The tension here is is between Terry's attempt to reduce what might be called a "rule of civic conduct" down to a simple "non-aggression principle", and the recognition by most of the rest of us that the statements of that principle simply do not, and cannot, contain within them the amount of logical information needed to derive decisions for how people should conduct themselves in a full range of everyday situations. At the Founding of this country most of those rules could be subsumed within a body of legal traditions and Blackstone's 4-volume set of Commentaries on Common Law, covering everything from tort to fraud to contracts to probate to nuisance to property rights disputes. It would be absurd to try to deal with the complexities of life today with so little law and government. We have entire libraries full of it. Now one could argue that we have overcomplicated the issues, but an equally good case can be made that we have no complicated them enough. It can also be argued that the essence of that entire body of law and government is expressed in the "non-aggression principle". But if that argument is made then what one is doing is loading a lot more information into the terms "non-aggression" or "initiation of force" than those words have for most readers. Complexity should be reduced as far as possible but no farther. Consider the concept of "recklessness". What is "reckless" behavior, and when does it become a "treat" justifying the "initiation" of "force"? If some guy is playing around with fissionable materials, at what point do we intervene to deal with the risk that he will set off a nuclear explosion? If a guy is experimenting with genetic engineering of viruses, at what point do we intervene to deal with the risk that he will develop a plague that will wipe out humanity? Do we wait for it to happen, or step in to prevent it, and if so, how? The "non-aggression principle" seems to presume a world of basically civilized people whose behavior only needs adjustment at the margins. That is not the world we live in. Too many people are not only not civilized, but actively bent on exterminating us, and extinguishing anyone who doesn't think like they do. Humanity worldwide is not in a state of civil society, but in a state of war. Libertarian principles apply to isolated pockets of civilization where conditions permit them to operate, and we can all try to extend those pockets to the entire world, but we are a long way from achieving that happy state of affairs.
-- Jon ---------------------------------------------------------------- Constitution Society 7793 Burnet Road #37, Austin, TX 78757 512/299-5001 www.constitution.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------- ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
