Male circumcision is a preventitive medical procedure. The purpose is to avoid potential infections. I would equate this to trimming one’s nails. Do you keep your finger- and toenails neat? If you do, it is to prevent the growth of hangnails which are painful and can lead to an infection. You are trimming unused material in order to prevent possible future ills. This is what male circumcision is for.
So I would consider male neonatal circumcision as causing as much “physical harm” as trimming one’s nails.
And if I had a son, and when he was in his 30s he tried to sue me over my violation of the NAP…well let’s just say I hope that the arbitrator sees it my way. And regardless of the outcome, my son wouldn’t be invited to family dinner anymore.
Well, I’d be curious how you distinguish politics from law? I guess you mean that libertarian theory specifies that, apart from the NAP, there’s no such thing as politics?
No, I’ve reconceived politics in a non-statist fashion, actually, as discourse and deliberation between equals (in authority, a la Locke’s state of nature) in joint pursuit of eudaimonia. (I presented a dissertation chapter on this at ASC in March. It’ll be uploaded on my website soon.)
But this isn’t the main reason why libertarianism is a political philosophy. Political philosophy in the West dates back to Plato and Aristotle. It’s a broad subject that covers communities pursuing shared ends, what kind of society should we live in (including what kind of government should we have, if any?), etc.
Also, rights are not purely legal concepts; they are moral ones as well.
And I resist the post-Rawlsian tendency in contemporary libertarianism to restrict it only to the NAP and its immediate implications. The NAP is just a principle distilled from more robust values generally held by classical liberals and libertarians. I see libertarianism as just a more consistent and radical version of classical liberalism but I see no need to narrow its scope so much like many contemporary libertarians do.
Somewhat off-(this)-topic, I find it rather amusing that belief in parenting and the distinction between adults and children is being labelled conservatism. Both Roderick Long and Mary Ruwart are left-libertarian anarchists. And I consider myself neither left nor right on the socio-cultural continuum.
We’re probably just facing a nomenclature mismatch. Since your conception is (guaranteed to be) voluntarist, I would say that it should not be called politics. You would probably reply that “politics” simply refers to the organization of society; I would recommend calling it something else, given that usage has made politics synonymous with the organization of society using coercive power.
Right. As I said, they’re a strict subset of morality. A just law must, by definition, be moral–but most morals cannot be enforced by law.
A good solid reason is that the NAP is necessary and sufficient to be compatible with a free society. All the other “more robust” values you might hold, including the pursuit of eudaimonia, are dandy but not mandatory. Your “broader scope” narrows the set of libertarians, and excludes valuable allies.
Frankly, I have no idea where that poster is coming from. He isn’t a libertarian at all, or at least has a muddled conception of what libertarian thinking is. My best guess is that he’s just baiting people. Perhaps he stumbled onto libertarians via 9/11-truthers and Paulistas, and is now projecting his identity crisis onto us.
Being an Aristotelian gives me a reason to keep it. Also, a redefinition, if successful, can help undermine the state. That’s a major line of attack that our enemies have been very successful with over the decades and centuries. They co-opt our labels and concepts, giving them a new meaning, stealing them from us. Or they re-define the labels and concepts we use, demonizing them and giving themselves the moral high ground as a result.
But law and morality are two distinct disciplines. Law is not a subdiscipline of morality. The two disciplines are linked though, and legal positivism is wrong for completely separating the two. Rights are best conceived, in my view, as a bridge between ethics and law, with one foot firmly planted in each.
I’m not talking about eudaimonia, but other concepts from which the NAP is derived too which are part of libertarianism: liberty, equality, property, trade, to name just a few. I think it’s a mistake to derive the NAP and then essentially kick away the ladder that was used to get to it and call that libertarianism. My “broader scope,” which I just see as the normal scope, and the NAP-only version as a thinner but legitimate scope (albeit in my view inadequate), does not necessarily exclude valuable allies. I see there being many versions of libertarianism which all hold certain shared core principles absolute. Moreover, eudaimonia is not some singular end that is the same for everyone. We Aristotelian libertarians have a pluralistic and highly individualized conception of it.
Those are all included in the NAP. Stealing, vandalism and other property crimes are aggression, and hence violate the NAP. Liberty is the condition that nobody is aggressing against anybody. Equality is a dicey notion, but everyone is equal in precisely the sense that we are all covered by the same NAP. And trade takes care of itself: if nobody is aggressing, trade will happen automatically between consenting parties.
Can you conceive of a zero-aggression libertarian who opposes trade, or liberty, or property? I can’t.
Sure, but if my goal is to be the worst possible example of whatever it is I am, but hold firmly to the nonaggression principle, I’m just as libertarian as you. You might think I’m a bum, a slob, a loser or whatever you like, but I’m as entitled as you are to (mis)use my liberty by my own lights.
Those were just a few examples, but there is more packed into them than is apparent at first glance. Excessive focus on the NAP as if it were axiomatic obscures these things. It’s a hyper-rationalistic tendency that I’ve found leads to problems in how the NAP is conceived, grounded and applied.
As long as you had a principled reason for respecting the rights of others and you were generally libertarian in your interpretation and application, yes you’d still be a libertarian. But I’d feel perfectly comfortable in arguing that your version of libertarianism is not conducive toward bringing about and maintaining a free, not to mention flourishing, society. It’s an inferior version that, if adopted en masse, would undermine the foundations of a libertarian society.
Sorry 'bout the side-track, folks - but this does seem to be the day of sidetracks on this thread. (And I’d hoped to get more work done, too… good thing my boss is a pushover.)
Like I said (in the quote above) - I’d object, too, and monitor it closely - I’m not at all a fan of vegetarianism, but it’s remarkably rampant in my daughter’s school. My kids, fortunately, seem quite happy about eating meats and fats - and both are quite healthy and slender.
No, we are not carnivores - we’re omnivores. An all-meat diet would be even unhealthier than a vegetarian diet.
20 years ago, I learned how to make my own protein shakes. Now, eggs are a health hazard, but pasteurized eggs are available, and if you make your own, not only are they fresh, but they taste just the way you want them to. I’ll second the recommendation on the dietary advice here. High-carb diets are only for people who use lots of physical energy daily, like athletes - who also need their protein.
Danno, planning on dead red quadroped for dinner again. It’s grilling season here!
You apparently haven’t researched this carefully. Male circumcision is a religious ritual that started in the Mideast a few millennia ago. The incidences of serious infections in uncircumcised males (in the USA, at least) is remarkably low. Some decades ago, when I was actively researching this (early 1970s), it was analogous to the incidence of damage caused by sloppy circumcisions.
This analogy would be more relevant if the foreskin grew and needed to be trimmed regularly - or would grow back if left alone.
Then hope he doesn’t get me for an arbitrator. [:@] Better yet, take a closer look at it if you’re planning an addition to the family.
Eskimoes and other aboriginal tribes live today on all-meat diets, and are among the healthiest people on the planet.
Mankind has lived through ice ages in which no plants can grow.
In 1928 a famous study was done at Bellvue hospital where two men ate nothing but meat for a year, to prove assertions that an all-meat diet was healthy made by a Harvard anthropologist who got stuck living with Eskimoes for a year and discovered he thrived eating nothing but fish, seal and caribou: http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
I have discovered a secret ingredient – Xanthan gum! You can get it at places like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. It’s a thickener that makes shakes really thick and filling.
For some, it’s a wider philosophy than that, covering morality, social relationships, and other things that aren’t appropriate subjects for political action.
FWIW, if Len says “it ain’t a subject for debate”, believe him - if you prove him to be wrong, he’ll ignore your proof and pout. Then again, if he doesn’t argue with you, mayhaps that’s not a bad thing.
I’m willing to bet if you pick an example at random, I’ll be able to argue cogently why it follows directly from the NAP–homesteading included.
No. My reasons are irrelevant. If I believed that Zeus really wanted me to uphold the NAP, that would suffice. If you didn’t like my reasons, you might worry that my commitment to the NAP was insufficiently strong, but until I transgressed it you’d have no basis to complain.
Geoffrey and I are having a rational discussion of terms and definitions. Your trolling forces me to scroll down the page, and creates the risk that I’ll inadvertantly read your drivel and be irritated. Pray discontinue, and go stuff yourself with grilled something-or-other.
Yes, it depends on how broad or narrow your conception of politics is. For the ancient Greeks and those who take their cue from them, it is broad. Many in modern political science have a narrower conception of what politics is, as do many libertarians (because they’ve come to identify it solely with the state).
Actually, I think it’s a mistake to say they are all included in the NAP. This treats the NAP as an axiom in a hyper-rationalistic manner. It is rather the case that the NAP is an abstract principle derived from them. It’s application will depend on how you conceive them.
I’d thought myself pretty well-read on nutrition, but hadn’t seen this before - I’ll have to look at it. Thanks for the pointer! I’d been under the strong impression that several of the essential vitamins (yeah, I know that’s redundant *) were unavailable outside of vegetables or supplements.
That’d work, but an all-natural ice cream, like Breyers, or yogurt (if you like that flavor) work also - and Breyers is remarkably tasty. [:D] Thanks for the tip, though.
Danno, thinkin’ it’s just about lunchtime…
For those who are not nutrition geeks, that word started out as a phrase: ‘vital amino acids’, then ‘vital amines’, thus: vitamins.
Perhaps. But I think the hyper-rationalistic, deontological approach to the NAP that many libertarians have tends to lead them to bizarre, extreme, and mistaken conclusions at times, particularly with regard to hard cases.
I also think that most, if not all, “thin” libertarians are “thicker” than they think, meaning that they don’t usually realize when they are drawing on implicit values, principles and beliefs in their conception and application of the NAP.
How is your belief in Zeus not a principled reason? The point was that simply refraining from violating the rights of others does not make one a libertarian. Morality is a matter of voluntary choice, and for an action to count as moral/virtuous it also has to be chosen because it is desired and for principled reasons. Refraining from violating the rights of others out of fear of punishment is not really respecting their rights and does not make one a libertarian.
You do have a point, and I’m probably more prone to that fallacy than I should be - politics is not solely about the state, and the word shouldn’t give me the heebie-jeebies. However, I do hold personal morality to be distinct from politics of any sort, and most of mine is based upon a libertarian philosophy.
'Sokay - we’ll be able to meet in the middle without much fuss. [;)]
