Dennis Hardin

When the jeweler withholds your physical property, he is, in effect, stealing something that belongs to you. So you could say that forcibly taking the ring from him is retaliatory force. But how does that apply when someone claims that he did fulfill the terms of a contract, and the other party disagrees? For instance, a contractor builds a structure to contractual specifications, but completes the project one day after the contractual deadline. A judge or arbitrator enters the picture, and has to decide upon an equitable settlement. If one party disagrees with that settlement, force must be initiated to enact that settlement.

And, to repeat, the whole notion of "indirect force" totally subverts the non-initiation of physical force principle as anything remotely resembling an objective guide to the definition of rights.

Your problem is with Rand, not with me. As Rand wrote in "The Nature of Government":

A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right—i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner's consent, under false pretenses or false promises. Extortion is another variant of an indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values, not in exchange for values, but by the threat of force, violence or injury.

It is perfectly fine if you disagree with Rand's analysis. If you think that her analysis of the "indirect use of force" totally subverts her NIOF principle, then we can discuss this problem. But you have no business posing as a defender of Rand while directly contradicting what she said.

Ghs

I'm not contradicting what she said at all. To repeat what I said above: the whole notion of "indirect force" totally subverts the non-initiation of physical force principle as anything remotely resembling an objective guide to the definition of rights.

As my prior post makes clear, Rand did not consider the non-initiation of force principle as an objective guide to the definition of rights. A full clarification of the nature of rights must precede any rational understanding of what the "non-initiation of force" means.

As to the question of "unilateral breach of contract," do you seriously want to argue that any and all instances of breach of contract are as clearcut as the one situation she describes? If one party withholds payment, then of course she is correct. But there are numerous instances where the party being accused of a "unilateral breach" contends he has fulfilled the terms of the contract, and a judge must resolve the dispute. How is the settlement to be enacted without the force of government standing behind the judge's decision? I'm quite sure Ayn Rand was well aware of such disputed settlements.

As I recall, Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden were directly involved in a disputed settlement over his rights to the articles he had written for The Objectivist.

Those of us who do not possess your Ayn Rand Decoder Ring did not realize that she did not wish to be taken literally, that she was oversimplifying this issue. We did not realize that Rand was speaking loosely or perhaps metaphorically. We did not realize that when Rand said, as she did over and over again, that "force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use," what she really meant to say was: "force may be use only in retaliation (with many exceptions) and only against those who initiate its use (with many exceptions)."

Thanks for clearing this up and for resolving the anarchist/minarchist debate, at long last. Until your explanation, the simple-minded on both sides of the controversy thought that Rand meant what she said, so the controversy revolved around the issue of whether or not a limited government must initiate force.

You're welcome.

Every minarchist I have debated over the years -- such as NB, BB, John Hospers, Tibor Machan, and William Thomas (even Phil Coates) -- insisted that a proper government is not permitted to initiate force, so they have attempted to rebut the anarchist claim that a limited government must initiate force. We now understand, thanks to your decoder ring, that their concerns were unwarranted. You are the first minarchist (that I know of) to point out that Rand was simplifying matters a great deal, and that when she said that legitimate force may be used only against those who initiate its use, she really meant "sometimes," not "only."

Thus have you cut through the Gordian Knot by saying, in effect: A proper limited government must and will initiate force in a number of areas, so what's the big deal?

[Rand]stated that the basic way to violate individual rights was through the initiation of physical force. She cited many, many exceptions to that principle. Libel and slander laws and reckless endangerment are just two examples.

Rand also stated (many times) that "Man's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force." "Only" does not mean "basic." It means "exclusively" or "solely." Rand used the word "basic" in the following context: "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others."

"Basic," in this context, means "fundamental" or "foundational." The fundamental political principle of the O'ist ethics, she said, is: "no man may initate the use of physical force against others."

The only exceptions to the NIOF principle that Rand ever acknowledged were emergency situations. She did not regard the "exceptions" you mention as exceptions at all. She never so much as hinted at any such thing.

Ghs

In thinking about this issue further, it occurs to me that Rand did not consider such issues as defamation of character, reckless endangerment or intellectual property to be exceptions to the noninitiation of force principle. Rather, her position was that, once these issues were objectively established as consistent with rights—i.e., as conditions of existence required for proper human survival—violations of them would constitute the initiation of force.

I have been approaching the issue of the initiation of physical force from the existential perspective of who first engages in a literal act of physically compelling one individual to do something—because that is the approach used by the anarchist. The anarchist says: you cannot physically stop me from starting an agency whose purpose if to use force strictly in retaliation. On a purely existential level, the monopoly government is engaging in the first act of the initiation of physical force by stopping that agency from doing what it purports to do.

Similarly, in the case of fraud, the government is the first party engaging in a literal act of the initiation of physical force. Prior to arresting the defrauder, no physical coercion has been exercised.

The same is true with respect to contract law. When there is disagreement about the settlement, the first act of physical force is when the settlement is enforced by the police. In the other cases of indirect force I cited--stalking, gang intimidation and bomb threats--the first act of literal physical coercion is taken by the police.

When Rand used the term “initiation of physical force,” however, she was not speaking in strictly existential terms. This is why she did not regard the initiation of physical force as a fundamental, as you claim. In her view, it is necessary to define what is or is not a right before you can correctly ascertain who is initiating the force.

You put the cart before the horse. You claim that whenever force is used, rights are violated. She says that you do not know who is initiating force until the nature of rights has been proven and defined.

In "The Nature of Government," Rand spends several paragraphs explaining what rights are before she says the following:

To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force.”

CUI, p. 289

You simply say: Individual rights means that no man may initiate physical force against another. You skip the part about clearly formulating what individual rights are, which—as I have repeated several times before--is the more fundamental issue.

David Kelley explains the issue this way:

Many libertarians, indeed, regard a principal banning coercion as a kind of axiom from which all principles assigning rights can be derived. In effect, the fundamental right is the right not to be coerced, and specific rights can be established by identifying specific forms of coercion. Property rights in particular are to be established by identifying certain actions involving physical objects as acts of coercion

The problem with this approach is that it works only if we can identify a given act as coercive prior to and independently of any premises about the rights of individuals affected by the act– otherwise we would not be able to derive those rights from a ban on coercion. It is clear that it cannot be done in regard to the right of property. In this case, what the libertarian must show is that prior to any recognition or acceptance of property rights, we can identify certain uses of a physical object by ‘A’ as acts of coercion against ‘B’. But how are we to do this? If we already know that ‘B’ owns the object, then ‘A’ s’ taking the object or using it without ‘B’s’ permission may be regarded as coercive: it prevents ‘B’ from acting in ways that fall within his de jure freedom. If we do not know whether ‘B’ owns the object, however, then we cannot tell merely by inspecting ‘A’s’ action whether it is coercive. If I walk across a piece of land, or fence it off and plant it, there is simply no way to tell whether I have engaged in coercion without knowing whether the land belongs to someone else.

David Kelley, "Life, Liberty and Property"

Human Rights, Paul, Miller, Paul, p. 111

My Ayn Rand Decoder Ring simply amounts to placing her view of force in the context of the rest of her philosophy. Here is how Chris Sciabarra explains Rand's view of rights:

The notion of rights has had a long intellectual history, emerging from the natural law prescriptions of antiquity and reaching its apex in Lockean political philosophy.

Rand’s approach, however, differs from the rights doctrines of classical liberalism because it is self-consciously derived from a broader theory of ethics. Whereas some libertarian thinkers, such as Rothbard, begin their defense of rights with an axiom of nonaggression, Rands theory is the culmination of a full-bodied system of thought Rand approached her philosophical totality from a variety of vantage points. Since a social existence is necessary for the flourishing of the individual, Rand's defense of rights is her consideration of this totality from the perspective of social relations. Everything she wrote about being, knowing, ethics, life, survival, reason and the integrated nature of human beings is internal to her concept of individual rights.

In later years, Rand expanded on her earlier formulations and integrated these into the corpus of her fully developed philosophy. She argued that the concept of rights provides a moral bridge between individual ethics and social relations. It "preserves and protects individual morality in a social context," and is "the means of subordinating society to moral law." Just as life provides the standard of morality, so, too, the right to life provides the basis for all other rights. For Rand, "the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self generated action – which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life."

Chris Sciabarra, Ayn Rand, The Russian Radical

p. 274-275

Rand held that it is appropriate to undertake the existential act of the initiation of physical force against those who were engaged in the violation of rights. Technically, she did not consider this the initiation of force, however. She put the libertarian anarchist in the exact same position as the con artist, the extortionist, the stalker, the street gang or the terrorist calling in bomb threats, because there is no such thing as a "right" to set yourself up as an independent agency imposing your view of “legitimate” force outside the exclusive province of government.

The oversimplication I spoke of consisted of Rand’s use of the phrase noninitation of force without always making it absolutely clear that clarification of the nature of rights must precede any understanding of what that phrase means.

She said, in some cases, “The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others.”

In other cases, she said, “Man's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force.”

To avoid the anarchist’s confusion, she should always have put the issue of the initiation of the use of force in the context of objectively defined rights.

You called the examples I presented “sophistry.” LOL. I expected that. They are nothing of the kind. None of the examples I presented – gun control, stalking, bomb threats, gang intimidation – are marginal issues. They are all fairly common examples of indirect force. Fraud is another example of indirect force which I deliberately did not discuss, since I assumed you might well take issue with such laws. I deliberately chose situations which might well arise in any normal social context. I deliberately avoided the issues of fraud and intellectual property because I suspected you would take issue with them as valid examples of the province of government. Needless to say, that is not Rand’s viewpoint.

You don't seem to understand what Rand meant by "indirect force." To respond with force to indirect force doesn't qualify as initiating force. It is a species of retaliatory force.

"Indirect force" simply means that the force employed is not inflicted directly on the agent, as is the case when one person punches another. Suppose I purchase a diamond ring from a jeweler for $1000. I hand the jeweler the money but (as I later discover) the diamond is fake. So what is involved in this instance of fraud?

When I gave the jeweler the money, I acquired title -- i.e., a legal claim of ownership -- to a diamond ring. I now own that diamond ring, but the jeweler never gave it to me. Thus if he refuses to give it to me, he is holding my property (my diamond ring) without my consent, i.e., he is forcibly withholding my property from me, and thereby violating my property right to use and dispose of my diamond ring as I like.

This type of analysis is called the "title-transfer theory of contract," and libertarians (e.g., Bill Evers, Murray Rothbard, and Randy Barnett) have written about it a great deal.

This fraud involving a diamond ring is essentially no different that if a thief were to break into your home while you are away and steal your television. The thief has not used force against you directly, since he did not assault your person, but he used force indirectly by forcibly depriving you of control over your own property. And this state of force continues to exist until and unless the the thief returns your television or provides restitution.

As it turns out, the world is not quite as simple as the one example you present. Breach of contract issues are often in dispute—and reasonably so.

When the jeweler withholds your physical property, he is, in effect, stealing something that belongs to you. So you could say that forcibly taking the ring from him is retaliatory force. But how does that apply when someone claims that he did fulfill the terms of a contract, and the other party disagrees? For instance, a contractor builds a structure to contractual specifications, but completes the project one day after the contractual deadline. A judge or arbitrator enters the picture, and has to decide upon an equitable settlement. If one party disagrees with that settlement, force must be initiated to enact that settlement.

And, to repeat, the whole notion of "indirect force" totally subverts the non-initiation of physical force principle as anything remotely resembling an objective guide to the definition of rights.

Your anarcho-capitalist defense agencies, incidentally, are another example of indirect force, because they threaten the very foundation of liberty.

Sorry, Dennis, but you cannot aribitrarily dub anything you don't like as a threat. You will need a theory of some kind to justify this allegation, a theory that explains what consitutes a threat, and why, and what does not. Your whims will not suffice here.

Shall I repeat my theory once again, so you can ignore it again? What would be the point of that?

You spoke of "induction," but your examples have nothing to do with induction. Rather, you posit possible exceptions to the non-initiation of force principle, but you leave unanswered the crucial question: By what general rule do we identify legitimate exceptions?

It's interesting to note that you claim that you do not take the non-initiation of force principle as a starting point or axiom. Yet when you argue against my position, you never acknowledge the basic premise of my presentation. You continue to debate the question of whether or not minarchy violates the non-initiation of force principle, and completely ignore the hierarchical foundation of rights: that society must institutionalize the conditions that enable man to live a moral existence.

I am simply following Rand when she wrote (as I quoted in my last post):

The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man——or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense.

As with Rand, this is my "basic political principle." This is not a moral axiom, since the NIOF principles requires justification, but it is the foundation of my political theory.

Unlike you, I am unwilling to give priority to some incidental comments by Rand that she may have made on the spot, while providing no substantial justification. I prefer to take her at her word in the many explicit statements she made in her carefully considered essays.

So let me get this straight: Your "basic political principle" is one that is demonstrably inapplicable in case after case where there is a clear violation of rights. Good luck with that.

You take Rand's shorthand statement of the essence of individual rights and elevate it to the status of a Platonic ideal, floating around somewhere up there in the clouds. And then you expect people to take your rationalistic scheme seriously.

Some of us prefer to live in the real world.

It won't do to concoct a bunch of problematic scenarios that you are unable to resolve and then dub them exceptions to the NIOF principle. You repeatedly invoke "context," but the only relevant context here is your failure to analyze your own problems in a systematic manner.

Ghs

You didn't bother to read my post very carefully--or make any half-way serious effort to understand it--or you would know that I did resolve each of them--and in an extremely systematic manner.

There wasn't a whole lot to read, Dennis, and there was even less in the way of argument. You repeated the same pattern of reasoning over and over, which amounted to this: X (e.g., some kinds of gun ownership) should obviously be prohibited by government. But X cannot be prohibited unless the government initiates force. Therefore, the government is justified in initiating force in such cases.

This manner of argument does not meet my standard of an "extremely systematic" presentation. You may as well argue that people on drugs sometimes harm other people, so a government, in the name of making a moral existence possible for its citizens, may properly prohibit drug use, even though this involves the initiation of force. By jettisoning Rand's NIOF principle, you have thrown overboard any objective standard by which the legitimacy of government actions can be assessed, especially since you leave it to the government to decide when exceptions to the NIOF principle are justified.

I would prefer to follow Rand here, if you don't mind.

You mean you prefer to treat your own rationalist, out-of-context misinterpretation of a Randian aphorism as if it were an entire political philosophy.

There is no objective way to outlaw drug use or any other form of irresponsible personal conduct. There is a way to objectively define what weapons a person may reasonably own without threatening the ability of others to lead normal lives. Apparently you believe people should learn to live with the fear of having one's head blown off when walking down the street. That shouldn't be too surprising to anyone who seriously considers what "anarcho-capitalism" would mean in actual practice.

But thanks. Now we can add that little tidbit to your "systematic presentation" of what freedom means in your "ideal" world.

Government action to protect the individual’s freedom to conduct his or her life can be undertaken in all of the situations described above, and many of these involve (in a technical sense) the initiation of physical force to stop others from interfering with that person’s life. (Or, in the case of abortion, no action will be taken even thought the woman is technically “initiating force”.) Using force against private individuals who want to pre-empt the government’s monopoly on the use of force is simply one more example—similar to those cited above--because their actions destroy the structure of society required for a proper human existence.

Abortion is a good example of how fuzzy your thinking is. A fetus is part of a woman's body, and a woman, as a self-owner, has a right to do with her body whatever she likes. An abortion is not "technically" initiating force. You can initiate force only against another independent moral agent. If you hit youself in the head, you are not initiating force against yourself, technically or in any other way.

This is one instance of why I said that your examples go all over the map and are poorly thought out.

Ghs

So, tell me, George. At what point does the fetus become an "independent moral agent"? Is it okay for the woman to bash the baby's head in moments before bringing it to full term? It's her body. She can do what she wants while it's still part of her body, right? She can use a coat hanger to pulverize the little parasite to her heart's content. Right? That's not "initiating force." As long as the baby is inside her--or even partly inside her--it doesn't have any rights.

Since your thinking is obviously so vastly superior to mine, please use your "basic political principle" to clarify when the fetus can no longer be slaughtered by the mother. You've dispensed with all of my nonobjective, muddled thinking about the conditions of a moral existence. NIOF is all you need. Right?

Nevertheless, Rand's statement that "the freedom of ideas does not permit you to lie about a person" is clearly inconsistent with with her basic premises. This is not true of her defense of intellectual property, however. Although I disagree with Rand about intellectual property, if you believe in this right then to violate it means essentially the same thing as to violate any other property right. To have a property right in X means that one has the exclusive moral right to say how X shall be used and disposed of. Thus if someone uses X without your permission, they are forcibly preventing you from exercising your exclusive right of use and disposal. Rand would not agree that protecting intellectual property rights involves the initiation of force. Rather, it is a species of retaliatory force.

Ghs

You are dancing back and forth between Rand’s position and your position in an apparent effort to muddy the water. I am fully aware of what Rand would argue. Of course, she would say that stealing intellectual property is the same as stealing any other kind of property. But since you disagree with Rand, the issue from your perspective is: who has initiated physical force?

If I acquire the deed to a physical property, that physical property is mine to dispose of as I see fit. For someone else to dispose of it is the physical act of stealing, and no one questions whether stealing physical property is the initiation of physical force. If I steal your book, I have initiated physical force. If I start selling a book you wrote without your permission, and you stop me, you have initiated physical force.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot argue that intellectual property rights are invalid, and then argue that stealing intellectual property—i.e., stealing something that is not physical—is an initiation of force. If you oppose intellectual property rights, then from your perspective, Rand is sanctioning the initiation of force. It is only from the perspective of someone who agrees with the notion of intellectual property that protecting such rights constitutes retaliatory force.

From your perspective—from the perspective of someone who does not recognize that property rights can be acquired through nonphysical (i.e., intellectual) means, Rand is sanctioning the initiation of force. From either perspective, she is clearly sanctioning the initiation of physical force. That was my point in bringing up that issue.

How does someone acquire the right to intellectual property, since it involves an act of intellectual creation rather than physical acquisition through production, discovery or free exchange? If rights are strictly an issue of being free from physical force, there is no way.

You can only validate the right to intellectual property if you grant that there is something more fundamental to rights than the non-initiation of force principle. The same is true about all the other exceptions to the NIOF principle cited above. She believed there was something much more fundamental than NIOF. Sadly, you continue to refuse to acknowledge that.

You have merely illustrated something that we already knew, namely, that Rand sometimes did not apply her own principles consistently. Here are some statements in 'The Nature of Government," in case you have forgotten them. The boldface is mine.

Like many classical liberals before her, Rand believed that fraud and breach of contract constitute indirect uses of physical force. (Rothbard developed this approach in greater detail than Rand did). She also incorporated the threat of force into her scheme of rights-violating activities.

Nevertheless, Rand's statement that "the freedom of ideas does not permit you to lie about a person" is clearly inconsistent with with her basic premises. This is not true of her defense of intellectual property, however. Although I disagree with Rand about intellectual property, if you believe in this right then to violate it means essentially the same thing as to violate any other property right. To have a property right in X means that one has the exclusive moral right to say how X shall be used and disposed of. Thus if someone uses X without your permission, they are forcibly preventing you from exercising your exclusive right of use and disposal. Rand would not agree that protecting intellectual property rights involves the initiation of force. Rather, it is a species of retaliatory force.

Again, what you have done is to throw out poorly-digested examples, apparently at random, in an effort to show that Rand would have approved of the initiation of force by a government -- and this in the face of her many explicit statements to the contrary. You do a grave injustice to Rand by gerrymandering her ideas in this manner. Yes, she was sometimes inconsistent. She sometimes failed to apply her own principles properly, but she never wavered on the basic principle that no one, including a government, has the right to initiate force. (A possible exception might be emergency situations, but that is not what we are discussing here.)

Ghs

Thank you very much for replicating all those quotes from Ayn Rand about the initiation of physical force as the only way in which individual rights can be violated. How very enlightening. She certainly did repeat that phrase over and over and over again, making it quite understandable that some of her readers would get the idea that initiating physical force was the only way to violate rights. She was attempting to simplify the issue as much as possible, not realizing that some people—for want of a better term, let us call them "libertarians"—would take her literally. She might have saved the world a lot of unnecessary grief if she had been less inclined to oversimplification, because that’s what the NIOF principle is—an oversimplification.

In other contexts, she stated that the basic way to violate individual rights was through the initiation of physical force. She cited many, many exceptions to that principle. Libel and slander laws and reckless endangerment are just two examples. When a person invests years in earning the value of a reputation, it is clearly a violation of their rights for someone to destroy that reputation with lies and false accusations. If a worker loses his arm on an assembly line because equipment was in a state of serious disrepair, are you seriously going to contend his rights were not violated? She was not being inconsistent in either of those examples. The other examples I cited—fraud and other forms of indirect force, including threats of force—are other common exceptions. The entire field of contract law is another. Breach of contract may constitute a form of physical force, but just as often it may not. Disagreements are extremely common. A judge issues a ruling, and if the parties disagree, the police must, in effect, initiate physical force when they exact compensation from the party deemed to be at fault.

The whole idea of "indirect force"--i.e., force that is not physical--completely subverts any argument for the non-initiation of physical force principle as anything resembling an objective guide to determining what is or is not a right.

When Rand used the phrase about the non-initiation of force, she was speaking in short-hand. Understandably, she did not think it necessary to always repeat the following:

The function of the government should be only to protect individual rights…A right is a moral concept that defines and sanctions a man’s freedom of action in a social context. The basic issue is: Does one man have the right to dispose of the life of another? Once you have established that a man is the owner of his own life—that his life is his to dispose of and does not belong to anyone else—you then have the base from which all other rights are derived. If a man has the right to his own life, then he has the right to take all those actions that are necessary, by his nature as a rational being, to sustain and protect it. In order to prove that a certain action is in fact a right, you have to prove that it is required by man’s nature.

Objectively Speaking, p. 47

Unfortunately, Ayn Rand often made wrong assumptions about her readers. She assumed that her admirers would be able to grasp when she was using shorthand, and that they would not drop the context of the rest of her philosophy. She assumed her readers would seriously study her essays and make an effort to see the connections between her ideas, not take one phrase and elevate it to the status of a Platonic ideal.

The history of libertarianism, in large part, proves how wrong she was about that.

They had to do Part I very quickly because the option to do AS was expiring. I haven't seen it. I may never see it. Same for this next one. The AS now in my head is the AS I want. Anyway, the first movie was supposed to be the best movie for that was the best part of the novel. It now seems that that will be the worst movie. Ironic--and a little depressing.

--Brant

Hard to believe you would not want to see a flesh-and-blood Dagny Taggart, even if a cinematic one.

Taylor Schilling did some truly wonderful things with the role. You are mssing out if you don't give it a look.

Is there a single cast member from Part 1 reprising their role in Part II? The Mouch was a keeper, I felt. I suppose Wyatt wouldn't be appearing in any event, maybe he'll come back for Part III.

As far as I know, none of the prior cast members from Part One are in Part Two.

We can praise the Gods that the scraggly, dissipated Francisco is gone. Two other Part One characters who looked like they just walked in off the street and wandered on to the set—Owen Kellog (the Pillsbury Dough Boy) and Hugh Akston (who looked like he just stepped off the ice cream truck)—don’t appear to be in Part Two at all.

The new cast members offer some impressive resumes of prior film and TV credits. The new Wesley Mouch, for instance, Paul McCrane, played a terrorist villain on the '24' series, opposite Keifer Sutherland.

First he takes on Jack Bauer, now John Galt. Some people never learn.

It is absolutely essential that you clarify this matter before we can go any further. I assumed that were arguing the standard O'ist line that a proper government need not ever initiate force. (This was Rand's position.) But if you wish to argue instead that, yes, even a proper government will initiate force but, because of some "context" (determined, presumably, by the government itself), this initiation of force is justified, then you are arguing for a position that differs radically from any O'ist I have ever debated before (and I have debated many). The examples you give are a mixed brew of poorly thought-out situations.

I don’t have time right now to answer all the questions you asked, but I will deal with this issue, since it is easy to show that you are factually incorrect. Here are a couple of quotes to show that Ayn Rand’s view of government was significantly more nuanced than you suggest:

Q: What do you think of libel and slander laws?

Rand: They are appropriate laws, because the freedom of ideas does not permit you to lie about a person. Under the older interpretation of the courts, truth was your defense. If you know something defamatory about someone, and it's true, then you have the right to say it. But today, you can practically say anything, so long as you’re supposedly not motivated by malice. There are some standards, but they are unclear and impractical.

This type of law is strictly to protect specific individuals; it has nothing to do with ideas. It's an issue of whether or not you lied about someone, and caused him damage.

Ayn Rand Answers, p. 21

But in the matter of protecting people from physical danger, if certain conditions of employment, let us say, are unsafe and it can be proved that there is a physical risk – I don't say that we have to wait until somebody dies – then the employer who is creating this risk can be sued, and can be severely punished financially. In other words, there can be a law protecting a man from [potential] physical injury by another man. In this case, the employer who puts men into conditions of danger – not accidentally, but intentionally or carelessly – can be penalized, because he is infringing the right of his workers not to be injured physically.

Objectively Speaking, p. 213-214

Rand is clearly saying that a proper government may, in certain circumstances, initiate force against those who defame another's character or create unsafe working conditions. Moreover, as you know, Ayn Rand endorsed the concept of intellectual property. Obviously, the protection of patents and copyrights does not, strictly speaking, involve retaliatory force. Rather, it involves government action to protect an individual's right to the products of his own intellectual effort. This is consistent with the foundation for rights which I explained in my prior post: the structuring of government to enable men to live a moral existence.

You called the examples I presented “sophistry.” LOL. I expected that. They are nothing of the kind. None of the examples I presented – gun control, stalking, bomb threats, gang intimidation – are marginal issues. They are all fairly common examples of indirect force. Fraud is another example of indirect force which I deliberately did not discuss, since I assumed you might well take issue with such laws. I deliberately chose situations which might well arise in any normal social context. I deliberately avoided the issues of fraud and intellectual property because I suspected you would take issue with them as valid examples of the province of government. Needless to say, that is not Rand’s viewpoint.

Your anarcho-capitalist defense agencies, incidentally, are another example of indirect force, because they threaten the very foundation of liberty.

You spoke of "induction," but your examples have nothing to do with induction. Rather, you posit possible exceptions to the non-initiation of force principle, but you leave unanswered the crucial question: By what general rule do we identify legitimate exceptions?

It's interesting to note that you claim that you do not take the non-initiation of force principle as a starting point or axiom. Yet when you argue against my position, you never acknowledge the basic premise of my presentation. You continue to debate the question of whether or not minarchy violates the non-initiation of force principle, and completely ignore the hierarchical foundation of rights: that society must institutionalize the conditions that enable man to live a moral existence.

It won't do to concoct a bunch of problematic scenarios that you are unable to resolve and then dub them exceptions to the NIOF principle. You repeatedly invoke "context," but the only relevant context here is your failure to analyze your own problems in a systematic manner.

Ghs

You didn't bother to read my post very carefully--or make any half-way serious effort to understand it--or you would know that I did resolve each of them--and in an extremely systematic manner.

Government action to protect the individual’s freedom to conduct his or her life can be undertaken in all of the situations described above, and many of these involve (in a technical sense) the initiation of physical force to stop others from interfering with that person’s life. (Or, in the case of abortion, no action will be taken even thought the woman is technically “initiating force”.) Using force against private individuals who want to pre-empt the government’s monopoly on the use of force is simply one more example—similar to those cited above--because their actions destroy the structure of society required for a proper human existence.

Dennis,

Really excellent.. I think you have highlighted and explained the disconnect

and floating ideal of the libertarian 'non-initiation of force' principle that's always

been bothersome ( for me.) You've given NIOF its legs.

Tony,

Thanks very much for the compliment. If my explanation was clear to you, then hopefully it was equally clear to others as well.

Penn Jillette is an embarrassment to the causes of secularism and liberty. I would much prefer he was a leftist like Michael Moore. I’m sure they would welcome his filthy, addle-brained, contemptuous approach to philosophy and ideas.

Dennis,

Does this mean you don't care much for Penn Jillette?

Michael

Whatever gave you that idea, Michael?

Penn is the walking incarnation of a gross, noxious fart. Aside from that, I'm sure he is a lovely person.

Has the John Galt of Part I (played by Paul Johansson) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0424035/

ever been visible on screen (aside from the scene where he shows up as a silhouette in the dark only)?

Why the complete exchange of the cast for AS Part II? Did Part I flop?

Galt was visible in Part One as the man in the fedora, but we never saw his face.

Yes, as a matter of fact, Part One was a complete flop at the box office. It was totally trashed by the critics, almost without exception, which obviously didn't help. Just about everything about the film was thrown together at the last minute, including the key players, so a total overhaul of the cast was called for. For the most part, the casting for Part Two looks very impressive. The actors chosen to play Rearden and Francisco, in particular, are a drastic improvement. We can only hope that the new director, John Putch, does a better job of dramatizing their heroism in a way that Ayn Rand would have wanted.

The one member of the original cast whose absence may detract from Part Two is Taylor Schilling, who played Dagny Taggart. My guess is that she may well have achieved a level of stardom that prompted her to take a pass on the sequel to a film that did so poorly.

You can't really blame her. Her Hollywood career seems to have gone into orbit. . .

Perhaps Samantha Mathis will make a fantastic Dagny. We'll have to wait and see.

So drop the juvenile crap about Platonism and try to focus on the problem at hand.

I'm afraid that shallow polemics against purity, perfection, and Platonism won't do. Well, gee, the governments of Iran and North Korea are not perfect, but only a Platonist would demand perfection!

Ghs

Here is an expanded version of my “juvenile crap” about Platonism. You claimed to be coming at the issue of government from an Objectivist (Randian) perspective, so I will analyze the issue from that perspective..

Feel free to skip over my summary of Rand’s ideas, since you know them so well. I’m including a summary here so that the full context is clear to anyone who might read this.

To begin with, Objectivism requires that a principle such as rights be placed in its proper philosophical context. Here’s your prior assertion about Rand and the alleged inconsistency of Objectivist minarchists.

Rand established the purity standard, especially in her arguments against compromises in matters of principle. Libertarian anarchists have taken her seriously in this regard; her minarchists followers have not.

Libertarian anarchists take a social principle—rights--and elevate it to the status of an axiom, which means they ignore all the philosophical principles that come before that. It’s comparable to arguing that we should be honest so that everyone will understand each other, making social relationships more harmonious. That view of honesty ignores the full context and hierarchy of honesty as a virtue, which pertains to the relationship between your mind and reality rather than any social application. Without the full context of a principle, there’s no way to know how to apply it.

Here is a summary of what you have tossed out of your philosophical equation when you argue for “pure and perfect” (i.e., Platonic) adherence to the principle of the non-initiation of force (according to Rand and the minarchists—i.e., Objectivism):

We’ll disregard metaphysics and epistemology for now and just focus on ethics. The starting point of ethics is that life is our standard of value. Life has definite conditions that must be met. Life requires that we act long-range. Man is conceptual. He can’t know how to meet the conditions without principles to guide him. The basic moral principle (i.e., virtue) is rationality, because reason is our means of survival. All other, related virtues are simultaneous—honesty, productivity, independence. All are expressions of rationality. All enable man to live the life proper to a rational being.

Politics must provide a social structure which enables man to be moral.. If man survives by the use of his mind, and the essence of force is to make the mind inapplicable to life, then force is evil in principle. The principle that defines a man’s right to be free from force is that of rights. Rights are the starting pointing for any discussion of politics and government. Rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Applying the principle of rights—of abolishing force from human relationships--requires that full context and hierarchy.

It is not self-evident that force is evil, as the libertarian anarchist seems to assume. But the above explanation alone is also insufficient by itself. You cannot simply go from an explanation of morality and deduce the conclusion that force is evil. A long process of induction is involved in reaching that apparently simple conclusion. And then it is not a simple matter of deduction to say that every single instance where force is “initiated” is necessarily evil. Again you must examine all the various concrete situations to see how the principle applies while holding the whole context of the prior discussion of morality and the nature of man.

Consider just two examples of where the principle of the initiation of force alone is not a sufficient guide—gun control and abortion. You have to hold the whole context and hierarchy of the nature of force and rights to untangle the complexity of such issues and apply the principle of rights.

Again, to repeat, politics must provide a social structure that enables men to be moral. Would it be possible to live a productive life in a society where your neighbors all have anti-aircraft weapons mounted on their front lawns, or where everyone wears an AK 47 on his hip? Would it be possible for a woman to live a rational, productive life if she had to carry every single instance of conception to term? The neighbors have not initiated force by buying anti-aircraft guns. Your fellow citizens have not initiated force by buying AK 47s. The embryo has not initiated force by being conceived.

If we apply your principle of the non-initiation of force in the “pure and perfect” manner you advocate, we can do nothing about the neighbors or the machine gun-slingers. And any woman who has an abortion will go on trial for murder.

What about stalkers who fixate on a victim and follow him or her everywhere they go? They don’t use force. Can you “initiate force” against them? Can a person or a celebrity live a normal life with predators stalking them, day and night?

Suppose a motorcycle gang lives next door to you and they don’t happen to like you. Suppose they decided to hold a protest vigil outside your home—just beyond your property line—day and night, strutting around with night sticks and chains, waiting for you or a member of your family to step outside. They haven’t touched you. They haven’t “initiated force.” Maybe they smile and wave in a friendly manner when you look out the window. You can’t interfere with their ‘right of assembly.’ If you get your private agency’s police force to sweep them out, you’re the one “initiating force.”

Suppose someone likes to phone in bomb threats to airports every once in a while, just as a joke. The airport has to shut down and everyone has to exit the premises, costing staff and passengers involved thousands of dollars in wasted time and expense. They don’t have to do that. Airport security could just ignore the threats if they wanted to. Your private defense agency can’t do anything. The caller is just a practical joker. He hasn’t “initiated force.”

The point is that you cannot simply sit on the definition of rights (defined as prohibitions against the initiation of force) and deduce your conclusions about what a government can and cannot do. Government action to protect the individual’s freedom to conduct his or her life can be undertaken in all of the situations described above, and many of these involve (in a technical sense) the initiation of physical force to stop others from interfering with that person’s life. (Or, in the case of abortion, no action will be taken even though the woman is technically “initiating force”.) Using force against private individuals who want to pre-empt the government’s monopoly on the use of force is simply one more example—similar to those cited above--because their actions destroy the structure of society required for a proper human existence.

(As I previously explained, it is not really “initiating force,” because the private defense agency’s use of force (a) violates the rights of all those who do not sanction their usurpation of the government’s function, and (b) threatens everyone else’s rights by destroying the objective structure required to restrain the legitimate use of force.)

You can argue that your anarcho-capitalist scheme is practical all you want, but you cannot legitimately accuse the minarchist of violating the principle of rights. The minarchist is upholding the foundation of rights—the political requirement that men must be free to live a moral life. Because the anarchist ignores that foundation, the charge of violating principle can be made against him, and with much more philosophic “force” behind it.

Again, you seem to have forgotten the initial premise that NB laid down in your headline post. NB said:

Branden: This, of course, is their favorite argument and their stock argument. In briefest essentials, I would answer as follows. Let's imagine, to make it very simple, that we--this group in this room tonight-- form a society and agree on the principles to be operative in the society in a political sense. We agree upon a constitution and a government is created for the purpose of carrying out the principles laid down in this constitution

NB deals with the problem of consent by assuming that we have unanimous consent at the time a government is formed. You have never offered any other alternative. So drop the juvenile crap about Platonism and try to focus on the problem at hand.

This strikes me as a red herring, George. Branden was using the people in the room to construct his example, not as an exact microcosm of any society which organizes a government. It was not his intention to imply that there is always unanimous consent when a government is formed.

He discussed the pro's and cons of representative government by majority rule in a follow-up question which I also posted.

Lastly, I will call attention to the fact that you have failed to give any reasons as to why we should regard the current U.S. government as legitimate.

Ghs

To the extent that the current U.S. government is engaged in the violation of individual rights, I would not argue that it is legitimate.

How inspiring that this pathetic sack of manure talks about how atheists must “grab the moral high ground” while he mocks and trashes men of genuine achievement like Nathaniel Branden on his disgusting, foul-mouthed TV show. He displays his admiration for Ayn Rand by talking about what a “great f__k” she would be.

He talks about how much he likes Atlas Shrugged in one breath, then labels all Objectivists nuts and “whack jobs” in the next.

Penn Jillette is an embarrassment to the causes of secularism and liberty. I would much prefer he was a leftist like Michael Moore. I’m sure they would welcome his filthy, addle-brained, contemptuous approach to philosophy and ideas.

Rand established the purity standard, especially in her arguments against compromises in matters of principle. Libertarian anarchists have taken her seriously in this regard; her minarchists followers have not.

If an O'ist and theoretical defender of limited government is willing to concede that no legitimate government has ever existed in fact and that no legitimate government is ever likely to exist, then we don't really have much of practical value to argue about. But this is not what typically happens. Instead, the O'ist makes an implicit and illicit jump from an ideal Randian government to the current U.S. government, suggesting that his theoretical justification for limited government somehow applies to the U.S. govenment.

How can this be done? Blank out, as Rand would say.

Ghs

There are several errors involved here. The first is the failure to recognize that the purpose of rights is to make possible the kind of actions required for human existence. Rights are corollaries of ethics applied to a social context. The most fundamental right is a man’s right to self-preservation. To achieve the goal of a human existence in this world, rights must embrace the facts of what this entails in practical reality.

To achieve the goal of enabling men to lead a proper human life, our approach to protecting rights must embrace reality—i.e., our theory must reflect the need for a mechanism to enable real human beings to live together in harmony.

To achieve any practical goal, we must validate our ideas through induction. We cannot claim that a conclusion is valid simply because it has been deduced from other ideas. We must, first and foremost, confirm that our conclusion corresponds to reality. We cannot hold our ideas as if they were forms of “purity” floating in some separate realm of “perfection” above reality.

You begin with a principle torn from its context of enabling men to lead a proper human life—“the non-initiation of force.” Then you leap to the conclusion that government can never be "legitimate" because it can never claim universal consent, and therefore may itself have to initiate force to invoke its monopoly on force. (One could say exactly the same thing about any private defense agency, of course.) You deduce your conclusion from a prior idea while totally ignoring the real world in which we must live.

Your Platonic “ideal of purity and perfection” is utterly divorced from reality, an abstraction drawn from non-existence as a standard for judging existence.

This is Platonism and rationalism. It is not Objectivism.

Dennis,

I'm not so bothered on the religious versus atheist thing--not even on fundamentals. People who truly adopt capitalism as a banner don't seem to care about this politically from what I have observed.

I haven't seen where religion versus atheism dispute has made a difference one way or another on the size and abuses of government.

On the contrary, on the times I have I seen pro-liberty efforts progress, I can't help but notice that the entire discussion has been thrown out of the political arena or at least ignored. (How much was it discussed in Clinton's welfare reform, for instance?)

With this in mind, for the religious people, I expect to see the Rand was an atheist argument to be aimed at the clueless and the agree with Rand on everything but atheism argument adopted by the side of the more informed folks. I seriously doubt altruism will figure as an important element in this situation, although I imagine it will be a talking point that comes up sporadically to add mass to the discussions.

Michael,

The religion vs atheism conflict is not fundamental here. It is merely a superficial smokescreen for the real drama--one that underlies so much of the political debate today. The real battle is between selfishness vs. altruism.

That is the unspoken, underlying thread that ties together a vast number of issues dominating today's headlines.

It is the real issue involved in the debate on Obamacare. And the federal budget battle. And raising taxes on the rich. And the price of oil. And governmental regulation of private industry. And revamping Medicare and social security. And cutting back federal and state entitlements. And the power of labor unions. And out-of-control federal spending. And the sacrificial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And so many other issues too numerous to list here.

The fantastic thing about the prospect of bringing Ayn Rand into the forefront of the national debate is that this underlying, unspoken moral conflict will be brought out into the open, and, for the first time, voters will have a chance to see clearly the nature of the choice facing them--and choose the future they truly want for America.

In a discussion with David Kelley a few months ago, he said that the reason most people react negatively to the idea of atheism is that, to them, atheism represents the negation of all values. I think he was right about that--and that most people will care much less about Ayn Rand's atheism when they discover the values she fought for so passionately--most especially, individualism and the greatness of human achievement.

If the upcoming national debate can be framed in terms of self-sacrifice vs. self-responsibility (which is the true meaning of selfishness)--and if even a small number of people can be helped to see that--it could make all the difference for America's future. Most likely the debate will not be framed in those terms, because the Republicans will prefer to battle the Democrats for the banner of "holier-than-thou." Even so, we can hope that this debate will lead many observers to discover the Randian alternative on their own.

On religion and politics per se, I have a very interesting quote I just came across that gave me great pause. I'm reading a book on gurus by an extremely insightful psychologist, Anthony Storr. It is called Feet of Clay - Saints, Sinners and Madmen: A Study of Gurus. One of the gurus he examined was Carl Jung (yes, he called Jung a "guru" ). Here is the quote from the chapter on Jung (p. 105):

Because of his own experience, he drew attention to a phenomenon which has not received the investigation it deserves: the need which those who have lost their faith feel for something to replace it, and the dangers which threaten us all when whole populations worship dictators like Stalin and Mao rather than a god beyond the skies.

Wow.

That is an angle I never thought of, although when I read it, I got the oddest feeling of déjà vu.

One of the reasons religion doesn't bother me politically like it used to is that I believe I gradually came to the conclusion behind Storr's warning without having the words for it. At least I think I did. I do know that his words hit me with a feeling of obviousness that was a little too familiar.

Michael

The quote from Anthony Storr reminds me of another famous quote from G.K.Chesterton:

“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.”

For Chesterton, "anything" translates to the false gods of socialism, feminism, environmentalism, communism, Nazism, et. al.

In the case of Ayn Rand, however, anything becomes something better--an alternative secular value-system around which the individual can build his life. I happen to think many people will embrace that new value-system, when and if they fully grasp it.

My hope is that the Democrats are about to lend us a helping hand in promoting that very worthy cause.

Michael,

Thanks for posting that audio by Beck. You're right. Beck's comments make clear that he continues to admire Rand as a "prophet" despite her alleged bigotry against religion.

I'm sure this is the approach Republicans will take on the 'Rand vs. Jesus' controversy, i.e., downplaying Rand's rabid atheism as misguided and emphasizing the ways in which capitalism helps the "less fortunate"--i.e., has altruistic consequences despite promoting a benign form of "selfishness."

I have my doubts about whether this strategy will work. Any serious study of The Virtue of Selfishness reveals the numerous ways in which Rand's absolute focus on the self is totally incompatible with the purely negative edicts of the Ten Commandments (which Beck no doubt believes in). To the extent that this "epic confrontation" (Jesus vs Rand) continues to get attention in the media, that stark contrast will be highlighted by those who study the subject seriously. Beck glosses over this by portraying Rand's morality prosaically as merely a focus on "pursuing happiness."

Rand's Christian-Democratic critics are going to make clear that the differences are much more fundamental than that. The parable of 'Jesus and the money changers' along with a few other choice quotes from Christ ("Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his fellow man" and something about camels passing through the eye of a needle, et. al.) come to mind.

Obama's recent statement describing Ryan's budget as 'social Darwinism' could be an omen of things to come. If the Dems choose to press the issue, we may see a fascinating drama unfolding before our eyes in the months ahead.

The new Dagny Taggart is Samantha Mathis

(Attention: wardrobe dept--I think this would be an excellent "dress" for her to wear throughout the entire film.)

And the new Francisco d'Anconia actually looks like Francisco d'Anconia(Esai Morales)

Based on the casting alone, I think there is every reason to believe that Atlas Part Two is going to be a significant improvement over Part One.

Take A Stand on Ayn Rand

I thought the heated debate over Paul Ryan’s new budget proposal had inspired the controversy about the influence of Ayn Rand’s ideas on Republicans, but it appears this “American Values Network” page has been up for several months.

It looks like some Democrats are finally doing what the Republican conservatives have been afraid to do: Challenge the ethical basis of capitalism. Needless to say, they take the wrong side on the issue, but at least they seem to grasp the incompatibility of the two sides (Ayn Rand vs. Jesus Christ).

The anti-Rand youtube video featured here has also apparently been up for about ten months. It includes this remarkable quote from Paul Ryan:

“Ayn Rand more than anyone else did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism..”

I knew Ryan had described himself as a fan of Rand and required that his staff read Atlas Shrugged, but I did not realize he had openly praised the Objectivist ethics in such clear terms. You have to wonder: Did Ryan, a self-professed Catholic, have any idea about what he was saying? This becomes even more significant when you consider that Ryan’s name has been put forth as a potential vice-presidential running mate for Romney.

Here’s an interesting quote from one of the numerous Rand-related articles referenced here, citing Glenn Beck’s apparent about-face on his previously expressed admiration for Rand.

Glenn Beck Changes Mind On Ayn Rand

As many of us on Current know, Glenn Beck usually does not change his mind, but two days ago he did! In June of last year he extolled Ayn Rand on his radio show saying, “You gotta love her – she’s great!” But then he watched and played American Values Network's ad, which has been at the center of the recent discussion, and highlights the Rand vs Jesus problem for the GOP. And Beck did an about-face, calling Rand a "bigot" and someone who wrongly used freedom for selfish ends. Check out the video and the link to the article above. If even Beck – Glenn Beck! – can’t ally himself with Rand’s morality, how could some of our political leaders –who claim to be “Bible-believing” – still find it possible to praise her morality and say our federal budget should be modeled on her teachings?

Beck called Rand a “bigot”? How did I miss that?

I think this is fantastic. It’s like: “America—The Final Conflict.” I’m almost tempted to make a donation to the outfit promoting this controversy. I would love to see this ideological confrontation between Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ become the centerpiece of the 2012 presidential campaign.

It reminds me of the following prescient quote from Rand:

From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.

And now D.B.Sweeney has been cast as John Galt

But who will be his Dagny? And have the producers managed to find someone to play Francisco who looks more like Zorro and less like Bonzo?

Stay tuned. . .

Catholics United made a similar charge when they attributed Ryan’s budget to the influence of Ayn Rand.

“The social Darwinist teachings of Ayn Rand have consistently been denounced by major Catholic leaders as antithetical to Catholic doctrine,” argued Catholics United.

The earlier thread:

Catholics Credit Ryan Budget to Ayn Rand

Introducing the new Hank Rearden, Jason Beghe.

And Brian Patrick O'Toole is now officially back on board as a script writer.

IMDB

The tragedy surrounding Trayvon's death is not in the possibility that it might have something to do with white racism; the tragedy is in the lustfulness with which so many black leaders, in conjunction with the media, have leapt to exploit his demise for their own power.

That is the key point. Is it pure coincidence that this little drama has emerged in an election year and a radically leftist president is facing an uphill battle for re-election? Does anyone seriously believe that the drive-by media would spend five seconds on this story if Zimmerman were black?

This whole disgusting spectacle has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of Zimmerman. I have no idea if he acted in self-defense or not, and neither does Sharpton, Jackson, the leftist media or our pathetic, race-baiting, power-hungry excuse for a president. He and his cronies clearly have no reservations about doing their part to help incite riots in the streets when a second Obama term is at stake.

I presented two options. You say that you "wouldn't accept either premise." I take this to mean that, in rejecting option #1, you don't think that objective law requires ascertaining "objective truth in the realm of ethics and legal philosophy." Is that what you mean to say?

I am saying that there are numerous issues where it is not realistic to think that every rational person will agree on what constitutes “objective truth,” even though that is our ideal goal. Ascertaining truth and obtaining universal agreement on what is “objective truth” are very different things.

Here are some examples of such issues (from post #4):

In regard to the question of gun control, when does the mere possession of a weapon constitute a violation of other’s rights—e.g., for an extreme example, placing an anti-aircraft weapon on one’s front lawn next door to an airport? Or pointing a missile launcher at your neighbor’s house? Or merely possessing a nuclear suitcase? Or an AK 47 rifle?

Date rape is another example. When does a man’s use of benevolent aggression in the sexual act constitute rape and when is it masculine self-assertiveness? Some uses of a fundamentally benevolent kind of “force” can be highly erotic and desirable to a woman. If you can’t verify this from your own personal experience, just look at the popularity of so-called “bodice-ripper” romance novels. Or the ‘rape’ scene in The Fountainhead. So where do we draw the line between mutually stimulating “force” and date rape?

In car accidents, there is often strong disagreement about who caused the accident—i.e., who forcibly damaged the other’s property and who should be legally forced to provide restitution. What rules of evidence apply in adjudicating the dispute? How do we assess the validity of witness testimony? As with many similar issues, arbitration would only solve the problem if both parties agree to arbitration.

Or consider the whole abortion issue. When (if ever) does abortion constitute murder? After the first trimester? What about partial birth abortion? Where do we draw the line-- before or after the umbilical cord is cut?

In contract law, there can be numerous disputes about what constitutes a violation of a contract. In real estate, for one example, there is usually a clause pertaining to “full disclosure.” Following completion of a sale of property, the buyer might maintain that the plumbing in the purchased home was not up to expectations. Some contracts might contain definitions that adequately cover that issue, but others may not. Again, it is not a simple matter to determine whether force should be used to extract restitution.

In divorce situations, it can be very difficult to determine what constitutes equitable distribution of shared assets. At some point, as in all unresolved civil disputes, the threat of force must be used to finalize the settlement.

There are two senses in which law should be objective. The law must clearly (objectively) define what people are forbidden to do, and it must be objectively justified—i.e., rationally defensible, not simply an arbitrary decree.

A totalitarian government can "objectively define" what people are forbidden to do. An anti-Semetic government, for example, can forbid Jews to intermarry with Gentiles, while objectively defining what it means by "Jew."

But this doesn't seem to be what you mean by "define," for you then proceed to equate "define" with "objectively justified" and "rationally defensible." Although we can define a principle or law without justifying it, I will assume you misspoke and proceed to the key question:

I don’t know why you would assume I misspoke. I did not. Arbitrary laws imposed wthout rational justification, no matter how well-defined, are not objective. That’s why I made clear that laws must be objective in both senses. Nazi Germany could have had a well-defined law that all Jews must die. Because such a law is arbitrary and egregious, it would hardly be considered objective.

Are only governments capable of discerning legal principles (laws, in this case) that are "objectively justified" and "rationally defensible"? If such laws are rationally defensible, then why can't any rational person discern and justify the same laws? You surely don't wish to say that government employees have a monopoly on reason. Right?

No. Government officials do not have a monopoly on reason. Yes, every rational person can make up his own mind on what consitutes a law that is "objectively justified" and "rationally defensible.” But because rational people will inevitably have reasonable disagreements on issues such as those referenced above, the only way to have a civilized society is for there to be one agency, subject to democratic control, charged with responsibility for defining what constitutes “objective truth” in these situations. In some cases the government will be right. In other cases, it may be wrong. To let everyone decide such issues is to create unmitigated chaos. The democratic process allows everyone to advocate for changes without such chaos.

But the fact that the law must be objectively justified does not mean it will be totally rational and in accord with objective reality (or “truth”). That’s one problem with democracy: Those who make the law are democratically elected representatives of the people—and they are very human. They are not Gods. (In fact, as things stand today, they are about as far away from being Gods as one might imagine it’s possible to be.) Consequently, the content of the law is unlikely to exactly coincide with objective reality. The hope is that it will come as close to objective reality as the limits of human fallibility and rational inconsistency permit.

Okay, let us agree, for the sake of argument, that it is neither necessary nor possible for all laws to be "totally rational and in accord with objective reality." I have two questions:

1) Is it possible for us to tell, via the use of reason, which laws are totally rational and which laws are not?

No, not with anything resembling a “final answer” on what is “objective truth” in a vast number of situations such as those described above.

2) Why does your government get a pass in regard to laws that are not "totally rational" but market agencies do not? Why, in other words, do you demand complete legal objectivity from market agencies, while arguing that complete objectivity is not possible from "fallible men," and therefore not necessary for your government? Why the double-standard? How can you hold market agencies to a standard of infallibility that you yourself concede is impossible?

There is no double standard. It’s possible, with respect to such issues, that a private defense agency might have a resolution that is superior to the government’s current law. But to allow private defense agencies to offer different interpretations of each of these complex laws, and then back up their interpretation with force, will lead to endless civil war. The only practical solution is to have one agency with a monopoly on force and allow private individuals or agencies to advocate for change through the democratic process.

So the only alternatives are (a) government officials who are infallible in their perception of the truth, a majority of whom always vote on bills correctly, or (b) the divine right of kings. I hardly think so. Rather, we are talking about a clearly defined code of comprehensible law offered by a group of rational, but fallible elected officials doing the best they can to get it right but falling somewhat short of the mark due to the nature of bureaucracy.

I never said anything about infallibility. On the contrary, as a good O'ist in epistemology, I deny that infallible procedures are required for rational justification.

The confusion I referred to relates to your claim -- which you still have not explained -- that a government can somehow arrive at objective laws in a manner that market agencies cannot. You now concede that some laws of a government will not be rationally defensible. But this was the crux of your argument against market agencies, namely, that some of their laws will not be rationally defensible.

I’m not sure what I may have said to imply that “some laws of a proper government would not be rationally defensible." If a law is objective, to repeat, it must be rationally defensible. In my last post, I also explained that, with respect to many complex issues, the laws of private defense agencies might also be seen as rationally defensible. Lack of rational defensibility was not the crux of my argument against private defense agencies. My argument against such agencies is that to have multiple agencies defining “objective law” will lead to clashes that can only be resolved by one (or more) agency using force to impose its interpretation on those who disagree. (It's true that a government must also impose their viewpoint, but that's the price we must pay for civilization.)

So, again, what is the difference? Nowhere in your discussion have you shown how only a government can arrive at objective laws. Everything you have said applies equally well to Rothbardian justice agencies.

Ghs

The difference is that rule by objective law requires one agency with the final authority when there are disputes about what is or is not rationally defensible. The alternative is civil warfare and chaos. Multiple agencies with conflicting "objective laws" will destroy all semblance of rule by objective law. Democratically controlled representative government--strictly limited to the protection of individual rights--is the only workable system for keeping force in check.

Once again, you have mixed a number of different issues together in a fast and loose manner. "Democratic control" has absolutely nothing to do with any of this; in fact, it opens up a different can of worms. A majority might wish to enforce Sharia law, after all.

In truth, you alternate between #1 and #2, depending on which option serves your needs at the time.

Ghs

Fast and loose? Shifting meanings to suit my purpose? Well, obviously. One has to be an irresponsible cheat to disagree with you. Right? (Are you sure you’re not an objectivist?)

It’s just possible that the alternatives you offer don’t exhaust the alternatives for the meaning of ‘objective law.’ You offer these options:

(A) Law is objective because the government consists of rational people who are able to ascertain objective truth in the realm of ethics and legal philosophy; or

(B) Law is objective because the government decrees it.

You equate objective law and objective truth in option A. You make objective law whatever the government says it is in option B. I wouldn’t accept either premise. There are two senses in which law should be objective. The law must clearly (objectively) define what people are forbidden to do, and it must be objectively justified—i.e., rationally defensible, not simply an arbitrary decree. But the fact that the law must be objectively justified does not mean it will be totally rational and in accord with objective reality (or “truth”).

That’s one problem with democracy: Those who make the law are democratically elected representatives of the people—and they are very human. They are not Gods. (In fact, as things stand today, they are about as far away from being Gods as one might imagine it’s possible to be.) Consequently, the content of the law is unlikely to exactly coincide with objective reality. The hope is that it will come as close to objective reality as the limits of human fallibility and rational inconsistency permit.

If you embrace option #1 -- i.e., if you believe that reason is able to tell us the proper limits of force -- then, like me, you hold that such matters are objective. If you embrace option #2 -- i.e., if you believe a government creates the standards of "objectively limited force," and that such limiting standards cannot be rationally ascertained by those outside government -- then your "objectively limited force" is in fact subjective.

So the only alternatives are (a) government officials who are infallible in their perception of the truth, a majority of whom always vote on bills correctly, or (b) the divine right of kings.

I hardly think so. Rather, we are talking about a clearly defined code of comprehensible law offered by a group of rational, but fallible elected officials doing the best they can to get it right but falling somewhat short of the mark due to the nature of bureaucracy.

You say: “As before, you link ‘objectively limited force’ with ‘the 'central planning' of a single government agency’ while making no effort to explain the link.”

I don’t really get where the confusion is, quite frankly. I hope this helps to explain the “link,” and the role of democracy, but I’m not holding my breath.