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Moral justification for preemptive violence

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AspiringObjectivist

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What law prevents self-defense? If there was one would you say it was moral?
None, but Al Qaida is not acting in self defense. You should look at the laws surrounding self-defense -- they are specific, and don't amount to just saying "I was defending myself, I get to do anything I want". Laws that allow self-defense say that you must be using force against unlawful force.
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Because they are both immorally operating outside of the law.

Laws that allow self-defense say that you must be using force against unlawful force.
Oh .... are you saying all laws say this? And, what about my moral right to defend myself against force legally initiated against me? Laws are man-made and not necessarily moral. There have been many instances of governments throughout history that legally initiating force against citizens who morally had the right to defend themselves. Since governments make the laws all they have to do is make it legal for them to do whatever they want including initiating force. What do laws have to do with the moral right of self-defense?
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Oh .... are you saying all laws say this?
Yes: if you know of an example where you are legally allowed to use force to defend yourself against the legal application of force, do please give us the citation.
And, what about my moral right to defend myself against force legally initiated against me?
What about it? Your question is irrelevant in the context of what you asked. You asked "What law prevents self-defense?". Asked and answered -- move on. You also asked whether a law preventing self-defense would be immoral: I reminded you that Al Qaida is not acting in self defense. So move on. We are not discussing the plight of the citizens of an oppressive dictatorship, we are talking about whether a nation has the right to use defensive force against an aggressor before the aggressor manages to bomb the hell out of them. The answer is "Yes, they do". Do you have any questions that pertain to that topic? Or any declarations, for example you think that a nation should only use defensive force against an aggressor after they have been annihilated by the aggressor?
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Do you have any questions that pertain to that topic? Or any declarations, for example you think that a nation should only use defensive force against an aggressor after they have been annihilated by the aggressor?
Yes, I think you should wait until you are annihilated before defending yourself. What did you eat some spoiled food or something?

You say: “Yes: if you know of an example where you are legally allowed to use force to defend yourself against the legal application of force, do please give us the citation.” Dictators can pass any law they want. They can say (and make it law) that it is illegal for another country to resist their invasion. When your country resists invasion you are breaking their law--but not your laws. Any person, any country, any group of people can make laws—laws, per se, say nothing about what is right or wrong.

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You say: “Yes: if you know of an example where you are legally allowed to use force to defend yourself against the legal application of force, do please give us the citation.” Dictators can pass any law they want.
The ability to imagine such a scenario does not constitute a citation of a such a law. I repeat: laws which allow people to defend themselves against the use of force only allow such a defense against the unlawful use of force, and, most pointedly, do not allow the use of force against the legal use of force. Your shocked reaction "Oh .... are you saying all laws say this?" suggests that you either knew of a counterexample, or that you found the idea to be implausible. Whatever your motive might be in your reaction, I am reaffirming my claim, and denying that your self-evidence statement that dictators can do anything they want does not in any way damage my statement. On the contrary, dictators would be the very first persons to uphold such a restriction on the right of self-defense and to perhaps deny that there is any right to selse defense at all.
They can say (and make it law) that it is illegal for another country to resist their invasion.
Completely irrelevant. The US is not subject to the laws of Afghanistan or Pakistan. Al Qaida was at no time opperating according to the laws of any nation, even Afghanistan.

BTW you should not ask questions about your right to self-defense if you are discussing Al Qaida and its supposed right to attack the US. At least given my basic charitable assumptions about you, I assume that you are not an Al Qaida operative and therefore if I say that you have the moral right to defend yourself against attackers who seek to rob or kill you, that is based on the premise that the attack is by thugs and not by the police, that you are in fact defending your actual rights and are not resisting the proper use of force by the government, which is seeking to prevent you from the further initiation of force. If you really are an Al Qaida agent and are seeking to destroy America by force, and you are looking for sanction of your use of force to resist justice, then I withdraw any implication that you have any right to self defense.

And finally, your entire line of argument here is utterly off topic. This thread has been about nations -- see Marxist's Sept. 29 post, where this all started. (Side note: this is an argument against thread-merging, which isn't a practice that I approve of since it distorts context). Al Qaida is not a nation. Al Qaida has even less of a right to invade the US that Pakistan does (namely, none), and no relevance whatsoever to the root question. So please, concentrate on what nations do, and whether any nation has a right to preemptively invade an aggressor nation that is planning an attack. Your side-questions about primitive tribal war, and implications that Al Qaida is in some way "like" the US or that Al Qaida has the same right to defend itself from justice that decent people have to defend themselves against the initiation of force -- these are seriously distracting. Go back to square one, before you got all tangled up in this messy defense of the "right" of primitive tribes to engage in perpetual warfare or the imagined "right" of Al Qaida to initiate force against America because they are a group and groups are just the same as governments. A rights-respecting nation has the right to defend itself against the initiation of force by anyone, and the nation may even use defensive force before the force initiation by the attacker is fully realized. I just do not understand how you can disagree with that: perhaps you can explain.

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A rights-respecting nation has the right to defend itself against the initiation of force by anyone, and the nation may even use defensive force before the force initiation by the attacker is fully realized. I just do not understand how you can disagree with that: perhaps you can explain.
Perhaps I think you are being a bit too restrictive when you say that "a rights-respecting nation," has this right to... I read that to mean that as an exclusive right that these particular kinds nations have. I disagree with this because 1) the concept is very vague—does the nation have to respect all rights or just some rights? – Does it have to be a “nation” – why? What about other organized groups? What is so special about nations that you single them out? What nation on the planet respects all rights of all individuals? 2) Nations are made up of individual people. You must start at the individual rights area before you can leap to the rights that nations have. A nation nothing but a group of individuals. It is a particular type of group: it claims land ownership—which in most cases it took and keeps by force, and it is organized and run by some kind of government—which has a monopoly on the legalized initiation of force. Nations are established by force and maintained by force. What nation came into existence without the use of force? You say, “well the other guy initiated the force by violating our rights so we used force in retaliation."

My point is that there is no way to trace back all of the uses of force to the first person who initiated it. Everyone can claim that someone else has initiated force against them. Do you pay income taxes? Why? Is not the taking of personal property the initiation of force? Then you have the right to fight back. So you fight back and the goverment kills you.

I am not commingling issues here—rather I am distilling out the real issues.

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1) the concept is very vague—does the nation have to respect all rights or just some rights?
"Sufficiently rights respecting". Rand's "freedom of the press" metric is a very good one, in my opinion. Obviously, all nations are in the "just some rights" respecting category. Yet it is still a huge mistake to say that the US is no different from North Korea.
Does it have to be a “nation” – why? What about other organized groups? What is so special about nations that you single them out?
Yes, it has to be a nation, and not some cult residing within that nation. The citizens of the United States have ceded their individual right to self defense to the government of the United States, as part of what must be done in order to live in this particular civilized society. That is, the use of force for the protection of rights is under the objective, monopolistic control of the government. This is in the nature of what it means to live in a civilized society. This monopoly on the use of force entails that no local cult may also rightfully use force under the color of rights-protection. [i assume you understand how emergencies give rise to the right to defend yourself against a house-breaker so you won't be interjecting any emergency scenarios, which would be irrelevant to a preemptive defensive attack against foreign invasion].
2) Nations are made up of individual people. You must start at the individual rights area before you can leap to the rights that nations have. A nation nothing but a group of individuals.
No, this is the root of your error. A nation is not just a special kind of association, it is a unique kind, having a special status in terms of its function as the guardian of rights in a civilized society.
My point is that there is no way to trace back all of the uses of force to the first person who initiated it.
And indeed there is no need to do so, a point that I have made previously. Again, France initiated force against England; England initiated force against France; back and forth, and who really cares. That is ancient history: now you can drive a car from France to England, and France and England are as friendly as any two countries could be, if one of them is France. You do not see Tony Blair planning preemptive nuclear strikes against Paris because France is planning on invading with hordes of crack legionnaires. Preemptive military action is only necessary against an uncivilized nation, such as Afghanistan or North Korea.

You questions about taxes are totally irrelevant, except if you simply want to reject Objectivist politics and advocate a libertarian-anarchist line. But that's not the topic of this thread, so you should start a new thread in the Debate forum if you want to argue for anarchy. Fresh start and all.

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You questions about taxes are totally irrelevant, except if you simply want to reject Objectivist politics and advocate a libertarian-anarchist line. But that's not the topic of this thread, so you should start a new thread in the Debate forum if you want to argue for anarchy. Fresh start and all.
Since all rights depend on property rights, by saying property rights are irrelevant you are saying that all rights are irrelevant. Since anarchy results from the absence of a cohesive principle (which in this case is the principle of individual rights) and since you say property rights are irrelevant, it is you who is arguing for anarchy.

The last time I checked Objectivists ethics did not advocate the government's taking of property by force. So how am I rejecting Objectivist ethics by arguing against the US Government's initiation of force against its citizens?

I'm not saying a nation does not have the right to protect itself. I am bringing up the point that "protecting yourself" and responding to a prior attack or even a current threat of attack is not the same thing. Just because someone verbally threatens you does not mean you are actually at risk of harm from them. And just because someone (or some nation) had previously initiated force does not mean (by that fact alone) that you are now justified in responding with force.

Ayn Rand made the point that it is not unethical to take over a dictator nation because the dictator does not respect individual rights. So let's assume we decide to do that. Our attack on them is not an initiation of force because the dictator initiated the force against his people (this is the basis for her reasoning that it was not unethical for us to kill the American Indians and take over the land that we now control). But to the people of the country who are under the dictator (or to some group of Indians who may have respected the rights of individuals) the attack is the initiation of force. Now they have the right to fight back -- and the war is on – both sides claiming that they are in the right.

What if some group of people (who previously were a nation) can trace back 2000 years ago and can prove that they had been taken over by another nation. Do you think they have the right to take their nation back by force? Why or why not?

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Since all rights depend on property rights, by saying property rights are irrelevant you are saying that all rights are irrelevant.
I have thought about the issue for some time now, and I cannot deny what I have seen -- repeatedly and undeniably -- with my own eyes. My judgment, based on a long-term evaluation of your posts on this forum, is that you have rejected certain essential aspects of Objectivism, and this rejection seriously impairs my ability to interact with you using fact and reason. Concretely, you cling tightly to a fundamentally Kantian rationalist perspective on the relationship between reality and knowledge, exploiting the power of word-trickery to advance your cause.

The primary tool of that approach to philosophy is context-dropping. If you would be so kind, please review my various posts on this forum, on this thread or others, after which review you will see that at no time have I ever suggested, even remotely, that property rights have no bearing on questions of moral judgment. So to suggest that I actually hold that property rights are in any absolute sense irrelevant is an utterly baseless accusation, made possible only by dropping the essential context of my last couple of posts where I have attempted to get you to see how you are utterly off topic. My conclusion that you are a word-game rationalist is, on the other hand, based on integrating a range of your posts here (admittedly not every single one, but very many).

In fact, if you were to read just those posts which I have made in this thread, you would see -- if you were judging the evidence objectively -- that I have argued, specifically, that your pathetic attempt to analogize the United States to the despicable regime of North Korea based on the fact that we have taxation is -- I will repeat -- totally irrelevant to the question of whether the United States or another civilized, rights-respecting government has the right to preemptively defend itself from attack by aliens. You have entirely, completely, totally and wholely dropped the context of what the question under discussion in this thread is.

You are free to propose that no nation has the right to defend itself against attack from an agressor, or to propose that only a completely pure Objectivist government has a right to defend itself against foreign invasion, or that anyone pretending to have a grievance against another is fully justified in engaging in unlimited violence against those whom they dislike. However, you need to initiate a separate thread where you make those claims, and advance the necessary initial evidence for your case. That could include some part of what followed in your post, which I did not respond to. I personally don't see the point in continuing to argue with someone who cannot distinguish the essential from the non-essential.

If you really don't understand why the libertarian fallacy of imperfection is a fallacy, you can simply pose that question.

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RSalar,

It's been pointed out a couple of times now (by David) that you are off topic and appear to be promoting ideas outside those which are compatible with Objectivism. If you want to pursue that line of argument/discussion, start a thread in the Debate forum.

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  • 3 years later...

Regarding individual self-defense (bumping this thread because many other topics get replies pointing to previous threads when a question has been touched upon already), where does behavior (including physical actions) cross the line and constitute something to justify violent retaliation?

Implicit verbal threats ("You'll be sorry if you don't get out of here right now!")? Explicit ones ("I'm gonna kick your ass!")?

Physical actions that are meant to harass/intimidate, but not injure -- like shoving or poking someone in the chest hard?

I think if it's something like on a sidewalk or in a parking lot, trying to walk away is clearly justified, but what about somewhere that you have a right and purpose to be, like a store or bar? What if the person follows you and continues their behavior but still doesn't throw a punch? A little more difficult, but if they are following you and continuing to intimidate you I think it's much more clear that they intend to continue to escalate, and preemptive force could be warranted.

Edited by jparagons
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Implicit verbal threats ("You'll be sorry if you don't get out of here right now!")? Explicit ones ("I'm gonna kick your ass!")?

Physical actions that are meant to harass/intimidate, but not injure -- like shoving or poking someone in the chest hard?

when it becomes physical, including people acting in a threatening manner, invading personal space, shouting aggressively in your face, you are entirely justified in taking pre-emptive action. indeed, it is not pre-emptive, it is a response to their actions against you.

I think if it's something like on a sidewalk or in a parking lot, trying to walk away is clearly justified, but what about somewhere that you have a right and purpose to be, like a store or bar? What if the person follows you and continues their behavior but still doesn't throw a punch? A little more difficult, but if they are following you and continuing to intimidate you I think it's much more clear that they intend to continue to escalate, and preemptive force could be warranted.

I would not say it could be warranted, rather that it is certainly justified (possibly even morally necessary - assuming you are physically able). I would always walk away initially, but if the person followed me, was fronting up, getting in my face, acting aggressively, I'd have no option but to attack him, viciously and decisively without any thought or regard for his well-being.

I guess this shows what you are talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAx5kZ9jYDU&NR=1

this guy shows incredible restraint, walking away, followed for two minutes; no-one can say that the thug didn't have it coming - I wish the guy could have done more damage...

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when it becomes physical, including people acting in a threatening manner, invading personal space, shouting aggressively in your face, you are entirely justified in taking pre-emptive action. indeed, it is not pre-emptive, it is a response to their actions against you.
There are a number of other contexts to be included. While I agree with your examples, they are very close to crossing the line of actual physical contact, and it would be mistaken to conclude that your right to self-defensive force only exists starting a few inches from direct contact. Other examples include pointing a gun at a person; brandishing a knife in someone's direction; declaring or implying an intent to kill or harm a person. The latter is really the epitome of the principle, which is that you have the ability to integrate the facts known to you and use reason to determine whether a person has an intent to apply force to you, or not.
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