|
It may be that any given philosophy has its work cut out for it in practice. But that is no objection. Imagine what everyone said to Jesus, or Marx, or Sir Henry Parkes. "No, no, no, you can't, can't, can't." is what I imagine they said. 'There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.' The international institutions you mention are only human inventions, and come to that, they are not even all that old. The United Nations was put together just over 60 years ago largely under the motive power of Roosevelt in the closing stages of world war two. He was imbued with the kind of statist philosophy that has been the cause of more human death and suffering than any other in the history of the world. The world reallly has little reason to place their faith in these instutitions, and they have proved themselves quite disgracefully useless in just about every task they have ever been given - except trumpeting their own supposed necessity. The constant theme facing the advocates of liberty is 'well violent people are going to fuck you up anyway.' While, considering their violent tendencies, this may be accurate as a matter of fact, still it's not much of an argument. One might as well say to people protesting for the right of free speech in the recent furore over cartooning of the Prophet Mohammed, "Well, Muslims are just irrational and violent people, so it's really isolationist to argue the merits, or demerits, of their being violent." Maybe it is. But I don't care. I have not yet met anyone who has been able to put up a competent defence or justification of the use of government power over and above that required to enforce the principle of liberty. That's what I'm looking for. Plenty of 'might is right'; but it does not persuade me.
| 
