Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!inmet!janw
From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: How Opposite are Reason and Force?
Message-ID: <28200631@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Feb-86 09:47:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.28200631
Posted: Fri Feb  7 09:47:00 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Feb-86 00:47:08 EST
References: <441@umich.UUCP>
Lines: 43
Nf-ID: #R:umich:-44100:inmet:28200631:000:2255
Nf-From: inmet!janw    Feb  7 09:47:00 1986


[--Paul V. Torek      torek@umich]
>>[Bob Stubblefield]
>>To say that in normal circumstances the initiation  of  force  to
>>gain  values  is irrational, is not to say force is irrational in
>>all contexts. [examples].  Stealing  a  loaf  of  bread  in  Marie
>>Antoinette's day may have been rational. It is certainly possible
>>for man to devise political systems that  make  it  difficult  to
>>distinguish the rational from the irrational.

>I have an important question here:  is stealing a loaf of bread in Marie
>Antoinette's day an example of *initiating* force?  If so, you have
>already conceded that it is sometimes rational to initiate force.  And
>in that case, why isn't it rational to support certain laws (say, laws
>that authorize taxation to pay for national defense, for example)?

Bob makes an important distinction between *normal*  and  *abnor-
mal*  circumstances. What you are saying is that the circumstance
of a state having external enemies is abnormal enough to  *insti-
tutionalize* the initiation of force against *own* citizens. This
means *giving up* normality (in Bob's sense) for good. The  price
is  clearly too high to be rationally paid because you are giving
up what you are  trying  to  save.  

However, if the taxes are emergency levies and are not likely  to
become  permanent,  then I can see how someone rationally opposed
to initiation of force in general would make an exception in  ex-
traodinary  circumstances.  There  is a moral difference between,
say, an  anti-Nazi  resistance  fighter  sequestering  a  private
weapon  *against all law*, and Congress voting that, from now on,
any part of a person's income they want to take, is  theirs.  The
difference  here  is  entirely  in  favor of the law-breaker, and
against the lawmaker.

It is like  all  other  intolerable  moral  choices.  A  starving
peasant family might intentionally let one of the children die to
save the others and keep the seed grain. Would you  proceed  from
this  observation  to,  say,  a constitutional amendment institu-
tionalizing children-killing to save on food resources ? The con-
clusion  from  an abnormal situation should rather be, to concen-
trate on discovering ways to prevent its recurrence.

			Jan Wasilewsky