…if the right to life is the FOUNDATION of morality, then there’s nothing that can trump it.

That’s exactly the way it should be. Unfortunately, current events indicate that we are a long way from that ideal.

s.s.

Using an individual’s right to life as the foundation of all morality does NOT necessarily mean that war is fundamentally immoral — it just means we haven’t discussed what a properly derived moral justification for some war(s) might be.

And just because we “do it all the time” doesn’t mean it’s “right”, or that we should change our definitions and/or basic premises.

s.s.

Jeff, let me refine my terminology, because “practicality” is too sloppy a term and will lead to misunderstandings. Instead of the quick and dirty term “practicality”, let me suggest instead “the aggregate health of society”. To some degree, this begs the question by introducing the new term “health of society”, but I think that, for the moment, we can agree on its simple meaning. I’ll likely have to refine the term as we explore more complex issues.

Note that this terminology includes individual freedom within its scope. Freedom unleashes the talents and energy of individuals, allowing them to make the best possible contribution to society. Yet at the same time it avoids the conundrums that arise when the health of society requires intrusions upon the freedom of individuals. By making freedom the measure of morality, we make it impossible to justify a huge range of socially beneficial policies. Why, for example, should we hold an accused person in jail if he cannot post bail? We are depriving him of his freedom before we have established his guilt — if freedom is the ultimate measure of morality, not social health, then this is an immoral action. There are countless other such examples.

Again, my definition does not deny the benefits of freedom, but it more precisely evaluates the costs against the benefits.

Regarding “freedom [being] the foundation of morality…”: Well, you could say that, although it would be more accurate to say “an individual’s right to life” is the foundation of all morality.

And murder is wrong because it impinges on the dead guy’s right to life. Capital punishment (or killing in self-defense) is not wrong, because (presumably) it’s done to people who have violated someone else’s right to life.

s.s.

Why do we consider murder to be immoral?

Because it deprives another of his freedom.

Yet we also know that in some cases, such as war, killing is good.

Self-defense is justified because you have a right to protect your own freedom. Aggression is not.

Freedom is ultimately good for society because it unleashes the talents of individuals.

Yes, freedom has practical benefits, but that is not the reason it is desirable. I would gladly accept a less efficient society in exchange for more freedom.

even if something is practical, it doesn’t make it right

I’d like to offer the thought that in fact practicality (from society’s point of view, not the individual’s) determines morality. Why do we consider murder to be immoral? Because it’s bad? What does that mean? We all “just know” that murder is bad, but WHY is it bad? Yet we also know that in some cases, such as war, killing is good. So why are there exceptions? Note that the only really consistent factor in all of our moral codes is the good of society. Freedom is ultimately good for society because it unleashes the talents of individuals.

There are many complexities to consider here, such as the merits of altruistic behavior (Western civilization doesn’t require but certainly applauds fatal self-sacrifice for others.) But the general principle certainly has a great deal of merit.

Thus, a purely ideological approach (“total individual freedom is absolute right that we’ll never compromise on!”) flies in the face of historical experience.

I can see where building codes come from in a practical sense with your explanation, but even if something is practical, it doesn’t make it right. As with many other instances of regulation, I believe the local market conditions should help people to decide what to do with property projects like a deck, not government regulation where you have to get permission from the government to do something on your own property. It seems as if our society is “permit-happy,” with everybody needing permission from the localities to accomplish major home or property projects. Don’t get me wrong, I can see your point about the localities interest in seeing that things are safe and “up to par” so to speak. But if this is the case in most communities, I see yet another instance of sacrificing liberty for safety. I don’t see why I, in a sense of self-interest, that I have to get a building permit to build an addition to my home that may increase its market value. Of course, I would have to take into account that I cannot wreck other people’s property (which is why I wouldn’t erect a power plant on my property) and any homeowners association guidelines, which may or may not apply.

As far as litigation goes, I think there is an equal chance for there to be trouble with up-to-code building practices. Things may be up to snuff, but there are always chances where one may use crappy building materials or building materials age and become weak over time. Those things, in some instances, are expected, especially when one hires a contractor to build something cheaply. If one gets something for cheap, obviously the builder will use somewhat cheap materials. You get what you pay for and I don’t think that an unreasonable expectation.

Thanks for the explanation above…I suspect that took awhile to type lolz.

Now, most libertarians would treat this with tort law. The problem here is that litigation is always more expensive than building codes and seldom yields positive results — you spend more money on the lawyers than on the injury.

Other problems make tort law ineffective in dealing with this problem. What if you sell the home, don’t tell the new owner about how you never bothered to apply anti-rot coatings to the foundation wood, and they sell it, and twenty years later the deck collapses and a couple of people are injured. It’s all YOUR fault, but how are they going to track you down and make you pay for their injuries? What if you’re dead?

The idea of building codes is to make buildings safe from the get-go. People shouldn’t have to post certificates at their front doors declaring that the home has been found to meet the standards of the XYZ Building Code. People shouldn’t have to stop at the front door of the house, read the safety certificate, and then decide whether or not to attend the party based on that certificate. While this is theoretically the best approach from a libertarian point of view, in practice it just means that more people will be injured and killed by badly-built structures.

Oh, one other problem: what happens when the building contractor cuts corners, the apartment building collapses, a dozen people die, another few dozen are seriously injured, and the building contractor declares bankruptcy? Do you just shrug your shoulders and say, “Too bad for them!”

This is a classic example of good principles being thwarted by ugly practical details. That doesn’t mean that we should abandon libertarian principles. It just means that we can’t get dogmatic about them.

Another point I wanted to make is that though many politicians say they believe in limited government, have they ever thought to stop and examine how many things they’ve voted into law that restrict the public in some way? Maybe they’ve voted for more rules or certain regulations to combat behavior they see as contrary to the public good. Whatever happened to the notion that maybe the government should NOT intervene for everything? Whatever happened to the notion of repealing legislation? Even when one does genuinely want to give the public more choice, why do I find that solving legislative problems with more legislation somewhat illogical? It all gets screwed up in some bundled mess. A great example of this is the U.S. tax code that keeps getting amended in some way every single year. If accountants can’t understand it, how do the common people understand a legislative mess like that?

Israel may have established itself, but its existence is still threatened. Israel has consistently relied upon military action and the problems that it faced in 1948 have not gone away. Only a diplomatic solution will give them long-term peace.

Normally violent conflicts are resolved by vast slaughters that effectively destroy the losing community. That kind of solution worked great in the past, when genocide was acceptable, but nowadays we don’t accept those kinds of solutions, and greatly increased populations make it almost impossible to carry them out.

Not exactly…ours as originally set up was more of a form of indirect democracy (the Senate and the President not being popularly elected). I agree it’s a form of democracy or a kind of relation, but I think it’s wrong not to differentiate between the varieties when making an argument on the merits of democracy. It’s just too broad of a grouping and that often prevents useful discussion from occuring and creates faulty analysis. Churchill’s remarks may very well have been accurate for the discussion he was having but all too often they are applied to discussions where they are not.

As for the examples you cite, it depends on what perspective you’re looking at it from. Afghanistan certainly solved a problem for the Afghanis…they wanted the Soviets out and that’s what their war achieved. Israel established itself in the region and forced Jordan and Egypt to deal with them. Several of the other conflicts you list are still ongoing so it’s premature to judge the merits of those conflicts. The problems that wars solve aren’t always about decisive, all-encompassing victories…sometimes the issues they resolve are much smaller and not readily apparent at the time of the conflict. I also believe that part of the reason so many conflicts tend to persist is the international community’s well-meaning but wrong-headed intervention, which prevents these conflicts from coming to an actual end, insulates parties from decisive wins or losses (thereby removing the incentive to negotiate meaningful treaties) and tends to let the resentments simmer and eventually boil over (Israel-Palestine, for example).

Military solutions and violence solve issues all the time.

I’ll agree that violence has solved most disputes in the past. In the modern world, however, populations are so high that military approaches seldom yield a final resolution. I’ll agree that it is certainly theoretically possible for a military approach to resolve a dispute, and it is likely that military approaches used as a portion of a larger strategy can be effective. But if you look at the track record of primarily military approaches in the last half-century (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice), Congo, Arab-Israeli conflicts, Somalia, Lebanon, India-Pakistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya) you see a pretty dismal record. Again, I’m not ruling out the possibility of military approaches yielding a success; I’m observing that they have seldom been successful.