In Search of Utopia.

• Author: Parker, David
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

"The goal: citizens living in a minimal state, free to say and do what they please within an agreed upon set of rules, investing their capital so that when they retire, they will be financially independent."

SOCIETY must incorporate a few universal values. Pluralism is such a value, namely, different groups of people living together--sometimes with one group in power (through election), later, others, but when one group's identity is elevated above pluralism, democracy is subverted. The more that one side says only its views count, the closer we are to tyranny.

In the U.S., the loss of pluralism is most dangerous in the nation's schools and universities where "woke" liberals--considering their opinions sacred, their critics oh-so-wrong-use their concentrated power of students and professors to dictate what may be said and who may speak on campus. To such individuals, speech cannot be divorced from the identity of the speaker, which is why conservative speech is censored. Should conservatives argue that patriarchy and white privilege are not a fact or that gender norms are purely arbitrary, liberals go ballistic. True or false, what is relevant is that speech must not be censored. Since the 1970s, thousands of teachers, professors, and administrators have lost their positions (or were never hired) simply for tolerating conservativism. The American anti-fascist campaign to eliminate conservatives from education has been successful.

A nation's government must not use individuals to solve social problems--for example, taxing individuals to redistribute wealth. "Individuals are ends, not means to an end. They may not be sacrificed for achieving ends to which they do not consent," declared German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

There is no species in nature where leaders tell others what to do. Let that be humanity's guide: the spontaneity of the invisible hand of nature that created everything we have--language, custom, money, common law built over centuries, a trading economy, as well as crime--is a product of evolution and therefore should be dealt with naturally, wherein a natural desire for justice is satisfied through immediate punishment (not years later when the perpetrator no longer is the same person). In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick elaborates on a cost-benefit analysis to determine the extent of law enforcement, the extent of retribution. It was not necessary. Necessary is to impose a few rules about which a society has achieved consensus--the U.S. Constitution, one page...