Is there really Just War?

Economics Political Theory
21

It’s unfair to blame that passage on thompsonisland - that was me who said that.

You are welcome to speak for yourself, but in most cases, I punish only when it will serve to prevent the behavior I’m reacting to from happening a second time. I’ll start handing out just desserts when I can, as freely, reward all behavior that I think merits it. The call towards revenge may be strong, but I believe that the urge to control is both stronger, and more widespread.

As much as I despise rape, I don’t believe that the death penalty is called for - unless you’ve got compelling reason to believe that nothing else will prevent further rapine.

This becomes quite sticky. If I go to war to give my Democrat neighbor more freedom, and he clearly doesn’t want this freedom, I’m not freeing him - I’m simply claiming the role of his master, which is not my goal.

Associated with an Organization? Huh? I’ve just been enjoyin’ exchanging ideas on a web site - I don’t believe that a login here makes me the member of any organization.

IMO, respect for and adherence to the US Constitution simply cannot be furthered by violence - we can perhaps win them over by convincing them - it can’t be done by pointing guns at them, and forcing it down their throats won’t be effective.

The draft wasn’t (and can never be) justified - but by agreeing to help the South Vietnamese people resist the violent overthrow of their government by Communist insurgents from outside of their country, we had no just course of action other than to be there. We, as a group, represented by our government, promised to be there - billing them for it would have been breach of contract. (If we were unhappy with our elected representative’s contracting us to do so, it was our problem - that woudn’t invalidate the contract.)

The public reaction to the conflict in Vietnam may have been different if the young people of the time had been better informed of why we were obligated, and the reasons we had taken on that obligation - but the educational system had been largely taken over by socialists by that point. The average citizen too young to remember WWII had no idea of why we were there - combined with an awareness of the injustice of conscript troops, public support was remarkably split, largely on lines of age. Most of the people I know socially still don’t have a clear idea of why we went there, or what we were trying to accomplish.

After the US’s idiotic State Department, I blame the educational establishment. If we’re going to restore a love of freedom in our societies, getting the respective educational establishments converted to a love of freedom will be an essential step.

Danno, probably overdue for bed.

22

If someone struck me and walked away, what would I do? The old me would have chased them down. These days, I would turn the other cheek. Would I call the police? Are you kidding me? I just got hit, how much more trouble do I need?

This is not for religious reasons - I am not religious. Am I a hippy, well, who knows? I guess it depends on the definition - does choosing non-violence make one a hippy?

I believe everyone’s actions are about themselves. We cannot control another’s thoughts or actions. I know, I have a toddler! So, if someone makes war on me, that is about them. If I choose to participate in his war, I have given that war, and that person, power over my thoughts and my actions. I opt out.

The reason I do not take up arms against my oppressor has been, until now, that, as mentioned above, I didn’t believe I would win. However, what kind of principle is that, to stand on? I do not take up arms because arms are the method of my oppressor. I subvert him in my heart, just as I love him.

This last is the sticky part for me right now. Can I love W? I believe that I have to, in order to be free.

23

Your responsibility not to aggress against an innocent victim stems from their right not to be harmed. It is a correlative duty, of a sort.

-Jon

24

“their right not to be harmed”? This is not a right - at least, not in the way I view rights. If it were, I’ve had my right to not be harmed violated, almost continuously, since I was born.

The right to be not harmed, while sounding lovely, sounds very much like the right to an education, medical care, clean water, a rewarding career, a faithful spouse, and an honest government. I keep hearing about these rights, but they generally boil down to someone else’s right to run my life - which I disagree with strenuously, or someone else’s being required to provide for me that which I cannot or will not provide for myself - another idea with which I refuse to agree.

I may, indeed, have a moral obligation, in a rational society, to desist from committing aggression against people who have not given me clear cause - but this ain’t a rational society.

My own moral standards may prevent me from initiating aggression - but they’re my business, and nobody else has the right (or might) to decide my moral standards for me.

I fully understand the siren song of rational, ideal utopias - but history is full of atrocities committed in the quest to make them reality, and I strongly encourage you to rethink your position on the rights that people have.

Danno - kinda surprised

25

It occurs to me that the political establishment, presently and historically, is most threatened by those that advise non-violence. Look at the response to Ghandi, to MLK, Jr., to Jesus (and to Ron Paul). It is easy to drum up patriotic fervor and hysteria against an armed group; harder to do so when the persecuted persons do not represent a military threat. I believe that our current form of government is fundamentally based on violence (compulsion and coercion); if we respond with violence we beget more violence, ad infinitum.

And markets, which are fundamentally non-violent, are the biggest threat of all to the establishment, and the largest agents of peaceful change. No one in the political establishment feels threatened by an armed enemy, at least domestically, because they have the most guns. But an enemy who brings peace, who challenges them at the very root of their corruption, now THAT is an enemy they fear. They cannot control it, they cannot fight it.

26

Why not ?

Who is ‘we’ ? What contract are you talking about ? Can I see a copy of it ? Does said contract ‘justify’ the draft, taxing, killing civilians, etc ?

Hm. Having a minimum of decency not to attack people is a ‘rational utopia’ ?

Ah, so all wars have been started by the libertarian army ?

I think that the word ‘rights’ is shorthand for ‘violence is wrong’ ‘attacking people is wrong’ ‘using coercion is wrong’ ‘coercion cannot be justified’, etc., etc..

27

I would think that the draft can never be justified because it is slavery.

As for a contract with the South Vietnamese, I think that any party is free to break a contract at any time, it just invalidates the whole contract. Now, it may be the case that breaking a contract could be viewed as acting in bad faith, and there are social/business consequences for such action, but I do not think it is unethical to break a contract provided neither party has delivered any goods.

Plus, as mentioned, saying “we” had a contract with the South Vietnamese is a lot like arguing that “we” have entered into a “social compact” which justifies taxation. No one asked me to sign.

28

So? We wound up with the Stalinists and Communist China instead of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan. Yeah, much better.

Nothing is ever justified when men are enslaved (drafted) to accomplish it. The powers on both sides were vicious a-holes, and if we want to talk about what nations in general deserved (though I’d rather not), nobody really got more than they deserved in that little conflict. We wound up delivering Eastern Europe to the Soviets. We allied with a man who murdered more people than Hitler. Yeah, we were justified.

Who’s “we”? I didn’t agree to sh1t, I was 12 in 1991. They still stole my treasure and encouraged the world to hate me to fulfill “our” promises.

29

Not at all - the one is the right to demand others provide for me, the other that they refrain from doing something to me.

Right, and prohibiting you from violating the rights of others is one such “right” to run your life that you just have to live with in any given society. More concretely, it is a check on your power to harm them.

-Jon

30

It is more of a summary, though indeed, an imprecise one. Can you wrap your brain around it if we say a right not to be aggressed against or defrauded? As for “someone else being required to provide for me that which I cannot or will not provide for myself” - you mean, like “national defense”?

So, then, what you’re saying is you have a right to aggress in this society.

Well, wait, I mean, this is an irrational society, so I do have the right to decide for you, if I have the force. Right?

Will someone get out the air freshener? It stinks of Neocon in here.

31

Is war just? Might as well argue about whether hurricanes or earthquakes are “just”. Is a lion justified in eating a zebra? Is AIDS justified when it kills a young kid? War is and always has been. No amount of hand wringing or wishful thinking is going to change that. War has been a part of the human condition since before recorded history, and if there are two people left alive after the last war, war will continue after recorded history.

32

Class war.

33

Rape always has been and always will be a part of human existance, nature. It’s inherent. Now bend over since it’s not unjust to rape you.

I also like how you compared inanimate/irrational things to rational ones. It’s a very convincing analogy.

34

Which is why we can’t think about it and come up with arguments against it? We can’t try to prevent it as much as possible?

Through the vast majority of history, there were no computers. There was no internet. The bulk of human knowledge was not available to the bulk of humanity. It is now. The spread of information has exceeded the control of our would-be masters. Once, an ignorant populace was not difficult to achieve, it was inevitable. Now, all that has changed. We are in an unprecedented age. I can send a message around the world in fractions of a second. I can travel around the world in a day. And the impact of these changes is just starting to really be felt.

It may yet be that humans will, by and large, act rationally when presented with the information necessary to make a rational decision. This is just the first time in history that information is truly readily available. Who can say what will be?

35

Yo, Nicky! I dun interacted with you b4 (Enlish rules!) so I think you know where you’re going, but you may want to clarify a bit here for those less familiar with your unique style. Do you mean to say that “Class war is always a sham”, or that “Class war is justified”, or what?

36

Gandhi

Martin Luther King, Jr.

William Lloyd Garrison

Leo Tolstoy

…not hippies. Of course, I don’t consider MLK, Jr. to really have advocated pacifism because he advocated statism, which, as we libertarians are all aware, must be founded on force or the threat thereof. But he believed he was a pacifist, and he certainly did much to forward the cause of non-violence, so I include him.

I like your approach. Your emphasis on the inextricable (I believe) principles of love and non-violence mirrors my own, though from different starting points.

If I could bring myself to have a nice sit-down dinner with Bush and manage to treat him like someone I love (like maybe as I love my father), I think that I will have come a long way from the days when I couldn’t wait to buy a .45 ACP so I could think about blowing the brains out of anyone stupid enough to fulfill my teenage video game fantasy of giving me a reason to “legally” do so.

[Note to those concerned: I never really wanted to kill anybody, but I did want a gun for “self-defense purposes,” and the line between the two isn’t always clear in young minds.]

37

I’m not sure I get it. One thing is to dislike and repudiate violence - a different thing is to ‘love’ people who are clearly despicable or worse. I see no merit in turning the other cheek. If you want to commit suicide, fine, but getting yourself killed is not that virtuous, IMO.

38

Conscript troops? That can’t be a serious question, Juan.

By ‘we’, I was referring to the lawfully-elected (mostly) government of the USofA, who had a mutual-assistance treaty with the government of South Vietnam. The contract was irrelevant to the draft or taxation. The deaths of civilians probably had a lot to do with the insurgent’s frequent refusal to wear identifiable uniforms, and was unintentional, Calley’s misbehavior at Mai Lai notwithstanding.

Huh? I was actually not thinking of any wars, per se - but the atrocities committed upon populations by their governments, such as Stalin’s purges, Pol Pot’s ‘reeducation’, et cetera.

If that’s how the word “rights” is being used, then it’s being misused, badly - the sort of conflation I’d expect to see from Socialist “molders of society”. The examples you give are of moral decisions - which I may or may not agree with, but which cannot be decided for anyone but oneself.

Nobody can justify the right to decide on a moral code that everyone else must follow. If it’s a clearly good moral code, most will see that and adopt it - but that’s not for you, me, or anyone else to decide for them - and if you force it upon them, you’re committing aggression on them.

The Bad Things ™ done by people trying to enforce a moral or religious code upon their neighbors have been even worse than governmental atrocities.

Danno, recalling getting along with Juan in the past…

39

You do have a point, but it gets skinny. It may well be better if all governments were minimalist, and anarchy may be even better than that - but that’s not the world we live in. (Changing what we have is great - pretending that it’s not there is silly.)

If you have consistently spurned the ‘social compact’ that is the norm in your part of the world, taking no benefit from it, you may be justified in claiming that it is irrelevant to you. If you have, however, taken benefit from it, it becomes harder to claim that you’re not subject to it.

Do I think taxation is a good idea, or even justified when based on earned income or property holdings? No. I do, however, have to acknowledge that it is the law of the land I live in, and admit that I have used the results of that taxation. Having benefited (however few my choices were) from that ‘social compact’, it follows that I can not claim that it does not involve me, or is invalid - else, I’m guilty of fraud.

Changing that social compact is a worthwhile and important endeavor - but it’s hard to do when you’re busy claiming that it doesn’t exist in a valid form.

None of us will get anything worthwhile by ignoring reality.

Danno

40

Political actions are exploitive, attempts to gain at someone else’s expense. Social actions are cooperative, like economic exchange.

People have an obligation to not violate the property and person of another person. I have no contract with you currently, am I free to kill you at will?

Victory is not a goal, its the condition required to gain your goal. The goal of war is loot.

The image of war you are presenting never existed.

Wars are fought between sovereigns, who owe their armies to the confiscation of land which reduces the previous owners to the status of dependent. The soldiers then are the first exploited class. This is a political method for raising an army, a social method would be to hire them(without slave contracts) or convince to volunteer.

Once you have an army you have to feed it. The historical method happens to be using political means, confiscating whatever you need. Obviously, social means would be buying or begging.

Franz Oppenheimer created the distinction.

“There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. Robbery! Forcible appropriation! These words convey to us ideas of crime and the penitentiary, since we are the contemporaries of a developed civilization, specifically based on the inviolability of property. And this tang is not lost when we are convinced that land and sea robbery is the primitive relation of life, just as the warrior’s trade - which also for a long time is only organized mass robbery - constitutes the most respected of occupations. Both because of this, and also on account of the need of having, in the further development of this study, terse, clear, sharply opposing terms for these very important contrasts, I propose i. the following discussion to call one’s own labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means” for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political means.”

I recommend Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy, The State