Charlotte Corday

I agree only with the following: that a group of individuals may establish an organization for the “purpose of protecting the rights of the organization's members.” But the membership of that organization would include only those who of their own free will chose to join it. The organization would have no moral authority to proclaim every person from sea to shining sea a member and thus oblige him to certain duties he did not voluntarily undertake. Nor, for the same reason, would it have the authority to enroll posterity as members and bind them to involuntarily acquired duties. An organization may require certain dues of its members. However, no organization has the right to “lay and collect taxes” (as the U.S. Constitution proclaims) on those who did not willingly enlist in the organization, for taxes are an involuntary form of wealth transfer that violate the fundamental right to be free from the initiation of force. Furthermore, while a group of individuals may contract for mutual protection of their lives and their property, they have no moral authority to limit the peaceful movements of non-members. Thus, you and your organization may set any rules you wish for admitting certain visitors to property belonging to you and other alliance members, but such rules would not extend to anyone who did not of his own free will join the organization. I agree that people may of their own free will give money to an organization without stipulation so that the officers that that organization would have full command of the resources in their treasury. However, this state of affairs does not describe government, since the hundreds of millions of people who “contribute” to the coffers of this institution so under threat of violence.

EWV, I responded clearly and patiently to each point made in your last post. I regret that instead of dealing specifically with my response you have chosen instead to engage in derisive characterizations of it. If, as you say, I have dropped the context, manipulated words or ignored absurdities, then you should have no trouble demonstrating same. However, in the absence of evidence, the reader has nothing more than faith to go on. I’ve already provided the hotel room mini-bar as a model of how certain property titles do not change hands until the property is consumed. Another example would be the rental car contract which charges the renter for any gas that is used up. The renter does not own or pay for the gas until it has been consumed. But if financing of government is to be truly voluntary, why does government itself need to be the raiser and disburser of operating funds? Could not private organizations perform the necessary task of collecting donations on the government’s behalf and then directly pay -- with private money -- whatever invoices are presented to the government? First of all, I’ve already taken pains to point out that this is not a debate on the minarchism-anarchism dispute but presumes that there is to be some form of government. Therefore, your raising the “anarchist” issue here is just a red herring. Secondly, avoidance of ownership is not necessarily a matter of “renting” consumables. Restaurants and banquet facilities which provide food often have contracts which charge by the amount of beverage and edibles that are used up during the event. (This, by the way, is frequently the case in pro sports stadium sky boxes.) You don’t pay for it till you use it.

If the government can find someone to lease it land unto perpetuity, so be it. The landlord still holds title and still holds the right to sell the property (as long as the new owner does not violate the terms of the lease contract). And, like the Boeing stockholder who cashes in his holdings, do I get my share of government property? If not, then my alleged ownership of the government's property is a farce. The same disproof of citizen ownership of “public” property applies to alleged citizen ownership of government property. If a citizen cannot sell or transfer his share of government property, in no sense does he own it. Therefore government is not at all analogous to Boeing. If your point is that officeholders and not citizens are the true owners of government, I could not agree with you more. However, in Post #29, it appeared that you wished to draw a parallel between citizens and corporate shareholders: “In a free country, the government is just like a corporation, except that it has citizens instead of shareholders, and its purpose is not to make money for them but to protect their rights. As long as its actions are bound by a constitution sanctioned by the citizens--which, in a free country, will restrict the government's actions to protecting the citizens' rights--it can acquire and control property on their behalf just like a corporation can do things on behalf of its stockholders.” However, if a citizen’s relationship to the government is the same as that of a shareholder to the corporation, then the citizen would enjoy the same privilege as the shareholder: the right to divest himself of his share by selling or trading it. Since this is clearly not the case with government (even in the case of a strictly limited government), we cannot say that government property is ultimately or in any other sense the property of its citizens. I never claimed that property must be publicly traded in order to be private. For example, in a partnership, each partner has a specified (usually equal) share. And, while the shares are not traded on a stock exchange, each partner retains title to a portion of the company and the right to sell it or to dissolve the partnership and reap a portion of the liquified assets. Now, if your point is that the U.S. government is somehow like the fictional company in Sheldon’s novel, then why can’t Citizen A sell his share of government property to Citizen B, in the fashion of one family member to another? But being given the right to participate in elections in no way implies ownership, for ownership entails the right to sell or trade one’s property. For example, a movie theatre could give its patrons the opportunity to vote on the next titles to be shown. Yet taking such a poll does not mean the patrons have a proprietary share of the theatre. The person who holds the deed to the building and its contents (not those casting ballots) is the only one who has the essential right of the property owner: to transfer ownership to another person. If I divest myself of my citizenship and receive no portion of government property in return, then it is demonstrably clear that citizens are not owners of government property at all. Again, citizenship in a country is distinctly different from ownership of the government’s property in that country. Just as being a member of the Majestic Theatre’s Movie Watcher Club is distinctly different from owning a share of the Majestic. Any group of citizens has the right and privilege to establish an organization of their choosing, provided that such organization does not involve the initiation of force. And while the organizers are within their rights to designate exactly who should be the lawful owners of the institution and its property, they cannot logically state that their institution is owned by all the people, unless they are prepared to issue negotiable shares to all the people. By comparison, I could absurdly claim that you are co-owner of my automobile, yet restrict your right to drive it, sit in it, touch it, or even enter my garage to view it. Some "ownership" that is!

Perhaps, you might also wish to argue that the military draft is not always bad. Depending on the context, could it not “be appropriate, even necessary”? Perhaps we could also say the same thing about inflation, wage and price controls, censorship, government ownership of major industries, income redistribution, socialized medicine and a host of other government evils. In short, can we really say that certain activities should be forbidden to government, as context may potentially render any and every action appropriate? Following this line of thought, every guarantee in the Bill of Rights should be apprended with the phrase "except when appropriate, even necessary, to violate it." Furthermore, why shouldn’t government own the roads and railroads that lead to those buildings, lest it be beholden to the “private individual” owners? And why stop there? Why not have government own the electric, water, phone and gas utilities, lest it be beholden to the stockholders of those enterprises? And to prevent any interruption of government’s legitimate activities, why not call for government ownership of armaments factories, oil reserves, coal deposits, hydroelectric dams, etc. Surely, one doesn’t advocate minimal government as a “contextless absolute.” First of all, I have made it clear that this is not a debate about anarchism vs. minimal government. This discussion is placed within the context of providing for some form of government. Secondly, you have presented no evidence that Rand “intended to exclude gov't from that general dictum regarding ‘all property.’” In order to prove that, you will have to do better than simply make an assertion. It would indeed be fraudulent to use a quotation from an author to represent that author’s views, if the preponderance of the author’s work contradicted that quotation. But in the case of Rand’s belief that under capitalism “all property is privately owned,” I can find nothing in the rest of the essay or in her other works that would invalidate the statement. In fact, the statement is perfectly consistent with Rand’s general aim to keep government small. Strawman fallacy. At no point in this thread did I declare that Rand’s statement “all property is privately owned” under capitalism to be an absolute. Nor did I claim that the Ayn Rand’s saying something made it right.

Thank you for your lengthy analysis of my argument. However, I must correct a point or two. My aim here has not been to argue for free market anarchism. I’ll fight that battle elsewhere and with other reasons. Rather, I’m merely defending a point that Ayn Rand makes with absolute clarity: under capitalism, “all property is privately owned.” There is no reason for the minarchist to be alarmed by Rand’s position. Limited government can function quite well without having to hold title to the property where and with which it conducts its business. In this thread I’ve offered several examples of how this could be done. Given the ambiguity of Premises 2 and 3, I cannot say that the above accurately represents my position. Let’s look at the word “control.” In my last two years of college I lived in a small house. I determined who could and could not enter, what color the rooms were painted, where the furniture was placed, where drapes and pictures were hung, which lights and appliances were turned on, when the furnace ran, etc. For all appearances, I “controlled” the house. But I did not own it. Instead, I paid rent to a landlord, the actual owner. Similarly, we can imagine the government occupying and conducting business in office buildings, warehouses, freight depots, seaports, air bases, etc. without holding title to those properties. Ergo, ownership and control are related but not identical. No, if a government leases a property, it may be said to control that property in most respects. It can determine who can enter and leave, and what activities take place on that property (provided such activities do not violate the terms of the lease). The only important aspect of the property not controlled by the government would be the property’s title. Sale or future lease (once the current lease expires) would remain the privilege of the title-holder. As I have shown, this is a misreading of my position. I have never said, "The government should not control anything." Therefore, since one of the premises is false (in the sense of not representing anything I’ve said), the conclusion does not follow from the premises and the argument is invalid. Agreed. See my second paragraph above. Earlier in this thread, I showed that the idea that the government is owned by its citizens is a myth. The foremost reason why there can be no analogy between Boeing Corp./Boeing stockholders and government/citizens, is that any one of Boeing’s stockholders can in a matter of minutes divest himself of ownership in the company by trading his shares on the NYSE. However, no such option exists for the supposed “citizen/shareholder.” As I wrote in Post #12, “Anyone who claims that government property is owned by individuals in that collective known as ‘the public’ can put his claim to a real world test. Simply go down to your local school board and demand that you, as a bona fide constituent of the public, be given your share of the real estate owned by the board, i.e. ‘the public.’ If they actually hand over a chunk of land to you (or its worth in dollars), then we can say that the public really does own public property. If the board ignores the demand, then it should be clear that public property is not public at all but a fiefdom of whatever politicians happen to be in power. “ “Private” is by definition non-governmental: “a. Belonging to a particular person or persons, as opposed to the public or the government: private property. b. Conducted and supported primarily by private individuals or by a nongovernmental agency or corporation.” (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992) Now, perhaps your argument is that once we have achieved a government “bound by a constitution” and restricted to “protecting the citizens' rights,” all distinctions between government and private property will disappear. Let us put it to the test: if a citizen of a free country cannot sell his share of government in the same way he can sell his share of Boeing, then government property and private property are not the same thing at all.

If we grant that private ownership should be given a specific meaning and that there should be mandatory limits on government action, we still have not addressed the issue of who should own the land and buildings used by the government for its operations. Suppose that we fully agree on the meaning of property and the limits on a proper government. That agreement would not tell us who should hold the title for the land and buildings of an air force base. However, once we accept the idea that under capitalism "all property is privately owned," there is no doubt as to whether the air base should be in the public or private sector. That is a judgment of taste. I do not regard I as the least bit ludicrous. What’s not to understand? There is no reason why a contract could not exist between government and Smith & Wesson stating in precise terms who is the owner of certain bullets and what responsibilities and obligations exist between owner and user of the property in question. Does this mean that when the government purchases a parcel of land for the purposes of building an air force base, it does not truly own the land? If the government does not own the land that it has just paid for, exactly who does? The difference made would be that if the government takes title of land or other property through purchase, it has removed that property from the private sector. If certain property is no longer in the private sector, it is no longer true that “all property is privately owned,” one of Ayn Rand’s criteria for capitalism. I do not consider Rand’s criteria to be arbitrary. If Ayn Rand was not talking about all property, why then did she say “all property”? If Rand did not really mean for all property to come into private hands, why then didn’t she say so in “What Is Capitalism” or any other essay? You are asking us not to take Rand at her word, without providing any reason to follow your recommendation. Unproven assertion. You have offered no evidence that Rand in the essay under discussion, or in any other work, endorsed something other than putting all property into private hands. You have yet to prove that Rand did not literally mean “all property” when she said “all property.” If we are free to interpret Rand loosely instead of literally, we might also (wrongly) claim she did not really mean it when she said there should be a complete separation between government and the economy. Actually, objective epistemology would render the statement “all property” to be “all property” and not “some property.” “A is A,” not “A is somewhat A.”

If a contractor builds a bridge with inferior materials, it may collapse and he could be held liable for the deaths of innocent people. Although he wouldn't go to jail, he might be assessed a large financial judgment. The case Oakes cited is complex: we do not know all of the factors involved or the possible options other than killing an innocent person. In fact, if certain information was revealed there might be an argument for sentencing the killer to death. In any case, it offers no reason for overturning Rand's point in “Collectivized ‘Rights'”: “A slave country has no national rights, but the individual rights of its citizens remain valid, even if unrecognized, and the conqueror has no right to violate them.” Neither my whim nor anyone else's should have authority to suspend the rights of an innocent person.

Sure there is a way. You don’t drop bombs that destroy whole cities. In any case, whatever problem you’re having in conducting your war is totally irrelevant to the sanctity of a person’s life and property. Individual rights are not suspended merely because someone has difficulty responding to an act of aggression. A person’s right to his person and property exists no matter what your problems happen to be. We’ve been through this already. You cannot morally shift responsibility for any and every hideous action. For example, if invaded could the U.S. government revive the draft and blame military slavery on the aggressor nation? The answer is no. The nobility of one’s motives does not earn one authority to snuff out lives. Someone in the blast area of a nuclear device does not lose his right to life and property because the one dropping the bomb has high motives. The rights of A are not conditional on B’s objectives. Nobody in Hiroshima was shooting or hiding behind human shields on the day it was bombed. In Post #109 you wrote, “. . . the president wouldn't be taking the life of an innocent. He would be targeting people initiating force by contributing morally and financially to an aggressor government.” Well, if you do not consider these people innocent, why shouldn’t they be punished? That distinction is irrelevant to the question of rights. You have not demonstrated how declaring a state of war empowers one to violate or suspend the rights of others. If you do not judge them as guilty why did you say in Post #109 that they were not innocent? So it is legitimate for me to go around dropping bombs on anyone unless someone first convinces me that one of my intended targets is innocent? Who gets to decide whether or not it’s a lifeboat situation, the person dropping the bombs or the person being bombed? All I said is that I would not send you to jail in the situation described. I did not say you should be exonerated of all ethical/legal responsibility. And the “the taxpaying, job-holding civilians” of an aggressive nation can live in LA too.

In fact, none of these quotations contradict the idea that rights are inalienable, i.e. exist independently of the will of the ruler or majority of a society. In “Man’s Rights,” Rand says, “. . . some assert that rights are a gift of God--others that rights are a gift of society. But in fact, the source of rights is man’s nature.” She goes on to quote approvingly Jefferson’s idea of inalienable rights in the Declaration. Now given the fact that man’s nature exists independently of the will of the majority or the dictates of government, we do not say man’s rights depend on or are subordinate to what is going on in a particular society. Take the case of Solzhenitsyn. Rand and Jefferson would both say that when he was a political prisoner in the Soviet Union, his rights were violated. They would not say he had no rights. What government did your Mr. Smith relinquish his right of retaliation to? And what did you say Daughter Brown did to protect Son Brown from the judicial process? Funny. I had the same reaction to your little Survivor Island story. The term “clean shot” was metaphorical. There are such things as sling-shots and bows. But I’m prepared to hear you tell me there are also no rocks or wood on the island and that the Smiths are caught in some sort of pre-Stone Age technology time warp. But no matter. The fact that Smith has limited options in no way diminishes Daughter Brown’s right to continue living. The concept of individuals rights cannot be applied in a limited and one-sided fashion. Otherwise it would not be an ethical principle at all. We cannot say that in pursuit of vengeance you have a right to snuff out some innocent person’s life and not also say that the avengers of the innocent person have a right to snuff out you in return. If war justifies whatever “it takes” to win, then there can be no limit on the actions of government. It can institute military slavery, commandeer the economy, build concentration camps, exterminate “risk” populations, anything “it takes.” Never said killing an innocent person is justifiable. More importantly, I made it clear early in this discussion that moral systems cannot be built on lifeboat scenarios.

In Post #16 you wrote, “It does not mean that government cannot ‘own’ and control property specifically for its own proper, required purposes.” Now if there are certain parcels of real estate that are “owned” and controlled by government, those parcels are by definition not in private hands. And if there is some property that is not in private hands, it follows that we have not achieved Rand’s definition of capitalism which requires that “all property is privately owned.” Let’s be specific here and discuss an air force base. Now that base must be either government-owned or privately owned, for there is no third option. If it is privately owned, then we are on our way to achieving a society of 100% private property. However, if there is a sign posted on the base fence that reads “U.S. Government Property, No Trespassing,” then we have an instance of a piece of real estate existing outside private hands. Yes, it may be the case that for our government there will be “strict limits” and “a radically different kind of control over property.” But, no matter. The air force base is still a form of property, and there is no escaping the fact that if there is one chunk of land that is not under private ownership, we have not reached a society in which “all property is privately owned.” Rand’s wording is crystal clear, and I fully endorse the concept of a pure private property society. Furthermore, I find nothing in the rest of the essay, "What is Capitalism?" or in any of her other writings that contradicts the idea of moving all government property into private hands. I have not dropped context. If it is your position that Rand elsewhere endorsed keeping some property in the hands of the government, feel free to cite the relevant passages.

No, I was merely answering your question. In Post #100 you wrote, “So, do you believe that rights are in fact intrinsic, meaning that they exist within the individual human being itself, regardless of that human being's moral and political context?” My response stressed that rights do in fact exist independently of any social/political context. As for moral context, rights are explicitly a "moral concept" (Rand's phrase), based on man’s nature (or identity) as a rational being. I presumed that it was self-evident that one cannot remove a moral concept from a moral context. “Justly retaliating” must necessarily exclude initiating force against a person who has not himself initiated force. As Rand said in “Collectivized ‘Rights,’” “A slave country has no national rights, but the individual rights of its citizens remain valid, even if unrecognized, and the conqueror has no right to violate them.” Desert islands are a common mutation on the old lifeboat setting. Smith cannot morally poison non-murderers for the same reason the Brown and Goldman families cannot morally poison the water supply of Brentwood, CA in attempt to bring death to the murderer of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. The fact that Smith finds it difficult to get a clean shot at the Brown son, does not entail the forfeiting of the lives of non-murderers in the Brown family. “Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.” Orwell satirically had his Stalinist pigs in Animal Farm declare, "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." A neat variation on this would be: all human have rights but some humans have more rights than others.

If the population as a whole is targeted, there can be no “collateral damage” in the “enemy population.” If the entire population is the “enemy” i.e, the target, then any kill within that target must be considered a “successful” hit. Therefore, given the supposed premise that attacking whole populations is legitimate, there is NO such thing as “collateral damage.” You say they are not lifeboat situations? We agree. Involuntary manslaughter and wrongful death cases are tried in courts every day of the court calendar. Fine. I won’t send you to prison if you shoot through a human shield that someone is hiding behind while shooting at you. However, this hardly justifies incinerating whole cities or whole populations as someone in this thread has suggested. Let’s review: I said, “If he cannot take the life of an innocent as a private citizen, then he cannot take the life of an innocent as a president.” You said in Post #85: “Again, we haven't agreed yet that these people are innocent.” I asked you, “What people are you referring to?” Your reply in Post #91: “Civilians of nations we are at war with.” Since you did not make any exception for people who contribute nothing to the government or even those who actively oppose it, you are subscribing to the collectivist notion that every single person in a country may be punished for the crimes of a criminal gang in government. That means that neither the infant in a crib in Dresden nor a member of the underground anti-Nazi White Rose movement was innocent and deserved the same punishment as the Fuehrer hiding in his Berlin bunker. Now what incentive would an opponent of a dictator have to act against him if he knew that, despite his efforts, he would be judged guilty by the conquering army? If “civilians have no rights when they morally or financially contribute to their government,” then it would not follow that we should deny rights to those civilians who do NOT morally or financially contribute to their government (children, for example) nor to those who work actively to bring down the government (the National Movement of Iranian Resistance, for example). Ergo, “civilians of nations we are at war with” is not a monolithic block that can be accorded a one-size-fits-all treatment. Non-sequitur. There is no reason to conclude that people who are victims of a criminal regime should be punished for the actions of that criminal regime. The fact that there is “no chance” of convicting the U.S. population of Vicki Weaver’s murder is completely irrelevant to the moral issue being discussed here. If you wish to defend punishing “the taxpaying, job-holding civilians” of an aggressive nation as legitimate targets, then you will also have to show why taxpayers in the United States should not be similarly punished as contributors to U.S. government aggression. Just consider the immoral, unconstitutional War on Drugs, War on Capitalism, War on Free Trade, War on Gun Owners, War on Free Speech, War on Income Concealers. Therefore, if there is a large income earner in my community who enables (by involuntarily) contributing to my local government in its wealth redistribution schemes, I may morally kill him, as ending his life is a performance of your precept that “Killing those forced to support aggressor governments in your own defense is moral.” How does this follow? What ethical principle sets those who perform the initiation of force in war apart from those who perform it in a “civil” society? Why would it be proper in one case but not in the other? If the population as a whole is targeted, there can be no “collateral damage” in the “enemy population.” If the entire population is the “enemy” i.e, the target, then any kill within that target must be considered a “successful” hit. Therefore, given the supposed premise that attacking whole populations is legitimate, there is NO such thing as “collateral damage.”

If you meant that the U.S. may take action only against an aggressor government and those who voluntarily support it, then we are in full agreement. However, we'll somehow have to reconcile this with your statement in Post #95: "If you pay taxes, then you materially support the government which is oppressing you, whether you like it or not. You may have little choice in this matter. You may even spiritually oppose the government. Yet, you are still a part of the life force of this nation."

I'm willing to grant that one government may be the primary aggressor. What I reject is the notion that the “government who made the war necessary is responsible for all resulting deaths.” There are all sorts of heinous and unnecessary actions that could be committed in the name of national defense. We cannot say that anything and everything we do in response to aggression is legitimate. For example, suppose the U.S. is invaded. May the government revive the draft and then blame military slavery on the invaders? Of course not. Ayn Rand made it clear that retaliatory force may be used only against the initiators of force.

The discussion has been about wiping out whole populations. Mister Swig said, "If we need to wipe out enemy populations in order to avoid American casualties, then that is what we need to do." The debate is not over accidents but targeting an entire society. More importantly, how does the concept of collateral damage exempt one from moral responsibility? If, as Ayn Rand says, "the individual rights of [a slave country's] citizens remain valid," then a resident of Tehran who is a slave and not a master may not be attacked, either as an intended target or as an "accidental" victim. Suppose my company is demolishing a hotel in Las Vegas. Something goes wrong and the explosion causes a nearby building to collapse and people die. The fact that I did not intend to cause those deaths does not immunize me from moral or legal responsibility.

There is no reason why Smith & Wesson could not own both the gun and the bullets. The government pays rent for the gun it has borrowed, and pays replacement costs for the bullets that have been fired.

This is simply a blank check for mass slaughter. If the “government who made the war necessary is responsible for all resulting deaths,” then the opposing government is utterly free to commit any outrage: poison water supplies, blow up hospitals, kill people in neutral countries. Any and every horror can be shifted to the other government. This, of course, is in complete contradiction to Rand’s moral-political code: “Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.” Finally, we’re getting someplace. In Post #85 you wrote, “Again, we haven't agreed yet that these people are innocent.” So now we can come back to my earlier point: “If he cannot take the life of an innocent as a private citizen, then he cannot take the life of an innocent as a president.” But one person’s needs do not represent a valid claim on the life or property of another. As Rand said in “Collectivized ‘Rights,’” “A slave country has no national rights, but the individual rights of its citizens remain valid, even if unrecognized, and the conqueror has no right to violate them.” What judicial process are you talking about? There was no judicial process: no judge, no jury, no defense. Vicki Weaver was murdered in cold blood by a tax-paid thug. As for making distinctions between a “judicial process” and “war,” you will have to demonstrate why moral law should be suspended or applied selectively in wartime. Your point is obscure. Swig was had said in Post #93 that if a “criminal is supported by a group, then you punish the group.” By that logic, people who hand over their wallets to armed robbers are supporting those robbers and therefore should be punished. How are Iranian children initiating force? What percentage of tax revenue in Iran is contributed by children under the age of 15?

A better word choice would be “innate” or “natural.” Man’s rights are entailed by his nature, and exist irrespective of his political context. For example, no one would deny that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a prisoner in the Soviet gulag. Yet his imprisonment, however brutal, did not alienate him from his natural right to self-ownership and to trade and exchange ideas with others. From Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights”: “The Declaration of Independence stated that men ‘are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.’ Whether one believes that man is the product of a Creator or of nature, the issue of man's origin does not alter the fact that he is an entity of a specific kin--a rational being--that cannot function successfully under coercion, and that rights are a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival.” If rights were exclusively the creatures of “political context,” then we could not say that campaign finance laws violate our right to free speech or that a ban on assault rights violates our right to self-defense. We would have no moral basis for demanding that government leave us alone.

My hotel room mini-bar analogy applies here. Before you take a Budweiser out of the refrigerator in Room 102, the hotel owns the beer. As soon as you pop the top, the can goes on your bill. I see no reason why bullets could not be owned by Smith & Wesson, which would have the responsibily of stocking police and military armories.

There is no valid reason to interpret Rand’s phrase “all property” to mean “some property.” Readng Rand’s statement in this way renders it into a useless tautology: under capitalism, all private property will be privately owned, and all government property will be owned by the government. As for “dropping context,” nothing in the rest of the essays says anything about government properly having ownership of certain property in a society.

Actually, I think the Post Office should be sold off to the highest bidder with the proceeds rebated to the taxpayers. But even giving away the USPS to the workers would be better than the postal socialism we have now. The best way I can illustrate this is to point to Roadway Express (now a part of FedEx). Unlike UPS, Roadway Express drivers owned the trucks they drove. The result was that since the vehicle was their own property, they took much better care of it. The same thing happens when one becomes a home owner rather than a renter.

That which one cannot be alienated from or deprived of. Founding Father George Mason ably described the concept: "All men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity." There is no contradiction in saying that the source of man’s rights is the law of identity and man’s nature as a rational being. From Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights”:: “But, in fact, the source of rights is man’s nature.” From Atlas Shrugged: “The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A--and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work.” If you don’t expect me to understand a point, why don't you save yourself the trouble of making it? Unproven assertion. Fine, but the value or non-value of people is absolutely irrelevant to the question of whether or not one possesses certain rights. My position is that rights are not derived from other people's values or self-interest. Feel free to prove otherwise. The proof for rights is found in “The Objectivist Ethics.” There is no mention of “intrinsic” rights in that essay. Perhaps because “intrinsic” rights is a rather redundant phrase. Nope. I have already referred to the appropriate passages in Rand’s work that lay the foundation for objective rights. And I reiterate a distinction I made earlier: If I were the world’s worst misanthrope and wished death on the entire human race, the prohibition against initiating force would have no less logical validity.

Ayn Rand has a wonderful line in Atlas Shrugged: “It was like blaming the victim of a hold-up for corrupting the integrity of a thug.” I cannot imagine anyone seriously suggesting that victims of muggers and pickpockets be jailed for giving aid to criminals. But that would be no more absurd than holding the citizen/slave responsible for the aggressive actions of his ruler. What about the one million children under the age of sixteen who died in the Holocaust? Were they remiss in not being prepared to “suffer for the sins” of government? The whole of Iran is no more a proper target for retaliation than are the patrons and tellers of a bank who happen to be on the scene during a robbery. There is nothing ambiguous about the following statement: “Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use” (Rand’s emphasis). Twenty-eight percent of Iran’s population is under the age of 15. (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html) Now unless it can be shown that those infants and children are engaging in the lethal initiation of force, then they clearly are not appropriate targets for lethal force. This is something that every Iranian kid should obviously know. Then consistency demands that “The Objectivist Ethics” be revised to reflect the right of U.S. generals to kill Iranian babies. Fallacy of false dilemma. Like Ayn Rand, I do not believe in sacrifice, period. Yes, because the number of rights violations was 51 times greater. My intrinsic evaluation of a human life is completely irrelevant to the existence of individual rights. If I were the world’s worst misanthrope and wished death on the entire human race, the prohibition against initiating force would have no less logical validity.

I'm afraid voluntary donations of land to the government won’t get around Rand’s stricture that all property under capitalism be privately owned. Once a deed passes into the hands of the government, voluntarily or not, the property is no longer in the private sector. I’m disappointed that you don’t like my suggestion of treating government consumables in the fashion of a hotel room’s mini-bar. Missiles, torpedoes and the like would remain the property of a private corporation until they are actually used. At that point the government pays the owner according to a pre-established price list. In Post #9 I show that this is not true. What is “the public”? Ayn Rand said, “There is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals.” Thus, anyone who claims that government property is owned by individuals in that collective known as “the public,” can put his claim to a real world test. Simply go down to your local school board and demand that you, as a bona fide constituent of the public, be given your share of the real estate owned by the board, i.e. “the public.” If they actually hand over a chunk of land to you (or its worth in dollars), then we can say that the public really does own public property. If the board ignores the demand, then it should be clear that public property is not public at all but a fiefdom of whatever politicians happen to be in power.

Let me point out that I am a member of this “society,” but in no way am I responsible for the criminal actions of “my” government. I did not “support” the IRS’s immoral theft of my income or that of other producers; I did not “support” the Fed’s corruption of our medium of exchange through inflation; I did not “support” trade restrictions and other interventions into a free economy. I am one of the victims of force, not one of the initiators. And this victim has never given her trespassers sanction. This is the fallacy of the hasty generalization. As Ayn Rand put it, “There is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals.” It is simply not true that the entire “people” of Iran support the current regime there. There have been a number of heroic opponents of the dictatorship, such as Dr. Shapur Bakhtiar and his followers, who have in many cases lost their lives by calling for more freedom. Therefore, we have no more right to attack the entire people of Iran than we would to blow up a federal building for the perceived crimes of some bureaucrats. No, as Rand demonstrates in “The Objectivist Ethics” and “Man’s Rights,” rights are based on man’s nature. Thus your rights are derived from the essential fact that you are a rational human being. Your rights are inalienable and not derived from any other person’s values or self-interest. The U.S. government has long operated on the principles of altruism and force. Yet I do not regard my own rights are forfeit.