I Expected Better

Charles Murtaugh levels a laughably weak attack on my libertarian defense of cloning:

One of the weaker ones, though, is by Vodkapundit Stephen Green. He is put off by the suggestion that anyone outside the government can trample individual liberty.

So “everyone breathing” is protected by the Constitution? Tell that to the antebellum slaves, or to their descendants in the Jim Crow era. Yes, now we all understand that blacks are entitled to civil rights, but only a hundred years ago, this was well up in the air. Government intervention was needed to ensure the freedom of Southern blacks.

Of course I’m put off by the suggestion, Charles — everything you mentioned is a government act. We need a small government to protect our rights, but government is also the source of tyranny. Second Amendment aside — as too many wish — Big Brother will always have most of the heavy firepower. Try the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence for a better explanation.

Charles would sacrifice the good to the perfect. Freedom is on ongoing struggle, never perfected, never finished. But that’s no reason to give it up. It took centuries for English lords to assert their independence from the king. It took further centuries for the common man to free himself from the lords — a task still not yet complete.

In each and every case, it was individuals and small groups throwing off the chains of government, not of big business or hyper-rich individuals. Slavery was a government-sponsored institution. Jim Crowe laws were, well, laws. Government thingies, you know. It was those nasty, oligarchic, <><> railroads that helped make the first cracks in Jim Crowe.

Murtaugh makes the argument that, since some government power used to uphold slavery, we need to increase government power to protect us, um, from government power.

If anyone can untangle that without a Gordian solution, I’m all ears.

UPDATE: When quoting my original post, Charles was good enough to leave in most of the jokes, but cut out the meat. Here’s what he left out, “If Alpha Individuals or Evil Corporations, or, hell, Senator Palpatine attempted to enslave their clone armies, they