The Apparition of St. Michael by Pacino di Bonaguida
Posted on 10/20/2001 7:27:01 AM PDT by annalex
The Apparition of St. Michael by Pacino di Bonaguida
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I don't agree with this at all. I do not delegate this right to anyone.
A TREASURY OF PRIMARY DOCUMENTS . The ultimate source of history links.
A Chronology of US Historical Documents.
The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, more historic documents.
Laissez Faire Books.
Ayn Rand Bookstore. (formerly Second Renaissance Books)
Reason Foundation.
Ayn Rand Institute.
Religion and the Founding Fathers
Religion vs. Morality, from the Ayn Rand Institute.
So true is it that property is prior to law that it is recognized even among savages who do not have laws, or at least not written laws. When a savage has devoted his labor to constructing a hut, no one will dispute his possession or ownership of it. To be sure, another, stronger savage may chase him out of it, but not without angering and alarming the whole tribe. It is this very abuse of force which gives rise to association, to common agreement, to law, and which puts the public police force at the service of property. Hence, law is born of property, instead of property being born of law.
One may say that the principle of property is recognized even among animals. The swallow peacefully cares for its young in the nest that it has built by its own efforts.
Since we're discussing whether land can be property prior to the existence of government, lets take the example of an ordinary guy in a pre-civilized society. He builds a hut, as in Bastiat's example above, and plants some grain nearby. It seems fairly obvious that anyone taking the hut and crops from him by force is committing a crime. Isn't that the definition of ownership? He has a right to that land because no one may rightly take it from him. His ownership may be "temporary", but no more so than his ownership of anything else. In fact, it's longer lasting than his ownership of the grains he grows, which are eaten or bartered over the course of the next year. Mobility also seems to me to be a non-issue. By some of the arguments DD put forth, land holds up better than other forms of property. Jumping to modern times, people own cars for relatively short periods of time(I've been driving since I was 16, and have had two cars in that time; it would be one if I hadn't wrecked the first one, but it illustrates the point), but they are certainly movable. Cars are also registered with the government. I have a deed for my car.
Nations as such — like any other collectives — have no rights. In her essay “Collectivized Rights,” Ayn Rand notes:---Here, we see that nations not only do not have rights, but cannot have rights, according to Rand.
Here, she makes distinctions between the rights of free nations and that dictatorial nations, savage tribes, etc. do not have those rights:
"A free nation — a nation that recognizes, respects and protects the individual rights of its citizens — has a right to its territorial integrity, its social system and its form of government."
In this quote, Rand is actually saying that what she defines as a free nation has a right to BE a nation. All a nation comprises consists of its territorial boundaries, its civilization and culture, and its form of government within those geographical boundaries. Our State constitutions at one time set forth their geographic boundaries by longitude and latitude, among other geographic descriptions of their boundaries. Once the geographic limits of the State were set forth, the State Constitution would then describe the form and organization of the government and guarantee the rights of the State's citizens. A nation is a geographic area in which the people possess a given civilization, culture, and form of government. As this is what a nation is, and Rand states these are the rights that are possessed by a free nation, free nations, therefore, are the only nations allowed to be nations. That is what Rand is really saying. "Territorial Integrity" is an element of sovereignty.
"A nation that violates the rights of its own citizens cannot claim any rights whatsoever. The right of the ‘self-determination of nations’ applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictatorships."
Sentence 1: Rand states that a nation that violates the rights of citizens has no rights, but earlier, Rand stated that nations, and other collectives, have no rights. This is a contradiction, which she attempts to eliminate by making a distinction between free and dictatorial nations.Sentence 2: This is further proof that Rand is saying that only free nations can be nations.
Rand confuses "nation" with "government," which is a common error. The government of this nation has intervened in several foreign conflicts without the consent of the people of the nation. Many government acts are performed in total secrecy, so the people cannot give their consent to those actions. The government decides to intervene, not the nation as a whole, in these cases. When this takes place, is there any more right for the "nation" (government) to intervene?
Nations either have rights or they do not. I prefer to think that nations do have rights, as the nations exist, and are comprised of human persons who undeniably possess rights. When one nation's government commits unjust aggression against another nation and its government, it makes legal sense to set forth the victim's claim against the injustice of the aggressor in the terms of nations, and their rights, rather than citing the rights of each individual citizen.
This is an attempt to replace traditional just war principles, based mostly on religion and classical philosophy, with one compatible with an materialist/atheist worldview. It is like replacing fresh sqeezed orange juice with Tang.
This description is not entirely accurate about either incident. In 1916, Pancho Villa attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico first. The Punitive Expedition was launched to find and punish Villa in retaliation for his attack. In the Boxer Rebellion, the Boxers also struck the first blow, attacking the foreign legations in Peking, where our diplomats were housed and is considered sovereign US territory, as the Chinese Embassy was, and is, here. Our maintenance of gunboats in Chinese rivers during the early decades of the century would have been a better example, as they were there to protect missionaries and US business people, who should have gone to China at their own risk.
The author, Ben Bayer, is the coordinator of the ARI debate program. He is a past state champion in policy and four-time national qualifier in foreign extemp, L-D, and policy. He coached debate and extemp for two years, producing a state championship team and several national qualifiers. He is presently a graduate student in philosophy and a student at the objectivist Graduate Center. He can be contacted at benb@aynrand.org.
I will get to everyone's responses tomorrow. As always, thank you for your thoughtful replies.
The second issue is that of national interest. While we morally can fight any war on dictatorial governments, often we shouldn't. Our involvement in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans are examples where we should have stayed out, because there was no national interest at stake. Those we involvements dictated by altruism, correct. But altruism as a motive does not invalidate the right to intervene; it only makes it a mistake.
In matters of foreign policy you have little choice; like it or not, there is plenty voters in this country to empower a government that retaliates when this country is attacked or threatened.
The rulemaking authority, even if needed, doesn't have to be government. Historically, that role was played by tradition, and professional associations.
Clearly, no rulemaking authority is needed to exchange property once acquired. A registry of deeds facilitates exchange but is not strictly necessary to have a rightful real property exchange.
At least part of the problem is the human tendency to speak in shortcuts.
Groups have no rights other than those empowered by their individual members. It would be better usage to speak of individual rights and group powers, like our Constitution does when it speaks of government powers.
So, the expression "our nation has a right to do X" really means "we (Americans) each have individual right to empower our government to do X". In order not to torture the gentle reader, one simply uses the "national rights" parlance. A nation run dictatorially cannot say the same thing, has been empowered nothing, and so "has no rights"
Let's say you and I (a nation of two) walk in the park and see a man beating a woman (another nation of two). Since you and I decided that when it's time to rough people up, it is your responsibility, you go and knock that guy senseless. Even if in the process of hitting the man you occasionally hit the woman, my action in delegating you to fight was rightful; your action in roughing the guy up was also rightful; we as a nation had a right to intervene. The man beating the woman was obviously in a position of governing their nation of two; since he got to govern by violence and not, like you, by consent, he as an individual has no rights, and as a government has no rightful powers. The man and a woman as a nation of two have "no rights whatsoever", although the woman has her individual rights.
Thus, a nation that is not free can be referred to as a nation for purposes of its ethnos or geography, but politically it is a pariah nation, or as the current term is, a rogue nation. Its rights are nil, but of course its citizens have individual natural rights like any other human beings.
I don't think the above explanations are any different from what Rand teaches, but her expression may be less than perfect. It is true that many truths that objectivism claims as its own are really classic philosophy of government. The novelty of objectivism is to reduce the argumentation to stark atomic elements of individual rights. An attempt to build a theory of ethics on top of that, in my opinion, has failed.
The fact that governments do clandestine things doesn't remove the legitimacy as long as the government has obtained an overall consent to prosecute foreign policy.
On your comment in #11, I don't think it is relevant to the illustration of cases of intervention, whether the interventions in the Boxers' Rebellion or against Panch Villa had been provoked by initiated violence. The authore merely enumerates examples there.
The use of force can never be a "monopoly" of the government in a free society
I agree. I never understood this "monopoly" tenet myself. On the face of it, it is wrong. If we are talking of defensive/retaliatory force, clearly we all have a right to it. As to initiated force, the government has no right ot is any more than the individuals. The only case when there is a difference is that a government can make laws that would falsely empower it to use initiated force. May be that's what is meant by the "monopoly".
Not according to my constitution. And if it weren't for the income tax, I could certainly refuse to support any incursion on foreign soil that didn't relate to national defense.
That is the essence of both libertarianism and our constitution. The people were allowed to freely refuse to support bad government decisions.
I am disheartened to see you resort to the might makes right argument. Votes shmotes.
Our founders knew this which was why they did not ask us to give that authority over to the government. In every case this has been done, the idle government turned its weapons on the population at large.
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