Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Second Amendment Is the Libertarian View Valid?

You and I agree on a large number of things, as I'm sure you know. However, I don't think that property and happiness are the same thing.

And I do think that there is a fundamental, unalienable right to property. As a matter of fact, it's the most fundamental right, because all the other ones derive from it. Your right to liberty essentially consists of the right to acquire, use, and dispose of your property in whatever way you deem appropriate without being interfered with, provided of course that you don't interfere with anyone else in the process. Your right to life simply comes from the fact that you own your own life: it's your property to do with as you please, without interference or interfering.

As a matter of fact, the very concept of freedom itself depends on property rights, as I'm sure you'll see if you think about it.

But you also have a point in that the right to own property does not include a right to be provided with property by others, especially if it is extorted from them with force from the state and handed to you. You properly acquire property either by creating it yourself or by persuading someone else to give it to you of his own free will, usually by providing him with some sort of agreed-upon compensation.

But once it's yours (provided that it has not been obtained through an initiation of force or fraud), it's yours, and anyone who tries to take it from you without your consent would best be prepared to be dealt with as an initiator of force.

Well, that's a perfectly valid kind of libertarian. Lots of people want to be left alone; that makes them human, not libertarian. But if in order to be left alone, they're willing to leave others alone (and not appeal to the state to jerk others around on their behalf), then they're definitely on the right track.

I don't know what a "circle A" is, but if you like being left alone and they're not willing to leave you alone, then they don't sound much like what I know of capitalist anarchists. (There is a philosophy called socialist anarchism, but I've never understood it, and so far no one has been able to explain it to me.)

But if you've got the basic tenet down (I'll leave you alone if you'll leave me alone) and you're an intellectual type of person, you're in danger of thinking yourself into anarchism at some point. I may think myself there eventually; but I'm not there yet.


Libertarians make allowances for people to be venal, selfish nincompoops--as a matter of fact, it's pretty much assumed that they will be. However, in a libertarian society, being selfish and venal means walking lightly around others and saying please and yes sir and thank you ma'am, because you wouldn't want anybody with a gun to get the idea that you were trying to initiate force.


Excellent! Then my work here is done.

Barak, I don't know the other gentleman who misunderstood my statement on property rights, but I am very surprised that you would misconstrue my meaning. Ok, here goes. If we had a "right to property," that would imply an obligation on the part of others to provide said property for you. You have a right to YOUR property (both real and personal), but not that of others, and you have a right to both pursue and obtain property in a free society by any legitimate means. As you state, property rights are the foundation of a free society (see John Locke), but that is entirely different from the leftist view that people literally have a right to property, e.g., the right to have housing, medicine, food, clothing provided for them. This is the view held by socialists, i.e., that if I don't have something to which I have a right, then government must provide it to me. Negative! You have a right to pursue it, obtain it by trade, manufacture it, receive it as a gift, but you do not have the right to have that which belongs to another if you don't currently have it. If you had a right to have an income (rather than the right to pursue it, obtain it, keep it), for example, then we who already have it are obliged to give you that to which you have a right. See the difference between having a right to property and the right to pursue property? One implies socialism, and the other free market capitalism.

I was not saying that property is identical with happiness. I identified both the pursuit of happiness and of property as being a right.

Well, I'm glad we got that straightened out.

One way I've heard it described before that makes sense to me is that all true fundamental rights are negative--that is, they protect the absence rather than the presence of action. That is, you can be said to have the right to be free from somebody coming into your house and taking your food; but you can't be said to have the right to force somebody else to put food in your house.

It gets a little dicey, though, because politicos will try to represent positive government entitlements (for example, unemployment compensation) as negative rights ("freedom from poverty"). In such cases you have to think, "If I am to be kept from experiencing or having or dealing with this, will obligations need to be placed on others?" If yes, then it's not a right, but an entitlement which violates the rights of somebody else.

Yes, that's the way I've heard it expressed too. That is to say, it is not a true right if its satisfaction places a positive obligation on society, or anyone else, to take some kind of action for your benefit. In Communist countries we see lists of such rights, e.g., the right to be free from hunger, from want, etc.,. FDR was a Communist, and we see this conception of rights in many of his speeches.

Are you saying that we have a right to pursue property and that if through our own efforts we are successful in that pursuit then we have the right to consummate that pursuit by obtaining that property but that we do not have a right to have property provided for us?

I'm not trying to be anal here. I'm really trying to understand what you've written. I understand what Barak has written and agree with it but your explanation is still a little murky to me.

Skidrow, I'm sorry I've confused you. Perhaps I could be clearer. Let us first establish what authentic property rights are. You have a right to pursue the acquisition of property, to thereby acquire it, to then keep and use it, to make it yourself, to receive it as a gift, to give it away and to sell it, but to say that we have property rights is not to say that we have a right to property. If I have a right to property, and I currently have none, my right is being vioted, no? If my right is being violated, then government has a positive duty to step in to prevent my right from being violated (that's why governments are instituted), and this is where we get the income tax and wealth redistribution. The answer is that we do not have a "right to property," but rather a right to pursue it (and, naturally, to acquire, sell, keep, use, etc.,.).



It is typical of Communist nations to assert that everyone has a right to certain things, i.e., property such as food, medicine, housing, etc.,. In America we traditionally say that everyone is free to pursue material goods, necessities and land, but we do not have the right to them, per se. To say we have a right to property is to imply that if we don't have property, then it is a legitimate function of government to step in, take from others who do have it, and give some to us.



Let's use the right to pursue happiness, mentioned in the Declaration of Independance, as an example. I don't have the right to be happy, because if that were my right, my failure to be happy would be a violation of my right, and the government would then have a positive duty to step in, assess what is missing in my life, and then provide the missing elements so as to make me happy. Not the case. We are free to pursue happiness, but we do not have a right to happiness. See the difference?

I think we're getting closer, but I still have a problem with not being able to comsumate the pursuit. If I understand you correctly, we have a right to pursue happiness, property etc. but you don't believe that we have a right to what we have obtained if we are successful in our pursuit. That's where I have a problem. If I have achived happiness then I have a right to what I have achived, however fleeting the duration of that achivement may be. If I pursue something and achive it or obtain it then it is mine. Once I have gotten it (what ever "it" is) (hope it isn't catchy) through my own effort and/or means with nothing provided for me with out charge or cost by the government or anyone else then what ever I have is then mine and I have a right to keep it, at least for as long as it lasts, therefore I have a right to it since it has become my property through achivement, successful aquistion or passage of title.

In other words, I don't have a right to have anything given to me or provided for me but I do have a right to own what I have aquired though my own means and effort.

We may be talking at cross purposes or it may be semantics.

I think I understand what you mean but I'm having difficulty with the way you're explaining it. I guess that's my problem. Sometimes the simplest things are the most difficult to understand until the moment of epiphany when all is made clear by the manifestation of a slightly different perspective.

The bottom line is, I think, that none of us has a right to be given anything or to have anything provided for us by anyone else.

I further think that it is very important to remember (polititians and bureaucrats, are you listening?) that our government has no rights what so ever but only those privileges that we have given it. That's the part that the "new liberials" just don't get. In their pursuit of "freedom from" they take it as a given that the government has the right and the responsiblity to provide the necessary gifts to achive all those "freedoms from" that they want every one to have and have absolutely no problem with the fact that in order for govenment to provide someone with something it first has to be taken from someone else. While you have characterised them as socialist I think that they are closer to the communists that you later mentioned as they are more concerned with the needs of the "have nots" being met than with the ability of the providers to provide. For my part, I can do very well on my own, thank you very much. And if I can't that's my problem, not your's, and neither you nor anyone else has any responsiblity to provide me with anything that I'm incapable of getting on my own.

Skidrow, from what you have said, I can see that you hold a view of property rights essentially identical with my own. You are just having trouble with the words I've used to express essentially the same idea.

I will use something very concrete now in an attempt to clarify (or bring to sharp focus) the more subtle point I was attempting to make. Would you say that I have a right to a Corvette? I think you will agree with me that I do not, for if I did, then I could place my demand with some agency of government (remember that governments are instituted to secure that which is my right), and one would promptly be shipped to my place of residence at tax-payer expense. On the contrary, however, while I do not have the right to a Corvette, I do have the right to do whatever is legal in order to acquire a Corvette, and then (once mine) I have every right to dispose of it, or to use it, in any way I choose (within the confines of the law), i.e., once acquired, it becomes mine, and I may excercise "dominion and control" over it. Now expand that to property in general, and you've got it.

If you are still in the dark as to what I'm saying, just rest assured that we essentially agree on property rights. The point I am making is a little more subtle, however. Barak's point about the difference between a true right and a false right is another approach to the same exact point, so if you understand that, you've got it.

Exactly--although I would use the word "powers" rather than "privileges," but that's nitpicking.

Have you read Vin Suprynowicz's take on that? (How do you say "Suprynowicz's" anyway?) I thought it was fascinating. He applies it in the case where pro-gun and anti-gun people are arguing over what sorts of weapons the government should allow its subjects to own, and where the anti-gunners pull out the hysterical red herring, "Well, then, what about tanks and artillery and fighter planes and battleships and NUCLEAR WEAPONS?? I suppose you think you have a right to own those too, huh?"

Vin says, "Well, does the government have the right to own them?"

He imagines the response would be, "Of course the government has the right to own them. But do you think you have the right to own them?"

And then he says basically what you said: "Where do you think the government got the right to own them?" And etc.

Hmm, I say. Innnteresting, I say.

Guys,

Time to attack part "B" of my post.

"So is the Libertarian View a type of government worth striving for or is it just an unrealistic pipe dream? Is voting and supporting political conservatives and incrementally trying to undo our current state of over regulation the best we can do? Do we lose more by seperating ourselves into a group that will never achieve enough political power to have any effect, or by choosing the lesser of two evils with the political parties who can have an effect?"

Comments

Blaine

TRH,

Got it. Thanks.

Barak,

I think that one of the greatest difficulties in discussing weapons, govenment and the 2nd Amendment is that most people, to include many who are well versed in firearms, don't understand the distinction between arms and ordnance. When the Constitution was adopted the right to bear arms was singled out for protection and reserved to the people while the privilege of aquiring, maintaining, storing and the responsibility for paying for ordnance was customarily bestowed upon the federal and various state govenments. What is important to remember is that no where and at no time did the founders state that the people did not have the right to keep and bear ordnance. It simply wasn't enumerated as one of the rights specifically protected by the Constitution. For the most part it wasn't an issue as the expense of owning ordnance made it prohibitive for the average citizen. In my view it comes down to more of an economic issue rather than a right vs privilge issue since the peoples right was never abdicated and the government has no rights.

Careful, I'm still probably mongering power somewhere out there in the shadows. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

That depends. Do you want the idealistic perspective or the pragmatic perspective? The truth is what you percieve and believe it to be regardless of what the actual facts are. Truth as defined currently is subjective rather than objective and doesn't necessarily relate to what ever the pertinent facts are so therefore it can change depending upon your perspective and experience. So pick your version of the true answer to your question and go with it. Everything the rest of us have to say on the subject is mere opinion.

Yeh, well, I'm one of the ones who isn't convinced that it makes a particularly big difference.

But just in case, I didn't mention the Second Amendment. Simply from the Declaration of Independence, where a government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, if the government has the just power to own heavy weapons, then it must have gotten that power from us, which means we also have it, Second Amendment or no.

I'm sure I've probably posted my perspective here before (I've posted it everywhere else, it seems), but just in case, I'll do it again.



1. One does not get less government by voting for more government. Even the conservative hero Ronald Reagan significantly increased the size of government, especially the military. Perhaps he increased it less quickly than a Democrat would have; but it is not at all clear that either Papa Bush or Baby Bush has increased the size of government slower than Democrats would have.



2. The objective of a third party in a two-party system is not to win; it's to make a primary party that is abandoning its base lose. And that is a significant amount of political power, especially in a close race.



3. Corollary to 2: if you have serious problems with what the Republicans are doing, then the worst possible thing you can do is vote Republican. As long as they keep getting your vote, they have no reason to care about what you think of what they're doing, or to do anything differently. Elections are not about figuring out how to make voters already in the tent happier: they're about figuring out how to get voters outside the tent inside the tent. Anger and disgust on the part of the voters inside the tent is completely immaterial, as long as they stay inside the tent. That's why the Republicans use the "lesser of two evils" argument and the "A vote for a third party is a vote for a Democrat!" slogan: not to soothe angry brows or salve wounded consciences, but specifically to keep voters inside the tent without having to give them anything.



You want the Republicans to listen to you? Proclaim far and wide that you'll never vote Republican again until Republicans put your issues back on their agenda and make you believe them. In a race where they can hope to win only by one or two percentage points, that will carry a lot of weight.



4. The objective of government (any government, Democrat or Republican, or Taliban or Likud or whatever) is not to protect people's rights. (That's the stated purpose of government according to the Declaration of Independence, but not its objective.) The objective of government is not even to make voters happy. The objective of government is simply to acquire and consolidate power. It's as if the government is a living, breathing entity in and of itself. Yes, it's made up of individuals, but it will use the power it already has to bend those individuals to the task of providing it with more power. It doesn't care whether they're Democrats or Republicans, Christians or heathens, honest or dishonest. It will use whoever and whatever is available to grow bigger and more powerful as quickly as it thinks it can get away with.



The only check on the ability of government to continue growing, and the only throttle on its rate of growth, is the people as a whole. It doesn't really matter which party is in the majority, or even whether the political system is democracy, republic, monarchy, dictatorship, or whatever. If the people are willing to give the government more power, the government will cheerfully take that power and be instantly back for more. If the people demand power back from the government, the government will surrender power to them to preserve its existence; for since government is by definition parasitic on the people, it must always be much less populous than the people, and it understands that in a direct and wholesale confrontation it cannot but lose. The classic power struggle is not between the bourgeoisie and the workers, not between the believers and the infidels, but between the government and the people. It always has been and it always will be, at least until Messiah comes.



So you see, the question of whether we send a Democrat or a Republican into government is, from the long view, entirely irrelevant. Whichever it is, the government will swallow him up and begin using him for its own purposes. The only important question is what we the people are willing to put up with. If we are willing to continue surrendering our liberties, then whoever we send to Washington (and our own state capitals, etc.) will continue taking them from us. If we're willing to demand them back, and to bear the possible consequences of such a demand, then whoever we send will give them back to us, as slowly and reluctantly as he can without being dragged from his office and hanged from a streetlamp.



In point of fact (and this is the important part, right here), the very concept that there are substantial differences at all between Democrats and Republicans, once they get into office, is a deception the government uses to keep us voting rather than shooting.



No matter who you vote for, the government always wins. It's not just a bumper sticker: it's the law.

I am not sure about this ordnance distinction from arms. There are small arms, and then there are all the rest. Small arms are such as handguns, rifles, submachineguns, shotguns, grenades, and the like, i.e., those that can ordinarily be carried by one man in the field. The Second Amendment did not state that only our right to "small arms" shall not be infringed. Neither did the Constitution give to the Federal Government an EXCLUSIVE power to keep ordnance, as it did the coining of money, the regulating of its value, the fixing of standards regarding weights and measures, or the issuance and enforcement of patents, for example. Since all of its just powers derive from the consent of the governed, and we have never (through our representatives in the Federal Government) consented to the Federal Government's EXCLUSIVE power to keep and maintain ordnance, this power remains equally with the people at large (The Federal Government acquired this power only via our collective consent through Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, so an amendment to that document would be necessary for it to claim exclusive power over its possession), and the States respectively.



The question remains, however, whether this right is inalienable with regard to the people. Certain rights are inalienable, i.e., even the people, through their consent, are powerless to give it away. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, if my right to life is inalienable, then my right to acquire and possess the means of preserving my life is also inalienable. If you can make a case that there are circumstances where my self-preservation might require that I possess ordnance (nukes, for example), then you have a case that this is an inalienable right. I think not, however, as it is impractical to carry ordnance (such as a nuke) with you at all times, or even while doing most of your ordinary daily activities. Additionally, it is hard to imagine where the carrying of a nuke would be useful in preserving one's life. This would suggest that the ownership of certain ordinance, though a right held by the people, is not an inalienable right, and can be legislated away by our representatives at either the State or the Federal level, i.e., by our collective consent.



We are still, however, left with the question whether the Second Amendment prevents the infringement of our right to keep all ordnance, and that would depend on the definition of arms. If all ordnance are arms, then an amendment to the constitution would be required to outlaw their possession by the people. No amendment, however, may alienate from us the right to keep and bear those arms that are practical to bear on our persons, and which are useful in preserving our individual lives, as this is without question an inalienable right. Only while in actual custody for criminal conduct (or the legitimate suspicion thereof) are we rightly prevented from exercising it.

jmartin03 said:


I don't think that accurately describes libertarianism. That sounds more like rational anarchy.

Barak,

The problem I see with bailing on the Republican party in protest is you wind up electing the Democrats, which are normally much worse. Instead of a Libertarian party, I'd like to see a Libertarian "wing" within the Republican party that weilds enough power to make changes in the Libertarian direction.

The question is how do we get there?

Blaine

Democrats are not much worse, not from the standpoint of liberty.



It was a Republican administration that gave us the USA PATRIOT Act and the Office of Homeland Security. Come to that, it was a Republican administration that gave us the War of Northern Aggression, which may be the only greater insult to American liberty in history.



There is no substantive difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to achieving the purpose of government, namely protecting the rights of the people and securing the blessings of liberty; anyone who says different is selling something.