RoR: Forum

Post 60

Tuesday, September 9 - 1:03am

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Joe,

It is morally wrong to subject people to contradictory laws. It is wrong to have laws that can be mis-applied such as to cause injustice. It is a moral requirement that a nations laws exist as an integrated system. That is what I mean by "absolute moral stricture, but only INSIDE a nation's systems of law." The "inside a nation's system of laws" just means that we are not obligated to make our laws consistent with those in other countries.

Jurisdiction is about connecting a law, which is generalized so that it can apply to any of a described set of future acts or conditions that might occur. This fitting of the general rule to the concrete specifics of an event is required - it is the application of the law, it is putting theory into practice, and it isn't simple. It is difficult. The law by intention applies to some essence of an act or condition, but actual events can come in such a complex variety of contexts and forms as to be confusing. This art of matching laws and all future events is part the art of writing the laws, but also part jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is about much more than geography. We have jurisdiction to decide the body that hears cases - there are many, many different courts within the same geographical jurisdiction. We have jurisdiction based upon conditions, like the size of damages claimed. Or, the body of law that is applicable is also a matter of jurisdiction - the Uniform Commercial Code is applied to one contract dispute, while the Warehouseman's act is applied to another in the same city. Jurisdiction is about 'standing', about 'determination of injury,' 'causation,' 'redressability,' 'ripeness,' 'mootness,' 'subject-matter jurisdiction,' and many other factors. Many of these don't just move a case from one court to another, or tell the participants what body of law to apply, but they actually determine if the facts warrant applying the law, if a party has standing, if a court can make a finding.

The law governs the application of force. It is intended to be applied and should be applied, but only when the facts warrant it. We are familiar with a jury as trier of the facts - well many a case can't even get standing for lack of an element of jurisdiction - that is a protection against using the force that comes with a law and applying when it shouldn't be. I hope I've made my case that jurisdiction is far, far more complex that just geography or national boundaries, and that it is a key component of justice.

On a scale of 1 to 100 where jungle law is 1 and limited government, free-enterprise, based upon individual rights is 100. Where would you put a tyrant that demanded that all his subjects accept his whim? Let's say 2 or 3. Where would you put a tyrant that dressed his tyranny up with written laws, some of the laws were normal laws copied from other nations, but most were there to prohibit opposition to his tyranny? Let's say 5 or 6. Please do me the honor of NOT suggesting this kind of comparing is tantamount to apologizing for despotism or that it is insisting on respect for a tyrant - I have not said or implied anything of the kind! And it isn't fair to make such a suggestion.

Nor did I say that we need to respect their sovereignty.

You said, "My view is that our government should protect our rights, and if another government stands in the way of that, they better expect trouble. And that's whether they are ruled by law, whim, or law of the jungle, or whatever else. Our moral right to defend our rights and lives does not stop on a line on a map, no matter how many trappings of a legitimate government they may enact... I don't think the legitimacy of another government can ever negate our right to defend ourselves." JOE, FIND ONE PLACE WHERE I SAID ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY.

You said, "I said jurisdiction only arises in the context of multiple governments." And you were completely wrong! Jurisdiction is the matching of facts (only one of which is geographical) to law to determine things like standing. If all of the universe vanished into some magical black hole except for Horse's Breath, Nevada, they would still have complex jurisdictional questions to answer every week to match the circumstances and facts to the law. And not having these concepts that make up jurisdiction would render attempts to acquire justice a failure a large percent of the time.

Joe, this whole business about jurisdiction has been like a strawman - it was mistaken early on. People assumed that I had said that we could not do anything in another country because we did not have jurisdiction over there - THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID.

If some one WANTS to have an argument, and it must, for whatever crazy reason, have the word jurisdiction in it - then they can argue about these statements:

We can NOT legally take an action against another country unless they do something that OUR law interprets as a proper set of facts to act upon. That is what gives us jurisdiction. I can smack someone if they are threatening me. But a cop can not hit someone without a set of facts that match police policy on the use of force which matches the laws on the books. That is just the nature of being a nation of laws.

If Iran won't stop with the bomb building, we pass a declaration of war - that is jurisdiction. If the president wants to invade Russia, but congress won't give him his declaration, then he hasn't got jurisdiction. When Carter made his belated attempt to rescue he hostages in Iran he didn't need a declaration of war, and he didn't need to have a single thought about boundaries or their jurisdiction. They had kidnapped Americans. That set of facts gave him jurisdiction.

Acts of government must conform to law. The fitting of the law to the facts is the practice of jurisdiction - it is the validation that the law is properly applied for a given set of facts.

Post 61

Tuesday, September 9 - 7:48am

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Steve wrote:

My position has been that self-defense is the only principle that permits the exercise of force

That has been my position as well. As I said before, I am arguing that the typical libertarian conception of self defense for an individual in response to threats from other individuals should also be applied to groups of those individuals, you do not lose your right to self defense because you associate with other people.

That self-defense requires either an attack on our country, or an immanent attack - that is, a threat of attack that is reasonable, significant and not in the distant future

What is the 'distant future' for you? As Rand wrote, "the Better the mind, the longer the range"

Further, any action our government takes must be in our national interest

Agreed, obviously it should not be detrimental to us. However, some things might be detrimental in the short term but beneficial in the long term (taking a vaccination, for instance) Similarly, Military or interventionist action may be detrimental in the short term, but more beneficial in the long term. Ideally it should be beneficial in the near term AND long term, but this is not always possible. If you do not distinguish between short term benefits and long term benefits, you are not evaluating reality and planning actions in any manner beyond the immediate range of the moment.

since we believe in rational egoism rather than altruism, and that all government acts must be lawful (which is where jurisdiction comes in).

All government actions must be MORAL. In a just government, this is the case.

Your implication is that in ignoring the jurisdiction of other nations, our government is acting illegally. There is no supra legal internal code of law that this action would violate, like individual states in the United States disregarding jurisdiction would. The concept is meaningful only in the context of federal government and state government, or a similar hierarchical arrangement. There is no 'global government' that determines the legal validity of actions that individual nations take so jurisdiction has no legal validity in that context.

It does, however, have a MORAL validity. You originally seemed to imply that just because a nation calls itself a nation and has things it calls laws, that it now claims exclusive moral jurisdiction over the people that it applies those laws to. I argued that it is only JUST nations with JUST laws that we have a moral obligation and it is in our own rational self interest to respect the jurisdictional claims of. The overall determiner of jurisdictional validity is not a supra-national legal code but our fundamental moral claim to defend our rights.

Post 62

Tuesday, September 9 - 3:58pm

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Steve, I don't think your use of the term "jurisdiction" is correct. This is a semantic issue. I think you're trying to stretch it to be something entirely new. Some kind of non-contradiction in the laws. I don't agree.

1. the right, power, or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies.
2. power; authority; control: He has jurisdiction over all American soldiers in the area.
3. the extent or range of judicial, law enforcement, or other authority: This case comes under the jurisdiction of the local police.
4. the territory over which authority is exercised: All islands to the northwest are his jurisdiction.

I also don't argue that jurisdiction is simply geographic, although it often is. It can also be between agencies within a government. It can be organized by function. But I don't find it useful to lump everything into a single word. Jurisdiction defines who has authority in a case. Even when the same laws apply, agencies can split jurisdiction. The FBI and the ATF have different different jurisdictions, based on function. It's not that there are two sets of laws. There is one. They both exist to implement the federal law. But they still have unique jurisdictions, to allow them to focus on their own set of problems, and not interfere with the workings of the others.

And trying to add concepts like objective law (vs. non-objective) into jurisdiction make it an unusable concept in most cases of government, where the laws aren't integrated. But there is still jurisdictions.

So not only do I have a semantic disagreement with you, I think conceptually you're wrong as well. And let me add that contextually, this discussion of jurisdiction was based on the idea of national governments having their area of control, and I take the original quote to be saying that there is no moral reason to respect the "jurisdiction" of rogue states. We could argue there is a moral reason to respect the boundaries of authority for friendly nations, as an analogy to respecting the individual rights of a friendly person. But any such moral reasoning would be out of context when applied to these violent regimes. So even here, your definition is not relevant.

On a scale of 1 to 100 where jungle law is 1 and limited government, free-enterprise, based upon individual rights is 100. Where would you put a tyrant that demanded that all his subjects accept his whim? Let's say 2 or 3. Where would you put a tyrant that dressed his tyranny up with written laws, some of the laws were normal laws copied from other nations, but most were there to prohibit opposition to his tyranny? Let's say 5 or 6. Please do me the honor of NOT suggesting this kind of comparing is tantamount to apologizing for despotism or that it is insisting on respect for a tyrant - I have not said or implied anything of the kind! And it isn't fair to make such a suggestion.

I think the problem here is that you ignored entirely the context of the original quote, and the use of jurisdiction. Instead of arguing for a unique use of the term that has nothing to do with the quote, you responded to the quote by suggesting that jurisdiction DOES apply to any nation, no matter how evil, as long as it has laws. In the context, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that you are arguing that in fact we must respect the jurisdiction (not your meaning) of violent regimes, simply because they have laws.

You compounded the problem multiple times by suggesting that a country with rule of law, no matter how evil the laws, is high up on the scale. As if it suddenly had enough moral legitimacy that we were obligated to respect their authority.

To further confuse the matter, your scale doesn't make sense. Whether the government uses whim or law is not as significant as whether those whims or laws are good or bad. If they happen to be good, then law enables citizens to expect and demand certain results. It creates stability. But horrific laws don't benefit from stability. So which is better, a whim based tribal chief who is fair wise, or a communists regime with laws?

So discussing that and defending it in the context of this thread makes it appear as if you are arguing that we should respect the authority of rogue nations, instead of that you're arguing for a completely new meaning to the word. That, of course, is the cost of trying to give old words new meanings without informing others that you are doing it.

And the fact that I don't adopt your new definition of jurisdiction doesn't make me "completely wrong". My statements were right on...they just didn't accept your terminology.

Post 63

Tuesday, September 9 - 6:44pm

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Joe,

My descriptions of different aspects of jurisdiction are from current usage - they aren't theoretical or something I made up. Jurisdiction nearly always includes geography but it also includes the body or agency that has authority. And, yes, it does distinguish between different set of rules (tried as an adult vrs tried as a juvenile means different sets of laws - one of which will be chosen - as well as different courts, different procedures, different legal rights). There can be two different sets of regulations that apply to a contract depending upon the subject matter. Jurisdiction also means determination of standing - can one claim standing to file a suit?

That first definition you supplied had many of the things I've mentioned:
1. the right, power, or authority to administer justice..."
Geography and standing and subject matter (and other things) can determine if a person has a legal right as plaintiff or as the adjudicating authority - power can refer to court or agency or the stated application of statutes.

I'm not making this stuff up. I suspect that you can easily verify what I'm saying on the internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject-matter_jurisdiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_in_rem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discretionary_jurisdiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_jurisdiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amount_in_controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_contacts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_question_jurisdiction
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As I've said this entire detour into jurisdiction was the product of a misunderstanding. People thought that I was 'respecting' the jurisdiction of illegitimate states - I was not. Jurisdiction is authority for an act of a government based upon its own laws and is not about the laws or boundaries or jurisdiction of any other nation.

Israel does not even care if Palestine has laws or jurisdiction in the case of the rocket attack - and they shouldn't. If someone at the UN cried out, "You had no right to violate Palestinian space!" They could reply, "Our law demands that we defend our citizens. Our government was forced to recognize that it had jurisdiction when that rocket landed in our country. Jurisdiction in this kind of event required authorizing the exercise of power by the Army to extract the terrorists from Palestine and turn them over to the criminal courts."

You said, "I take the original quote to be saying that there is no moral reason to respect the "jurisdiction" of rogue states." I agree totally. Our jurisdiction is about our laws and they are not dependent in any way on foreign jurisdiction. "We could argue there is a moral reason to respect the boundaries of authority for friendly nations, as an analogy to respecting the individual rights of a friendly person." Well, yes, as a intention, but our government is engaging in acts that are legal only according to our jurisdiction - other jurisdictions don't matter. "But any such moral reasoning would be out of context when applied to these violent regimes. So even here, your definition is not relevant." No. Because it is a moral requirement for each government to use laws not whims - some do this some don't. It is a moral obligation for those countries with laws to make then consistent and non-contradictory and to apply them rationally - some do and some don't. My definition did not imply that all governments will be moral, have moral laws, or use them correctly. As to whether it is very relevant to the prior thread - no not so much. I was correcting things I disagreed with in Michael's definition. Notice that he claimed we would never have jurisdiction in France. That is wrong. We always have the jurisdiction to request extradition, and to forcibly extract if France refused. We are much less likely to have to do that with France, and we are much less likely to see in in our interest, but we always have the right and the jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is a practice that all nations with laws go through and it has a moral dimension which is honored by some nations and not by others.
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You wrote this, "You compounded the problem multiple times by suggesting that a country with rule of law, no matter how evil the laws, is high up on the scale. As if it suddenly had enough moral legitimacy that we were obligated to respect their authority." I NEVER SAID THAT! I said it a tiny, tiny bit higher than a country with no laws at all. I have no idea at all where you get that business about us being obligated to respect their authority - I NEVER SAID THAT!
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You said, "To further confuse the matter, your scale doesn't make sense. Whether the government uses whim or law is not as significant as whether those whims or laws are good or bad. If they happen to be good, then law enables citizens to expect and demand certain results. It creates stability. But horrific laws don't benefit from stability. So which is better, a whim based tribal chief who is fair wise, or a communists regime with laws?"

Look again. The only reason for that stupid scale is to show you that your accusation that I'm treating despots with respect was false. I never even tried to put the quality of law in the scale because that wasn't what I was showing you.

I absolutely hate the unfairness of being accused of apologizing for despotism or insisting on respect for a tyrant - I have never done either. Then you attack my attempt to prove that I did not say what I did not say and here I am trying to prove that my attempt to prove that I didn't say what I didn't say isn't in itself a sign that I'm all wrong. Joe, if you don't want to read my arguments more carefully then I'd rather not discuss this entire jurisdiction thing with you. I want to make real progress in finding answers and not in futile attempts to convince someone that I didn't say what I didn't say.

Post 64

Tuesday, September 9 - 7:18pm

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Steve,

I was pointing out why your statements appeared to be defending despots, since you made them in a context where an alternative definition of the term was in use. Can't you see, given the original quote and meaning, someone jumping in and saying that despots with laws do have jurisdiction will be interpreted to be supporting them? You've made it clear now that you don't believe it. Fine. But I'm suggesting that this confusion could have been avoided if you had paid more attention to the context, and made it clear that you were offering an alternative definition that had no bearing on the original quote.

On the topic of laws vs. whims, you said earlier: "If a totalitarian country observes the sham practice of creating immoral laws to justify immoral acts, it is one step better than an acceptance that some ruler's whims are as good as law and his having whims is all the justification that is needed."

Better by what standard? By the rule of law? Or better by the standard of human life? This is like arguing that integrity is virtuous, even when the morality you are practicing consistently is horribly anti-life. I brought this up to show that your statements imply that having laws is a value in and of itself, regardless of the content of those laws. Mixing this with the initial confusion from your change in definition, it appeared that you were arguing that we should respect the jurisdiction of rogue nations simply because they have laws. As if that were enough of a value to set the standards for appropriate action. It's clear to me now that this isn't your view. I'm simply describing (and described before) why each statement you added compounded the initial miscommunication. Since you still claim you don't understand how anyone could think you were thinking that, read my posts again! Read the initial quote. Ask what happens when you reply to it by saying that jurisdiction does in fact apply to rogue nations, as long as they have laws. Ask what happens when you start arguing that having laws always makes a government better than one without in this context.

I still disagree with your use of the term jurisdiction, but I don't see any progress on that because it appears to be a semantic difference. I can understand the desire to have a government stick to its laws. I can understand the desire for a government to limit its scope. I can understand agencies in a government to limit their scope. I also understand the need to recognize that another body is the existing authority in some area (physical or functional). Both of us see the need to have non-overlapping authorities, although we may justify them in different ways. I don't think there's any fundamental disagreement, except for which of these ideas does "jurisdiction" apply to.

Post 65

Tuesday, September 9 - 7:38pm

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Having begun not with reality, or first principle, but rather a false and midlevel notion in mind, (the idea that de jure "territorial" jurisdiction approximates de facto "legitimate" DICERE of JUS - a failure to draw an essential distinction) your arguments are getting more and more convoluted and wrong, Steve. You said:

"On a scale of 1 to 100 where jungle law is 1 and limited government, free-enterprise, based upon individual rights is 100. Where would you put a tyrant that demanded that all his subjects accept his whim? Let's say 2 or 3."

This is absolutely wrong. On a scale of 0 to 9 with the state of nature as 0 and full laissez faire capitalism as 9, a dictatorship is perhaps a -3 or worse. At least in the state of nature there is no organized force trying to violate your rights. Dictatorship is not half way between the state of nature and full freedom. But if you take an intrinsicist notion of jurisdiction - that it exists because there are nominal laws - no matter what the legitimacy of those laws, then you have to see dictatorship as grading into proper government. Admittedly the subject is complex. A government can be semi-legitimate on some issues and evil on others. Fully evil governments soon cease to exist. But the difference is qualitative, not quantitative. Dictatorships are not half way to freedom. This is the anarchist fallacy in sheep's clothing.

Post 66

Tuesday, September 9 - 8:04pm

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Ted, it feels late in the day so I'm going to skip your first sentence. I'd have to look up to much and unpack to many concepts... sigh

You said, "On a scale of 0 to 9 with the state of nature as 0 and full laissez faire capitalism as 9, a dictatorship is perhaps a -3 or worse. My intention was to show 0 as raw, bloody anarchy - no law, no order, violence from any source at any time for any reason as the only 'rule.'

That little scale was just an attempt to get out from under the completely baseless change that I was apologizing to despots and respecting tyrants when I mentioned that all nations with laws also have jurisdiction. All that I wanted to say was that ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL having a set of written laws is better than not. And when I say that having laws means having jurisdiction does not mean that other nations need respect that jurisdiction - there is no such requirement.

Jurisdiction is how we work with joining events or conditions of a specific, concrete nature - actual states or happenings to our system of law. Making that attachment, that joining, includes picking the hearing body, determining the evidentiary requirements and procedures, determining the body of applicable law... all kinds of decisions get made that are know as establishing jurisdiction. You can see it only makes sense to hook your own laws to events happening to your citizens or country. You never go adopt or play by some other countries jurisdicion. The moral aspect is just that this is a matter of justice in how it is performed. Do you permit contradictory laws to hold sway in the same jurisdiction.

If one picked some kind of criteria for ranking freedom, then some kind of non-free government would be above the bottom of the scale and not at the top - why is that a problem.

Post 67

Thursday, September 11 - 8:40am

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Steve Wolfer wrote:

Here is what I said, "Any dictator, any where can be assassinated, because he has no rights (gave them up) but wars (invasions) kill more people than the dictator and his henchmen - and therefore needs more extensive justification." The meaning intended, the meaning that I thought would be carried in context of the post, was that WE, America, would end up killing innocent people - not just the dictator, his cabinet, and his generals. - We would end up killing the bad guys but also thousands of innocent people and that, by itself, required a higher level of justification.

Dictators obviously don't care that they kill innocent people - we do.

Steve I don't think your statement has any other reasonable interpretation. You say, specifically "but wars (invasions) kill more people than the dictator and his henchmen - and therefore needs more extensive justification." This is a VERY clear statement. Wars, you say, even wars to remove dictators, kill more people than the dictators would have killed. It's obvious that is what you meant. And, as the statistics show, this is absolutely untrue. There is just no arbtitraryness to your statement, so I do not see how you could have expected it to be interpreted in the way you claim you meant it.

I hardly think your ethical standard is a rational one, I would not sit idly by and let a thousand people be gunned down by a machine gun toting maniac because if I tried to shoot him I *might* hit one of those other people. You don't get to sit back and go 'oh, well, I'm not going to have a potential death of an innocent on my moral conscience, better to let thousands be killed!' If you undertake a reasonable course of action to try to stop a murderous madman, and kill an innocent in the course of it, the moral responsibility of the death is on the murderous madman, not you. You were trying to stop destruction.

If a madman held your loved one hostage, and you did your best to try to stop him and save her, but she ended up dying, is her death *your* fault? This ethical standard relates moral culpability only to the mechanical initiator of an action, and not the context surrounding the physical action, and also assumes a platonic idealism and omniscience. It leads directly to absolute pacifism and the rewarding of murderous and violent behavior.

Police officers and law enforcement agencies are often put in the position of having to possibly inflict collateral damage on innocent by standards when stopping a crime. They are expected to try their best not to, and even in heated situations make good decisions. When we determine their actions are reasonable, they are justly not held morally accountable for deaths they may have caused.

I have always argued that three things are need to provide the full justification of war:
1) Self-defense - attacked or threatened with attack - for moral justification.
2) National Self-interest - as rational egoists we don't want to implement policy that is altruistic.
3) Legal - as a nation of laws we don't want our government to be able to act on whim.

I went back and re-read some of your posts on Jurisdiction and I agree that I misinterpreted what you said. Originally I though you argued that because these were nations with laws, we did not have any jurisdiction to act within them, because their only legal standards had jurisdiction locally. And I of course argued that the legal standard of tyrannies are not respectable and we have no moral obligation to respect their jurisdiction.

I realize after re-reading your posts, and these later ones, that you are trying to argue that the jurisdiction is what is permissible by the laws of the state, and the actions of the United states must fall under it's legal jurisdiction. I agree. But if it is illegal for the United States by it's own laws to act in this manner I am advocating for self defense and long term self interest, than the legal code of the United States in this matter is immoral and suicidal, and THAT should be changed. The actions are not what is wrong, the laws that make them impermissible are. Laws are not the standard of morality, morality is the standard by which laws should be held to. Laws are just to the degree that they are moral. But yes, the government should not be doing anything that it is not explicitly permitted to do by it's laws.

If we kill the bad guys to stop the killing of innocent people we are setting our self up as world policeman. Is that our decision?

That is not why I am advocating removing dictators, it is merely a very positive corollary. The over arching foreign policy goal of an alliance of liberal constitutional democracies is to 1) act in direct self defense of immediate threats 2) act in long term self defense against growing threats.

Since dictatorships are not legitimate nations and we have a moral right (but NOT obligation) to use reasonable methods to remove them from power, it is in our long term rational self interest because people that hold entire nations hostage have complete control over their resources and are not answerable to any domestic laws. They also start all the wars, breed all the terrorists, and through their oppressive economic controls will start all the pandemics.

Defending our rights is a defense of the 'world' (thee free western world) It's not one or the other, it's the same thing. I see no rights that need to be 'sacrificed' in order to act in our own long term self defense and self interest.

If we wipe out thousands of innocents while we are killing bad guys and we were NOT defending our rights - where did our justification come from?

This is a red herring, you are presuming the disqualifying factor in your question, that we are NOT defending our rights and killing many people in the process. Obviously the actions I advocate are ones that ARE in self defense and ARE defending our rights. Also, modern military technology reduces collateral damage tremendously.

In about 3 weeks a tyrannical government which murdered about 2 million people, started a half dozen wars, sponsored international terrorism, and was an existential threat to one of our closest allies, was toppled and completely eradicated from the world scene. The major combat operations of the Iraq War saw approximately 3,750 non combat fatalities, 10,000 Iraqi combat fatalities, and 150 coalition fatalities. This is singularly the most tremendous military victory in the entire history of humanity.

To say that it was "in our interest" is just like saying it is required for "national security" - that favorite rug that many a sin has been swept under.

Just because 'national security' has been used to justify dubious things does not mean that a) the concept is dubious or b) that this is invalid because it is justifiably categorized under national security.

Are we willing to pass a law that states our president, with authorization of congress, can invade any country deemed to not have a legitimate government despite the number of deaths such an invasions might cause? Will we justify that by saying that we protecting those not yet killed by the dictators of the world?

I think it should be clear now that this is an unfair and very inaccurate representation of my position. I do not advocate this position solely on humanitarian grounds, though that is an excellent corollary benefit. This should not be something ONLY the United States does, but instead should be an explicit alliance of free nations against non-free nations. The course of action justified should be explicitly laid out in a series of steps carried out over a timeline, starting with sanctions and access to inspectors, etc, and ending with strategic military strike targeting the upper echelon of the tyranny. All of this leading to an occupation by this multinational force and stabilization, enforcement of rule of law, and ultimately the establishment of a constitutional market based representative government.

Even if it were moral, even if laws were passed to make it legal... Is the military invasion of all illegitimate governments possible with our resources?

1st of all, you act like we would invade all these nations at the same time, right away. 2nd of all, you presume that they would actually even need to be invaded.

The United States makes up 20% of the worlds GDP. The European Union makes up about 30%. The Free nations of the world probably make up about 75% of the worlds GDP. North Korea, by contrast, makes up .004 % of the Worlds GDP. This alliance of free nations would have over 10,000 times the resources available to them.

Pick the worst one, the most threatening, and start there.

If the tyrant co-operates, a war might not be necessary. If he does not, the price will be high for him. As long as the steps are clearly identified and incentive is given for tyrants to co-operate, I would wager that only one, maybe two wars would be necessary (just to establish that this coalition means it) before tyrants start climbing all over each other to co-operate.

The steps of said programs are worthy of entirely different in depth discussion.

The subsequent wealth which would come from these nations 'marketizing' would be tremendously beneficial to the alliance of free nations, to the long term rational self interest of free people, and would raise the global standard of living. Consider South Korea, which is now the worlds 13th largest economy.

Would it even work since freedom can not be forced on anyone?

You can not 'force' someone to be free, the concept is not possible by any rational definition of freedom. Freedom is a life without coercion, I can not use FORCE to free you from COERCION. The only thing I can do is use force to PREVENT other people from using coercion against you.
You can force people to not oppress others, but you can not force them to be free from force. That makes no sense.

Your bumper sticker bromide is a favorite of the anti-war left who view freedom as something entirely different from what a libertarian or objectivist considers to be freedom. Please give me a definition of 'freedom' which is consistent with the idea that I can 'force' it on someone.

The last election in Iraq matched the turnout that a typical US election gets, even with massive threats of terrorist attacks. I hardly see this as 'forcing' freedom on anyone.

Are we willing to behave immorally (killing innocents when we haven't been attacked), illegally (no law allows our government to launch this kind of war), towards an impractical end (you can't force people to be free that don't want it), that if attempted would wipe out our resources and saddle the taxpayer with the cost of destroying the heart and wealth of the only nation on earth that was conceived to defend the rights of its citizens and not all the rest of the world.

It is not immoral to defend yourself and your rights against an aggressor or threat, and where reasonable effort is used to avoid innocent deaths those tyrants are morally culpable for those deaths.

If we have no legal allotment for this course of action then the laws of the US need to be changed. However, The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States, as mentioned in the Foreign Policy Agenda of the U.S. Department of State, are "to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community" This should be an effort of an alliance of free nations though, not just the United States.

Preventing others from coercing people is not an impractical goal, it has an established historical track record of success (South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, etc) No meaningful definition of 'freedom' includes the idea that you can force it on someone and still make the sentence logical.

None of these actions would be detrimental in the long term, if this policy was enacted 1 nation at a time, much fewer resources would need be expended, and the alliance of free nations would outstrip the non free ones in resources by a thousand fold. The expanded wealth of the world, and reduction in terrorism, wars, political instability, and economic controls, would tremendously increase the security, wealth, and prosperity of all the free nations and free people of the world.

I know that Michael is deeply concerned about the threats of coming technology and about terrorists - but throwing out the concept of self-defense doesn't help - it hurts by taking away our focus at a time where we need to look at defusing evermore complex threats, not going off on crusades against all illegitimate governments.

All of these actions ARE in self defense. The best way to defuse the evermore complex threats we face IS to promulgate the growth of free nations. The nations which undermine terrorism, create tremendous economic wealth, successfully combats pandemics, do not start wars, and do not murder their own people.

Post 68

Thursday, September 11 - 12:52pm

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Michael,

In this business of "...wars kill more people than x." You interpreted x to = 'the number represented by all of the bodies of the people killed by the dictator and his henchman'. That is a reasonable interpretation, but not what I intended. Sorry. I meant for x to = "the number represented by the body of the dictator himself and the bodies of his dead henchman". When I wrote that sentence, it didn't occur to me that it would be misunderstood, but it was and it is my mistake since your interpretation is reasonable.

When you see that what I'm referring to is that our bombs would kill innocent people, leaving behind more than just the bodies of the dictator and his bad guys, we should set a higher standard for an invasion than we would for just extracting or assassinating a dictator.

I hope this will have us both arguing (or agreeing), either of which require having the same thing in mind. So, I'll wait till you reply to this before addressing the parts of your post that flow from our different meanings.
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You said, "I of course argued that the legal standard of tyrannies are not respectable and we have no moral obligation to respect their jurisdiction. I realize after re-reading your posts, and these later ones, that you are trying to argue that the jurisdiction is what is permissible by the laws of the state, and the actions of the United states must fall under it's legal jurisdiction. I agree." Thank you, I appreciate your taking the time - I figured we would agree in this area.
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You said, "But if it is illegal for the United States by it's own laws to act [in this manner I am advocating] for self defense and long term self interest, than the legal code of the United States in this matter is immoral and suicidal, and THAT should be changed. The actions are not what is wrong, the laws that make them impermissible are. Laws are not the standard of morality, morality is the standard by which laws should be held to. Laws are just to the degree that they are moral. But yes, the government should not be doing anything that it is not explicitly permitted to do by it's laws." I bracketed a phrase your statement that, if removed, we would be in complete agreement. So, this is the area where we have a fruitful disagreement. If we address our differences in what I believe to be the definition of threat and response to threat we will make real progress (or at least have an actual disagreement rather than going back and forth of misunderstandings). Even the most remote, least probable threat IS a threat - we need to learn how to measure them.
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You say, "Your bumper sticker bromide is a favorite of the anti-war left who view freedom as something entirely different from what a libertarian or objectivist considers to be freedom. Please give me a definition of 'freedom' which is consistent with the idea that I can 'force' it on someone." Forcing freedom on people is reasonable assessment of any attempt to create a free nation when the people not only don't understand freedom, but don't want it. It is understood that "forcing freedom on people" means getting rid of a tyrant that many of the people want and will fight to get back - and that is a reasonable assessment of some situations. Playing word games doesn't change that fact. Some people will want the freedom, some will understand and be able to sustain it. Others won't.

I specifically mentioned the futility of creating a free, sectarian government for a country where most of the people want Sharia law - Rand and many others who are not anti-war left have acknowledged that there are not just military battles, but also philosophical battles and it is disaster NOT to recognize that. We won the war in Iraq in 3 weeks, but we are still there going on 6 years because of the people that don't want freedom.

p.s., I assume we are all "anti-war" in the sense that it is never a goal, but rather the last of the reasonable alternatives that other nations can force us to take if their threat/attack is sufficient.
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You said, "It is not immoral to defend yourself and your rights against an aggressor or threat, and where reasonable effort is used to avoid innocent deaths those tyrants are morally culpable for those deaths. If we have no legal allotment for this course of action then the laws of the US need to be changed. Three comments:
1) If there is an attack or threat of attack, then it is not immoral to defend yourself - agreed on that.
2) The severity of the attack or threatened attack is a measure of whether or not we can take actions that will result in the loss of innocent lives. I'll use two examples to illustrate - Iran captures an American patrol boat, claiming it was in their waters and holds the boat and 3 crewmen hostage - we spend 4 days negotiating to no avail, so we bomb a series of government buildings in Tehran - about 5,000 civilians killed - we have the right to take military action against Iran, but not where we could imagine that kind of loss of innocent lives lost - not in this case. Or, intelligence sources tell us that Iran is within 6 months, at the earliest, of having a nuclear bomb and we have attempted all possible negotiations, threats, boycotts, as have our allies, with no effect, so we launch a massive bombing strike of all suspected weapons production sites and related nuclear facilities - about 5,000 civilians killed. In this case the threat is too devastating and getting too near to take chances - the loss of lives is on the heads of the tyrants.
3) The only reason that the lives of innocent victims can be morally seen as victims of the dictator, even if it is our bombs that killed them, is if the dictator left us no reasonable choice. To be reasonable their has to be a proportionality and there has to be a sense of being pushed against the wall and seeing major destruction to our country if we don't act.
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You say that none of your proposed actions would be detrimental. I say that we need to have a clear understanding the kind of threat that justifies either massive expenditures of American fortune or the lose of innocent lives and without that understanding, we are behaving as a nation acting on whim and some politicians will abuse that power.

You say that the costs would be low because we take one nation at a time, each illegitimate nation made legitimate raises the world GDP and the costs would be shared with the rest of the free world. I say that we should only be considering nations based upon threats - the one at a time sounds to me like a desire to remove all illegitimate governments even if they do not threaten us (no matter what the order). If they are a threat, we don't care about legitimacy - threatening nations give up their legitimacy when they threaten. I say that we have not had much luck getting help from other nations and have born the costs by ourselves. It is good to find better ways to support our efforts and build good alliances, but based upon past performances and worst cases we should not count on it. And we can see that there are many collateral benefits, like increases in world GDP, but they can't be the justification of using force.
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You say, "The nations which undermine terrorism, create tremendous economic wealth, successfully combats pandemics, do not start wars, and do not murder their own people." The argument implied here is that a form of nation building is a proper activity of our government. That we should be knocking down illegitimate government and ensuring that they are replaced with governments that meet those criteria. And further, that this is justified as self-defense because it is a response to threats. But I believe that that view of threats is too generalized and does not constitute self-defense. If we imagine that Estonia becomes an illegitimate government over time, and starts behaving aggressively towards Lithuania, there is no immediate threat to us. The only threat is that if they continue to devolve that they might one day create some weapon and give it to terrorist that might use it on us. That is too far down a road of "if-thens" to be the kind of threat that justifies self-defense.