How the Left Violates The Non-Aggression Principle

I have long been aware of this principle, but was recently reminded of it when I saw a Wikipedia entry on it. I also noticed another hub that mentioned this. The Principle of Non-Aggression can be used to argue against the current liberal state and socialist states in general. As such it is an important argument for conservatives to understand. So first lets define the principle:

The Principle of Non-Aggression asserts that it is inherently illegitimate to initiate force or aggression against another individual. Key to the idea is initiation. If for example another person initiates aggression against you then you are certainly entitled to defend yourself because in this instance you did not initiate the act of force. The principle of non-aggression is closely aligned to the libertarian principle of being free to act so long as you do not engage in force or fraud. Basically not having initiated force against anyone no one is entitled to initiate force against you.

This principle has been recognized by great minds throughout history in various forms. A few formulations:

Epicurus: "The justice of nature is a pledge of reciprocal usefulness, neither to harm one another nor be harmed."

John Lock: "Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."

Ayn Rand: "The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships. ... In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use."

This principle is rather axiomatic in nature. That is certain ideas are pretty much fundamental and can't be argued for in terms of more basic ideas. Now I don't claim that it is philosophically impossible to find a system of reasoning that has the principle as a consequence, but we can certainly see it is a rather fundamental notion. I think you either get it or you don't. Some people are naturally tyrants and others are not. Those on the left are either tyrants or they do not think clearly enough to see the application of this principle as it relates to their behavior.

Before we go on to see how the principle applies to the behavior of the left we should note that in various ways it is certainly consistent with left wing ideologies. That is the left does certainly apply or appeal to the principle as it suits them. For example, feminists think that a womans body is her own and that the government should not interfere with her choices. Were the government to interfere it would constitute an act of aggression against the womans own free choices. Of course they apply the principle fallaciously because a third person is involved in a forceful act that they propose to initiate. But never mind they still appeal quite emotionally to their rights over their body.

Next of course the left at least in the 60's used to argue for individualism and the right of people to be left alone in there own consensual affairs. For examples, reading pornography or engaging in sodomy. I suppose they still argue for this and the argument is based on an application of the principle of non-aggression. In fact the left especially in the 60's made a fairly big deal of this. For example, they did not want others to moralize about their activities nor certainly the government to interfere.

But once in power the left became concerned with a principle more dear to them than their notions of individualism. This would, of course, be their more central idea of equality. Not just equality before the law a starting point we all agree with, but the left has in mind a principle of equality of outcome. That is if outcomes are unequal then social justice is not served and it is the obligation of the government to bring about social justice. It is simply a fact of the behavior of the left that when there is any conflict of ideas they always favor using the government to bring about their notion of social justice and no other axiom competes with this.

The result is that the non-aggression principle has been entirely abandoned by the left. This is rather obvious but since it is the point of the article lets make a few examples. For example, lets say I have my own business selling lets say widgets. Now my widgets are safe and useful for others. Others want to freely engage in transactions with me to buy my widgets. Now the non-aggression principle says no one should be allowed to engage in an act of aggression against our consensual affairs. The left however says I must pay taxes and if I don't then I cannot sell my widgets. If I refuse to pay taxes (note I have not engaged in any act of aggression) the left will make me close my business. If I refuse to close my business they will come with a gun and arrest me and put me in prison.  If I try to escape they will shoot me.  So finally we see they have engaged in an act of aggression and violated the principle of non-aggression.

Now many would of course argue that some taxation is obviously necessary. To this purpose people like John Lock speak a social compact whereby we all agree to pay some taxes to mutually protect ourselves. But the left goes farther than this. They are not just using the money to protect me. They are using the taxes to engage in a far reaching social agenda. They in theory at least are trying to bring about social equality through their system of taxation. This means that they have chosen a philosophical idea perhaps one that is rather suspect, and they have decided to use the full force of the government to aggressively impose their idea on those who either don't agree or don't want to participate.

As an example: I personally cannot stand the bigots at NPR. I really don't like them. The left however does like them and uses tax dollars to pay them to drive SUVs. Now if I don't want to pay them I have no choice the left will put me in prison as illustrated above. So we see the left clearly engages in acts of aggression to impose a rather questionable social agenda that goes well beyond any minimal social compact theory. If you think about it you can see it is rather bigoted and arrogant of them.

I for one have long argued that if liberalism really works let the left form their own collectives of voluntary association. They can mutually form any association they like with whatever rules they freely agree to. But the left of course won't do this because it doesn't work. Their systems always fail so no one would join. Hence they tax and regulate others in order to impose their agenda. In other words they violate the principle of non-aggression in the most profound way.

I have a moral principle that I am sure others also recognize. It is that if you violate morality profoundly in order to gain some result normally this leads to more trouble. Well it sounds rather vague but you get the idea and of course the application is that the left by violating the non-aggression principle ends up causing all sorts of societal harm.