[at-l] (OT) What do you do...

[mfuller@somtel.com (Malcolm Fuller)]

Bob Cummings wrote:

> The error that a very bright and very articulate MF makes is
> that he somehow thinks property rights can exist outside the
> rule of law. 

That is correct. Individual rights, of which the right to
property is one, exist regardless of whether a government
chooses to legally recognize them. 

The point of my previous post was that blind obedience to
law qua law, which is the context in which "rule of law" is
typically invoked, is nothing more than moral agnosticism,
and is typically appealed to disingenuously; only when the
law happens to be on their side.

I certainly hope, for example, that nobody here would have
turned away a fugitive slave in the mid-nineteenth century
simply because it was the law.

>         I can think, however, of no reason why government
> should not buy such a trail and make it available to its 
> citizens to use. Nor can I think of any reason why government
> that has always been in the business of helping powerful
> folks preserve their property, should not from time to time
> use its inherent powers to force the recalcitrant to make
> property available for the general good of citizens.

  "After centuries of civilization, most men -- with the
exception of criminals -- have learned that the above
mental attitude is neither practical nor moral in their
private lives and may not be applied to the achievement
of their private goals. There would be no controversy
about the moral character of some young hoodlum who 
declared: 'Isn't it desirable to have a yacht, to live
in a penthouse and to drink champagne?' -- and stubbornly
refused to consider the fact that he had robbed a bank
and killed two guards to achieve that 'desirable goal.
  "There is no moral difference between these two examples;
the number of beneficiaries does not change the nature
of the action, it merely increases the number of victims.
In fact, the private hoodlum has a slight edge of moral
superiority: he has no power to devastate an entire
nation and *his* victims are not legally *disarmed*.
  "It is men's views of their public or *political* exist-
ance that the collectivized ethics of altruism has protected
from the march of civilization and has preserved as a 
reservoir, a wildlife sanctuary, ruled by the mores of 
prehistorical savages. If men have grasped some faint 
glimmer of respect for individual rights in their private
dealings with one another, that glimmer vanishes when they
turn to public issues -- and what leaps into the political
arena is a caveman who can't conceive of any reason why
the tribe may not bash in the skull of any individual if
it so desires."

-- from Ayn Rand (1963), Collectivized Ethics

> There are moral issues. Eminent domain is not one of them.

I honestly don't know how you can assert that, especially
when you use the term "general good" to justify its use,
or do you believe that it is only upon the ends which moral
judgment may be passed? I'm seeing a lot of that attitude
on this list, and I got to say it's damned depressing.

-MF