Editor's Note: I normally wouldn't post this, but I found the whole discussion fascinating....strange but fascinating. I never stop being amazed at the lengths people.....progressives or libertarians.....will go to dig deeeeeeep into some new and profound philosophical view. Unfortunately everyone seems to forget Royko's people.....the average guy...and gal.... just trying to live their lives, raise their children and have a decent life. In all these cases they keep forgetting that life is all about “the basics” and far too many arm chair philosophers, with no penalty to be paid for being wrong, have entirely too much to say about far too many things. And I find that those who profess to be on the side of individual rights….both progressives and libertarians…..,who are at the extremes of their philosophical flavors, would leave dystopia and anarchy in their wake if society followed their lead. One more thing. I deliberately didn’t use the terms left and right because when you look closely at the extremes of both of these philosophies they seem to merge in the most negative way as a philosiphical basis for life. Strange isn’t it?
My final thought. Wisdom is the application of knowledge and understanding. As I grow older and more knowledgeable I find that there is little wisdom being applied in the real world. I find that distressing, nor am I optimistic about the near future. Of course the obvious explanation is that when society abandoned the Judaic/Christian principles that were foundational to a free society they needed new philosophies as a touchstone for judgment. The problem with that is the lack of consistent moral foundation. That has left humanity to be washed back and forth like the waves crashing against the rocks.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013 by David Gordon
Matt Zwolinski, a libertarian political philosopher and the founder of the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, has a surprising proposal. Libertarians, he suggests, should drop the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). The NAP holds that “aggression against the person or property of others is always wrong, where aggression is defined narrowly in terms of the use or threat of physical violence.”
Zwolinski raises six objections to the NAP, targeted especially against the way Murray Rothbard interprets it. Supporters of the principle need not worry. The objections don’t hold up.
Zwolinski suggests that, according to Rothbard, it would be wrong to trespass on someone’s property to feed a three-year old child whom someone was starving to death. The person starving the child isn’t aggressing against him, but trespass is aggression.
That is nonsense. To starve someone who cannot leave is to murder him. You don’t have to touch somebody to kill him: there isn’t a special libertarian concept of murder, different from the ordinary one. Neither is it the case that you are free to violate people’s rights, so long as you do so on your property. Rothbardian libertarianism is not the doctrine that each person is an absolute despot over his own property. …To Read More….
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