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So then you don't believe that our government can be reasoned with?

Not the arbiter of truth. Just the enforcer of laws. You can take your truth and apply it with all the reason you can muster in the form of letters to your congressman. What you can't pretend to do is decide to break laws at your own whim and claim that you have some special pass based on your expert understanding of the spirit of the law. Even a lawyer or judge doesn't get that privileged. Ok, your playing semantic games now. How would they determine that a law violated a principle without thinking it? This is a lame attempt to avoid the fact that careful, reasonable, thoughtful people, even I and *gasp* you can make conceptual errors in application of principles, which is why the law is necessary as a check on the individual fallibility. I once spent three years singing, "rock me, on my days" before seeing the music video on mtv that convinced me it was, "rock me Amadeus." That ever happened to you? Been absolutely certain of something only to find out later you were mistaken? Happens to me all the time. Holy loaded question, Batman! But surely I do-Yes, it is moral in some contexts. Security jobs for the military come to mind.

The UN definition: "a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires, as well, measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness and procedural and legal transparency" It includes what your saying, but the aspect that is relevent is that it applies to all entities. The US does this reasonably well by comparison to most other countries so I am inclined to think that reasoning and philosophic change is the best way to attempt to correct our path and that civil disobedience or armed conflict are not yet necessary. Also, if someone decided that reason was not effective and wished to use civil disobedience as a political tool for ideological reasons, they must commit the act with the intention of getting caught. So in this circumstance, they should not be sneaking across in the middle of the night, but rather walking across in mass directly in front of border control to force them to arrest 20,000 people. That would be legitimate version of an ideological fight. As it is now, they're just breaking the law. That's a good assessment.

Generally speaking, yes. Though I would make exceptions in certain extreme cases. Applying it to something which affects me, I would not attempt to evade income taxes even though doing so could significantly increase my standard of living. If they wanted 100% instead of 50%, and put me in a coal mine when I refused to work, I'd probably break any laws necessary and some that weren't in attempting to destroy them. And certainly recommend others do the same since the law, in that circumstance is not just deleterious but actually unbearable. Yes. And of course excluding the breaking of the law by mistake because of a lack of understanding. In and of itself, yes I would say that that is a correct summation. Once it's beyond repair then I'd say break all the immoral laws that you can get your hands on. I would say generally no, but that certain extreme disparities of treatment, such as slavery, would be severe enough that it would be warranted because of their impact on a particular person or group. In our current context I am not aware of anyone severely affected enough that I would view breaking the as the appropriate response. The worst injustice I see is the level of taxation that steals at least half of the lives of the productive to pay our new bureaucratic overclass elites. Its disgusting, but not so high that it is unbearable or impossible to accomplish some goals in spite of it and not so high anarchy would be more pleasant. So I suck it up and recommend everyone else does the same. Unless they're ready for the "revolution." I would probably, out of political expediency vote for it, in the "you asked for it, brother," sense. I view the states as a significant check on federal power and this is sort of the "employee" trick where you do exactly what the boss man says. The federal government writes stupid rules and leaves the states there to clean up the mess, so I would see this as a rational act on the part of Arizona. It has the potential to bring the untenability of immigration laws to a head, which is a peaceful and reasoned way of affecting change at the federal level. I don't see the civil rights violation aspect of it, since, as I understand it in laymen terms, it basically says if they have probable cause, like a missing drivers license or license plate, they must investigate and then enforce the law that is already there. Lots of Latinos live in Arizona legally so they can't run around arresting all them. Their court dockets couldn't handle it, so I have some faith that if it's passed they will only use the law when they do have actual legal probable cause. Also that a few examples of some cops being less careful or making a race based arrest will be all over the news every six months or so.

I believe that they have, at least with regard to immigration law. I am giving the benefit and assuming that they would be consistent in advocating that all immoral laws be disregarded. I believe there is an objective right and wrong answer to all questions, legal questions included. I also believe we are capable of finding those answers out. Where I disagree, more precisely, is in the acknowledgment of the complexity of the law and the capacity for most, to be necessarily correct in their applications, even if they are somewhat well versed in objectivist ethics and political philosophy. I have found that the circumstances of life, legal and otherwise, are often such that the nuance and detail make certainty less easy and obvious. If we look at big obvious general principles like, Bob stole Bills car, should Bill get it back? Then the answer is easy and objective, but if we add details like, "I think that I saw a guy, Bob, that I know to be a criminal, drive off in a car that looked a lot like Bill's, then should I run him off the road to try and retrieve Bill's car for him?" The answer in application becomes more questionable. Especially if I live in a place where a shortage of police officers makes it unlikely that he would get it back, otherwise. So it's not so much that I have a malevolent view of people, but that actual decisions are not always clear cut, which is why lawyers spend months preparing and arguing cases to convince 13 people that someone acted justly of unjustly. Certainty is possible, but not always obvious and off the cuff.

Because you are not the final arbiter of truth for everyone else to accept. Let me ask you this for clarification, do you think that all laws which anyone thinks are immoral should be disregarded on principle? I have above, so I can only assume that you haven't been reading the posts. If there is one thing that I have no doubt about, it is the certainty you have of your opinions, Jake. Again, it seems that you believe we are further along on the road to fascism than I currently accept.

If you were a police officer, yes. I'm not sure if the law requires us to tattletale generally. Depending on the law, I would say probably not to both questions but I hold it as improper to advocate for the breaking of laws unless you're willing to do so consistently because you view the government as beyond repair.

That's true, but what I am referring to more, is the fact that people advocate breaking laws that you disagree with on principle. As I wrote above, individuals can have different ideas as to when the legitimacy of a government begins and ends within their own context, but that decision carries with it the added weight of the fact that it is an all or nothing decision since you can't cherry pick laws to follow without the law becoming meaningless. Advocating opposition to one or many laws is that admission. Attempting to change unjust laws is an acceptance of the law's legitimacy without, necessarily, approval of all of it's particulars. Like I said, a moral man in a free country would have no need for government. Currently and in all likelihood, we always will need it to be the arbitrator of disputes. Even men who try very hard to make correct decisions can make mistakes and inadvertently or emotionally make decisions which do cause harm. I do not disagree here, but again, those are individual context based decisions and not the advocation of lawlessness. If I were standing near the border and somebody behind me starting shooting at me, it would probably be correct to run across since currently, becoming an outlaw in the US consists of being put in a US federal prison as a worst case scenario and it is far less damaging then being murdered. But that is a context based scenario from which we cannot derive the principle that bad laws ought to be broken. The "rule of law" in somalia doesn't exist precisely because people do not follow it. I agree about "making the law moral, so long as you mean making it moral through reasoned argument and political efforts and not by waging a personal war against the government. I have been arguing just that, actually. Those particular contexts are not relevant to the principle that the law ought to be followed. They are lifeboat situations that could just as easily be applied to a free country that respects property rights. For instance, if I happened to be on my plot of land and surrounded by an evil rich guys land who wouldn't let me cross, I would probably take the chance and trespass in order to escape because the cost of a trespassing fine is significantly less to me than dying of thirst. But these do not determine the moral principle in everyday life for all of the reasons Rand pointed out.

Absolutely. I think Rand's identification of the four essential characteristics of a dictatorship are good rules of thumb. Obviously their can be different estimations of when each of those breaches occur. For example, it might be argued that there are insufficient differences between republicans and democrats to claim that single party rule isn't already upon us. Or that the near govt monopoly on education and airwaves represents significant censorship. Yes, for instance, a slave prior to the civil war would be acting properly to try to escape since the denial of his or her rights are near total, even though the rights of others were quite well respected. There is room to make that decision individually, but it is a sum decision on the validity of the existence of that government and comes with the understandings that you are putting yourself in opposition to that government by declaring their illegitimacy and that other individuals may morally make their own decision with regards to their disagreements with you or the law as well. My personal estimation is that I don't believe that current immigration laws, my excessive taxation, or even the new obama program to turn doctors into my slaves, bring us to the point at which the government is completely illegitimate quite yet. I think we are getting dangerously close, though.

Yes, I would. Likewise with income tax evasion or any other more serious rights violating law. I agree that government has a place in monitoring the flow of goods and individuals across its borders(in a much more limited capacity than our current context) as compared to alcohol purchase where I see, no justifiable argument for any involvement, but that is not pertinent to my argument, in that, I am assuming and/or agreeing that many or most of the laws regarding immigrant movement are immoral as are many other laws imposed on us which, as I have noted before, no one seems to advocate breaking out of principle. This is my central point, really. Laws must be applied consistently to everyone or they lose all legitimacy. Everyone can appeal to change them through all of the normal peaceful routes. When we abandon those routes out of principle and suggest that people who are facing immoral laws should simply break them, that means all of the laws which are immoral should be broken as well, and that, rather than a court of law and due process making the determination of justice in each particular situation, everyone will decide for themselves. People argue above that they mean, "just this law should be broken." But that to me is wholly inconsistent and unprincipled when I consider that we live in a society with at least millions of improper regulations and laws on the books. So to be consistent, the pro-lawbreaking side needs to advocate that everyone ought to break all immoral laws and then hope that everyone is a good judge of proper political ethics. I suggest that this is not tenable because people, as a general rule are more likely to make their decisions about their own interests with more than a little emotional bias and more than a little lack of knowledge and understanding of the laws, their particular circumstances, and the future ramifications of their decisions to break the law.

Good clarifying question! I believe it should be maintained out of an attempt to maintain the validity and consistency of the legal system. Until such time as one believes it to be irretrievably lost.

I know that you don't think that you are, but when you allow that it is proper to break this law that you think is wholly immoral, it means I and everyone else is justified in doing the same with regard to laws which we think are immoral. Wouldn't you agree? I would deny that they are unjust in total, but not that large parts of them are. I am saying that 1)it is unlikely that individuals making this decision are qualified to make the decision and making it rationally and 2)even if they are, there is no way to justify the law being applied differently to some individuals because they have what objectivists would consider to be the correct view of legal morality.

I think that I may have to clarify that I am not in favor of open immigration. I believe that individuals should be screened for communicable diseases, criminal back grounds, and associations with any foreign enemies or terrorist organizations, for example. Because of this, I do not agree that no ones rights are violated. Many, many rights of Americans are violated by the many many criminals who cross the border and many more could be violated inadvertently by a well meaning immigrant who carried a highly contagious disease. This is actually a perfect example of why stepping outside of legal avenues assumes a level of certainty about rights that an individual ought not to hold. Our perfect, rational, objectivist immigrant might rightfully think, I just wish to work in a free country and not interfere with anyone, and then in the process of breaking the law be responsible for thousands or millions of deaths and illness, exposing many to the disease he didn't know he had. This potential for error, this realization that even objectivists don't have a direct, omniscient line to objective reality, is exactly why respect of the law and its methods of redress is critical to the functioning of a free society. What you are essentially advocating, without, I assume, intending it, is vigilantism. In your perception, the implication that I derive is that an individual who was certain that a crime had occurred and gotten away with would be well within his rights to punish the criminals. The problem is with the concept of certainty. Senses can be mistaken, reasoning can be mistaken, Reasoning can even be absurd, which is why we have a complex legal system intended to, as objectively as possible, determine who has been damaged and who is responsible. Leaving it in the hands of individuals who are in all likelihood emotionally involved in the case does not yield justice, it yields anarchy to exactly the degree it is practiced by the population.

Again, I am not ignoring the higher moral principle of rights. They are the foundation upon which just laws should be built. I am denying the notion that individuals in general necessarily have some sort of justification to break them at will because they believe(which may or may not be a correct belief) that justice is served by so doing. There is no requirement for an immigrant to set aside his rational self-interest since the rule of law and it's being followed is what allows the many benefits he is coming here to acquire. His self-interest is served in breaking the law only in the same short term sense that a free rider benefits by way of other people's morality. If everyone else in the US acted against all laws they found disagreeable and immoral, I'm certain our heroic immigrant would have no desire to come here. The presence of civil order is inexorably tied to the protection of individual liberties and acting outside the law, even bad laws, is an assault on civil order. I, and I believe Rand would only encourage it in the bleakest of circumstances.

I'm not sure if you understand the meaning of the terms here. Looking at what actually occurs, a state which does not secure itself and it's borders is no longer a state. It is no longer able to maintain its jurisdiction, which means it does not exist. In some ideologically perfect world where no security threats existed and no one violated anyone's rights, you would probably be correct, but then again, in that circumstance, no government would be necessary. In our current context, however, the government is the entity solely responsible for defining rights and determining whether or not they are violated in each particular circumstance through our courts. Everyone else gives up that liberty to act based on rights violations when we chose to be citizens of the country or they become outlaws. Now, if the government makes a mistake, which even an objectivist government would with regard to the protection of rights, then we are able to appeal to the legislators themselves, vote different people into power, take out adds in newspapers, blog, run for office ourselves, etc, to attempt to encourage the government to change the law or circumstance to one of our own liking. This is using reason and persuasion to affect change. The alternative, when persuasion is rejected as a suitable means is the use of force such as armed attacks on the government's agents or the breaking of laws you dislike or refusing to pay taxes to support the state you view as hostile to your rights. My argument is that the violent approach is not yet necessary. One more time, I am not arguing that rights should be violated. I am pointing out that they are being violated in a great many ways, but that those violations and their costs are small compared to what occurs once armed conflict becomes the method by which we attempt to reach agreements. When everyone becomes their own personal judge jury, and executioner, implementing or ignoring laws at their whim, as is being advocated (with regard to immigration laws alone for some reason I can't understand) we are necessarily in a state of anarchy with all that it entails. -The stuff above that statement and the Rand quotes I, for one could live without. If you have thoughts of your own on the particular matter, I'd love to hear them, but I already know what Miss Rand said. I've read it all and read VOS at least 3 times. It's just not relevant to the point I am attempting to make. No one here, not even Maximus as far as I can tell, is advocating the disregard of rights. Rather, we are acknowledging the disregard of rights that is currently here, in total, and debating the way to best ameliorate them.

I've acknowledged that more than half a dozen times and repeatedly pointed out at what level of analysis it is relevant and what level it is not. But just the same I'm not real interested in repeating myself when you ignore most of my arguments or teaching a basic civics class, so adieu, Mr. Ellison.

No, no, no. The consent of the govern to write and enforce laws that they will obey. Meaning they give up their right to enforce their own laws. To never judge, retaliate or punish others but to leave that process to an objective uninvolved agent-the government. To operate within the confines of the law(within the context of reasoned discussion) to ameliorate injustice they perceive. Are you saying that US citizens deserve to be kidnapped in Arizona for some reason? No, it's a realist perspective regarding application and process. Individual rights come way before that.

Laws are created by law makers, who, are granted this monopolistic charge by the consent of those they govern. You, Jake Ellison, making his own personal decision about what laws are moral and ought to be followed necessarily means that everyone else is right to do the same regardless of how well they reason or base their law preferences on individual liberties. You cannot justly say 'that I will only follow the laws that I agree with but others must follow them all,' unless you were literally responsible for the creation of the law. Choosing to regard or not regard laws at will means that you are not bound by the law of the nation where you reside, which means that you exist in a state of anarchy or state of war with regard to the government. Necessarily, disobeying ANY laws of a government is an act of defiance of their authority. Occasionally, "in the course of human events," this becomes necessary, but usually it is not. You really are not. The fact that you personally see some laws as conducive to shielding society from anarchy doesn't mean, necessarily that they do or do not. I do not believe that we are looking at the same level of abstraction with this. You keep insisting that, basically, you only break bad laws. The morality of a law is incredibly important in the process of making, altering, and abolishing laws, but almost totally irrelevant in the context of your behavior under the law. For example, I could make a case that the increased violence at the border by the drug cartels implies that Mexico has become, in parts of their territory at least, a failed state. As such, the US could properly consider ourselves to be in a state of war, not with the mexican government itself, but with the drug regimes who control their northern territories. Because if this security issue, not only is it proper for our government to stop everyone near this de facto war zone, but to even shoot on site any illegal crossings. I personally don't believe we are at that point, YET, but we are heading that way fairly quickly. Is it a violation of rights? Sure, in a normal context, but not a state of war or civil disobedience. A states primary goal has to be survival or it won't exist to preserve rights at all. That means to protect itself internally from those who break the law and externally at it's borders. If people choose freely to obey only the laws they agree with or if borders are not regulated, it is not carrying out its job of preserving the rights of those in its territory(and only those in its territory). The government uses laws to protect rights. Law and law enforcement is the tangible way this occurs. In short, the essential principal in anarchy is disregard for the law. No exceptions. Occasional disregard for the law is only less anarchy. They are the same in essentials. In the same way that income tax is the elimination of your rights. It's not the elimination of all of them, but it does eliminate, at the least your right to property and some of your right to liberty. In your opinion; Not mine. There are many stop signs I have come across which I could ignore and be certain of putting no one at risk. I'm not daft. I know which signs are safe to run and which aren't. I'm only going to run the ones that will demonstrably not "violate anyone else's rights." Fair enough. To be more precise, it is a rejection of the US government and all those who attempt to obey it's laws. In breaking them, you become their enemy, though not society's generally. In this I have no major argumentative disagreement with you so long as you also advocate cheating on your taxes, defrauding welfare programs, operating businesses without licensing and all other means of action possible against the government. I take it as an admission, though, that in your opinion, reasoned argument within our government is no longer feasible and that only violence and law breaking are going to elicit change for the better. Is that accurate?

There are a number of well known effects that seem to be fairly permanent as a result of child abuse/neglect and poor attachment which may or may not necessarily be connected in particular cases. Also, people who spend their lives less mentally active seem to be more likely to develop dementia. It's late, so those are the only circumstances that have popped into my head. I'll list more if the occur to me later.

I agree about the distinction, but you are incorrect in thinking that the very act of breaking a law is different in any essential way from "writing your own laws." If obeying the law means 'obey only those you believe are justified,' then what you lose is a nation of laws and gain is a nation of men. Many men all writing their own laws...Anarchy, in a word. Some stop signs are more important than others but if everyone gets to decide which are worth stopping at they would be fairly ineffectual at stopping accidents. The same is true with this optional legal system which you are advocating. I fully realize that you could get away with breaking any number of laws...people do every day, but in principle they have rejected society(the rest of the law abiding people) as such, and become its enemy.

I don't entirely disagree, but hold that attributing a single cause to something like the civil war has a great deal of inherent difficulties since reason happens individually and millions were involved. Some undoubtedly fought for states rights and and unfair tariffs on southern goods and likewise some probably fought against slavery as such. I'm not enough of a historical scholar to be real certain wither way, I have found.

There was civil war then precisely because slavery was considered so egregious an infraction that it could not be tolerated, which led to the breakdown of civil society. Reason dialogue between the North and the South proved incapable of arriving at a solution and the undergound railroad(which technically was trespassing and theft) can properly be thought of as being a contributive part of the path to war. In that case, I would say that the institution of slavery itself paired with the impossibility of compromise or retraction by the south meant that a major political restructuring was inevitable. I am not entirely convinced that this is the case today or that immigration restrictions are in anywhere near the same category as slavery.

Tangent/ this made me realize that this situation is very much like not getting immunized. It can seem very safe to not get immunized in a place where everyone else is, because there is no one to catch the disease from. However, if you advocate not getting immunized, in 15 years 30% of the population suddenly has polio or whatever. In this sense the one, single reason why breaking the law is effective and profitable for some is that most everyone else obeys the law. To make this point clear, it's a rights violation for people to trample across your property and one way for an owner of land on the border to protect the property that the government won't is to sit on his porch with a shot gun and shoot everyone who tries. He get's validated by this same disregard. edit-thanks, btw.

If I ever see my opinion presented as a Republican Boilerplate, I'd be tempted to join.

I'm not nearly as anti conceptual as you seem to assume. It isn't a straw man argument but a requirement for conceptual consistency which I haven't seen applied. If you believe that the US is that far gone then your appeals to law breaking make sense and, what's more, should be expanded to all irrational laws. That was the purpose of my list; (which I did not intend to be condescending) to show that there is a great deal wrong with our current system and to argue the case that an appeal to anarchy in regard to immigration is, necessarily an appeal to anarchy with regard to the law generally. If you realize that an see the US as beyond repair, then I have no argument with you, outside of disagreeing that it is beyond repair. Thanks for your civility.