At Townhall.com, John Stossel repeats the myth of absolute self ownership.
Independent of that harm, adults ought to own our own bodies, so it’s not intellectually honest to argue that “only marijuana” should be legal — and only for certain sick people approved by the state. Every drug should be legal.
Christopher Lasch touches upon this topic in The Revolt of the Elites And Betrayal of Democracy :
The temptation to withdraw into an exclusive world of their own was countered by a lingering awareness, which in some circles survived even the riotous self-indulgence of the Gilded Age, that “all have derived benefits from their ancestors,” as Horace Mann put it in 1846, and that therefore, “all are bound, as by an oath, to transmit those benefits, even in an improved condition, to posterity.” Only an “isolated, solitary being, … having no relations to a community around him,” could subscribe to the arrogant doctrine of absolute ownership,” according to Mann, who spoke not only for himself but for a considerable body of opinion in the older cities, in much of New England, and in New England’s cultural dependencies in the Old Northwest.
Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995) 4-5
The individual is the final product of the confluence of his genes and the discourses he is immersed in. He is a link in a social and genetic chain that extends throughout his community and into the past and the future. Where is the intellectual honesty in claiming absolute self ownership when we are dependent upon others for the elements of our own identities?
Expand this blog to a forum and rule it with iron hand. Think General Robert E. Lee appointed as President of the Confederacy.
“The myth of absolute self ownership” — a great phrase, and an excellent post (especially the last paragraph).
The fanatical individualism and dissolution of close-knit communities in the recent history of The West has already taken a terrible toll on Western societies and will only get worse if communal ties (based on kin/ethnicity/ancestry, living patterns, religious beliefs, business, political beliefs, or whatever) are not soon rebuilt.
It is also my belief that actions in the Jewish-dominated media (movies/TV, newspapers, book publishing, etc) and in Jewish-dominated economic spheres (mega-corporations which eventually shutdown small local businesses and farms, international Jewish real estate interests, invention of the suburb [William Levitt], etc) have disproportionately contributed to the decline of communal consciousness amongst non-Jewish Westerners and have slowly inculcated within us this unhealthy and moronic sense of fanatical individualism (particularly in the media and in the selfish consumerist culture) which has slowly led to the situation we find ourselves in today.
I still have all the old material saved. It is a matter of uploading it here.
Yes, please get that old material back on here if you can. There was so much excellent material in many of your old posts that it would be terrible if all of that was lost to the public and history. I even recommend printing out a lot of what you wrote (along with the comments too, maybe) if you can. Please put these hard copies in a safe/secure place and save it for posterity since I believe much of what you wrote is extremely important, even breakthough in some respects.
I just posted a few comments about the rural/urban divide in terms of Blacks over on RL’s blog which you might be interested in reading — http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2008/06/blacks-and-crime-examination.html
Indivividualism is a dangerous myth. Here is a point where I agree with you entirely, Brad. Bravo!