Individuals Are Not Sovereign, Obama Implies

Individualism is the recognition that sovereignty, meaning one's ownership of one's self, is inherent from birth. These are the so-designated "self-evident truths". The purpose and legitimacy of a government, then, resides in its protection of individualism's opposition to both restraint by government, and by assistance from from it. Restraint violates the sovereignty of the restrained; assistance violates a person's sovereignty indirectly by violating the sovereignty of others for his or her sake. In today's political climate that is called variously 'social justice' or 'social equality', or more honestly 'distributive justice.'

"What [Obama] means by his slogan, 'You’re not on your own, we’re in this together,'", wrote The Objectivist Standard, "is that individuals are not sovereign and that government must dictate the means and terms of their lives."

The first hint that most of America got in regard to the President's disregard of sovereignty, was his now-infamous talk with 'Joe the Plumber'. This was when Obama told the man, who had asked him a question about his business plans, that his taxes might go up if he reached the $250K mark. "It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama was telling America. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too." 

We ought to have taken that presciently. Many did, including myself, but the left said 'pooh pooh, that isn't what Obama meant'. Now we know it is precisely what he meant. If more Americans had had their eyes and ears open in 2008, we could have seen that he has no idea how how business works, how individualism works, or how the Tenth Amendment works, all of which which the last four years have borne out. 

"For the president of the United States to say that you didn’t do that, [that] you didn’t build your business, was a ‘Joe the Plumber’ moment of 2012," said Rep. Greg Walden, deputy chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and former small business owner.

"Those persons and groups who oppose the devolution of authority from the central government to the states in the United States," wrote James Buchanan, "[place] other values above those of the liberty and sovereignty of individuals." Does Obama not do everything to show that he appreciates the evolution of authority from the individual to the central government? "[In] a large economy, characterized by liberty of resource flows and trade throughout the territory," Mr. Buchanan continued, the problem becomes how "to maximize the protected sphere of individual sovereignty."

Individual sovereignty involves every sphere of human activity, even such things as trade policy with other nations:
"US trade policy is almost always debated in terms of economic utility: Does free trade raise or lower incomes? Does it help or hurt U.S. industry? Does it create or destroy jobs? But behind the statistics and anecdotes lie moral assumptions about human nature, [and] the sovereignty of the individual." source

'Protecting the sphere of individual sovereignty' is certainly not what our President is about.

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012