Charlotte Corday

Actually, it is quite clear from the Brady Bill, McCain-Feingold, the Patriot Act and the other “one thousand commandments” that the federal government has placed a very low priority on upholding the Bill of Rights. "Fixing" bad laws in a democracy that regularly ignores its Constitution is a fool's errand. As long as "the final arbiter" of interpretation (the Supreme Court) is the indirect product of the popular will and not objective law, individual rights will get no fairer a hearing than in the Supreme Soviet. So if the residents of, say New Hampshire, seceded and got the right to own weapons, support anyone’s political campaign without restriction, and not pay any income taxes to anyone, anywhere -- exactly WHOM would be damaged? Great. The Federalist Papers say nothing about forcing a state to remain in the union. And you don’t either. So we agree. When a state declares its independence, we should let it go.

In 1861, virtually the only land in the Southern states that the federal government held title to were military forts, post offices and custom houses. Prior to the firing on Ft. Sumter in April, 1861, the Confederacy had sent a delegation to Washington to negotiate the peaceful transfer (with compensation) for said federal properties to the CSA, but was refused an audience with the Lincoln administration. If your point is that the federal government was the one and true owner of *all* property in the South -- even that held in private hands -- what part of the Constitution supports this claim? Unless one accepts the silly Georgist notion that all real estate properly belongs to the government and that individuals merely occupy it, there is no basis for suggesting that an individual landowner who refuses to pay taxes or allegiance to a certain gang of men calling themselves “government” has committed an act of theft. 1. No part of the U.S. Constitution binds any of its signatories to perpetual union. 2. As I have stated elsewhere, even the Federalists who argued for a *stronger* union than was provided for in the Articles of Confederation insisted that the union outlined in the proposed Constitution was entirely dependent on the voluntary participation of the separate states. 3. Any contractual promise signed by a member of one generation is not binding on successive generations. If my father is a member of the Rotary, am I bound to be a member of the Rotary and pay regular dues to it?

And would you mind providing us with the source of this quotation?

I suspect that this alleged quotation is a hoax. First of all, searches on Google and Alltheweb show that the quote appears exclusively on evangelical Christian web sites -- and usually without attribution. One site (christdot.org) claims the quotation is from Washington’s Farewell Address. But a search of that address at http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/m...ewell/text.html shows nothing even remotely resembling the quotation, although Washington does speak favorably of religion in the speech. Secondly, the language of the sentence is a far remove from the parlance of colonial America. There is a very low probability that a chauvinistic term like “true American” would be used among the founders of the new republic. Furthermore, a glaring pronoun-antecedent disagreement appears between the main and subordinate clauses: “anyone . . . if they” should be “anyone . . . if he.” Washington was no Milton, but neither was he a grammatical dunce. My guess is that some evangelist decided that an authentic quotation from Washington could not be understood by his modern, semi-literate flock. So he took a sentence like “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports” and converted it into 20th century Americanese.

As a thoroughgoing individualist, I favor the right of each citizen to determine which government he owes his allegiance to. If 60% of all New Hampshirites want separation, there is no reason why the other 40% must be dragged along kicking and screaming.

I suppose it is refreshing to hear someone worry about the weakening of the national government. Let's be clear on how far you would go. Do you favor the immediate re-unification of Taiwan and mainland China? Obviously, Taiwan's separation weakens the People's Republic of China. Now, if your answer is that we don't want to strengthen any central government that violates individual rights, on what basis would you oppose the secession of a part of the United States that aims to restore government to its scope and size of 1787? If those in the separating territory gain a marked increase in their liberty, by what right do you declare their secession invalid? The right of the strong over the weak? The many over the few? The unfree over the free? False. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution or the Federalist Papers endorses holding a state captive within the union. James Madison wrote in Federalist #39 that each state was “a sovereign body” only “bound by its voluntary act.” And in Federalist #46, Madison wrote that a standing army “entirely at the devotion of the federal government” could be opposed and defeated by local and state militias “fighting for their common liberties.” Even the arch-centralist Alexander Hamilton said that the central government could never make war against an American state: “To coerce a state would be one of the maddest projects ever devised. No state would ever suffer itself to be used as the instrument of coercing another.”

Since it is *not* my position that states (or rather the people therein) *don't* have the right to secede, I can't explain or defend that argument. I *can* defend the position that government does *not* have the right to force a peaceful people into a political union that they don't want, on the grounds that no government may ethically initiate force. Well, the fact that a certain thing occurred in history does not mean that the action is ethically right. I come from the position, ariticulated by Rand among others, that man has an inalienable right to his life, to the products of his labor and to the defense of his life and property against aggressors. Now we cannot say that two men have an equally valid right to the same thing in the same place at the same time. Such a claim would be self-contradictory and therefore false. That is why we must judge as false your claim that a state has the right to secede and the central government has an equal right to use force to prevent its secession.

If people in a state have the right to secede while the government of the larger nation has the right to prevent them from seceding, then two parties have the right to the same thing in the same respect at the same time. This would violate the law of non-contradiction and therefore must be considered false.

Surely then, you must favor a world government. How else would disputes be resolved among separate nation-states, each of which regards itself and its authority as sovereign and final? On the question of the monopoly in retaliatory force: nothing in your requirement that law and its enforcement be objective would preclude a person or persons from acting independently of the existing government to secure justice. The fact that a government confers on itself a legal monopoly on force does not necessarily mean it has a monopoly on reason or objectivity. Then his earlier objections to “limited government” stand unrefuted. This evades the central question in the debate. No one is alleging a contradiction in enforcing laws against the initiation of force. The objection Childs and others have raised is against using force against a person or persons who have *not* initiated force. If Citizen Corday sends her private agents to recover her stolen car from a person that objective evidence indicates is the likely suspect, she and her agents have acted no less morally or objectively than any group of persons calling themselves the sovereign government. Therefore, if the monopoly government jails us or fines us for acting within our rights of self-defense, it has initiated force and can no longer claim the status of a consistent defender of individual rights.

It can be and historically has been a national issue. I have already provided an example of a state (New Hampshire) that may find itself an unwilling net tax producer and that therefore would see its interests better served by independence. Let me also remind you that while you have repeatedly thrown up your arbitrary "rational basis for secession," you have not once offered any proof for it. It's nice to think that the reason New Hampshire would never become a tax cow to the rest of the nation is because the wealthy folks in the state would be free to spend whatever mega-fortune it took to influence the makeup of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and the Presidency. Of course, this fantasy must necessarily ignore the power of net tax consumers in the other 49 states to influence elections, too. Consider, Fred, that net tax consumers were implementing social welfare legislation that ran contrary to the interests of the productive class decades before campaign finance laws went into effect. Consider, for example, the legislation of the pre-income tax “Progressive” Era. But surely we can make this very argument now. Since the government does not take *everything* belonging to the wealthy citizen, that citizen can still afford to buy a handgun, an alarm system, or a security patrol service. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes that the government is justified in taking a portion of an individual’s wealth (and misallocating it) as long as it leaves a certain amount untouched. On the contrary, provinces and communities seeking independence to advance individual freedom are real world facts. The Republic of Biafra would have been a far less corrupt, less tyrannical country than its present day ruler, Nigeria. And in my own community, an independent North County would engage in far less wealth redistribution than the present unified county. Imagine, Fred, if Taiwan had not become independent of mainland China, following the 1949 communist revolution. Fine. If New Hampshire secession is a trivial matter, then I’m sure you won’t consider it worth fighting a war over, right? What you are ignoring is that secession is an issue entirely separate from anarchism. I’ve named three real world secessionist movements that have nothing whatever to do with anarchism. Actually, Fred, my response was not intended to be sarcastic at all. If a community of individuals decides peacefully to sever its connection with the greater state in order to advance human freedom and form “a more perfect union,” you have three possible responses: 1) you can do nothing, 2) you can use persuasion, or 3) you can use force. In response #48 above, you said, when asked why the U.S. should not take over the rest of North America, “Because Objectivists don't advocate the initiation of force.” Now here’s where we need some clarification: if it is immoral for the government to use force to *expand* its borders, why would it be permissible for the government to use force to prevent those borders from contracting? In both cases, government would be initiating force against people who were peacefully providing for their own political arrangements.

I am perhaps not the best person to defend the LP, but the suggestion that the party has a pacifistic foreign policy is rubbish. It is no more pacifistic than the U.S. was under President Washington. The LP National committee explicitly endorses the use of military force to defend the U.S.: This sure doesn't sound like pacifism to me. No question about it. The government is charged with protecting us from foreign aggression -- for whatever reason it originated. The problem is: the current administration is repeating the same errors that in the past have contributed to making the U.S. and its forces overseas sitting ducks for "blowback," i.e. strikes at the U.S. in retribution for support of foreign dictatorships. I believe I have a cohesive set of ideas to deal with the threats. It involves having our federal government put America's interests first above all other nations. It involves protecting our own borders first. It involves devoting tax money to our own defense instead of the defense of any other foreign power. (If the welfare state is wrong, how can we justify international military welfare?) I've seldom had trouble getting "average Americans" to accept these principles.

I believe this to be an accurate summary. I read once that when someone in her circle proposed going after Mises for his value skepticism, Rand responded, "Oh, leave him alone. He's done enough." And she was right. After fleeing from the Nazis in Vienna, Mises fought a tough, one-man battle against the Keynesians and socialists who dominated his profession in the 40s and 50s. One example of what he was up against: major universities like Columbia wouldn't stock his books in their libraries, but they would carry monographs devoted to "refuting" his ideas. I for one am fascinated by the fact that Rand and Mises differed so radically on basic philosophical premises, yet arrived at practically the same conclusions on political economy.

On the contrary, since police protection is one of the fundamental services of any government, failing to provide such protection or providing it in a haphazard or costly fashion would have a serious impact on a citizen’s liberty. If a community of 1,000 homes could get 20 patrol cars for what it is currently paying for only 10, it could very well cut the rate of violent crime (i.e. loss of liberty and property) in half. However, if the ruling political majority uses that community as net tax producers, the majority would have no incentive to decrease the wealthy minority’s fees/taxes or to increase the minority’s services. Addressing the imbalance would simply not be in their self-interest. Furthermore, allotment of tax revenue on the basis of contributions while certainly just is decidedly not a matter of “equality before the law” and therefore pursuing constitutional remedies through the courts would be fruitless. (Neither the U.S. Consitution nor any libertarian or Objectivist revision I've seen holds that expenditures in an area be proportionate to revenues collected therein.) If you wish, we can apply the problem on a national scale. If a state with high per capita wealth, say, New Hampshire, contributes more in taxes (or fees) than it gets back in government services, it may do much better to go it alone than remain in the union. However, the states that are net tax consumers would see NH as a cash cow and likely resort to violence rather than let it go. That’s like saying that if a government acknowledged the right to keep and bear arms, it would be sufficiently aware of the right of self-defense never to attempt to restrict a citizen’s power to purchase and own certain weapons. Good luck with that! But I have addressed it. I have pointed out that you have assembled an admirable list of reasons to have a large union. Those are powerful arguments the unionists could readily deploy whenever a chuck of territory (or an individual) threatened to secede. I don’t see why your government should have to resort to force, Fred, when you've provided it with so many dazzling appeals to reason! Therefore, what is your Objectivist government going to do when two-thirds of the people of New Hampshire want out of the Union? Is it going to send a team of Objectivist philosophers to talk them out of it? Or is it going to send in the Marines?

You have already listed the many advantages of a large union. Why must the government use force rather than the power of its arguments to keep people from breaking away from the larger state? Yes, precisely, where do we draw the line? If it is appropriate for a central government to use force to prevent a certain territory from leaving the union, why would it not be appropriate to use force to expand the union? On this point I agree with David Odden. I would not support any new political entity that diminished existing rights. But early in this thread I made it clear that I was addressing the matter of secession to *increase* liberty. I wrote: “The secessionists might argue, with good reason, that their own breakaway government would be more vigilant and effective in preventing crime. In such a case, there is no reason why the larger state should not wish to let the dissident territory go its own way. . .” But I have already shown that it is possible to have an Objectivist type of government that, due to human fallibility, may have imperfect performance in protecting individual rights efficiently. This is not a matter of correctness of political theory or of rationality but of the natural inequality of individual abilities. Furthermore, it is conceivable that under an Objectivist government one part of the population may pay a disproportionately higher share of the revenues but receive fewer government services per tax dollar spent. No part of Objectivist political theory that I know of has spoken to the matter of whether or not this is just. But you have not shown what is rational about letting the electoral majority determine that political fate of the minority. Furthermore, why must union and the larger state be the default position for objective justice? If the people in the northern part of my county decide finally to stop sending money to the political majority in South County and to establish their own separate, free and cost-effective government, why should we side with the majority in South County? Is it your position that the South County police should invade North County, shoot North County’s policemen and jail their newly elected leaders? Who’s initiating force now? The only conclusion that I can draw from this question is that you regard a group of citizens who peacefully establish a free and independent government for the protection of individual rights to be equivalent to a gang of murderers. Good. Then I take it that no Objectivist government would use force against a certain province that peacefully establishes a separate, free and rights-protecting government?

Well, at least www.mises.org has all of Mises's books for sale, and several online for free. Yes, Kant, for all of his faults, was not a socialist.

I think the discussion regarding Silber's article is fascinating. But, if I may, I'd like to shift the topic to purely aesthetic considerations -- and I trust I will not be accused of dropping context by doing so. I viewed the link recommended by Argive99, and see that the design by Gardner and Belton is basically a rehash of the original Twin Towers. Between 1970 and 1991, the Twin Towers were not only Manhattan's tallest buildings; they were also its ugliest. In their own way, they perfectly represented the product of a state bureaucracy: massive, unimaginative, tediously repetitive, and costly. They sat on the lower end of the city's previously majestic skyline like two thermometers in the mouth of a sick patient. Political-economic issues aside, I abhorred the WTC’s blemish on the face of America’s greatest city. I particularly resented the fact that they replaced the magnificent Empire State Building as New York’s tallest structure. The Empire State Building was one of the great achievements of modern architectural design (before it descended into the grim plainness of the Bauhaus School). Its indentations, its set-back walls, its tapering summit -- each contributed to a triumphant, soaring beauty. I would have loved the building in any case, but the fact that it was also, for a time, the home of Objectivism’s first outreach organization added to its allure -- as did its key role in the movie King Kong. If the government chooses to put up those same old boxes again, the new WTC will stand as an apt monument to the mentality of government: gray, dull and pointless.

The definitive, pro-market treatment of monopoly theory is D.T. Armentano's Antitrust and Monopoly (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990). Professor Armentano has a shorter, more recent work, Antitrust: The Case for Repeal, which specifically addresses the Microsoft case. It can be ordered here: http://www.mises.org/store/product1.asp?SID=2&Product_ID=10 The Austrian-Objectivist economist George Reisman has two good articles about the Microsoft case at http://www.capitalism.net/articles/BriefMS...Top%20of%20Page and http://www.capitalism.net/BriefMS2.htm#Top%20of%20Page

It would, of course, depend on the degree of irrationality we are dealing with. In his writings, Ludwig von Mises has demonstrated that as long as people prefer life to death, health to sickness, and prosperity to poverty, capitalism is the most efficient of all economic systems. On the other hand, if one believes that exisitng as a primitive hunter-gatherer is man's true calling, the best attributes of capitalism (money, international trade, the division of labor, the accumulation of capital) will hold little appeal. However, there's little reason to suppose that a passion for primitivism will sweep the world. I have heard people extoll the noble savage, but have yet to observe anyone actually living that existence for any length of time. Furthermore, when I have visited the Third World, the overwhelming majority of people I encounter there want to live like Americans.

Rand's words amount to nothing more than an assertion that the anarchist does not understand "competition" and "government." She does not offer any proof beyond that. But anyone who reads Rothbard's Man, Economy and State and Power and Market is given a crystal clear understanding of the nature of government and competition. Furthermore, no one to my knowledge has successfully refuted Childs's point regarding the contradiction inherent in a government which presumes to defend individual rights yet at the same time initiates force to maintain its monopoly.

Once again, I’d like to see some proof that secession is not a legitimate option when a given people are not being provided with the best form of government. All we have to go on is your assertion that electoral politics is a more “rational mechanism.” In fact, there is nothing rational about letting a numerical majority determine the fate of the minority. If the majority has certain interests which conflict with those of the minority, leaving the matter to 51% of the electorate is futile, as is placing it in the hands of a judge who serves the majority’s interests. The example I offered earlier about my county (where the northern residents pay disproportionately high taxes yet receive less police protection per tax dollar spent than the southern residents) is a perfect example of the futility of electoral politics. It is simply not in the self-interest of the southern majority to give North County more government for their dollar. Petitioning the state legislature for a separate county is the only practical remedy. As for my "raising issues which are fundamental enough to justify secession," what government service is more fundamental than police protection? -- and it is precisely this service that the North County separatists are not getting enough of. You have listed the merits of a large union. Fine. Why then shouldn’t the larger political entity, with its many advantages, use persuasion instead of force to keep a dissident territory from leaving? Isn’t persuasion a more rational mechanism than brute force? Another point: if the larger nation-state is better than the smaller nation-state, shouldn’t we Objectivists advocate the expansion of current U.S. borders? Why not take over Canada and Latin America-- or go at least as far as the isthmus? And, in the long run, why not One World, One Government?

I find it curious that neither the Ayn Rand Institute’s bookstore nor the Objectivist Center’s “Objectivism Store,” both of which supposedly defend laissez-faire, offers a single book by Ludwig von Mises. That's unfortunate because just as Rand provided a powerful moral defense of capitalism, Mises showed that it is the only practical economic system. Rand and Mises were the twin beacons in the formation of my own political philosophy. I discovered the great Austrian economist through a conservative book service, which began sending me brochures after I (at the ripe age of 15) had contributed a whopping $10 to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. I discovered the great ex-Russian novelist three years later by way of an article in Life magazine. Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises, both residing in New York City, had met and (with some reservations) respected one another. Some of Rand’s inner circle of the 1950s attended Mises’s lectures at New York University. The Objectivist Newsletter, Rand’s first periodical, enthusiastically recommended Mises’s books Planned Chaos, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, Planning for Freedom and Human Action. Mises himself attended some of the lectures on Objectivism given at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan by NBI, which was Objectivism’s earliest outreach organization. At one point Mises remarked that Ayn Rand was "the most courageous man in America." Other similarities: Both were born to Jewish parents, both fled to America to escape totalitarian regimes, both were uncompromising in their defense of capitalism. It's worth considering what common ground the 20th century’s two foremost and “extremist” defenders of laissez-faire share -- and where exactly they diverge philosophically. I would like to offer, as a springboard for discussion, the following links: http://www.solohq.com/Articles/Younkins/Ca...econciled.shtml http://www.freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetime...ues_virtues.htm http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/reisman1.html

I wonder if Peikoff has persuaded Hurd to vote for Kerry.

I'm not sure that the 60,000 Chechens killed by the Russians in the past few years are resting in peace knowing that their murderers were not "oppressive socialists." Furthermore, why should we regard Putin and his gangsters as the "legitimized" authority over Chechnya -- any more than it was the rightful ruler of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? Right. Saddam was evil because he killed "his own people" -- like the Kurds who want a separate country. And the Russians are our allies because they are killing Chechens who want a separate country. I'm sure all this makes sense to some mad genius in the State Department. Your point must be that since Chechens have killed hundreds of people, Chechnya must not be independent of Russia. On the other hand, the government of Russia, which has killed tens of thousands of people, would make an ideal ruler for the region.

I think Dave Odden is asking precisely the right questions here. Terrorism and the massacre of innocents can never be excused. But the Russian government's crimes against the Chechen people far exceed anything Chechen secessionists have done. In the 1940s Stalin had half the Chechen population shipped in cattle cars to Central Asia, where 125,000 died in the frigid conditions. The current war has left 60,000 Chechen civilians dead. Were all of them potential terrorists? We also must ask how trustworthy is the government of Vladimir Putin (himself a former KGB agent). In 1999, the current incarnation of the Russian secret police, the FSB, was caught planting bombs in a Moscow building in an apparent attempt to create public outrage against Chechnya. If the FSB could blow up a building, why not an airplane? It is symptomatic of the insincerity of the "War on Terror" that the U.S. gives its blessings to Russia's brutal war on Chechnya, and continues to support Uzbekistan, an ugly little tyranny run by "ex"-Communist strongman Islam Karimov. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insi...eav022604.shtml

Let's take a look at Stephen's response. "Losertarians," "nonsense," "crumpled banner," "tiresome," "thoughtless," "concrete-bound," "clowns." My, what a spectacular display of logical rigor! It must have been a killer argument!