Altruism In Action: The Felon Heart Transplant Recipient

Anthony Stokes was a black juvenile delinquent who needed a heart transplant in 2013. Initially the hospital refused to provide him with a transplant because he had a history of committing crimes, and had a “history of non-compliance” with the directives of his doctors regarding his health. This meant he was not a good candidate for a heart transplant over others who would actually take the gift of a heart transplant seriously.

Of course, once the leftist media got a hold of this story, the hospital was criticized for being “mean” and “racist”. The hospital caved to pressure, and reversed its decision, giving Stokes a heart. Since there are only a limited number of human organs available for transplant, this meant that someone else had to wait, and possibly die, because they gave a heart to the less-deserving Stokes. (The fact that we have limited organs for transplants, which could be solved with a free-market in organs, where people would be paid, while alive, to contractually sell their organs when they unexpectedly die in the future, is a separate issue. We can argue about that at another time. Right now, the system is what it is.)

What did Anthony Stokes do with his new lease on life? Go out and commit more crimes, of course. About two years after he got his heart transplant, he committed an armed robbery of an 81 year old woman in her house, shot at her, and then ran from the police in a high speed chase. During the course of the chase, he crashed into a pole, and died. (Presumably, he decided he was going to get his “reparations” through armed robberies.)

Our society is a society dying of altruism. What is altruism? It’s not just “helping others”. Its fundamentally about sacrificing those who are good to those who are evil:

“The injunction ‘don’t judge’ is the ultimate climax of the altruist morality which, today, can be seen in its naked essence. When men plead for forgiveness, for the nameless, cosmic forgiveness of an unconfessed evil, when they react with instantaneous compassion to any guilt, to the perpetrators of any atrocity, while turning away indifferently from the bleeding bodies of the victims and the innocent—one may see the actual purpose, motive and psychological appeal of the altruist code. When these same compassionate men turn with snarling hatred upon anyone who pronounces moral judgments, when they scream that the only evil is the determination to fight against evil—one may see the kind of moral blank check that the altruist morality hands out.” (“For the New Intellectual“, Ayn Rand; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html )

There is more I could say about this story. I could talk about how we coddle black criminals, because it is considered “racist” to hold them accountable for their actions, and thereby infantilize and endanger other blacks as well as whites. It’s also a story about how “black culture“, by which I mean the culture of a significant segment of black society, needs to be changed, both for the sake of black people and our own. It’s also a story about how many, many, many needlessly guilty white people, especially the “liberals” and “progressives”, are unwilling to judge and hold black people accountable for their actions. But, I think, at root, it is a story about altruism run amok, and not just with respect to race relations. Until more people explicitly recognize the value of their own lives, and chose a set of reality-oriented principles for living their lives, and for living in a rational society, which includes the willingness to judge and recognize a criminal when you see one, it’ll only get worse.

Conservatives On The Secular Basis of Sexual Propriety -A Trojan Horse For Dogmatism

I occasionally watch bits of a podcast called “whatever” on YouTube. It reminds me of “The Phil Donahue Show” from when I was a kid, although it’s more focused on sex and relationships. The host will have a panel of women on. Some of them will be involved in the pornography industry or doing sex work, sometimes including women that do legal sex-for-money work, such as in a brothel in Nevada. There will also be a person on the panel who represents the “conservative/religious viewpoint” on sex and romance.

Additionally, there will be some women on the panel who have more “average” lives, and are not sex workers and also are not conservative ideologues. The point of the podcast, from a “getting viewership” standpoint, is obviously to get the two “sides” into debates about what is and isn’t appropriate or acceptable when it comes to sex, romance, dating, and marriage. Often the debates will center around questions like: “How promiscuous is too promiscuous?” “Is sex before marriage okay or desirable?” “Is viewing or producing pornography okay?”

In the most recent episode I partially watched, there were two women who do or have done legal sex work at brothels in the state of Nevada, as well as a couple of women who do Only Fans pornography in varying degrees of undress.

The conservative/religious viewpoint was represented by Candace Owens, who is a conservative, Catholic podcaster. During the course of the podcast, she made arguments for why monogamy is preferable to promiscuity, and why things like paying money for sex, and polyamorous relationships are not desirable for the people engaged in such activities.

I saw Candace Owens making, basically, two types of arguments in the podcast, although she did not explicitly acknowledge the difference between these two categories of argument. They are the same two arguments that most religionists make about marriage, sex and romantic relationships:

(1) Non-monogamous relationships and sexual promiscuity are contrary to biology and fundamental aspects of human psychology. An example of this type of argument is the following, although I don’t know that it is explicitly made on the podcast: Too many sex partners before marriage make pair-bonding more difficult, and watching pornography will affect pair-bonding later. There is supposedly some scientific evidence for this, although that is disputed. (https://healthland.time.com/2011/02/09/do-men-really-bond-with-porn-spoiling-them-for-real-life-sex/)

(2) Non-monogamous relationships/sexual promiscuity are contrary to the Bible/Christian doctrine, at least as they interpret it.

The conservative/religious ideologues I see online make the first, secular, argument when they say things like: Women who are promiscuous when young will find it difficult to be in a committed relationship later. That may or may not be true -I don’t know. But, when pressed, the conservatives like Ms. Owens fall back on: Promiscuity is contrary to the Bible. In other words, argument number two. At the end of the day, conservatives believe such behavior is undesirable because it is contrary to their interpretation of the Bible. That is what really matters to the conservatives/religionists, not any sort of scientific or psychological argument.

There may or may not be evidence to prove the first argument, regarding biology/human nature. Even as an atheist, I still regard monogamy as ideal, and I try to avoid being too promiscuous. But, I am open to the possibility that I hold this attitude because of the somewhat Christian culture I grew up in, which might still be buried in my subconscious. For that reason, I tend not to pass judgment on people who choose unconventional sexual lifestyles, such as promiscuity, polyamory, or to be sex workers. (I think it’s easier to justify certain types of nude photos, sexual dancing, or erotic art as consistent with a healthy psychology, but again, I’m not 100% certain.)  All I am willing to say is that open relationships would not work for me.  (I would get too jealous to share a wife or girlfriend.)

I would like to see someone pose the following question to conservative/religious pundits making these two types of arguments regarding sex work and promiscuity: “If the scientific evidence will later show that promiscuous behavior before marriage does not affect pair-bonding, and it is possible to be in a long-term polyamorous relationship, or to be a sex worker without psychological damage, will you then change your opinion on this topic? Do you actually follow the science, or is this really about what you think the Bible says, evidence and logic be damned?”

This method of argument used by conservative/religious people extends beyond the realm of sexual propriety. For instance, they will use the same sorts of arguments when it comes to abortion. They will present psychological or medical arguments, which they allege are science-based, for why women who get abortions will be medically harmed by abortion, or that it will affect their psychology adversely. The science here may or may not be true, but, at the end of the day, they are really opposed to abortion because they believe it is contrary to their interpretation of the Bible. Even if there were scientific evidence that abortion causes no harm to a woman, or less harm than an unwanted pregnancy, the religionists aren’t going to suddenly change their mind. That’s because science has nothing to do with their viewpoint. It’s about religion, which is based in their faith.

Do the Conservatives/Religionists really believe that love and romance are important when they promote things like sex only after marriage? Religious institutions instruct their followers not to marry atheists because they would be “unequally yoked”, and they regard sex as a sin for purposes other than reproduction. So really, their desire for pair-bonding isn’t about love or romance, but about making yourself what they believe is a better servant of god.

More generally, conservatives will wrap up their religious arguments with secular-sounding justifications in other areas too. They will say things like: “We need religion to keep people moral.” But, why do we need morality at all? When asked this, they are probably going to say something like: “Morality is needed to keep people from committing murder and stealing.” If that is their reason for why they think morality is necessary, and if I can present a secular moral code and a secular basis for the criminal law, will they abandon religion? Of course not, because these arguments are just rationalizations. They want to advance their religion, and are pragmatic enough to use a secularist argument as a fig-leaf, if it suits their agenda.

Truly religious institutions recognize this, too. They will say things like: “Works do not get you into heaven.” In other words, not stealing and committing murder is not what they believe gets you into heaven, so they don’t really care if people are moral or not. The truly consistent ones realize that logic, reason, and science are irrelevant. Even “conventional morality”, such as “stealing is wrong” and “murder is bad”, is irrelevant to them. Many of these western religious institutions might not commit murder for god (yet), but they are certainly committing manslaughter.

Am I being hyperbolic? The Catholic Church forbids the use of contraception, even in the context of marriage. There is good evidence that the lack of contraception world-wide leads to unnecessary deaths for women. (https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2012/ahmed-contraception) The Catholic Church even opposes the use of contraception by married women with certain medical conditions that would make pregnancy unusually dangerous. They are expected to either abstain from sex or risk death if they become pregnant. I submit that this is advocacy of manslaughter by the Catholic Church. They are promoting the use of force by government to prevent women from using a device that will save their lives.

The Catholic Church will tell those women not to have sex. But, without sex, how do they maintain a romantic relationship with their husbands? The Catholic Church will respond that sex is an unnecessary aspect of marriage. I do not believe that assertion is at all reality oriented. More fundamentally, it also shows what the Catholic Church thinks of love. It is a belief in platonic love as an ideal. Sex is dirty and base for the Catholic Church. They view it as a necessary evil for reproduction, and nothing more.

Tying this back in to the ‘whatever’ podcast with Candace Owens, at points the sex workers claimed that sex and love are not connected. They said sex has nothing to do with love, so loveless sex without psychological consequence is possible. Interestingly, the Catholic Church also believes in love separated from sex. ‘True love’ between a man and woman is platonic, with sex as a necessary evil, for purposes of reproduction. This is what the truly dedicated religionists actually believe.

I don’t know if non-monogamous and polyamorous people can find lasting happiness with that sort of lifestyle. (I’m very skeptical.) All I can say for sure is it doesn’t work for me. But, swingers and sex workers are not the people who need to fear the declarations of religious institutions like the Catholic Church about how people should govern their sex lives. The people who need to be wary are the monogamous couples who want to sleep with their husband or wife without the psychological consequences of perpetual guilt and shame.

Reduction and Integration of the Neurobiological Concept of “Action Potential”

This Spring, I took a Saturday course at the local community college on Anatomy and Physiology. (It’s the course that people going into the medical professions, such as nursing, would take.) The textbook used was “Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology”, 11th Ed. (Martini, Nath, Bartholomew). The following was an issue that I ran into several times while reading the textbook, and how I solved that problem to advance my understanding of the concepts. (If anyone is interested, I made an A in the course.)

Chapter 12 of the textbook presents the concept of the “action potential” in nervous tissue.

The problem is it presents everything on a microscopic level, with a very abstract presentation of the electro-chemical processes.

Before I begin, I should go over the “textbook” explanation of what an “action potential” is, as best I understand it. (Keep in mind I’m not a scientist, much less a biologist, so this is just my best understanding.)

Neurons communicate with each other via electrical signals known as “action potentials”. These are defined as brief changes in the voltage across the membrane of a neuron due to the flow of certain ions into and out of the neuron. https://teachmephysiology.com/nervous-system/synapses/action-potential/

At pages 410-411 of the textbook, a series of diagrams are presented to show the generation of an action potential in a neuron. These include 4 steps in the action potential generation process: (1) Depolarization to threshold, (2) Activation of sodium ion channels and rapid depolarization, (3) Inactivation of sodium ion channels and activation of potassium ion channels to start repolarization of the neuron, and (4) time lag in closing all potassium ion channels, which leads to temporary hyperpolarization:

 

 

IMG_6197 IMG_6198

The diagrams in the textbook show what happens at a molecular or cellular level, with each diagram containing a little picture of what is supposed to be  a voltmeter to show what the voltage of the neuron’s inner membrane is at each point in the generation of the action potential. At resting membrane potential, the neuron’s inner voltage is -70mV. There are sodium ion channels that are closed at resting membrane potential. When depolarization occurs, the stimulus causes the voltage of the inner part of the neuron to become less negative, which causes the sodium ion channels to open, which allows sodium, a positive ion, to rush into the neuron. Since sodium is a positive ion, it causes the inner portion of the neuron to become much less negative, until it is a little bit positive. (+10mV according to the textbook). As the inner portion of the neuron continues to get more positive, it causes the sodium ion channels to close, and potassium ion channels to open. Repolarization can now occur, as potassium ions, which are positive are removed from the inside of the neuron, causing it to become more negative in charge on the inside. Eventually, the neuron’s inner portion is back around -70 mV.

The above explanation is what you can get from the book, but I was dissatisfied with this explanation. I wanted to know how scientists could have reached this conclusion.  Clearly, they didn’t just have a divine revelation from God. Since this all occurs on a microscopic, molecular level, you cannot see this process happening with your naked eye. In particular, I was bothered by the way the textbook presented the voltage differentials created by the change in sodium and potassium levels in the neuron. How could they get a voltmeter small enough to insert into a neuron to measure the voltage differentials? How could they possibly know that?

In the past, this would have probably taken a trip to the library, and looking through several books on the history of biology. (This is still probably the best way.) But, with the Internet, I started with some key-word searches on a search engine. I did this research several months ago, so I am somewhat recreating what I did, but as best I can recall, this is what I started my Internet search with: “discovery of action potential”.  From that, I found the following web site: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3500626/

This article discussed a pair of scientists, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, who did research in this area about 60 years ago.  I then plugged “Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley” into another search engine, and got the following Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodgkin%E2%80%93Huxley_model

(A side-note on Wikipedia. I don’t consider it to be a reliable source, but I do consider it useful as a “jumping off point” for research. I will read the Wikipedia article, then look at the citations, and see if I can find more reliable sources on a topic from there. I think this is a perfectly acceptable use of Wikipedia.)

From reading the above Wikipedia article, I saw that they studied something called a “squid giant axon”. There was another Wikipedia article on that topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_giant_axon

This article said:

“The large diameter of the axon provided a great experimental advantage for Hodgkin and Huxley as it allowed them to insert voltage clamp electrodes inside the lumen of the axon.”

To confirm this with a more reliable source, I then typed into a search engine: “why did they use the squid giant axon to study the action potential” From there, I found this article:

“A, John Zachary Young (1907–1997). His discovery of the squid giant axon in the 1930s was pivotal since it provided an electrically excitable membrane of sufficient area for Hodgkin and Huxley’s experiments.”

“Both Hodgkin and Huxley have stated that, following the failed attempts with the mercury droplets, it was the other who made the suggestion that a fine capillary electrode might be inserted inside the nerve fibre (Fig. 3A) to record the potential difference across the membrane.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3424716/

Basically, this particular squid neuron is very big. About 1 mm in diameter, and several centimeters long. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-squid-giant-axon-The-giant-axon-is-a-very-large-up-to-1-mm-in-diameter-and-long_fig2_276491039

After that, I understood how they could have measured the change in voltage in the inner membrane of a neuron. Scientists found a neuron that was big enough to let them insert the probe of a voltmeter into it. They then operated under the assumption that this particular squid neuron worked the same as other, smaller neurons, in other species, which seemed like a reasonable inference to me. (Given the fact that all animals are connected to each other by a common ancestor in our evolutionary past, it makes sense that once a particular biological system occurs, the same model will be “used” by evolution in other organisms.)

By looking at some of the history, I learned something about the scientific experiments and observations that went into formulating this abstract idea of the action potential. I was sufficiently satisfied from half an hour of Internet searches as to how they had arrived at this conclusion, that I could move on to the rest of my reading.

I hasten to add that sometimes I might not be able to find anything regarding how scientists arrived at an abstract idea presented in a science textbook. I am somewhat limited by time constraints, and this method does not always bear fruit in 15 minutes to half an hour of Internet searches. In those instances, I will sometimes just have to resign myself to memorizing the abstract model well enough to spit it back out on a test. When that occurs, I just recognize in my mind that I haven’t really learned anything. (If I have time later, I will go back and try to learn something about how scientists came up with this idea, but sometimes I don’t.) It’s somewhat disheartening that our educational system encourages rote memorization over actual learning of concepts, but as a student, you just have to recognize that the system is what it is, and do your best to operate in it. However, I try to keep my level of rote memorization like this to a minimum, since I think if you make this your habitual method of studying in high school and college, you’ll leave academia worse than an ignoramus. So, I recommend trying to use the method outlined here at least 80 to 90 percent of the time. At the very least, you’ll have questions in your mind, that, later on down the road, might lead you to the answers.

I should also say something about where I acquired this methodology of studying science textbooks. Since this method is also an idea, I didn’t just get it through divine revelation. (We get nothing through divine revelation.)

By studying the ideas of Ayn Rand, I learned that all knowledge starts with observation, that is our sensory-perceptual apparatus. From reading “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”, by Leonard Peikoff in college, I learned about the methods of “reduction” and “integration”, which relate to a concept’s “hierarchy” and “context”. Basically, integration, concerns the logical relationship of a concept to other concepts -that is, placing it in a context. For instance, above, I said that scientists assumed that the giant squid neuron was basically the same in its operation as the neurons in the human body, despite the size difference. I said this assumes that all animals share a common ancestor, which is a well-founded idea, based in Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection.  So, evolution through natural selection would form part of the context through which this idea of the action potential in neurons would be based.

“Reduction” relates to mentally following  a “chain” or “hierarchy” of ideas back to what you can perceive in the world around you. For instance, scientists can use a voltmeter, which has known properties to measure something that is imperceptible, the voltage of a neuron. They know through other experiments that certain voltages can perform certain tasks, such as lighting a light bulb, or spinning a turbine, etc. Chemists also are able to relate the concentrations of certain substances, like sodium, to the generation of voltage, which tells them something about the nature of otherwise imperceptible sodium atoms (that they are ions, which are charged atoms, with too few or too many electrons.) The important point of reduction here is that you want to develop a method or experiment to allow you to relate the unperceived to that which is perceived by your senses.

This explanation of Ayn Rand’s ideas on logic and epistemology is just a brief sketch. If you want to understand it better, I recommend that you pick up some of her books on the subject, or Leonard Peikoff’s book, read them, and decide for yourself if they relate to reality or not.  Like all ideas, you shouldn’t take them on faith, or assume that they are revelations from God.

“The Thin Blue Line” on Netflix

“The Thin Blue Line” on Netflix is an old documentary about an even older murder case in Dallas County, Texas. In the late 1970’s Randall Dale Adams was convicted of murdering Dallas police officer Robert Wood. It was asserted by the prosecution that Adams had shot Officer Wood after being pulled over by the later.

In reality, there was compelling evidence that another person, David Ray Harris had shot Officer Wood. This included the fact that Harris had been bragging to other people that he had shot Officer Wood. Harris later claimed at trial that he hadn’t shot Officer Wood, and had only been bragging to his friends to seem like a bigshot cop-killer. Additionally, although the state does not have to show motive for murder, Harris had the only logical motive to kill Officer Wood. Harris was driving in a stolen car when it was pulled over by Officer Wood. Randal Dale Adams would have had no reason to kill the police officer, and likely wouldn’t have even known that the car was stolen. Randal Dale Adams claimed that he was not even in the car at the time of the shooting, because he had been dropped off by David Ray Harris earlier that night.

So why was the State so intent on prosecuting Randal Dale Adams, rather than the more obvious suspect, David Ray Harris? Randal Dale Adams was in his mid-twenties at the time of the murder, while David Ray Harris was only 16, and not eligible for the death penalty. It’s likely that the Dallas Police Department, the Dallas County District Attorney, and the State of Texas wanted to put someone to death for the murder of a cop, even if it was the wrong person.

Randal Dale Adams was convicted and sentenced to death. His appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was unsuccessful in overturning his conviction or getting him a new trial.  His execution was scheduled for May 8, 1979. Three days before that, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a procedural matter unrelated to the factual finding of guilt. This would require a new trial on guilt/innocence before Mr. Adams could be executed. In order to avoid a new trial, which would likely have brought to light new evidence of innocence, the Dallas County District Attorney was able to secure the commutation of his death sentence to life in prison. This obviated the need for a new trial on the procedural irregularity, since the US Supreme Court opinion only applied to death penalty cases. As a result, Randal Dale Adams then spent more than a decade in prison until “The Thin Blue Line” came out.

While conducting interviews of David Ray Harris, who was on death row himself at that point, for the murder of another person, the producers of the documentary recorded David Ray Harris giving what almost amounted to a confession, stating that Randal Dale Adams did not kill Officer Wood.

Additionally, the producers of the documentary conducted interviews of the witnesses who had claimed to see Randal Dale Adams behind the wheel of the car before Officer Wood was shot. They had been driving by on the road when Officer Wood had first pulled over the car the night of the murder. It turned out that the witnesses were not very credible, had reasons to lie, or just flat-out stated to the documentary producers they didn’t actually see Randal Dale Adams. One female witness, Emily Miller, seemed like total scum. She was either lying because she wanted to collect reward money, or she simply convinced herself that Adams was the man she had seen, even though she had not been able to pick him out of a lineup earlier. (I would think this would have been brought up by the Defendant’s attorney on cross examination?) It also turned out that Emily Miller had her own legal problems. Her daughter was being investigated for a robbery, so she might have been trying to curry favor with the DA and Police for the sake of her daughter. (She had also recently been fired from her job for stealing from the cash register.) Additionally, on a motion for a new trial, after the first trial, the Dallas County District Attorney engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and withheld evidence that could have exonerated Randal Dale Adams, ensuring that he went to death row.

As a result of the newly unearthed evidence and the negative publicity on the DA and Dallas Police, Randal Dale Adams got a new trial in 1989. The Dallas County DA then dismissed the case, and Mr. Adams was a free man after 12 years  of incarceration and nearly being executed by the State of Texas. Try to imagine what it would be like to be an innocent person, convicted of a crime you didn’t commit, waiting on death row to be killed by the State. The police didn’t believe you, the DA didn’t believe, you, the judge didn’t believe you, and the jury didn’t believe you. For all intents and purposes, the human race is against you, and wants to see you dead. In reality, you didn’t do anything to deserve any of it, and you will die soon. The situation is too horrible to contemplate.

All around, it was a total miscarriage of justice. Why would the Dallas County District Attorney and the Dallas Police Department want to convict the wrong man? Most likely because they couldn’t give David Ray Harris the death penalty because he was only 16. (Although I wondered if someone in a position of power was protecting him for some reason?) In their minds, the public needed to see someone being executed for the murder of a police officer, either because it would satisfy the public’s sense of justice, or because it would deter others from shooting a cop. Whether the Defendant actually did it was a secondary consideration for them. As a result, Randal Dale Adams was three days from his death sentence being carried out, and only avoided that because of a procedural irregularity the US Supreme Court found.

The Police, the jury, the DA, the judge, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the public all seemed to be okay with executing Randal Dale Adams, who, in my mind was likely innocent. Unlike 99% of all other exonerations I’ve read about, I think Randal Dale Adams probably didn’t do it. Usually, I think when people who spent time in prison are let go because of newly discovered evidence, it’s not because they’re actually innocent. It’s simply a case of new evidence coming to light that creates some reasonable doubt as to their guilt, and it’s better to let them go than take a chance keeping them in prison for a crime they possibly did not commit.  I agree that it is better to let probably guilty, but possibly innocent, people go since I don’t want to see innocent people in jail or executed. Guilt always needs to be beyond a reasonable doubt, and if anything creates reasonable doubt, you’ve got to let them go.

But, the fact that everyone failed, or willfully chose to hide the truth, in the case of Randal Dale Adams has been the last straw for me. If there were a hell, the prosecutor in his case belongs there. I’ve changed my mind about the death penalty. When I was younger, I was willing to take a chance with the possibility of executing an innocent person. Life has taught me that about 50% of the police, judges, and prosecutors are either incompetent or maliciously negligent in their duties. Additionally, juries in many counties in Texas have the attitude of: “Don’t bother with presenting the evidence, just tell me where to write ‘guilty’ on the jury charge.” As an advocate of capitalism and the free market, I recognize that government is highly inefficient and often corrupt. I think death can be a just punishment, as it stops criminals from committing more crimes permanently, but many government officials are not sufficiently competent or virtuous to ensure that the innocent are not executed. There are people who definitely deserve death, but not at the cost of innocent lives.

The Biden Administration’s “Friendly Censorship”

Murthy v. Missouri is a case that was recently argued before the United States Supreme Court. It involves the allegation that the Biden administration in 2021 coerced social media companies such as Facebook into removing content that concerned COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccine, election integrity, and other matters considered important to the Biden Administration.

The factual findings of the trial court in the case are disturbing, if true:

“For   the   last   few   years—at   least   since   the   2020   presidential   transition—a group of federal officials has been in regular contact with nearly every    major    American    social-media    company    about    the    spread    of    “misinformation”  on  their  platforms.  In  their  concern,  those  officials—hailing from the White House, the CDC, the FBI, and a few other agencies—urged  the  platforms  to  remove  disfavored  content  and  accounts  from  their  sites. And, the platforms seemingly complied. They gave the officials access to an expedited reporting system, downgraded or removed flagged posts, and deplatformed  users.  The  platforms  also  changed  their  internal  policies  to  capture  more  flagged  content  and  sent  steady  reports  on  their  moderation  activities to the officials. That went on through the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 congressional election, and continues to this day. “ (5th Circuit Opinion, Case: 23-30445, Document: 00516889176 , Date Filed: 09/08/2023, Pg. 2) (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca5/23-30445/23-30445-2023-09-08.html)

The Biden Administration and its defenders seem to have responded to these allegations by saying that the factual findings of the trial court are simply mistaken. They claim that the trial court took things out of context, or just outright misrepresented facts:

“While the legal questions presented are legitimate, a substantial amount of the underlying evidence now before the Court in this case is problematic or factually incorrect. Snippets of various communications between the government, social media executives, and other parties appear to be stitched together – nay, manufactured – more to support a culture war conspiracy theory than to create a credible factual record” (https://www.justsecurity.org/93487/a-conspiracy-theory-goes-to-the-supreme-court-how-did-murthy-v-missouri-get-this-far/)

The government says it was merely engaging in its own speech to combat what it viewed as “bad speech”, and that it did not coerce social media companies into taking down social media posts it disagreed with:

“Brian Fletcher, the principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, argued that the government was legally using its bully pulpit to protect the American public.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/18/supreme-court-social-media-biden-missouri/)

Whether the Biden administration was merely engaged in its own speech or whether it intentionally used the threat of force to coerce social media companies into censoring the posts of their users will be determined through the court process.

Even if the government was simply using its own speech to counter what it viewed as “bad speech”, without any intentional threat of coercion, given the reach of government when it comes to regulating the economy, I think companies and businessmen must, of necessity, take into account what a President and his administration say.

In 1962, Ayn Rand wrote an article titled “Have Gun, Will Nudge” in which she discussed the efforts of then head of the FCC, Newton N. Minow, to “encourage” broadcasters to air certain types of “educational programs”. She noted that the arbitrary power held by the FCC in the form of its licensing of broadcasters meant that it didn’t have to engage in explicit censorship. Broadcasters would attempt to discern through their contacts and back-channels with Washington what the FCC officials would like to see on the airwaves, and then provide it:

“No, a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-assistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Washington whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?” (Ayn Rand, “Have Gun, Will Nudge” https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/regulations/pov-have-gun-will-nudge/ )

For the people running a television station, or, today, a social media company, not listening to what the President wants them to post or not post would be almost suicidal. The President has enormous power to bring any company to its knees through executive orders and arbitrary regulations. It doesn’t even matter if the President and his administration intends to engage in censorship. The massive and arbitrary power that the President, and the government in general, holds over any company through economic regulation means any broadcaster or social media company has to take into account what the government wants, just as a matter of self-preservation. If Facebook or Google believes that keeping up certain social media posts might have even a one percent chance of getting them slapped with an antitrust suit, the cost of keeping up the post just isn’t worth the benefits. That’s why true freedom of speech likely isn’t even possible today. As Ayn Rand noted:

“The right to life is the source of all rights — and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”(“Man’s Rights”, Ayn Rand https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/ )

 

“Lookism” On Netflix

In this story, an unattractive and poor young man, who is the victim of frequent assaults by other teenagers due to his looks and lack of status, magically wakes up in a new, very attractive body, while his original body lies sleeping beside him. He starts a new school in his attractive body during the day, and is awake at night in his original body. He experiences a new kind of social attention, and quickly gains social status due to his attractiveness. But, he makes an effort to befriend several fellow students who are less attractive and less popular. His new-found handsomeness causes conflict with both the more popular teenagers, and also with the unattractive teens he tries to befriend.

I thought the fantasy premise of this story was very interesting. It was much better that his old body was still there, but asleep, while he was awake in his new, attractive, body. When he’d fall asleep in his new body, he’d wake back up in his old body, which was the basis of some comedic content.
 
I also found the misunderstandings that occurred between himself, in his new body, and a couple of other characters interesting. Several people who first met him questioned his motivations, and assumed that he used his handsomeness for nefarious or manipulative purposes.

Throughout watching the series on Netflix, I wondered if there were other people with a similar secret -that they had an ugly body sleeping while their more attractive bodies were awake. At the end of season 1, such a revelation is made, although it wasn’t who I thought it would be. I suspect that there are more people with two bodies in this world, so I hope to see additional revelations in continuations of the series. That, in and of itself, would make an interesting story: a secret society of people who have an ugly body sleeping while their beautiful bodies are out and about.
 
I had two questions about this series. First, I was stunned by the way Korean high schools were portrayed. There seemed to be what could only be described as criminal gangs involved in extortion, robbery, and assault in the school. There was a level of brutality towards the less popular kids that seemed to go beyond mere high school bullying. It felt like these kids were living in “Lord of the Flies”. I’ve seen similar portrayals of high school life in other Korean TV shows. Since I’m not from that culture, and I’ve never studied it, I don’t know if this is just artistic exaggeration of the trials and tribulations of high school life, or if this is really how it is. But, the treatment of the unattractive, low-status teenagers was fairly horrifying to me.
 
My second question concerned the underlying themes in the story. These included questions about the nature of beauty, the earned versus the unearned, envy, social-esteem versus self-esteem, and the basis of social status. It seemed that the main character in his original body was treated badly not only because he wasn’t attractive, but also because he was poor. At one point, a group of kids were even going to publicly criticize him in his new body because he always wore such shabby clothing, and didn’t keep up with fashion trends. This points to the fact that social status is about more than mere looks. Wealth tends to play a role. A wealthy, but ugly, teenager could probably be fairly popular in school, too, just because he’s rich. He could also afford to improve his appearance, since attractiveness is probably only partly biological. Even aside from plastic surgery, he could wear better-fitting clothes, eat better to loose weight, invite attractive kids to hang out with him on his yacht, etc. (I’m somewhat leaving aside the issue of to what extent attractiveness is just “social convention” here, since I don’t want to go down that rabbit-hole.)
 
The main character was viewed as unattractive in his original body, in part, because he was overweight. (He was also below average in height, which, for males, means a lot of women will not consider you a good sexual choice. That’s completely beyond your control.) I tend to think that your weight is somewhat genetic, and therefore beyond your control, to a certain extent. But, I also think it’s possible to manage your weight, even if you have a genetic propensity towards obesity. I think it’s your responsibility to take action, if you have a weight problem. When the main character is awake in his original body, he makes an effort to exercise, although not much improvement is shown in his appearance. I hope that in future seasons of this series, the writers will address this issue further, and show the main character getting serious about improving his physical appearance in his original body through diet and exercise. I think this would be a positive message to convey in this story: that at the end of the day, you are ultimately responsible for improving your situation in life, regardless of how tall/short or thin/overweight you are.

An Observation While Learning Spanish Via The Comprehensible Input Method

I have been trying the comprehensible input method espoused by this site to learn Spanish.

The comprehensible input method seems correct to me, although I admittedly haven’t studied the science that they claim backs up the efficacy of the method. It just “rings true” to me based on my own introspection and knowledge of epistemology and language. The method discards learning grammar in favor of using pictures, gestures, and acting while speaking to make it more like the experience of a child first learning to speak. It also completely discounts speaking a language to learn it. Your are supposed to just gather “comprehensible input”, as that is the only way you are going to truly learn, according to the theory. The input is “comprehensible” because you understand the meaning of the speech, thanks to the gestures and drawings of the speaker, even through you do not understand the language yet.
Something I’ve noticed when listening to native or near-native Spanish speakers is they will mix in certain English words that usually reflects some new technology or imported concept, rather than adopt a specific word for it. Although this can also vary. Spaniards call computers “ordinators”, while Mexicans tend to call them “computeradoras”.

In this video, I noted that the speaker, a Spaniard, called the act of snowboarding, “hacer snow” a few times. In Spanish the substance that falls from the sky would be called “nieve”, so, to his ear, the word “snow” is connected with the concept of snowboarding.

Shazam! Movie Review

Both the 2019 movie and the 2023 sequel for “Shazam!” were recently added to the lineup on Netflix.

These can be described as “adventure comedies”, and were filled with a lot of light-hearted humor. There were three things that I think make these movies work.

First, the protagonist is an adolescent, between the ages of 15 and 18. This created a lot of opportunity for humor, as he went from having a young person’s body to having the body of a grown man. For those who don’t know, the protagonist was given his super-powers by a wizard. Whenever he says “Shazam!”, he goes from his normal form to the form of a superhero with a lightning bolt. (Similar to “He-Man”) Saying “Shazam!” again turns him back into a teenager.

His superpowers are somewhat equivalent to those of Superman. However, he does not know what powers he has in the first movie, and he and his foster-brother go through a rather amusing series of misadventures to discover what his powers are. He also doesn’t learn how to fly until pretty late in the first movie, which creates more comedic situations.

Since they are teenagers, he and his foster brother create a YouTube channel to document the discovery of his powers. Also, since they are just kids, the protagonist starts doing sidewalk demonstrations of his powers for tips, like a street musician or performer might do.  With some of that money, he and his foster-brother go buy beer. They both take a swig, and spit it out, declaring that the beer tastes like vomit. (This made me laugh a good bit.)

Another good feature of the movie was its fantasy element. Unlike most superheroes, the protagonist obtains his power through magic, rather than science fiction. I found the spells, gods, and mythology more interesting, and I thought that it opened up a lot of possibilities, in terms of what stories can be told.

Finally, I enjoyed the references to other, better-known, superheroes in the movies. During both movies, there are references to other heroes in the DC Comics label, such as Batman and Superman. The characters in Shazam! look up to these other superheroes, and try to model themselves on them, but often fall short of the mark because they are children. This creates a lot of good humor. There are also some fairly “inside” jokes. For instance, the protagonist can never settle on a name for his super-alter-ego, which is a reference to the fact that this character has been called different things in the comics, partly due to trademark disputes. At one point, the comic book character was called “Captain Marvel”, but this was changed due to an IP dispute between DC and Marvel Comics.

The protagonist from the Shazam! movies makes a good addition to the other DC movies because he is more like a member of the audience, who is suddenly getting to live the life of his heroes, and has the sort of energy and enthusiasm you’d expect from a child who suddenly found himself having super-powers. I think the character would make an excellent comedic foil or sidekick to one of the more “serious” superheroes, or perhaps he could be worked into one of the Justice League movies. I recommend that you check out Shazam!.

The Basis of Punishment of Criminals When Reading Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand

The Basis of Punishment of Criminals, Based On My Reading of Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights and Government

As far as I can tell, Ayn Rand did not discuss the details of government much beyond saying that it would have police, military and courts:

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, emphasis added, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government.html)

Since Ayn Rand said that there would be police, and did not give any other definition of what “police” are, we can assume that she generally accepted the role police play in contemporary society today, so long as that role was delimited to protecting rights.

The way police function today is by catching criminals, taking them to court for an adjudication of guilt or innocence, and then incarcerating those found guilty for a period of time. (Leaving aside certain petty crimes that only involve a fine, and assuming the death penalty does not exist.) Presumably Rand thought arrest and incarceration was appropriate, but how exactly does incarceration protect rights, and whose rights does it protect?

It does not appear that Ayn Rand ever explicitly discusses how it is that the police and the incarceration process protects individual rights. She says that the purpose of government is based in the right to self-defense:

“The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.” (“The Nature of Government”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

I can see how an individual can prevent himself from being murdered by using self-defense. If the victim is armed, he can try to outshoot the person trying to murder him, thereby saving his life. If the victim is a quicker draw than the person attacking him, or just a better shot, then he can stop the attacker with a bullet.  But, in the case of a person already murdered, he cannot act in self-defense, and the state cannot defend him, because he is already dead. How is the state prosecuting the murderer, after the fact, self-defense? It must be in the sense that every other living person needs to stop the murderer from killing again, and for their own self-defense, rather than the defense of the murder victim, who is beyond help.

Even for lesser crimes, what is the probability that the criminal will re-victimize that particular victim? If a bank robber robs a bank, wouldn’t he be more likely to rob a completely different bank in the future? The bank that was just robbed is more likely to take additional security precautions, so it would be smarter for the criminal to find a new target. Although the government is defending the bank already robbed, it is also protecting other banks that have yet to be robbed.

Also, this still doesn’t explicitly answer the question of exactly how does locking up a person convicted of murder help defend the still living, in the case of a crime like murder? (And, I am just assuming that Ayn Rand would be in favor of incarceration, because I don’t know that she ever explicitly says that this is how criminals should be punished.) I don’t think Ayn Rand explicitly answers the question of “how”, but I think I am able to see logical implications based on her writing. For instance, Ayn Rand said the following:

“If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door-or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into the perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages.“ (“The Nature of Government”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

So, it is “organized protection against force” that is the goal of government. Government is not primarily “organized revenge” or even “organized retaliation”. Government exists for purposes of protection. Only actions by government that protect against force are justified. But, what about the person already murdered? How can he be protected by government? Clearly, the dead cannot be protected, only the currently living. Whatever government does to the murderer is done to protect the currently living, not for the sake of the deceased.

I see only two ways that a government can provide “organized protection against force” in the case of murder, which is generally considered to be the worst crime:

(1) Government establishes a penalty for murder, and that penalty is always imposed, so that everyone is discouraged from committing murder. Government imposes a penalty to protect the currently living from being murdered in the future. The only way that penalty will work is if it is, in fact, imposed whenever a murder is committed. The government is threatening the use of force to protect the currently living. The threat of force by the government is not against any particular individual, but against everyone in society. Another way to look at it is that government promises or declares that anyone who violates individual rights by initiating physical force will be met with force.

(2) Government actually uses force to prohibit future crimes being committed by a specifically identified murderer. Government is actually imposing the force, rather than merely threatening the use of force, to protect the currently living from that particular, identified, murderer.

The first is the “deterrent” or “general deterrence” argument for punishment. The second I’d call the “restraintist” argument for punishment, although I think some legal philosophers might say this is “specific deterrence”.

I should note that I can somewhat see a third basis for how government can provide “organized protection against force”. It would be very understandable that the family and friends of the murdered person would want to enact revenge on the murderer by killing him. I doubt that this feeling is rational, but it is very understandable. It’s also very likely to take place if there is no organized government. By having an organized system of punishment, government can provide friends and family members of the victim with sufficient emotional satisfaction that they might be less inclined to seek revenge. I think this “retributivist” basis might just be a form of “deterrence”, in the sense that it discourages the victim’s friends and family members from seeking revenge against the killer.

Another point to note is that I don’t think the first two, and maybe not even the third, possible bases on which government imposes “organized protection against force”, are necessarily mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, Rand does not give much in the way of detail about how government, and in particular, the police, will protect individual rights, other than to say that the police represent a delegated and organized use of force in self-defense against criminals. The logical implication seems to be that the police are not just defending the victim, who, in the case of murder, is beyond help, but everyone else in society that could be the criminal’s next victim. A further logical implication is that this organized use of force by police is in the form of incarceration, which serves the purpose of restraining the particular criminal from future crimes, and/or deterring future crime by others.

The Basis of Punishment of Criminals For Murray Rothbard

If my interpretation of the Randian basis for punishment, as lying primarily in “deterrence” and “restraint” is correct, then Murray Rothbard would disagree with Rand. (At the very least, I disagree with Rothbard about the basis of punishment.)

Rothbard explicitly states that retributivism is the basis of punishment of criminals:

“It should be evident that our theory of proportional punishment: that people may be punished by losing their rights to the extent that they have invaded the rights of others, is frankly a retributive theory of punishment, a ‘tooth (or two teeth) for a tooth’ theory.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

Rothbard does say that the purpose of using force in retaliation is self-defense:

“Many people, when confronted with the libertarian legal system, are concerned with this problem: would somebody be allowed to ‘take the law into his own hands’? Would the victim, or a friend of the victim, be allowed to exact justice personally on the criminal? The answer is, of course, Yes, since all rights of punishment derive from the victim’s right of self-defense.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

But, in many cases, the principle of “an eye for an eye” does not seem to have anything to do with anyone’s defense, whether that be the victim, or other people that the criminal might victimize in the future. The retributivist focuses on the punishment aspect, rather than the defense of others, and this seems true for Rothbard. For instance, he says that a person who has been assaulted should have the right to beat up his attacker in return:

“In the question of bodily assault, where restitution does not even apply, we can again employ our criterion of proportionate punishment; so that if A has beaten up B in a certain way, then B has the right to beat up A (or have him beaten up by judicial employees) to rather more than the same extent.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

Although the threat of getting beat up might, to a certain extent, serve a deterrence effect, this is not why Rothbard advocates it. Instead, it is because he thinks the perpetrator of a crime should have the same done to him. (“A tooth for a tooth.”) To me, this seems completely senseless. How does the victim beating the shit out of his attacker, after the fact, help the situation? Also, how would this prevent the victim from being beat up in the future? With incarceration, the attacker is put in jail for a period of time, which better ensures the victim’s safety.

Rothbard does address the “deterrence” viewpoint, and another major modern school of thought, regarding the purpose of incarceration, which is the “rehabilitation” viewpoint. His critique of the “deterrence” viewpoint is that it would involve the use of levels of punishment that most people would regard as inappropriate or unfair. So, for instance, most people would regard shoplifting as a minor crime, and that the punishment should be very light. But, Rothbard says that if shoplifting were legal, then many more people would commit the crime of shoplifting than if the crime of murder were legal. He says this is because more people have “…a far greater built-in inner objection to themselves committing murder than they have to petty shoplifting, and would be far less apt to commit the grosser crime.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

As far as I can tell, Rothbard provides no evidence that people would be more likely to commit shoplifting than murder if the two were legal. This does seem likely to me too, but I have no basis for saying that, other than I like to think that most people are not prone to commit murder. If there were no laws, isn’t it likely that people would kill or steal when they thought it would suit them? Does it even matter what they’d do if there were no laws? If we have a theory of rights based on the fundamental right to life, like Ayn Rand’s philosophy, then doesn’t that philosophical system say that murder must be worse than shoplifting, precisely because the former is an assault on the fundamental basis of rights? So, wouldn’t that be the basis of a system of proportionality, in which murder is punished more harshly than shoplifting? This would only seem to be a problem for someone with a utilitarian philosophical basis, which is what Rothbard is criticizing when he criticizes the deterrence school:

“Deterrence was the principle put forth by utilitarianism, as part of its aggressive dismissal of principles of justice and natural law, and the replacement of these allegedly metaphysical principles by hard practicality. The practical goal of punishments was then supposed to be to deter further crime, either by the criminal himself or by other members of society. But this criterion of deterrence implies schemas of punishment which almost everyone would consider grossly unjust.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”, emphasis added.)

Clearly, Ayn Rand is not a utilitarian, but, as already discussed, her views on rights and the nature of government would suggest that “deterrence” is part of the purpose of incarceration of criminals. Incarceration would be for the purpose of protecting the rights of people living in society, as well as the original victim, if he is still alive.

Rothbard also dismisses the “rehabilitation” viewpoint because it would seem to lead to absurd results, like incarcerating someone for shoplifting for longer than a murderer, if it is determined that the murderer has been successfully rehabilitated and will not commit more crimes:

“…in our case of Smith and Jones, suppose that the mass murderer Smith is, according to our board of ‘experts’, rapidly rehabilitated. He is released in three weeks, to the plaudits of the supposedly successful reformers. In the meanwhile, Jones, the fruit-stealer, persists in being incorrigible and clearly un-rehabilitated, at least in the eyes of the expert board. According to the logic of the principle, he must stay incarcerated indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life…”(The Ethics of Liberty, Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 13, “Punishment and Proportionality”)

Although I cannot find support in Ayn Rand’s writing for this, I believe “rehabilitation” does play a role in the length of incarceration of someone convicted of a crime, but not quite in the way that I think this term is used by philosophers of law. I think that the possibility that the convict can “rehabilitate” himself, due to the possession of a volitional consciousness means that the length of a prison sentence may be less than the convict’s life. Since people possess volition, even a murderer can change his thought patterns and his actions for the better in the future. I disagree that the government or society can “rehabilitate” a convict, but I think that the convict can “rehabilitate” himself. Lesser crimes, besides murder, are therefore likely to carry less than a life sentence, given the fact of human volition. I think the possibility of self-rehabilitation by the convict is a major factor to consider when weighing the proportionality of the punishment in relation to the crime. The fact of volition must be weighed, as much as possible, against the possibility that a person found guilty of a minor crime might go on to commit more serious crimes in the future, while at the same time, recognizing that the commission of a minor crime might be a “fluke” or a one-time event that would not be repeated by the convict. Additionally, someone found guilty of a murder, who is facing a life sentence, is likely to lie to get out of prison early, so making the determination that he is truly rehabilitated is not going to be easy.

Admittedly, unlike the retributivist system of crime and punishment proposed by Rothbard, determining the extent of the punishment in particular circumstances, along the lines I have proposed, would be more difficult. “An eye for an eye” has the advantage of being easy to implement. If someone is beat up, then they get to beat up their attacker, which makes assessing the punishment easy, albeit ridiculous and irrational.

 

A Comparison and Contrast of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard On Warfare

Ayn Rand on Warfare

As far as I can tell, Ayn Rand did not write much about when a nation has a right to use organized physical force, on a mass-level, against other nations or other armed groups.

Her essay, “The Roots of War” discusses how Statism is the fundamental source of war in modern times. In that essay, she does not explicitly deal with when, and to what extent, a free or semi-free nation may use its military force. She does make it clear that a free nation should have a military, and that sometimes it should be used:

“Needless to say, unilateral pacifism is merely an invitation to aggression. Just as an individual has the right of self-defense, so has a free country if attacked. But this does not give its government the right to draft men into military service-which is the most blatantly statist violation of a man’s right to his own life. There is no contradiction between the moral and the practical: a volunteer army is the most efficient army, as many military authorities have testified. A free country has never lacked volunteers when attacked by a foreign aggressor. But not many men would volunteer for such ventures as Korea or Vietnam. Without drafted armies, the foreign policies of statist or mixed economies would not be possible.” (“The Roots of War”, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

Determining when an individual can use force in self-defense can be quite difficult by itself. It becomes even more complicated when the issue is “scaled up” to a nation-wide or world-wide level.

Since I cannot find anything from Rand’s explicit writings on the conditions under which a country can use military force, I want to start by looking at her writing on when an individual can use physical force.

One passage that I have found helpful in making the distinction between the use of physical force in an improper way verses the use of physical force in a moral manner comes from her essay “The Objectivist Ethics”. In that essay, she discusses what is the difference between the use of physical force “in retaliation” and the use of physical force as an “initiation”:

“The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.” (The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand)

For Rand, whether force is “retaliatory”, which is moral, or an “initiation”, and therefore immoral, turns on her view of values, and who is entitled to those values. For Rand, a value is that which one acts to gain and or keep, with the ultimate value being “man’s life”:

“The Objectivist ethics holds man’s life as the standard of value- and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.” (The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand)

So, one must hold “man’s life” as the standard, and the purpose of holding that standard for each individual man is his own life. Values are those things which one must have in order to live. Thanks to their rational faculty, human beings can create these values in much greater quantities than they would exist in nature. (For instance, agricultural technology creates much more food per acre of land than would typically be found growing in a similarly sized area of natural land.)

If each man holds his own life as his ethical purpose, then the values he creates, are for himself and for maintaining his own life. In the case of using physical force, whether that force takes the form of a punch, a bullet, or a bomb, it is an “initiation of physical force”, if one is attempting to obtain the values which others have created for their own sustenance. It is “retaliatory force” if one is merely attempting to keep what one has created for oneself.

Something that is not quite captured by the quote from Rand above is the case of someone not trying to gain the values of others, like a bank robber. Some people are simply trying to destroy the values of others, such as a terrorist who kills for some obscure political reason, or a “serial murderer”, who may kill not because they gain any particular value, in any rational sense, from it, but to satisfy some psychological craving. In that case, I think she would still consider this to be an initiation of physical force because they seek to deprive others of their values. So, I think you could expand the concept of an initiation of physical force to include both the use of physical force to gain the values of others, and also to destroy the values of others.

At any rate, Rand’s point is clear. It is not the physical act, the use of physical force, that makes something an “initiation of physical force” versus “retaliatory force”. The action itself may look the same, and the context in which it occurs will determine whether it is “initiation” or “retaliation”. For instance, you cannot merely see a man shoot another man and conclude with certainty that the man who fired the bullet has initiated physical force. You would need to know something about the conditions under which that occurred. For instance, if it was revealed that the person who was shot was wearing a vest of explosives under his jacket, and had just expressed an intention to go detonate it in a crowded movie theater, the shooter is quite probably acting in retaliation against an initiation of physical force. In that case, the man wearing the hidden explosive vest has taken affirmative steps to kill a large number of people by putting together the explosive vest, putting it on, walking towards the movie theater, and expressing an intent to use the bomb. He has initiated the use of physical force. (Although the act is not completed yet.) He has started the use of physical force, and that physical force is directed at the destruction of other people’s values, in this case, their very lives.

For Rand, a nation or a society is nothing but a number of individuals:

“A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no rights other than the rights of its individual citizens.” (“Collectivized ‘Rights’” Ayn Rand, http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-ideas/collectivized-rights.html )

Therefore, a nation and its military has no greater rights than the rights of its individual citizens. What would be an initiation of physical force for an individual would be an initiation for a nation. Similarly, retaliatory force for a nation is physical force that is not aimed at gaining the values of others or depriving others of their values, but at protecting the values of the nation’s citizens.

Murray Rothbard on Warfare

Murray Rothbard seems to hold similar views to those of Rand when it comes to the state as nothing but a collection of individuals.

Additionally, he would hold that all states, insofar as they hold the exclusive right to the use of retaliatory physical force in a given geographic area, are illegitimate, but I am not looking to address his advocacy of “anarcho-capitalism” here. I am instead considering his views on warfare, within the existing framework of nations, as he does in Chapter 25 of his book, The Ethics of Liberty.

For instance, early in Chapter 25 of his book, Rothbard says:

“To be more concrete, if Jones finds that his property is being stolen by Smith, Jones has the right to repel him and try to catch him; but Jones has no right to repel him by bombing a building and murdering innocent people or to catch him by spraying machine gun fire into an innocent crowd. If he does this, he is as much (or more of) a criminal aggressor as Smith is.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 190)

But, what if Smith deliberately hides in a crowd of people, and fires his gun at Jones? Can Jones fire back? Whose fault is it if Jones accidentally hits a bystander during the course of returning fire on Smith, when Smith deliberately used other people as cover? Rothbard does not address the issue.

Rothbard then “scales up” his individual scenario to a group of individuals:

“The same criteria hold if Smith and Jones each have men on his side, i.e. if ‘war’ breaks out between Smith and his henchmen and Jones and his bodyguards. If Smith and a group of henchmen aggress against Jones, and Jones and his bodyguards pursue the Smith gang to their lair, we may cheer Jones on in his endeavor; and we, and others in society interested in repelling aggression, may contribute financially or personally to Jones’s cause. But Jones and his men have no right, any more than does Smith, to aggress against anyone else in the course of their “just war”: to steal others’ property in order to finance their pursuit, to conscript others into their posse by use of violence, or to kill others in the course of their struggle to capture the Smith forces. If Jones and his men should do any of these things, they become criminals as fully as Smith, and they too become subject to whatever sanctions are meted out against criminality. In fact, if Smith’s crime was theft, and Jones should use conscription to catch him, or should kill innocent people in the pursuit, then Jones becomes more of a criminal than Smith, for such crimes against another person as enslavement and murder are surely far worse than theft.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 190)

Rothbard never seems to want to address, in Chapter 25 of “The Ethics of Liberty”, to what degree, if at all, you can risk the lives of innocent people in defending yourself. If you cannot risk the lives of others at all, then there are very few cases where even clear-cut acts of self-defense are justified. A bullet could always go astray and hit an innocent bystander.

For Rothbard, exactly who has violated rights, if you are forced to defend yourself, shoot an attacker, and, for instance, the bullet goes through your attacker and hits someone behind him? Common law legal systems would likely limit culpability to what is ‘foreseeable’, or some other similar concept. This is the idea that whether you commit a rights violation has something to do with your intent, and/or what you could have expected to be the reasonable probable result of your actions. So, if a bullet goes through your attacker, makes a weird series of ricochets, and hits someone you didn’t even know was behind your attacker, you are probably going to be excused from any sort of legal culpability. (It should go, almost without saying, that nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice.)

My point is, your intentions, your state of mind, to some extent, matters when you use force. Why does your state of mind matter? I think Ayn Rand would say it’s because it points to your purpose in using force. If your purpose in using force is to protect your values, that is different from using force to destroy another person’s values, or to gain another person’s values:

“The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.” (The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

Accidentally shooting a bystander while defending yourself from a robber is not an attempt to obtain values. This is not to say that all such accidental shootings of bystanders should be completely excused by the legal system. Maybe some particularly reckless acts in self-defense should cause some level of criminal liability, but the level of culpability is probably not the same.

When you shoot a hold up man in self-defense, and accidentally shoot someone else, your level of culpability is lesser (although possibly not completely excused). Why? because you were not seeking ‘to gain a value’. You were seeking to protect a value. Your intentions when using force matter.

What does this all have to do with warfare? It gives us guidance on how to look at uses of force by certain countries. If a country is attempting to kill enemy soldiers and accidentally kills civilians in the process, this is not the same level of culpability as intentionally targeting civilians, because the country is not seeking to destroy values. Furthermore, it may even completely excuse the unintentional killing of civilians, in some circumstances.

Go back to the individual level for a moment. Imagine if a criminal shoots at you with a baby strapped to his chest. You have no ability to take cover, and you cannot safely run away without getting shot, so you shoot back and kill the baby in the process of shooting the robber. Have you violated the baby’s rights? I think the answer is very circumstantial, but I can see a set of circumstances where you would have no other choice. (It’s an extreme, ‘lifeboat scenario’, admittedly.) In that case, the fault lies with the person who strapped a baby to his chest and then tried to kill you, leaving you with no other choice but to die, or shoot back.

More fundamentally, how is the risk that you might hit an innocent bystander in an act of self-defense different from the possibility that, for instance, your car might suffer a mechanical breakdown while you’re driving it, go out of control, and hit a pedestrian? Both are actions aimed at enhancing or promoting your life. Both could have unintentional and even unforeseeable, deadly consequences for innocent third parties. I do not think that others have a right to be 100% risk-free from your actions. If that were the case, then things like airplanes would have to be illegal. It’s always possible an airplane will malfunction, fall from the sky, and kill a family in their home. Airline companies, to a certain extent, put us all at risk of death from crashing airplanes.

All other people have a right to is that you will not: (a) intentionally use force to deprive them of values, nor will you: (b) use force in such a way that it would be reasonably foreseeable that the force would deprive them of their values. (Examples of such unreasonable uses of force would be things such as: driving a car at 80 mph through a neighborhood street where children are about, target shooting with your gun in a field that children are playing in, etc.)

Expand the situation of the criminal using a baby strapped to his chest as a human shield to the national level. If an organization of terrorists hides behind civilians, and then fires rockets at your country, can your army shoot back with rockets? Again, it’s going to be very circumstantial. Sometimes, the army might be able to stop the attacks in some other way, such as an anti-missile system. But, sometimes, the army may have to fire missiles back, and, in the process, unintentionally kill civilians. In that case, the fault lies with the terrorists, not with the army. The terrorists are no different than the criminal who tries to murder you while using another person as a human shield. The responsibility for the death of any innocents lies with the terrorists. For Rand, I believe the initiation of physical force, the rights violation, lies with the person who used other people as cover while committing acts of violence.

Rothbard, on the other hand, does not seem to agree with this. For instance, he considers all nuclear weapons to be illegitimate:

“…a particularly libertarian reply is that while the bow and arrow, and even the rifle, can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, that modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even ‘conventional’ aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 190, emphasis added.)

First, it must be noted that this seems like a suicidal viewpoint. In a world where countries like China and Russia have nuclear weapons, to say nothing of North Korea and Iran, Rothbard’s apparent call for unilateral nuclear disarmament by freer Western nations would mean we’d be subject to nuclear annihilation at the whim of some dictator. But, more fundamentally, who has initiated physical force here? Is it the United States for threatening to obliterate North Korea should that totalitarian dictatorship attempt to harm our citizens, or is it the madmen (and women) in charge of that country? Does the United States gain a value in destroying North Korea’s ability to wage war against us, or does the United States merely preserve the values of its people -that is their lives, liberty and property?

(As an aside, I think Rothbard also forgets about a use of nuclear weapons that would not involve the death of innocent civilians. Imagine an island nation, in say, the East China Sea, that was being invaded by a much larger nation from the mainland. That invasion force would come in the form of a floating armada of ships. What if the island nation were to use nuclear weapons to obliterate the invasion force while it was still in the water? No civilians would be harmed, and the possession of nuclear weapons by that island nation would serve as a deterrent to invasion.)

Rothbard is also fairly explicit that all modern warfare is illegitimate:

“All State wars, therefore, involve increased aggression against the State’s own taxpayers, and almost all State wars (all, in modern warfare) involve the maximum aggression (murder) against the innocent civilians ruled by the enemy State.” (The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard, Chapter 25, Pg 193)

At root, I think the difference between Rothbard and Rand on the legitimacy of certain acts of warfare by freer nations comes down to Rothbard either misunderstanding, or explicitly rejecting, the fact that the distinction between an “initiation of physical force” and “retaliatory physical force” lies in what values are, and what ultimate purpose they serve. I think Rothbard desired to create a “libertarian” view of Rand’s non-initiation of physical force principle that is severed from Rand’s underlying view of values, and the standard of “man’s life”. I started reading Rothbard’s book, “The Ethics of Liberty” prior to October 7, 2023, but those events caused me to want to write something about his views on warfare in particular. In the future, I will turn back to a comparison and contrast of other features of his book to the ideas of Ayn Rand.