Misinterpreting Justice

State interventions are often ironically justified in the name of justice. In reality there are few things less just or merciful than the wealth redistributing efforts of the state and its initiation of violence against its citizens. The clamoring by progressives and so called conservatives for more government intervention is supposed to make our communities more just and merciful, but it simply isn't. The concept of social justice has distorted the true meaning of justice, based on individual action, and mercy and distorted it to a sweeping view of the necessity of intervention in the name of equality. What is merciful about having the state intervene in the affairs of your neighbor on your behalf and having their property distributed to whom you see fit? How can this approach be considered the most moral and merciful in our society today? These are questions I cannot answer on behalf of those who believe it, but I believe I can point out at least one source of their error.

Most confusion around the true meaning of justice and mercy comes from a misunderstanding of rights. Those in favor of restricting freedoms and redistributing wealth confuse illegitimate positive rights for legitimate negative rights. Despite their best wishes there is no right to health care, owning a home, cell phones, or other amenities. In what seems like a cruel twist of fate for those in favor of positive rights, attempting to guarantee access to essentials even as simple as food and water through government redistribution inevitably destroys the surplus of the commodity they saw as a fundamental human right. By attempting to enforce a positive right to a good or service, government actually makes the good more scarce by removing the productive market from the economy. 

Those in favor of negative rights understand that it is only by the guarantee of secure property rights that the very things which supporters of positive rights advocate came into existence. It is important to remember that the natural state of humanity has always been poverty. For around 6000 years even the richest kings did not enjoy the luxuries which many of us now find routine. The socialist, fascist, communist, or welfare state did not produce this level of prosperity. Those types of governments have destroyed and continue to destroy the prosperity which has been created by productive individuals exercising their liberty. 

Unfortunately the message of liberty will continue to be looked down upon by social justice types, until popular fallacies such as positive rights are dispelled for the myths that they are. This is why it is so important to spread the message of liberty in diverse ways to diverse people. It will certainly seem incomprehensible to many that the only way the win the war on poverty is to end the war on poverty, but the facts are clear and they are on our side.