Do “We” have more rights than “I”?

    In this day and age it is worth asking the question, “from where does government derive its rightful authority?” Whatever answer is to be found to this question must serve as the limit to government power. After all, nobody – not even government (especially government) – should go beyond that which can be rightly claimed.

    To answer the question of the origin of government power, we must explore the origin of government itself. For the next bit, I will borrow heavily from Frederic Bastiat (see www.bastiat.org). Now let us transport ourselves back to the (strictly hypothetical) dawn of human civilization and witness the process of the emergence of government.

    Let us picture two farmers working away in their fields. On occasion, a thief will come by these farmer’s fields and will steal some of their grain. But these farmers are too busy farming and tending their crops to concern themselves with the defense of their property. So they both decide to band together and share in the expense of hiring a handful of men to watch over their farms for them to thwart future attempts at theft. Thus they have established the first police force.

    It is perfectly acceptable for these farmers to hire other men to use force to prevent thieves from stealing from them, because each farmer naturally and individually possesses the right to self-defense and the defense of their property. The hired men are only acting on behalf of the farmers’ own natural rights.

    But now let us imagine that the second farmer fails to plan ahead and finds himself without any seed to re-plant his crops. So the second farmer says to the hired men (police), “would you please take for me some seed from the first farmer as I have none?” This is the same sort of theft that these men were hired to prevent. But now they are being asked to commit it themselves.

    It is not acceptable for the second farmer to ask these men to take the other farmer’s property by force because it is not a natural right the farmer possesses, and therefore the hired men are not acting on behalf of any natural right. The farmer, working by proxy through the hired men, is one and the same as the thief he wanted to stop from stealing from his own field. If the farmer does not possess a right to take from another, neither do his hired proxies have such a right – even if (and especially if) the hired proxies are paid by both farmers.

    The farmers entered into a joint venture of mutual protection since it was more efficient and cost-effective than hiring guards separately. We see that this primeval government was conceived by the farmers for the sole purpose of protecting their persons and property from bandits. This is the purpose of government and the reason it was established in the first place. But this government can only rightly do things that its founders had a right to do individually before the government was founded. If it is wrong for the individual to do a thing, it must also be wrong for the group to do the same thing because the group is composed of individuals.

    Many today would have us believe that somehow groups enjoy more rights than individuals. That governments (which are nothing more than the modern analog to the hired men in the previous story) somehow enjoy more rights of power collectively than the individuals that comprise them. Governments are, after all, merely groups of individuals who have (more or less) mutually agreed to cooperate with one another for the common protection of their rights.

    But the question must be asked, in political matters, at what point does the whole become more than the sum of its parts? Put another way, at what point does a group association acquire rights and powers that the individuals comprising the group do not possess separately? If the individual cannot justly take something from another by force, how many individuals must associate together for it to become just? 10? 100? 1,000? While 10 men collectively possess more physical strength than 1, do they posses more humanity? Do they, merely by means of their association, attain to something higher than the individual human? Something super-human? These questions hopefully illustrate the absurdity of the notion that governments can do things that are normally considered unjust, immoral, and criminal for the individual. Earthly government does not act on behalf of a Supreme Being, but rather on behalf of the mere mortals that comprise it. So how can government claim super-human privilege? Bastiat explained this concept well in his book, The Law:

    If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. … If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law … is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
    Another scathingly clear indictment of our present generation’s view of government can be found in Bastiat’s Government:

    We all therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it, "I am dissatisfied at the proportion between my labor and my enjoyments. I should like, for the sake of restoring the desired equilibrium, to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could not you facilitate the thing for me? Could you … lend me gratuitously some capital which, you may take from its possessor? Could you not bring up my children at the public expense? or grant me some prizes? … By this mean I shall gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace!"
    So the next time a politician is promoting one law or another, ask yourself, “do I personally possess the right to do what this law would have the government do on my behalf?”