wellspring/01-principles/01-01-principles-apologia.md

Wellspring: Principles: Apologia

Disclaimers and disavowals:

We have been very careful to ensure that no charges of original sin can be brought against WS by extracting only the good ideas from various intellectuals while painstakingly dissociating the project from the reputations and shortcomings of each of them. There are scant few ideological icons who are untainted by identitarianism or some other form of exclusionary bias that serves to turn potential individualists away from individualism.

We would like to emphatically assert that the principles espoused in WS are to be taken as stated. If a particular principle is sourced from an intellectual leader who also espouses other ideas that run counter to those expressed in this constitution, it is to be understood that WS disavows those other ideas categorically and unreservedly. We would like to unambiguously state that the goal of WS is to create polities that express and live out the idea of individualism -- that every person is judged before the law not by the colour of their skin (or their sex, or any other immutable/irrelevant characteristic) but by the content of their character and their actual actions in practice.

To be even more cautious, we have decided to explicitly address each of the reputations of the people we have referenced in WS, here, and explicitly disavow any ideas they professed which antagonize people/groups on the basis of immutable/irrelevant attributes:

• Aristotle:
  • We disavow his views on slavery, etc.
• Ayn Rand:
  • We disavow her views on the European settlers' treatment of the Native Americans, and we disavow the following statement she made on Native Americans in 1974 during a question and answer segment after her talk at West Point, New York: "I do not believe that they had any right to live in a country merely because they were born here and acted and lived like savages. ... And since the Indians did not have any property rights -- they didn't have the concept of property: they didn't even have a settled society, they were predominantly nomadic tribes -- they were a primitive, tribal culture ... if so they didn't have any right to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.", and we disavow it for the following reasons:
    • The rights of the individual stem not from its cognitive recognition or awareness of the concept of private property rights, but from his/her metaphysical identity as a member of a species which is capable of consciousness, capable of understanding and rationally governing itself by private property law. Whether or not an such an individual has conceived of the idea of private property sovereignty, its sovereignty remains its right until and unless it violates the sovereignty of another such individual.
    • An individual possessing such a rational faculty loses its rights only upon committing an act which violates the private property sovereignty of another such individual possessing the like rational faculty, and the infringing individual becomes subject to the jurisdiction of its victim only as far as is required to enable recovery for damages and the additional enforcement of a penalty to disincentivize repeat offenses.
    • The European settlers had full rights to homestead and to proceed according to the principles of capture law. They did not have the right to displace Native Americans from their own homesteaded settlements.
    • The European settlers had full rights to defend their own homesteaded settlements and to expand into unsettled areas which had not been homesteaded (by the Native Americans). The nascent American colonies would have best represented individualist ideals by carefully registering the title to the Native Americans in the areas where they observed the Native Americans to have settled and firmly protecting their (the Europeans') own settlements.
• Leonard Peikoff:
  • We disavow the view that in war, the civilian populace of an enemy nation is in effect, fair game and acceptable collateral damage. We assert that in war, the ideological and political leaders of the enemy entity should be targeted directly where possible, and where it is necessary to engage in large scale destruction in order to destroy the enemy entity, all measures should be taken to be as surgical as is reasonable and practical (while also being sure not to paralyze ourselves with inaction in the face of a threat of our own destruction), and if practical, to warn civilians to get to safety beforehand.
• Antonin Scalia:

Interpretation.

WS fixes a shortcoming of the forerunning republic's constitution by explicitly specifying a framework for interpretation and construction in order to ensure consistency in interpretation, since phrases such as "shall not be infringed" have tended to confuse even the most erudite of scholars.

Symbols, celebrations and rituals.

These symbolic paraphernalia are not intended to imply any collectivist/tribal/nationalist cohesion among individuals but rather to serve as exhortations to the exact opposite. Whereas other polities use mottos, watchwords, anthems, flags, coats of arms, national animals and so on to engender a sense of shared stake in the population, we use these elements to assert the individualist nature of our values and to encourage people to reject collectivist cultural maypoles.

• ReNoDem: The founders of the forerunning republic omitted an explicit statement that the US Constitution was designed specifically to resist Democracy, and this negligence left the door open for the US Republic to be broken down into a Democracy.
• Magnificata: We chose this name because we didn't want to overload the word "magna" in search engine results - ideally, people should easily be able to find information about the magna carta without dealing with overloaded results.
• InteGrid: It is important to explicitly put down arguments that the legislature is supposed to be passing new laws for their own sake. Legislative stagnation is a value; not a dysvalue.
• Sictember: Tyranny is not to be born with longsuffering.
• RaNO: Leave no room for arguments that conflate rights with benefits.
• Tyranny is Unenforceable: Ensure that the polity is reminded that they need not submit to the enforcement of government overreach.

The last few holidays (Exis, ReGRe and EIConI) assert positive philosophical arguments which, being included in the body of the text, leave paltry room for certain destructive philosophies to gain purchase in any discussion of the "meaning" of the text.

Rights

Definition of Rights

Notice that it says that rights and private property law go hand in hand. It does not say that rights and "responsibilities" go hand in hand. The individual is only required at his/her own peril to ensure that their activities do not interfere with the exercise of the capabilities of others - this is a negative injunction. The individual is not beholden to any positive obligations to any other individual, except those obligations which s/he takes on voluntarily in contract. The individual is an end unto himself and not the means to any other individual or group's ends.

Man is not a social animal but a contractual animal.

Definition of Private Property

WS recognizes and respects the sovereignty of the individual with exceptions applied for individuals with cognitive and physical disabilities, communicalble contagions/biohazards, the keeping of records for common law plaintiffs, the display of warnings and cautions, and war readiness.

On laws which require the maintenance of logs and records which are of interest to common law plaintiffs, the aim here is to encourage papertrails at those entities which sit between parties as a witness or service provider in order to act as a disincentive against violations of private property law. Such papertrails may be mandated by the legislature for such things as telecomms companies being required to maintain X years of text message backlog or call logs; or mail (both physical and electronic) service providers being required to preserve X years of logs.

Rights protected by WS

Left unimpeded, most indepagents are capable of exercising each of these rights. It is therefore their right, by right, to exercise them subject only to the principle of non-interference (private property law).

Here are examples of things which are not the exercise of rights, but rather impositions of obligations on other indepagents -- i.e., they impede the free exercise of the rights of some other indepagent:

• A "right to healthcare". : A claim to a "right to healthcare" amounts to a claim on the ability to compel a healthcare worker to perform medical labour on the indepagent claiming the right, even if the healthcare worker does not voluntarily agree to be bound by the claim.
• A "right to housing". : A claim to a "right to housing" amounts to a claim on the labour of a construction worker to perform labour for the benefit of the indepagent claiming the right, or a claim to sieze the existing housing property owned by another indepagent, even if the construction worker or landlord does not voluntarily agree to be bound by the claim.
• And so on.

Those things declared "unenforceable" by WS

This mechanism is intended to allow people to resist government overreach by making certain classes of edict "unenforceable". It amounts to making government overreach in those areas null and void since overreaching laws would theoretically never gain actuating force. Any conagent taking orders to enforce an unenforceable thing should understand that it does so at its own peril.

Republic, not Democracy.

It has became common for politicians of the forerunner republic to call that republic a Democracy or to speak highly of Democracy. The forerunner polity's constitution specifically calls itself a Republic and mandates that a "Republican form of government" be guaranteed to all of its states. WS goes further and rectifies this shortcoming of the forerunner constitution by making it clear that not only is WS a Republican constitution, but further, that it is intentionally not a Democracy.

WS rejects rule by whim, in all of its forms. WS is founded upon rule of law. Here are some examples of rule by whim:

• Democracy : Rule of some defined majority. In a democracy the changing whims of some defined majority is the law. Irrespective of what may be written down in the law books at any given time, if a shift in the mind of that controlling majority occurs, the laws on the books will soon follow. The law is what inhabits the minds (i.e., the whim) of that defined majority.
• Kakistocracy : Rule of judges. In a Kakistocracy, the changing whims of some subset of the Judiciary is the law. Irrespective of what may be written down in the law books at any given time, if a shift in the mind of that controlling group in the Judiciary occurs, the laws on the books will soon follow. The law is what inhabits the minds (i.e., the whim) of that subset of the judiciary.
• Monarchy : Rule of kings. In a Monarchy, the changing whims of some defined royal lineage is the law. Irrespective of what may be written down in the law books at any given time, if a shift in the mind of that royal lineage occurs, the laws on the books will soon follow. The law is what inhabits the minds (i.e., the whim) of some royal lineage.

Freedom of citizenship:

We do not wish to hold anyone born within a WS polity captive to our borders, and we wish to make it materially plausible for persons unhappy in WS polities to leave, and to encourage those people to leave.

The right to leave

WS does not wish to hold anyone captive to its borders, who wishes to leave. This program makes it practical for indepagents who are not happy living in a free market to seek greener pastures elsewhere. It is available only to citizens of WS. Indepagents who immigrated willingly to WS will not have access to this program.

The right to seek greener pastures

Again, WS does not with to hold captive to its borders, anyone who wishes to leave. An individual born in a WS polity who prefers a different polity, is welcome to take advantage of this program to leave, and we welcome the new individual whom they swap citizenship with, with open arms.

Individual private property sovereignty has veto power over the government

The forerunner American republic was an experiment in self-governance. It was imperfect, and this constitution seeks to improve on the forerunner republic and patch up its holes. In the same way that the forerunner republic was degraded over time, so also will polities based on this constitution. This constitution is not an end unto itself - it is the blueprint for a successor experiment to follow its forerunner. It will eventually be succeeded by a better consitution which will assert and preserve individual private property sovereignty even better than this one does.

As seen in the forerunner republic, the careful wording of a constitution is no guarantee against the insipient, persistent, relentless and incremental efforts by enemies of private property to subvert it and they will labour tirelessly for generations to sieze upon loopholes in the wording and open a chink in the armour of the constitution. It is therefore necessary to clarify that the end goal of this constitution is individual private property sovereignty. The wording of this constitution is merely a maze intended to frustrate the efforts of collectivists and send them off groping in myriad directions.

This constitution and any government based on it are means to the end of individual private property sovereignty and therefore private property sovereignty has veto power over this constitution and the governments based on it.

Regarding the overthrow of a government which infringes on private property sovereignty, the faction which proposes to do this must have a positive proposition. It cannot merely be fighting against tyranny. It must be fighting for liberty, and its policies must be openly known to the residents of the polity before any overthrow of the government occurs. Hence the requirement that such a faction must have a publicly published and well disemanated constitution (or amendments to this one). Such a faction must be fighting for a well-identified set of principles which are compatible with individual private property sovereignty.