T

horeau might have written only yesterday about our government today. What makes his commentary so timeless in its application is that he saw beneath the superficial manifestations of government to its underlying principles of operation. What is important is to define the condition toward which the human community should be advancing. To set the social goals toward which the men and women of good will should strive; the general relationships that should exist between human beings. To produce a schematic for civilized life, a set of instructions. This is the intent of my writings on Ethics.

Some Ethical Concepts Defined

 term:               genus:           differentia: 

 ethics          human behavior       interpersonal 
 libertarianism  political principle  voluntary 
 statism         political principle  coercive 
 anarchy         political structure  voluntary 
 government      political structure  coercive 

Libertarianism is the statement of a political principle. As John Hospers described it:

"a philosophy of personal liberty - the liberty of each person to live according to his own choices, provided that he does not attempt to coerce others and thus prevent them from living according to their choices. Libertarians hold this to be an inalienable right of man; thus, libertarianism represents a total commitment to the concept of individual rights."

Libertarianism, as a political philosophy, is concerned with the appropriate use of force. It asks one question: Under what conditions is the use of force justified? And it gives one answer: only in response to the prior use of force.

The opposite of libertarianism is statism, the principle that it is proper for the community (or a selected subgroup thereof) to compel the behavior of its individual members.

Anarchy is a narrower term, contained within the context of libertarianism, and referring to the social institution by means of which the principle of libertarianism shall be implemented.

Government is the social institution by means of which the principle of statism is implemented. In practice throughout history, the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of government has been that it is an institution comprised of the strongest gang of aggressors in a particular area at a particular time. Government is not itself a principle but is the institutionalization of an ethical principle. The gang of bandits becomes a government when it establishes an institution for the purpose of implementing its principle of coercion.

Consider that when people live together in a society, that is, a group in which interactions can take place among all the members, there must be institutionalized a set of ethical standards of behavior designed to inhibit actions which would result in the violation of freedom. This is the ostensible (but NOT historical) purpose of a legal system.

A society can have either non-aggression or coercion as its standard of behavior. In accordance with the first alternative, the social institution (legal system) for implementing that standard of behavior will be an anarchy. On the other hand, if coercion is the standard of behavior then a government will be the implementing institution.

An anarchic society is not a Utopia in which the inititation of violence is impossible. Rather, it is a society which does not institutionalize the initiation of force and in which there are means for dealing with aggression justly when it does occur. The absence of government does not mean the absence of violence. It simply means the absence of an official, legal, institutionalized tool for its imposition.

A statist society is one in which aggression is institutionalized.

Philosophy Underlies Society

In the case of an individual, that failure can occur when a person takes actions based on his principles. To the extent that the principles do not correspond to reality, the actions he takes will fail to achieve beneficial values. Thus it is that a philosophical failure will have destructive consequences in reality.

In the case of a society, the danger arises from the fact that there will always be individuals whose personal beliefs lead them to perform actions which violate rights. Wicked people are drawn toward the state because the state is able to "socialize" the costs of persecution and thereby save them the expense (or potential danger) of implementing their wickedness. Many individuals would use their positions wickedly if they could. However, the institutional arrangements within which people perform their tasks determine whether or not such abuses can be carried out. If social institutions fail to accomodate this fact, the actions of those individuals will be detrimental to the society. Further, the deliberate institutionalization of rights-violating behavior (e.g., government) is akin to the dietary failure of actually eating poison. Thus it is that a philosophical failure will have destructive consequences in social reality.

Society doesn't function because government intervenes occasionally to resolve disputes. Rather, the vast majority of people depend on continuing relationships wherein it's customary to keep one's word, treat others with respect, and comply with mutually beneficial norms. These privately- developed norms are the glue which holds society together, by and large in spite of the interference of government.

Here are examples of two different norms, each of which produces a completely different type of ethical behavior, depending on the acceptance or rejection of government interference in an interpersonal relationship:

• Consider a man and a woman who have lived together in a state of intimacy for 20 years. At the end of that time, they decide that the best thing for them to do would be to go their separate ways and each live independently of the other. So what happens? Each hires a lawyer, goes to court, and attempts to induce the government to use its coercive power against the other. This sort of divorce occurs so frequently that it is considered a natural process, always to be expected, even inevitable. But in fact there is nothing natural, expectable, or inevitable about this arrangement. It is simply the result of a mistaken cultural norm which is easily corrected by a fundamental alteration in the individuals' perspective on government.
• Consider a man and a woman who have lived together in a state of intimacy for 20 years. At the end of that time, they decide that the best thing for them to do would be to go their separate ways and each live independently of the other. In this case, it would be unthinkable for them to go through the above described legal process. Why unthinkable? Well, don't you see, they are not husband and wife, but father and daughter (or mother and son).

Many people consider philosophy to be very largely an affair of acquiring and then displaying certain clever techniques of logico-linguistic proficiency. Or they seem to want a philosophy resembling the multiplication table or the periodic table of the elements. They want it to be such that all philosophy is mechanistically determinate. So that whenever faced with an alternative they can simply consult this "look-up" table and thereby be relieved of the necessity of intellectual effort. They want an answer to every question - even before it has been asked. Maybe what they really don't want is the recognition of personal responsibility. They want a philosophy that takes this burden off their shoulders. Responsibility must come from within, as a commitment to one's own values, rather than from the outside, as a duty to God, family, or community. Responsibility in action flows from a sense of self-ownership - motivation by values rather than duties - and independence of mind. The perspective of personal moral responsibility for one's actions is being abandoned - it has nearly been culturally lost - and the result is what you see in everyday's newspaper headlines: mayhem and brutality.

Foundation of Law

While it is generally recognized that man's physical and even his mental nature are subject to the rule of natural law, it is just as generally assumed that the area of ethics is completely outside the scope of natural law. This assumption is held tacitly, rather than being identifed and defended, simply because it CAN'T be rationally defended. It is quite foolish to assert that man is a being with a specific nature and therefore subject to the rule of principles derived from that nature in all areas except his dealings with other men. Do men cease to have a specific nature when they come into relationship with other men? Of course not! Natural law does indeed apply to human relationships, and it is just as objective, universal, and inescapable in this area as in any other. The proof of this is that actions have consequences - in the area of human relations as surely as in the area of human medicine. No matter how cleverly a man schemes, he will suffer if he insists on acting in a manner which contradicts the nature of human existence. The consequences may not be immediate, and they may not be readily apparent, but they are inescapable.

The law of supply and demand, and all other market laws, are really natural laws, derived from the nature and needs of man. The fact that market laws are natural laws explains why a free market works and a controlled- market doesn't: natural law is always practical - it always "works."

Thus man-made law must be identified rather than invented or decreed, as is the case with government legislation. Law is necessary for the survival and development of individual liberty, but decreed legislation is its nemesis.

"True law is right reason, consonant with nature, diffused among all men, constant, eternal." .... Cicero

Legislation also often disrupts established inter-personal conventions that have hitherto been voluntarily accepted and held to by individuals. Even the possibility of nullifying these conventions tends to induce people to fail to rely on any existing conventions or to keep any accepted agreements, no matter how they may have come into existence.

Man's only duty is to respect others' rights and man's only right over others is the enforcement of that duty.

A free society exists when people recognize, as a social, collective rule, that individuals have the right to own property and to use their bodies and minds as each sees fit. Their recognition of this right consists in their accepting a duty not to interfere with these free actions of individuals. This social rule has the enormous advantage of being the only collective rule compatible with individual freedom and autonomy. This is the only rational way in which society can cope with the problem posed by nonagreement about "The Good."

Every bit of human progress has happened for a single, simple reason: the elevation of the status of the individual. Each time civilization has stumbled into another age that is a little better, a bit more enlightened, than the ones before it, it's because people respected other people as individuals. When they haven't, those have been the times of slipping backward.

One of America's greatest shortcomings is that almost everything nowadays is geared against the individual and in favor of the big institutions - big corporations, big unions, big banking, big government. So not only does an individual have trouble getting ahead and staying there, he often has difficulty merely in surviving. And whenever bad things happen - inflation, devaluation, depression, shortages, higher taxes, even wars - it isn't so much the big institutions which get hurt, it's the individual, all the time.

More and more, individuals are being deprived of the power of decision, and being allowed only the power of choice among the things government permits. The more you depend on government, the more limited those choices become. What must be reinstated is the opportunity for the individual to make decisions that count. Small wonder that many people in big cities seem so despairing: nothing in view indicates any care for what the individual thinks or desires.

Hitler: "The individual must finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual."

Stateolatry

The most firmly held myth in the world today is that society cannot possibly exist without government. This myth is as decisive as belief in God was for the people of Medieval European Society. This myth is held so firmly and fundamentally by many people that they are entirely unaware even that they hold it.

The stateolatrist is so devout a statist that he views government as an object of religious worship. He regards government as being the ultimate foundation of morality and ethics, and as an absolute prerequisite to civilized human existence. He is unable to conceive that the time could ever come when government will fade into an anonymity as deep as that of its humblest subjects. He is one manifestation of what Eric Hoffer described as a "True Believer."

A hallmark of the stateolatrist is the inability to perceive the fundamental similarity between government viciousness and criminal viciousness. He is not merely a patriot who loves his country, he is so overwhelmed by his devotion that he cannot see the reality of government.

PATRIOT GAMES by Tom Clancy is a remarkable book. Not for the story itself, but for what it shows about the mentality of the author. Never have I seen such a blatant display of the stateolatrist syndrome. Clancy, who is an excellent writer and storyteller, portrays with great clarity the nature of terrorist behavior and the exactly identical nature of government behavior, but then distinguishes between them with such a transparent film of verbal gloss that in many places I laughed out loud with amazement. Clancy's writing is an unparalleled example of a devout statist who is totally self-blinded to the fundamental identicality of terrorism and government.

In describing terrorists, one of Clancy's characters remarks:
"They don't relate to the people around them as being real people. They see them as objects, and since they're only objects, whatever happens to them is not important. Once I met a man who killed four people and didn't bat an eye; but he cried like a baby when we told him his cat died. People like that don't even understand why they get sent to prison; they really don't understand. Those are the scary ones."

Clancy would be appalled at the idea that this same description could be applied to the FBI and the BATF "terrorists" guilty of the Waco massacre.

For another good illustration of this syndrome see Heinlein's CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY, pg 180. Here you can see someone to whom government is so unquestionably pervasive that he describes human culture without reference to it, just as you might describe society without reference to the air we breathe.

Everyone is so immersed in the context of statism that no one really knows the other alternative. Even though the governments of the former Soviet Union might WANT to establish a free market, they simply do not know what it is. Most people do not realize they could even HAVE any control over their own economic situation. Because life is so wrapped up in bureaucracy and law no one has any idea that government could be circumvented. So long as people cannot perceive alternatives for comparison they will never even become aware that they are oppressed. They will not only lack any impulse to rebel, they will lack even the power of grasping that the world could be other than what it is.

It is as Orwell said it would be: "You will lose the ability to think certain ideas, and then you will be totally incapable of ever trying to act on those ideas."

The only way out of this statist situation is for people someday to realize that governments are NOT necessary for civilization - that in fact governments are an impediment to civilization. When the day comes that enough people are disillusioned with government, government will simply cease to exist. It will go the way of Alchemy, Phrenology, the Flat Earth, and other similar errors that were eventually discarded as being useless. This is why I do not think anarchism to be utopian. Today it is only a dream, a dream that will not soon come true, but if the idea is preserved it will be used in the future.

Consider this: all government is founded upon Lies. But a lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another lie derived for the purpose. Therefore the life of a lie, and of government, is simply a question of time. Nothing but truth is immortal: 99.9 percent of all the laws ever passed by governments have vanished from the society of mankind. But Aristotle's laws of logic, Archimedes' laws of buoyancy, and Euclid's laws of geometry persevere immutably.

Miscellaneous Ethical Topics

Voting

Thoreau (Civil Disobedience):
"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked, I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting FOR THE RIGHT is DOING nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but litttle virtue in the actions of masses of men."

"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.... Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence."

Voting is an indicator of personal intellectual and moral inadequacy:
anyone whose memory is strong enough to recall what was said during the last election - and what was subsequently done by the winning candidates - will realize full well the fraudulence and futility of electoral politics. You advocated an undertaking you didn't fully understand. You were a participant in an activity you failed to supervise. You did not check on the behavior of a man whom you knew from experience to be a liar, and you permitted that man to screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history. I'd say you shirked your responsibility.

In America, voting is an all-or-nothing proposition: you either win or you lose. If you can get 51% of the vote, you get 100% of the power. No matter whether an office is filled by an 80% voter turnout or by a 15% voter turnout, the new office holder has the full power of his office. If you are on the losing side - the minority - you get nothing. The alternative presented to the voter is absolutely exclusive: the selection of one TOTALLY precludes the other.

There is a conflict in voting which is not found in the market. Market choices conflict only in the sense that buying a given good leaves you LESS money (not NO money) to purchase other goods. While you can buy some pretzels and some pizza, you can't vote for some Bush and some Clinton. In a market, the individual is never placed in the position of being a dissenting (and powerless) minority.

Democracy is the opportunity to choose among rulers none of whom you want, and the obligation to accept the ones you end up with.

Voting is just a method of choosing oppressors. Every time you step into a voting booth you license a potential killer or thief. From the perspective of either political party, there is no area of human activity that is outside the sphere of government encroachment.

Some advocates of voting, when faced with the accusation that they are perpetrating this evil, will counter with the assertion that your means of control over the situation is to exercise your right to vote, and that if you don't do so, you have no right to complain about the situation ("If you don't vote, don't complain!" is what they say). Consider the nature of the demand they are laying on you: your alternative is either to participate in the wickedness (by voting) or refuse to participate and thus be condemned to submit in silent acquiescence to being victimized by the wickedness.

In fact, only those who do NOT vote have a legitimate moral right to complain: they are the only ones who give no sanction or support to their persecutors.

Imagine a neighborhood in which two bullies dominate and intimidate everyone. But they're democratic-minded bullies: they allow all (well, almost all) the neighbors to vote every four years in an election to determine which of the bullies will be empowered to possess a big stick and for the next four years to rule the neighborhood, beating and robbing all the residents. Now imagine that one poor persecuted resident complains about being beaten and robbed, and in response is told: "Well, if you don't like bully D then next time express your preference for bully R - but unless you choose one of these bullies, you have no right to complain about being beaten and robbed."

Such a demand for willing self-immolation is an act of inexcuseable viciousness - worse even than the beating and robbing!

To commit a crime by proxy is to have someone else impose your will for you. The most convenient and frequent manner of committing acts of harm by proxy is to use government to commit the crimes you want done. All you have to do is vote for whichever criminal promises to use force in the way you wish. The very act of voting is an attempt on the part of voters to delegate to another person a power that they could not justly possess themselves.

When you vote you participate in the selection of an officeholder. Thus you acquire responsibility for his subsequent behavior - regardless of who holds the office. Your participation is your concession that there should indeed BE elected officials with the power of coercion. In voting, you give your sanction to the institution that enables the officials to coerce. Even though you may not approve of the particular officials who attain office, you do approve of the enabling institution. Government is based on coercion, but individuals should not have the authority to coerce others, and therefore they should not put themselves in a position to delegate such authority to third parties, which is the essence of voting.

There is plenty of mass-media crowing about the "high voter turnout" (about 55% - that's high?), as an "affirmation of the system," and a "strong endorsement of democracy." Nobody mentions the message of the 45% abstention.

It is often said that refusal to vote means that one is left with no voice at all, but that implies that having a voice in the proceedings of government is proper and desirable.

An authoritarian activity is one which forces, directly or indirectly, someone else to do something. But voting in itself does not do this. Only voting for authoritarian candidates (including the lesser of evils, which is still an evil) or for authoritarian policies is authoritarianism.

Voting AGAINST tax increases, measures to increase government controls, and voting FOR libertarians truly committed to total liberty cannot be authoritarian. Voting for freedom or against coercion does not delegate power to another; just the opposite.

If someone is applying coercion against me, I'll resist by any means available, even means provided by the coercer himself.

When you vote, you are devoting a part of your time and energy to making a contribution to the political system. Your participation constitutes that contribution, regardless of the intent of, or specific form of, that participation. Like they say, it doesn't matter who you vote for, as long as you vote.

Any participation in the electoral process can be used by our opposition as evidence of sanction for their actions. After all, they won - fair and square - didn't they? the contrary, it is the process of voting that has made it possible.

Suppose you are in airplane which gets hijacked and the hijacker says, "I will kill you all unless you vote that you want to be set free." Unfortunately, over 50% of the passengers are anarchists who are opposed to voting, so they refuse to vote, and all the passengers are killed. In this case, by refusing to vote, they indirectly contribute to the death of the minority that would have survived if they had been the majority. Not voting in this case is authoritarian.

Not voting constitutes an implicit declaration to the winner that "I don't care what the outcome is." We are all living in a society hijacked by the rulers. If we can vote for less coercion but refuse, we implicitly endorse coercion. The fact is, when we are hijacked, as we are, or under terrorist rule or subject to any authoritarians, we ARE involved, and a refusal to voice a yea or nay can itself further authoritarian rule.

[This is a fundamentally collectivist argument - it assumes that the victim is in some way responsible for the behavior of the criminal. It is not the responsibility of the non-voters to save the voters from their own folly.]

Back during the Vietnam era, the protestors used to say "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" That represents only a superficial analysis of the political system. A more fundamental analysis is represented by the question "What if they gave an election and nobody came?" (But then, Australia has a solution to that!)

Voting would make ME feel like a swim in the sewer. It would leave me with a sense of spiritual pollution.

John Galt (Part3, Chapter8):
"It's the attempt of your betters to beat you on YOUR terms that has allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries. Which one of us would succeed, if I were to compete with you for control over your musclemen? .... I'd perish and what you'd win would be what you've always won in the past: a postponement, one more stay of execution, for another year - or month - bought at the price of whatever hope and effort might still be squeezed out of the best of the human remnants left around you, including me."

From Ayn Rand's notes for ATLAS SHRUGGED:
By accepting his decisions, which she knows to be wrong, then by helping him to carry out bad ideas well, she only helps him to run the railroad badly and thus contradicts and defeats her own purpose, which was to run it well. She postpones the natural consequences of his bad decisions and thus leaves him free and gives him the means to do more damage to the railroad by more bad decisions, and worse ones. A bad thing well done is more dangerous and disastrous than a bad thing badly done. For example: an efficient robbery is worse for the victim than an inefficient one.

Majority Rule - Democracy

To find out, let us analyze a recent presidential election. I chose the Johnson-Goldwater election of 1964 because the winner of that election received the greatest plurality of votes of any recent (during the past half-century) election: Johnson received 61% of the votes cast. But was this landslide victory an expression of "majority rule"? I think not.

Certainly Johnson can be said to represent a majority of the voters - 61% is, after all, almost two-thirds. But when you consider the total number of eligible voters you discover that Johnson represents only 37% of them (they didn't all choose to vote, you see). So Johnson represents only a bit over one-third of the voting-age population of the country. That can hardly be said to be a majority!

But even this is not a fair assessment of the situation. Johnson was, after all, not merely president over those who chose to vote for him. And he was not merely president over those who were qualified to vote. He was president over EVERYBODY! And out of that "everybody" how many actually expressed a choice to have Johnson as their president? 22%. Yeah, only about one person in five chose Johnson.

As I said, I deliberately picked this election as an example. Any other recent election shows even more strikingly that this so-called "majority" is a quite small fraction of the population.

The notion of "majority rule" is hogwash!

Shortly after the 1964 election I realized that the American electoral process contains a fundamental flaw. When you vote, the only choice you have is to vote FOR one candidate or FOR another candidate. There is no way you can vote AGAINST any candidate. There is no "NO" choice on the ballot, only "YES" choices. This realization was one of the things that turned me off to the idea of politics. You have no doubt heard (many times) of a disgruntled voter going to the polls to choose "the lesser of two evils." I realized that the lesser of two evils is still an evil, and to express a preference for that evil is to don the cloak of moral culpability for his subsequent behavior.

I observed with interest a peculiar electoral quirk during the 1976 elections. The LP, after the expenditure of an enormous amount of time, energy and money, was able to get "None of the above" placed on the ballot in Nevada. Thus there were three options available to the Nevada electorate when they went into the polling booth to elect their congressman: the Democrat, the Republican, and None of the Above. The outcome of this election was very interesting: the Democrat received 23% of the votes, the Republican received 29%, and NOTA received a whopping 47%. Can you guess what happened? Very simple: the Republican went to Washington as the congressman from Nevada. As of 1990, NOTA is still on the ballot in Nevada, and the winner of every election is that PERSON who gains the greatest number of votes. Votes cast for NOTA are simply wasted.

It is intrinsic to the American Constitution that there MUST be a government. The people CANNOT choose "No Government" - that is not provided for in the Constitution. Sure, the Declaration of Independence observes the right of the people to "alter or abolish" their government, but the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document.

I found it fascinating to watch the first post-Soviet general elections in Russia. They had an explicit choice on their ballots: Yes or No for any (and all) particular candidates. Such a large number of the Communist candidates (who ran unopposed) received a preponderance of "No" votes that run-off elections were held a couple weeks later. Those "No" votes were indeed counted - unlike the NOTA votes in Nevada.

I found it fascinating also to watch the subsequent Hungarian elections, which were held with the stipulation that unless at least 51% of the voting population did participate, the elections would be invalid. The Hungarian government has at least a more acute sense of "majority" than does the American government. In a recent election for the Fremont County, Wyoming government, only 13% of the population voted, and yet the government selected by a portion of that tiny percentage does indeed rule Fremont County. Some "majority rule" that is!!

American voter turnout as percent of voting age population, during national off-year elections:

           1966 47.9 
           1970 47.9 
           1974 38.9 
           1978 45.9 
           1982 48.5 
           1986 46.0 
           1990 45.0 

The majority is invariably wrong. Consider the fact that every major breakthrough in man's understanding of the world has always been greeted with indifference or opposition by the majority. When private individuals in 18th century England introduced the "barbaric" practice of innoculating against smallpox, the majority, including virtually the entire medical profession, was appalled. Advances are made by individuals or by small groups of cooperating people who OVERCOME majority opinion or indifference. The fact that the majority is invariably wrong has interesting implications for the concept of democracy - a system which means, in fact, State control of the individual and his property in accordance with the supposed wishes of the majority. In a word, where majority rules, progress stops. The goal of free men should not be majority rule at all but self-rule, a society in which not political action but individual action prevails.

Political freedom for the individual has become a charming legend from the early years of the Republic when individual liberty - rather than the will of the majority - was actually considered the core of democracy. Nowadays, acceptance of the legitimacy of individual autonomy is a contradiction wholly intolerable to the democratic ideology. Under a democracy, when a man looks into a mirror he sees one ten-millionth of a tyrant, and one whole slave.

Some of the devastating consequences of the Ambiguous Collective fallacy can be observed in the phrase "we are the government," where the useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the naked exploitative reality of political life. The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people. But even if it did, crime is still crime, no matter how many citizens agree to the aggression. There is nothing sacrosanct about the majority; the lynch mob, too, is the majority in its own domain.

A black African guerilla, commenting on democracy:
"Vote, what is a vote? I don't have a vote in Mozambique. They don't have the vote in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Angola or Tanzania. Nobody has the vote in Africa, except perhaps once in a man's life to elect a president-for-life and a one-party government. Vote? You can't eat a vote. You can't dress in a vote, or ride to work on it. For two thousand rand a month and a full belly you can have my vote."

Assisted Suicide

Yes. He has a right to live his life - or end it - according to HIS choices, nobody else's.

But how about selling him cigarettes, or booze, or other destructive drugs?

The moral duty of a human being is to choose to live according to his nature. The best such choices are those that enhance his nature - not those that degrade his nature. It would not be ethically improper to sell him drugs, but it would not be the decent thing to do. By "decent" vs "indecent" I mean actions that contribute to another person's choices to enhance vs debilitate his nature as a human being. Death is a normal, natural phenomenon. Under the appropriate conditions it is proper to end a life. It is not proper to contribute to its degeneracy.

He is responsible for how he uses the stuff he buys. You acquire ethical culpability only if you know he is going to use the stuff to injure other people.

Abortion

I will make not a moral or ethical evaluation but merely a factual presentation upon which can be based whatever evaluation you choose to draw from your own set of moral principles. (Personally, I am opposed to abortion, but I am even MORE opposed to laws which forbid abortions.)

Many arguments are based on the contention that a fetus is a human being, and is therefore possessed of the right to life. This is the "Human Rights" argument.

There are six points of development at which a fetus can be claimed to acquire the status of "human being." Any argument from this premise must choose and justify one of these points:

• 1. Fertilization
• 2. Implantation in the uterine wall
• 3. Brain-wave activity
• 4. Quickening (when the woman becomes aware of the fetus' movement)
• 5. Viability (when the fetus can be withdrawn and survive)
• 6. Birth

Some argue that whether or not the fetus is a human being, it is not a "person" i.e., is not possessed of the complex of psychological characteristics that distinguishes any one human being from all others - in short, that the fetus, although a human being, does not yet have a soul.

Aquinas, rejecting the notion of a "fertilized-egg = person" equivalence observed that "the body alone is begotten by sexual procreation, and that after the formation of the body the soul is created and infused."

On the subject of abortion, Rand viewed "selfhood" far more broadly than mere possession of a physical life. She saw selfhood in the sense of personhood, and human rights as not rights of a mindless body, arising from physical processes alone, but rights of selfhood, or of personality. The realm of ethics does not apply to entities which do not possess a human level of consciousness - hence, neither do rights. That's why Rand regarded the mother, not the fetus, as possessing rights: only the mother is truly, fully human (i. e., a "self").

Others argue that even if the fetus is a human being, it is a parasite and therefore does not possess human rights. This is the "Parasite" argument:
What human has the right to remain, unbidden, as an unwanted parasite within some other human being's body? The fetus does not have any right to be fed and nourished, because such a right would make the woman its slave. The only means of refusal is to expel the fetus. What the woman is doing in an abortion is causing an unwanted parasite within her body to be ejected from it. (This can be extended to include euthanasia for seriously ill adults and dependent elderly people, as well as all those whose continued existence requires material support provided by other people.)

This argument is countered with the assertion that parasitism is a perfectly natural phenomenon (Mankind is itself a parasite upon the earth) and therefore parasites do indeed have rights - the fetus has as much right inside its mother as does man on mother earth. Both are in their natural habitat.

And there is the "Infanticide" argument - the contention that a live, born child cannot in principle be distinguished from a viable late-term fetus: they both have an unconditional need for material support. Therefore, if abortion is acceptable, so also must be infanticide.

There is also the "Supersession" argument - that the rights of the woman supersede any rights possessed by the fetus:
Does not a woman have a primary right to her own life? The right to determine the circumstances of her own body?

The "Contractual Obligation" argument:
Conception and pregnancy are foreseeable consequences of even careful sex. By willfully causing a fetus to exist, parents implicitly recognize its need for support; it's a package deal. When parents mutually enable their sperm and ova to join, the parents are not enslaved - they have volunteered.

And its rebuff, the "Choiceless" argument:
How is it that the fetus, which is an entity incapable of making choices, can be said to be a participant in that - or any - contract?

When couples who both carry the mutation for Tay-Sachs disease decide to have children, they typically elect to have prenatal testing. If a fetus has the disease, they usually abort it rather than give birth to a child who would succumb within five years to a slow and horribly painful death. Because it is always so uniformly hideous in its progression, extremely few people believe a child afflicted with Tay-Sachs should be brought into the world.

Scientific American, April 1996, contains an essay on frozen embryos.

"Test-tube" embryos, in the two- to eight-cell stage of development, are placed in liquid nitrogen and kept in suspended animation until needed by couples for subsequent attempts at in vitro fertilization. As the number of frozen embryos grows (there are about a million worldwide) it has become obvious that a sizable number of them will never be required. The essay makes three references to cryopreservation being "fraught with ethical and philosophical complications" but makes no specific mention of just what these complications might be. (See this chapter's section on * Profound Ethical Concerns)
See reference

The view of the Religious Right, as expressed by George Bush (LA TIMES, 12/12/88): "Well, it (may) appear to be a double standard to some, but I, that's my position, and it's, we don't have the time to philosophically discuss it here, but... we're going to opt on the side of life, and that is, that is the, that really is the underlying part of this for me. You know, I mentioned, and with, really from the heart, this concept of going across the river to this little church and watching one of our children, adopted kid, be baptized. And that made for me, and it was very emotional for me. It helped me in reaching a very personal view of this question. And I don't know."

Also to be considered are the inevitable practical results of anti- abortion laws, since in the legal context created by such laws many abortionists are dangerous and disreputable practitioners resorted to by desperate people.

As many as 60 million abortions are performed annually, at least 50% of them clandestinely in the 100 or so countries where the procedure is illegal.

Unsafe abortions account for between 105 and 168 maternal deaths for every 100K births in the Thirld World countries. This constitutes between 25% and 40% of all maternal mortality.

Every year, in six of the Latin American countries where the practice is illegal, about 2.8 million women have abortions and half a million are hospitalized for related complications.

In the USA, the abortion rate for Catholic women is 29% higher than that of Protestant women. A study in Boston and Long Island showed that 66% of women having their first abortions are young, single Catholics opting for abortions rather than sinning repeatedly by using birth control. 70% of those who have a second abortion are Catholic.

Each year in the USA, out of a total of approximately 6.4 million pregnant women, 1.6 million choose to have an abortion. About half of all women in the USA will choose to have an abortion at some time in their life.

There are some very well-presented arguments against abortion at the Libertarians for Life website: Libertarians for Life

Ethics as Black-and-White

Honesty vs Dishonesty

Under ordinary circumstances a lie is an attempt to coerce someone - that is, an attempt to separate him (without his consent) from some rightfully achieved value. In the context of my little story, the lie is not a coercion. Your money is not the hoodlum's rightfully achieved value, and you have NO ethical obligation toward him. Your only moral obligation is to extricate yourself from the situation in the least self-destructive manner possible. Thus we see that a lie can be a perfectly proper act to protect a value against an injustice; not a desire to gain a value by faking reality, but a fully contextual recognition of the relevant facts of reality.

Crime - The Criminal Mentality

"The current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will."

This is the psychological phenomenon that accounts for the clearly distinct difference between the behavior of "individual man" and that of "group man." How a man will behave in a social context depends very much on his self-image.

An animal is an animal by nature. It has no choice in the matter. But a human being must, by nature, CHOOSE to be a human. The necessity of choice arises from the structure of his cognitive apparatus. A part of this choice is, as an individual, to choose to think - and, as a member of a society, to choose to live by the non-aggression principle. One can not claim to be fully human unless one acts from the base of non-coercion.

The Objectivist stand is quite clear:

"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." (From "The Objectivist Ethics," in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS.)

There are really only two kinds of people in the world: those who bother other people without provocation and those who don't.

It is the initiation of force that distinguishes criminal from non- criminal behavior, and it is the acceptance or rejection of the non- aggression principle that distinguishes a civilized human being from a savage; a libertarian from a statist. This helps to explain why the State cannot respect - it can only fear. Animals do not have the attribute of respect.

The Hindu religion approaches this distinction in its famous "beetle test": as you are walking along the road, will you break stride to avoid stepping on a beetle, or will you merely crush it and walk on?

Branden maintains that the fundamental moral "sin" is the failure to choose to think (see THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-ESTEEM, chapter 4). I would draw a parallel to this contention in the field of ethics and maintain that the fundamental ethical "sin" is the failure to choose to judge. I mean specifically failing to make judgments about the ethical propriety of your own behavior, and instead allowing yourself to become merely an instrument of someone else's will. Rand observed that the most contemptible man is the man without a purpose. I believe the most evil man is the man who allows his purpose to be determined by others. He makes no ethical judgments about his behavior, but falls into the default of having his ethos determined by someone else. This is the man who implements in practice the ideas proposed by men who would otherwise be impotent. Without this man, Hitler would have been nothing more than a house painter.

The most widespread excuse for this failure is the claim that "I was only doing my job." I call this the "Nuremberg Defense" as it was the most common defense offered by the Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials. Whenever you hear this claim, what you are hearing is an attempt to justify ethical viciousness on the grounds that the perpetrator has abandoned his own judgment and accepted the propriety of acting according to the judgment of someone else.

The Nuremberg Defense tries to divorce choice from action and thus avoid the assignment of guilt. The man who makes the choice tries to absolve himself from guilt by claiming "but I didn't DO anything," and the man who performs the action tries to absolve himself from guilt by claiming "but I didn't make any choice." When each has thus eliminated guilt from his considerations, both together are capable of a completely unlimited scope of wickedness. This "default of judgment" phenomenon lies at the base of all government police agencies and all military organizations. Without this default, the Hitlers of the world would each have to do his own murders personally, and would not be able to act through a social institution comprised of people trained to accept any judgment - any choice - governing their behavior. Any judgment, that is, except their own.

The vast majority of the human race are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from infliciting pain, but in a society where viciousness is institutionalized they don't dare to assert themselves. One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally participates in iniquities which revolt both of them. "In fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the woman although your heart revolted at the act."

Hitler: "I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down. This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty."

But this process works only with "group man." It does not work at all with the individualist. The individualist is the person who has a higher allegiance to his own conscience than to the rules others set down for him. The individualist thinks and judges independently, valuing nothing higher than the sovereignty of his own intellect. He does not allow others to determine his ethos. He is not the sort of chaff that makes good fodder for a tyranny.

Those who believe that might is right must always perceive themselves as mighty.

The Criminal Mentality:
If two men had walked down Fifth Avenue in March 1933, and one of them had a pint of whiskey in his pocket and the other had a hundred dollars in gold coins, the one with the whiskey would have been considered a criminal and the one with the gold an honest citizen. If these two men, like Rip van Winkle, slept for a year and then walked back up Fifth Avenue, the man with the whiskey would have been considered an honest citizen and the one with the gold coins a criminal.

I call this the Rip van Winkle phenomenon. It is useful in understanding "psychological" analyses of crime. Any definition of "crime" that is founded on government edict cannot ascribe a psychological basis for crime, because nothing about the psychology of either of the two men changed during the course of their nap. If, however, the definition is based on a fundamental principle, then it will have to recognize the criminal nature of much of government behavior: tax collectors as thieves - business licenses as extortion.

If the definition of crime includes victimless activities, then the analysis must account for the Rip van Winkle phenomenon. If the definition does NOT include victimless activities, then the analysis must consider as criminals those people who enforce victimless crime laws.

Either the distinction between crime and non-crime is one of arbitrary edict, in which case it does not exist in principle, or analysts are looking at the wrong people because they do not examine the government's acts of coercion and ignore the fact that half the prison population are merely lawbreakers, not criminals.

Hate Crimes

Conspiracy

If a field of study is dominated by the premise of collectivism - the premise that the group (rather than the individual) is the basic unit of analysis - then investigators in that field will tend to perceive conspiracy where in fact there exist only individuals behaving in similar manners. There is no conspiracy - it is merely the case that the fundamental beliefs of the people involved are similar, therefore their attitudes and behavior are similar. (Thus you won't find a priest in an abortion clinic, or an atheist in a convent.)

The fact that many individuals with similar interests tend to advocate roughly the same solutions to the same problems should be neither surprising nor puzzling. Each is merely advocating what he sees to be obvious remedies to the problems he perceives. There is no deliberate conspiracy involved in this behavior. It seems like a conspiracy simply because many people acting in accord with the same principle will all behave in a similar manner. But it is a mistake to assume from this similarity of behavior that there exists a collusion. Their cooperation results not from a conspiracy of men, but from a similarity of basic premises - and the power directing it is logic: if, when faced with a practical problem, some men point to a course of action logically necessitated by certain basic premises, those who share the premises will rush to follow that course of action.

But practical problems merely confront man with the need for action; they do not determine what the action will be. It is the predominant philosophy (of a man or of a country) that determines the action. For example: Hunger will impel a man to take some kind of action - but it will not dictate precisely what that action should be. The man's knowledge and ideas will be the governing factors in what he chooses to eat. Another example: Loneliness doesn't tell you who you need, only that someone is missing. It is up to you to define the emptiness of your soul, and make an appropriate choice of companions.

America in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was confronted with the need for social change. The most influential set of ideas in the minds of the men who implemented change was the philosophy of John Locke. America was ideologically ripe for Jefferson. The intellectual groundwork had been prepared by half a century of education in Lockean philosophy.

On the other hand, although the post-WorldWar1 situation in Germany necessitated some kind of major changes in the country's institutions, it was the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that governed the type of changes. Germany was ideologically ripe for Hitler. The intellectual groundwork had been prepared by a century of education in Kantian philosophy.

If one knows the principles behind a given phenomenon, one can predict the direction it will take and its ultimate results. If you know a man's convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course.

For the great majority of men the influence of philosophy is indirect and unrecognized. But that influence is real.

It is important to remember that social institutions do not have goals. Only individual human beings have goals; political and cultural institutions merely provide a framework enabling the participating individuals to pursue their commonly-held goals. Institutions provide the incentives, opportunities and constraints that structure the behavior of goal-seeking individuals, but the institutions do not possess goals of their own.

What is a Slave?

• 1. He is compelled to do whatever his master commands him to do.
• 2. He is forbidden to do anything without having permission, explicit or implicit, from his master.

Profound Ethical Concerns

Here is an example of a rare instance wherein a proponent of such "profound ethical concerns" actually makes a sensible statement of the concerns he imagines:

Gene therapy raises profound ethical concerns. For instance:

• 1. Should therapy be applied simply to improve one's offspring, not only to prevent an inherited disease? [He implies that the elimination of an evil, "an inherited disease," is perhaps acceptable, but the implementation of a positive good, "to improve one's offspring," is of questionable propriety. Why does he object to a good?]
• 2. Who would be empowered to decide?
  [Here he clearly implies that someone is to have the authority ensuing from "empowerment." Why must such an authority exist? Who, after all, is "empowered" to decide which people shall be permitted to wear shoes?]
• 3. Is society willing to risk introducing changes into the gene pool that may ultimately prove detrimental to the species? [In fact, Yes. Not only does the willingness exist, but the perpetuation of such detrimental genes is actually legally compelled by implementation of medical techniques that preserve the existence of severely retarded people.]
• 4. Do we have the right to tamper with human evolution? [Everyone who ever selects his/her spouse on the basis of "He would make a good father" or "She would make a good mother" is "tampering" with human evolution. Why does he object to this selectivity?]

• 1. Is it ethical to deny a liver to someone who has cirrhosis in order to transplant it into a hepatitis victim who would have died but for an artificial liver device? After all, the hepatitis victim may recover spontaneously, whereas the cirrhotic patient almost certainly will not.
• 2. Is it ethical to refuse to put a dying patient on an artificial liver when there is a good chance that she will revive only enough to require a new liver?
  [What this ethicist ignores is the fact that the artificial liver is a piece of property and the resolution of these "difficult ethical issues" can be accomplished by the simple application of property rights.]

Charity - Egalitarianism - Welfarism

Talent DOES NOT survive all obstacles. In fact, in the face of hardships, talent is the first one to perish; the rarest plants are usually the most fragile. Are talented people born with tough skins? Hardly. In fact, the more talent one possesses the more sensitive one is, as a rule. And if there is a more tragic figure than a sensitive, worthwhile person facing life without money - I don't know where it can be found." .... Ayn Rand

Here is an appropriate response to a plea for charity:
Tax bills continue to take more of my time, hard work and earnings each year. Because of this, I have less to contribute to the cause of charity. In light of this increasing burden of taxation, I have decided to make contributions only to those organizations which do not receive any funds from government agencies. Since organizations which do receive such funding already benefit from my involuntary contributions, I believe that I have provided sufficient support to them. If your organization is one which I identify as being free of tax dollar dependency, you can look forward to a contribution from me in the near future. Otherwise, good wishes and enjoy my tax money.

In considering which organizations to support, it would be a good idea if you contribute not on the basis of NEED, but on the basis of PROMISE. Ask which organizations have the greatest potential for achieving goals that you deem to be of value.

In the case of an individual, "If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is a trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help."... Ayn Rand

When Menon, a Hindu, arrived in Delhi in 1947, he discovered that every rupee he owned had been stolen. He approached an elderly, distinguished Sikh, explained his plight and asked for a loan of 15 rupees to cover his train fare. The Sikh gave him the money. When Menon asked for his address so that he could pay it back, the Sikh said, "No. Until the day you die, you will always give that sum to any honest man who asks your help." Almost 30 years later, just six weeks before his death, a beggar came to the Menon family home in Bangalore. Menon sent his daughter for his wallet, took out fifteen rupees, and gave it to the man. He was still repaying his debt.

Demands for "social justice" take two different forms, which can be called egalitarianism and welfarism. The difference in these two conceptions of social justice is the difference between relative and absolute levels of well-being.

Egalitarians are concerned with RELATIVE well-being. According to egalitarianism, the wealth produced by a society must be distributed fairly - it is unjust for some people to earn fifteen, or fifty, or a hundred times as much income as others, and since laissez-faire permits and encourages these disparities in income and wealth, it is therefore unjust. The hallmark of egalitarians is the way they use statistics to describe the distribution of income. In 1989, for example, the top 20 percent of U.S. households on the income scale earned 45 percent of total income, whereas the bottom 20 percent earned only 4 percent of total income. The goal of egalitarianism is to reduce this disparity; greater equality is always regarded as a gain in social justice.

Egalitarians have often said that of two societies they prefer the one in which wealth is more evenly distributed, even if that society's overall standard of living is lower, Thus egalitarians tend to favor government measures, such as progressive taxation, which aim to redistribute wealth across the entire income scale, not merely at the bottom. They also tend to support the nationalization of goods such as education and medicine, taking them off the market entirely and making them available to everyone more or less equally.

The welfarist, on the other hand, has a much more absolutist view of social justice. He demands that people have access to a certain absolute minimum standard of living. As long as this floor or "safety net" exists, it does not matter to the welfarist how much wealth anyone else has, or how great the disparities are between rich and poor. Welfarists are primarily interested in programs that benefit people who are below a certain level of poverty, or who are sick, out of work, or deprived in some other way.

To the welfarist, rights are conceived as rights to possess and enjoy certain goods, regardless of one's actions; they are rights to have the goods provided by others if one cannot provide them oneself. Accordingly, welfare rights impose positive obligations on other people. If I have a right to food, someone has an obligation to grow it. If I cannot pay for it, someone has an obligation to buy it for me... etc. From an ethical standpoint, the essence of welfarism is the premise that the need of one individual is a claim on other individuals. The claim is an unchosen obligation arising from the mere fact of his need.

The ethics of welfarism does not assert an absolute right to pursue the satisfaction of human needs. The "right" asserted is, rather, a conditional one: those who DO succeed in creating wealth may do so only on condition that others are allowed to share that wealth. The goal is not so much to benefit the needy as to bind the able. The implicit assumption is that a creative person's ability and initiative are social assets, which may be exercised only on condition that they are aimed at the service of others.

The egalitarian arrives at the same principle as the welfarist, but by a different logical route. The ethical framework of the egalitarian is defined by reference to justice rather than rights - by the idea that people are to be treated differently only if they differ in some MORALLY (not economically) relevant way. The most common position is a presumption in favor of equal outcomes, and that any departure from equality must be justified by its benefits to other people (as opposed to its benefits to the individual who created the departure). But we can see that this is the same principle that lies at the basis of welfare rights: the principle that the productive individual may enjoy the fruits of his efforts only on condition that those efforts benefit other people as well.

Both of these social schemes rest on the premise that individual ability is a social asset - that the individual must regard himself as a means to the ends of others. And here we come to the crux of the matter. In respecting the rights of other people, I recognize that they are "ends in themselves," and that I may not treat them merely as means to my own satisfaction, in the way that I treat inanimate objects. Why then is it not equally moral for me to regard myself as an "end in myself"? Why should I not refuse, out of respect for my own dignity as a moral being, to regard myself as a means to the ends of others? An honorable person does not offer his needs as a claim on others; he offers an exchange of value as the basis of any relationship. Nor does he accept an unchosen obligation to serve the needs of others. No one who values his own life can accept an unchosen, open-ended responsibility to be his brother's keeper. The principle of trade is the only basis on which humans can deal with each other as independent equals rather than as objects of property.

The only social constraint laissez-faire imposes is the requirement that those who wish the services of others must offer value in return; that no one may use the State to forcibly expropriate what others have produced, nor claim a right to compel others to serve him involuntarily.

"What about someone who is poor, disabled, or otherwise unable to support himself?" This is a valid question to ask, as long as it is not the PRIMARY question asked about a social system. There is no ground in a rational ethics for considering the poor and the sick to be the foundation of society, or for regarding their needs as primary. It is in fact self- defeating to think that the primary goal of a society should be the treatment it gives its least productive members. We must remember that the needs of the poor and the sick CANNOT be met unless someone chooses to produce the means of meeting those needs. Thus the social prerequisites of creativity and productivity MUST be accomodated FIRST if charity is to exist at all.

Coerced Compassion

In any case, if you are going to do good for someone, it really should be THEIR idea of good, not yours. In all cases, it should be the other person who initiates the interaction - by asserting THEIR perception of their own good.

Why was it necessary to have laws to FORCE racists to practice racism? After all, the employers, landowners, businessmen, etc., were overwhelmingly from the dominant group and were free to segregate and discriminate on their own. The answer is that the voluntary structure of economic incentives works against this behavior. As long as producers and consumers are free to act spontaneously in the context of a free market, there are economic costs for discriminating against minorities. There are likewise economic rewards for avoiding discriminatory practices.

Effect of Social Complexity on Statism

Dual Ideologies

People almost automatically assume that the goal of a political system is to advance the welfare of at least a majority of the population. But this is because some such goal is almost universally propounded in surface ideologies, and, being credulous, they allow themselves to be taken in by the surface ideology and never perceive the real motives that actually guide the behavior of the state.

Much of the government's "crime-prevention" behavior can be explained by the idea that the State has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrongdoing, not because it desires to abolish wrongdoing, but because the State desires to monopolize it.

Hallmarks of a Conservative

An excellent example is the following quote from FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton and Rose Friedman (page 61):

"Some restrictions on our freedom are necessary to avoid other, still worse, restrictions. However, we have gone far beyond that point."

But consider that the distinction between an acceptable level of restriction and an unacceptable level is an arbitrary one, because such a distinction is based on a mere variation in quantity rather than a difference in quality. The "point" the Friedmans refer to is an undefinable position. To such people there is no wall between freedom and tyranny, just a fuzzy line in their imagination. Such a mind-set inevitably leads to the acceptance of tyranny, because to the man who holds it, first one thing doesn't seem too wrong, then another thing doesn't seem too wrong. And eventually nothing doesn't seem wrong. He has nowhere to draw a line.

Ben Franklin wrote in 1766 that "if Parliament has the right to take from us one penny in the pound, where is the line drawn that bounds that right, and what shall hinder their calling whenever they please for the other 19 shillings and eleven pence?"

The very best way to distinguish between a conservative and a libertarian is to observe the presence or absence of the uncalibrated quantification fallacy in his ideas. The libertarian is opposed to ALL tyranny, not just "too much" tyranny. The conservative thinks he can make some compromise between freedom and tyranny, but his belief that there is a happy middle somewhere in between is wrong. That is not how compromise works. (See Chapter 3) See reference

A second characteristic by which a conservative can be recognized is his reliance on religion. Almost all conservatives have religious belief as a major foundation stone of all aspects of their philosophy. A noticeable exception are the Randites, who are both conservative and atheist. But they are atheists who have a god named Government.

A third characteristic by which a conservative can be recognized is that politically, he is an "anti-". If you ask him what his political philosophy is, he will usually reply that he is an anti-communist. This is what makes conservatives attractive to philosophically superficial libertarians. Such libertarians (who are themselves opposed to communism) see no deeper than the "anti-communist" label presented by the conservative and conclude that the conservative is their philosophical ally.

The libertarians have the idea that to be allies it is not necessary to have a noble goal in commmon, but only to have a common enemy; that if your ally defines himself only as an "anti-" you can use him without fear that he will corrupt your purpose. Sometimes this can be true: an ally of convenience, who merely shares a common enemy rather than a common goal, can be useful - if you're careful. You have a big advantage: he knows only what he DOESN'T want -you know what you DO want. But the flaw in applying this idea lies in the philosophical superficiality of the libertarians. They do not probe beneath the surface label of the conservative to observe that fundamentally what he is FOR is the imposition of some form of coercive social institution. This mistake on the part of the libertarians is what has resulted in their being co-opted by the conservatives.

If morality consisted of social customs and traditions to which individuals must conform, rather than principles which they grasp and accept by means of reason, then it would be vital for a society to maintain a high degree of uniformity in customs and traditions. This explains why the conservatives are such strong advocates of immigration limits. An influx of people with different customs and traditions poses a severe threat to the conservative notion of morality.

The conservative believes that achievement of values is OK, as long as you don't ENJOY that achievement - too much. (If you enjoy your achievement too much you commit the Christian sin of Pride.) This points out a seeming similarity between Objectivism and conservatism: they both approve the achievement of values. But to equate the two philosophies on the basis of this observation would be grossly superficial. It would be to equate opposites by substituting nonessentials for their essential characteristics. Conservatives always make this equating when they claim to be Objectivists or libertarians. In fact, the Objectivist and conservative theses on the fundamental nature of, and the purpose of, human values differ greatly.

Libertarian Foreign Policy

Thus a proper libertarian policy toward trade relations (a foreign policy, as expressed by a free society) should be: We will trade with individual people or with private companies, but we will not engage in any exchange which is subject to the control of a government.

The Ethical Carnivore

This label of "immoral" smacks of original sin. In fact, it is simply impossible to live in America today without taking advantage of knowledge that was gained by experiments (many of them quite horrifying) performed on animals. Much of chemistry, and almost all of medicine, rest on such research.

For example, here is a note from a researcher on nervous systems:
"Some mammals (such as the common laboratory rat) can have their entire forebrain excised and are still able to walk, run and even maintain their balance to some extent. Although they move with a robotic stride, without making any attempt to avoid obstacles placed in their path, these animals are fully able to operate their leg muscles and to coordinate their steps."

Personally, I would find it completely impossible to conduct such experiments. Yet I study and learn from the results of them, with the explicit knowledge of how those results were obtained. Although this knowledge makes me feel depressed, it does not make me feel guilty. I have eaten the Apple, and I must live with it. Am I a hypocrite?

Jeremy Bentham: What insuperable line prevents humans from extending moral regard to animals? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

Infants and the mentally ill do not possess the attributes of "normal" or "typical" humans, but are not left out of the realm of rights. Why then omit animals? If there is something one would not do to a severely incapacitated child, then neither should one do it to an animal that would suffer as much.

A scientist who did cancer studies on mice recounts that whenever he had doubts about his work, he had only to think about the terminally ill patients in the children's ward.

Veterinarians are particularly sensitive to the ethical problems of dealing with animals - love of animals, after all, was what brought most of them into the field. Vets point out that their job is not to prolong life but to reduce the suffering of as many animals as possible. Human medicine, they aver, is in many ways more heartless: "We're allowed to give suffering animals euthanasia, but physicians are required by law to keep their patients alive no matter what the cost."

Sooner or later man will be going outside the solar system. Sooner or later we will meet types of intelligent life much higher than our own, yet in forms completely alien. And when that time comes, the treatment man receives from his superiors may well depend upon the way he has behaved toward the other creatures of his own world.

Sagesse oblige.

Voluntary vs Coercive - Trade vs Theft

Voluntary:
Acting on one's own initiative. Controlled by or subject to individual volition. Proceeding from the will or from one's own choice or consent. Resulting from one's own free choice; given or done of one's own free will; freely chosen or undertaken. Self-determining. Acting willingly and without constraint or legal obligation or other external compulsion.

Synonyms: deliberate, intentional, spontaneous, willful, willing. Deliberate implies full consciousness of the nature of one's act and its consequences. Intentional stresses an awareness of an end to be achieved. Spontaneous refers to behavior that seems wholly unpremeditated, a natural response and a true reflection of one's feelings. Willful often implies headstrong persistence in a self-determined course of action. Willing suggests acceding to a course proposed by another, without reluctance or even eagerly.

Coercion:
A relationship in which a person is subjected to physical force (or the threat of it) in order to compel him to submit to the choices of another person. The separation of a person from his rightfully achieved values without his voluntary consent. Any course of action calculated to inflict physical injury, regardless of whether or not the action succeeds in its intent.

Fraud:
Obtaining material values without their owner's consent under false pretenses or false promises. Receiving values then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by physical possession) not by right, and without the consent of their owner.

What bothers me about such concepts as "willingness" or "voluntary" is that they can be identified only by examining the contents of a person's mind. But this is not possible; hence my attempts to define them in terms which are objectively verifiable, such as the observable result of a choice and the observable conditions of the context within which that choice occurs.

How can the existence of willingness be determined? A man with a gun to his head (or whose values are indirectly threatened) will most likely ASSERT willingness, but does his assertion really signify the existence of willingness?

To determine whether or not something is voluntary, we should examine two things: the person's behavior (both word and deed) and the context within which that behavior occurs - including the temporal context: the person may be operating under a threat laid on him in the past, and which is not to be manifest until sometime in the future.

The concept "voluntary" cannot apply to any context in which coercion occurs as part of the relevant environment. If a person's behavior is mandated, regardless of her personal choice, then her behavior cannot properly be labeled voluntary. No contract - whether direct, indirect, or implied - is valid if it is coercively imposed, or if it is acquiesced to by default within a context of coercion. Meaningful consent does not exist under these conditions.

The fundamental distinguishing characteristic which separates the two categories is the relevance of choice to the preservation of values.

For example: If I put a gun to your head and demand your money, the situation is such that your choice has no relevance: you lose a value no matter how you choose. Either your money or your life.

If your choice is to give me the money, then you lose the money.

On the other hand, if your choice is NOT to give me the money, then you still lose the money - and your life, too.

No matter how you choose, you lose. That's what makes the situation coercive.

If a person's choice is NOT relevant to the loss or non-loss of a value then the transfer is a theft. If the person's choice IS relevant, then the transfer is a trade.

There is a situation in which choice seems to be relevant, but nonetheless the transfer cannot be termed a trade: when the transfer occurs within a context of deception. This is fraud.

In considering the nature of deception, we must keep in mind that rights impose no obligations on other men except of a prohibitive nature. Rights are not a claim to affirmative action. Each man is obliged only to AVOID the violation of the rights of other men.

Therefore, in my dealings with others:

• I have no obligation to convince them of anything.
• I have no obligation to educate them about anything.
• My only obligation is to refrain from telling them anything I know to be untrue.

• 1. It must be freely entered into by both parties.
• 2. There must be no deception on either side.
• 3. The goods traded must have been justly acquired - that is, acquired in circumstances that accord with the first two conditions.

Keynes described aggregate demand management as "the one kind of compulsion of which the effect is to enlarge liberty."

Edmund Burke wrote, "Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed."

Rousseau, in The Social Contract: "Men must be forced to be free." Page 3 of the 1993 IRS form 1040A starts out with this statement: "Thank you for making this nation's tax system the most effective system of voluntary compliance in the world."

The words "liberty," "freedom," "voluntary," etc. have been appropriated by would-be tyrants who use those words to designate the opposite of their cognitively correct meanings, thus leaving the majority of people with no way to distinguish libertarians from our totalitarian enemies.

The only way I can see to combat this dismal situation is to attack it not on its surface, by making futile attempts to persuade people of the correct definitions of those critical words, but at its roots, by presenting the notion that "Definitions Are Not Arbitrary". Unless your audience realizes this, any argument you engage in will be merely a verbal battle of wits with your adversary - the outcome dependent on who can make the most clever use of eloquent phrases which are nevertheless meaningless in the minds of the audience.

Governments can be contended to be not coercive only if it is assumed that they own all the land under their jurisdiction. In which case, property and property rights are based on force, and only governments own property.

In some cases, it is claimed that my behavior must be voluntary because I do not exercise the alternative of departing from the social context in which the behavior occurs. (America: love it or leave it!) But by what right does my oppressor demand the abandonment of MY homeland as the price I must pay to get HIS coercive government off my back?

I take my motive from Thoreau, who stated: "Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined.... If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list."

Gulliver's Travels: "They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defense against superior cunning; and since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or hath not law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage."

Solon believed that "being seduced into wrong was as bad as being forced, and that between deceit and necessity, flattery and compulsion, there was little difference, since both may equally suspend the exercise of reason."

Self-Defense

There are two very different kinds of force: one is coercive or aggressive force - that which is initiated against other people, and the second is retaliatory or defensive force - that which is used to protect human rights. Libertarians oppose only the first of these.

The Objectivist stand is quite clear:

"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." (From "The Objectivist Ethics," in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS.)

Thus we are not opposed to force when it is used in self-defense. In fact, we recognize the inevitable necessity of such force: it is necessary to use defensive force to preserve civilized life against those who embrace the use of coercive force.

Compare the appalling behavior of government with the plausible alternative of self-defense:

Private handguns are successfully used for self-defense 645K times each year. Ninety-nine percent of the times when a private citizen uses a gun to prevent a rape, robbery or burglary, no one is shot.

Women use guns over 400 times per day to defend themselves against rapists. The Federal Justice Department found that of 32K attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when the woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually committed. In 1966 a highly publicized safety course taught women in Orlando Florida how to use guns. Orlando's rape rate declined 88% during 1967.

In 1982 the city of Kennesaw Georgia passed a law allowing heads of households to keep a weapon in the house. Ten years later, the residential burglary rate was 72% lower than it had been in 1981.

Since the passage of Florida's concealed-carry law in 1987, over 258K people have received permits to carry guns. Of those 258K, only 18 have used their guns to commit a crime. The homicide rate in Florida has fallen 22% during that time. A similar Georgia law, passed in 1976, was followed by a 21% drop in its homicide rate.

A gun kept at home is 216 times more likely to be used for defense against a criminal than to cause the death of an innocent member of the household.

Each year, more criminals are lawfully shot by private citizens than are shot by police. But fewer than 2% of gun owners ever kill someone unlawfully.

Eleven percent of people who are shot by police are innocent of a crime. Two percent of people who are shot by private citizens are innocent of a crime.

In 1985 the National Institute for Justice reported that 57% of the felons polled claimed that they were more worried about meeting an armed citizen than they were about encountering the police.

Society is safer when criminals don't know who's armed.

A society where peaceful citizens are armed is far more likely to be one where Good Samaritans will flourish. But take away people's guns, and the public - disastrously for the victims - will tend to leave the matter to the police. In a recent survey, no less that 81% of the Samaritans polled were owners of guns. If we wish to encourage a society where citizens come to the aid of neighbors in distress, we must not strip them of the actual power to do something effective. Surely it is the height of absurdity to disarm the peaceful public and then, as is quite common, to denounce them for apathy.

Even worse are the insidious consequences of the denial, by law, of individual self-responsibility and self-authority. In a society where the individual is forbidden to act freely on his own authority within his own personal sphere of influence, a sense of apathy MUST be the inevitable result - both a local apathy, regarding his interpersonal relationships, and a more generalized apathy, regarding his community. People who are prevented from solving their own problems will not solve the problems of their cities, either.

As Kropotkin put it in his book MUTUAL AID:

"In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other. Under the theory of the all-protecting State the bystander need not intrude: it is the policeman's business to interfere, or not. All that a respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the starving starve. The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek their own happiness in a disregard of other people's wants is now triumphant all round. It is the religion of the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to be a dangerous Utopian." Government will always be opposed to self-defense. The government insists on a monopoly of force because any force not under the government's control poses a potential threat to the government. Thus self-defense must be outlawed.

Preemptive Force

If an ethical principle requires you to abstain from self-defense, can that principle be valid? Can any philosophy whose practice results in the death of the body or the spirit be moral or correct? As Rand pointed out, the only valid morality is one that is life sustaining rather than life negating.

The significance of Time:
Man cannot live range-of-the-moment. He needs to support his life by the continuous use of reason. He must make correct identifications of reality which can then serve to guide his behavior through time.

"'Man's survival qua man' means the terms, methods, conditions and goals required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his lifespan...." (Rand, in THE OBJECTVIST ETHICS)

Man is obliged, by his nature as a rational being, to take account of the future.

The point in time at which an event occurs is not philosophically fundamental. It is the principled nature of the event that you must consider in order to properly evaluate it. To be philosophically comprehensive you must judge the event on the basis of the underlying principles manifested therein. You must adhere to the principled distinction between coercion and self-defense, whether the defensive force takes place before or after the coercion. You must remember that when you defend yourself you are not fighting for control over your enemy, you are not fighting to compel your enemy's behavior, you are not fighting to separate him from a rightfully- achieved value, you are fighting only to PREVENT your enemy from coercing in the future. You are fighting for the preservation of your rights, your freedom, and your life through time.

In my discussion of Rights (in Chapter 5) I claimed that the foundation of all human behavior - both moral and ethical - lies in the Law of Identity. Proper behavior is that which is consistent with this Law; improper behavior is that which attempts to contradict it. The violation of rights involves a contradiction of the Law of Identity. However, it is consistent to take an action which eliminates such a contradiction, even if that action, when considered out of context, could itself be a negation of the Law of Identity. In ethics, as in the propositional calculus, one negative cancels out another. (I find it personally distasteful, but I can see no way to avoid the conclusion that two wrongs do indeed make a right.) Thus to lie to a man who is trying to rob you, or to kill a man, when defending your own life against his aggression, are ethically legitimate (i.e., logically consistent) actions. See reference

To limit your response would be a form of the pacifist thesis: the self- destructive notion that you must restrict YOUR behavior while your enemy places no restrictions on his. If there is a general principle involved, it must apply to both parties, not merely to one (you). Your enemy enters the relationship operating on the principle of coercion. If you cling to an unrealistic principle of non-aggression that prevents you from defending yourself against his coercion, then your enemy will always have the advantage of you and you will be destroyed. Such behavior cannot be ethically proper.

Threat:
Consider forceful action in response not to previous coercion, but in response to the threat of coercion. If we consider threat to have the same status as coercion itself, then the use of preemptive force is justified.

If someone is pointing a gun at you, it can be argued that this in itself constitutes the initiation of force, because it is certainly an effective form of coercion - even though he has not (yet) pulled the trigger. And therefore if you use force against him you are reacting defensively, not initiating.

When a man threatens you by asserting an intent to coerce, and has available the means to coerce, then you have a right to believe he means to do what he says. If he SAYS it, you HAVE to believe he MEANS it. The alternative is to place yourself in a value-destructive situation.

A good illustration of this problem appears in THE PROBABILITY BROACH by L. Neil Smith. The scene on pages 218 to 220 depicts an application of the principle of non-aggression that precludes preemptive defensive actions on the part of the intended victims.

Rules vs Principles

A RULE, usually a precept adopted or enacted, is (or should be) the specific application of a principle.

A rule is a self-contained prescription about concrete actions or situations, telling you what to do or how to do it. In contrast to principles, rules are specific and limited in scope, prescribing a particular type of action in a particular situation. Because they are so specific, no set of rules could possibly cover every situation and action to which the corresponding principle applies.

Rules are formulated for specific contexts, but because humans are not omniscient they can never fully specify the parameters of that context. As a result, rules almost always have exceptions and they often conflict with one another. Someone trying to follow rules without the benefit of broader principles will have no way to determine when he is faced with an exception, or how to resolve conflicts among rules.

By contrast, a principle gives us comprehensive guidance across a vast number of circumstances that could not be covered by even a very long list of discrete rules, and it tells us how to identify exceptions to the rules. Properly formulated, a principle states the relationship between an action and a goal. It is a statement of cause-and-effect, and thus a principle has no exceptions.

To appreciate the problem, consider the Ten Commandments.

Leaving aside the first few, which deal with the worship of God, the list is not unreasonable, as far as it goes. It's generally a good idea to honor your parents, and not to steal, kill, commit adultery, bear false witness, etc. But these rules hardly cover the whole of life. Honoring your parents is normally a matter of justice as well as affection: giving them what they are due for having given you life and nurture. But the fourth commandment has exceptions: some parents treat their children with such cruelty or neglect that no honor is due them; quite the contrary. But the commandment gives us no guidance on this point. The principle of justice does.

Because it is so abstract, a principle must be applied to a particular situation by the exercise of judgment, taking into account the specific parameters of the situation.

The exercise of judgment cannot be eliminated from human life, and the attempt to do so by erecting a detailed network of rules always has destructive consequences in public as well as private affairs.

Unless rules are anchored in principles, they cannot be rationally justified, and will be experienced by individualists as externally-imposed constraints - limitations on their pursuit of happiness.

To be non-arbitrary, a moral code must be validated by reference to a fundamental fact - an ultimate good to which all other goals of action are the means. For Objectivism, that ultimate good is the individual's own life.

Moral principles identify the requirements for living successfully, given man's basic needs and capacities: Production is a virtue because it provides for our needs. Conceptual knowledge is a value because it makes production possible. Rationality is a virtue because it is the only way to acquire and maintain a conceptual grasp of reality. Honesty and integrity are virtues because they are the only way of keeping one's actions tied to one's grasp of reality.

A critic of rational ethics complained:
"If an ethical principle requires me to abstain from self-defense in certain cases, then those cases constitute a reductio ad absurdum of said principle, and I won't apply it to them. In fact, for any imaginable principle, one can devise scenarios in which it will give absurd results and must be abandoned. Thus it's impossible to devise principles of ethics which will always work."

Principles of natural law (such as Archimedes' principles of bouyancy) cannot be carried to such "reductio ad absurdum." They ALWAYS work. What does this say about so-called ethical "principles" which CAN? It says that they are not principles at all, but merely arbitrary rules.

The refusal, or inability, to distinguish between rules and principles is a manifestation of the concrete-bound mentality that Barbara Branden analyzed in her lectures PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENT THINKING.