A delusional Sandra Mendoza
Stephen Speicher
> I'm sorry about the bickering over who's honest, who a liar, who
> psychologically sound, who's got mental problems, who's smart, who's dumb. I
> didn't start the accusations: Betsy Speicher and Fred Weiss did.
I will stipulate that you are so delusional as to actually
believe what you write. However, for those of us who live in the
real world, the facts do not support your distortions.
You waltzed into here, an Objectivist group (supposedly) devoted
to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and before you were ever engaged
by Betsy or Fred (or any other rational person here), you had
already disparaged and slurred Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and the
people who have embraced the philosophy. Amongst other comments,
there were such gems as:
"Objectivists can always rationalize. They learned it
from the *sorceress of reason.*"
"Is fun-loving Objectivist an oxymoron?"
"I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. But
reading Arnold makes me want to do all three."
"I always feel so sorry for Objectivists. They know
less about having fun than White Anglo Saxon
Protestants."
"I consider Leonard's support of the idea of private
roads absolutely looney tunes."
And this was before your "Giants, those Objectivists, Giants!"
post with your deluded rant about Vivian's abortion and those who
you believe conspired and were culpable. You used Barbara
Branden as a reference for your rants, and when "The Fiz"
reported that she said there were people who invent things in
order to make themselves feel important, and that your
characterization of what had gone on with Vivian was made up out
whole cloth, it was _you_ who claimed that these words could not
be hers, and that they were a lie made up by the person reporting
them.
You even posted a request, asking others how to contact Barbara
Branden. So, now enough time has gone by; tell us what she said.
Did she stand up for your veracity in reporting this account,
including Alan Greenspan, or did she reject you as was said.
You are a real mental case, Sandra. You slur Ayn Rand and
Objectivism, and antagonize the people here from the very
beginning, and project onto others a hostile response which was
borne by yourself. You create this whole 'insider of the early
days' image to fluff yourself up, yet you exhibit an atrocious
ignorance of the philosophy. You constantly name drop and refer
to your 'personal' events, but such will never take the place of
real understanding.
From what I can tell, you are a sad, pathetic, shell of a person
who can only derive self-value by manufacturing reminiscences of
days gone by, lest you collapse in the pool of nothingness which
is the sum total of your life of now. That a creature like
yourself should publicly vomit up your judgments of Ayn Rand and
her philsophy, and of those who actually understand that
philosophy, is itself a nauseating event.
Let me hasten to add that Sandra Mendoza has amply demonstrated
that her own self-image is so bizzare -- so contrary to what she
actually says and projects -- that this will be the last time I
address her directly. From now on, Sandra becomes a third-person
person; a member of that select little group here of her
"philosophical twins" who are also so out of touch with reality
that one does not grant them the status of personal recognition.
If one feels like it, one speaks about them, but not to them.
Stephen
s...@compbio.caltech.edu
Welcome to California. Bring your own batteries.
Printed using 100% recycled electrons.
--------------------------------------------------------
Gaius Helen Mohiam
dbco...@webinbox.com
Dr. Stephen "Strangelove" Speicher <s...@compbio.caltech.edu> wrote:
> SANDRAMEND wrote:
>
>> I'm sorry about the bickering over who's honest, who a liar, who
>> psychologically sound, who's got mental problems, who's smart, who's dumb. I
>> didn't start the accusations: Betsy Speicher and Fred Weiss did.
>
> I will stipulate that you are so delusional as to actually
> believe what you write. However, for those of us who live in the
> real world, the facts do not support your distortions.
Wrong, Dr. Speicher. Sandra has dredged up some nastiness from the
early days of Objectivism, but she didn't try to impeach the
credibility of her ARIan counterparts in this forum by immediately
accusing them of being mentally ill, lying, etc. Your wife started
that business.
> You are a real mental case, Sandra. You slur Ayn Rand and
> Objectivism, and antagonize the people here from the very
> beginning, and project onto others a hostile response which was
> borne by yourself.
But there is nothing wrong with slurs on Ayn Rand and antagonizing
Objectivists - it is Rand's insane philosophy that led you to propose
mass murder. When Objectivists propose killing innocents on a scale
that would make Mao, Hitler, and Stalin blush, do you think you or your
belief system are entitled to any more respect than liberty-loving
egoists normally accord to Communists and Nazis?
> You create this whole 'insider of the early
> days' image to fluff yourself up, yet you exhibit an atrocious
> ignorance of the philosophy. You constantly name drop and refer
> to your 'personal' events, but such will never take the place of
> real understanding.
Or maybe it is the case that you want to protect your precious
abstractions by cutting them off from any test of empirical
experience. Maybe the early history of the proto-ARI "collective"
reveals too much about the true nature of Objectivism, so you find
it necessary to say things about Sandra that are actionable in
California courts.
> From what I can tell, you are a sad, pathetic, shell of a person
> who can only derive self-value by manufacturing reminiscences of
> days gone by, lest you collapse in the pool of nothingness which
> is the sum total of your life of now. That a creature like
> yourself should publicly vomit up your judgments of Ayn Rand and
> her philsophy, and of those who actually understand that
> philosophy, is itself a nauseating event.
I'm just wondering, Dr. Speicher, do you have conclusive evidence
that Sandra is "manufacturing reminiscences of days gone by"? While
I haven't been able to confirm the specifics of most of her charges,
my research so far indicates that some of her stories do check out.
My sources also tell me that she is just as annoying to pompous
a!!holes in person as she is on the net.
> Let me hasten to add that Sandra Mendoza has amply demonstrated
> that her own self-image is so bizzare -- so contrary to what she
> actually says and projects -- that this will be the last time I
> address her directly. From now on, Sandra becomes a third-person
> person; a member of that select little group here of her
> "philosophical twins" who are also so out of touch with reality
> that one does not grant them the status of personal recognition.
> If one feels like it, one speaks about them, but not to them.
Gosh Dr. Speicher, does the fizzy side of your split personality
promise to go away too?
I mean, it does seem just a little bit inconsistent to damn Dr.
Kelley for daring to speak to a Laissez-Faire Books audience, while
you and your friends show up here all the time to address a far more
hostile audience that is already wise to the tricks of Objectivism.
If it is wrong for an ARIan to sanction LFB by his presence, it must
be the depths of perdition to keep slogging it out on h.p.o.
-Coop
__________________________________________
Sent using WebInbox. "Your email gateway."
Check us out at http://www.webinbox.com
Gaius Helen Mohiam
news:200104190144...@webinbox.com...
> After brushing the fallout off his keyboard, aspiring mass murderer
> Dr. Stephen "Strangelove" Speicher <s...@compbio.caltech.edu> wrote:
Just one minor quibble here: there is no "Dr. Speicher". Stephen Spiecher
does not hold an advanced degree. He is just a subordinate staff member at
some obscure little institute at CalTech.
> Or maybe it is the case that you want to protect your precious
> abstractions by cutting them off from any test of empirical
> experience. Maybe the early history of the proto-ARI "collective"
> reveals too much about the true nature of Objectivism, so you find
> it necessary to say things about Sandra that are actionable in
> California courts.
Is that so? Very interesting...
--Helen.
David Friedman
<Pine.LNX.4.10.101041...@photon.compbio.caltech.edu>,
Stephen Speicher <s...@compbio.caltech.edu> wrote:
You are confusing personal attacks ("bickering over who's honest ....
accusations") with attacks on groups or on ideas. The bits you quote are
attacks on Objectivists in general, just as Schwartz's infamous essay is
an attack on libertarians. But they aren't statements that a particular
person is dishonest, or accusations against particular people, any more
than Schwart's essay is an attack on me.
Personal attacks, at the moment, seem to be a specialty of the
Speichers, although I'm sure others have from time to time engaged in
them.
> Printed using 100% recycled electrons.
Actually a cosmic ray zipped through the wire and pulled a brand new
electron positron pair out of nothing. But it's close to 100%.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
David Friedman
dbco...@webinbox.com wrote:
....
> When Objectivists propose killing innocents on a scale
> that would make Mao, Hitler, and Stalin blush,
Unaccustomed as I am to defending Stephen Speicher, I have to call you
on this one. All he proposed was nuking Teheran. Depending on the
weapon, I would expect that to kill between one and ten million people.
Mao, Hitler, and Stalin were each responsible for more deaths than that,
and probably for more deaths of innocents.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Ken Gardner
> Unaccustomed as I am to defending Stephen Speicher, I have to call you
> on this one. All he proposed was nuking Teheran. Depending on the
> weapon, I would expect that to kill between one and ten million people.
> Mao, Hitler, and Stalin were each responsible for more deaths than that,
> and probably for more deaths of innocents.
That's one way to think of it. However, he has more recently proposed
nuking China -- up to 1.3 billion potential kills there. And if instead you
consider the Peikoff proposal (Iran, Afghanistan, and the Sudan), I think
they can begin to give Mao, Hitler, and Stalin a real run for their money.
Not a nice group, and (to put it mildly) not exactly representative of what
I know to be the Objectivist philosophy and sense of life.
Ken
Chris Cathcart
says...
>
><dbco...@webinbox.com> wrote in message
>news:200104190144...@webinbox.com...
>> After brushing the fallout off his keyboard, aspiring mass murderer
>> Dr. Stephen "Strangelove" Speicher <s...@compbio.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>Just one minor quibble here: there is no "Dr. Speicher". Stephen Spiecher
>does not hold an advanced degree. He is just a subordinate staff member at
>some obscure little institute at CalTech.
And you know what, Helen, that is not nearly the kind of stature that the
Speicher creature projects here. What he pompously projects himself as bei
ng is
this big shot doing really cutting-edge work at Cal Tech, a leading institution
of science -- and not just as some subordinate staff member at an abcure little
institute, but as perhaps a major or influential figure in the field. He
projects a stature whereby he can speak in an authoritative fashion that is
supposed to lend credibility to anything and everything he says here, including
all his condescendion and personal attacks against many posters here. What is
so ironic and funny about all this is that one thing Speicher loves to do is to
go to great lengths to dig up anything he can to tear down various other
posters, to expose them for not being anything near what they had allegedly
postured themselves as being.
And now we have here, in plain view, someone flatly stating something about the
stature and actual employment status of Stephen Speicher, in a manner quite
similar to what Speicher was known for, and what's more, this looks like it has
a lot more truth to it than any of the vicious attacks that Speicher has made
against just about anyone else here. The result: Speicher would rather not go
out in the open and exacerbate the matter, so he figures that with his silence,
he's sufficiently dealt with the likes of Helen. Of course, Speicher isn't
fooling anyone. He's getting his come-uppance here in a big way, and I mus
t say
it's quite funny to watch. Since the source is Helen, he and his ilk who've
ignored her (including such luminaries as Phil Oliver, who, in virtue of any
lack of response by Speicher or others of his ilk, will never see this
unflattering portrayal even second-hand), but any rational readers here will
know that the source is irrelevant to the naked exposure of Speicher for wh
at he
really is: a pompous subordinate staff member who has also shown himself to be
in over his head when it comes to so simple and basic a matter as what trut
h is.
In short: the Speichers are this couple who have achieved this high level of
esteem among the ARIan faction -- they might be one of the most respected
couples there, having each made an appearance on the Prodos show and so on --
and time and time again, they are exposed here for the
fruitcakes/flakes/frauds/evaders/clowns they really are. And now we know how
Stephen Speicher likes to project a certain personality trait unto lots and
lots
of his enemies here. It just gets better and better!
Torkel Franzen
> And you know what, Helen, that is not nearly the kind of stature that the
> Speicher creature projects here.
Stephen and Betsy Speicher may well be somewhat obsessively
concerned with what image they project, but there's no reason to
believe that they're not competent at what they do. They're just a bit
insecure - surely touchingly so, more than anything else - and
manifest this by ranting and raving.
Chris Cathcart
>Chris Cathcart <Chris_...@newsranger.com> writes:
>
> > And you know what, Helen, that is not nearly the kind of stature that the
> > Speicher creature projects here.
>
> Stephen and Betsy Speicher may well be somewhat obsessively
>concerned with what image they project, but there's no reason to
>believe that they're not competent at what they do.
Depends on "what they do." If it's what they do in their careers, I can't
comment, as I don't know what they do. Qua subordinate staff member, Speicher
might very well be quite competent at whatever it is that he does. But if
"what
they do" is to attempt to live up to the reputation that they were supposed to
have had, for high-class intellectual discussion with accountability and
integrity, they have done a monumentally shitty job. They have, by their own
behavior over the years here, thoroughly destroyed any pretense they may have
had to being respectable intellectuals or Objectivists. Chris Wolf's
description of them as "pond-scum" might not be too severe.
fred...@papertig.com
>.....
>
>> When Objectivists propose killing innocents on a scale
>> that would make Mao, Hitler, and Stalin blush,
>
>Unaccustomed as I am to defending Stephen Speicher, I have to call you
>on this one. All he proposed was nuking Teheran. Depending on the
>weapon, I would expect that to kill between one and ten million people.
>Mao, Hitler, and Stalin were each responsible for more deaths than that,
>and probably for more deaths of innocents.
Why is the primary here considered to be the killing of "innocents"? We
killed lots of innocents in WWll, certainly lots of children (to put aside for
the moment the arguability of what constitutes "innocence" with regard to
"civilians"). We even killed lots of our own people by mistake. In fact
the very act of going to war assumes that some of your own men will die. It
is
unavoidable in war.
The real question is what constitutes a legitimate response - military or
otherwise - to the initiation of force by a foreign power. There is *no*
comparability to Mao, Hitler, or Stalin. In fact the issue is how to respond
*to* such brutes.
Was the A-bombing of Japan merely less of a "crime" because it killed
fewer people than the Japanese had killed or was it a justified act of
self-defense? And even - would there be a moral issue if we had had to kill
more Japanese than they killed ours in order to stop them? We didn't attack
Pearl Harbor. They did.
We didn't take our embassy personnel hostage. The Iranians did. We weren't
engaged in a policy of state sponsored terrorism. The Iranians were (and
apparently still are). If the specifics of "nuking Tehran" are
arguable,responding appropriately to *their* initiation of force was not - a
response, I might add, they never received in any magnitude (in fact what
they got was the opposite: capitulation and appeasement on our part, just as
the Red
Chinese are now - a further fact, I might additionally add, that doesn't seem
to concern you and some of our other opponents in this debate).
Fred Weiss
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Ken Gardner
> And now we know how Stephen Speicher likes to project a certain
> personality trait unto lots and lots of his enemies here. It just gets
> better and better!
This statement captures the essence of the Fizzbutt about as well as any
statement I have ever seen.
Ken
SANDRAMEND
Helen busted *Dr.* Speicher as a low level employee at an obscure Cal Tech
institute and then Chris said:
CC: << In short: the Speichers are this couple who have achieved this high
level of esteem among the ARIan faction -- they might be one of the most
respected couples there, having each made an appearance on the Prodos show and
so on --
and time and time again, they are exposed here for the
fruitcakes/flakes/frauds/evaders/clowns they really are.>>
Do I know how to choose my enemies or what??
Sandra
Chris Cathcart
>
>Chris Cathcart said:
>
>Helen busted *Dr.* Speicher as a low level employee at an obscure Cal Tech
LOL'ing a bit here. On first glance I thought you had said that Helen had
busted "Dr." Speicher's balls -- something which, come to think of it, she
would
have ample opportunity to do if Speicher ever actually had the balls to com
e out
and confront her, big-shot scientist he is and all.
Sheer cowardice through silence on display by the Speicher here. The man
(inasmuch as you can call it that) is a disgrace.
James E. Prescott
message
news:Pine.LNX.4.10.101041...@photon.compbio.caltech.edu...
> From what I can tell, you are a sad, pathetic, shell of a person
> who can only derive self-value by manufacturing reminiscences of
> days gone by, lest you collapse in the pool of nothingness which
> is the sum total of your life of now. That a creature like
> yourself should publicly vomit up your judgments of Ayn Rand [...]
I'm loath to get involved in this unseemly business, as I am a gentleman.
And yet, as I am a gentleman, I guess I should.
Stephen, I don't know you from Adam, but if your words are to be taken as
sincere -- which I've serious doubts about, given your "Fiz" fiasco -- then
you are behaving like a sad, pathetic fool. (And if you are insincere in
this vitriolic bluster, it's gotta be even worse.)
In any case David Friedman is quite right. Sandra did not initiate the
personal venom, the personal attacks. You and your wife did that -- for
perhaps some other purpose, but -- /ostensibly/ because you took offense at
what she was saying about Objectivism and Objectivists -- which, as David
pointed out, is not the same as a personal attack, much less one of the
vicious, cruel and near-hysterical sort as you've posted here today.
I say ostensibly, though, because, again, I simply do not trust your words.
I refer again to your recent deception, in which you spewed just such
venomous remarks -- perhaps not so extreme -- at even those you claim are
your own friends, deceiving even them for some purpose of your own. Well,
whatever sort of man you are you appear to have as little regard for the
truth as you claim to have for Sandra. Have you forgotten, or never learned,
that a man speaks truthfully out of respect and regard for /himself/, not
for those to whom he speaks?
And whatever sort of man you are, you are giving Objectivism and
Objectivists a very bad name. I disagree with Sandra if she truly thinks
Objectivism is somehow responsible for such reprehensible behavior as yours.
I'm living proof that a man can be both a generous and understanding
gentleman and a fervent life-long Objectivist (30 years, plus; family man,
and joyfully selfish!). And while I disagree with Sandra in general terms I
certainly commend her for speaking openly about herself and expressing her
opinions regarding Ayn Rand and the Objectivist movement. She's made a real
contribution to this newsgroup. And nobody -- certainly no woman -- should
ever have to read such unjustified filth as you have posted here today
without a defender or two speaking up. I'm glad to see she hasn't had to.
And I'm glad to lend my voice to the chorus. Sandra, I'm sure you're a fine,
intelligent, honest and worthwhile person. Pay no mind to those who hate.
Stephen, I hope you someday learn to deal with your anger -- or whatever the
heck it is! -- in a more constructive way.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
dbco...@webinbox.com
<GMo...@Bene-Gesserith.org> wrote:
> Just one minor quibble here: there is no "Dr. Speicher". Stephen Spiecher
> does not hold an advanced degree. He is just a subordinate staff member at
> some obscure little institute at CalTech.
What?!? Stephen Speicher, apostle of the new interpretation of
quantum physics that is going to sweep the world and consultant to the
Defense Nuclear Agency, can't even boast of a Master's degree? What
does h.p.o.'s great genius spend his time doing? Cleaning lenses on
microscopes? Scrubbing culture bottles and sterilizing them in an
autoclave?
This is a horrible waste of intellectual talent - this is the
equivalent of Roark working in a marble quarry. In a just world,
prestigious research institutions would feel privileged just to strew
honorary doctorates before Stephen's path, lest his shoes be soiled by
direct contact with the ground and distract his awesome mind from its
grave responsibility of saving the nation from Commies in tunnels.
How can anyone fail to grant Stephen the respect of calling him "Dr."?
Is it possible that the academic world has become so loathsome and
corrupt that _this_ outrage is allowed to stand?
dbco...@webinbox.com
<kesga...@home.com> wrote:
> And if instead you
> consider the Peikoff proposal (Iran, Afghanistan, and the Sudan), I think
> they can begin to give Mao, Hitler, and Stalin a real run for their money.
Even this doesn't sate Objectivist blood-lust, however. A couple of
Objectivists did seem to warm up to the idea of nuking China,
and I'm sure that a number of other countries, like Iraq, Pakistan,
Syria, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea, would be deserving of the
Speicher treatment according to orthodox Objectivist principles.
Keep in mind Rand's theory that dictator nations have no rights - the
only practical limit on the willingness of Objectivists to drop the
big one on such countries seems to be the ability of the target to hit
back.
Of course, our brave nuclear warriors neglected to discuss the
possibility that countries like Russia and China wouldn't sit by
with folded hands while America was nuking their buddies. Obviously,
Plan Speicher and other Objectivist schemes of this sort would
probably entail grave risks of massive escalation, possibly leading
to all-out war among the principal nuclear powers. Simply summing
the death tolls of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao might be a very
conservative estimate of how many people would die at the hands of
a United States of America led by President Peikoff and Secretary of
Defense Speicher.
> Not a nice group, and (to put it mildly) not exactly representative of what
> I know to be the Objectivist philosophy and sense of life.
All forms of Objectivism equate evasion with evil and thus have a
built-in bias towards demanding ideological purity in others. This
is the malignant core of Rand's thought that turns Objectivist true
believers into sociopaths. Don't confuse the sense of life of
the characters in Rand's fiction with what Objectivism does to
people in reality.
Evasion often does produce evil, but you shouldn't drop the context of
who actually suffers the evil. If the evader is only harming himself
by his evasions, why treat him like a leper who must be shunned or
nuked into oblivion?
Betsy Speicher
> Evasion often does produce evil, but you shouldn't drop the context of
> who actually suffers the evil. If the evader is only harming himself
> by his evasions, why treat him like a leper who must be shunned or
> nuked into oblivion?
And if he is threatening American citizens with terrorist mass murders
(like the Iranians) or nuking Los Angeles (like the Red Chinese), then
what?
Betsy Speicher
You'll know Objectivism is winning when ... you read the CyberNet -- the
most complete and comprehensive e-mail news source about Objectivists,
their activities, and their victories. Request a sample issue at
cybe...@speicher.com or visit http://www.stauffercom.com/cybernet/
dbco...@webinbox.com
<be...@speicher.com> wrote:
> On 19 Apr 2001 dbco...@webinbox.com wrote:
>
>> Evasion often does produce evil, but you shouldn't drop the context of
>> who actually suffers the evil. If the evader is only harming himself
>> by his evasions, why treat him like a leper who must be shunned or
>> nuked into oblivion?
>
> And if he is threatening American citizens with terrorist mass murders
> (like the Iranians) or nuking Los Angeles (like the Red Chinese), then
> what?
Let's unpack those cute little collectivist national labels of yours.
Only a few residents of Teheran, Beijing etc. are responsible for the
existence of these threats. Does that entitle you to ignore the
rights of Iranians and Chinese who have never threatened America?
Only by demonizing _all_ Iranians and _all_ Chinese in defiance of
reality can you possibly have the gall to suggest that they are all
evil enough to be killed. You bloodthirsty Objectivist savages
easily entertain such collectivist prejudices against whole nations
because your Objectivist pseudo-egoism is a complete fraud.
Like the pseudo-egoism of Nietzche, your Randian philosophy of death
has no conception of the selfish value that is to be gained by
respecting the rights of other human beings. All your talk about
liberty, individual rights, and capitalism is just a phony propaganda
show you put on to swindle the rubes.
David Friedman
Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> wrote:
> And if he is threatening American citizens with terrorist mass murders
> (like the Iranians) or nuking Los Angeles (like the Red Chinese), then
> what?
You have a pretty flimsy standard of evidence to base mass killing on.
Iran is a country. It easily has the resources to kill a hundred
Americans; as McVeigh demonstrated, it isn't all that hard.
In fact, no Americans have been killed "by Iran" so far as we know. A
very small number, all military serving in the Middle East, have been
killed in terrorist attacks that some people think Iran might have been
responsible for.
On the other hand, not long ago, the U.S. blew up a pharmaceutical
factory in the Sudan. We know who was responsible, because the President
said we did it. To this day, the U.S. has failed to provide any evidence
that that factory was producing chemical weapons. When the U.S. froze
assets associated with the factory and the owner sued, the U.S unfroze
them--demonstrating that it was unwilling to have its claims tested in
an American court of law.
Now who is the terrorist?
As to "nuking Los Angeles," it is hardly a secret that the U.S. has, for
a very long time, had missiles targeted at Soviet (and almost certainly
Chinese) cities. Apparently your position is that if a single Chinese
general hints that under some circumstances China might nuke an American
city--a hint not even made or confirmed by his government, and rather
implausible given the limited range of Chinese missiles--that counts as
a threat that justifies our killing many million Chinese.
"It wasn't my fault, Mommy. I just hit back. First."
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Betsy Speicher
> <be...@speicher.com> wrote:
> > On 19 Apr 2001 dbco...@webinbox.com wrote:
> >> Evasion often does produce evil, but you shouldn't drop the context of
> >> who actually suffers the evil. If the evader is only harming himself
> >> by his evasions, why treat him like a leper who must be shunned or
> >> nuked into oblivion?
> > And if he is threatening American citizens with terrorist mass murders
> > (like the Iranians) or nuking Los Angeles (like the Red Chinese), then
> > what?
> Let's unpack those cute little collectivist national labels of yours.
> Only a few residents of Teheran, Beijing etc. are responsible for the
> existence of these threats. Does that entitle you to ignore the
> rights of Iranians and Chinese who have never threatened America?
> Only by demonizing _all_ Iranians and _all_ Chinese in defiance of
> reality can you possibly have the gall to suggest that they are all
> evil enough to be killed. You bloodthirsty Objectivist savages easily
> entertain such collectivist prejudices against whole nations because
> your Objectivist pseudo-egoism is a complete fraud.
> Like the pseudo-egoism of Nietzche, your Randian philosophy of death
> has no conception of the selfish value that is to be gained by
> respecting the rights of other human beings. All your talk about
> liberty, individual rights, and capitalism is just a phony propaganda
> show you put on to swindle the rubes.
Or as Cooper might have written 60+ years ago:
"Let's unpack those cute little collectivist national labels of yours.
Only a few residents of Berlin, Tokyo etc. are responsible for the
existence of gas ovens murdering millions of Jews or the attack on Pearl
Harbor. Does that entitle you to ignore the rights of Germans and
Japanese who have never threatened America?
"Only by demonizing _all_ Germans and _all_ Japanese in defiance of
reality can you possibly have the gall to suggest that we ought to bomb
Dresden or drop A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You bloodthirsty
American savages easily entertain such collectivist prejudices against
whole nations because your American pseudo-egoism is a complete fraud.
"Like the pseudo-egoism of Nietzche, your American philosophy of death has
no conception of the selfish value that is to be gained by respecting the
rights of other human beings. All your talk about liberty, individual
rights, and capitalism is just a phony propaganda show Americans put on to
swindle the rubes."
Betsy Speicher
Ken Gardner
>Even this doesn't sate Objectivist blood-lust, however. A couple of
>Objectivists did seem to warm up to the idea of nuking China,
>and I'm sure that a number of other countries, like Iraq, Pakistan,
>Syria, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea, would be deserving of the
>Speicher treatment according to orthodox Objectivist principles.
Well, I object to you calling these people Objectivsts. They aren't. They
can call themselves Objectivists until they are blue in the face, but it
won't change the underlying reality to the contrary. I would go so far as
to call these people the functional equivalent of moles.
>Keep in mind Rand's theory that dictator nations have no rights - the
>only practical limit on the willingness of Objectivists to drop the
>big one on such countries seems to be the ability of the target to hit
>back.
We discussed this issue last year during the nuke Tehran thread. It's not
my fault, or Objectivism's fault, that some people who call themselves
"Objectivists" make this argument. The actual Objectivist principle is that
force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate
force. This means that although a free government would have the right (but
not the obligation) to liberate a totalitarian country, it must do so in a
manner that punishes the guilty while protecting the innocent. Nuclear war,
in which millions of innocent people get killed, just won't do.
>Of course, our brave nuclear warriors neglected to discuss the
>possibility that countries like Russia and China wouldn't sit by
>with folded hands while America was nuking their buddies. Obviously,
>Plan Speicher and other Objectivist schemes of this sort would
>probably entail grave risks of massive escalation, possibly leading
>to all-out war among the principal nuclear powers. Simply summing
>the death tolls of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao might be a very
>conservative estimate of how many people would die at the hands of
>a United States of America led by President Peikoff and Secretary of
>Defense Speicher.
These people are insane. That fact should be obvious to you. It is unfair
to smear Objectivism with the mad rantings of these lunatics.
>> Not a nice group, and (to put it mildly) not exactly representative of
>> what I know to be the Objectivist philosophy and sense of life.
>All forms of Objectivism equate evasion with evil and thus have a
>built-in bias towards demanding ideological purity in others. This
>is the malignant core of Rand's thought that turns Objectivist true
>believers into sociopaths. Don't confuse the sense of life of
>the characters in Rand's fiction with what Objectivism does to
>people in reality.
Well, I'm one of those people, and I assure you that what you are describing
is as exact an opposite from me as you can get. Rand herself was very
clear, in Galt's speech, on the difference between error and evasion. There
is nothing inherent in the philsophy's content or method that should lead to
the type of dogmatism you describe.
[...]
Ken
Fred Weiss
"David Friedman" <dd...@best.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-61C551.1...@news.wwc.com...
> In article <Pine.LNX.4.20.010419...@hypermall.com>,
> Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> wrote:
>
> > And if he is threatening American citizens with terrorist mass murders
> > (like the Iranians) or nuking Los Angeles (like the Red Chinese), then
> > what?
>
> You have a pretty flimsy standard of evidence to base mass killing on.
>
> Iran is a country. It easily has the resources to kill a hundred
> Americans; as McVeigh demonstrated, it isn't all that hard.
And McVeigh is getting the electric chair. Or to put it another way: we
responded to him with deadly force and he lost his right to his life.
So what's your point? Or maybe you think, like Jim Klein, that we should let
him out if he promises never to do it again.
>
> In fact, no Americans have been killed "by Iran" so far as we know. A
> very small number, all military serving in the Middle East, have been
> killed in terrorist attacks that some people think Iran might have been
> responsible for.
Are you now an expert on military intelligence? And apparently you've
forgotten the hostage taking. Or the death threats against Rushdie. Who in
your view is sponsoring the terrorism? Who is sponsoring the Palestinians?
But I want to go back further than that. I want the oils well back that the
Arabs stole from us. How many Arabs do you know who would give them back
willingly?
Why are you apologizing for these thugs?
>
> On the other hand, not long ago, the U.S. blew up a pharmaceutical
> factory in the Sudan. We know who was responsible, because the President
> said we did it. To this day, the U.S. has failed to provide any evidence
> that that factory was producing chemical weapons. When the U.S. froze
> assets associated with the factory and the owner sued, the U.S unfroze
> them--demonstrating that it was unwilling to have its claims tested in
> an American court of law.
>
> Now who is the terrorist?
Are you serious, David? You bring up one cockamamie instance where Clinton
was trying to raise his approval ratings in the polls and you turn that into
a moral equivalency argument.
The US has laid prostrate at the feet of the Arabs for 50 years and
jeopardized the safety of Israel in the process. In addition we watched them
destroy Lebanon which at one time was called the "Switzerland of the
Mideast". We've left an essential commodity to our economy in the hands of
socialist dictators and medieval monarchs. What justifies that - even from
your political perspective.
>
> As to "nuking Los Angeles," it is hardly a secret that the U.S. has, for
> a very long time, had missiles targeted at Soviet (and almost certainly
> Chinese) cities.
Gee, I wonder why. This is like arguing that it's ok for criminals to have
guns because how else can they protect themselves from the police.
> Apparently your position is that if a single Chinese
> general hints that under some circumstances China might nuke an American
> city--a hint not even made or confirmed by his government, and rather
> implausible given the limited range of Chinese missiles--that counts as
> a threat that justifies our killing many million Chinese.
Maybe you've forgotten that China is a dictatorship, hostile to the US and
our interests in Asia. This isn't a matter of a "single general". This is
sword brandishing that has been going on for some time. It is also
apparently the case that China is supplying some of our enemies - such as
Iraq - with advanced military weaponry.
Someone correctly pointed out that when you libertarian/anarchists let loose
you really do sound like leftist America haters.
I'd rather not think of you in that way, David. Leave that to loonies like
Coop.
(For another thing when you go off like this, you are confirming precisely
what Peter Schwartz said about libertarians.)
Fred Weiss
Robert J. Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> And McVeigh is getting the electric chair. Or to put it another way: we
> responded to him with deadly force and he lost his right to his life.
Lethal Injection I believe.
It will be televised. It is like watching paint dry.
>
> Are you now an expert on military intelligence? And apparently you've
> forgotten the hostage taking. Or the death threats against Rushdie. Who in
> your view is sponsoring the terrorism? Who is sponsoring the Palestinians?
The Fatwah on Rushdie is an Iranian thing.
>
>
> But I want to go back further than that. I want the oils well back that the
> Arabs stole from us. How many Arabs do you know who would give them back
> willingly?
If we try to take them back, they will be destroyed. In which case we
will have neither the wells nor the oil. Now we get the oil, but we
pay a pretty penny. Now if you want to have proper revenge on
the Saudis, push for government de-regulation and freeing up of
unnecessary regulations whereby alternative energy sources will
be developed. Then the Sheiks of Araby can take a bath in the
oil.
>
> Maybe you've forgotten that China is a dictatorship, hostile to the US and
> our interests in Asia. This isn't a matter of a "single general". This is
> sword brandishing that has been going on for some time. It is also
> apparently the case that China is supplying some of our enemies - such as
> Iraq - with advanced military weaponry.
To no avail, as the late war has shown.
>
>
> Someone correctly pointed out that when you libertarian/anarchists let loose
> you really do sound like leftist America haters.
Here is a specific question. Under what conditions would you
undertake actions that will get millions of Americans killed.
I can name a few. An attack by a foreign power or the
the credible threat of such an attack.
Or interference with our commerce on the high seas or
international air space.
Short of these, I cannot think of a damned thing worth the
death of millions of countrymen. Can you?
Bob Kolker
David Friedman
Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> "David Friedman" <dd...@best.com> wrote in message
> news:ddfr-61C551.1...@news.wwc.com...
> > In article <Pine.LNX.4.20.010419...@hypermall.com>,
> > Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> wrote:
> >
> > > And if he is threatening American citizens with terrorist mass murders
> > > (like the Iranians) or nuking Los Angeles (like the Red Chinese), then
> > > what?
> >
> > You have a pretty flimsy standard of evidence to base mass killing on.
> >
> > Iran is a country. It easily has the resources to kill a hundred
> > Americans; as McVeigh demonstrated, it isn't all that hard.
>
> And McVeigh is getting the electric chair. Or to put it another way: we
> responded to him with deadly force and he lost his right to his life.
>
> So what's your point?
My point is that Iran's terrorist war on the U.S. looks a lot more like
a paranoid delusion (yours and Stephen's) than a war, considering that
they could easily kill lots of American civilians and obviously aren't
doing so. Yet your friend Stephen and (I presume--the argument was a
long time ago and I no longer remember your precise position) propose to
kill several million people in response to that nonexistent war.
> > In fact, no Americans have been killed "by Iran" so far as we know. A
> > very small number, all military serving in the Middle East, have been
> > killed in terrorist attacks that some people think Iran might have been
> > responsible for.
>
> Are you now an expert on military intelligence? And apparently you've
> forgotten the hostage taking. Or the death threats against Rushdie. Who in
> your view is sponsoring the terrorism? Who is sponsoring the Palestinians?
Rushdie is not an American citizen, last time I looked. The hostage
taking was indeed a violation of the rights of those hostages--but then,
governments, includingn ours, quite often violate the rights of
foreigners when doing so is politically profitable. The fact that some
Iranians violated the rights of some Americans a decade or two back,
with at least the implicit support of their government, doesn't strike
me as much of an argument for killing several million Iranians, most of
whom, so far as we know, have never violated the rights of any American.
> But I want to go back further than that. I want the oils well back that the
> Arabs stole from us. How many Arabs do you know who would give them back
> willingly?
1. Iranians aren't Arabs; it's worth knowing a little about people
before you decide to kill them.
2. The Middle Eastern countries follow the same rules of the game as our
government, including a government's power to seize property within its
borders. I disapprove of those rules, but since our government steals a
lot more from Americans than foreign governments do, the foreign
robberty strikes me as pretty flimsy grounds for arguing for our
government killing their citizens, which is what you are doing.
> Why are you apologizing for these thugs?
What thugs? Most of the Iranians I have met are reasonable people--not
perfect, but well above the moral standards of some of your friends here.
Why are you supporting would be mass murderers?
> > On the other hand, not long ago, the U.S. blew up a pharmaceutical
> > factory in the Sudan. We know who was responsible, because the President
> > said we did it. To this day, the U.S. has failed to provide any evidence
> > that that factory was producing chemical weapons. When the U.S. froze
> > assets associated with the factory and the owner sued, the U.S unfroze
> > them--demonstrating that it was unwilling to have its claims tested in
> > an American court of law.
> >
> > Now who is the terrorist?
>
> Are you serious, David? You bring up one cockamamie instance where Clinton
> was trying to raise his approval ratings in the polls and you turn that into
> a moral equivalency argument.
So U.S. citizens are not responsible for the acts of their rulers--even
an act of open unprovoked aggression--but Iranian citizens are
responsible for the acts of their rulers? That seems to be your position.
Have you noticed, now that Clinton is out of power, any apology from the
U.S. government or offer to pay reasonable damages for blowing up other
people's property? I haven't. Indeed, I gather that you and your friends
include Sudan on the list of potential targets, presumably for their
presumption in providing Clinton something to blow up.
> Maybe you've forgotten that China is a dictatorship, hostile to the US and
> our interests in Asia.
China is a dictatorship. It is not particularly hostile to the U.S. and
our interests in Asia. The source of present conflict is that the
Chinese government, naturally enough, wants to take over Taiwan, and the
Taiwanese, naturally enough, don't want them to. The U.S. is supporting
Taiwan, at least a little, which creates sources of friction with China.
That is a long stretch from your "hostile to the US and our interests in
Asia."
Did you even notice when China and Communist Vietnam were fighting each
other?
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Fred Weiss
"David Friedman" <dd...@best.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-1BECBE.1...@news.wwc.com...
> In article <te0m18i...@corp.supernews.com>,
> Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote
> My point is that Iran's terrorist war on the U.S. looks a lot more like
> a paranoid delusion (yours and Stephen's) than a war, considering that
> they could easily kill lots of American civilians and obviously aren't
> doing so.
Neither did the Soviet Union. But was their threat a "paranoid delusion"?
Not many people walk through Central Park at night anymore, not because
there are that many killings there. All you needed was a few. Last I heard
there still remains massive world-wide security precautions at airports and
gov't facilities. Is it paranoid delusion? Should it stop?
> > > In fact, no Americans have been killed "by Iran" so far as we know. A
> > > very small number, all military serving in the Middle East, have been
> > > killed in terrorist attacks that some people think Iran might have
been
> > > responsible for.
And what if those people are right? And what if they are financing the
Palestinians and that Ibn Laden (sp?) character. And what if they were
behind the blowing up of that American naval ship in Yemen? Would any of
that matter to you?
> Rushdie is not an American citizen, last time I looked.
So we should be indifferent?
>The hostage
> taking was indeed a violation of the rights of those hostages--but then,
> governments, includingn ours, quite often violate the rights of
> foreigners when doing so is politically profitable.
The enemy here being "government" - so there is moral equivalence in your
mind. The Chinese force down one of our spy ships and hold our crew and
that's to be expected because it's a "government". We catch a spy of theirs
passing secrets and we are "just like them". We're just a government. Just
like theirs.
>The fact that some
> Iranians violated the rights of some Americans a decade or two back,
> with at least the implicit support of their government, doesn't strike
> me as much of an argument for killing several million Iranians, most of
> whom, so far as we know, have never violated the rights of any American.
Not many Russians violated the rights of Americans either, nor now do many
Cubans. For that matter during WW11, millions of Germans and Japanese
probably weren't violating the rights of Americans either.
> 2. The Middle Eastern countries follow the same rules of the game as our
> government, including a government's power to seize property within its
> borders. I disapprove of those rules, but since our government steals a
> lot more from Americans than foreign governments do, the foreign
> robberty strikes me as pretty flimsy grounds for arguing for our
> government killing their citizens, which is what you are doing.
This is the same moral equivalency argument. But you are right to this
extent, if we had a gov't with enough backbone to not allow our property to
be confiscated by foreign gov'ts, we'd probably have a gov't that was
stealing less from us, too. But I wonder if that would make any difference
to you, since it would still just be gov'ts doing what gov'ts do.
> > Why are you apologizing for these thugs?
>
> What thugs? Most of the Iranians I have met are reasonable people--not
> perfect, but well above the moral standards of some of your friends here.
Are these American-Iranians? Do they support the current regime in Iran and
its virulent anti-Americanism?
But whatever....the Russians regularly would trot over "reasonable people"
who would be fawned over by the liberal press and the universities.
And in that regard, no, I don't regard them as morally equivalent with my
friends. Being obnoxious on a newsgroup if that's what you are referring to
is not morally equivalent to enslaving people.
> Why are you supporting would be mass murderers?
Why are you supporting the instigators of murder?
> So U.S. citizens are not responsible for the acts of their rulers--even
> an act of open unprovoked aggression--but Iranian citizens are
> responsible for the acts of their rulers? That seems to be your position.
If the US engaged in "unprovoked aggression", then, yes, we should take
responsibility for it. If you recall, there were massive protests in the US
over our involvement in Vietnam (which a lot of people regarded as
"unprovoked aggression", mistakenly in my view, but that's another matter).
What are you saying, that Iranians are not responsible for their leadership
because it's a dictatorship? But then where is the moral equivalency you've
been touting?
> China is a dictatorship. It is not particularly hostile to the U.S. and
> our interests in Asia. The source of present conflict is that the
> Chinese government, naturally enough, wants to take over Taiwan,
Naturally enough??? Coming from you in particular I find that absurd.
As I understand it, the Taiwanese are predominantly *refugees* from Red
China!!! (As btw, were most of the residents of Hong Kong which we watched
get swallowed up by Red China without a peep).
> Did you even notice when China and Communist Vietnam were fighting each
> other?
So? Rival gangs are always fighting each other. There was tremendous
friction between the Soviets and Red China also.
You know as well as I do that the longest period of relative peace in the
modern world was during the ascendancy of capitalism and (classical)
liberalism from about the end of the Napoleanic Wars until WW1. And here
you are bizarrely apologizing for theocratic and communist dictatorships.
Fred Weiss
Phil
> These people are insane. That fact should be obvious to you. It is unfair
> to smear Objectivism with the mad rantings of these lunatics.
Perhaps Gardner could explain how Ayn Rand was a lunatic
who was not an Objectivist, since she herself made it clear that war
against e.g. the communists, including nuclear bombing, was
potentially in the interests of America (i.e. self defense against
tyrants who hate America.) And speaking of evasion, this point
was made to Gardner multiple times in the past, which he continues
to evade along with his other evasions, such as the absurdity that
a fertilized human egg has rights.
Phil Oliver
Ken Gardner
>Perhaps Gardner could explain how Ayn Rand was a lunatic
>who was not an Objectivist, since she herself made it clear that war
>against e.g. the communists, including nuclear bombing, was
>potentially in the interests of America (i.e. self defense against
>tyrants who hate America.)
Now _that's_ a loaded question if I ever saw one. Tell me where in the
published literature she said any such thing -- I'm talking about the
"including nuclear bombing" part, not the rest of this statement. She did
say, in effect, that a free country has the right to liberate a totalitarian
country -- but she mentioned nothing about using nuclear weapons as a means
to this end.
[...]
Ken
James E. Prescott
Objectivism, in its politics, is individualist of course. And the proper
acts of government are defined in this philosophy in terms of the principle
of individual rights. The idea behind this concept -- stating what it
/means/ to uphold the rights of the individual -- is the well-known
prescription, "No man may initiate the use of force; force may be used only
in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use."
There's naturally a lot of debate about what this means for national
defense. I.e., when is it appropriate by Objectivist standards for a
government such as ours (imagining, let's say, that ours were a perfect
Objectivist state) to use deadly force against the civilian population of an
aggressor nation (a state that is sponsering terrorism, let's say, or one
that is threatening to invade and destroy us).
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) used against such a nation may be an
effective defense but it would indisputably kill innocent people. Of course
one might quibble over just what percentage of the civilian population is
truly innocent. But individualism isn't a numbers game. Naturally, not all
Iranians (much less all the diplomats and all the other foreign visitors who
might reside there) can possibly be guilty of the crimes of the Iranian
state. Many are actually victims of that state. Many are held in prisons and
cannot escape. Many are small children or newborn babies. And so, no matter
how you look at it, /many/ of those who would die in such a WMD attack
(would it matter if it were only one?) cannot possibly, in any sense of the
word, have initiated any kind of force against any of us.
An answer Objectivists typically offer in defense of such attacks is that
it's really the government of the aggressor nation that is responsible for
those deaths, not ours. That may be. I'd agree. But it doesn't quite get to
the heart of the issue. I think both sides in this protracted dispute are
missing the true context and the true meaning of Objectivism's precscription
against the use of force.
Consider the above-quoted injunction and compare it to the Biblical formula,
"Thou shalt not kill." An important difference you ought quickly note is
that the latter happens to have a particular source, the voice of Almighty
God, telling men and women what they must and must not do. Well, the
Objectivist formula has no such commanding source, no Voice of Authority,
obviously. So from where does it come? Why is it right for us to pay any
mind to it?
The problem is, both sides, I think, are guilty of treating the above quoted
statement by Ayn Rand as if it were a context-less absolute, as if it were
handed down to us on stone tablets, rather than treating it for what it
truly is. And what it is, is, a plan of action /offered/ by Ayn Rand -- or,
in her novel, by John Galt, or in real life by anyone who seeks to establish
a civilized society -- that is intended to serve, when understood and
accepted by those hearing it, as the founding principle of that society.
And then it is accepted by the members entering into that society, or, if
rejected, the society doesn't form. We are thus political equals among
ourselves, agreeing to certain necessary rules on how we'll behave regarding
each other; we not are a people listening to and obeying some Divine
pronouncements; and that's what's so important, if not completely unique,
about Objectivism's idea of rights.
Now certainly, "nobody will initiate the use of force" may be seen as the
/right/ plan to offer, and it may be the right plan for us to accept. This,
if true (and I believe it is true of course!), is because it's the one
founding principle that is appropraite to a society of rational beings.
However, this clearly doesn't mean that this principle exists off somehwere
by itself, outside the context of that offer and outside the context of our
accepting that offer as the words we'll live by, i.e., outside the context
of a civilized society of laws.
Well, sometimes the context of a society of civilized law simply breaks
down, particularly in the world of international relations. Our government's
action still needs to be under the constriant of law, even in such a case.
There is and must be such a thing as international law. However, within
international law, you need the concept of an Act of War to cover the cases
where the breakdown of law cannot be remedied except by one government
overcoming, suppressing, overthrowing or compelling another government
through the use of physical force.
And sadly then, the rights of innocents do not trump that need. Indeed, for
the reason stated (just above; about from /where/ the idea behind rights
originates) there simply aren't any rights in war or in revolution or in
anarchy. There is only the imperative to end that tragic state of
lawlessness as soon as possible (by the least harmful means) and so to
restore civilized societies, ones that have and uphold the rights principle.
It is not that we should disregard the plight of innocent civilians, mind
you. I am certainly not advocating the use of WMD to resolve all our
problems. I /oppose/ using WMD to fight terrorism, of course!
But I am saying that when such an attack is /necessary/ to restore the rule
of law -- or is the least costly in terms of lives and property -- and when
it's reasonably certain that it will have precisely that effect (as with the
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII), then it's an
appropriate action, and the rights of the innocent persons who lose their
lives do not figure into the issue.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Ken Gardner
Regarding the NOI principle, and specifically its requirement that force may
be used only in retaliation and only againstthose who initiate force....
[...]
> However, this clearly doesn't mean that this principle exists off
> somehwere by itself, outside the context of that offer and outside the
> context of our accepting that offer as the words we'll live by, i.e.,
> outside the context of a civilized society of laws.
This is awfully close to what Stephen Speicher was arguing last year. The
notion is that the NOI principle is merely "contextual," and then you define
the "context" in such a way that it doesn't apply when you don't want it to
apply. The only difference between you and him is that you would define the
context to exclude the use of weapons of mass destruction, whereas he
wouldn't.
However, the fallacy in this argument is that there is no relevant
"context" within which the NOI principle doesn't apply. The NOI principle
is an _objective_ requirement of a rational human society. As long as human
beings seek to live together on the same planet as rational beings, the NOI
principle is absolutely essential. There is no relevant context within
which human beings can rationally co-exist while deliberately initiating
deadly force against innocent people.
> Well, sometimes the context of a society of civilized law simply breaks
> down, particularly in the world of international relations. Our
> government's action still needs to be under the constriant of law, even
> in such a case. There is and must be such a thing as international law.
> However, within international law, you need the concept of an Act of
> War to cover the cases where the breakdown of law cannot be remedied
> except by one government overcoming, suppressing, overthrowing or
> compelling another government through the use of physical force.
This is very vague. What specifically do you mean by "breakdowns in
international law?"
> And sadly then, the rights of innocents do not trump that need. Indeed,
> for the reason stated (just above; about from /where/ the idea behind
> rights originates) there simply aren't any rights in war or in
> revolution or in anarchy. There is only the imperative to end that
> tragic state of lawlessness as soon as possible (by the least harmful
> means) and so to restore civilized societies, ones that have and uphold
> the rights principle.
There are indeed cases in which one cannot reasonably avoid collateral
damage to innocents. However, I don't think you can therefore conclude that
innocents have no rights (and, therefore, there is no corresponding
obligation to limit collateral damage against them to the fullest extent
reasonably possible) merely because we are at war with their government.
Rights exist by virtue of their existence as human beings and, as such, can
be neither conferred nor taken away by the actions of any government. Even
in a state of revolution or anarchy, every human being has the same
inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
> It is not that we should disregard the plight of innocent civilians,
> mind you. I am certainly not advocating the use of WMD to resolve all
> our problems. I /oppose/ using WMD to fight terrorism, of course!
But do these innocent civilians have _rights_? That is the big question.
If you and Speicher answer this question the same way, the fact that you
would be more sympathetic to the plight of the "rightless" innocents is only
very small consolation.
> But I am saying that when such an attack is /necessary/ to restore the
> rule of law -- or is the least costly in terms of lives and property --
> and when it's reasonably certain that it will have precisely that
> effect (as with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of
> WWII), then it's an appropriate action, and the rights of the innocent
> persons who lose their lives do not figure into the issue.
Sure. This is a good if complicated example, given that President Truman
essentially had to choose between ending the war by destroying a city or two
and risking millions of American causalties (and God knows how many Japanese
casualties, military and civilian alike) in a full scale invasion of Japan.
Or at least the historians, or many of them, are telling us that he was
faced with that choice and I have no reason seriously to doubt it. However,
the justification for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not that the
Japanese civilians had no rights or had somehow lost their rights, but that
Truman had to choose between our innocents and the enemy's innocents, a
choice forced upon us by the Japanese government's irrational refusal to
surrender.
Ken
James E. Prescott
Ken Gardner <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9089EAD2E3DE3...@24.4.0.74...
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@news.kornet.net> wrote:
>
> > [...T]his clearly doesn't mean that this [right] principle exists
> > off somewhere by itself, outside the context of that offer and
> > outside the context of our accepting that offer as the words
> > we'll live by, i.e., outside the context of a civilized society of
> > laws.
>
> [...] The fallacy in this argument is that there [...] is no relevant
> context within which human beings can rationally co-exist while
> deliberately initiating deadly force against innocent people.
It seems you grant precisely such a context yourself, Ken, a bit later in
this post, unless you mean to suggest either that the bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki were "not deliberate," or that those bombings of innocent
people somehow rendered us "incapable of rationally co-existing," neither of
which, I think, is what you mean.
The bombing actually /facilitated/ our co-existence with the people of Japan
(we became close allies quite quickly following the war), and of course the
bombings were deliberate. But we'll come to that.
> [...] What specifically do you mean by "breakdowns in
> international law?"
Well, I said breakdowns in law, to include international.
And what I mean is, disputes among men and disputes among nations ought to
be resolved peaceably, by appeal to the law, and that's the normal state of
affairs. Often, however, particularly in international relations, this
doesn't work, and physical force is required, sometimes even violent force.
Well, in domestic affairs the force that prevails is typically the
overwhelming force applied by the legitimate government, and so that's still
not what one would call a "breakdown of law." Sometimes, though, the
government might be rendered completely helpless, say by rampaging mobs, or
by organized rebellion, and then that certainly /is/ what one would call a
breakdown of law. And this sort of thing is simply more common in
international affairs since there is no world government possessing any
overwhelming power, and so some prolonged fights, wars, break out from time
to time. That, too, is a breakdown of law, and on a massive scale.
> > [...]
> There are indeed cases in which one cannot reasonably avoid
> collateral damage to innocents. However, I don't think you can
> therefore conclude that innocents have no rights (and, therefore,
> there is no corresponding obligation to limit collateral damage
> against them to the fullest extent reasonably possible) merely
> because we are at war with their government.
Well now, Ken, did I really say they have no rights, or that there is no
obligation to limit damage? The former is not quite what I said (I'll try to
stress what I actually said and meant, below), and the latter is quite the
opposite of what I said. (Recall, I said that the use of WMD could be
justified only when it is necessary as being the method /least/ destructive
of lives and property.)
> Rights exist by virtue of their existence as human beings
> and, as such, can be neither conferred nor taken away
> by the actions of any government.
And there's the rub. You see, that's an assertion with which I strongly
disagree, and about which, I should hasten to point out, you, Ken, provide
absolutely no basis either in fact or in argument. Recall now my comparison
to the assertion in the Bible, "Thou shalt not kill." If you agree with me
that the principle you are asserting as a truth is /not/ of this
handed-down-by-God sort, then you really need to show some basis for why you
think it exists.
For my part, I have tried to present precisely such a basis.
I have said that rights arise as the consequence of a human moral purpose,
specifically, as the code men and women adopt when they agree to live
together peaceably as political equals, in a civilized society, mutually
respecting the rule of law. If what I say is true, then rights are
contingent upon that mutual moral commitment. Your own personal rights don't
exist "just because you are a human being" (if you want to insist they do,
please explain how!). Rather, they exist because you are a human being who
has committed himself to accept and to abide by the principle of the
non-initiation of force in return for a similar pledge and compliance from
one's fellow human beings, thereby creating a civilized society.
> Even in a state of revolution or anarchy, every
> human being has the same inalienable right to life,
> liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But, as I asked above, why? How? Where does this supposed "right" come from?
Is it magic? I'm not saying, by the way, that the citizens of an enemy
nation have no rights whatsoever. They may have the same rights as you and I
and for the same reasons, but this to me means only that whatever rights
they do possess are the products of their commitment to the principle that
establishes the rule of law. If the rule of law has broken down to the point
where it is only a question of kill or be killed, well then, that leads
precisely to following problem, which you yourself describe so well...
> [...] President Truman essentially had to choose between
> ending the war by destroying a city or two and risking
> millions of American casualties (and God knows how many
> Japanese casualties, military and civilian alike) in a full
> scale invasion of Japan. Or at least the historians, or
> many of them, are telling us that he was faced with that
> choice and I have no reason seriously to doubt it. However,
> the justification for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was
> not that the Japanese civilians had no rights or had somehow
> lost their rights, but that Truman had to choose between our
> innocents and the enemy's innocents, a choice forced upon
> us by the Japanese government's irrational refusal to
> surrender.
But, don't you see, you can't have it both ways? You can't assert both that
President Truman, and America, had the clear moral right to kill these
thousands of innocent men, women, children and infants, owing to the
unfortunate necessity of doing so, and at the exact same time claim that as
innocent human beings they had the "right not to be killed." We did have a
choice, remember. Rather than kill innocent human beings we could have
easily allowed the Japanese to kill innocent human beings. We could have
surrendered, or just stopped fighting, and left the Japanese alone to
continue their cruel oppression of Asia. That would have been stupid of
course, and grossly immoral, and incalculably tragic for all of humankind,
but, hey, at least we'd not have violated anybody's rights!
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Fred Weiss
"James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
news:012901c0cacd$10b0c2e0$44b2fea9@prescott...
>
> Ken Gardner <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns9089EAD2E3DE3...@24.4.0.74...
> > Rights exist by virtue of their existence as human beings
> > and, as such, can be neither conferred nor taken away
> > by the actions of any government.
>
> And there's the rub. You see, that's an assertion with which I strongly
> disagree, and about which, I should hasten to point out, you, Ken, provide
> absolutely no basis either in fact or in argument. Recall now my
comparison
> to the assertion in the Bible, "Thou shalt not kill." If you agree with me
> that the principle you are asserting as a truth is /not/ of this
> handed-down-by-God sort, then you really need to show some basis for why
you
> think it exists.
Curiously, very curiously, according to Ken the basis seems to be "Ayn Rand
said it". And he he seems to be approaching it precisely as you've said - as
a contextless absolute, almost as if it were a commandment issued by god.
In the previous debate on this matter last year he took the trouble to dig
up an - out of context - quote of AR's where she seems to imply just that,
i.e.that it is an absolute, almost axiomatic, with no exceptions whatever.
But it is clear - and it was obviously AR's position, taking the totality of
her comments on this matter (not lifting sentences our of context) - that if
someone uses or threatens to use deadly force against you that they have
*forfeited their rights*,i.e. you can kill them. The same principle applies
to nations and since there is no way to defend yourself in war without
killing "innocents" it is equally obvious that their rights are forfeit as
well until and unless the threat against you has ceased.
The issue of WMD, nuclear or otherwise, is a completely separate issue.
But I will mention one thing pertaining to that. We probably killed more
Germans and caused more damage in the massive conventional bombing against
their cities than we did Japanese with the A-bomb. We also lost thousand of
our planes and pilots in the process. We lost zero planes and pilots in
A-bombing Japan and we forced their unconditional surrender in a matter of
days instead of the protracted months and massive lose of life that would
have resulted with a conventional assault on Japan.
Ask yourself this question: if we had the A-bomb in 1941, would you have
used it against Germany - even at the cost of several million, even 10's of
millions, of German lives - to stop WW11? (In actuality, as with Japan,
nothing of that magnitude probably would have been required).
Fred Weiss
Tom Robertson
<snip>
>The US has laid prostrate at the feet of the Arabs for 50 years and
>jeopardized the safety of Israel in the process.
Did you reverse the two on purpose or inadvertently?
<snip>
Robert J. Kolker
Tom Robertson wrote:
When the Ayrabs sneeze we catch pneumonia at the gasoline
pumps. What does Israel control in the U.S.A. Nada.
Bob Kolker
Ken Gardner
>> [...] The fallacy in this argument is that there [...] is no relevant
>> context within which human beings can rationally co-exist while
>> deliberately initiating deadly force against innocent people.
>It seems you grant precisely such a context yourself, Ken, a bit later
>in this post, unless you mean to suggest either that the bombings of
>Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "not deliberate," or that those bombings of
>innocent people somehow rendered us "incapable of rationally
>co-existing," neither of which, I think, is what you mean.
But I was very careful to say that the innocent civilians in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki still had rights, and therefore there was a corresponding duty on
us to minimize civilian casaulties to the fullest extent possible. I then
went on to say that under the extraordinary circumstances then facing
President Truman, I could conclude that he did just that in deciding on the
nuclear attacks in lieu of what was sure to be an extremely bloody invasion
of Japan.
What matters here is what reason you use to base your decision to use
nuclear weapons. If the reason is because the civilians have no rights,
that's one thing. If the reason is because it is actually the best way to
minimize innocent casualties (e.g. the situation in Japan in WWII), that's
another thing entirely. To use an analogy to justice, it's the difference
between refusing to rob your neighbor because you are just and respect his
rights and declining to rob your neigbor only because you fear punishment
from the law (or from your neighbor).
[...]
>> There are indeed cases in which one cannot reasonably avoid
>> collateral damage to innocents. However, I don't think you can
>> therefore conclude that innocents have no rights (and, therefore,
>> there is no corresponding obligation to limit collateral damage
>> against them to the fullest extent reasonably possible) merely
>> because we are at war with their government.
>Well now, Ken, did I really say they have no rights, or that there is no
>obligation to limit damage?
Not in so many words, and perhaps not in intended implication. However, IMO
you did leave the door open to this interpretation, which is why I responded
the way I did.
[...]
>> Rights exist by virtue of their existence as human beings
>> and, as such, can be neither conferred nor taken away
>> by the actions of any government.
>And there's the rub. You see, that's an assertion with which I strongly
>disagree, and about which, I should hasten to point out, you, Ken,
>provide absolutely no basis either in fact or in argument.
I wasn't attempting to offer a validation of rights in my previous post.
However, my validation is identical to the one Rand gives in Galt's speech
and in her articles on the subject in VOS. The whole concept of rights
arises because we need freedom of action -- specifically freedom from
interference from others by means of force or fraud -- to live and to pursue
happiness. The concept of rights is the means by which we recognize and
implement this need. The need for freedom of action, and the concept of
rights which arises from these need, are metaphysical (or natural, if you
will) and, as such, cannot be altered or changed by any government any more
than it can alter the law of gravity or the requirement that life requires
food.
[...]
>I have said that rights arise as the consequence of a human moral
>purpose, specifically, as the code men and women adopt when they agree
>to live together peaceably as political equals, in a civilized society,
>mutually respecting the rule of law. If what I say is true, then rights
>are contingent upon that mutual moral commitment. Your own personal
>rights don't exist "just because you are a human being" (if you want to
>insist they do, please explain how!). Rather, they exist because you are
>a human being who has committed himself to accept and to abide by the
>principle of the non-initiation of force in return for a similar pledge
>and compliance from one's fellow human beings, thereby creating a
>civilized society.
I disagree. Rights in politics are like values in ethics. Their existence
and identity are metaphysical in the sense that they are objective
requirements of a rational human existence (values in the case of individual
human beings, rights in the case of human society). Our only choice in the
matter is whether to _accept_ them and live accordingly. As Rand through
Galt said in AS, we are free, of course, not to accept the principle of
individual rights, but not free to escape the consequences. Furthermore,
your view, IMO, leads to subjectivism, i.e. the view that we should
recognize and implement rights only so long as some individual (or some
government) chooses to make the "mutual moral commitment" you mention above.
My rights are not subject to the whim of some other individual. Neither are
anyone else's. That's the difference between an objective theory of rights
and a subjective theory of rights.
>But, don't you see, you can't have it both ways? You can't assert both
>that President Truman, and America, had the clear moral right to kill
>these thousands of innocent men, women, children and infants, owing to
>the unfortunate necessity of doing so, and at the exact same time claim
>that as innocent human beings they had the "right not to be killed." We
>did have a choice, remember.
In fact, the moral responsibility for those deaths rested squarely with the
Japanese government, who put President Truman to the Hobson's choice of the
death of close to a million Japanese civilians or what was virtually certain
to be the death of millions of American and Japanese (both military and
civilian). Under these extraordinary circumstances, Truman probably made
the right choice. By putting us in this position, the Japanese government
is the actual rights violator in this situation.
>Rather than kill innocent human beings we
>could have easily allowed the Japanese to kill innocent human beings. We
>could have surrendered, or just stopped fighting, and left the Japanese
>alone to continue their cruel oppression of Asia. That would have been
>stupid of course, and grossly immoral, and incalculably tragic for all
>of humankind, but, hey, at least we'd not have violated anybody's
>rights!
No, once Japan started the war, we had to finish it with extreme prejudice.
And we did.
Ken
Robert J. Kolker
Ken Gardner wrote:
>
> But I was very careful to say that the innocent civilians in Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki still had rights, and therefore there was a corresponding duty on
> us to minimize civilian casaulties to the fullest extent possible
Not true. In a war situation, necessity rules. The civillians and their
property are hors de combat. Tough shit. They should have revolted
when they had the chance. The minute the Other Side finds out you
are solicitous of civillians they will put baby nurseries on every
factory roof. If they do, you know what is done? The bombs are
dropped anyway.
In a war, the lives of enemy civillians don't matter a damn.
Bob Kolker
James E. Prescott
> [...I]t was obviously AR's position, taking the totality of
> her comments on this matter (not lifting sentences our
> of context) - that if someone uses or threatens to use
> deadly force against you that they have *forfeited their
> rights*,i.e. you can kill them. The same principle applies
> to nations and since there is no way to defend yourself
> in war without killing "innocents" it is equally obvious that
> their rights are forfeit as well until and unless the threat
> against you has ceased.
A man forfeits his own rights when he violates rights. Does he forfeit, by
/his/ actions, the rights of /others/? Think carefully about this before you
answer. If the answer is no, then how is it that the rights of innocent
others are forfeited when one nation wages war upon another? Do states and
collectives and masses of people have prerogatives -- to just rule rights
out of existence -- over and beyond those of individuals?
I'm not saying I don't agree with you. I'm saying I don't see the two as the
same principle. I don't see it as "equally obvious" that a threat to you
forfeits the rights of those /not/ responsible for the threat at the same
time that it forfeits the rights of those actually posing the threat.
And explain to me again, if you can, how it is that we can morally
extinguish the lives of perhaps even millions of perfectly innocent men,
women and children (people guilty of nothing whatsoever, and who only happen
to be in the way as we seek to end the war), but we can't tax to finance the
war, and we can't conscript young men into the Army, even to do some
perfectly safe tasks while volunteers do the fighting.
That makes no sense! If the outcome of the war depended on the government's
ability to draft John Galt into military service for 6 months Objectivists
would likely say (please, please, correct me if I'm wrong!) that we're
better to lose the war because forcing someone to serve means we're not a
society worth saving. Then they'll turn right around and say that if the
outcome of the war depends on vaporizing John Galt and his whole family and
all their friends, that's a perfectly fine thing to do!
In short, I think the notion of rights held to by most Objectivists -- on
both sides of this argument! -- just isn't well worked out at all. I'll go a
bit more into just how it needs to be fixed in my response to Ken.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
James E. Prescott
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote:
> >It seems you grant precisely such a context yourself, Ken [...]
> But I was very careful to say that the innocent civilians in
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki still had rights, and therefore there
> was a corresponding duty on us to minimize civilian casualties
> to the fullest extent possible. [...]
If a person has a right to live, I'd say the "corresponding moral duty" is
simply to allow him to live, to not kill him. Wouldn't you say that? Of
course I agree with minimizing civilian casualties in general, but in some
cases that can mean locally maximizing those casualties. The sudden shock to
Japan of the loss of two entire cities and their whole civilian
populations -- innocent lives extinguished in a blinding instant; other
thousands of civilians left sick and dying; thousands more homeless and
starving -- is what brought the Emperor out to end the war, sparing both
Japan and America the million-plus casualties that would have followed
otherwise.
Well, if the dead had a right to live, how was that right respected by
President Truman? Was it that he did his best to spare lives? I suppose he
did. But what difference that, to those who actually died? Dead is dead. If
a hundred million lives are spared by executing a single individual man, is
it not the case that that single man's right to life has still been
violated? I know you say, later, that the Japanese government was the
violator (agreeing now with the other Objectivist camp in the debate!!), but
think about that: A) the Japanese government didn't drop the bomb; and B)
just suppose there'd been no Japanese government at all, only, say, a
/natural phenomenon/, a natural disaster sort of thing (Godzilla arising
from Tokyo bay!), the /moral/ argument would be same. In other words, the
bombing was justified /solely/ because we /needed/ to do it in order to save
lives! This has nothing to do with whether the Japanese government is evil
or good, or even exists at all.
> [...]
> I wasn't attempting to offer a validation of rights in my previous
> post. However, my validation is identical to the one Rand gives
> in Galt's speech and in her articles on the subject in VOS.
I think in Galt's Speech and in her articles Ayn Rand's derivation was
incomplete and inadequate. Notice carefully how, in the Speech, she switched
from what's right to do, to what one has a right to do. She mixed what's
"morally correct" with what's "politically sanctioned." I'll come back to
this in a moment, as you do the same switch yourself.
> The whole concept of rights arises because we need freedom
> of action -- specifically freedom from interference from others
> by means of force or fraud -- to live and to pursue happiness.
Yes, we do need these things. But a need by one doesn't impose an obligation
on another. Animals need food to live. It doesn't follow logically from this
that they've any "right" to food. Heck, men and women also need food. It
doesn't follow that they've any right to food, either.
Men and women need freedom of action. It simply doesn't follow they've any
/right/ to freedom of action. At least, not /from/ the "need-for-it." That
would be illogical.
> The concept of rights is the means by which we recognize
> and implement this need.
Well, you recognize needs; you implement solutions. Needs you are born with.
Solutions you create.
So I agree with you! We recognize the need for freedom of reason-guided
action, and then we implement the idea of individual rights as the way to
satisfy that need. This is perfectly fine, and perfectly logical in my
opinion. And it is the position I advocate, exactly stated.
You on the other hand see it different. You mix the man-made and the
metaphysical. You seek to make both a need /and/ the solution to that need
into metaphysical things. Notice where you put the word "and" in the very
first line here. ...
> The need for freedom of action, and the concept of
> rights which arises from these need, are metaphysical
> (or natural, if you will) and, as such, cannot be altered
> or changed by any government any more than it can
> alter the law of gravity or the requirement that life
> requires food.
And there's where you and other Objectivists go off the track.
Don't you see what you've done? You tried to make the human-devised
/solution/ to a metaphysical need into a metaphysical thing /itself/. That
doesn't work, and it leads to precisely the conundrums we've been wrestling
with in this thread: If a Japanese child is /born/ with rights, then they
can't just be snuffed out by a government, by Harry Truman or by anyone
else. and yet, surprise!, if it's to protect some other people, all of a
sudden they can be! What a puzzlement!
Well, I say there's no need for this confusion.
Rights are simply a human devised /tool/ enabling political freedom within
the context of a moral, civilized society's laws. Rights satisfy a human
metaphysical need, yes, indeed. And that's a need every one of us is /born/
with, just as we're born with a need for food. But being born with a
metaphysical need for rights does not mean that you are born with rights.
You are born with a /need/ for them. That's all. Whether that need gets
satisfied or not depends on you finding and joining with others -- others
who share with you that exact same need -- and creating with them a society
of laws defining and protecting individual rights.
> [...Y]our view, IMO, leads to subjectivism, i.e. the view that
> we should recognize and implement rights only so long as
> some individual (or some government) chooses to make the
> "mutual moral commitment" you mention above.
Please take care to note that in my view the government is not what makes
the moral commitment, and the government is not the source of any rights.
The government is simply the agency that we create to /enforce/ the moral
commitment that we all and each make to one another. You and I decide,
between ourselves, that for the sake of our mutual happiness, we will
respect each other's freedom of action. We pledge ourselves, to one another,
that neither one of us will initiate the use of force against the other.
That's the origin of RIGHTS. And then, when many people are involved, we
naturally need some way to mediate disputes and to enforce the
non-initiation commitment we've all entered into. That's the origin of
GOVERNMENT.
> My rights are not subject to the whim of some other
> individual. Neither are anyone else's. That's the
> difference between an objective theory of rights
> and a subjective theory of rights.
Except that your rights are indeed subject to the whim of an individual --
you!
Suppose, for example, you decide that, no, you do /not/ agree to this moral
commitment. You then reserve to yourself the option to use force against
anyone you please. You rob. You plunder. Well, you /still/ are a human
being! You still have all the same metaphysical characteristics as the rest
of us. The difference is, you don't have any rights!
And that's the difference between an Objectivist conception of rights and a
mystical-innate rights theory. I'm not saying rights are subjective at all.
I'm saying that your rights depend on you establishing and participating in
certain /objective/ bilateral or multi-lateral terms of association with
your fellow man. When those relationships break down, as in war, revolution,
anarchy, etc., then this idea of rights isn't involved any longer. We're
left with simply a need that is unsatisfied. And it then becomes a moral
imperative that we do everything in our power to remedy the situation, to
restore civilized society, to re-establish the rule of law.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Fred Weiss
"James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
news:00c001c0cb37$ee4960c0$44b2fea9@prescott...
> Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> A man forfeits his own rights when he violates rights. Does he forfeit, by
> /his/ actions, the rights of /others/? Think carefully about this before
you
> answer. If the answer is no,..
The answer is "yes".
>... then how is it that the rights of innocent
> others are forfeited when one nation wages war upon another?
I thought about that a bit more and I'd be inclined to revise that and
perhaps not say "forfeit", but I would say at least "put in abeyance" or
something along those lines. Anything else would be sacrificial on our part.
We cannot put their lives above ours in a context where our lives are being
threatened (and where it may be necessary and unavoidable to take theirs).
Do states and
> collectives and masses of people have prerogatives -- to just rule rights
> out of existence -- over and beyond those of individuals?
I think this poses the question as something of a floating abstraction. The
function of gov't is to protect our rights - including against foreign
aggression. If a gov't is acting in self-defense of its citizens, i.e.
acting properly, it does what it has to do to defend them, including using
deadly force if necessary, and in the amount necessary to end the threat as
quickly as possible. It is acting in the name of the victims - it's
citizens - and it cannot be primarily concerned with the victimizers.
>
> I'm not saying I don't agree with you. I'm saying I don't see the two as
the
> same principle. I don't see it as "equally obvious" that a threat to you
> forfeits the rights of those /not/ responsible for the threat at the same
> time that it forfeits the rights of those actually posing the threat.
If one could "surgically" remove just those posing the threat - the head of
state and all his ministers, all the military officers and wipe out their
war machine and the segment of the population that supports it, without
harming a single genuine innocent, I'd be for it. But I don't know any way
to do that.
How could we have dropped bombs on Germany just marked to kill Naziis and
their supporters? As you may know there are often resistance fighters in
these countries who will help you destroy their own country. Why are they
always clearer on these issues than some of the people on hpo?
> And explain to me again, if you can, how it is that we can morally
> extinguish the lives of perhaps even millions of perfectly innocent men,
> women and children (people guilty of nothing whatsoever, and who only
happen
> to be in the way as we seek to end the war), but we can't tax to finance
the
> war, and we can't conscript young men into the Army, even to do some
> perfectly safe tasks while volunteers do the fighting.
Different issues. We began this debate a couple of months ago but I guess
never finished it. I'd be happy to discuss it with you more. But let's do it
separately.
> That makes no sense! If the outcome of the war depended on the
government's
> ability to draft John Galt into military service for 6 months Objectivists
> would likely say (please, please, correct me if I'm wrong!) that we're
> better to lose the war because forcing someone to serve means we're not a
> society worth saving.
I don't believe conscription is proper or necessary, but again we can
discuss that separately.
>Then they'll turn right around and say that if the
> outcome of the war depends on vaporizing John Galt and his whole family
and
> all their friends, that's a perfectly fine thing to do!
In what context? I'm not sure what you mean. There may very well be contexts
where a "John Galt" would be more than happy to risk his life to end
tyranny. Our own Founding Fathers being just one example.
> In short, I think the notion of rights held to by most Objectivists -- on
> both sides of this argument! -- just isn't well worked out at all. I'll go
a
> bit more into just how it needs to be fixed in my response to Ken.
I don't see what needs fixing at least on our side (Ken of course badly
needs fixing) , but I'll gladly read what you have to say. At least it might
prove interesting to have an intelligently presented third point of view.
<g>
Fred Weiss
Firebug
<dbco...@webinbox.com> wrote in message
news:200104192023...@webinbox.com...
> After brushing the fallout off his keyboard, Ken Gardner
> <kesga...@home.com> wrote:
>
> > And if instead you
> > consider the Peikoff proposal (Iran, Afghanistan, and the Sudan), I
think
> > they can begin to give Mao, Hitler, and Stalin a real run for their
money.
>
> Even this doesn't sate Objectivist blood-lust, however. A couple of
> Objectivists did seem to warm up to the idea of nuking China,
> and I'm sure that a number of other countries, like Iraq, Pakistan,
> Syria, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea, would be deserving of the
> Speicher treatment according to orthodox Objectivist principles.
>
> Keep in mind Rand's theory that dictator nations have no rights
Rand immediately follows up this statement by emphasizing that while the
dictatorships themselves can claim no national rights, the citizens of those
nations still have legitimate (even though unrecognized by the dictatorship)
rights. This is why I proposed, instead of nuking Chinese population
centers, the destruction of Chinese military installations, followed by a
garrisoning of China and the implementation of a rational government there.
- Firebug
Ken Gardner
>If a person has a right to live, I'd say the "corresponding moral duty"
>is simply to allow him to live, to not kill him. Wouldn't you say that?
Yes.
[...]
>Well, if the dead had a right to live, how was that right respected by
>President Truman?
What really happened was that the Japanese government put him in a situation
in which innocent people were going to die no matter what he decided to do.
For this very reason, he was not morally responsible for the choice he made
and the innoceent people that were subsequently killed -- the Japanese
government was.
> I know you say, later, that the Japanese government was the violator
> (agreeing now with the other Objectivist camp in the debate!!),
To a point, the Japanese government _was_ the violator. However, we still
had a duty to make reasonable efforts to avoid as many civilian casualties
as possible consistent with winning the war. If we would have breached this
duty, then we would have joined the Japanese government in violating their
rights.
The other side's position, translated to this situation, was that the
Japanese government would be responsible even if our use of retaliatory
force was excessive and unnecessary. I disagree. I say that that an
unreasonably excessive use of retaliatory force, to the extent of the
excess, is the moral equivalent of an initiation of force.
[...]
>Yes, we do need these things. But a need by one doesn't impose an
>obligation on another.
It does if both want to co-exist in a rational society.
>Animals need food to live. It doesn't follow
>logically from this that they've any "right" to food. Heck, men and
>women also need food. It doesn't follow that they've any right to food,
>either.
Not the right _to_ food, but certainly the right to hunt, grow, or produce
food.
>Men and women need freedom of action. It simply doesn't follow they've
>any /right/ to freedom of action. At least, not /from/ the
>"need-for-it." That would be illogical.
I disagree. The need gives rise, in a social context, to the right -- not
the right to the thing in question, but the right and freedom to pursue the
thing by his own thought and effort.
[...]
>You on the other hand see it different. You mix the man-made and the
>metaphysical. You seek to make both a need /and/ the solution to that
>need into metaphysical things. Notice where you put the word "and" in
>the very first line here. ...
By metaphysical, I mean merely that the requirement for freedom of action
exists if we want to live in a rational society. By analogy, I would say
that our need to avoid consuming cyanide is metaphysical as well, in the
sense that cynaide is fatal if swallowed. I don't mean "metaphysical" in
the different sense that rights are "things," like trees or rocks.
>> The need for freedom of action, and the concept of
>> rights which arises from these need, are metaphysical
>> (or natural, if you will) and, as such, cannot be altered
>> or changed by any government any more than it can
>> alter the law of gravity or the requirement that life requires food.
>And there's where you and other Objectivists go off the track.
>Don't you see what you've done? You tried to make the human-devised
>/solution/ to a metaphysical need into a metaphysical thing /itself/.
It's not a human-devised solution, but a human _discovered_ solution. Just
as human values must be discovered, not invented, so too with rights.
>...If a Japanese child is /born/ with
>rights, then they can't just be snuffed out by a government, by Harry
>Truman or by anyone else. and yet, surprise!, if it's to protect some
>other people, all of a sudden they can be! What a puzzlement!
No, they can't be, not morally. The issue isn't whether it is improper to
violate their rights. It is. The issue is who is morally responsible for
violating their rights.
>Well, I say there's no need for this confusion.
>Rights are simply a human devised /tool/ enabling political freedom
>within the context of a moral, civilized society's laws.
The problem with treating the issue this way is that rights become
subjective. Besides, it just ain't true. Rights are objective, just as
values are objective.
>Rights satisfy
>a human metaphysical need, yes, indeed. And that's a need every one of
>us is /born/ with, just as we're born with a need for food. But being
>born with a metaphysical need for rights does not mean that you are born
>with rights. You are born with a /need/ for them. That's all. Whether
>that need gets satisfied or not depends on you finding and joining with
>others -- others who share with you that exact same need -- and creating
>with them a society of laws defining and protecting individual rights.
I disagree. Rights are to living in society what values are to ethics.
They are statements of the conditions that must exist, or the requirements
that must be met, in order for each human being living in that society to
live well and be happy.
[...]
>Suppose, for example, you decide that, no, you do /not/ agree to this
>moral commitment. You then reserve to yourself the option to use force
>against anyone you please. You rob. You plunder. Well, you /still/ are a
>human being! You still have all the same metaphysical characteristics as
>the rest of us. The difference is, you don't have any rights!
The difference is that I would have waived or renounced any rights that I
had, or any claim that others should respect my rights That's slightly
different from what you're saying.
[...]
Ken
Stephen Grossman
>The US has laid prostrate at the feet of the Arabs for 50 years and
>>jeopardized the safety of Israel in the process.
Uh, our military and diplomatic power can overwhelm them easily. Try
being contextual. We have appeased Arabs in relatively small ways. We
should withdraw from the Mideast, after freeing our energy industry, and
morally praise Israel as the only individualist nation there.
--
=======================================================
Reason is man's basic means of survival. AYN RAND
-------------------------------------------------------
Tracking Marxist dialectical revolution: ZigZag
Radically systematic radical metaphysics: Existence 2
http://home.att.net/~sdgross
-------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Grossman Fairhaven, MA, USA sdg...@att.net
=======================================================
Betsy Speicher
> > Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> A man forfeits his own rights when he violates rights. Does he
> forfeit, by /his/ actions, the rights of /others/?
No, but he can, if he violates rights when he is in control of the
government, violate not only the rights of citizens of foreign countries
but also the rights of HIS OWN country's citizens at the same time.
The reason is that if a head of state aggresses against foreigners, he
invites military retaliation and any casualties resulting in his own
country are HIS FAULT.
The principle is that whoever initiates the use of force is responsible
for the deaths resulting when others respond to that force in self-defense
or retaliation.
This principle is recognized in California homicide law. If an armed
robber holds up a store and the storekeeper accidentally kills a bystander
while trying to defend himself, the ROBBER can be convicted for the death
of the bystander.
Jim Klein
Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> wrote:
>The principle is that whoever initiates the use of force is responsible
>for the deaths resulting when others respond to that force in self
>defense or retaliation.
Neat trick. Hey...let's just make a principle that whenever anything bad
happens in the world, it's Iran's fault. Then we can all sign onto Plan
Speicher and say that we're principled about it!
Anyway, I think you're bullshitting again. The _legal_ principle to
which you're referring is that whoever initiates force is responsible for
the damage that occurs pursuant to that initiation of force. While this
includes reasonable acts of self-defense, it's not built around them so
far as I know.
With regard to retaliation, I've never heard of a perp being charged for
damages resulting from after-the-fact retaliation. Do you have any
evidence for this claim...either rulings or even better a statute?
>This principle is recognized in California homicide law.
I doubt this. Firstly we have you saying it, which alone makes it
unlikely to be true. Secondly this supposed principle of yours is
subsumed (at least the self-defense part) under the widely recognized
legal principle mentioned above.
>If an armed robber holds up a store and the storekeeper accidentally
>kills a bystander while trying to defend himself, the ROBBER can be
>convicted for the death of the bystander.
Well of course, Betsy. That's not just California, but it's nearly
everywhere. Not only do the statutes say this, but often they say that
the death of any person during the commission of a felony is _first
degree_ murder, even if unintentional on the part of the perp ir anyone
else.
What they don't say (AFAIK) is anything about self-defense or retaliation
having something to do with it. If someone dies because the storekeeper
drops the cash register on him due to nerves or something, the robber can
be prosecuted for first degree murder even then. At least as far as I
know that's the case, and that's probably a country mile farther than you
know about it.
Of course, if you have any evidence that some "principle" of self-defense
and retaliation is involved in any of this, then by all means produce it.
If you can do that, I will naturally be happy to acknowledge my error.
Until and unless you do, then my personal guess is that you're just
making this up like you do so much else.
jk
Betsy Speicher
In fact, she did and she was speaking to people just like Garner who hold
that retalian is OK as long as not "too many" innocents are killed:
"It is true that nuclear weapons have made wars too horrible to
contemplate. But it makes no difference to a man whether he is killed by a
nuclear bomb or a dynamite bomb or an old-fashioned club. Nor does the
number of other victims or the scale of the destruction make any
difference to him. And there is something obscene in the attitude of those
who regard horror as a matter of numbers, who are willing to send a small
group of youths to die for the tribe, but scream against the danger to the
tribe itself--and more: who are willing to condone the slaughter of
defenseless victims, but march in protest against wars between the
well-armed ..." ["The Roots of War," CUI, 35.]
Ken Gardner
>In fact, she did and she was speaking to people just like Gardner who
>hold that retalian is OK as long as not "too many" innocents are killed:
>"It is true that nuclear weapons have made wars too horrible to
>contemplate. But it makes no difference to a man whether he is killed by
>a nuclear bomb or a dynamite bomb or an old-fashioned club. Nor does the
>number of other victims or the scale of the destruction make any
>difference to him. And there is something obscene in the attitude of
>those who regard horror as a matter of numbers, who are willing to send
>a small group of youths to die for the tribe, but scream against the
>danger to the tribe itself--and more: who are willing to condone the
>slaughter of defenseless victims, but march in protest against wars
>between the well-armed ..." ["The Roots of War," CUI, 35.]
Where does it say in here that it's okay to use nuclear weapons as part of
liberating a totalitarian dictatorship, or that it's okay even to kill an
excessive number of innocents as part of destroying the guilty?
If your reading of it is that it's okay to nuke innocent people because
they're going to die anyway....well, you better tell me that's your reading
before I respond further.
In any event, that certainly isn't my reading of it. My reading of the first
two sentences, especially when read in conjunction with the preceding
paragraphs in the same essay, is that she is criticizing the negative
implication that wars would be worth contemplating if only conventional
weapons were used. Indeed, the theme of the essay as a whole is that
because nuclear war has made war too horrible to contemplate, and statism is
the root cause of war (thus the title of the essay), the conclusion is that
we must therefore oppose statism. Rand clearly accepted the truth of the
major premise. Furthermore, this is not the only place in her writings in
which she discussed the proper or improper use of nuclear weapons -- but
I'll hold back for now except for this friendly warning that I haven't yet
told you everything I now know about Rand's actual views on this subject.
And what do you make of her statement towards the end in which she
criticizes those who "are willing to condone the slaughter of defenseless
victims...."
Rand further held that the right to liberate a dictatorship was conditional.
"Just as the suppression of crimes does not give a policeman the right to
engage in criminal activities, so the invasion and destruction of a
dictatorship does not give the invader the right to establish another
variant of a slave society in the conquered country." [Lexicon, page 125]
Now, think: what principle was she relying on in order to reach this
conclusion?
Last, let me ask you to leave the realm of Rand's actual writings for a
moment and put on your own thinking cap. Do you think that _in princple_,
it is just or unjust to punish the innocent along with the guilty in
response to a crime, when the punishment to the innocent could have been
avoided?
Ken
James E. Prescott
Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> wrote:
> [...]
> The principle is that whoever initiates the use of force is
> responsible for the deaths resulting when others respond
> to that force in self-defense or retaliation.
>
> This principle is recognized in California homicide law. [...]
Nothing wrong with that, but what's the point of it? Suppose, as I suggested
to Ken, that the threat were not from any person or any government
whatsoever. How does that change, if at all, your position on the propriety
of sacrificing innocent human lives for some grand and noble purpose?
Let's suppose, for example, that a deadly new virus called "Godzilla" has
come up from the depths of Tokyo Bay and is now wiping out the entire
population of the city except for a sizeable percentage of people who happen
to be immune to it and who cannot be infected by it and who cannot carry or
spread it. Suppose now that the U.S. President receives an urgent plea from
the government of Japan: explode a hydrogen bomb over our capital city
immediately! If we, the U.S., do nothing, the virus will spread in a matter
of days throughout Asia and into Europe and into America, killing /billions/
of people. If we explode the bomb we will wipe the virus off the face of the
earth, and save most of mankind from certain death. But there's no time to
identify and evacuate those who are immune to the virus. They'll have to die
in Tokyo along with everybody else in the city. If we don't explode the bomb
however, these million-or-so innocent non-carriers will live out full, long
lives, in a world of just 3 or 4 billion fewer people.
Is this -- the deliberate taking of innocent human life -- a moral dilemma
for you? Is it a problem because -- unlike homicide law in California --
there's simply nobody to around to /blame/ for the deaths of those innocent
people? And so, even with nobody to blame for it, would you still explode
the bomb and save most of mankind? Or would you let the virus run its
course, and just watch billions die?
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
James E. Prescott
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
> [...] Does he forfeit, by /his/ actions, the rights of /others/? [...]
> The answer is "yes".
> [...]
> I thought about that a bit more and I'd be inclined to revise
> that and perhaps not say "forfeit", but I would say at least
> "put in abeyance" or something along those lines. [...]
That's pretty close to the way I see it.
> [Regarding financing and conscripting:]
> Different issues. We began this debate a couple of months
> ago but I guess never finished it. I'd be happy to discuss it
> with you more. But let's do it separately.
Fine.
> I don't believe conscription is proper or necessary, but again
> we can discuss that separately.
Sure. We may not even disagree all that much. I agree with you already that
conscription is neither proper nor necessary, in our society. Where I
disagree with other Objectivists, though, is in regard to what I call an
"emergency conscription lottery," wherein a perfectly moral society which
happens to be at significant risk may, as a deterrent to aggression,
register young men for a conscription that would only take effect in the
event of an dire emergency, then, if the emergency transpires, draw names
from a hat rather than rely exclusively on volunteers. There are reasons
this capability is sometimes necessary, and there are reasons it is actually
more of a moral system than is the recruiting of volunteers. Happy to
discuss it anytime.
> > In short, I think the notion of rights held to by most
> > Objectivists -- on both sides of this argument! -- just
> > isn't well worked out at all. I'll go a bit more into just
> > how it needs to be fixed in my response to Ken.
>
> I don't see what needs fixing at least on our side (Ken
> of course badly needs fixing) , but I'll gladly read what
> you have to say. At least it might prove interesting to
> have an intelligently presented third point of view.<g>
I commend you for being receptive to arguments. Too many seem closed-minded.
Nice chatting with you, and...
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Fred Weiss
"James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
news:020301c0cb9a$8032f840$44b2fea9@prescott...
>.....your position on the propriety
> of sacrificing innocent human lives for some grand and noble purpose?
Where does Betsy maintain any such position?
As for your virus scenario, I wouldn't engage in hypothesizing about such
science fiction nightmare scenarios. Owl likes that sort of thing. Ask him.
You could dream up an endless number of such nightmares, but to what
purpose?
There are plenty enough of real world problems to deal with.
Fred Weiss
James E. Prescott
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
> news:020301c0cb9a$8032f840$44b2fea9@prescott...
> >.....your position on the propriety
> > of sacrificing innocent human lives
> > for some grand and noble purpose?
>
> Where does Betsy maintain any such position?
>
> As for your virus scenario [...]
I thought the virus scenario, in the context of what Betsy said, made it
plain what I was referring to: We, all of us, including yourself, Fred, have
vigorously defended the decision to end the lives innocent humans at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the grand and noble purpose of bringing the
second world war to a swift conclusion.
Well, Betsy was making a point of blaming the Japanese government for those
deaths.
Fine. I agreed with her. It's a valid point, in isolation. But in the
context of what we were discussing it misses the mark because one doesn't
/need/ for there to have been a Japanese government involved at all in order
to address the basic moral question: is it right to take innocent human
lives when what's at risk if you don't is the loss of /other/ innocent human
lives?
> I wouldn't engage in hypothesizing about such
> science fiction nightmare scenarios. Owl likes that
> sort of thing. Ask him.
Don't address it if the sci-fi tone of it bothers you. (It's not really that
far-fetched, though. There are such viruses. The world's population has been
decimated in the past. Could happen again). But what I'm asking you and
Betsy to address is the moral argument. But what the hey. Don't address that
either, if it's bothersome.
> You could dream up an endless number of such nightmares,
> but to what purpose?
I've stated the purpose. It's to point out that the presence of "someone to
blame" is not essential to the moral argument.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
James E. Prescott
Ken Gardner <kesga...@home.com> wrote:
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote:
> [...]
> > Men and women need freedom of action. It simply doesn't
> > follow they've any /right/ to freedom of action. At least,
> > not /from/ the "need-for-it." That would be illogical.
>
> I disagree. The need gives rise, in a social context, to the
> right -- not the right to the thing in question, but the right and
> freedom to pursue the thing by his own thought and effort.
A right is a moral-legal sanction to act without interference from others. I
say that can't exist until men come together and agree upon it. But you say
a right exists independently of any such social agreement. Perhaps you mean
something by a right different from what I mean, or perhaps you have some
argument of which I'm unaware establishing this supposed link between a
/need/ for freedom of action and a /right/ to act freely. I don't see how
the one follows from the other, Ken. Can you explain it?
> [...] I don't mean "metaphysical" in the different sense that
> rights are "things," like trees or rocks.
There's the distinction Ayn Rand drew between the metaphysical and the
man-made. Not all that is metaphysical is a physical thing like a rock, and
not all that is a physical thing is metaphysical vice man-made in the sense
that Ayn Rand meant in drawing that line. I say, a right is a man-made
thing: it's a moral-legal sanction, an /agreement/ to leave you a scope of
unfettered action /in return/ for your leaving me a scope of unfettered
action, and so on. I see rights as based on the metaphysical properties of
man, of course. But to say that they exist /in/ man, /from/ birth, as a
/metaphysical attribute/ of any sort (whether physical or not) seems to me
pure nonsense. But again, I'm open to hearing your reasons for saying what
you say about rights.
> > You tried to make the human-devised
> >/solution/ to a metaphysical need into a
> > metaphysical thing /itself/.
>
> It's not a human-devised solution, but a human
> _discovered_ solution.
Well, okay, and the difference then is...
> Just as human values must be discovered, not
> invented, so too with rights.
The light bulb is a human value. Was it discovered, or invented? Exactly
like the light bulb, rights don't exist out there in the natural world. Do
elephants have them? No, of course not. So they aren't natural, pre-existing
things, discovered, like electricity. Instead, they are a uniquely human
/method/ of utilizing natural things, like a light bulb; specifically, they
are the unique method of non-force interaction among men. And so just like
the method of illuminating a room, they are brought about by human
creativity to serve a human purpose and to fulfill a human need, and thus
are not "discovered" out there in the natural world. (It's okay, I suppose,
but not strictly /correct/ to say "I've discovered a method" -- unless you
mean that someone else invented the method and you just found the
description of it lying around somewhere.)
Now, I'm not saying we don't need rights, that they aren't metaphysically
required for Man's proper mode of living. I'm only saying we need them for a
/specific purpose/: civilized human society, and the productivity, trade and
prosperity it produces.
> > Rights are simply a human devised /tool/ enabling political
> > freedom within the context of a moral, civilized society's laws.
>
> The problem with treating the issue this way is that rights
> become subjective.
Not a problem, because they do not become subjective. I mentioned this
already.
> Besides, it just ain't true. Rights are objective, just as
> values are objective.
Not all values are metaphysical. Some are man-made. But if you want to
insist that rights are discovered in nature, you owe an explanation of what
that means and how rights come into existence.
> Rights are [...] statements of the conditions that must exist,
> or the requirements that must be met, in order for each
> human being living in that society to live well and be happy.
With that much, I agree.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Fred Weiss
"James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
news:037601c0cbf4$002ecde0$44b2fea9@prescott...
> I thought the virus scenario, in the context of what Betsy said, made it
> plain what I was referring to: We, all of us, including yourself, Fred,
have
> vigorously defended the decision to end the lives innocent humans at
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the grand and noble purpose of bringing the
> second world war to a swift conclusion.
Ok, but that's a specific context, one of self-defense, not some unspecified
"grand and noble purpose". There have a been a lot of people killed for
alleged "grand and noble purpose(s)" that neither of us (or Betsy) would
agree with.
> Well, Betsy was making a point of blaming the Japanese government for
those
> deaths.
>
> Fine. I agreed with her. It's a valid point, in isolation. But in the
> context of what we were discussing it misses the mark because one doesn't
> /need/ for there to have been a Japanese government involved at all in
order
> to address the basic moral question: is it right to take innocent human
> lives when what's at risk if you don't is the loss of /other/ innocent
human
> lives?
It's not "other" innocent lives - it's *yours* ...or in this context ours,
our country's, the victims. No one should take on the impossible assignment
of, per se, saving innocent lives.
>
> > I wouldn't engage in hypothesizing about such
> > science fiction nightmare scenarios. Owl likes that
> > sort of thing. Ask him.
>
> Don't address it if the sci-fi tone of it bothers you. (It's not really
that
> far-fetched, though. There are such viruses. The world's population has
been
> decimated in the past. Could happen again).
Putting aside the validity of your assumption (which I question), the reason
I object to it is that you are creating a malevolent universe, not conducive
to human life. I'm not willing at this point to speculate what any of us
should do in such a world - except to figure out as quickly as possible how
to get out of it.
> I've stated the purpose. It's to point out that the presence of "someone
to
> blame" is not essential to the moral argument.
Possibly, but this whole debate rests on a single issue: whether the use of
nuclear weapons is inherently evil. I gather the other side has conceded it
is not.
Incidentally, there could be a debate on this specious argument of
"excessive" force that the second A-bomb - on Nagasaki - was unnecessary. I
don't think it was for a reason I could give and I gather was Truman's. But
let's take it a step further: what if the Japanese hadn't surrendered? You
know, the Japanese fought often to virtually the last man on many of the
Pacific islands at enormous cost in American lives. The Japanese military I
believe was willing to fight on.
I also wonder if those now glibly supporting the use of the A-bomb on Japan
because they *now* see that it was the right thing to do would have done so
when the decision had to be made. Or if back then also they would have been
wringing their hands over the "innocents". There are people who argue to
this day that we should not have done it.
I also want to make note of the fact that nobody has yet answered my
question about what if we had the A-bomb in 1941 and could have used it
against Germany.
I'd like to raise an additional question in relation to Red China.
Apparently they have ICBM's pointed at us ...which I regard as an act of
aggression. Ask yourself how you would react and what you would do if a
neighbor of yours had a loaded cannon pointed at your house.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns908B7E95633Ek...@24.4.0.74...
> Last, let me ask you to leave the realm of Rand's actual writings for a
> moment and put on your own thinking cap. Do you think that _in princple_,
> it is just or unjust to punish the innocent along with the guilty in
> response to a crime, when the punishment to the innocent could have been
> avoided?
You've switched the context. We're not talking about a "crime", like a bank
robber with some hostages where it is likely that the criminal can be
killed/captured and all or most of his hostages rescued.
In dealing with a foreign nation, we cannot just kill the criminals even if
you just limited the criminals to the gov't and the military - and rule out
their civilian supporters (of which there are probably many).
The other side of the coin which you are evading is: how many of *our
innocent* are you prepared to sacrifice in the name of protecting *their*
alleged "innocents".
Let's take a concrete case: how many Israelis have to die at the hands of
Palestinian terrorists in the name of protecting "innocent" Palestinians?
Fred Weiss
David Schwartz
Fred Weiss wrote:
> The other side of the coin which you are evading is: how many of *our
> innocent* are you prepared to sacrifice in the name of protecting *their*
> alleged "innocents".
Another side of the issue to explore is, to what extend and under what
circumstances can you hold a civilian responsible for the actions of his
govrnment? I don't think the answer is "never, under any circumstances".
DS
Ken Gardner
>A right is a moral-legal sanction to act without interference from
>others. I say that can't exist until men come together and agree upon
>it. But you say a right exists independently of any such social
>agreement. Perhaps you mean something by a right different from what I
>mean, or perhaps you have some argument of which I'm unaware
>establishing this supposed link between a /need/ for freedom of action
>and a /right/ to act freely. I don't see how the one follows from the
>other, Ken. Can you explain it?
Yes, I say that a right exists independent of any social agreement to
recognize such a right. The need for freedom of action in a social context
is the particular fact that leads to rights and, for a rational society, the
necessity of recognizing rights -- if the ultimate goal is (as it should be)
to create a society in which each individual is free to pursue his own life
and happiness as an end in itself. More to follow below on this particular
point.
The chain of reasoning that leads to the concept of rights begins with the
chain of reasoning (including the conclusions) that leads to an objective
moral code, but it then goes on to answer the question of what social
conditions must exist in order for each individual to live MQM in accordance
with a rational moral code. For example, if wealth is a value under a
rational moral code, and productiveness is the virtue that achieves this
value, then we must have a society in which human beings are free to think,
produce, and be the beneficiaries of their own actions.
>> [...] I don't mean "metaphysical" in the different sense that
>> rights are "things," like trees or rocks.
>There's the distinction Ayn Rand drew between the metaphysical and the
>man-made. Not all that is metaphysical is a physical thing like a rock,
>and not all that is a physical thing is metaphysical vice man-made in
>the sense that Ayn Rand meant in drawing that line. I say, a right is a
>man-made thing: it's a moral-legal sanction, an /agreement/ to leave you
>a scope of unfettered action /in return/ for your leaving me a scope of
>unfettered action, and so on.
Well, positive law is, by definition, a man-made thing. Natural rights, on
the hand, would exist even if there wasn't a government around to pass a law
recognizing or implementing them. Both types of law exist, but of the two
natural rights should always prevail over the positive law in the event of
any conflict.
>I see rights as based on the metaphysical
>properties of man, of course. But to say that they exist /in/ man,
>/from/ birth, as a /metaphysical attribute/ of any sort (whether
>physical or not) seems to me pure nonsense. But again, I'm open to
>hearing your reasons for saying what you say about rights.
I don't know what it means to say that rights exist "in" a human being. I
would say instead that rights exist by virtue of the fact that a human being
exists and is alive. Rights are not, strictly speaking, attributes of human
beings in the same sense that a beating heart or the capacity for
intelligence is an attribute. Instead, as Rand correctly stated in Galt's
speech, rights are _conditions_ that must exist within the society in which
a human being is present if that human being is going to have any chance to
live and enjoy his life -- and, again, the only proper goal and
justification for any society is to create or implement the conditions in
which each individual is free to live well and pursue his own happiness as
an end in itself.
>>> You tried to make the human-devised
>>> /solution/ to a metaphysical need into a
>>> metaphysical thing /itself/.
>>
>> It's not a human-devised solution, but a human
>> _discovered_ solution.
>
>Well, okay, and the difference then is...
Rights have metaphysical identity, not as a thing (in the sense that the sun
is also a thing), but as a condition or requirement of a human being whose
ultimate end is to live well and achieve happiness.
>The light bulb is a human value. Was it discovered, or invented? Exactly
>like the light bulb, rights don't exist out there in the natural world.
Sure. Light bulbs are entities. Rights are conditions or requirements -- a
different metaphsyical category altogether.
>Do elephants have them? No, of course not. So they aren't natural,
>pre-existing things, discovered, like electricity. Instead, they are a
>uniquely human /method/ of utilizing natural things, like a light bulb;
>specifically, they are the unique method of non-force interaction among
>men. And so just like the method of illuminating a room, they are
>brought about by human creativity to serve a human purpose and to
>fulfill a human need, and thus are not "discovered" out there in the
>natural world. (It's okay, I suppose, but not strictly /correct/ to say
>"I've discovered a method" -- unless you mean that someone else invented
>the method and you just found the description of it lying around
>somewhere.)
Rights are discovered, but the discovery or identification is not of a new
type of entity, but of a condition or requirement that applies to human
beings who seek to live as their rational nature requires -- as explained
above.
>Now, I'm not saying we don't need rights, that they aren't
>metaphysically required for Man's proper mode of living. I'm only saying
>we need them for a /specific purpose/: civilized human society, and the
>productivity, trade and prosperity it produces.
Right. Or as I have already put it several times, in order for individuals
to be able to live well and pursue happiness in a social context.
[...]
Ken
Ken Gardner
>> Last, let me ask you to leave the realm of Rand's actual writings for
>> a moment and put on your own thinking cap. Do you think that _in
>> princple_, it is just or unjust to punish the innocent along with the
>> guilty in response to a crime, when the punishment to the innocent
>> could have been avoided?
>You've switched the context. We're not talking about a "crime", like a
>bank robber with some hostages where it is likely that the criminal can
>be killed/captured and all or most of his hostages rescued.
Read my question again. Very carefully. You are trying to answer a
question that I didn't ask instead of the question that I actually asked. I
think you have three options: (1) yes; (2) no; or (3) sometimes yes and
sometimes no. I'm just trying to see if we can agree on the general
principle before we then see how it applies to different situations.
Ken
Ken Gardner
> Another side of the issue to explore is, to what extend and under what
> circumstances can you hold a civilian responsible for the actions of his
> govrnment? I don't think the answer is "never, under any circumstances".
Nor is the answer "always, under every circumstance." Nor do we have a
method of knowing in advance which civilians are innocent and which ones
aren't so innocent. These are all important considerations.
Ken
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns908ACB12A9B89...@24.4.0.74...
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote:
> To a point, the Japanese government _was_ the violator. However, we still
> had a duty to make reasonable efforts to avoid as many civilian casualties
> as possible consistent with winning the war. If we would have breached
this
> duty, then we would have joined the Japanese government in violating their
> rights.
I need to remind both of you that we are not Kantians. There is no "duty"
here. The one and only principle in operation here on the basis of rational
egoism is to end the war as quickly as possible with the least amount of
casualities on our side. While it is immoral to gratuitously kill civilians,
there is no principle in war to avoid killing them if it serves a proper
military purpose. And that was precisely the thinking - the correct
thinking- in A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither of which cities I
suspect were major military centers. But the bombing of them served a
military purpose: to thoroughly terrify the Japanese and to warn them that
we were prepared to annihilate them if they didn't surrender and surrender
quickly and unconditionally.
The same principle was used in the massive bomb attacks on German cities,
but the difference there as I've already said is that we lost thousands of
our men in the process. If we had the capability we should have A-bombed
Germany as well - even if it had meant the killing of far more Germans
(though it probably wouldn't have).
> The other side's position, translated to this situation, was that the
> Japanese government would be responsible even if our use of retaliatory
> force was excessive and unnecessary. I disagree. I say that that an
> unreasonably excessive use of retaliatory force, to the extent of the
> excess, is the moral equivalent of an initiation of force.
Just as I discussed with you in relation to Aristotle, "excessive" in this
context is meaningless and an evasion of the issue. What could have been
more "excessive" , or more precisely extreme, than totally annihilating two
Japanese cities with 10's of thousands of women and children. And what if
they hadn't surrendered.? Would it have been "excessive" to have wiped out
several more cities until they did surrender? But it wouldn't have been
"excessive" to have continued to slaughter them *after* they had
surrendered. That would have just been barbarism.
What "moral equivalent of initiation of force" are you referring to? This is
a total inversion of justice. The Japanese - with the support of the vast
majority of the population - had spent the preceeding 10 or so years
murdering, torturing, raping, and enslaving millions of people, including a
lot of our own - and with every intention of continuing to do so if we
hadn't stopped them. (To this day, many Japanese are in denial about what
they had done and their textbooks still gloss over their atrocities).
Fred Weiss
Ken Gardner
>> To a point, the Japanese government _was_ the violator. However, we
>> still had a duty to make reasonable efforts to avoid as many civilian
>> casualties as possible consistent with winning the war. If we would
>> have breached this duty, then we would have joined the Japanese
>> government in violating their rights.
>I need to remind both of you that we are not Kantians. There is no
>"duty" here.
To avoid any possible confusion, please disregard the word "duty" in my
statement above, in both places, and replace it with the word "obligation."
>The one and only principle in operation here on the basis
>of rational egoism is to end the war as quickly as possible with the
>least amount of casualities on our side.
It is a principle, but it is certainly not the "one and only" principle that
applies to this situation. If we want to subordinate right to might and act
like brutes and barbarians, then sure we might save an American life or two
by nuking tens of millions of people -- assuming, of course, that a
horrified rest of the world doesn't nuke us out of existence in retaliation
and in self-preservation. For us, it would be easy to slaughter millions;
all we need do, in essence, is push the button. Any dishonorable coward can
do just that. If, however, we want to act like the rational human beings
that we claim we are, then our actions, even in wartime, have to be
regulated by moral principles that recogize and implement even in the
wartime context the basic Objectivist principle that force is proper only in
retaliation and only against those who actually initiate force.
There is an absolutely superb statement by Rand herself to this effect, and
also regarding the nature of honor, in her West Point speech. I'm sure you
remember it from the nuke Tehran thread, so I won't repeat it here except
for this excerpt, which sums it all up: "The principle of using force only
in retaliation against those who intiate its use, is the principle of
subordinating might to right. The highest integrity and sense of honor are
required for such a task. No other army in the world has achieved it. You
have."
>While it is immoral to gratuitously kill civilians, there is no principle
>in war to avoid killing them if it serves a proper military purpose.
I think this statement is way too broad, if you are suggesting that the
first part of your statement is not a limitaion on the second part of your
statement. See my previous comment.
>And that was precisely the thinking - the correct thinking- in A-bombing
>Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither of which cities I suspect were major
>military centers.
I disagree. The historical evidence that I'm aware of is as follows: the
thinking was that faced with the choice between (1) casualties in these two
cities followed (hopefully) by a Japanese surrender and (2) a full scale
invasion of Japan that would have resulted in millions of casaulties on both
sides, and -- because of the irrational evil of the Japanese government --
no way to avoid either alternative, Truman chose the lesser of two evils.
[Note: as a historical note, many of his advisors expected Japan to
surrender after the dropping of the first bomb on Hiroshima, making that
choice seem even more justifiable at the time he made it.]
I don't remember whether either city was a major military target. Maybe Bob
Kolker knows. I think at least one of them may have been, either as a port
or a production center for military equipment or weapons.
>But the bombing of them served a military purpose: to
>thoroughly terrify the Japanese and to warn them that we were prepared
>to annihilate them if they didn't surrender and surrender quickly and
>unconditionally.
Here, I fully agree.
[...]
>> The other side's position, translated to this situation, was that the
>> Japanese government would be responsible even if our use of
>> retaliatory force was excessive and unnecessary. I disagree. I say
>> that that an unreasonably excessive use of retaliatory force, to the
>> extent of the excess, is the moral equivalent of an initiation of
>> force.
>Just as I discussed with you in relation to Aristotle, "excessive" in
>this context is meaningless and an evasion of the issue.
I disagree. See my explanation above. And this post is not the first time
that I have given this explanation, either. See my earlier note to Jim
Prescott, which may very well be the note to which you are responding right
now. Excessiveness is, in part, a question of alternatives and
circumstances. Nuking a city or two is not "excessive" if the alternative
would have been an even greater number of casualties, on both sides,
resulting from an invasion of Japan.
[...]
Ken
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
question of when one lets innocents die.
In WW2 the British had broken the German code, and learned of a bombing raid
about to be made on Coventry. Any warning given, would have let the Germans
know their code had been broken, and taken the advantage the British had in
protecting themselves over the longer term. Churchill, I understand, let the
raid go ahead. What would you have done?
--
"It's not that most men don't try to do the right thing. The problem is that
they don't know what the right thing is."
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
Ken Gardner
> If my information is correct, the following is true, and poses the
> moral question of when one lets innocents die.
> In WW2 the British had broken the German code, and learned of a bombing
> raid about to be made on Coventry. Any warning given, would have let
> the Germans know their code had been broken, and taken the advantage
> the British had in protecting themselves over the longer term.
> Churchill, I understand, let the raid go ahead. What would you have
> done?
Probably the same thing, for pretty much the same reasons that Truman
decided to use atomic bombs. The Allies' knowledge of the German code was
one of the most closely guarded secrets of WWII. Who knows how many lives
were saved, and how many months or years the war was shortened, because of
the intelligence that the Allies were able to gather. Sometimes the only
choice is between the lesser of two evils.
Ken
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns908A87CB16CAk...@24.4.0.74...
> But I was very careful to say that the innocent civilians in Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki still had rights, and therefore there was a corresponding duty on
> us to minimize civilian casaulties to the fullest extent possible.
So, it is ok to violate rights...so long as it's kept to a minimum. The
innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been very
appreciative that you were very careful to say that they still had rights
before you blew them to kingdom come.
>....What matters here is what reason you use to base your decision to use
> nuclear weapons. If the reason is because the civilians have no rights,
> that's one thing...
So if one has a good reason to violate rights...it's ok.
Bottom line: it is ok to violate rights so long as one has a good reason and
it is kept to a minimum.
This is: the greater good of the greater number,i.e Utilitarianism.
Not Objectivism. (Note that in your entire discussion you never mentioned
the primary moral issue: saving *American* lives.)
In approaching this issue, you've tried Kantianism, now Utilitarianism.
What's next?
How about Intuitionism? That's pretty close to your new found "habit and
settled disposition" approach.
>....To use an analogy to justice, it's the difference
> between refusing to rob your neighbor because you are just and respect his
> rights and declining to rob your neigbor only because you fear punishment
> from the law (or from your neighbor).
I've got news for you Ken, your neighbor doesn't care what your reasons are;
he just wants you not to rob his house. The innocent people you are prepared
to kill don't care what your reasons are either.
Fred Weiss
James E. Prescott
Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote on April 22, 2001:
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
> news:037601c0cbf4$002ecde0$44b2fea9@prescott...
> > I thought the virus scenario, in the context of what Betsy said,
> > made it plain [...]
> [...] There have a been a lot of people killed for
> alleged "grand and noble purpose(s)" that neither
> of us (or Betsy) would agree with.
Sure.
> > [...I]s it right to take innocent human
> > lives when what's at risk if you don't
> > is the loss of /other/ innocent human
> > lives?
> It's not "other" innocent lives - it's *yours* ...or in this context
> ours, our country's, the victims. No one should take on the
> impossible assignment of, per se, saving innocent lives.
It's not always impossible. It's not always ours we save. Better to say,
it's "lives that are valued more highly." Naturally, one values one's own
life more highly than that of a strange. You might, I suppose, value your
spouse's life even more highly than your own. And a billion strangers' lives
one might value more highly than, say, a few million (unless those few
million are your countrymen).
So the question becomes, is it right to take innocent human lives when
what's at risk if you don't is the loss of other innocent human lives that
you happen to value more highly?
> [...T]he reason I object to [the Godzilla virus scenario] is
> that you are creating a malevolent universe, not conducive
> to human life. I'm not willing at this point to speculate what
> any of us should do in such a world - except to figure out
> as quickly as possible how to get out of it.
Well, but consider, what you've just now asserted happens to be rather close
to what I've been saying myself from the git-go!
Remember, I said the very idea of rights simply doesn't apply except in the
context of a society of civilized laws. I said that when the rule of law
breaks down, as in a war, a revolution, or anarchy, we are left then with
just a /need/ for rights -- for terms of civilized conduct among men -- that
happens to be, for the duration of that emergency, an unfulfilled need. And
we are left also with a moral imperative to all in our power to remedy that
situation, to restore civilized society, to re-establish the rule of law.
Is a catastrophic natural disaster similar in this respect to war, rebellion
and anarchy? You bet it is! That was my whole point. Recall, the point of
that Godzilla scenario, again, was simply to show only that you don't need
to have a villain. You don't need to have some persons or some evil
government around to "blame" for the breakdown of the rule of law. If, for
/any/ reason, what I call "the social contract" -- the mutual moral
commitment among political equals that they will each refrain from
initiating force against the others for the shared moral purpose of trade,
prosperity and happiness -- breaks down and is unenforceable (in this
Godzilla scenario because /life itself/ is impossible, to say nothing of
trade, prosperity and happiness!), then "rights" simply aren't at issue. All
that matters is surmounting the tragedy and restoring ourselves to a
civilized world in which the rights of each and every individual can be
equally respected and upheld.
> > I've stated the purpose. It's to point out that the presence of
> > "someone to blame" is not essential to the moral argument.
>
> Possibly, but this whole debate rests on a single issue: whether
> the use of nuclear weapons is inherently evil. I gather the other
> side has conceded it is not.
I wouldn't put it quite that way myself, but, yes, I guess that's a way of
saying it.
One might say that if rights don't depend on the mutual moral commitment and
the specific moral purpose (civilized society) that I have tried to describe
in this thread, then one may of course be led to conclude that any WMD is
"inherently evil," because, then, the killing of the innocent along with the
guilty "violates their rights."
> [...W]hat if the Japanese hadn't surrendered? You know, the
> Japanese fought often to virtually the last man on many of the
> Pacific islands at enormous cost in American lives. The Japanese
> military I believe was willing to fight on.
The Japanese Army was willing to fight on, that's fairly clear.
We had no more atomic weapons with which to carry out Harry Truman's threat
to continue exploding them. The Japanese didn't know that of course, but
they may have figured it out given a little more time. If they hadn't
surrendered, well, then, we'd have gone ahead with the invasion of the
Japanese mainland, and it would have been horrible, more horrible perhaps
than it would have been without the atomic bombings.
And imagine if we hadn't protected the Emperor. (We literally flattened
Tokyo with conventional bombing but we never struck at the Palace.) If the
Emperor had died in the middle of this, there would have been nobody around
to order the surrender! It's likely, I think, that the Army would have been
in command, and that the order would have been for every Japanese person to
fight to the death, or to commit suicide. That's what the Army did to their
own civilians on Saipan and on Okinawa. We anticipated a million or more
casualties. Well, I shudder to think just how /many/ millions might actually
have died.
> There are people who argue to this day that we should
> not have done it.
Sure. And there was a lot of debate at the time, as well. Understandably so.
It was a horrible thing to do. The problem is, what other choice did we
have? When all the options are horrible, you take the least horrible you can
find.
> I also want to make note of the fact that nobody has yet
> answered my question about what if we had the A-bomb
> in 1941 and could have used it against Germany.
Okay. I'll answer it. I think you were proposing that there could have been
some sort of preemptive strike.
I don't agree. Of course if we'd had these weapons we'd have at least
threatened to use them, telling Germany what we'd do to it in the event of
an all-out war against it. That might have worked, if the Germans believed
we'd follow through.
However, the moral /and/ practical reason I oppose using WMD to fight
terrorism applies equally well to any "stop the holocaust by incinerating
Germans" scenario. It wouldn't work /unless/ backed up by an actual all-out
war or by the credible threat of such. Weapons of mass destruction, in and
of themselves, are fairly pointless and powerless. Indeed, the use of WMD
outside of war is simply terrorism, and like any kind of terrorism it fails
to accomplish anything. Remember please, the Japanese surrendered only in
/part/ because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They also knew the invasion was
coming. It might have come before or after all of their major cities were
obliterated by these new weapons, but it was coming, and coming /for sure/.
And it was this knowledge of inevitable invasion, not just the bombing
itself, that forced their hand. Without that credible threat of invasion,
the leadership of Japan could just have easily have chosen to ignore the
tens of thousands who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even to ignore the
millions who would die later in other such attacks. Why not? Don't assume
the Japanese leaders, or the Nazis, had some high regard for the value of
human life, even of Japanese and German life. They didn't. It didn't matter
to them how many died as long as they, the leaders, survived in positions of
leadership.
What the bombings did was only to hasten the outcome of the war. They showed
Japan that resisting invasion would not ever discourage the Americans. Why
would it, since now we could just sit back and toss horribly destructive
bombs until resistance to invasion crumbled? But if we hadn't been prepared
to invade at all, what then? It's possible then, that the killing of
innocent civilians would have just intensified the hatred most Japanese felt
for us, and it would have strengthened the will of the Japanese people to
fight on, later, with their imperialist leadership still firmly in power.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Betsy Speicher
> Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> wrote:
> > The principle is that whoever initiates the use of force is
> > responsible for the deaths resulting when others respond
> > to that force in self-defense or retaliation.
> > This principle is recognized in California homicide law. [...]
> Nothing wrong with that, but what's the point of it? Suppose, as I
> suggested to Ken, that the threat were not from any person or any
> government whatsoever. How does that change, if at all, your position
> on the propriety of sacrificing innocent human lives for some grand
> and noble purpose?
I do not think it is proper to sacrifice innocent human lives. That is
why it IS proper, in some situations, to attack a dictatorship which
initiates force against American citizens and to do it as quickly
and as effectively as possible. Such a dictatorship, by its own
aggression, is putting its own citizens in jeopardy. The dictator is the
one sacrificing the innocent, not the people trying to stop him.
> Let's suppose, for example, that a deadly new virus ...
There is no need for science fiction scenarios when there are plenty of
real dictators with international military ambitions we might consider.
Betsy Speicher
> I'd like to raise an additional question in relation to Red China.
> Apparently they have ICBM's pointed at us ...which I regard as an act
> of aggression. Ask yourself how you would react and what you would do
> if a neighbor of yours had a loaded cannon pointed at your house.
Especially if the neighbor were hostile, paranoid, and had already broken
into other neighbors houses and threatened you with bodily harm.
Fred Weiss
"James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
news:006e01c0ccba$71712e00$44b2fea9@prescott...
>
> Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote on April 22, 2001:
>
> > "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
> > news:037601c0cbf4$002ecde0$44b2fea9@prescott...
> > It's not "other" innocent lives - it's *yours* ...or in this context
> > ours, our country's, the victims. No one should take on the
> > impossible assignment of, per se, saving innocent lives.
>
> It's not always impossible. It's not always ours we save. Better to say,
> it's "lives that are valued more highly." Naturally, one values one's own
> life more highly than that of a strange. You might, I suppose, value your
> spouse's life even more highly than your own. And a billion strangers'
lives
> one might value more highly than, say, a few million (unless those few
> million are your countrymen).
>
> So the question becomes, is it right to take innocent human lives when
> what's at risk if you don't is the loss of other innocent human lives that
> you happen to value more highly?
This is all too "floating" for me. I'm not interested in discussing ethics
at that level of abstraction without reference to concretes ...and to
concretes with some generally real-world application.
Give me some specifics - and not far-fetched ones - so I have some idea what
you are trying to get at.
> > [...T]he reason I object to [the Godzilla virus scenario] is
> > that you are creating a malevolent universe, not conducive
> > to human life. I'm not willing at this point to speculate what
> > any of us should do in such a world - except to figure out
> > as quickly as possible how to get out of it.
>
> Well, but consider, what you've just now asserted happens to be rather
close
> to what I've been saying myself from the git-go!
>
> Remember, I said the very idea of rights simply doesn't apply except in
the
> context of a society of civilized laws.
Well, in a social context, yes. Rights don't pertain if you are living alone
on a desert island with no contact with the outside world.
>I said that when the rule of law
> breaks down, as in a war, a revolution, or anarchy, we are left then with
> just a /need/ for rights -- for terms of civilized conduct among men --
that
> happens to be, for the duration of that emergency, an unfulfilled need.
And
> we are left also with a moral imperative to all in our power to remedy
that
> situation, to restore civilized society, to re-establish the rule of law.
Agreed.
>
> Is a catastrophic natural disaster similar in this respect to war,
rebellion
> and anarchy? You bet it is! ..."rights" simply aren't at issue <in this
context>. All
> that matters is surmounting the tragedy and restoring ourselves to a
> civilized world in which the rights of each and every individual can be
> equally respected and upheld.
I wouldn't go quite so far as to say rights aren't at all at issue, even
then, but generally, yes, this could be the case. Emergencies create a
different scenario where normal, civilized morality may not apply - or apply
fully.
> > > I've stated the purpose. It's to point out that the presence of
> > > "someone to blame" is not essential to the moral argument.
That's true, but so what?
<snip a section where you lost me completely>
<snip our agreement on A-bombing Japan>
> However, the moral /and/ practical reason I oppose using WMD to fight
> terrorism applies equally well to any "stop the holocaust by incinerating
> Germans" scenario. It wouldn't work /unless/ backed up by an actual
all-out
> war or by the credible threat of such.
Possibly, and this would have to be factored into the military strategizing
about it and considered in each separate context. But in that case the
British and the French would have been happy to invade.
>Remember please, the Japanese surrendered only in
> /part/ because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They also knew the invasion was
> coming.
True.
>Don't assume
> the Japanese leaders, or the Nazis, had some high regard for the value of
> human life, even of Japanese and German life. They didn't. It didn't
matter
> to them how many died as long as they, the leaders, survived in positions
of
> leadership.
Possibly - and to some considerable extent their own people accept the role
of sacrificial animals in the name of "the cause". But if it goes to that
extreme you might have to take out "the Leader" - or as with Hitler, he
commits suicide - and then all his minions crumble. In Germany at least
there were better men around to step in.
>But if we hadn't been prepared
> to invade at all, what then? It's possible then, that the killing of
> innocent civilians would have just intensified the hatred most Japanese
felt
> for us, and it would have strengthened the will of the Japanese people to
> fight on, later, with their imperialist leadership still firmly in power.
Possibly. If you are asking me to take this to the extreme, in the worst
possible imaginable situation like that, with a nation prepared for
martrydom, then I'd have to tell you we might have to be prepared to
annihilate them. What's the alternative? I certainly would not have wanted a
million American men killed in the name of avoiding the hatred of the
Japanese. Who cares that they hate us? On what rational grounds do they hate
us? We'd rather not be there killing them. We're not the ones seeking
martyrdom. We're the victims not them.
And if we sent over men to invade them that would make them happier!
The only other alternative I can see - the "modern one" - is we "half"
finish the war, demolish their military capability as best we can and then
leave them alone - as we did Saddam Hussein - with their evil men still in
power - perhaps with some conditional surrender/perhaps not - and then we
hope that they behave themselves in the years to come. Is *that* a rational
foreign - or military - policy? I don't think so.
Fred Weiss
John Harrington
"Fred Weiss" <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:te75ad1...@corp.supernews.com...
<snip>
> The one and only principle in operation here on the basis of rational
> egoism is to end the war as quickly as possible with the least amount of
> casualities on our side. While it is immoral to gratuitously kill
civilians,
> there is no principle in war to avoid killing them if it serves a proper
> military purpose. And that was precisely the thinking - the correct
> thinking- in A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither of which cities I
> suspect were major military centers. But the bombing of them served a
> military purpose: to thoroughly terrify the Japanese and to warn them that
> we were prepared to annihilate them if they didn't surrender and surrender
> quickly and unconditionally.
Suppose instead of fighting the Japanese military, we were fighting a virus
created by Japanese scientists. Suppose further that the only way to find a
cure to the virus was to experiment on Japanese children. Truman and his
general staff decide that, in order to win the war against the disease,
which is killing, say, millions of Americans and has the potential of
killing many more millions, we are justified in experimenting on Japanese
children.
As are deaths from radition sickness, the deaths of these children will
necessarily be slow and painful, but assume that if the experiments are
allowed to go forward, we are practically assured of eventually discovering
drugs to combat and eradicate the virus.
How does this hypothetical differ significantly from the actual bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Would such experiments on Japanese children be
justified? If so, how many children would be "excessive"? Or would any
number necessary to stop the virus be excessive? Say 1000? 100,000? A
million?
These are *not* rhetorical questions. I would like to see answers, please.
John
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
John Harrington <jbay...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:Zl3F6.3325$Ee1.2...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>
> Suppose instead of fighting the Japanese military, we were fighting a
virus
> created by Japanese scientists. Suppose further that the only way to find
a
> cure to the virus was to experiment on Japanese children. Truman and his
> general staff decide that, in order to win the war against the disease,
> which is killing, say, millions of Americans and has the potential of
> killing many more millions, we are justified in experimenting on Japanese
> children.
>
> How does this hypothetical differ significantly from the actual bombings
of
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Would such experiments on Japanese children be
> justified? If so, how many children would be "excessive"? Or would any
> number necessary to stop the virus be excessive? Say 1000? 100,000? A
> million?
>
> These are *not* rhetorical questions. I would like to see answers,
please.
The issue is whether one is defending against aggression. You have a right
to defend yourself against attack, and your response must be directed to
that end.
What you put forward, is attacking the innocent as the end. (Which is
different from unintended collateral damage)
--
Arnold
John Harrington
"Arnold Broese-van-Groenou" <bro...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:nM3F6.7008$EQ3.2...@ozemail.com.au...
What agression were the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki guilty of?
> What you put forward, is attacking the innocent as the end.
Let's say the intention of the experiements in the hypothetical is to find a
cure for a virus, not kill children. Killing some children is merely a
consequence of the experiments, though not all children involved will die.
> (Which is different from unintended collateral damage)
If I drive my car through a crowd of people and kill a few, does it matter
that my "intention" was to get to work faster? Or am I responsble for the
deaths I caused?
John
Ken Gardner
>> But I was very careful to say that the innocent civilians in Hiroshima
>> and Nagasaki still had rights, and therefore there was a corresponding
>> duty on us to minimize civilian casaulties to the fullest extent
>> possible.
>So, it is ok to violate rights...so long as it's kept to a minimum.
No, it's _not_ okay. I'm saying that there is a rights violation, but the
Japanese government is the actual violater in this situation because of
their irrational refusal to end the war, with the consequence that there
were going to be extremely heavy casaulties one way or the other.
[...]
Ken
Tom Robertson
<snip>
>The one and only principle in operation here on the basis of rational
>egoism is to end the war as quickly as possible with the least amount of
>casualities on our side. While it is immoral to gratuitously kill civilians,
>there is no principle in war to avoid killing them if it serves a proper
>military purpose. And that was precisely the thinking - the correct
>thinking- in A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither of which cities I
>suspect were major military centers. But the bombing of them served a
>military purpose: to thoroughly terrify the Japanese and to warn them that
>we were prepared to annihilate them if they didn't surrender and surrender
>quickly and unconditionally.
I've never understood why, if the primary point of contention that was
prolonging the war was whether the Japanese could keep their Emperor
or not, and, once the Allies received the Japanese unconditional
surrender, they still allowed them to keep their Emperor, the atomic
bombs were dropped.
<snip>
John Harrington
kesga...@home.com wrote on 4/23/01 6:37 PM:
The U.S. also refused to end the war, with the consequence that there were
going to be extremely heavy casualties one way or the other.
John
Ken Gardner
>> No, it's _not_ okay. I'm saying that there is a rights violation, but
>> the Japanese government is the actual violater in this situation
>> because of their irrational refusal to end the war, with the
>> consequence that there were going to be extremely heavy casaulties one
>> way or the other.
>The U.S. also refused to end the war, with the consequence that there
>were going to be extremely heavy casualties one way or the other.
Are you saying that the United States should have decided to end the war
itself, instead of dropping the nukes or invading Japan?
Ken
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
The intent was defence on the part of the allies. Understand that the deaths
of the above children did not benefit them. The allies would have preferred
the kids were all away on a picnic 50 miles away I warrent. They were in the
wrong place at the wrong time. They were colateral damage. It's what happens
when your government goes to war. It makes you a potential target, even if
an inadvertant one. If you think it possible to defend yourself without
hurting innocents, please let me know how.
>
> > What you put forward, is attacking the innocent as the end.
>
> Let's say the intention of the experiements in the hypothetical is to find
a
> cure for a virus, not kill children. Killing some children is merely a
> consequence of the experiments, though not all children involved will die.
As you put it, the children are being sacrificed to you, although they did
you no harm. Defence should be against initiators of force. If innocents get
in the way they cannot blame you for defending yourself. Your scenario is
completely different in that you have not been attacked by any individual.
> > (Which is different from unintended collateral damage)
>
> If I drive my car through a crowd of people and kill a few, does it matter
> that my "intention" was to get to work faster? Or am I responsble for the
> deaths I caused?
Of course intention matters. If you drove into a crowd for a good reason,
you are not as blameworthy as you would be for a bad reason.
Responsibility goes with volition. If you chose to drive into a crowd, one
needs to evaluate the circumstances surrounding the choice before passing
judgement.
For example, the alternatives might have been worse.
--
Arnold
Robert J. Kolker
Ken Gardner wrote:
>
> Are you saying that the United States should have decided to end the war
> itself, instead of dropping the nukes or invading Japan?
Given the rage and anger against Japan (because of the
Pearl Harbor attack) there was no way the war would
be ended prior to grinding the Japanese into the mud.
It was Get Even Time.
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns908CD1A24BD8k...@24.4.0.74...
> Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> >> But I was very careful to say that the innocent civilians in Hiroshima
> >> and Nagasaki still had rights, and therefore there was a corresponding
> >> duty on us to minimize civilian casaulties to the fullest extent
> >> possible.
>
> >So, it is ok to violate rights...so long as it's kept to a minimum.
>
> No, it's _not_ okay. I'm saying that there is a rights violation, but the
> Japanese government is the actual violater in this situation ,,.
So when we dropped the A-bombs *we* weren't violating any rights, the
Japanese gov't was.
Is that what you are saying?
I agree with that but I'm not entirely sure that's the position *you* want
to maintain. Consider its full implications in connection with objections
you've raised to our position in the past.
Fred Weiss
Ken Gardner
>Given the rage and anger against Japan (because of the
>Pearl Harbor attack) there was no way the war would
>be ended prior to grinding the Japanese into the mud.
>It was Get Even Time.
Not only that, but also there was everything that happened between that
attack and the day on which Truman decided to drop the bomb. Not to mention
to incredible price for the Munich appeasement that had just been paid in
Europe.
Ken
Ken Gardner
>> No, it's _not_ okay. I'm saying that there is a rights violation, but
>> the Japanese government is the actual violater in this situation ,,.
>So when we dropped the A-bombs *we* weren't violating any rights, the
>Japanese gov't was.
>Is that what you are saying?
Yes, under the extraordinary circumstances of this particular example.
>I agree with that but I'm not entirely sure that's the position *you*
>want to maintain. Consider its full implications in connection with
>objections you've raised to our position in the past.
The objection I've raised in the past is when the use of retaliatory force
is excessive, i.e. in situations in which the punishment is far worse than
the crime (e.g. shooting a shoplifter) or when innocent people are punished
in addition to the guilty in situations in which such punishments could have
reasonably been avoided (e.g. nuking the shoplifter's neighborhood).
Ken
John Harrington
kesga...@home.com wrote on 4/23/01 9:51 PM:
What would the consequences be of doing so?
John
John Harrington
at bro...@ozemail.com.au wrote on 4/23/01 10:13 PM:
What if the researchers trying to find a cure in my hypothetical would
prefer that they didn't have to experiment on children?
> They were in the
> wrong place at the wrong time. They were colateral damage. It's what happens
> when your government goes to war.
Why is it inevitable that civilian cities be bombed in wartime? Or is it?
> It makes you a potential target, even if
> an inadvertant one.
Did the children of Naga and Hiro "go to war" and thereby make themselves
potential targets?
> If you think it possible to defend yourself without
> hurting innocents, please let me know how.
How do you define innocents? Wouldn't fighting on the battlefield at least
reduce hurting non-coms?
>>> What you put forward, is attacking the innocent as the end.
>>
>> Let's say the intention of the experiements in the hypothetical is to find
> a
>> cure for a virus, not kill children. Killing some children is merely a
>> consequence of the experiments, though not all children involved will die.
>
> As you put it, the children are being sacrificed to you, although they did
> you no harm.
Do you mean the children in Naga and Hiro were "sacrificed" to the
servicemen who didn't want to die fighting the Japanese?
> Defence should be against initiators of force.
Do you mean the children of Naga and Hiro were "initiators of force"?
> If innocents get
> in the way they cannot blame you for defending yourself. Your scenario is
> completely different in that you have not been attacked by any individual.
In my scenario, are the scientists who created the virus individuals like
the Japanese military were individuals in the case of the Hiro and Naga
bombings?
>
>>> (Which is different from unintended collateral damage)
>>
>> If I drive my car through a crowd of people and kill a few, does it matter
>> that my "intention" was to get to work faster? Or am I responsble for the
>> deaths I caused?
>
> Of course intention matters.
Did I say intention doesn't matter?
> If you drove into a crowd for a good reason,
> you are not as blameworthy as you would be for a bad reason.
What if I threw a bomb into the crowd? Did Timothy McVeigh murder those
children in the day care center of that OK City federal building or were
they collateral damage?
> Responsibility goes with volition. If you chose to drive into a crowd, one
> needs to evaluate the circumstances surrounding the choice before passing
> judgement.
> For example, the alternatives might have been worse.
So are you saying that if the alternatives might be worse, we are justified
in killing innocents, even when those innocents don't, as you say, "initiate
force"?
What if the alternatives are not merely possibly worse but certainly worse?
Suppose I need a heart transplant but can't find any donor soon enough,
would I be justified in killing someone to take their heart, if I had a
family to support and the person I took the heart from was unmarried and
childless?
John
David Friedman
Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> So when we dropped the A-bombs *we* weren't violating any rights, the
> Japanese gov't was.
One possible position is that if we killed the minimal number of people
necessary to defend ourselves, their rights violation is the fault of
the Japanese government, but that any deaths beyond that are our
responsibility.
The problem with that out is that "necessary" isn't very well defined.
Either you interpret it strictly, and we can't kill any innocents as
long as there is any other way of winning, not matter how costly, or you
end up with the position (which I think Fred has asserted) that we can
kill an unlimited number of innocents in order to save one American
life. Neither strikes me as very persuasive.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
David Friedman
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou <bro...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> The intent was defence on the part of the allies. Understand that the deaths
> of the above children did not benefit them. The allies would have preferred
> the kids were all away on a picnic 50 miles away I warrent.
That might be true of Japanese children at Hiroshima. It was not true of
German civilians killed by allied bombers. We were quite deliberately
targetting the civilian population, in part because civilians are also
productive workers, in part, probably, in the hope that if we hurt the
Germans badly enough they would surrender, and in part, probably, from
sheer vengefulness.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
James E. Prescott
> On 22 Apr 2001, James E. Prescott wrote:
>
> > Nothing wrong with that, but what's the point of it? Suppose, as I
> > suggested to Ken, that the threat were not from any person or any
> > government whatsoever. [...]
>
> I do not think it is proper to sacrifice innocent human lives. That is
> why it IS proper, in some situations, to attack a dictatorship which
> initiates force against American citizens and to do it as quickly
> and as effectively as possible.
Yes, Betsy. I understand and I agree with that, as I said at the start.
My question to you was, what difference would it make, if any, in a case
where there were NO dictatorship, and NO other human wrongful act, causing
the threat to human life. Would you STILL say it's right (or still say it's
not right) to take innocent human life for the sake of saving other innocent
human life?
> Such a dictatorship, by its own aggression, is putting its own
> citizens in jeopardy. The dictator is the one sacrificing the
> innocent, not the people trying to stop him.
Yes, you keep saying that, as if you're fixating on it for the sake of just
not thinking about the question I asked you. That can't possibly be right,
can it? That would be, well, evasion. So, just suppose that it's an animal
that is threatening innocent people, including, say, your beloved spouse,
and suppose that the only way to kill that animal is to kill a lot of
innocent people along with it.
> > Let's suppose, for example, that a deadly new virus ...
> There is no need for science fiction scenarios when there are plenty of
> real dictators with international military ambitions we might consider.
Consider those dictators all you want, but considering them alone evades the
fundamental moral issue: Are rights something you are born with?
Metaphysical absolutes? As such, is it always wrong to violate those in-born
rights, even when the failure to do so would cost the lives of innocent
people?
My point is, the Objectivist theory of rights -- as understood by yourself
and others, Betsy -- just isn't well worked out, and this illustration
/proves/ it. And your unwillingness even to discuss the question is a
further indication of the weakness of the theory you hold to be true.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Fred Weiss
"David Friedman" <dd...@best.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-ABD67A.0...@news.wwc.com...
> In article <2Y7F6.7134$EQ3.2...@ozemail.com.au>,
>It was not true of
> German civilians killed by allied bombers. We were quite deliberately
> targetting the civilian population, in part because civilians are also
> productive workers, in part, probably, in the hope that if we hurt the
> Germans badly enough they would surrender, and in part, probably, from
> sheer vengefulness.
These air raids were a sign that the "Battle of Britain" had been won and
that the war was now being taken *to Germany* where it had begun.
AsI understand it, it did hurt the Germans badly. It drained considerable
resources in men and materiale from the front where our soldiers were being
killed. Instead they had to bring in anti-aircraft batteries and the
manpower to employ them, they needed rescue crews, medical personnel,
medical supplies, they needed to find housing for survivors, they needed to
rebuild factories and transportation facilities, etc, etc.
And if this is supposed to be any factor (which it shouldn't be), there is
no evidence of which I am aware that it made the Germans angrier at us and
thereby hardened their resolve and improved their fighting resolve (as it
did the British). But if I had to guess it was that it sapped their morale
and made them realize that they had unleashed a hornet's nest and were
facing a formidable opponent that was prepared to inflict enormous damage on
them.
Fred Weiss
John Harrington
> The problem with that out is that "necessary" isn't very well defined.
> Either you interpret it strictly, and we can't kill any innocents as
> long as there is any other way of winning, not matter how costly, or you
> end up with the position (which I think Fred has asserted) that we can
> kill an unlimited number of innocents in order to save one American
> life. Neither strikes me as very persuasive.
Very well said.
John
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
news:Xns908D5596A49F9...@24.4.0.74...
> The objection I've raised in the past is when the use of retaliatory force
> is excessive, i.e. in situations in which the punishment is far worse than
> the crime (e.g. shooting a shoplifter)..
Had someone suggested shooting shoplifters? You think Arab terrorism is
equivalent to shoplifting??
I thought we were discussing more like the equivalent of people leaving
bombs in shops and killing innocent shoppers. I guess that could be
considered "lifting" the shop in some sense.
>..... or when innocent people are punished
> in addition to the guilty in situations in which such punishments could
have
> reasonably been avoided (e.g. nuking the shoplifter's neighborhood).
Had someone suggested nuking shoplifter's neighborhoods?
I thought we were discussing nuking "neighborhoods" where there are dens of
such bombers, along with their supporters who hail them as heroes and
martyrs, and where they get all the official support they need to keep doing
it - not merely as the equivalent of an occasional teenage prank, but as a
matter of national policy.
Maybe I need to remind you (and David) of something, the MidEast is not
enfused with the spirit of freedom and constitutional law. It is ruled by
socialist and theocratic dictators and medieval monarchs who are enriched by
selling to us - at probably at least 3x times the market level - the oil
which we discovered and developed and which they stole from us.
Are these the shoplifters you are referring to?
Fred Weiss
James E. Prescott
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
> news:006e01c0ccba$71712e00$44b2fea9@prescott...
> > [...I]s it right to take innocent human lives when
> > what's at risk if you don't is the loss of other innocent
> > human lives that you happen to value more highly?
> [...]
> Give me some specifics - and not far-fetched ones -
> so I have some idea what you are trying to get at.
The scenario I described is not far-fetched. A world war is a tragedy far,
far more unlikely than the outbreak of an Ebola-type virus in a major
population center.
> > [...]
> > Remember, I said the very idea of rights simply doesn't
> > apply except in the context of a society of civilized laws.
>
> Well, in a social context, yes. Rights don't pertain if you are
> living alone on a desert island with no contact with the outside
> world.
Questions illuminating the fundamental nature of rights include these: Do
rights pertain in the jungle, where there are plenty of other human beings
around but none of whom, but you, have any concept of or regard for them? Do
rights apply in the midst of a natural disaster, when the normal rule of law
has broken down and we find ourselves on the brink of utter chaos? Are the
declaration of martial law, the imposition of curfews, the suspension of
press freedom, and the forced quarantine of citizens, etc., all
/illegitimate/ acts that ought never be done by a moral Objectivist
government, because they violate rights?
My answer is no, to all those questions. And furthermore I say, if someone
doesn't comprehend /why/ the answer is no, then he hasn't really
comprehended the meaning of the Objectivist concept of rights at all.
> [...G]enerally, yes, this could be the case. Emergencies create a
> different scenario where normal, civilized morality may not apply
> - or apply fully.
Good. That's gets close to it.
> > > > I've stated the purpose. It's to point out that the
> > > > presence of "someone to blame" is not essential
> > > > to the moral argument.
>
> That's true, but so what?
So nothing. I was asking Betsy, remember, whether /she/ agreed with you and
I that you don't need someone to blame for the deaths in order to say that
self-defense (against a natural threat) is still morally right even if it
costs the lives of innocent people.
> <snip a section where you lost me completely>
Aha. Sorry. In that brief section I was reminding you of /my/ position. I
say rights are not something men and women are "born with," but are instead
the product of a /moral commitment/ given among men and women to refrain
from the use of force in their relationships, all for the sake of mutual
trade, prosperity and happiness. I was reminding you that, by this approach,
the Objectivist idea of rights -- as sanctions to act positively on one's
own behalf without interference -- is logically consistent. By the
alternative idea advocated by Betsy and others -- namely, that rights are
something you are born with, applying to new born infants and to savages in
the jungle as equally as to adults in a civilized society -- the idea is
self-contradictory and breaks down when you pose these simple moral
questions about it. Weapon of mass destruction, whether used in a war or
used to eradicate a simple natural threat, would be seen as violating the
"in-born rights" of those who die from it.
I think we agree, pretty much, about the history and moral implications of
WWII.
> [...]
> [...I]f it goes to that extreme you might have to take
> out "the Leader" - or as with Hitler, he commits suicide
> - and then all his minions crumble. In Germany at least
> there were better men around to step in.
There were better men in Japan, too. The problem is, in Germany and Japan
alike it wasn't just a single man but was a gang of men, of thugs, a
criminal clique, a dictatorship /government/, that was responsible for the
evil. (In Japan, the Emperor wasn't even considered a member of this
criminal gang. He was never put on trial. He was even allowed to remain
Emperor.) So you can't just cut off the head. It'll sprout a new head.
You've got to uproot it entirely. And that means overthrowing the
government, completely, and establishing a new government. You just can't do
that with WMD, which is why I said, alone, they are fairly pointless and
powerless -- except as a deterrent to aggression. They can have great effect
/if/ they are used against an aggressor government /in conjunction/ with a
call for the unconditional surrender of and complete disbanding of that
government, to be enforced by a period of military occupation.
> [...]
> The only other alternative I can see - the "modern one" - is
> we "half" finish the war, demolish their military capability as
> best we can and then leave them alone - as we did Saddam
> Hussein - with their evil men still in power - perhaps with
> some conditional surrender/perhaps not - and then we
> hope that they behave themselves in the years to come. Is
> *that* a rational foreign - or military - policy? I don't think so.
I don't think so, either.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
Fred Weiss
"David Friedman" <dd...@best.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-489058.0...@news.wwc.com...
> One possible position is that if we killed the minimal number of people
> necessary to defend ourselves, their rights violation is the fault of
> the Japanese government, but that any deaths beyond that are our
> responsibility.
I think the principle is: the gratuitous killing of innocent civilians, a
killing of civilians which serves no legitimate military purpose. For that
matter there can also be the gratuitous killing of enemy soldiers.e.g after
they have surrendered.
> The problem with that out is that "necessary" isn't very well defined.
That's possible and in the nature of the situation tragic mistakes are
inevitable. We sometimes kill our own people by mistake.
> Either you interpret it strictly, and we can't kill any innocents as
> long as there is any other way of winning, not matter how costly, ...
I think we're all agreed that's not acceptable but it would certainly be
immoral on the Objectivist ethics, i.e. it would be self-sacrificial.
or you
> end up with the position (which I think Fred has asserted) that we can
> kill an unlimited number of innocents in order to save one American
> life.
I'm actually inclined to that view, but at the extreme I could easily be
persuaded otherwise. But at the very least I would say that we should try to
minimize our casualities and end the war as quickly as possible, even if
that means killing a great many of their civilians (some of whom may very
well be innocent). (And, please, we are discussing national policy now, not
matters that can be handled by the police. We can't send a few cops over to
the Mideast to arrest their terrorists.)
This however is on the assumption that our actions are justified. We all
seem to be basically in agreement on Japan and Germany but we continue to
disagree about the Arabs (and for David's sake) ...and the Iranians.
I also assume the Red Chinese. Incidentally, if I'm reading the papers
correctly (and I may not be, I'm just glancing at the news these days),
we've already capitulated on not supplying the full contingent of arms which
Taiwan requested. All the signs are there that we will continue to appease
the Reds.
If history is to be our guide, that is a very, very dangerous course of
action. And I don't want to have to hear Bob Kolker again declare, "woulda,
coulda, shoulda, what do we NOW".
Fred Weiss
Owl
> necessary to defend ourselves, their rights violation is the fault of
> the Japanese government, but that any deaths beyond that are our
> responsibility.
>
> The problem with that out is that "necessary" isn't very well defined.
> Either you interpret it strictly, and we can't kill any innocents as
> long as there is any other way of winning, not matter how costly, or you
> end up with the position (which I think Fred has asserted) that we can
> kill an unlimited number of innocents in order to save one American
> life. Neither strikes me as very persuasive.
Suppose we interpret it liberally, but with the following proviso (to
eliminate the latter horn of your dilemma): we may not use means of winning
the war that cause an overall greater harm than the harm of our losing the
war would be. Thus, if the Iranians (say) are causing the deaths of 1
American citizen per year, we may undertake means to prevent that that
include killing up to 1 innocent person per year.
Perhaps the proviso should be modified as follows: that we should include in
our calculation only harm to innocents. Thus, we could kill any number of
evil dictators, but not any number of his unwilling subjects.
Fred Weiss
"James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
news:002101c0cd75$06b88e80$44b2fea9@prescott...
> Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> The scenario I described is not far-fetched. A world war is a tragedy far,
> far more unlikely than the outbreak of an Ebola-type virus in a major
> population center.
Alright. And? In the event of a health emergency I believe the gov't can
take measures, not normally permissible, such as quarantines, etc. Someone
with a deadly communicable disease is equivalent - in its threat to others -
to someone walking around with a loaded gun.
> Questions illuminating the fundamental nature of rights include these: Do
> rights pertain in the jungle, where there are plenty of other human beings
> around but none of whom, but you, have any concept of or regard for them?
Of course. That they don't recognize my rights doesn't mean I abdicate them.
If they attack me, I defend myself (the right of self-defense).
>Do
> rights apply in the midst of a natural disaster, when the normal rule of
law
> has broken down and we find ourselves on the brink of utter chaos? Are the
> declaration of martial law, the imposition of curfews, the suspension of
> press freedom, and the forced quarantine of citizens, etc., all
> /illegitimate/ acts that ought never be done by a moral Objectivist
> government, because they violate rights?
With regard to emergencies I'd never say "never". I'm a little nervous about
censorship, but I haven't thought it through if it could be justifiable in
certain instances.
All of these measures are acceptable only on the understanding that they
last only as long as necessary and not a moment longer.
> > > > > I've stated the purpose. It's to point out that the
> > > > > presence of "someone to blame" is not essential
> > > > > to the moral argument.
> >
> > That's true, but so what?
>
> So nothing. I was asking Betsy, ..
Oh, Ok. I'll leave that to you and Betsy. But I'm still don't know what the
issue is.
> Aha. Sorry. In that brief section I was reminding you of /my/ position. I
> say rights are not something men and women are "born with," but are
instead
> the product of a /moral commitment/ given among men and women to refrain
> from the use of force in their relationships, all for the sake of mutual
> trade, prosperity and happiness. I was reminding you that, by this
approach,
> the Objectivist idea of rights -- as sanctions to act positively on one's
> own behalf without interference -- is logically consistent. By the
> alternative idea advocated by Betsy and others -- namely, that rights are
> something you are born with, applying to new born infants and to savages
in
> the jungle as equally as to adults in a civilized society -- the idea is
> self-contradictory and breaks down when you pose these simple moral
> questions about it. Weapon of mass destruction, whether used in a war or
> used to eradicate a simple natural threat, would be seen as violating the
> "in-born rights" of those who die from it.
I'm still not following but let me ask you this if it'll help clarify: do
you think that new born infants and savages *don't* have rights?
>You just can't do
> that with WMD, which is why I said, alone, they are fairly pointless and
> powerless -- except as a deterrent to aggression.
Well, that's sufficient for me.
>They can have great effect
> /if/ they are used against an aggressor government /in conjunction/ with a
> call for the unconditional surrender of and complete disbanding of that
> government, to be enforced by a period of military occupation.
If we want to go that far.
I've raised an interesting question in my own mind on that subject that I
want to think about more - even with regard to Germany and Japan, i.e.
whether it was (and in the future, is) necessary to go and occupy ...and
reform them. It did work brilliantly in both cases, I admit. But is that
necessarily our mission and do we need to do that in all cases? I don't
know.
Fred Weiss
Tom Robertson
>Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote on April 22, 2001:
<snip>
>> It's not "other" innocent lives - it's *yours* ...or in this context
>> ours, our country's, the victims. No one should take on the
>> impossible assignment of, per se, saving innocent lives.
>
>It's not always impossible. It's not always ours we save. Better to say,
>it's "lives that are valued more highly." Naturally, one values one's own
>life more highly than that of a strange. You might, I suppose, value your
>spouse's life even more highly than your own. And a billion strangers' lives
>one might value more highly than, say, a few million (unless those few
>million are your countrymen).
<snip>
>the very idea of rights simply doesn't apply except in the
>context of a society of civilized laws.
<snip>
>If, for
>/any/ reason, what I call "the social contract" -- the mutual moral
>commitment among political equals that they will each refrain from
>initiating force against the others for the shared moral purpose of trade,
>prosperity and happiness -- breaks down and is unenforceable (in this
>Godzilla scenario because /life itself/ is impossible, to say nothing of
>trade, prosperity and happiness!), then "rights" simply aren't at issue. All
>that matters is surmounting the tragedy and restoring ourselves to a
>civilized world in which the rights of each and every individual can be
>equally respected and upheld.
If that's all that matters, then how could minimizing the number of
deaths it takes to accomplish it be a matter of morality? Or am I
just interpreting your "all" too literally?
<snip>
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Tom Robertson
If killing hundreds of thousands of people who were all thousands of
miles away from the United States is justified because they killed a
few thousand of our men a few years earlier and might be a threat
again someday, then maybe rounding up and killing the families of
criminals is justified, since they might be a threat to society
someday. Maybe Hitler's invasion of Poland was in self-defense.
Maybe Stalin's purges were in self-defense. After all, one of all
those millions of people might have killed him.
*
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Betsy Speicher
> Betsy Speicher <be...@speicher.com> wrote on Monday, April 23, 2001:
> > I do not think it is proper to sacrifice innocent human lives. That is
> > why it IS proper, in some situations, to attack a dictatorship which
> > initiates force against American citizens and to do it as quickly
> > and as effectively as possible.
> My question to you was, what difference would it make, if any, in a case
> where there were NO dictatorship, and NO other human wrongful act, causing
> the threat to human life. Would you STILL say it's right (or still say it's
> not right) to take innocent human life for the sake of saving other innocent
> human life?
To assume the human life, absent any violation of rights, requires
innocent people to be prepared for kill- or-be-killed scenarios in which
they need to sacrifice each other in order to survive is to go against all
of my personal experience and my knowledge of history.
If the universe really were that malevolent, Objectivism would not apply.
Fortunately the universe is open to the rational efforts of man and men
can and do deal profitably with each other without sacrificing anybody.
> So, just suppose that it's an animal that is threatening innocent
> people, including, say, your beloved spouse, and suppose that the only
> way to kill that animal is to kill a lot of innocent people along with
> it.
I really hadn't considered it and I probably never will considering how
unlikely that is to occurs. If it ever did, what I would do would depend
on the ACTUAL situation and what options I ACTUALLY had. Theoretical
speculations, a priori, would be useless.
> My point is, the Objectivist theory of rights -- as understood by yourself
> and others, Betsy -- just isn't well worked out, and this illustration
> /proves/ it. And your unwillingness even to discuss the question is a
> further indication of the weakness of the theory you hold to be true.
If you find it a "weakness" that Objectivism doesn't work in a malevolent
universe, you're right. Bit it does work -- very well, thank you -- in
the universe _I_ live in.
Betsy Speicher
You'll know Objectivism is winning when ... you read the CyberNet -- the
most complete and comprehensive e-mail news source about Objectivists,
their activities, and their victories. Request a sample issue at
cybe...@speicher.com or visit http://www.stauffercom.com/cybernet/
James E. Prescott
> "James E. Prescott" <jep...@kornet.net> wrote in message
> news:002101c0cd75$06b88e80$44b2fea9@prescott...
> > Fred Weiss <pape...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> > The scenario I described is not far-fetched. A world war is a
> > tragedy far, far more unlikely than the outbreak of an Ebola-
> > type virus in a major population center.
>
> Alright. And? In the event of a health emergency I believe the
> gov't can take measures, not normally permissible, such as
> quarantines, etc. Someone with a deadly communicable
> disease is equivalent - in its threat to others - to someone
> walking around with a loaded gun.
Agreed. But I was suggesting you be careful not to suppose that you must be
able to attach moral /blame/ on some person(s) in order to justify the
action. You say, they are like persons walking around with a loaded gun.
Well, that's true. And that's a moral breach for which you can blame them.
Perhaps. But perhaps they aren't the ones infected at all. Perhaps they are
just people doing nothing whatsoever except "being" in Tokyo when the bomb
is dropped. Must you find, then, someone else on whom to attach the blame
for their deaths?
I'm not saying you are doing that! Don't get me wrong.
It's just that when I ask /Betsy/ how she can justify the killing, she says
it's justified _because_ the Japanese government is at fault. But that's
illogical! The Japanese government was indeed at fault in WWII. Betsy's
right about that much. But that wasn't what "justified" the bombing! It
wouldn't have mattered had the threat been from a virus instead of from a
government. The bombing was justified because it was the only way to spare
the lives of a million or more people. The affixing of moral blame is not
essential. At least I don't think so (Betsy apparently does).
This may seem obvious to you. If so, pardon me for addressing it at such
length.
> [...]
> I'm still not following but let me ask you this if it'll help clarify: do
> you think that new born infants and savages *don't* have rights?
Rights are moral-legal sanctions to act for oneself within specific limits,
guided by one's own reason, in a social context. And rights are acquired, I
say, by apprehending, affirming and /adhering/ to the moral principle of
renouncing the use of physical force among reason-guided beings, in favor of
free trade as political equals. That's the "moral commitment" at the base of
rights, as I tried to explain.
So, yes. Obviously, new born infants and savages do /not/ have rights.
This doesn't mean it's right to do them harm. This doesn't mean doing them
harm is a rightful act (is an act within one's rights; it isn't). And it
doesn't mean that harming infants, or harming savages, either is lawful or
ought to be lawful. That's not the point! The point is, infants and savages
aren't parties to the moral commitment that forms the foundation of the
political concept of rights. Infants and savages /benefit/ from the rightful
protection of other human beings. They are NOT protected because they have
"a right to be protected." Rather, they are protected from harm because we,
you and I and others -- as members of a civilized, rights-based society of
laws -- have the right to protect them.
> I've raised an interesting question in my own mind on that subject that I
> want to think about more - even with regard to Germany and Japan, i.e.
> whether it was (and in the future, is) necessary to go and occupy ...and
> reform them. It did work brilliantly in both cases, I admit. But is that
> necessarily our mission and do we need to do that in all cases? I don't
> know.
It's a troubling question I know. I don't think there's one answer to cover
all cases. When the cost in terms of American lives is not too great, then I
think, yes, we ought do what we did for Germany and Japan. But we can't save
every nation everywhere on earth.
Best Wishes,
Jim P.
John Harrington
"Owl" <a@a.a> wrote in message news:9c4gbs$7k$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
If we could find a cure to a plague that killed millions by experimenting on
5 children, would the experiments be justified? No? What if their parents
were responsible for unleashing the plague on mankind? Would it then be
merely a question of their parents "forcing" us to experiment on the
children? Or, at this point, do the actions of the parents really make any
difference wrt our behavior towards their children?
John
Robert J. Kolker
John Harrington wrote:
> children? Or, at this point, do the actions of the parents really make any
> difference wrt our behavior towards their children?
Shall the sins of the parents be visited upon their children?
I hope not.
Bob Kolker
Ken Gardner
>>> The U.S. also refused to end the war, with the consequence that there
>>> were going to be extremely heavy casualties one way or the other.
>> Are you saying that the United States should have decided to end the war
>> itself, instead of dropping the nukes or invading Japan?
>What would the consequences be of doing so?
Tell you what. You answer my question first because I asked it first, and
please explain if your answer is anything other than an unqualified "no." I
might be able to answer your question in the course of responding to your
answer to my question.
Ken
Ken Gardner
> One possible position is that if we killed the minimal number of people
> necessary to defend ourselves, their rights violation is the fault of
> the Japanese government, but that any deaths beyond that are our
> responsibility.
That's essentially my position, at least if you limit it to the wartime
context.
> The problem with that out is that "necessary" isn't very well defined.
> Either you interpret it strictly, and we can't kill any innocents as
> long as there is any other way of winning, not matter how costly, or you
> end up with the position (which I think Fred has asserted) that we can
> kill an unlimited number of innocents in order to save one American
> life. Neither strikes me as very persuasive.
I think this is a false alternative. The truth is somewhere in between and
really depends on the circumstances of each particular case, although IMO
the truth is probably much closer to the first interpretation than the
second.
Ken
Ken Gardner
> And if this is supposed to be any factor (which it shouldn't be), there
> is no evidence of which I am aware that it made the Germans angrier at
> us and thereby hardened their resolve and improved their fighting
> resolve (as it did the British). But if I had to guess it was that it
> sapped their morale and made them realize that they had unleashed a
> hornet's nest and were facing a formidable opponent that was prepared
> to inflict enormous damage on them.
My guess is that the ordinary German civilian was much more worried about
the Russians than they ever were about us or the British. If it were up
solely to them, they would have surrendered to us long before they actually
did. Unfortunately, the allies had already cut a deal with Stalin on how
Germany was going to be handled after the war. Not exactly one of the
proudest moments in U.S. history.
Ken
Ken Gardner
>> The objection I've raised in the past is when the use of retaliatory
>> force is excessive, i.e. in situations in which the punishment is far
>> worse than the crime (e.g. shooting a shoplifter)..
>Had someone suggested shooting shoplifters? You think Arab terrorism is
>equivalent to shoplifting??
The point here is you don't punish innocent people more severely based on
how serious the crimes of the guilty are. You punish the _guilty_ more
severely.
>I thought we were discussing more like the equivalent of people leaving
>bombs in shops and killing innocent shoppers. I guess that could be
>considered "lifting" the shop in some sense.
I must confess that I haven't thought of it exactly that way....:)
>> ..... or when innocent people are punished
>> in addition to the guilty in situations in which such punishments
>> could have reasonably been avoided (e.g. nuking the shoplifter's
>> neighborhood).
>Had someone suggested nuking shoplifter's neighborhoods?
Literally, not yet. But has someone suggested nuking an entire city of 10
million because of the presence of some guilty people in the city? Yes.
They have even proposed giving the guilty 48 hours to evacuate before
starting the attack.
>I thought we were discussing nuking "neighborhoods" where there are dens
>of such bombers, along with their supporters who hail them as heroes and
>martyrs, and where they get all the official support they need to keep
>doing it - not merely as the equivalent of an occasional teenage prank,
>but as a matter of national policy.
The choice isn't between nuking a city and doing nothing.
>Maybe I need to remind you (and David) of something, the MidEast is not
>enfused with the spirit of freedom and constitutional law. It is ruled
>by socialist and theocratic dictators and medieval monarchs who are
>enriched by selling to us - at probably at least 3x times the market
>level - the oil which we discovered and developed and which they stole
>from us.
>Are these the shoplifters you are referring to?
I don't like them either. However, there are rational alternatives to
nuking them.
Ken