Dear Friends,
If I make a stone ax from a rock I find, cordage I twist, and a handle I hew… who is justly entitled to that ax? Central planners would argue that the moment it is created it becomes their property. That same argument was used by kings and emperors back in the day. It’s called the rights of kings. The Enlightenment did two things. It decimated the power of the Church and it obliterated the legitimacy of kings by falsifying appeal to authority. Today the term appeal to authority has been perverted to appeal to illegitimate authority. As if there are experts we should never question. Those same people argue to the head of a pin that the stone ax I made in a state of nature is their property. Rationalizing it as the needs of the many overrule the needs of the few. But is that just?
Are we entitled to the products of our own hands or are we indeed slaves to a king, despot, or bureaucracy? The definition of a slave is someone who is not entitled to the product of his or her own labor. They are property whose production belongs to another. Just as the output of a mechanical loom is the property of the owner of that loom. So we can reverse this chain of logic. If someone else owns your production, you are their slave. This is proven further if they control your body. If you are forced to take a shot they demand regardless of your thoughts, someone else controls your body. The fact that they allow you to keep some of your labor isn’t proof of freedom, it’s proof of manipulation. The central planners that run the world today assume the position and so rights of kings.
The Rights of Kings was a theory that the king had his power as the intention of God himself. This perverted Christianity and blasphemed at the same time… how very efficient. To illustrate the results of always getting what you want… I am reminded of the Simpsons. Homer was getting everything he prayed for, and so became arrogant. Then he began making demands of God. Justifying the sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, gluttony, and sloth (the lifestyles of royalty, elites, and despots) in the name of God is the purest form of blaspheming. So central planners both claim God doesn’t exist as they assume the rights of kings by popular vote. Then rig elections, ban opponents, and choose who can run. This ensures they have the rights of kings without the religious baggage. Language is their domain.
Central planners then changed “appeal to authority” to “appeal to illegitimate authority,” inserting the spurious notion that some authorities are above questioning. Legitimate authorities then must not be questioned… they are the experts, the professionals, and the science. Regardless of what the central planners say, no matter how absurd, they must not be questioned. They are the legitimate authorities that are above questioning. Just as kings and the Church were back in the day. This is because those who assume the rights of kings cannot be questioned, or else their authority will evaporate away. Central planners are like the driver who puts his car in the ditch, then complains a tree jumped out in front of him. Their hubris and arrogance are only matched by their ineptitude.
All this warping of logic, morals, and ethics is so that some can take from others and call it just. Kings called it the rights of kings. The Church called it the will of God. Today, central planners claim rule by experts is in everyone’s best interest… so submit. In most cases kings produced disasters. It was the rare king who did good for his kingdom. The same holds true for despots and central planners. If the ratio of failures to successes holds, then we can expect central planning to produce poverty, chaos, and war, while the central planners get rich doing it. Of over seventy-five Roman Emperors, only five were considered “good emperors” by Edward Gibbon. So far central planning has yielded even worse results. So I ask again, if you made that ax… who would it belong to?
Sincerely,
John Pepin
