The Chasm (an Essay), By G. Edward Griffin; very good Options

[Wingmaster05]

http://www.freedomforceinternational.org/p...urecalling1.pdf

22 page essay on two modes of thought that we can never seem to come to the same understanding. Collectivism and Individualism. Great read and I thought it was worth sharing in light of the whole Ron Paul debates.

[Wingmaster05]

excerpt:

The fourth concept that divides collectivism from individualism has to do with
responsibilities and freedom of choice. We have spoken about the origin of rights, but there
is a similar issue involving the origin of responsibilities. Rights and responsibilities go
together. If you value the right to live your own life without others telling you what to do,
then you must assume the responsibility to be independent, to provide for yourself without
expecting others to take care of you. Rights and responsibilities are merely different sides of
the same coin.

If only individuals have rights, then it follows that only individuals have
responsibilities. If groups have rights, then groups also have responsibilities; and, therein,
lies one of the greatest ideological challenges of our modern age.

Individualists are champions of individual rights. Therefore, they accept the principle
of individual responsibility rather than group responsibility. They believe that everyone has
a personal and direct obligation to provide, first for himself and his family, and then for
others who may be in need. That does not mean they don’t believe in helping each other.
Just because I am an individualist does not mean I have to move my piano alone. It just
means that I believe that moving it is my responsibility, not someone else’s, and it’s up to
me to organize the voluntary assistance of others.

The collectivist, on the other hand, declares that individuals are not personally
responsible for charity, for raising their own children, providing for aging parents, or even
providing for themselves. These are group obligations of the state. The individualist expects
to do it himself; the collectivist wants the government to do it for him: to provide
employment and health care, a minimum wage, food, education, and a decent place to live. (...) They have a fixation
on government as the ultimate group mechanism to solve all problems.

Individualists do not share that faith. They see government as the creator of more
problems than it solves. They believe that freedom of choice will lead to the best solution of
social and economic problems. Millions of ideas and efforts, each subject to trial and error
and competition – in which the best solution becomes obvious by comparing its results to all
others – that process will produce results that are far superior to what can be achieved by a
group of politicians or a committee of so-called wise men.

By contrast, collectivists do not trust freedom. They are afraid of freedom. They are
convinced that freedom may be all right in small matters such as what color socks you want
to wear, but when it come to the important issues such as the money supply, banking
practices, investments, insurance programs, health care, education, and so on, freedom will
not work. These things, they say, simply must be controlled by the government. Otherwise
there would be chaos.

There are two reasons for the popularity of that concept. One is that most of us have
been educated in government schools, and that’s what we were taught. The other reason is
that government is the one group that can legally force everyone to participate. It has the
power of taxation, backed by jails and force of arms to compel everyone to fall in line, and
that is a very appealing concept to the intellectual who pictures himself as a social engineer.

Collectivists say, “We must force people to do what we think they should do, because
they are too dumb to do it on their own. We, on the other hand, have been to school. We’ve
read books. We are informed. We are smarter than those people out there. If we leave it to
them, they are going to make terrible mistakes. So, it is up to us, the enlightened ones. We
shall decide on behalf of society and we shall enforce our decisions by law so no one has
any choice. That we should rule in this fashion is our obligation to mankind.”

By contrast, individualists say, “We also think we are right and that the masses
seldom do what we think they should do, but we don’t believe in forcing anyone to comply
with our will because, if we grant that principle, then others, representing larger groups than
our own, could compel us to act as they decree, and that would be the end of our freedom.”

Please read that last bolded statement, compare to the individualistic train of thought, and also consider how the elite figure themselves into the equation...

This post has been edited by Wingmaster05: Dec 19 2007, 09:20 PM

[Wingmaster05]

The so-called charity of collectivism is a perversion of the Biblical story of the Good
Samaritan who stopped along the highway to help a stranger who had been robbed and
beaten. He even takes the victim to an inn and pays for his stay there until he recovers.
Everyone approves of such acts of compassion and charity, but what would we think if the
Samaritan had pointed his sword at the next traveler and threatened to kill him if he didn’t
also help? If that had happened, I doubt if the story would have made it into the Bible;
because, at that point, the Samaritan would be no different than the original robber – who
also might have had a virtuous motive. For all we know, he could have claimed that he was
merely providing for his family and feeding his children. Most crimes are rationalized in
this fashion, but they are crimes nevertheless. When coercion enters, charity leaves.


Individualists refuse to play this game. We expect everyone to be charitable, but we
also believe that a person should be free not to be charitable if he doesn’t want to. If he
prefers to give to a different charity than the one we urge on him, if he prefers to give a
smaller amount that what we think he should, or if he prefers not to give at all, we believe
that we have no right to force him to our will. We may try to persuade him to do so; we may
appeal to his conscience; and especially we may show the way by our own good example;
but we reject any attempt to gang up on him, either by physically restraining him while we
remove the money from his pockets or by using the ballot box to pass laws that will take his
money through taxation. In either case, the principle is the same. It’s called stealing.