Assuming, arguendo, “that some of the land in Israel actually was stolen from individual Palestinians in the Israeli War of Independence,” Tim Starr writes:

For one thing, compensation in lieu of returning the property may be more appropriate.

Whether this is “appropriate” restitution for the crime is primarily up to the victims of the crime, not its beneficiaries (that is flagrantly immoral) and not “disinterested” third parties (how would they know?).

Also, is there no statute of limitations for land theft?

No. Why would there be? If I have some land and you throw me off of it in violation of my rights, it remains my land, not yours. Even if you get away with it for a long time. (What would you do that would have made it yours rather than mine? Sit on it? Work on it? Occupancy and use only count towards homesteading if the land is unowned to begin with.)

Furthermore, a good many Jews used to live in Islamic countries that expelled them and confiscated their property — how come that is never brought up by those who want land returned to Palestinians by Israel?

Because it’s irrelevant to the topic at hand.

You have at the most a case for convicting some advocates of Palestinian claims of anti-Semitism, or hypocrisy, or historical ignorance. But that has no bearing at all on whether or not individual victims of land theft have a right to get their own land back.

Do those Jews not have the right to have their property returned, or to receive compensation for it?

Of course they do. But the violations of their rights neither justify nor excuse the violations of individual Palestinians’ rights. Nor does it justify or excuse refusing or delaying restitution to individual Palestinians.

Also, what about compensation to the families of all the Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism?

I’m for it, provided that the compensation actually comes from the property of individual terrorists and their commanders. What has this got to do with whether or not other Palestinians who (we’ve assumed) had land stolen from them have got a right to get that land back?

Israel has also offered tens of billions of dollars in compensation to the Palestinians for any injustices they might have suffered at Israeli hands, but the Palestinians have never offered any compensation to Israel for killing Israeli civilians as a means of achieving Palestinian political goals. … In short, Israel has bent over backwards for peace in the Middle East, and the Islamo-Nazis and their international sympathizers on the commie-left and nazi-right have merely replied to each effort by saying that Israel wasn’t bending over far enough.

“Israel” has not done anything, or offered compensation to anyone. Nor have “the Palestinians” received any offers of compensation. Nor could “the Palestinians” offer any compensation. Individuals act, not ambiguous-collectives.

Maybe you mean the Israeli government has been doing a lot, and some group of people that you’ve designated the collective bargaining agent for all Palestinian people hasn’t done a lot, or hasn’t done anything, in return. Oh well; that may suck from the standpoint of the diplomatic resolution of conflicts between warring states, or quasi-states, or self-appointed states-in-exile. But what has that got to do with the land rights, or other rights, of individual Palestinian people? It’s not their job to compensate individual Israelis for things that they didn’t do; and it’s not their fault if the people who did do it aren’t paying for it.

Your comment is an exercise in shameless tribal collectivism from beginning to end.

Critto:

Well, I’m a rabid anarchocapitalist, but I’m also a gradualist. This means that I don’t believe in gaining liberty in a momental, rapid event; I totally denounce the violent revolution and I fear of chaos that may spring once the state is destroyed. Therefore, I think that the best way to achieve freedom is to gradually limit the state

That’s all very interesting, but what has it got to do with forcing people to carry “private” insurance? How is implementing more State coercion than presently exists supposed to gradually advance the cause of liberty?

Ah, sorry, I meant of course “suicide bombings of civilians”. I just haven’t heard about a whole lot of suicide bombings against military targets outside of WWII.

Sure you have. For example, Beirut (1983), the U.S.S. Cole (2000), and the Pentagon (September 11, 2001). Suicide bombing in the modern form mostly originated in the Lebanese civil war, where it was very often used against military or militia targets.

“I don’t think it justifies suicide bombings however.”

There’s nothing about suicide bombings that makes them essentially or even presumptively unjustifiable. The problem isn’t the method of delivery but rather the use of the method to attack civilians. (Would it be better if Hamas bombed innocent people from planes?)

Sorry. Pet peeve.

Lopez:

Are American blacks better off now than if their ancestors had been left alone in Africa? Let’s see: on the one hand you can have ignorant backwoods fucks calling you a coon, on the other hand you can have your neighbors chopping your family up with machetes.

1. If European marauders had left Africa, and the West African coast in particular, alone, then the political and economic situation there might be somewhat different from what it is today.

2. Who cares? At best you’ve offered a utilitarian argument in favor of free immigration here. But the question was about property rights, not about whether some other regime of theft and terror would have left them worse off in the end. From the standpoint of just compensation, what matters is how well-off they would have been if no theft had occurred, not how well-off they would have been if someone else were left to do the thieving.

Kennedy:

Being long dead, the slaves cannot be compensated and their masters cannot pay.

As an historical note, the era of chattel slavery was not the last time that Black people in the United States had their rights to person and property systematically violated. Lots of people living today remember government-enforced Jim Crow.

Kennedy:

Because B’s property is not anyone else’s. Only B’s rights are at stake. If you rob my parents you’ve violated their rights, but not mine because I had no right to their property.

If you murder my parents, do I (as an heir) have the right to demand compensatory damages for wrongful death?

heretyk:

… why do i desire happiness? i’m not sure, but i do.

If we desire happiness for its own sake, then you’ve just answered your question: we might desire something for at least one reason other than good results, viz. because it is happiness, or a constituent part of happiness.

If, on the other hand, we desire happiness only because it causally contributes to some further set of results that we desire, then we just ask why we desire that, until we reach whatever it is that we are ultimately trying to get to by means of happiness. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Point being, the appropriate question to ask in the debate over consequentialism is not, “Is there any reason to favor anything other than good results?” That’s obvious: there is, whether or not we clearly understand what those other reasons are. Neither consequentialists nor non-consequentialists hold any other position, if they have thought their position through. The live question between them is how narrow or how broad a range of things are in fact desirable for their own sake. Moral consequentialists typically say that the range is pretty narrow, or at least that it must categorically exclude certain sorts of things. (E.G.: non-psychological things, or things of which no human is aware, or specific performance of actions, or ….) Non-consequentialists hold that the range is broad, or at least that it can include the sorts of things that consequentialists typically categorically exclude.

heretyk:

… for what other reason but good results to we desire something?

Come on, this is an easy one. There are things that are desirable in themselves, and things that are not desirable in themselves but are desirable for their results, and things that are desirable both in themselves and for their results.

If you do not have some account of the things that are desirable in themselves, then you correspondingly have no account of the things that are desirable for their results, since you don’t have any account of which results should be counted as the desirable ones and which should be counted as the undesirable ones. (Suppose you found that one result is more pleasant and the other more painful. Well, why do you desire pleasure, or the absence of pain? For their results?) If, on the other hand, you actively maintain that there aren’t things that are desirable in themselves, then your position is simply incoherent, since you’ve cut out the possibility of distinguishing desirable from undesirable results, even in principle.

So what reason do you give for thinking that one set of results is better than another?

Delance: Are libertarian in favor of unions now?

Yes. The Central Committee approved the resolution Thursday. Didn’t you get the memo?

Holmes, here’s my favorite part of the North article, right at the beginning:

“The strike was illegal under the state law, just as the present one is. Mike Quill, the head of the union and one of its founders in 1934, was ordered by the judge to return with his union to operate the transportation system. Quill responded to the press: ‘The judge can drop dead in his black robes. I don’t care if I rot in jail. I will not call off the strike.’ … The union is obviously proud of Quill’s defiance.”

What villains they must be, to celebrate someone who ignored The Law and defied a court order. Next thing you know, they’ll probably call for something unconstitutional, too.

Kennedy: My only purpose here was to explain why I have a distaste for unions in general as they have evolved in historical practice, not to offer an exhaustive analysis of the history of unions.

That’s fine. My purpose was to try to explain why I think you ought to take a more nuanced view of people in the labor movement who happened to use the letters S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-M to tag the views they held.