Meta-values

I've been involved in the start-up of four companies, and it's important to have good, qualified people to write clear and comprehensive policies and procedures, and good managers who achieve the goals of the company. One area that's overlooked when developing business plans is the meta-values of the company, the mission and purpose and clear understanding of the overriding meta-values and principles which cannot be violated.

Our nation is presently in the process of re-evaluating our meta-values, and it's about time. For too long we've been driven by the technocratic values of pragmatism and utilitarianism, after losing sight of the original meta-values of individual rights, limited government and liberty. The hard-nose pragmatist makes a good case, but ultimately pragmatism is insufficient for a great nation and ends up defiling the better angels of human nature, mainly because individual rights are inevitably violated for some greater cause, which could be valid -- we can all imagine certain emergency situations, although extremely rare, like, perhaps, an attack on our nation, where temporary measures are taken which violate individual rights.

 But, even in these emergency situations, other values should come into play to prevent a wholesale destruction of rights just for the sake of safety, so that the nation quickly returns to its meta-values once the extreme emergency ends. People can understand extreme cases where the nation as a whole is in immediate danger, and they would gladly temporarily sacrifice rights for the sake of survival. What we haven't guarded against is pragmatic violation of individual rights justified by any form of "crisis", such as a recession, so that pragmatism has over-ridden individual rights. As they say -- hard cases make bad law. But with the wrong politicians in power, operating in a system of intervention without strict limitations, the tendency is to manufacture crises out of every event in order to expand control. Tibor Machan has wrtten extensively about these issues.

We can't legislate or regulate or centrally plan our way to an excellent society, just as a company can't create excellence through policies and procedures and smart managers, no matter how well written the policies and procedures or how smart the managers.

Americans have been forced to ask themselves what type of country we want, and, also, what type of government. Those who frame meta-values as ideological extremism and paranoid reaction miss what's happening. It's not about narrow-minded ideologues or frightened people holding on to old values, it's about people with integrity standing for something and realizing that some values are universal and too important to compromise. Once integrity is compromised something vital is weakened and placed at risk.

Our nation has been morally negligent when it comes to government, failing to associate violation of individual rights with immorality. The idea that what's best for the greatest number should trump meta-values, if not immoral, is at least amoral and neglects human values which are vital to a just society. However, during this period of progressive transformation, or at least the attempt at transformation, people are forced to consider values at a deeper level, and as a people we're beginning to realize the failures of an interventionist State and our two party governmental system.

I think this is part of the evolution towards a libertarian society, a society that values choice, responsibiity and liberty. I have a feeling that in the next twenty years politics as we've known politics will drastically change, with ordinary people playing a much larger role in the creation of the 21st century society, and with government playing a much smaller role. If I'm right, the 2012 elections ought to be interesting, and those who have lost sight of meta-values, still lost in the remnants of moral relativism, will be removed from positions of State power.