Charlotte Corday

This is an excellent question (and one that Nathaniel Branden himself raised after the Great Split). The stark contrast between the flawless super-heroes of Atlas Shrugged (Dagny, Galt, Francisco, Rearden) and that piously loyal schnook Eddie Willers is an expression of a theme that appears often in Rand’s fiction (but never in her essays): there exists a natural aristocracy in every society. In any given population there will emerge a certain elite whose innate gifts of intellect and leadership will set them apart from the masses. Implicit in that theme is the idea that lesser mortals must make way for their betters. It is not the role of the world’s Eddie Willers to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Atlases but cheerfully to do their bidding. That is their “fate,” if you will. I think this exchange between Andrei and Kira from the first version of We the Living (London: Cassell, 1937) serves to illustrate the point: “Don’t you know, he asked, “that we can’t sacrifice the millions for the sake of the few?” “You can! You must. When those few are the best. Deny the best the right to the top -- and you have no best left. What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it? What is [sic] the people but millions of puny, shrivelled, helpless souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words of others put into their mildewed brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than justice for all. Because men are not born equal and I don’t see why one should want to make them equal. And because I loathe most of them.” (pp. 88-89) Remember the scene in which Eddie discovers Hank Rearden’s bathrobe in Dagny’s closet? Now ask yourself what kind of personality would forego the selfish pleasure of having his own wife or girlfriend in order to serve a powerful businesswoman day and night -- and remain steadfastly and adoringly loyal even after discovering the object of his affection had a lover of her own? I’ll tell you what kind: one who regards himself as mud under Dagny’s pretty little foot.

This does not follow. Why must a country be completely devoid of freedom before a victim of the government demands justice? If metaphysical-ethical change precedes political change, then a overhaul of the prevailing culture would have to precede any political change. Just exactly how does one “impose freedom by force”? And why is that? Does the U.S. Constitution demand it? Do the Objectivist Ethics demand it? This does not follow. Why must a country be completely devoid of freedom before a victim of the government demands justice? If metaphysical-ethical change precedes political change, then a overhaul of the prevailing culture would have to precede any political change. Just exactly how does one “impose freedom by force”?

Again, this is a non sequitur. Why must the rolling back of the income tax be preceded by the rolling back of government expenditures? In fact, it could happen just as easily in reverse sequence. A return to minimalist government would occur in short order once government lost its power to collect taxes. If you do not like fell swoops, try this: the enforcement arm of the IRS could have its current budget reduced to zero per cent over the next five years. No enforcers, no taxes collected -- except by those who, of their own free will, cheerfully contributed. But why should those who scream "I want democracy in Iraq now!" be more entitled to U.S. Treasury funds than those who demand retribution from tax theft? Pronouncing the latter “short-sighted” and “futile” does nothing to address the ethical merits of their case. Those who favor using funds coerced from millions of productive individuals for foreign adventures that those tax producers may or may not approve of are themselves engaging in a monumental dropping of context. Splendid! Then you cannot very well dismiss my “sneer against the cause of using of force to democratize them,” if you by your own admission have no principled interest in democratizing Iraq. Actually, the most cowardly form of warfare (if we define “cowardly” by the ratio of risks taken to the number of people killed) is the mass air-bombing of civilians, the prime example being the atomic bombing of Japan which you and Yaron Brook in fine style embrace. You have already cited Japan as the appropriate model for Iraq. Yet it was in Japan that the U.S. made an alliance with the Emperor, who was, à la Saddam, the leader of Japan’s imperialistic drive in the 1930s. Then your argument is pure tautology. If intervention itself is the cause (and not just a means to advance a higher cause), then it follows by closed-loop logic that we must intervene. What you have not shown is why intervention itself should be the great cause. “Our security” strikes me as an extremely collectivistic term. Why should the security of White Fish, Montana be defined in the same way as lower Manhattan, New York? But the key problem is that we keep coming back to your fundamental (and apparently unquestioned) article of faith: “we definitely need to intervene over there.” If intervention is axiomatically good, then we must say the more intervention, the better. The current U.S. force of 150,000 in Iraq would be better than a mere 100,000. But 250,000 would be better still. A half million better than that. And a million even better. Hell, why not two or three or four million? Since you have set intervention as your only cause, we must evaluate U.S. policy not on what results are obtained but merely on how much manpower and matériel are appropriated. In other words, we must judge our government not on actual accomplishments but on reported intentions.

Why do welfare recipients have a greater right to my money than I do? Why should the fact that the government has not shrunk give non-producers a better claim to the wealth of producers than the producers themselves have? Essentially, you making the non sequitur argument that as long as the government is engaged in the forced and immoral redistribution of wealth, no taxpayer may demand the return of any money coerced from him. In Post #36 you criticized my “sneer against the cause of using of force to democratize them.” Now, I’m not quite sure whether the government you have in mind for Iraq is to derive its powers from the Iraqis themselves or to rule autocratically regardless of what the Iraqis think. I would suggest that any government that runs contrary to popular Iraqi opinion will be continually besieged by the same sort of spectacularly violent resistance the current puppet regime is experiencing. Odd that Objectivists, who usually argue that a culture must be changed before its government is revolutionized, take the opposite view on Iraq. As for comparing Iraq to Japan, bear in mind that after Japan’s military defeat, Gen. MacArthur kept Emperor Hirohito on the throne and used his popularity to build respect for Japan’s post-war government. Nothing about the current U.S. administration of Iraq shows any concern for existing social structures or hierarchies. Like the 18th century Jacobins, the American occupiers are trying to build a “new society” out of nothing. The key difference between 1945 Japan and 2004 Iraq is that the occupiers of the former were smart enough to pay careful attention to “what the people think.” If that is your cause, then it is completely meaningless. It’s like having a “cause to intervene in Europe” or a “cause to intervene in Central Africa” or a “cause to intervene in the South Pacific.” If intervention itself is the glorious cause, then there is no way at all of rationally determining how much intervention is too little or too much.

This is curious. In Post #14 you wrote, "The complete end of coercive taxation would take some time to completely implement." But logically if you do not favor the immediate end of coercive taxation, you cannot turn around and claim that you are "not advocating that people be imprisoned for the non-payment of taxes." If people are not to be imprisoned for refusing to hand over their wealth, exactly what is to be done with them? It is obvious what would happen: 1) the government would run out of money and would have to cut back on its myriad activities, and/or 2) it would have to rely on the people who Capitalism.org says “would voluntarily give 5 or 10% of their income to support a government that protects rights.” The vital point is that there is no moral reason to hold the peaceful, productive members of this society hostage to the “needs” of those who demand the unearned and the undeserved.

Yes, let’s see the Galt quotation that is allegedly lifted verbatim. As for the content, there are no grounds for believing the ideas employed by Rothbard had sprung fully formed from Rand’s brain in 1957. The argument for free will over instinctual determinism can be traced back to Aristotle. As for the critique of Rousseau’s noble savage (actually it was Dryden who coined the phrase), Voltaire, Hume, J.S. Mill and even Charles Dickens all had contributed to the demolition of the perfect state of nature myth. (Mill described uncivilized people as "pugnacious, dirty, irascible, cowardly and mendacious.") The term “tabula rasa” has been used in philosophical debate since ancient Greece. John Locke, devotes much of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding to how reason develops from a blank slate: “All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:--How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience.” Both Rand and Rothbard have a predecessor in David Hume, who wrote in Natural History of Religion, “The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events; and what ideas will naturally be entertained of invisible, unknown powers, while men lie under dismal apprehensions of any kind, may easily be conceived. Every image of vengeance, severity, cruelty, and malice must occur, and must augment the ghastliness and horror which oppresses the amazed religionist. A panic having once seized the mind, the active fancy still farther multiplies the objects of terror; while that profound darkness, or, what is worse, that glimmering light, with which we are environed, represents the spectres of divinity under the most dreadful appearances imaginable. And no idea of perverse wickedness can be framed which those terrified devotees do not readily, without scruple, apply to their deity.”

Iceland did have an assembly, but no executive branch -- no king, no president, no prime minister. Thus, enforcement of property rights was the responsibility of each individual, his family and his chieftain.

Apologies for my delayed response. I was on a business trip. The best way to respond is by analogy. If you take out a loan from a bank and do not pay it back, not only will your banker refuse to lend you any more money, but other bankers will also refuse to let you borrow from them. Now what is it that guarantees that bad risks will be denied loans in the future? Do we need an almighty government to lay down the law to lenders? Not at all. Bankers will refuse loans to bad risks not out of a sense of civic duty, but rather because it in the self-interest of the banker to do so. Similarly, insurance agencies and defense protection agencies would not find it in their self-interest to renew a contract with a person who has shown an unwillingness to honor past contracts. In Iceland, a chieftain would not continue to defend a person who had broken the terms of an arbitration because 1) such a client was demonstrably untrustworthy, and 2) the chieftain could not negotiate arbitration in good faith in the future with other chieftains if he stood by a lawbreaker. As far as I’m concerned, the right to secede is still very much intact. (And I have never claimed a “right to not have to abide by the decisions of those who had a monopoly on the use of force.” Obviously, if someone has stolen a car, he may morally be forced to return it, regardless of whether those doing the forcing work for the government or private industry.) Let me return to a statement I’ve made repeatedly in this thread: secession does not immunize one from the repercussions of initiating force. If a Canadian steals your Lexus and drives it back to his home in Montreal, you have not lost your right to recover your car, nor should we assume that the Canadian Mounted Police are going to resist attempts by you or a New York police department from recovering the stolen vehicle. Now, you may want to ask, what is to stop the car thief from declaring his house, his garage, his yard an independent nation? Under my theory of secession, there is nothing that morally prohibits him from doing so. Yet, political sovereignty does not absolve him from retribution. As the owner of the stolen car, you and your agents still have every right to cross his “national” borders and take back what is rightfully yours. Perhaps you have not been paying attention. I have never argued that there should be no body of law under market anarchism. In fact, if you will review my posts in this thread, you’ll see that all along my thesis has been that objective law can exist independently of the state.

I have fully and clearly answered each of Professor Odden's points.

Unassailable proof that those behind the "Capitalism" Party are economic ignoramuses: "Taxes: Taxes are a way to finance government but the income tax enables government bureaucrats to coerce and harass citizens who prefer to be left alone. The logical and honest solution is to abolish all production taxes including the income tax and corporate tax. Production taxes will be replaced with a national consumption tax. Thus instead of taxing wealth production, the Capitalism Party will tax wealth destruction since consuming wealth is a form of destroying wealth." In other words, those who buy food and put it into their mouths are destroying wealth! And what's this about the income tax coercing and harassing citizens? Should we assume that the national consumption tax will be entirely voluntary?

Well, then, do we or do we not continue to throw people in jail for non-payment of taxes?

Unproven assertion.

So the end of coercive taxation must await the demise of the welfare state? If that is the case, on what moral grounds do the needy have the right via government to seize the wealth of the productive class? Do we say to wage earners, "You are obliged to surrender a portion of the product of your labors to the 'needy' because the government has not shrunk enough"? What if the wage earners say, "It's not my problem that you haven't shrunk your government enough!"? Do we continue to throw productive people in jail for tax evasion just because there are still moochers on the dole?

Okay, if my funds should come back to me, perforce all other income-earners’ funds should come back to them. Now, if we agree (for the nonce) that W’s war in Iraq should continue full speed ahead, just what funds is it going to continue full speed ahead with? Voluntary contributions via the RNC? Bombing people to make them believe in democracy is the moral equivalent of O’Brien torturing Winston Smith to make him believe in Big Brother. What the neo-cons don’t understand is that attacking civilian populations does not convert them to the bombers’ point of view but to the revolutionaries’ side. This is the lesson France reluctantly learned in Algeria. "Dr. Brook retracts his previous, hesitant endorsement of the Iraq War. He now argues that the way we have fought in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is worse than doing nothing." http://objectivistsr.us/index.php?showtopi...hl=yaron++brook In other words, doing nothing would have been a greater cause than the current War in Iraq. By the way, what percent of our current defense budget should be devoted to making the governments of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Nigeria free and accountable? And what percent should come from coerced revenues?

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing these insights into an American original.

It is conceivable that some agency could assert that it will defend all of its clients against any and all claims regardless of the merits of the case. National governments can do the very same thing today. The downside is that agencies/governments taking such a position will lose the ability to argue for its clients/citizens when they themselves are the aggrieved party. In the case of Iceland, parties that refused to submit to arbitration were placed outside the law and could not lodge claims against other members of the community in the future. This puts one in the unenviable position of being unable to engage in trade with any party outside one’s own immediate agency or nation. In other words, subsistence survival.

Fred, borrowing ideas (without attribution) is too serious a charge to make without supporting evidence. If the allegation is that one of Rothbard's ideas is unique to Rand and no other, then some proof would be in order.

It could be another chieftain or a group of chieftains. Under standard arbitration, both parties agree in advance to abide by the judgment rendered by the arbitrator. It is true, that one of the parties could renege on his prior agreement. But it is no less true that someone in a civil case in our current systems could refuse to abide by the judgment of a court.

My apologies, Thoyd Loki. For some reason, I'm having trouble getting statements made by others to appear in the quote boxes. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Through private arbitration.

Under market anarchism it is conceivable that for a certain property, the law may not codified in a clear, non-contradictory fashion. Accordingly, people seeking to minimize risk would always have the option of not visiting that location or dealing with its owners/residents. What is clear is that if there is a demand for a certain commodity (legal certainly, for example), it is more likely to be provided by capitalist institutions than by coercive monopolies. Okay, let’s reduce it to the minority of one: me. Where is the argument showing that I am better served by a monopoly in defense and criminal justice services than a 100% free market? Does not reason tell you what arbitrary restrictions a coercive monopoly will impose on you? Does not reason tell you which politician, which bureaucrat, which government thug you need to be afraid of? Since you haven’t shown exactly what agency within a government has the power to keep that government limited, I’m forced to conclude that you really haven’t thought through the whole matter of “limited” government. Argumentum ad hominem. 1) Since a private contract is not a statute, the 14th Amendment would have no relevance in the case. 2) Since the 14th Amendment was ratified under duress, its authority is null and void under the terms of Article V. Covenants are no different than any other limitation in a deed. For example, in some states I can sell the surface of a land parcel to one party and the mineral rights underneath to another. If the Court may overturn one form of deed limitation, then it could just as well overturn any other. Copyright law itself is based on the idea of an author selling his work except the right to resell it. You may as well argue that when I buy a literary work from a book re-seller, I have the right to print a million copies of that work and sell them, inasmuch as I, a non-signatory to the original sale, am not bound by the terms of the original sale.

Fine. Before you enter the front gate of my property, you will have the opportunity to inquire about the rules of conduct that are enforced therein. Just as a visitor from Amsterdam to Charleston, SC can discover prior to his journey whether he will be permitted to smoke hashish there, so Professor Odden can inquire of landlady Corday as to whether he will be allowed to play his bagpipes at 2 a.m. Then you’ll have to take time to know thy vendor and know thy customer. For example, before you take your family camping in the forest I own, you’ll just have to do a little research to determine whether it’s permissible to play bagpipes past midnight. Very well. If a colleague from another part of the country pays you a visit, just tell him the agencies that you’ve hired to provide defense do and do not offer protection against theft; do and do not offer protection against rape; do and do not offer protection against murder. Of course, once you do establish contradictory laws over your property, don’t be surprised if you find very few who are willing to engage in “rational interaction” with you. Bear in mind that there are some very large countries today that do not provide protect of patents and copyrights. How does our monopoly government protect us against them? It seems that the only way to guarantee absolute universal adherence to one IP standard is a Union of World Republics. Therefore, the correct position for those who favor individual rights is to favor the present quasi-lack of monopoly. For surely if the central government imposes its tyrannical anti-drug law uniformly and without exception, there will be no protection at all for the heroic users and distributors of medical marijuana. Reducing individual freedom is never a valid argument against competing laws. I did not say there was a U.S. law prohibiting same-sex marriage. I was referring to the lack of uniformity between state and local laws in California. If I thought that having a single, immutable set of laws over a large territory were the best way to advance individual liberty, then I would be all for world government. However, experience has shown that centralized authority does not reduce bad laws or the influence of whim in governance. Indeed, as the territory of the U.S. expanded, so did the malignant authority of the central government over the lives and property of its citizens. Strawman. No such argument was advanced by me. If that is the case, then Soviet Russia under Mass Murderer Stalin is to be preferred over the Mississippi Valley during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Perhaps you’ll let us know just what those problems are.

Basically, each individual had the right to pick the agent (chieftain) of his choice in enforcing his property claims. A combination of monopoly-formation by formerly competing chieftains and intervention by the King of Norway, brought Iceland's system of competing defense agencies to an end. In any event, the system lasted over 300 years, longer than our own experiment in "limited" government has endured. Since the U.S. of 1787 was predominantly agrarian and pre-industrial while today it is the most technologically advanced nation on earth, should we conclude there is an inverse correlation between technological development and limited government? My own guess is that technology over the past 300 years favored large nation states up to a point. However, the technology that was developed in the last half of the 20th century is now making the large nation state a difficult arrangement to maintain.

Just as the U.S. had statutes against attacks on its military bases and acted on those laws to punish the nation that bombed Pearl Harbor, so your defense agency will have clear and knowable prohibitions against the theft of its clients’ cars. In the absence of a coercive monopoly there is likely to emerge a framework of principles that will be widely accepted. Will there be perfect unanimity on every point of law? No. But, for that matter, there is no unanimity even in the U.S. with its more and more centralized government. Do all law enforcement agencies in this country recognize the same principles in regard to medical marijuana? Do all legal systems in this country recognize the same principles on gay marriage? But the Mafia has already done this under our present monopoly government. The mob has created its own councils of “Dons” and its own in-house enforcement agency (“wise guys”) who operate independently of local, state and federal laws to deprive citizens of life and property. Again, under current monopoly government, there are already “agencies” (or gangs) that recruit participants to engage in aggression against others. If the purpose of monopoly government is to eliminate any possibility that a group of individuals would conspire to commit aggression on a regular basis, then we must say that the present monopoly has failed. This has been the pattern for years in Afghanistan. (Note that it continues despite the presence of a U.S. army of occupation which is purportedly there to bring about “freedom” and “law and order.”) If your government is truly based on individual rights, then it will not initiate force against me. It will not interfere with my right to provide for my own self-defense. There is a demand for the protection of life and property against aggression. And there is a demand for seizing what rightfully belongs to other. If ever the latter demand were more prominent in a society than the former, then there would be no civilization and no political arrangement of any kind -- not minarchism, not anarcho-capitalism, not even the welfare state. Experience shows that the vast majority of people are not rapists, thieves or murderers. Thus, Crime Inc. is not going to enjoy widespread support within any population. And crime is less likely to thrive when the forces of capitalism are unleashed against it. If a government restricts my right to contract for the best self-defense available, then the government is not based on rights. But all along I have said that secession is justified only when it upholds rights better than the present arrangement. And David Odden agreed with me on this point. In my oft-cited example, the secession of North County from South County would allow the northern residents to uphold rights better through a more efficient use of resources against the criminal element. Let me point out that the federal government did not invade the South because of slavery. Lincoln had made it very clear that he would preserve slavery if that is what it took to preserve the union. This point is not in dispute. Nonetheless, secession is a method for securing a more representative and responsible government. Actually they can. Predators both inside and outside of government trample on rights everyday. But on the ethical question of whether people should uphold rights, my answer is “yes.” Here we agree. I’m very much in favor of bringing back the ancient Greek custom of banishment. Felons would be exiled to the remote corners of the earth. Unproven assertion. That would be my loss. I say historical evidence argues otherwise. But if precedent is all-important, what is the precedent for a limited government which has consistently upheld individual rights? Our arguments would be “pure rationalism” if we offered no empirical evidence. In fact, market anarchists have provided numerous examples of law enforcement and justice operating outside the state. David Friedman, for example, has written extensively about Iceland. So the “pure rationalism” charge amounts to just another strawman for Objectivists to waste their time tilting at.

No, I am in fact separating them. I'm stipulating (for the moment) that Bush's policy in Iraq is correct. Now the only question left is how to properly finance it. Let's look at it another way. There is, say, $10,000 in the U.S. Treasury that was forcibly taken from my income last year. Now, if we have a choice, does the money come back to me or does it remain Bush's to spend as he pleases? No, if you'll look at my original statement, you'll see that it specifically responds to post #15 which argues that there is a "higher probablity than with most other similarly geographically situated countries" of coverting Iraq "to a Western-style democracy." I guess the cause ain't so great anymore.