In the closing thoughts of my last column, I predicted that I would receive a deluge of hate mail in response to publicly voicing my opinion of President-elect Barack Obama. As the week went on, and my inbox was slowly filled with commentary referring to me as “a morally despicable, selfish, un-American egotist,” it seemed as if things were going exactly as I had expected.
However, opening the Friday edition of The California Aggie to find an article titled “High Noonan” in the space that normally provides me with my weekly dose of liberal pessimism was something I had not anticipated.
To be honest, it wasn’t even the article itself that upset me. I mean, I get it, K.C., you’re a big fan of collectivism and know a bunch of funny ways to describe getting stoned. Hilarious.
What really got to me about the whole thing was the basic assumption that you had to make about my personality in order to write that column, and I’m not referring to the issue of getting high.
You began with a simple statement addressing the belief that I had a problem, and spent the remainder of you time trying to help me realize this. It was here that you exhibited the fatal flaw of positive rights, forced charity and government regulation in our society. You, and the other blind altruists who advocate for these programs, operate on one basic assumption of human nature – that man is not capable of helping himself.
This flawed view of the world grants men the same level of self-determination as a flock of captive sheep who have willfully surrendered control of their lives to a government of wolves posing as shepherds.
Fueled by this errant belief, world governments have adopted social programs designed to care for those who are thought to be somehow flawed and would find survival impossible without the aid of the government. Because you’ve adopted a view of existence that so drastically differs from my own, I think you’ll find that future disagreements between us are inevitable.
My view of human nature does not depict man as a flawed and helpless character, but rather as a being who is capable of and specifically designed for, self-advancement.
The entire notion of government in our world was introduced by groups of “selfish egotists” who discovered that their own success and survival was easier to obtain if they developed reciprocal relationships with like-minded individuals. Basically, one individual would exchange services with another, thus benefiting both parties. Entering into such a relationship was voluntary, and the partnership was only maintained as long as each man’s service was in line with the other’s self interest.
Society, along with an economy based on the exchange of goods and services, sprung from these relationships and governments were developed in order to maintain an environment that could facilitate these interactions.
As the flawed opinion of human nature that you so willingly embrace entered into the realm of world politics over the last century, the relationship between man and society has stopped being mutually beneficial and is no longer thought to be voluntary.
It is because of you and others who cling to equally flawed ideologies that it continues to become the burden of the productive man to care for the individuals that society has deemed incapable of success.
It is true that the Obama presidency will not be the first example of this irrational thinking in history, but rather another instance of charity collected at the point of a gun and yet another battle lost in the war waged on the self.
JAMES NOONAN doesn’t know if his fragile self-image can withstand another week of name-calling and hate mail. See if you can shatter his ego at jjnoonan@ucdavis.edu. Best of luck!!!
