#individualrights — Public Fediverse posts

#RenéeGood is dead. An #ICE agent shot her three times through her car window in #Minneapolis. Video shows the agent had time to step away—instead he drew his weapon and fired. This wasn’t self-defense. It was execution.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger traces the philosophical chain: https://hbletter.com/trumps-gestapo-is-now-murdering-protestors/

ICE exists because we philosophically and politically destroyed the concept of #IndividualRights.#Bentham called #rights “nonsense upon stilts” 20 years after #Kant. That became settled doctrine. Without a defensible theory of rights grounded in reality, we got the #Progressive movement’s #collectivism, then the xenophobia that built ICE, and now we have federal agents executing protesters in the street.

ICE has no legitimate function—it exists to grab and deport people, operating with arbitrary force. "The nature of an action follows from the nature of the entity that acts.” ICE's nature is thuggery wrapped in the language of #LawEnforcement.

But there’s also a commercial-political chain that made this possible: government agencies contract with private #surveillance companies to bypass #FourthAmendment protections. What the government can’t collect directly, it purchases from #DataBrokers and information services.

The technical infrastructure—databases, APIs, real-time intelligence platforms—gets built by engineers who think they're just solving technical problems. That infrastructure feeds into operations that put agents on Minneapolis streets with intelligence they couldn’t legally gather themselves.

This didn't have to happen.

Rights theory didn't have to lose to #utilitarianism and Kantian duty. We didn’t have to allow commercial surveillance to become a Fourth Amendment bypass. But we did, and now 37-year-old Renée Good is dead because an agent felt empowered to approach her car, try her door handle, and shoot when she tried to leave.

The horror isn’t just that Renée Good died. It’s that her death was philosophically, politically, and technically inevitable once we abandoned individual rights and built the infrastructure to enforce #collectivist #immigration policy at scale.

#ReneeGood #philosophy #politics #USpol #USpolitics #SurveillanceState #SurveillanceCapitalism

#RenéeGood is dead. An #ICE agent shot her three times through her car window in #Minneapolis. Video shows the agent had time to step away—instead he drew his weapon and fired. This wasn’t self-defense. It was execution.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger traces the philosophical chain: https://hbletter.com/trumps-gestapo-is-now-murdering-protestors/

ICE exists because we philosophically and politically destroyed the concept of #IndividualRights.#Bentham called #rights “nonsense upon stilts” 20 years after #Kant. That became settled doctrine. Without a defensible theory of rights grounded in reality, we got the #Progressive movement’s #collectivism, then the xenophobia that built ICE, and now we have federal agents executing protesters in the street.

ICE has no legitimate function—it exists to grab and deport people, operating with arbitrary force. "The nature of an action follows from the nature of the entity that acts.” ICE's nature is thuggery wrapped in the language of #LawEnforcement.

But there’s also a commercial-political chain that made this possible: government agencies contract with private #surveillance companies to bypass #FourthAmendment protections. What the government can’t collect directly, it purchases from #DataBrokers and information services.

The technical infrastructure—databases, APIs, real-time intelligence platforms—gets built by engineers who think they're just solving technical problems. That infrastructure feeds into operations that put agents on Minneapolis streets with intelligence they couldn’t legally gather themselves.

This didn't have to happen.

Rights theory didn't have to lose to #utilitarianism and Kantian duty. We didn’t have to allow commercial surveillance to become a Fourth Amendment bypass. But we did, and now 37-year-old Renée Good is dead because an agent felt empowered to approach her car, try her door handle, and shoot when she tried to leave.

The horror isn’t just that Renée Good died. It’s that her death was philosophically, politically, and technically inevitable once we abandoned individual rights and built the infrastructure to enforce #collectivist #immigration policy at scale.

#ReneeGood #philosophy #politics #USpol #USpolitics #SurveillanceState #SurveillanceCapitalism

#RenéeGood is dead. An #ICE agent shot her three times through her car window in #Minneapolis. Video shows the agent had time to step away—instead he drew his weapon and fired. This wasn’t self-defense. It was execution.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger traces the philosophical chain: https://hbletter.com/trumps-gestapo-is-now-murdering-protestors/

ICE exists because we philosophically and politically destroyed the concept of #IndividualRights.#Bentham called #rights “nonsense upon stilts” 20 years after #Kant. That became settled doctrine. Without a defensible theory of rights grounded in reality, we got the #Progressive movement’s #collectivism, then the xenophobia that built ICE, and now we have federal agents executing protesters in the street.

ICE has no legitimate function—it exists to grab and deport people, operating with arbitrary force. "The nature of an action follows from the nature of the entity that acts.” ICE's nature is thuggery wrapped in the language of #LawEnforcement.

But there’s also a commercial-political chain that made this possible: government agencies contract with private #surveillance companies to bypass #FourthAmendment protections. What the government can’t collect directly, it purchases from #DataBrokers and information services.

The technical infrastructure—databases, APIs, real-time intelligence platforms—gets built by engineers who think they're just solving technical problems. That infrastructure feeds into operations that put agents on Minneapolis streets with intelligence they couldn’t legally gather themselves.

This didn't have to happen.

Rights theory didn't have to lose to #utilitarianism and Kantian duty. We didn’t have to allow commercial surveillance to become a Fourth Amendment bypass. But we did, and now 37-year-old Renée Good is dead because an agent felt empowered to approach her car, try her door handle, and shoot when she tried to leave.

The horror isn’t just that Renée Good died. It’s that her death was philosophically, politically, and technically inevitable once we abandoned individual rights and built the infrastructure to enforce #collectivist #immigration policy at scale.

#ReneeGood #philosophy #politics #USpol #USpolitics #SurveillanceState #SurveillanceCapitalism

#RenéeGood is dead. An #ICE agent shot her three times through her car window in #Minneapolis. Video shows the agent had time to step away—instead he drew his weapon and fired. This wasn’t self-defense. It was execution.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger traces the philosophical chain: https://hbletter.com/trumps-gestapo-is-now-murdering-protestors/

ICE exists because we philosophically and politically destroyed the concept of #IndividualRights.#Bentham called #rights “nonsense upon stilts” 20 years after #Kant. That became settled doctrine. Without a defensible theory of rights grounded in reality, we got the #Progressive movement’s #collectivism, then the xenophobia that built ICE, and now we have federal agents executing protesters in the street.

ICE has no legitimate function—it exists to grab and deport people, operating with arbitrary force. "The nature of an action follows from the nature of the entity that acts.” ICE's nature is thuggery wrapped in the language of #LawEnforcement.

But there’s also a commercial-political chain that made this possible: government agencies contract with private #surveillance companies to bypass #FourthAmendment protections. What the government can’t collect directly, it purchases from #DataBrokers and information services.

The technical infrastructure—databases, APIs, real-time intelligence platforms—gets built by engineers who think they're just solving technical problems. That infrastructure feeds into operations that put agents on Minneapolis streets with intelligence they couldn’t legally gather themselves.

This didn't have to happen.

Rights theory didn't have to lose to #utilitarianism and Kantian duty. We didn’t have to allow commercial surveillance to become a Fourth Amendment bypass. But we did, and now 37-year-old Renée Good is dead because an agent felt empowered to approach her car, try her door handle, and shoot when she tried to leave.

The horror isn’t just that Renée Good died. It’s that her death was philosophically, politically, and technically inevitable once we abandoned individual rights and built the infrastructure to enforce #collectivist #immigration policy at scale.

#ReneeGood #philosophy #politics #USpol #USpolitics #SurveillanceState #SurveillanceCapitalism

A stalwart proponent of #freedom and #IndividualRights denounces the moral premise behind #SocializedMedicine: https://NewIdeal.AynRand.org/health-care-is-not-a-right/

#HealthCare #medicine #Medicare #Obamacare #ethics #morality #philosophy #USpolitics #politics #LeonardPeikoff

You love to see it: @gruber explicitly calls out the #EuropeanCommission’s #DigitalMarketsAct investigations/threats to #Apple, #Google, and #Meta as “#AntiCapitalist”: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/ec_non_compliance_investigations #DMA

If he can work his way toward realizing #LaissezFaire #capitalism as the only *moral* social system that limits #government to protecting #IndividualRights, enabling people to rationally pursue their happiness, we might make an #Objectivist out of him yet.

For more of #AynRand’s perspective on #IndividualRights and how #government can protect them, here are some resources for those who want to explore the deeper significance of #IndependenceDay: https://newideal.aynrand.org/its-independence-day-not-just-the-fourth-of-july/

#HappyIndependenceDay #Happy4thOfJuly #Happy4th #FourthOfJuly #4thOfJuly #July4th #USA

“#America’s inner contradiction was the #altruist-#collectivist #ethics. #Altruism is incompatible with #freedom, with #capitalism and with #IndividualRights. One cannot combine the pursuit of #happiness with the #moral status of a sacrificial animal.”

— “Man’s #Rights” by #AynRand
https://a.co/hICQIU7

#HappyIndependenceDay #Happy4thOfJuly #Happy4th #IndependenceDay #4thOfJuly #July4th #FourthOfJuly #USA

“#America’s inner contradiction was the #altruist-#collectivist #ethics. #Altruism is incompatible with #freedom, with #capitalism and with #IndividualRights. One cannot combine the pursuit of #happiness with the #moral status of a sacrificial animal.”

— “Man’s #Rights” by #AynRand
https://a.co/hICQIU7

#HappyIndependenceDay #Happy4thOfJuly #Happy4th #IndependenceDay #4thOfJuly #July4th #FourthOfJuly #USA

“#America’s inner contradiction was the #altruist-#collectivist #ethics. #Altruism is incompatible with #freedom, with #capitalism and with #IndividualRights. One cannot combine the pursuit of #happiness with the #moral status of a sacrificial animal.”

— “Man’s #Rights” by #AynRand
https://a.co/hICQIU7

#HappyIndependenceDay #Happy4thOfJuly #Happy4th #IndependenceDay #4thOfJuly #July4th #FourthOfJuly #USA

“#America’s inner contradiction was the #altruist-#collectivist #ethics. #Altruism is incompatible with #freedom, with #capitalism and with #IndividualRights. One cannot combine the pursuit of #happiness with the #moral status of a sacrificial animal.”

— “Man’s #Rights” by #AynRand
https://a.co/hICQIU7

#HappyIndependenceDay #Happy4thOfJuly #Happy4th #IndependenceDay #4thOfJuly #July4th #FourthOfJuly #USA

“#America’s inner contradiction was the #altruist-#collectivist #ethics. #Altruism is incompatible with #freedom, with #capitalism and with #IndividualRights. One cannot combine the pursuit of #happiness with the #moral status of a sacrificial animal.”

— “Man’s #Rights” by #AynRand
https://a.co/hICQIU7

#HappyIndependenceDay #Happy4thOfJuly #Happy4th #IndependenceDay #4thOfJuly #July4th #FourthOfJuly #USA

“It took centuries of intellectual, #philosophical development to achieve #political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from #Aristotle to #JohnLocke to the #FoundingFathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on #IndividualRights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. […] This was the great #American achievement.”

—“Theory and Practice,” #AynRand
https://a.co/e0kr0fK

#HappyIndependenceDay

@QasimRashid Moral counter-argument: http://afcm.org/hcinar.html

Video here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiVJP3JFs2nAmQ74XJ68oSwYh70wny3ks

#HealthCare #SocializedMedicine #HealthCareIsNotARight #IndividualRights #morality #LeonardPeikoff