There are, philosophically speaking, two ways to organize society.
One is to treat people as means to an end. This is the path of dehumanization, of reducing human beings to their ability to serve and produce. This is the path of the Divine Right of Kings and absolute monarchies. It is the path of totalitarianism, slavery, caste systems, and all forms of oppression.
The other path is to treat people as ends in themselves. This is the path of individual liberty and human rights, in which the state exists to protect each citizen’s freedom to pursue happiness as they see it. This path is an outlier in human history, only recently discovered by European philosophers during the Enlightenment. It is the philosophy at the heart of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, as well as the Civil Rights movement. This philosophy has many names, but I will refer to it here as liberal universalism.
Read Full Article »