day no. 17,185: first and last rights

“The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his ‘basic rights.’” — Thomas Sowell

A positive right requires someone to do something. If you say, for example, that everyone is owed the right to a fish sandwich with some tartar sauce and a side of fries, you have just obligated a fisherman, a farmer, and a delivery man, to name only a few. They are now required to work so that others might receive their rightful inheritance. In other words, positive rights require slavery.

A negative right does not require anyone to do anything. If you say, for example, that everyone is owed the right to free speech, no one has to do anything. They don't have to listen. No one has the right to be heard, only the right to speak. They don't have to like it. No one has the right to be liked, only the right to say what they like. They don't have to give you a platform from which to speak, they only have to allow you to stand on your own platform.

"Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." — Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Positive rights are created by man, who lacks the power to enforce them by sheer will power. 

Negative rights are created by God, who is omnipotent and fulfills them according to His will.

day no. 17,127: envy is no longer a bad word, it is the password

“Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice'.” — Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice

Envy has gone from being something one is ashamed of to something one boasts in. In other words, envy is no longer concealed and carried, it is brandished on the hip in broad daylight.

"Think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We now live in the land of two and two make five. We have men in women's locker rooms and women in fighter jets. We have empathy for perverts and animosity for parents. We lionize the effeminate while we chastise the masculine. We are ass backwards and full of beans, which is not a pleasant combo. 

We live in a world where envy is not only no longer a bad word, it is now actually the password.

day no. 16,712: property wrongs

“Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession.” — G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

Thou shall not steal presupposes private property. In other words, that which is thine really is. Jealously wishes thine was mine, but envy settles for thine as nein. Envy as a philosophical assumption has become so embedded into our thinking that many would rather everyone starve than anyone else be satisfied.

A thief wants to steal your property because they want it be their property. They do not long for a world where no one owns anything, rather they long to own more than they currently do. Philosophies like Marxism, however, do not just want to rob you, they want to rob the world. In short, they want to steal your right to property. This is often weaponized as a front by the well-to-do's who have not forfeited their interest in your property in the least. They want to do away with your property rights in principle and install their right to all property.

But theft is theft, regardless of who is doing it. Thou shall not steal. Whatever it is; whoever is trying to do it.

day no. 16,518: the separation of merch and state

"Properly understood, the case for capitalism is not a case for license or for laissez faire. It is a case for national wealth as a moral good; for the interest of the mass of consumers as the guide of policy; for clear and uniform rules of competition imposed upon all; for letting markets set prices, letting buyers make choices, and letting producers experiment, innovate, and make what they think they can sell -- all while protecting consumers and punishing abuses. It is a case for avoiding concentrations of power, for keeping business and government separate, and for letting those who can meet their own needs do so. It is a case for humility about our ability to know, and therefore about our capacity to do." — Yuval Levin

The marriage of the market and the ministry of the State is Crapitalism at its very finest. 

"Each of the moral aspirations we hope for about our society, and each of the economic objectives we have in a free enterprise economy, are undermined by an overly cozy relationship with business and government, where the collective power of the state is allowed to pick winners and losers. Our case for a market economy is a noble one, but it is undermined from start to finish when we fail to condemn the insidious effects of crony capitalism." — David Bahnsen, There's No Free Lunch

Crony capitalism is Crapitalism. 

Liberty demands a separation of Merch and State. The separation of Church and State is often touted as the sole safeguard of civil liberties, but it typically is promoted by those looking to separate the Church from its existence. Liberty does not command the State to be allergic to the Church. It does demand sphere sovereignty, but not sphere segregation. The far greater threat to liberty is the fusion of Merch and State. When the State artificially inflates the odds of a particular industry or referees through regulation the game to the benefit of one of the participants, the only result is richer refs and poorer hoi polloi. 

2 Peter 2:19

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

The Marketplace cannot deliver liberty. It does not possess it. It can and does promise it, but it cannot deliver it to you, even if you pay for the upgraded shipping. It can advertise it, but it cannot produce it. It can sell you on the idea, but it cannot manufacture it.

And the more the Market gets in bed with the Ministry of the State, the less liberty anyone has. Neither has freedom to offer. They are servants. Money and the Magistrate make for terrible masters. The servants of corruption cannot confer purity. The slaves of sin cannot successfully sell salvation. They have none to give. They can only invent counterfeit hells to save you from. They can manufacture an artificial damnation in order to advertise a synthetic salvation, but they cannot deliver the real thing. Lucre and the Lawmakers make for wonderful servants when they serve the Lord, their God and Maker, but apart from Him, they are merely tinpot paladins and milquetoast messiahs.

day no. 16,391: people are responsible to the reality of possible realities

“Human observation transcends that of the animals, who may very well observe basic empirical realities but lack the soulful capacity for bridging the gap between what is and what could be. Humans were given not just this ability but this burden — this opportunity— this cultural mandate.” — David L. Bahnsen

People are responsible to the reality of possible realities, pets are not. God has given His image bearers not only the blessing of enjoying the products of His creation and culture, but the privilege and responsibility of creating culture in order to shape the future of the world to come according to His commands.

day no. 16,374: poverty and productivity

"What helps the poor is access to work. But as we looked into the good intentions of so many people, we see that a lot of them just think that solidarity with poor people means giving them things." — Father Robert Sirico

Better to be given something to do than something to consume. Productive work gives integrity to the worker and something that they can give to others.

Give a man a fish, he eats a meal; teach a man to fish; he provides a meal for others.

Men do not need something simply given to them, they need the ability to given something back.

"Wealth is when you produce more than you consume." — Father Robert Sirico

True wealth is producing more than you consume and providing more than you require. It is not possessing much, but producing much. Wealth is not mere accumulation. It is production. It is having the means to make. It is having the ability to meet needs. It isn't knowing where to get them, but being able to manufacture them. Hiring a man to carry your bags does not make you a strong man. Hiring a man to fly you across the ocean does not make you free to roam. Those things can be taken from you. Wealth is not the ability to pay others to serve you, but the ability to serve others through your productivity. The man strong enough to carry another’s load may charge them for his service, but he can carry his own load for free.

"Centering an economic worldview around consumption is man-focused in the most trite and simplistic of ways; but developing an entire ecosystem of thought and action around production, well that honors the human person, and opens the door to a sustainable, soul-giving eradication of poverty." — David L. Bahnsen, There's No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths

Poverty is not simply being without the things you need, it is the greater issue of not being needed. In other words, it is easier to go without something you need than to go about as something unnecessary. That isn't too say that there are not essentials that everyone needs to exist, but to say that existence requires a reason to exist more than it requires the means to continue existing.

day no. 16,060: generosity and gratitude

"Generosity and gratitude are necessary components to any thriving economy." -- Christ and Capital Instagram Feed

Exodus 20:15

Thou shall not steal.

Generosity and Gratitude define a Godly economy.

Both presuppose property rights:

Generosity because it really was yours to give away;

Gratitude because it really was someone else’s who gave it.

Generosity is something a man rich towards God pays to someone he owes nothing.

Gratitude is something a man poor in spirit pays to Someone he owes everything.

Acts 17:24-25

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Generosity knows it owes no one and yet gives gifts.

Gratitude knows it owes someone and so gives thanks.

day no. 16,029: a socialist makes laws the way a capitalist makes widgets

"You would oppose law to socialism. But it is the law that socialism invokes. It aspires to legal, not extralegal plunder. It is of the law itself, like monopolists of all kinds, that it wants to make an instrument; and when once it has the law on its side, how will you be able to turn the law against it? How will you place it under the power of your tribunals, your gendarmes, and of your prisons? What will you do then? You wish to prevent it from taking any part in the making of laws. You would keep it outside the Legislative Palace. In this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal plunder is the basis of the legislation within." - Frederic Bastiat, The Law

If any socialist principle of legal plunder is adopted by a system, it will be impossible for that system to resist being entirely overrun by socialism further down the line.

Capitalism is the freedom to make and to sell, to buy and to keep. Crapitalism (socialism in seed form) is the tyranny of making laws which make the making, selling, buying, and keeping of things more difficult, if not impossible. Craptialism doesn't make or manufacture anything except laws. It produces in legislation what Capitalism produces in widgets. It makes red tape and bills and acts and amendments, but nothing of substance. It still depends on someone else to make things. In fact, it now insists that they do, it's one of their new laws. And the fines for not conforming are just another revenue stream for them. Crapitalism survives off of taxes and fines for non-compliance. This is what the ol' fashioned used to call, "slavery," only now it is marketed under the guise of "liberty" because of the benefits package it secures for its servants.

A socialist makes laws the way a capitalist makes widgets.

Beware of those who spend their time and energy making laws and making it harder for anyone else to spend their time and energy freely making, selling, buying, and keeping things.