Posted on 11/01/2002 12:09:21 AM PST by Roscoe
I've been a libertarian -- an advocate of and activist for inherent individual human (and other sapient) rights -- for the last three decades. If anything distinguishes the libertarian intellectual tradition from other politico-ethical traditions, it's the idea that rights originate with the individual and not with any collective, and that any group -- religious, ethnic, or political -- only has those rights which are held by the individuals who comprise it. This a priori premise dictates the answer to most of the conflicts of rights that arise in other traditions. Libertarians abhor the use of force to benefit one individual at the unwilling expense of another, and by corollary, likewise abhor sacrificing any innocent individual for the benefit of the collective -- again, whether that collective is religious, ethnic, or political. Libertarians, having adopted Ayn Rand's principle of never condoning the initiation of force, more often than not define themselves by this non-aggression principle.
Nevertheless we live in a world in which the words spoken by Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca seem to be the premise that everyone other than libertarians operate on -- paraphrasing: that the problems of one or two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Libertarians have spent a lot of words trying to reconcile the usages of the real world with the pure ethical abstraction of never sanctioning coercion. Doing so alienates the strict libertarian from the daily political discourse in the rest of the world as effectively as if libertarians were unworldly religious pacifists. Quakers, Amish, and many orders of monks come to mind.
Ayn Rand, unwilling to cut loose from the world as did the protagonists in her novel Atlas Shrugged, used a general ethical escape clause which she called "emergency ethics." The premise of emergency ethics as Rand used it, and adopted by many libertarians who followed, is simple. In any situation where there is no "non-deprivatory alternative" -- when there is no existing pro-survival behavior that does not deprive someone else of their rights -- one may act for survival even at the expense of others -- that is, outside the bounds of ethics. Rand justifies actions taken in self-defense, even if innocent third parties are hurt in the action. Only libertarian pacifists condemn as unethical using force against an attacker.
Allowing for any sort of collateral damage to innocent third parties, however, takes us off the map of the primary Objectivist/libertarian non-aggression principle since any use of force, even defensive force, harming innocent third parties violates the non-aggression principle, and likewise can only be justified if one is also arguing the case for the absence of a non-deprivatory alternative.
This escape clause opens up a can of worms because the absence of a non-deprivatory alternative is the common state of affairs for much of the human race at any given time, since war, terrorism, forced famine, and criminality thrive on depredation, on negative-sum games. It's common for one side -- usually those without constraints against harming the innocent -- to take loved hostages who would be harmed if force is used in response to their aggression. Libertarians are therefore left with only two alternatives: acting solely within the boundaries of one's ethical map even when the end result is annihilation of oneself and beloved others, or adopting some calculus of preferential behavior that allows for the likelihood of innocent third-party casualties in the defense of self and beloved others.
"Beloved others" can vary widely for libertarians, depending on whether one is completely individualistic in one's affections or extends one's affections to collective categories, such as family, nation, or even species. One's highest values can be material, social, or even transcendental, depending on one's worldview; but it's hard to imagine a libertarian who would subscribe to any ethics at all if he hadn't escaped solipsism long enough to consider the existence and value of others.
The question of whether libertarianism can allow for violation of the non-aggression principle in any case at all is an abstract ethical problem when looked at here in the non-specific, but when one applies the problem to the real world where the result is awful and tragic, the answers are always poignant and devastating.
(Excerpt) Read more at sierratimes.com ...
"Perhaps it is better to define libertarianism not by the non-aggression principle but by the principle that any chosen action contains the possibility of third-party damages, and the moral actor accepts personal responsibility for them. This is not so much letting the end justify the means as recognizing that no human action, even choosing inaction, is without risk of a catastrophic outcome."
"This is, I admit, not a pristine libertarian position. That's because, in the world I see, this libertarian can't find one."
Is J. Neil Schulman in danger of becoming an adult?
There are many test cases in which pure non-aggression, with full respect for property rights, leads to unacceptable results. David Friedman proposed one in which a killer is popping into a crowd, killing one innocent person after another. The only available gun with which to oppose him is lying in plain sight -- but its owner has threatened to prosecute anyone who touches it for any reason.
Solution: You seize the gun, drop the killer, and take your chances with the jury. Reasonable people will not put you away for committing a minor crime in defense of your life and the lives of innocent others.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best in his fabulous essay "Compensation," the contents of which are sufficient to govern any nation:
If the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will fail to convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in.
Other interesting cases where pure non-aggression and ethical individualism -- the two tenets of libertarianism -- are insufficient also exist. I covered several in my essays on "The Conservative-Libertarian Schism," which are still available here at FreeRepublic. However, for ordinary interactions with sane and responsible individuals, they are more than sufficient: they are optimal.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Hardly.
Insofar as it rejects standard Libertarian dogma.
I have never had anyone give me a plausible scenario where "innocent third parties" are harmed when force is used against and aggressor. I do not consider wars against other countries to be such in most cases.
I like most of what the Libertarians have to say and have worked with them on Ballot issues, but they have a certain spinelessness and guttlessness out side of the "ME" issue that reminds me of the '60's.
When you live in a Republic there are collective intererts that outweigh the individual interests. The Libertarian idea that it doesn't hurt me until the enemy hits the beach is short sighted, you can't John Wayne in a world war.
The "non-aggression principle" is standard Libertarian dogma.
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