying for private arbitration and protection services because they were faster, more effective, less corrupt, and cheaper? The result would be accountability, competition, new ideas, and the ability for others to imitate a system that is functioning well. If the worst happened, and we wound up with an arbitration or protection company that was becoming abusive or coercive (like the one we have now), we would withdraw our support and try with someone else.
We all acknowledge and love the effects of the free market in other areas -- why not let it work its magic on the legal and defense systems? I think it's what Ayn Rand wanted, too.
There will be bad people who initiate aggression not only with physical force, but by trying to steal our property. When I started to learn about anarchy, my big concern was also the same: Who will protect us from the "bad guys"?
One thing I realized along the way is that government doesn't do a very good job of protecting us. They sometimes catch, and sometimes punish, people who've harmed others after the fact, but the law actually says it's not their job to protect us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKVSNjlS... Can anyone say our system is ideal? Can anyone propose a solution that is likely to fix or improve it that hasn't been tried before?
I've addressed the other reasons to support a voluntary, non-coercive system in other comments here. In brief, I think it's more moral than the current system, since it doesn't initiate force against innocent people. (Taxation means demanding someone's property under threat of force, when they have done nothing to harm another.) And I believe it would be more effective, since monopolies aren't known for producing quality, while free markets are.
For those who argue that we need a uniform system of laws, why should we stop at just our country? Shouldn't we have world law, like the U.N.? Why should we have state courts? Shouldn't the same laws apply everywhere? I suspect that most Gulch members wouldn't want standardized national law, or international law. There are benefits of having competing systems, and I think we need more of them.
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If you have a point to make it, make it and let it stand on its own merits. Telling me that Rand agrees tells me you are fearful that your argument lacks substance and so you say she agrees with you. Easy to say when she has been dead for many years.
Also I signed up for one of the tape courses and when I commented on a painting in the office, the organizer of the course said that Rand like this artist and so the painting was good.
That is the kind of misuse of Rand's name I am referring to and is what I am seeing in some of the comments. I am not in any way defending anarchism and I apologize if that is what you thought I meant.
I simply want to see people make their own logical arguments.
We have no idea of what anyone told you years or decades ago about a painting, but it has nothing to do with the topic here or what anyone else has said about it.
Leonard Peikoff has not said that there is no new ground to cover and has attempted to do so himself (with mixed results). He does defend the position that Ayn Rand used the term "Objectivism" to refer to her philosophy as she formulated it, and that others claiming to 'extend' it, correctly or not, are not included in that. He insists that even his own subsequent work is not included, although he calls it "applications of Objectivism" and sometimes consciously 'suggests' that Ayn Rand would agree with him, which in significant areas I strongly doubt. She isn't here to say one way or the other.
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As for the website, it is in fact a 'free market anarchist' site, partly using Ayn Rand's ideas and partly contradicting them, as you can see throughout. This is not a matter of subjective "kinda impressions" employed by the mentally sloppy. One sample explicitly showing the anarchism: "'couldn't we just limit government, instead of doing away with it altogether?' The answer is NO." [emphasis in original]
"Left libertarian" and "free market anarchism" is a false alternative.
Maphesdus is a 27 year old college sophomore gadfly in "digital media" and an avowed "left libertarian", i.e., a leftist ,who claims to have been "through a period of about six months where I got really into Ayn Rand's philosophy" before rejecting it as supposedly opposing the "principles of the Declaration of Independence".
Nobody can "get really into" her philosophy in all of "six months" let alone honestly conclude something so dumb with even the most casual understanding of her political philosophy.
This is so stupid as to raise the question of intellectual dishonesty as well as severe disability, and with repeated obvious misrepresentation repeatedly refuted leaves no room for further patience with this troll who constantly trashes Ayn Rand under the guise of wanting to "debate" it with nowhere else to do it.
Maphesdus is a collectivist who demands government policy based on race in a statist, racist notion of government. Rejection of such statism does not make Ayn Rand an "anarchist" denying "essential functions of government".
Anyway, since you did provide one legitimate argument before unleashing your angry deluge of insults, I will address that. You claim that Ayn Rand's philosophy is not based on the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), yet even a cursory reading of her work demonstrates that that isn't true. The NAP was a very large part of her philosophy, so much so that she even proclaimed that it was the basic political principle of her ethics.
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"The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force."
~ Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, page 36
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/retali...
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Tell me, in light of this particular passage, how do you support your claim that Objectivism is not based on the NAP?
Maphesdus repeatedly insults, smears, and misrepresents Ayn Rand and others, ignoring and evading explanation with 'responses' consisting of more vituperative insults and misrepresentation.
Anarchy ALWAYS ends in totalitarianism. Why would you promote that?
note the date on this article posted on moonbattery.com:
"August 24, 2007
Venezuela Under Chavez: Totalitarianism Meets Anarchy
An irony of moonbattery is the close relationship between totalitarianism (ubiqitous government) and anarchy (absence of government), polar opposites that bleed into each other. For example, the sort of unwashed hooligans who stage riots at WTO meetings often refer to themselves as anarchists — yet to the extent they have any coherent ideology, it most closely resembles Stalinism. Another example is the authoritarian regime of Hugo Chavez. The more he tightens his grip on power, the more Venezuela dissolves into anarchy.
The streets of Venezuela are out of control — and according to the Financial Times, the economy may soon be as well:
President Hugo Chávez's tightening grip over Venezuela's economy is generating distortions that economists fear could, paradoxically, eventually lead to a loss of control.
Price controls, currency controls and negative real interest rates are just some of the elements that have contributed to one of the highest rates of inflation in the world and a substantially overvalued exchange rate.
The economy is ever more dependent on the high price of oil. If that falls, so will Venezuela — into economic chaos.
If things get bad enough, they could always try freedom. It works for America,"
else is standing around allowing it. There must be remedy.
In the current system there is a perfect avenue for bullies and sociopaths to get away with it - sign up for a government job. They got them for every taste. Small time bully? Become a clerk at your local DMV. Serious sociopath? Sign up as an IRS agent or with one of the thousands of (militarized) police agencies. Have psychopathic tendencies but queasy around blood? Become a politician. Want to get into some serious killing? Join the military. They maintain a few really cool shooting galleries far enough from home so that your family and neighbors won't have to watch what you're up to. Over the top, power hungry psychopath? Interested in killing in the thousands by proxy? Take a shot at running for US president.
well, then, you'll always have to have the biggest club and we're back at fiefdoms. and all that protecting will keep you from getting anything done and being productive. what mechanism do you have for disputes? and again remedy?
You see, the problem is that you continue to apply conditions which exist under a government monopoly on violence to create a scenario which supports your current convictions. First of all, the vast majority of humanity is decent and just. Sociopaths are outliers and as such make up only a tiny minority of society.
The remedy against these outliers is that In a truly anarchic society, the vast majority of people will own defensive weapons or other devices, know how to use them and be free to do so. Contracting with private security and crime prevention services is another option which has recently been demonstrated to be highly effective in the police vacuum created by the bankruptcy of Detroit. Having lived and worked in several countries which can easily be described as lawless in comparison with the USA or Canada I have seen this free market security mechanism at work with great effect.
This is in complete contrast to the present state of affairs where the vast majority of “good” people are disarmed by “government” and left effectively helpless against predators who simply ignore the laws and acquire/use whatever weapons they desire to.
You ask about dispute settlement mechanisms. They already exist in abundance today. Free market arbitration services and insurance policies (such full coverage auto) are proliferating everywhere, especially as government courts become more corrupt every day.
"contracting with private security" how is that contract enforced? Yes, I'm sure they work for small groups-the reason they are there, is because the govt has already broken down and you have a situation that is chaotic. That's my point- so a few are able to be protected by these private firms-the rest are still living in chaos being unproductive because they are spending time protecting themselves and their property and children aren't able to learn. Biff in Back to the Future Three was able to be protected, but the town was not this nice everyone getting along well, etc. lol
I agree that most are not sociopathic-100%. But in a chaotic or corrupt situation most will use force because it is being used against them. I agree to the conflict of small government. You still have not answered my question about remedy and enforcement of contracts. Ultimately I will challenge you on intellectual property and environmental issues. but I will state again-reasonable people disagree-how do you handle disputes? Your private police force disagrees with my private police force. now we have a mini war-we're back to a feudal existence. Invention will diminish. Building assets will go mostly towards protection. there have to be some rules.
The benefit of such is that the mediation services are not emotionally or financially involved in the dispute. They have an incentive to resolve the dispute as quickly and satisfactorily as possible. The private police forces also have an incentive to conclude this as they don't want to incur violence with their employees, and want to keep their clients.
Both the private police and mediation services would have the ability to sue their former client should they reneg on an agreed settlement to a dispute, which helps to keep the client from merely making an agreement that they have no intention of keeping and jumping to another private police agency.
As for payments of damages, there would be a monthly retainer that also paid some portion of an insurance policy. Should a client renege, they would lose their rights to that indemnity and it would be paid out to the stipulations of the agreement - and that person/entity that reneged would be barred from further private police protection until the debt was extinguished.
What about the homeless/destitute? Don't they get protection? These are some issues that need to be addressed, but I'm confident that free-market solutions are feasible.
As far as Detroit is concerned, your comments give the impression that you may not have been following the evolution there too closely. I have; for over three years. It's actually quite fascinating regardless of one's philosophical stance. Do you have any idea which crime prevention firm I might be referring to?
Did you know that there was a perfectly good, market-created voluntary system for resolving disputes prior to the government court system in England? It worked so well that the King decided he wanted a cut of the compensation, and then established the courts -- nominally for the people's good, but in reality so he could be a parasite of the already functioning system. I read an article about this, but can't find it to link to at the moment.
And once you agree that you band together with your neighbors to resist, you've just created a "government" whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
Surely, not even in YOUR wildest imagination, do these voluntary associations constitute "government"?
Wikipedia: A government is the system by which a state or community is governed. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining the policy of the state. A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political systems and institutions that make up the organization of a specific government.
Once you allow that force can be used in certain circumstances and not in others, then you must have an arbiter - and that constitutes government.
From Merriam-Webster: the act or process of governing; specifically : authoritative direction or control
Governing is decision-making and exerting control/authority over others. It can be formal or very informal. And thus, your vision of anarchy doesn't hold.
Maybe not collectivist, but statism most certainly. "Limited government" is an oxymoron. How is that limited government in Mordor-on-the-Potomac working out for you?
Ayn Rand emphatically denounced it, regardless of its form or excuse. It is not what Atlas Shrugged was about, let alone promoted, and has nothing to do with the AS movie. Limited government is not an "oxymoron" other than in the floating abstractions and imagination of anarchists.
It's a bit contradictory to insist we need force-based government laws, regulations and biased enforcement of them in order to have a "free" market, imho. Government subsidizes some businesses, sues or fines others, and otherwise interferes with the free market in thousands of ways. It's a system that benefits the politicians and their cronies (a.k.a. the rulers), but not the average citizen without pull.
In a truly free market, a spontaneous or natural order will arise, without the need for government to impose the rules by force. These are the ideas of F.A. Hayek and Frederic Bastiat. Please see section 2 here for a historical example of this spontaneous order arising: http://library.mises.org/books/Roderick%...
It seems to me that Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead also demonstrate clearly that government regulation does absolutely nothing to help the free market, and many things to hurt it. Anarchy doesn't mean "no rules" -- instead it means "no rulers" who inevitably impose unfair rules that benefit them alone.
None of these goofy floating abstractions trying to rationalize anarchy as supposedly endorsed by Ayn Rand are new since at least a half century ago. It is all gibberish and devoid of any remnant of common sense, and has long been rejected for good reason. A handful of people trying to resurrect it now is only spreading more misinformation about Ayn Rand and isn't doing anyone any good. It would be silly if it weren't so destructive.
It's not the end all answer to peace on earth, although I would hope the further it spreads the closer we could get to that ideal, but it is the best place to start. Any approach that requires the initiation of force is doomed to collapse, as eventually the slaves will rebel.
But there is force being used against others all the time. Some here tell me that if I don't support Objectivism that I don't belong on the site. They are using a subtle form of force there - coercion and mild intimidation - it doesn't work because I'm not so easily intimidated. But, just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean that it wasn't tried. That seems to me to be the nature of living creatures, and man in particular. Heck, if you look at plants, they try to crown one another out to get the prime sunlight, the most rainfall, etc. That's why we kill weeds and fertilize grass. Grass is an inherently weaker plant, and if left to nature, would perish under the onslaught of more robust weeds. Force is seemingly ubiquitous.
Perhaps you missed the ending of "Spartacus", or maybe modern history texts re-write the Confederate War as a slave rebellion, I dunno...
Anyone who thinks the entire human race will ever reach a single unanimous consensus on any issue through the mechanism of "democracy", "government" or other violent statist means is truly fooling themselves.
If man inherently uses force (as all living creatures do) then to base a moral code and life philosophy on something that requires man to live counter to his nature is insanity and bound to fail.
I'd love to see a study comparing the behavior of children who were hit, and children who weren't. That should show whether it's human nature, or learned.
In my education they applied two basic principles which can be summed up as (a) If you're smart enough to ask this question then you're smart enough to know the answer and (b) when in doubt about doing or saying something to or with others, ask if you would like them to do or say this to you. This process taught me (a) how to reason based on facts and logic and (b) self-discipline and the value of non-aggression.
Most importantly however, it endowed me with the self-confidence to tackle any situation with the conviction that I could figure it out without having to appeal to some higher (parental, state or religious) authority or resorting to aggression.
""My apologies. Your textbook does so state. But calling a tail a leg does not make the name fit ‘Juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and their failure to solve it.
Have you ever raised a puppy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you housebreak him?"
"Err... yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house.
"Ah, yes. When your puppy made mistakes, were you angry?"
"What? Why, he didn’t know any better; he was just a puppy.
"What did you do?"
"Why, I scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him."
"Surely he could not understand your words?"
"No, but he could tell I was sore at him!"
"But you just said that you were not angry."
Mr. Dubois had an infuriating way of getting a person mixed up. "No, but I had to make him think I was.
He had to learn, didn’t he?"
"Conceded. But, having made it clear to him that you disapproved, how could you be so cruel as to spank him as well? You said the poor beastie didn’t know that he was doing wrong. Yet you inflicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a sadist?"
I didn’t then know what a sadist was — but I knew pups. "Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he’s in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won’t do it again — and you have to do it right away! It doesn’t do a bit of good to punish him later; you’ll just confuse him. Even so, he won’t learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it’s a waste of breath just to scold him." Then I added, "I guess you’ve never raised pups."
"Many. I’m raising a dachshund now — by your methods. Let’s get back to those juvenile criminals. The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this class... and they often started their lawless careers much younger. Let us never forget that puppy. These children were often caught; police arrested batches each day. Were they scolded? Yes, often scathingly. Were their noses rubbed in it?
Rarely. News organs and officials usually kept their names secret — in many places the law so required for criminals under eighteen. Were they spanked? Indeed not! Many had never been spanked even as small children; there was a widespread belief that spanking, or any punishment involving pain, did a child permanent psychic damage."
(I had reflected that my father must never have heard of that theory.)
"Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was rarely invoked; it was regarded as ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ " Dubois had mused aloud, "I do not understand objections to ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment — and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism?
However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.
"As for ‘unusual,’ punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose." He then pointed his stump at another boy. "What would happen if a puppy were spanked every hour?"
"Uh... probably drive him crazy!"
"Probably. It certainly will not teach him anything. How long has it been since the principal of this school last had to switch a pupil?"
"Uh, I’m not sure. About two years. The kid that swiped — "
"Never mind. Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct. Back to these young criminals — They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes. The usual sequence was: for a first offense, a warning — a scolding,
often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested many times and convicted several times before he was punished — and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation — ‘paroled’ in the jargon of the times.
"This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called ‘juvenile delinquent’ becomes an adult criminal — and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder.You — "
He had singled me out again. "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house... and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken — whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?"
"Why... that’s the craziest way to raise a dog I ever heard of!"
"I agree. Or a child. Whose fault would it be?"
"Uh... why, mine, I guess."
"Again I agree. But I’m not guessing."
- Robert A. Heinlein, "Starship Troopers"
While I agree with Heinlein, he distorts the Constitutional meaning of "cruel and unusual" punishment. "Cruel" meant punishment performed for the sake of inflicting suffering, alone. "Unusual" meant singling an individual out for different punishment than the statute of a crime would call for generally.
We humans are animals first. We use force instinctively. I spanked my children to emphasize a point, and now as young adults in their early 20's they are well behaved, polite, respectful people. The spankings that they received did not make them bullies or psychopaths out to hurt others. On the other hand, I've observed other parents that swore they'd never hit their children whose little brats seemed to learn that there was never a consequence to their actions and were bullies and have grown up to be reprobates.
Resorting to violent aggression is NEVER an acceptable mode of dispute "resolution", especially not of behavior modification in children. It is bullying and a clear sign of the bully's inability to convince by logic and reason.
How do you convince a child by logic or reason when he has not yet learned to apply logic or to reason, himself? How do you convince a child by logic or reason when he is still ruled by emotion?
The underlying philosophical rationale (from F. A. Hayek, Frederic Bastiat and the like) is that a spontaneous or natural order will arise from people's interactions, and that it does not need to be imposed from above by government. There is a historical example of this in section 2 here: http://library.mises.org/books/Roderick%...
My understanding of the word "government" is that in the broader sense it denotes a particular philosophical concept (or idea if you prefer), i.e. is not a living creature capable of independent thought and action.
In the narrower sense I understand "government" to describe a legal fiction (once again not a living creature) used to give certain people monopoly power to make "laws", lay down other rules of conduct and the power to enforce them.
Am I correct in this?