Tom Robinson

If there is a right to end one’s own life, then one may legitimately employ someone else to do it or enter into a contractual arrangement in which one’s life is taken under certain conditions. In such cases, the individual continues to own his body until the moment of death. Thus, there is no surrendering of ownership, no alienation of rights. If Citizen A kills himself he does not alienate himself from his body; he retains full ownership of the body as long as he lives. The same is true when an individual voluntarily consents to enter circumstances which include a high probability of death. Ad hominem. Since the topic here is death entertainment, a reference to a discussion on another thread is relevant only if you can demonstrate that all those holding Opinion X on subpoenas must necessarily have incorrect views on the present topic. Your attempt to dismiss me as a “nutcase,” is reminiscent of 20th century Marxists who would typically smear anyone expressing opposition to them as suffering from mental illness. As for the allegation of anarchism, if that is true then I must be the only anarchist in the world who believes in rule by a single sovereign government constrained by constitutional law.

Among novelists, I like Dostoyevski, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Greene, Huxley and Waugh.

Placing oneself completely under the will of another would mean surrendering or alienating the individual from what is naturally and absolutely his. As long as he is alive, Citizen A cannot transfer title of his body to Citizen B. A is stuck with his inherent ownership of himself. As John Stuart Mill put it, a party to a slave contract “defeats, in his own case, the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to dispose of himself. . . It is not freedom to be allowed to alienate his freedom.” (On Liberty, Chap. 5) On the other hand, a suicide or death contract is not equivalent to surrendering ownership of one's body. It is, in fact, the exercise of the individual's right to dispose of his body as he wishes. It is true that a person cannot change his mind once his life is terminated, but that is also true of countless medical procedures. Should we outlaw hysterectomies because the womb cannot be restored once it is removed?

Unless an enterprise involves the inititation of force, we should permit and encourage any and all free market exchanges. I see no initiation of force involved in check cashing shops, pawn shops or sex shops. I'd be far more concerned about the culture if the store-fronts included welfare agencies, Social Security offices, government human rights bureaux, and other forms of getting something for nothing through the bully power of the state.

Agreed. We should punish any country that sends military aid to to the enemy government of Iraq, including Great Britain.

My guess is that the number of ninth graders who have read Atlas Shrugged would fit into a very small classroom. As exaltron said, you are clearly way ahead of your peers. What books did you enjoy before you started on Ayn Rand, and how did you discover her?

No, for the reasons explained by Capitalism Forever in his post yesterday. Hmm, could it be that the consent forms for kidney donors and death match participants are worded differently?

Ah, so violence in a football game should not be punished because there is "an implicit (if not explicit) consent" involved. Accordingly, we would charge the promoters of death matches with murder only if they were unable to produce a signed and witnessed consent form from the deceased. The point of a consent form is to demonstrate that each participant acknowledges the likelihood of permanent and irreparable injury. If the law should forbid all consensual arrangements that would produce such injuries to the human body, then kidney donations and vasectomies would have to be outlawed.

By the same logic, football games should be illegal because you cannot consent to assault and battery.

But what about the Objectivist principle of a citizen’s “renouncing the use of physical force and delegating to the government his right of physical self-defense”?

You go to war and then give the Medal of Freedom to the guy who said that evidence of the weapons was a slam dunk.

How does this follow? Do people frequent adult novelty shops only when the economy turns sour?

In fact, I did not miss your argument but answered each of your points and challenged you to show how the subpoena can serve justice when the practice is itself unjust.

If any statement I’ve made is in error, then you need only demonstrate the error. The name-calling implicit in the term “armchair philosopher” proves nothing. Non-sequitur. If one person’s needs do not constitute a title to the liberty or property of another, how do the needs of two or more people constitute such a title? I hope you are not going to put forth some utilitarian argument that the needs of the many cancel out the rights of the few. A self-contradictory idea cannot be a “metaphysically given fact.” One cannot achieve justice through rights violations, since rights violations are plainly contrary to justice. Citizen A is entitled to have his rights violations redressed but not by initiating force against Citizen B. Rand: “Only individual men have the right to decide whether they wish to help others; society -- as an organized political system -- has no rights in the matter at all.” (“Collectivized Ethics”) It is a contradiction to say that justice may be financed through injustice. If government acts as robber then it loses any claim to the role of defender of property rights. By the same process, you could suspend the Bill of Rights in order to fight crime, and blame the suspension on the “criminal element” -- which would of course ignore the fact that a government that is a mass rights violator is itself part of the criminal element. The protection of individual sovereignty is beyond question. Such ruthless delimitations should include prohibitions on all involuntary servitude, including the subpoena. Please feel free to show what knowledge in your possession demonstrates that A’s loss of property or liberty justifies violating non-aggressor B’s right to his property and liberty. In that case, a person’s legal background is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of any statement he makes on the subject of law. You have not submitted any data gleaned from your background in law that falsifies my proposition that subpoenas are a violation of individual rights.

X-rays most certainly are a form of force -- if they are used against a subject without his consent or knowledge. When X-rays pass through a body, some of the rays are absorbed by human tissue. Repeated exposure to X-rays can damage organs or induce cancer. Clarence Dally, Edison's assistant, died after X-ray burns on his hands turned cancerous. The example you gave above clearly is a case of physical force.

Posting error. Sorry.

Since no modern Republican president or Congress has done anything but vote increases for government schools, increases for socialized medicine, and increases in the federal debt (which means more taxation or inflation--both forms of theft), I don't see how the Republicans' agenda differs from the Democrats'.

Why derive X from Y if X = Y?

Which means what specifically? Are arguments made by “armchair philosophers” necessarily invalid? Unproven assertion. Because I answered your point in previous posts to other contributors. Your argument is essentially the claim that the criminal justice system needs subpoena power. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, one person’s needs do not constitute a legitimate claim on another’s liberty or property. This discussion is not about interpreting the present legal code but rather about the morality of one particular aspect of it, the subpoena. In this thread, I have not made any declarations about the existing body of laws, statutes, bills, ordinances, orders, etc, other than what has not been disputed: that the subpoena is a writ requiring appearance in court to give testimony. And even if I were offering a legal opinion, any statement I made would have to be judged on its own merits, not on my credentials or non-credentials as a legal scholar. If a person’s background in a subject were the ruling determinant of the truth of any of his statements about it, then we would not have to bother reading a person’s argument -- we would only have to look at the number of letters appended to his name. I am not making a pronouncement about the philosophy of law but about one portion of the law which is inconsistent with the non-initiation of force, the subpoena. By the way, taxes, which are also grounded in constitutional and statute law, represent another form of legal initiated force. Would you have any Objectivist without a law degree refrain from addressing the immoral nature of taxes?

If the law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle were equivalent, then the definition of the Principle of Non-Contradiction would be A either is or is not B. However, since that clearly is not the case, the terms are not equivalent.

The right to the use and disposal of one’s own body entails the right to transfer that right to an agent. The right to commit suicide, therefore, validates contracting with someone to terminate one’s own life. One does not have to have any physical involvement with the killing process; the contract completely legitimizes the killer’s actions. If rights cannot be waived, then one’s right not to be assaulted cannot be waived. If assault is impermissible under any circumstances, then boxing, wrestling, rugby, football and many other contact sports would have to be outlawed.

I cannot think of a reason why anyone shouldn’t suffer the consequence of their actions. It could be if the person kissed was not your spouse. If the person recorded was not given any assurances that his voice would not be recorded, he has no case against the surreptitious recordist. Stay only in hotels that offer a guarantee of privacy. If someone gets videos of your naughty activities, you have a case against the hotel. Not a rights violation, unless the recorder of restaurants himself engages in credit card fraud. Keep your credit card inside an opaque sleeve.

I was using the word "aggression" in the sense of invasive. In both examples you gave, the person who does not relinquish property belonging to another is acting in an invasive manner. His refusal to give up what belongs to another may indeed be considered a form of aggression; his continued occupation/holding of it is equivalent to a seizure of property, in principle no different than that of a thief. In any case, let us not lose track of the argument on this thread: whether subpoenas are justifiable. If, as you implied in an earlier post, you do not endorse the use of force against innocents, then surely you would oppose the use of force against a person who chooses not to speak -- which is a choice that cannot be interpreted as being anything other than non-coercive.

This is basically an ad hominem argument. Instead of dealing with the arguments of those who oppose subpoenas on ethical principles, you are calling their positions into question because of their educational backgrounds. Your criterion would be a valid one only if it could be shown that by virtue of being a lawyer or law enforcement official, one’s opinions about law are objectively correct.

AisA: Somehow I knew I would not get a straight answer here. Robinson: That is because you asked a question without defining your terms. If you ask ambiguous questions, don’t expect to get answers, straight or otherwise. AisA: I think it is very clear that a witness with knowledge of a crime is in a different situation than a person who leaves his keys in the car or a parent that does not do background checks. Robinson: If the difference is clear, then you should have no trouble articulating it. Go ahead and do so. My position is that since a person becomes a witness by no action of his own, he cannot be made to perform any service as a result of his being a witness. AisA: You are playing word games to avoid acknowledging the fact that your position rests implicitly on the notion of a right to assist in the violation of rights. Robinson: Again, you refuse to define “assist.” Once we know what you mean by the word, then we will be able to determine, perhaps, whether a woman who leaves her apartment unlocked should be charged with assisting a rapist. AisA: By the way, I have already answered the question: “Do you or do you not think that one has the right to assist in the invasion of a country?” This is another straw man argument. Robinson: No straw man. If you oppose the involuntary servitude of the draft, then your defense of the involuntary servitude of the subpoena is inconsistent with your opposition to the draft. AisA: I have not said that anyone that can help, in any way, must help, in every way. I have said that those who are involved in the crime have an obligation not to assist the criminal. Robinson: There are no unchosen obligations to perform services for others. AisA: When they withhold evidence, they are assisting the criminal in violating someone else's rights. Robinson: But surely the attorney for the accused is "assisting" the defendant. If a non-compliant witness can be jailed for “assisting” the criminal, why not jail the criminal’s attorney? Now, if you insist that the situations are different, then please offer a definition of "assist" that would include one action but exclude the other. AisA: Nothing in that argument can possibly be construed to mean that the wealthy have an obligation to give money to the police. Robinson: Is it your position that it is better for a criminal to get away with a crime than force someone to perform a service against his will? AisA: The proof is that there is no such thing as the right to assist those who violate rights. Robinson: Then your proof is invalid since it rests on an undefined term. AisA: Really? Then how do you account for the fact that Miss Rand also supported subpoena power? You have quoted her repeatedly, why do you not quote her on this issue? See the link that GC provided in his last post in this thread. Robinson: I quote her for support only when she is right. If Rand’s support of the subpoena is correct, then show how it squares with “The Objectivist Ethics,” which holds that “Men have the right to use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.” AisA: So is it your position that one does not have an obligation not to violate the rights of others because such a thing is "unchosen, unvolunteered or uncontracted"? Robinson: Straw man fallacy. I said no such thing. What I wrote was, “Once you prove that unchosen, unvolunteered or uncontracted actions by a citizen can create obligations from him to the state, then I will start taking your argument seriously.” A witness’s refusal to testify is not a violation of anyone’s rights, since no one has a proprietary right to the content of another person’s mind. AisA: You continue to beg the question. There is no right to assist in the violation of rights, so there is no right to remain silent in this situation. Robinson: No, but you do continue to evade my request for a definition. Without knowing exactly what “assisting” consists of, we cannot have objective law since the number of activities that might be considered “assisting” would be limitless. AisA: The issue is: does a witness have a right to assist a criminal by withholding evidence. You think he does, but will not say so for some reason. Robinson: If I knew exactly what you meant by “assist,” I would be able to state unambiguously whether the act of “assisting” does constitute the violation of rights and should be punishable. However, you continue to withhold from our discussion any precise definition of the term. AisA: This is your idea of addressing an argument? Borrow a phrase from it and then repeat your own assumptions? Robinson: You offered a principle of law, and I merely attempted to see how it worked in the real world. You said, “Man has an obligation not to violate the rights of others and, as a corollary, an obligation not to help those who do violate the rights of others.” If your principle is valid, then it should certainly apply to protecting a person who has not initiated force from having force used against him. In other words, it would apply to protecting the right of a witness not to speak. AisA: Once again, you evade the issue, which is: does a witness have the right to assist a criminal by withholding evidence? Your answer is yes. Robinson: In fact, not. To repeat: If I knew exactly what you meant by “assist,” I would be able to state unambiguously whether the act of “assisting” does constitute the violation of rights and should be punishable. However, you have chosen to withhold from our discussion any definition of the term. AisA: So, we may take it that your position is that one does not have an obligation not to violate the rights of others. Robinson: Rand: “No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as ‘the right to enslave.’” (“Man’s Rights”) Here, by “obligation” Rand clearly means service or labor. Simply respecting the rights of others is not the performance of a service or labor. In fact, by doing nothing in regard to another person, one can avoid violating his rights. And that is precisely what a witness who chooses no to speak is doing: not violating anyone’s rights by doing nothing. AisA: The initiation of force that I referred to in post 46 is that of the criminal forcing the witness to become a party to the crime. Robinson: Not true. Nimble wrote, “If you are not guilty, then wouldn't the force used to get you to go to court have been an initiation of force?” Your response: Yes, it is an initiation of force, but it is the criminal, not the government that is trying to catch the criminal, who bears responsibility for this.” So clearly you were not speaking of the criminal forcing the witness to look at his crime (an absurdity), but rather the force used to get someone into court.