Rights Are Inalienable But Forfeitable

In my recent Philosophy in Action Webcast discussion of the death penalty, I mentioned Craig Biddle's discussion of the fact that rights are inalienable but forfeitable. As promised, here's footnote 46 of his excellent essay, Ayn Rand's Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society

... If rights were somehow inherent in man by virtue of his being man, then we could never punish people who violate rights--because using retaliatory force against them would violate the "rights" that they "inherently" have and that they thus always retain by virtue of being human. Because Rand's theory is based on and derived from the observable requirements of man's life, it is not afflicted with contradictions regarding those requirements. On Rand's theory, rights are inalienable, in that others cannot take away or nullify one's rights; but they are also forfeitable, in that one can relinquish one's own rights by violating the rights of others. If and to the extent that a person violates the rights of others, he relinquishes his own rights and may be punished accordingly. His choice to violate rights places him outside the purpose of the principle and thus the scope of its protection. Again, one cannot claim the protection of a principle that one repudiates in action.

If rights were inherent in human nature, based purely on DNA or species-membership, then the advocates of "personhood for zygotes" would be right: the fertilized egg would have a right to life. However, on an objective theory of rights, rights cannot apply until the fetus is biologically separated from the woman. Only then does the fetus -- then a baby -- enter the social context necessary for rights. For further details, see Ari Armstrong's and my recently-published essay, "The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties.

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Dubai: Slave Society

Last week, I ran across a fascinating article on the society and economy of Dubai: The dark side of Dubai by Johann Hari. (It's from 2009, but no less interesting because of that.)

The whole shining metropolis -- recently featured in MI4 -- is built on a horrifying foundation of slave labor:

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

Then, at the air-conditioned luxury of the mall:

I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants, oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. "I love it here!" she says. "The heat, the malls, the beach!" Does it ever bother you that it's a slave society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. "I try not to see," she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she senses, is a transgression too far.

That kind of evasion is bad enough. Even worse is the evasion required by the Westerners who actively participate in this slavery:

...one theme unites every expat I speak to: their joy at having staff to do the work that would clog their lives up Back Home. Everyone, it seems, has a maid. The maids used to be predominantly Filipino, but with the recession, Filipinos have been judged to be too expensive, so a nice Ethiopian servant girl is the latest fashionable accessory.

It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.

In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is "terrifying" for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say – 'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.' At first I would say – my God, I will tell the consulate, where are you staying? But they never know their address, and the consulate isn't interested. I avoid them now. I keep thinking about a woman who told me she hadn't eaten any fruit in four years. They think I have power because I can walk around on my own, but I'm powerless."

The only hostel for women in Dubai – a filthy private villa on the brink of being repossessed – is filled with escaped maids. Mela Matari, a 25-year-old Ethiopian woman with a drooping smile, tells me what happened to her – and thousands like her. She was promised a paradise in the sands by an agency, so she left her four year-old daughter at home and headed here to earn money for a better future. "But they paid me half what they promised. I was put with an Australian family – four children – and Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. My ear still hurts. They wouldn't give me my wages: they said they'd pay me at the end of the two years. What could I do? I didn't know anybody here. I was terrified."

One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked – in broken English – how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport back from Madam. "Well, how could I?" she asks. She has been in this hostel for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. "I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything," she says.

As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. "Oh, the servant class!" she trilled. "You do nothing. They'll do anything!"

The psychological contortions required to willingly relocate to a slave society, then actively participate in such slavery, is just mind-boggling. As one woman was quoted in the article, "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." That mentality -- delusional and incompetent yet ambitious -- seems to be fertile ground for embracing the practice of slavery.

I've already quoted too much of the article, but so much else in it is deeply fascinating -- and heartbreaking. So go read the whole article. You won't be sorry to know what "exploitation of the workers" and "environmental destruction" really means.

Finally, my friend Kirez posted the following comment on Facebook, which I'm including here with his permission:

I recall reading this article when it was published. I witnessed many of these labor camps firsthand; it was a horrifying experience.

It's not easy to see if you're there simply as a tourist. But even when I wasn't exploring where I wasn't supposed to be, if I simply went into a grocery near one of these labor camps where the pakistanis and indians and burmese in large groups would go to buy their groceries, the racism (in these places even more than most others) was so palpable, it seemed a theatre spectacle: I would walk into a store, where gangs of pakistanis or indians were trudging along, and the (Indian) owners of the stores would come running, falling over themselves, bowing to me and calling me sir, and offering to help me with my shopping and finding me special products or deals... for no reason whatsoever except that I was white and had honored their store with my presence.

I first noticed the workers when I was acting as a tourist, and went out to the construction sites of the islands to look at the buildings (I saw a lot of really bad construction practices... not only safety issues, which were normal, but severely faulty lack of fortification and structural issues, like neglecting rebar through cinderblock walls, etc.) I saw buses full of pakistani workers coming to and from the work sites. I knew the city (Dubai) pretty well, but these workers didn't live in the city; the buses went out of the city into the desert. At first I simply watched the buses coming and going and felt very sorry for the workers, because the heat was overbearing for us in an air conditioned luxury car... and I could see them slumped against windows, sleeping, in the burning sunshine. These images burned into my mind, and caused me to start noticing the shanty towns in the desert outside the city. Eventually I would visit several; later I would meet the workers as they worked on projects where I was working -- later I even hired some workers to build pullup bars, squat racks, jump boxes and other equipment for me.

The cases of abuse were innumerable; it seemed to be the norm.

But I was overworked with my own projects... in a final, ultimately painful and frustrating insult to my powerlessness there, I learned that the mysterious traffic of men to the apartment underneath ours was explained by the slavery of a 9-year-old girl. They had kept her very effectively hidden from me for months, while I had watched men come to the apartment in singles or couples at all hours of the night, but I never saw them leave with bundles, never smelled anything, never saw weapons... I didn't get it. I had only 72 hours left in the country when a pakistani tried to steal some of my exercise equipment (outside -- this attempted theft was very unusual), and the woman who kept the girl, downstairs, came running out of her apartment to tell me, in arabic, that they were stealing my equipment... and the 9-year-old girl appeared in the door she had left open. I then got to watch local police detectives bumble the investigation, while I was completing my work, packing my household, selling my possessions and preparing to depart.

Wow.

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Video: The Purpose of Bankruptcy Law

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed the purpose of bankruptcy law. The question was:

What is the proper purpose of bankruptcy laws? When should a person renegotiate his debt with lenders, if ever? Should a person be able to wipe his debt clean by going into bankruptcy? In your July 10, 2011 webcast discussion of strategic default on mortgages, you suggested that a person shouldn't be able to do that, but shouldn't lenders be responsible for who they lend money to?

My answer, in brief:

The purpose of bankruptcy law not to give people a fresh start, but rather to peacefully and fairly resolve conflicts that arise between the debtor and his creditors when the debtor is truly unable to pay his debts.

Here's the video of my full answer:

If you enjoy the video, please "like" it on YouTube and share it with friends in e-mail and social media! You can also throw a bit of extra love in our tip jar.

All my webcast and other videos can be found on my YouTube channel.

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Video: State Involvement in Marriage

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed whether and how the state should be involved in marriage -- a crucial question for the debates about gay marriage. The question was:

Should the state be involved in marriage contracts? Many people say that gay marriage shouldn't be a political issue, because the state shouldn't be involved in defining marriage at all. Is that right? Why or why not?

My view, in brief:

We ought to separate politics and marriage, by treating marriage like any other contract. The state has a limited but crucial role to play in marriage to ensure that marriage contracts are objective, voluntary, and enforced. However, the state should not play social engineer by deciding who can get married or the terms of that marriage.

Here's the video of my answer:

If you enjoy the video, please "like" it on YouTube and share it with friends in e-mail and social media! You can also throw a bit of extra love in our tip jar.

All my webcast and other videos can be found on my YouTube channel.

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Police Fabricating Drug Busts

Did you need another reason to oppose the Drug War? Just in case, here's reason #28173:

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

Go read the whole story.

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Two Videos on Nudity

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed two questions on nudity. The first question was:

What's the proper approach to nudity? Should we all be nude all the time? Should nudity be saved for your lover only? Should children see their parents naked? Should we have clothing-optional get-togethers with friends? Basically, what is your view of the proper contexts for nudity?

Here's the video of my answer:

The second question was:

Do restrictions on nudity and sex visible to others violate rights? While having a zestful online debate, someone claimed that Ayn Rand contradicts herself in claiming that public nudity should be censored. (See "Thought Control" in The Ayn Rand Letter.) Since sex is a beautiful act, why should people be protected from it? Could a ban on visible pornography or sex be a slippery slope to other intrusions by government?

Here's the video of my answer:

If you like them, please share them! Also, all my webcast and other videos can be found on my YouTube channel.

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Ayn Rand on Forbidding Sexual Displays in Public Places

In tomorrow's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I'll answer the following question on public nudity and sex:

Do restrictions on nudity and sex visible to others violate rights? While having a zestful online debate, someone claimed that Ayn Rand contradicts herself in claiming that public nudity should be censored. (See "Thought Control" in The Ayn Rand Letter.) Since sex is a beautiful act, why should people be protected from it? Could a ban on visible pornography or sex be a slippery slope to other intrusions by government?

Of course, I have my own views on the substantive questions about the proper limits of the law, and I'll offer them in the webcast tomorrow.

I'm also interested in the question about Ayn Rand's views on the topic. Hence, I just re-read her essays, "Censorship: Local and Express" and "Thought Control." Both essays were originally published in The Ayn Rand Letter, and the former is also reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It. I strongly recommend reading (or re-reading) both essays in full before commenting on my question of interpretation below.

In light of Ayn Rand's strongly principled defense of freedom of speech in those essays, including her rejection of "community standards," I'm rather puzzled by what she says in these controversial paragraphs from "Thought Control." (I added an extra paragraph break for readability.)

Only one aspect of sex is a legitimate field for legislation: the protection of minors and of unconsenting adults. Apart from criminal actions (such as rape), this aspect includes the need to protect people from being confronted with sights they regard as loathsome. (A corollary of the freedom to see and hear, is the freedom not to look or listen.) Legal restraints on certain types of public displays, such as posters or window displays, are proper—but this is an issue of procedure, of etiquette, not of morality.

No one has the rights to do whatever he pleases on a public street (nor would he have such a right on a privately-owned street). The police power to maintain order among pedestrians or to control traffic is a procedural, not a substantive, power. A traffic policeman enforces rules of how to drive (in order to avoid clashes or collisions), but cannot tell you where to go.

Similarly, the rights of those who seek pornography would not be infringed by rules protecting the rights of those who find pornography offensive -- e.g., sexually explicit posters may properly be forbidden in public places; warning signs, such as "For Adults Only," may properly be required of private places which are open to the public. This protects the unconsenting, and has nothing to do with censorship, i.e., with prohibiting thought or speech.

I understand Rand's basic claim just fine. It's her reasoning that puzzles me. She seems to endorse the general principle that the government can and ought to regulate the actions of private property owners, if that property is open to the public, so as to prevent certain people from being offended. That seems like a terribly dangerous precedent to me, particularly because its application would depend on something like "community standards."

Hence, I'm wondering if I've properly understood Rand's argument. Any thoughts on that question of interpretation would be most welcome in the comments. What do you think she's saying -- and why?

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Video: The Morality of Torturing Terrorists and Criminals

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed the morality of torturing terrorists and criminals. The question was:

Is it moral to torture criminals and/or terrorists? We supposedly were able to track down Osama Bin Laden with information obtained by torturing captured Al Qaeda prisoners. Is it moral to torture criminals, terrorists or other evildoers to gain useful information to fight crime or help win a war? If so, should there be any limits on when and how torture should be used by the government?

Here's the video of my answer:

If you like it, please share it! Also, all my webcast and other videos can be found on my YouTube channel.

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Self-Defense in the UK

In Diana's July 3rd webcast, one of the topics she covered was self-defense and one of the points she made was that victims of violent attack in Great Britain could be prosecuted for fighting back in self-defense.

A listener who was a former UK resident (now living in Hong Kong) wrote back to let her know that UK law did allow "reasonable force" in resisting a violent attack and wanted to correct any potentially erroneous negative impressions of British laws. One of the references he cited was this 6/29/2011 BBC news story, "Right to self-defence in homes to be 'much clearer'".

However, even if UK law does recognize a victim's theoretical right to self-defense, a big question is precisely whether and how that right is recognized by the authorities in practice.

A few years ago, American gun law expert David Kopel posted this interesting report from a US student studying abroad in London. According to her, the London police were very explicit in telling her not to fight back:

I'm an alumna of Pepperdine University, a school which proudly owns a house/campus on Exhibition Road, literally across the street from the Imperial University, in the middle of South Kensington, right near Harrods, Hyde Park, the Albert Hall. Within two days of arriving for our first semester in London, our relatively small [American] class (37 students, 10 men, 27 women) was visited by a local police officer to instruct us on living in London. Her first question was to the women, 'How many of you brought mace?' Three girls raised their hands. She told us we couldn't use it, shouldn't even carry it, it was illegal.

Had any of us brought any other type of weapon, such as a knife? Several of the men in our group indicated that they carried pocket knives. She told us to leave them at home too.

Then she instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the aggressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was.

The feeling I got was, in London, it is not permissible to defend oneself. I also understood that this police officer thought Americans were more likely to be aggressive and/or cause more damage to a potential attacker. She was warning us for our own good. I have to admit, she did not make me feel particularly safe.

Last week, historian Joyce Lee Malcolm wrote a piece in the 8/16/2011 Wall Street Journal, "The Soft-on-Crime Roots of British Disorder". (If the link takes you to the truncated version, just enter the full title into a Google search box to get to the full piece.)

Some excerpts from her OpEd:

Victims of aggression who defend themselves or attempt to protect their property have been shown no such leniency. Burglars who injured themselves breaking into houses have successfully sued homeowners for damages. In February, police in Surrey told gardeners not to put wire mesh on the windows of their garden sheds as burglars might hurt themselves when they break in.

If a homeowner protecting himself and his family injures an intruder beyond what the law considers "reasonable," he will be prosecuted for assault. Tony Martin, an English farmer, was sentenced to life in prison for killing one burglar and wounding another with a shotgun during the seventh break-in at his rural home in 1999. While his sentence was later reduced to five years, he was refused parole in 2003 because he was judged a danger to burglars.

In 2008, a robber armed with a knife attacked shopkeeper Tony Singh in West Lancashire. During the struggle the intruder was fatally stabbed with his own knife. Although the robber had a long record of violent assault, prosecutors were preparing to charge Mr. Singh with murder until public outrage stopped them...

All sorts of weapons useful for self-defense have been severely restricted or banned. A 1953 law, the "Prevention of Crime Act," made any item someone carried for possible protection an "offensive weapon" and therefore illegal. Today there is also a list of devices the mere possession of which carries a 10-year sentence. Along with rocket launchers and machine guns, the list includes chemical sprays and any knife with a blade more than three inches long.

Handguns? Parliament banned their possession in 1997. As an example of the preposterous lengths to which zealous British authorities would enforce this law, consider the fate of Paul Clark, a former soldier. He was arrested in 2009 by Surrey police when he brought them a shotgun he found in his garden. For doing this personally—instead of asking the police to retrieve it—he received a five-year prison sentence. It took a public outcry to reduce the normal five-year sentence to 12 months, and then suspend it...

Knives? It's illegal for anyone under age 18 to buy one, and using a knife for self-defense is unlawful. In 1991, American tourist Dina Letarte of Tempe, Ariz., used a penknife to protect herself from a violent attack by three men in a London subway. She was convicted of carrying an offensive weapon, fined, and given a two-year suspended sentence.

The result of policies that punish the innocent but fail to deter crime has been stark, even before the latest urban violence...

Now it may be that the latest "clarification" of self-defense laws from the current UK government (including what counts as "reasonable") will respect the rights of innocent victims, rather than violating them.

During the recent UK riots, the police told shopkeepers that they could use "reasonable force" against the rioters and looters. And many innocent people did bravely use baseball bats and clubs to protect themselves against the bad guys. But if any of the would-be victims had presumed to protect themselves with a handgun, they likely would have been arrested. If self-defense with a handgun is illegal, then it de facto falls outside of what the government regards as legal "reasonable force".

Under any legal system where tools of effective self-defense (such as handguns) are banned, the losers are the physically weaker victims (women, the elderly, those with disabilities) who are easily preyed upon by the young and the strong.

There's a damned good reason that Americans have always regarded handguns as the "Great Equalizer". Let's hope that some day the UK government chooses to do the same.

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Police Interrogations

In preparation for Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast question on whether police should be allowed to lie to suspects in the course of a criminal investigation, I've been researching the standard practices and legal limits of police interrogation. I've found that extremely interesting, so I thought I'd share some links before the webcast itself.

First, How Police Interrogation Works from "How Stuff Works." Basically, police interrogations are designed to exert as much psychological pressure on the victim as the courts allow. This article explains those techniques.

Second, What can the police lie about while conducting an interrogation? from "The Straight Dope." This article is a fascinating summary of what kind of facts the police are permitted to misrepresent in dealings with suspects -- because some and only some kinds of lies violate the suspect's rights. The basic distinction is between "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" falsehoods. The article says:

Attempting to reconcile [various] rulings [by the Supreme Court], state courts and lower federal courts have come to draw a distinction between two kinds of lying to suspects: intrinsic misrepresentations, or those lies that relate to a suspect's connection to the crime; and extrinsic misrepresentations, or those that have nothing to do with the suspect's connection to the crime but attempt to distort his ability to make a rational choice about confessing.

That's the critical issue here, I think. Police should be able to lie to suspects, but some kinds of lies -- such as "you don't have the right to an attorney" or "we can hold you indefinitely" constitute a kind of fraud, whereas others like "your fingerprints were found at the scene of the murder" and "a witness saw you enter the store" don't. However, I'm not yet fully clear on the distinction, and I need to do more reading, this time from genuine law sources.

Third, "Don't Talk to the Police" by Professor James Duane:



Greg blogged about this video back in 2008, but I didn't watch it at the time. Now that I have, I can agree with Greg's summary and conclusions:

[James Duane] is speaking to law students, explaining why he uniformly advises his clients (and everyone) that they should they never, ever, under any circumstances, talk with the police -- guilty or innocent, a suspect or not, even if they are smarter than Aristotle and Newton combined, articulate as all get out, an expert in the law, and pure as the wind-driven snow. Never. ...

He explains how talking to the police can't ever help, and will in all likelihood hurt even innocents. This last is the part that really stood out: even the most innocuous statements by the most innocent of people could put them in jeopardy -- it depends on context they don't control. An officer misremembering an answer could bring a conviction; so could misremembering the question. Taping interviews is no guarantee, either: even some fuzziness in the contextual information that floated by before the interview could be disastrous!

Fourth, "Don't Talk to the Police" by Officer George Bruch



In this follow-up lecture, George Bruch completely agreed with James Duane: a person should not speak to the police without his lawyer present.

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Video: Why Carry a Concealed Firearm

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed the moral and practical reasons for carrying a concealed firearm. Here's the 11-minute video, now posted to YouTube:

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Claeys on ObamaCare, Constitutionality, and Politics

George Mason University law professor Eric R. Claeys has a nice detailed article on the constitutional issues related to ObamaCare and their political implications.

His article appears in the Summer 2011 issue of National Affairs and is entitled, "Obamacare and the Limits of Judicial Conservatism".

I'm still digesting Claeys' piece, but one of the many interesting points he makes pertains to the conventional wisdom that when the "individual mandate" is eventually decided by the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS), there will be 4 conservative votes against and 4 liberal votes for, with the "swing vote" being Justice Kennedy.

Claeys warns:

[T]his conventional wisdom is wrong -- and adhering to it could prove highly counterproductive for Obamacare's opponents. It is wrong largely because it assumes that the Roberts Court's 'judicial conservatives' are members of a monolithic bloc.

In the final section of the paper, he also discusses 4 principles that ObamaCare opponents should keep in mind as the SCOTUS decision draws here:

1. There should be no irrational exuberance about the Virginia and Florida decisions.

2. Obamacare opponents should not despair if the Supreme Court votes not to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional.

3. Opponents of Obamacare must anticipate what to say if the Supreme Court votes not to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional.

4. If legislators and candidates will need to argue against Obamacare's constitutionality later, they might as well start now. And they should consult the opinions of Justice Thomas.

(He discusses each of these points in greater depth in the paper.)

As I mentioned above, I'm still digesting this piece. But it's a thought-provoking read. The full text is available at "Obamacare and the Limits of Judicial Conservatism".

Disclaimer: Professor Claeys was on my wife's PhD dissertation committee. (Note from the wife: He was super-helpful!)

(Link via GMU law professor Adam Mossoff.)

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Michelle Bachmann, Theocrat

I refuse to vote for politicians whose votes are determined by prayer. I'm looking at you, Michelle Bachmann!

She's speaking about the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that denying marriage rights to same-sex couples violated the state constitution. Here's the transcript:

When that happened, I heard the news on my local Christian radio station in Minneapolis, St. Paul and I was devastated. And I took a walk and I just went to prayer and I said Lord, what would you have me do in the Minnesota state senate? And just through prayer I knew that I was to introduce the marriage amendment in Minnesota.

While we're here, don't forget about the varieties of marriage that God sanctions in His Holy Scriptures. (Click to read the fabulous details!)



Maybe, Michelle, if you pray real hard, God will make you some powerful man's concubine! Alas, that's one of the better alternatives.

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Video: Hooray for Gay Sex and Gay Marriage

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I discussed the morality of homosexuality and gay sex in my experimental "rapid fire questions" segment. (That segment was fun!) Here's the short video, now posted to YouTube:

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Video: Fatherhood Should Be Voluntary

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I answered the following question about the child support obligations of unwilling fathers:

Should a man unwilling to be a father have to pay child support? Suppose that a man and a woman have sex, and the woman becomes pregnant -- even though the couple used contraception based on a shared and expressed desire not to have children. If the woman decides to raise the baby, should she be able to collect child support from the man? What if they'd never discussed the possibility of pregnancy? What if they didn't use any form of birth control?

Here's my answer, now posted to YouTube:



No involuntary servitude! No involuntary parentude!

The policy paper mentioned in the video is The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception by Ari Armstrong and me.

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Biblical Marriage

The religious right claims to advocate "biblical marriage"... but what does that actually mean? Take a look, and be sure to click on the image to read the fine print.



Hooray for family values!

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Video: Juries Should Be Voluntary

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I answered the following question about the morality of compulsory juries:

Are compulsory juries moral? Is it necessary and/or proper to compel citizens to serve on a jury? If not, what is the best way to ensure the right to a trial by a jury of your peers, rather than trial by government agents? Should a free society have professional volunteer juries like the military?

The issue was (and is) of particular interest to me because Dr. Peikoff has stated in a past podcast that compulsory jury duty would be entirely proper. I disagree strongly with that position, and I don't think it's consistent with Ayn Rand's views on taxation or the draft, both of which she opposes.

So in my webcast, I argued that compulsory juries are a violation of rights -- and hence, neither moral nor practical. You can watch the video of that segment here:



I've not yet seen any substantive defense of Dr. Peikoff's position, but I'd certainly be interested to hear one.

Also, someone asked the natural (and requested) follow-up question on why I think that subpoenas are justified if compulsory juries are not. I'll likely answer that in the next few weeks, but please vote it up so that I can answer it sooner rather than later!

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Justice for Henry

As many of you know, I've long been a fan of Katie Granju, and I was deeply saddened to read of the tragic death of her teenage son Henry last year. Yesterday, I read Katie's detailed account of the facts of her son's death and the subsequent investigation (or lack thereof) posted to Justice for Henry. It was harrowing -- and deeply disturbing.

Here's my basic view, based on what I've read: Henry had a serious drug problem, and his self-destructive choices certainly set the stage for his death. Nonetheless, he did not die of a simple overdose of his own doing. Others were involved -- and they should be held legally responsible.

Inadvertently, Henry put himself in the power of some very dangerous people. Those people violated his rights: they gave him excessive drugs under false assurances; they took him to their home; they assaulted him severely, and they refused to call for an ambulance. Later, he died as a result of complications from the overdose, but if he'd lived, he would have been profoundly disabled.

In short, Henry's death seems to have been a crime -- or at least, serious crimes were committed in the events leading to his death. Yet the people responsible are still at liberty -- and amazingly enough, regarded with favor by the Knoxville authorities. Critical witnesses have not been interviewed, and compelling evidence has been ignored.

For months, Katie has been silent about what she knows, in the hopes that private requests to law enforcement would result in a serious investigation. Unfortunately that has not happened. It might only be happening now that Katie writing and posting all that she knows on Justice for Henry.

I hope that local authorities conduct a serious, honest investigation -- even if only due to public pressure. Justice should be done -- and that means uncovering and prosecuting any person who violated Henry's rights in the last few days of his life. Even when a person puts himself as risk by his own wrong choices, as Henry clearly did, he still retains his rights. Criminals who choose "easy targets" to prey upon should not be given a free pass. They are still dangerous, destructive, and fully deserving of punishment. That's part and parcel of "equality before the law."

I hope that the authorities in Knoxville see that and act accordingly. Justice should be done.

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Law of Treason

Law professor Hanah Volokh kindly sent me the following about the law of treason yesterday, in response to my fumbling remarks in last Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast:

I was just listening to your Rationally Selfish Webcast that I missed last weekend. I'm not an expert in the law of treason, but I do know a little bit about it. Treason does not actually require a formal state of war or aid to a declared enemy in war.

Black's Law Dictionary, which is probably the most widely used legal dictionary, defines treason as "the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of the state to which one owes allegiance, either by making war against the state or by materially supporting its enemies."

The current federal statute criminalizing treason is 18 U.S.C. section 2381, and it reads, "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason . . . ."

Prosecution for things like espionage, terrorist acts, arson, sabotage, and conspiracy are much more common than for treason, though, even if the acts committed are technically within the definition of treason.

A person can commit treason by making war against the state in the absence of a pre-existing war. If you act to overthrow the government, that counts as treason. This idea was behind the actions taken against communists in the U.S. during the 1950s.

Confederate soldiers and government officials also committed treason against the United States even though it was not a declared war. The Confederacy took the legal position that secession was permitted and they were not treasonous because they no longer owed allegiance to the United States. The Union took the legal position that secession was not permitted and the military action was about restoring the union and putting down an illegal rebellion. After reunification, the Confederate soldiers and officials were considered to have committed treason, though the vast majority of them were pardoned.

Right now, America has many undeclared enemies, thanks to its weak and appeasing foreign policy. As a result, many actions that should be prosecuted as treasonous, such as inviting the heads of terrorist states to speak at universities -- are not subject to any kind of legal action. However, my question would be how "enemies" should be defined, given a proper foreign policy. Clearly, the category would include any states with which we're at war. As Hanah notes, people or groups attempting to wage war from within (or without) are also properly considered "enemies." Beyond that, I could only see that the term should apply to states that a reasonable person would understand to be committed to overthrowing the US government. For various reasons, it might not be worth waging war on such states -- perhaps they're so poor as to be unable to inflict damage and/or our military is occupied with a serious threat elsewhere. Nonetheless, it would be treason to assist their efforts.

Thoughts?

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Do Corporations Have Rights?

The new site Objectivist Answers has really taken off since its launch, now with over 190 questions, more than 400 answers, and countless comments and votes from a steady stream of visitors!

One of the questions is asked by "ryankrause":

Do Corporations Have Rights?

There has been some controversy lately over the rights of corporations (freedom of speech, etc.). From an Objectivist perspective, what--if any--are the rights of corporations? Do they simply share the individual rights of their shareholders, or since they are technically legal creations, should they have fewer rights than human beings?

Objectivist Answers user JJMcVey offers the following answer:

Leaving aside the issue of their current legal status and dealing with principles, corporations are nothing more than means by which individuals get together and pool resources to make a single integrated system of resources to achieve one common objective. The rights of the corporation are whatever the rights possessed by the individual as they choose to delegate to it, and are of equal validity as any individual rights for that reason.

In regards to limited liability, the principle itself is sound but the law surrounding it today is wrong. The law today says corporations really are separate entities with legal personhood, which law is then used to pretend that incorporation is only a government privilege and that corporations are obliged to serve government ends. The law as it stands then leads to a variety of injustices, which have themselves lead to further bad adjustments to already bad law (another example of controls breeding controls).

If the law were written properly limited liability would be legally recognised for what it actually is: a derivative property right and which gives the superficial appearance of the corporation being a separate entity for the purposes of issuing stock, borrowing money, and similar financial activities. Everything valid about limited liability can be traced back to individuals' rights to property and freedom of contract, including other derivatives such as the right to freedom of principal-and-agent agreements. Proper law relating to limited liability would just recognise that people would use these same types of contractual arrangements again and again, so would integrate the practice into a few concepts (the corporation and a few variants) and develop an integrated body of law to match. That law would also then not let bad people perpetrate the fraudulent behaviour that law imparting legal-personhood to corporations shields them to do.

If you liked that answer, please go vote for it to make it more visible to the world while sending JJMcVey some well-deserved OA "karma." (And if you think he has missed something important, that's fine too: you can add a comment to that effect, or contribute a whole new answer of your own!)

Objectivist Answers is an exciting new online resource where anybody can ask questions of Objectivists, and any Objectivist can answer! Please visit with your questions, answers, or both!

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