Quote Originally Posted by mike
Quote Originally Posted by DDT
It is hard to understand why anyone is a leftist in this day and age. The Rights of the Individual outweigh the Wants of the Many. Once that rule is broken......no one is safe.
Once again, your logic begs the question why you support Bush. If you think the individual's rights are superior to that of the many then why on earth do you support someone who has taken away more civil liberties in the past 4 years than any US president in history (save perhaps John Adams or Woodrow Wilson)? I'm not advocating Kerry as an alternative, mind you. He voted in favor of most of the legislation we're talking about here. But still, sometimes your comments make me wonder if maybe you got kicked in the head by a cow or something.


By the way, there's an easy and valid argument to make against what you've said, and that is that a lot of people (myself included) do agree with you that individual happiness is more important than self-sacrifice for some Feuerbachian deity called "man," but that the easiest way for me to ensure my own individual happiness is by cooperating with others. If I contribute to a welfare system it is so if I need it someday, I can be sure it will exist and I will not become destitute and homeless. If I help come up with ideas of how to abolish the wage system, it is so I myself do not have to live paycheck to paycheck. If I advocate the end of workplace hierarchy and top-down control, it is because I do not want some asshole telling me what to do. The fact that other people want or don't want these things will not make me want or not want them. I am not doing it for them. But it is obvious I could not establish a system like this by myself, for the same reason that 100 men working 2 hours can accomplish vastly more than 1 man working 200 hours. It is not always stupid for an individual to relinquish some of his short-term desires to ensure the long-term ones come to fruition. Case in point: not cheating on my fiance with a Denny's waitress so that I might have a wife six months from now.

You might do good to read a little Stirner.
Hee. Good one, Mike I love it!