This series is my
attempt at writing more often as thoughts come to me. This is in no way an
attempt at anything coherent or even academic.
The date is somewhere late in September of 2012. We’re
currently working our way through the election season of one Mitt Romney versus
President Obama.
Now to start, allow me to state that I don’t particularly
like either candidate and that this series of blog posts aren’t designed to
shill for one side or the other. Or to put it into laymen’s terms, I don’t give
a damn about the race, nor do I think your candidate is worth a damn. I only mention the race as Romney made a
statement regarding 47% or something like that of the American voting
population expecting things such as food, healthcare and housing to be provided
for them and that they are basically a group of entitlement losers who depend
on the government.
Of course, much like anyone who is not a parrot for talk
radio, I shook my head and rolled my eyes at the stupidity of the comment. It
wasn’t until I recalled a conversation that I had with an older friend of mine
in which I mentioned something about ‘might makes right’. He turned and looked
at me with disgust in his eyes.
‘The problem is that, in our society, might does make right.
It’s just that ‘might’ here in America is based off of wealth, not strength or
ability.’
You see, it dawns on me that there is something
intrinsically wrong with the idea that we as a people have no ‘right’ to any of
these things… No, that doesn’t sound quite right. Perhaps I should state it in
a different way.
There is a basic belief among a number of philosophers (or
at least in my experience) that the reason that we agree to being held under a
set of laws and government is that we get something out of the system such as
safety, security and so on.
So, my question is simple. What am I getting out of this
system? Why shouldn’t I simply take what I want? I ask this outside of the
pesky ideas of morals and ethics. I mean this in simply a transactional type of
view.
More specifically, if the system doesn’t provide me with an
even playing field (and don’t bother pretending that it provides the population
with anything even remotely resembling an even playing field), doesn’t provide
basic necessities and doesn’t even provide a fair and unbiased system of
justice, why should I play according to the rules?
I think Mitt, living in a world where ‘struggling’ means
‘having to sell a bit of stock to pay for school’, misunderstands how few
people actually think the government has ever, or will ever provide anything
even remotely resembling basic necessities. But I also think Mitt
misunderstands just how little disincentive there is keeping someone such as
myself from breaking him and claiming his gear.
