Bithead:

So, you needed to buy Sudafed in BULK? Musta been one hell of a cold.

What the fuck business is it of yours whether she needed to buy sudafed in bulk or not?

What business is it of the government’s?

War collectivism happens on both ends of the sword.

It’s certainly true that collectivism is often used to make excuses for commandeering people’s lives and property in the name of the war effort. But it’s also certainly true that collectivism is often used to make excuses for burning villages and dropping bombs on innocent people’s heads. Sometimes this is done explicitly as terrorism or collective punishment; sometimes it is done on the idea that the national military or diplomatic aims justify continuing the war by any means necessary, no matter the cost to innocent third parties.

Kennedy’s right that anti-war libertarians don’t put nearly enough stress on the first sort of collectivism. But why in the world shouldn’t one challenge the second sort of collectivism, too?

Lopez,

Right. Also once you’ve convinced yourself that what justice demands is not that you, personally, not violate anybody’s rights, but rather that you somehow or another try to minimize the total number of rights violations going around in society. After all, that frees you up for all kinds of policy wonkery and social engineering that a personal obligation to do no injustice would rule out, on principle.

But what about private efforts? Many of the illegals cross onto private land. Right now, the Federal Government forbids these private landowners from doing much of anything to restrict access to their property.

1. Could you give an example of how the Feds are doing this?

2. If immigrants are crossing onto private land with the permission of the owner, would you then recognize their right to be left alone by La Migra? Or does your concern about private property rights only extend to those who are trying to keep the mojados off their property?

As for public property, do the people who paid (against their will) for this public property have no say in the matter?

You do realize, don’t you, that this argument could be used to make “libertarian” excuses for absolutely any form of tyranny whatsoever that enjoyed majority support, don’t you? Since drug traffickers, women in prostitution, gamblers, “assault weapon” dealers, corporate managers, and anyone else doing business uses government roads and other “public property” on a daily basis, you could use this just as easily to support the War on Drugs, the War on Vice, gun control, the whole federal regulatory apparatus, etc. Thank goodness The People will have their say; I was afraid that being a libertarian might actually require me to hold out for freedom.

(From the standpoint of justice, the answer is that not everyone has an equal claim to rightful ownership of all the government property within the continental U.S. I have some claim to a share of rightful ownership of the road in front of my house, and maybe the major thoroughfare I take to work every day. I have much less of a claim to a share of rightful ownership of I-94. I have absolutely no just claim to any control over how roads by the border in El Paso or San Diego are disposed of. Those who not only fund them but also habitually use them have a claim. So rightful use can’t be determined by taking national polls: insofar as it can be determined at all — which is not very far, socialist calculation being impossible, but let’s set that aside — it will depend on the varying attitudes amongst road-users in each actual border town. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but since unscreened immigrants pay the same gasoline taxes that everyone else pays, and habitually use those roads, they have as good of a claim to a share in them as the native-born Americans.)

Patri:

It is worth considering the future liberty you might gain. Why wouldn’t it be?

Because other people’s lives are not your bargaining chips, even if you can buy greater freedom for yourself by sacrificing them. They are not yours to give.

Now, is it wrong to reach through your crystal ball and deport George W. Bush?

Maybe not. Using force against an individual in order to defend yourself against a known, concrete threat posed by that individual is often within the bounds of justice. Using force against an innocent third party in order to “defend” yourself against the vague dangers allegedly posed by the ethno-national collective of which she is a member, however, is not. You have absolutely no right to visit the presumed sins of her compatriots on her, if you have no reason for thinking that she herself will do some damage to your rights. I can think of absolutely no libertarian principle that would justify or excuse that kind of collective punishment.

Just for fun, here’s Du Toit specifically addressing gun registration databases (2003-02-26):

One of the basic disadvantages of the State knowing who is armed and who isn’t, is that the State knows who has to be disarmed, if they are to impose any kind of tyranny. …

As we saw earlier in the case of Nazi Germany, by giving the State the ability to identify gun owners, we give the State the ability to disarm us.

This is not a situation of “Trust us, we’ll never do that.” We would be incredibly naïve to fall for that nonsense. In all of history, assumption of government benevolence has been betrayed, sooner or later, and the greater the power of the State, the sooner comes the betrayal.

Gun owners know the underlying motives behind gun registration, and we are not reassured or fooled by the weasel denials of politicians. Licensing and registration constitute infringement, and that’s prohibited by the Second Amendment. Anyway, we know the progression.

Good thing that freedom of speech and association aren’t important rights like gun ownership is, or else we might have a real problem here.

If you say so. The point is simply that the passage is universally applicable, even though Aristotle happened not to recognize that it was.

scott: ok john, what ought i do? or would you like to start a new blog entry for this never-ending issue?

I think, in spite of your put-on of ignorance, you actually know some of the answer to this question, or at least some of the things that you need to get a start on answering it. In any case, if you don’t, there’s nothing I can do to help you.

For, while we must begin with what is evident, things are evident in two ways—some to us, some without qualification. Presumably, then, we must begin with things evident to us. Hence any one who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just and, generally, about the subjects of political science must have been brought up in good habits. For the fact is a starting-point, and if this is sufficiently plain to him [sic], he will not need the reason as well; and the man [sic] who has been well brought up has or can easily get starting-points. And as for him [sic] who neither has nor can get them, let him hear the words of Hesiod:

Far best is he who knows all things himself;
Good, he that hearkens when men counsel right;
But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart
Another’s wisdom, is a useless wight.

—Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Bk. I, section 4.

scott: but first one must define right and wrong, which is a problem in itself.

Says who?

“Right” and “wrong” are pieces of ordinary English. As a competant speaker of the language I am quite familiar with what they mean; I figure that you are too. One may, or may not, be able to say what they mean in the form of an articulate definition, but the ability to use them consistently and correctly isn’t dependent on being able to give the definition. It can be demonstrated simply by buckling down and applying them consistently and correctly in concrete cases.

Kennedy: I strongly suspect this is not a learned behavior at all but rather something to which men are generally predisposed.

Why?

scott: JK, how do you know what right is? and what is meant by right anyway? you can’t answer these questions without simply leading to others.

The fact that you can raise a question does not guarantee that it is a cogent one. And the fact that there are outstanding philosophical questions about ethics does not mean that no-one can competantly reason about right and wrong (any more than the fact that there are outstanding scientific questions about matter means that no-one can competantly reason about tables and chairs).