Is it morally acceptable to use violence to defend freedom?
Was it morally acceptable for the English to kill Charles I?
Was it morally acceptable for the Thirteen Colonies to wage war to win their independence?
Was it morally acceptable for the U.S. to wage war to dethrone Saddam Hussein?
Was it morally acceptable for Irgun (a Jewish terrorist organization) to bomb the King David Hotel to protest British regulations restricting immigration?
Is it morally acceptable for the Palestinians to bomb busses and cafes to protest Israeli occupation?
I bring up these questions, not merely to be a troll (although that’s fun), but to point out that every violent conflict in history has been fought to defend freedom (at least from the point-of-view of the people involved).
i would say that none of the people you mentioned are libertarian and no doubt they lacked a proper understanding of what freedom meant. (having perhaps only partial understandings) it therefore is not surprising if they err and do things contrary to the true spirit of freedom (like kill innocents for example)
Yes, he was a mass slaver and thief. A great many things that Cromwell and his government did were not morally acceptable, however.
It was morally acceptable for colonists to repel men who meant to steal from them. The “unfunded government debt, paper money, skyrocketing inflation, price controls, legal tender laws, direct impressment of supplies and wide-spread conscription” written of by Jeff Hummel and cited by Kinsella in his important Mises Blog post were not morally acceptable.
No, because it involved murdering a great many people who were innocent of his crimes.
Even the 9/11 hijackers felt they were defending their homelands. Maybe they were. But they definitely violated our freedoms, so we sent over our freedom fighters to kill their freedom fighters.
All war involves the killing of innocents, including the English Civil War, and the American War of Independence - both of which above you endorse above. The minute one decides that war is necessary, one must accept the fact that innocents will be massacred on account of that decision. While it does not follow from this fact that all wars are immoral, sometimes open war is a necessity, but it does weaken any approach the condemns any act that involves the killing of inncents as “immoral”. In fact, if one is to hold such an opinion as a sort of categorical imperative it necessitates that one condemn war against an oppressor.
I made clear that I did not endorse the entirety of those wars. It is not really complexes of acts (such as wars) which are right or wrong. It is concrete, individual acts.
The killing of innocents is always wrong, by definition.
The decision of war leads to the killing of innocents, and that is a truism that one simply cannot wash away from one’s hands after having declared war. It is not just the soldiers in the field who bear the responsibility for the destruction that was unleashes, but also those who aid, and consent to the war-effort.
“Leading to” is immaterial. We all of us “lead” to innocents dying merely by filling our cars with petrol. That doesn’t make us culpable. It is only those whose actions directly take innocent life and those who directly order the actions which take innocent life who are culpable.
laminustacitus suggests that all war involves the killing of innocents. This is true.
laminustacitus also thinks that war is sometimes necessary to resist tyrants.
Now, if I start a war to dethrone a tyrant, and I know that innocent lives will be taken, then I am a tyrant, equally worthy of death as the other tyrant.
Liburne, as much as you would like to hide behind a curtain of moral proofs, war’s very nature leads to the destruction of innocent life, and anyone who supports a war must realize that they are apart of the machinery that enables war to continue, hence they must realize that they will also have blood on their hands once the war has commenced. No one should ever support a war if they are not willing to bear some of the responsibility for the innocents lives that will be lost in the storm; in fact, I would consider someone who believes that there is no situation in which an innocent life could be considered a tragic, but necessary casualty a hypocrite if he ever voiced support for an armed conflict.
I have not voiced support for any war in its entirety. I’ve voiced support for certain just acts which happen to be considered part of wars. I’m a methodological individualist when it comes to the actions, so it doesn’t make sense to me to say I would have supported or not supported a vast complex of actions like, for example, the English Civil War.
My apology, I specifically meant the English Civil War, you would support the assassination of King Charles, not necessarily the civil war itself. (No libertarian could support a civil war.)
About the killing of innocents, I think all the soldiers on both sides are innocents nowadays and for who knows how many centuries back.
If a soldier enlists voluntarily to kill people he knows are innocent, sure he’s guilty as sin. But how many of those type are there? Most think, rightly or wrongly, that they are ultimately defending their homes and families.
If a soldier kills people, unless it’s in self-defense, he is a murderer. Now, soldiers seldom kill people in self-defense. Soldiers are murderers - whether they realize it or not is irrelevant.
edit : and whether they pretend to know what they are doing (or not) is even more irrelevant.