Gary Farber points to this Guardian article about the horrors of a North Korean prison camp. Not for weak stomachs.
Some excerpts:
Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent.
And concerning camp chief of management Kwon Hyuk:
He explains how he had believed this treatment was justified. 'At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.
'It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.'
And why not? Once the philosophical determination has been made that the needs of society outweigh the sovereignty of individuals, anything goes. North Korea is a miserable place, and if these prisoners are impeding the progress of the country then they should be eliminated from society. That's what it means to put society ahead of the individual. The only remaining point of contention is the severity of the punishment.
There is another option, of course. Instead of using government and the criminal justice system to protect the needs of society you could reserve the use of those institutions strictly to protect the rights of individuals. That would mean prosecuting and punishing only those who directly violate the rights of others. Even the U.S. and other freer countries don't do that.
In this country people who use or sell unapproved drugs are sent to long prison terms. Our various layers of government confiscate about a third of all the produce of the land. People who resist turning over their property can share a cell with the drug user. The government prosecutes them because it is thought these activities harm society, and that overrides the rights of the individual. Perhaps some day history will look back at those prosecutions and view them as blatant human rights abuses.
This post is designed to give Gary the willies.
Update: Gary has added the necessary correction in the comments.
Posted by Walter at February 2, 2004 08:54 AMI actually gave up the willies sometime in my twenties. I'm willy-free!
I've been hearing silly libertarian over-statements since around age 11-12 (and silly socialist over-statements even earlier).
"Once the philosophical determination has been made that the needs of society outweigh the sovereignty of individuals, anything goes."
That's false, of course. There are all sorts of other redlines and guidelines that one can (and typical does) put into place between Individual Uber Alles and "death camps for everyone!" That's an erroneous syllogisms.
"That's what it means to put society ahead of the individual." Nah. Saying it doesn't make it so.
It can be true, sure. It must be true in all cases does not logically follow.
It's exactly as true as declaring that libertarianism, because it values the individual without regard for society, inevitably leads any individual who believes this to become a sociopathic serial killer. Same logic.
You may note, having become at least slightly familiar with a few of my opinions, and from the quotes on my blog, that I am plenty aligned with quite a lot of libertarian thought, up to a point. It's the taking it to a ridiculous absolutist extreme, as the One Single Guiding Principle Alone, that I think is silly and leads to Errors Of Logic, just as doing the same to principles of socialism does.
Life consists of more than single principles. It's a bit more complicated than that.
Posted by: Gary Farber at February 2, 2004 10:55 AM Yes, you're right. I overstated the case, not everything goes when individual rights are subjugated. And, I have more than a single principle. I keep spares.
The Koreans violated two ethical standards with their gulag. Denying individual rights is the first, the second is engaging in gratuitous torture and executions. The second doesn't always follow the first, and when I compare our country's ethical errors with North Korea we violate the first, but not the second. Not habitually, anyway.
I do try to follow the principle of individual rights consistently. I consider that to be an ethical standard.
The totalitarian error is not only in asserting the primacy of society but in equating society with state.
Posted by: Anton Sherwood at May 28, 2004 09:56 PM