The Empire Strikes Back - Borders v Logan III

Here we go...

First, Borders claims that the critiques of Will Wilkinson, Tom Palmer, and Matt Yglesias were all "dealt with." They were not, unless you count unconditional surrender as "dealing with."

In the comments section of Tom's blog, Borders demonstrated an astonishing ignorance (either in the sense of "never having studied" or, I think more likely "ignoring because it's convenient") of just war theory, the foundation of liberal thinking about war and peace.

To accuse me of being ignorant about the “foundation of liberal thinking about war and peace” while simultaneously failing to address my implicit and explicit references to Hobbes is just as much a sign of Logan’s desperation on this matter as his accusation that I’m ignoring Just War Theory out of "convenience." 

I ignore Just War Theory largely due to the fact of its obsolescence when applied to issues of 21st Century global terrorism. (Interestingly enough, my fellow blogger Chris thinks that the Iraq conflict and others can be justified on Just War grounds. I would be interested in hearing that case.)

Borders lamented Palmer's having invoked just war theory because "so called just war theory attempts to provide some sort of Enlightenment template of justification for war." A) Shudder that it were so! B) Just war theory well predated the enlightenment, and I'd even take its roots well further back than Palmer did, to St. Augustine, and the era of the fifth century when the Christian church decided to do away with its stringent adherence to pacifism.

My reference to the Enlightenment was not my attempt to place just war theory historically, rather to point out the common error of libertarians to apply universal templates to every issue with hackneyed dogmas—an old Enlightenment habit.

Logan:

When one dives in with sweeping claims about why the past millennium and a half's worth of thinking about war and peace is crap, one would think it would take more than one TechCentralStation article to do so.

It took less than the amount of time for me to write that TCS piece for crazy terrorists to bring down two buildings full of innocent people.  They are the ones who dealt 1500 years worth of Just War theory the death blow.  Not me.

Palmer went on to address Borders's bizarre theory of rights, one I'd like to again ask him to clarify: If you are outside of, say, the American constitutional order, are you presumed to be an enemy? Well, it's clear that Borders believes that people in some (all?) foreign countries do not have rights, or "rights" or "universal rights" or whatever we're calling them these days.

Wow, there must be buckets full of red herrings lying around Cato. Of course, two countries can make political agreements mutually to respect political “rights” in peacetime, but those extend to varying degrees based on such agreements. We are politically more like Britain than we are the Iran of the Mullahs, thus it’s easier to establish the preconditions for so-called political rights between both countries. Is that such a hard concept to grasp? The United States also has more interests in common with the Limies and the Frogs than they do the terrorists states. Still, those rights are ultimately not as strong as rights afforded to a US citizen. And likewise for a Brit at home. US citizens can't vote in Britain even though its guaranteed by our 14th Amendment. 

Borders conceded to Palmer that "Tom's right. I need to sit down and argue this in a 25 page journal article." That's not exactly dealing with the question, it's admitting that you haven't dealt with it…

This is context dropped. The 25 page journal article answer is in response to something else.  Looks like the sum total of explaining all this to Logan will equal 25 pages.

Instead of going back to the drawing board, Borders decides to skirt the issue on his blog: “People who live outside the auspices of such a [minimal, liberal] state and its underlying constitutional rules, are simply outside of it....Rights are circumscribed by constitutions (i.e. social contracts, roughly). So yes, if I have to give up a certain amount of power to a sovereign in exchange for protection, I expect that government to protect me and mine as best they can. The rest (like Iraqis) should be treated with decency, where possible--but this is not a normative should, rather a sentimental one.” For Borders, this articulation illustrates the "subtlety of a contractarian rights theory." I'll say it's subtle! But this is either another straw man or incoherent. First Borders claimed that "real rights...are conferred solely by...political institutions (and military power)." (emphasis added) He's baiting and switching here: are they conferred by a sovereign, or protected by a sovereign?

Jesus Mary Mother of God. “Real rights are conferred by political institutions” is not the same as saying “real rights are conferred by a sovereign.” The former expresses the complex relationship in a social contract between agents, their laws, and their government. So, yes, they are both conferred and protected by such institutions, unless you are one of these anarcho-capitalists who lives in a fantasy world where private Team Americas will go off and protect us from the baddies.

His position on the moral significance of foreigners is also incoherent. If they do not have rights, why should we treat them with decency? Can't we just smash their heads in with hammers, or nuke them, or boil them alive? What is a "sentimental should" and where does it come from?

If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral. It would just be grotesque, or indecent, or harsh. But since it doesn’t have any strategic value, we don’t boil people or nuke them.  A “sentimental should” means that most of us find such behavior unsavory, even barbaric--but it doesn’t match up against any grand moral standard etched into a Libertarian Rosetta Stone.  To momentarily digress into pop-philosophical obscurantism, it’s intersubjectively “wrong,” not objectively wrong (i.e. politically circumscribed).

Further, where does Borders draw the line with his social contract? If, say, the Turks start pissing us off, do they have rights? [no] Say those durned Frogs start acting up again: can we shift the "who gets to have rights" barrier over there? [not in war] Does Borders get to decide? [no] Does the U.S. government? [Yes] Why? [Because they make decisions on my behalf in a representative government. See more here]

Okay, but if you're going to completely throw rights theory out the window, overhaul what has been a long-standing, well-grounded libertarian (and liberal, in the broader sense) prescription against killing people unless they've done something to you, and throw out countless foundational tenets of libertarian thought, you ought to at least make a case for it. I am indeed saying "nuh uh," because the case Borders presents is not remotely libertarian, nor persuasive. Sneering at the long-standing libertarian position as "naive" (how do you make the diacritic? [usually pastes from Word to NotePad to Typepad]) is no better than Sager's characterization as "unserious," which Max concedes is unsatisfactory.

My understanding of Sager’s piece is that he thinks dovish libertarians are unserious about the War on Terror. I think his piece was weak in supporting such a claim.  My position with reference to Logan's Nozick citation is that libertarians tend to be naïve about rights and employ an unsustainable rights theory, generally (unless they’re contractarian like me). Also, they are often naïve about the dangers of terrorism and the need for active engagement in the Middle East. This is the strategic business that I look forward to arguing about in future exchanges.

Borders again attributes the claim: "based on universal rights, nations should not pursue their perceived interests" to me. False. The Nozick point was to reiterate that the rights that I believe foreigners possess should act as a moral side constraint on state action abroad.

How else am I to interpret your fidelity to universal rights?

Borders refuses to take up the strategic issue of what the hell we're doing in Iraq. (And if we can all agree to stop pretending we aren't talking about Iraq, that's fine by me.) Jesus, can anybody even tell anymore?!? Borders, for one, believes that "it will be a long-term benefit to attempt to change the Middle East—fundamentally." That's a pretty odd construction, and one that gets to the core of the libertarian perspective on government enterprises.

Odd that Logan is now prepared after questions of boiling foreigners to slide – yet again – into the prudential argument for Iraq. This is the new lib-dove two-step. You can find it in every single piece. Now, as for my ‘odd construction,’ I will say that it’s odd for one to sit idly by and wait for the Middle East to fester into a more dangerous cesspit than it already is, replete with Nukes, WMDs and crazy Jihadists ready to wield them given the next opportunity. (Come to think of it Sager may be right: Lib-doves are unserious.)

When pinko commie scumbags propose nationalizing the steel industry, or socializing the health care system, libertarians generally say two things: 1) "Get your grubby mitts out of my pocket, I earned that cash, go be productive yourself." (I'd call this the rights argument.)

Good eye. It’s justified here, because we are questioning policies internal to our constitutional regime, which affect our citizens who do have political rights.

2) "Oh yeah? How the hell do you think you're going to be able to do that?!? Look at history, man. Governments haven't been able to provide cancer treatments in Britain, bread in Soviet Russia, or prosperity in large swaths of the world. Here, let's look at the historical evidence..." (I'd call this the Hayekian argument.)

Right again! The Hayekian argument suffices for steering us off the road to serfdom domestically, but not to discount out-of-hand the use of force as a means of disrupting the Middle East’s status quo and planting the DNA of liberal democracy.  I realize that there are numerous public choice problems and other issues with having a government system of national defense.  But 3-5 percent GDP on military spending is not a wholesale planned economy.  While it's imperfect, its better than the alternative which is to have no national defense--or military militias like those found out in Utah. 

What Borders, Sager, et al understandably refuse to take up is #2. How in the hell are we going to do this? I put forth some questions for the libertarian hawks here, but have yet to receive responses. [Haven't read it, but will.]

Didn't refuse to take up that issue, though.  See my Hayek and Iraq piece and look for my next TCS piece. (I’ve yet to write it, due to this exchange.)

From reading the libertarian hawks, one almost believes that our Iraq project is going well. I was never sympathetic to the liberal hawk argument that the idea was good but that the Bush administration is just evil and stupid, and so they screwed it up. Libertarians were skeptical of such a hubristic endeavor from the start. It's beyond the limits of human knowledge.

To establish security, laws, and property rights in a country is beyond the limits of human knowledge? Don't think so.  What the Iraqis do with these institutions is beyond the limits of human knowledge.  This Hayekian fallacy had been used in a number of places.  If the US were trying to create a planned economy, they would be running afoul of Hayekian considerations.  Since they are trying to establish the conditions for spontaneous orders to emerge, they are not.  Whether they fail at such a project depends on how well they're paying attention to the basics:  security, the rule of law, and property rights.  Simple rules.

As I mentioned, there was nothing inherently unlibertarian about believing that Saddam was preparing to attack us and we had to stop him (I think this was naive, but not unlibertarian), but this remaking the political, social, and religious fabric of a region stuff is just bat-shit crazy! (And unlibertarian, because it ignores the central libertarian critique of government projects.

You’d be right if the US were going in to establish and plan a complete socialist democratic society. But to bring stability and set a constitutional order in motion is neither beyond comprehension nor “bat shit crazy.”

(PS: By the way, somewhere Logan mentions Randy Barnett as an advocate of Natural Rights.  Interesting, as he is a hawk.)

(PSS: I'm going to sign off now, so you can have the last word, Justin.  My suggestion is that after your last post, we take it offline over a beer since we're in the same town.)

Comments

[Lancelot Finn]

Well, I wrote a post relevant to this debate, but it seems to have branched off somewhat from the main subject matter. Mostly I explored the question of rights further, critiquing natural rights and offering a different basis for rights... It's here if you're interested.

http://lancelotfinn.blogspot.com/2004/12/what-are-rights-my-two-cents.html

The two odd points in this post are:

1. "They [the terrorists] are the ones who dealt 1500 years worth of Just War theory the death blow. Not me."

I was surprised you left this almost self-parodyingly simplistic version of a historical concept unchallenged. The ideas of when one country can justly wage war against another have evolved and changed greatly over 1500 years, and generally a much broader array of reasons has been considered acceptable than is the case in the late 20th century. Also, and crucially, powers historically have made justifications for their wars, but have needed only to satisfy themselves and whatever powers they want to recruit as allies or dissuade from joining their enemies, not some body like the UN. It would be child's play to construct a dozen different cases for the Iraq war. Whether the "pre-emption" case is valid is debatable, but the only reason we had to use that one rather than one of dozens of others was the UN. It is the fact that a regime like Saddam's is granted legitimacy from on high by the UN that is a repugnant innovation of the late 20th century.

2. "If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral. It would just be grotesque, or indecent, or harsh."

Well, I disagree with you there. I'm a moral realist. But that's another debate.

[Max]

The main reason I gave the 1500 years of Just War Theory short shrift because it's so nebulous. It's like saying: "before you get to write a TCS justification for the Iraq War, you have to go read Michael Walzer and all the books back to Augustine. Then you can come with your TCS piece." That was essentially Palmer's play, and Logan picked it up and ran with it. Well that's not an argument. Besides, I generally ignore 2000+ years of theology and feel comfortable in my atheism.

[-------]

You have to know something about Just War Theory before you dismiss it. Saying it has a long history, without ever engaging it, and then dismissing it out-of-hand because we live in a quote - post-911 world - unquote doesn't win an argument.

Non-state belligerents have been around for 2 millennia.

Do you read any philosophy or do you cook this crap up out of thin air?

Also, just because one is a "hawk" doesn't mean one can't believe in Natural Rights - Barnett.

And, finally, you are awfully nasty to people who have done a lot more reading and careful thinking about these issues. That isn't to say you should accept their arguments. It's just to say you should show a bit of humility about the quality of your own. Cause they suck.

[Max]

The phantom commenter again. What a nutless wonder.

Anyway, Logan and I are doing just fine without your assessment of our relative levels of humility. Neither of us takes it as a personal assault, as I'm sure Ryan Sager didn't when Logan criticized his arguments. Saying anyone's arguments suck without any argument (and not even having the balls to state your name) is the lowest form of discourse. And I guarantee you, I've done a hell of a lot more reading on this stuff than you--and every bit as much as anyone I criticize.

Wanna prove me wrong? Why don't you come out of the closet, then?

[Kevin B. O'Reilly]

"If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral." Glad to know you're on the side of liberty! Be scared if you were some kind of moral imbecile.

[[email protected]]

Moral imbecility would be a charitable description. What we have here is a recipe for naked, unabashed state aggression in all aspects of human life - a kind of totalitarianism that really is just about power.

It just so happens that Max's prejudices favor cloning and somewhat laissez-faire economic policies, and so he counts himself (incorrectly) as a libertarian. There's no content to the political theory he espouses - whether a rights justification, a kind of utilitarianism, some informed view about the problem of concentrations of power, some theory of the state, some careful understanding of Hayekianism - that actually says anything about how political power should be used. It's all ad hoc and whimsical, but not whimsical in a happy-go-lucky way. Whimsical in a boil-those-damn-foreigners way.

[Max]

I usually say "nuke" the foreigners, rather than "boil" them. But such is the nature of my whimsy.

[[email protected]]

That would be funny, were it not evil.

[Ben Kilpatrick]

Having followed this debate, I can say that the "nutless wonder" has far more backbone than Max will ever have. Though he chooses not to reveal himself, he makes perceptive points that Mr. Borders is unwilling (or unable, more likely) to address. In truth, as far as I can tell, Mr. Borders, like a typical conservative (and unlike a libertarian), has no consistent framework for evaluating the world. Because of this, he has nothing approaching an ideology, which leaves him with little more than a number of ad hoc conclusions which must often be defended with incompatible and/or contradictory reasons or outright intellectual dishonesty.

[karl]

To Max

Boiling human beings in oil?

The insensitivity of such a statement screams of phychopath.
Perhaps you need to put your hand on the stoves hot plate to find out for yourself if you are alive or one of the walking dead.

One fact is for sure, you are certainly young and very ignorant

[Bob]

Max's point was not that he wanted to boil people, or that he would enjoy it, or that we should. The point was simply that it was neither moral or immoral. And I challange anyone to prove otherwise.

[Rad Geek]

"Max's point was not that he wanted to boil people, or that he would enjoy it, or that we should."

But Bob, nobody that I've read on this topic yet has claimed that Borders advocates boiling people alive. What Barganier and others have pointed out is that Borders' own stated position *leaves the question open for deliberation* based on considerations of strategy and personal taste. Whatever you might think of that account, it's not a libertarian account, but rather something else.

"The point was simply that it was neither moral or immoral. And I challange anyone to prove otherwise."

The argument has already been taken up elsewhere (at http://www.radgeek.com/gt/2004/12/05/the_humane among other places). There is no possible non-question-begging argument that Borders could give for the (moral) permissibility of boiling innocent foreigners alive; any argument that shows a set of premises lead to that conclusion is, at the strongest, a reductio ad absurdam of the premises that are used.

[Morpheus]

I have also written a post related to this debate here:

http://www.thestatrix.com/archives/2004/12/the_objective_s.html

In essense, my argument is that only the recipient of an action can determine whether it is morally right or wrong. The CEO may like to be spanked by his dominatrix, but will press charges if his coworker performs the identical action on him in the conference room (unsolicited).

With respect to interpersonal morality, the difference between right and wrong is consent of the acted upon.

[Micha Ghertner]

"There is no possible non-question-begging argument that Borders could give for the (moral) permissibility of boiling innocent foreigners alive."

I think I gave a pretty solid argument for the moral permissibility of boiling innocent foreigners alive. See: http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2004/12/07/what-is-foreseen-and-what-is-intended/

[Bob]

Rad Geek, I am not saying that it is morally permissible. I am denying the existance of this moral sphere. From where do you get your morality? God?

In point 2 of your argument, you state that:

"But there is something wrong with boiling innocent foreigners alive to serve Wallachian interests, even if you don’t mind it."

I still am not convinced. Right and wrong are constructs of society; naturally, every man or group of men are free to do whatever they choose insofar as they have the physical power to do it.

You may argue against the efficacy of boiling people, or argue that it is counterproductive, cruel, or ineffective. You may say it undermines our society and its rules. But that is not a reason why it is "wrong."

[karl]

The survival system within the human mind is the primary key to human behavior.

The first value being survival. All else is based on that premis.

[Rad Geek]

Bob:

"Rad Geek, I am not saying that it is morally permissible. I am denying the existance of this moral sphere."

Fine, but that is a position different from Max's; Max holds that rights-claims are significant objectively binding; he just holds that they only have that significance and that force within the context of certain sorts of political structures. That's the claim that I am responding to; although what I have to say bears on plain moral nihilism, too.

"From where do you get your morality? God?"

Hardly; I'm an atheist, and even if I were a theist I'd still regard divine command ethics as incoherent. I can give you a long account of what I take to be the proper grounds of moral claims if you want but this isn't the best forum in which to do it. So for the moment let me just point out (1) that there are many ethical theories on offer that ground objectively binding moral claims in the nature of the human person, as either a thinking or a feeling being (or both); and (2) that whatever involved arguments and theoretical frameworks you might get tangled up in the course of having ethical arguments, statements such as "You're really doing something wrong to innocent foreigners if you boil them alive" is far more obvious than any of those arguments or theories. If it could be showed that some set of premises that I endorsed undermined or failed to support the anti-boiling conclusion, that would be as good a reason as any to reject at least one of the premises--not a reason to start deliberating about whether boiling innocents alive is a good idea or not.

[On premise 2 of my argument, that there really is something wrong with boiling innocent foreigners...] "I still am not convinced."

But Bob, I'm not interested in whether you're convinced or not; I'm interested in whether or not you have reason to be convinced. (See my discussion of the here-is-one-hand argument and charges of questions-begging for why that's important.) My argument is (1) that the burden of convincing is clearly on the person maintaining that you're really not doing anything wrong to an innocent foreigner by boiling them alive, and (2) that a good reason for convincing someone can't be made. And certainly this is not that reason:

"Right and wrong are constructs of society; naturally, every man or group of men are free to do whatever they choose insofar as they have the physical power to do it."

I don't agree; and the fact that boiling innocent foreigners alive really is wrong whatever you feel about it and whether or not you have the might to force it on someone else without untoward consequences is as good a reason as any to reject such sweeping arm-chair theorizing about moral claims in a state of nature.

"You may argue against the efficacy of boiling people, or argue that it is counterproductive,"

Counterproductive to what ends?

"cruel,"

"Cruel" is a moral term; there's no good way to distinguish cruelty from fair punishment for wrongdoing except by reference to the question of whether the person does or does not deserve the harsh treatment. And that is just the sort of moral question that you claim to be somehow meaningless.

"or ineffective"

Again, ineffective for what ends?

'But that is not a reason why it is "wrong."'

Nobody in her right mind says that boiling people alive (or impaling them on sharp sticks and leaving them to die over several days, say) is wrong because it "undermines society" or some nebulous set of rules. It's wrong because you're forcing the most excruciating pain, and ultimately a hideous death, on a completely innocent person. You don't need some extra theoretical reason to condemn that: it's horrible enough on its own.

[Rad Geek]

N.B.: Sorry; I forgot that HTML was being stripped out and so annihilating my links. The discussion of the here-is-one-hand argument, and charges of question begging, is in footnote 2 of my discussion of Honderich's attempt at an argument for terrorism. See: http://www.radgeek.com/gt/2003/09/30/why_there#honderich-fn2

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