Some comments about "race" and "intelligence"

Can anyone spell "Racism"?

Back to that, eh? Call opinions and facts on race that you don't like "racist" and use demonization and ostracization to substitute for actual arguments against that which makes you upset. You operate just like an authoritarian cultural Marxist, and the most likely explanation for that is that you are one.

If refusing to ascribe transcendent abilities to all peoples makes me racist, then so be it. The reality is that if a genetically average black person can will his way to a high IQ, a genetically average white or oriental person can will his way to a higher IQ because an average white or oriental person possesses more innate potential.

Try transcending your negative emotional biases and "willing" yourself to accept reality and assess arguments objectively.

advertise his pitiful little lectures, and to whine that some of his little videos were shut down

Can someone spell "petty"? Really, you come across as a grumpy, jealous, defeated old man who hurls gratuitous insults at people in retribution. My 5-part video series on race and IQ is a thorough, empirical refutation of the cultural Marxist conception of race and race differences. I put a lot of effort into it. I suggest that anyone here should view it for themselves before coming to any conclusions based on Wolfer's or anyone else's rash characterizations.

Race and IQ Equalitarianism Destroyed
http://youtu.be/ZzECHPkswW4
http://youtu.be/ctTDwATQ-24
http://youtu.be/tY26zm9Q0rM
http://youtu.be/C3zG-wWUc6E
http://youtu.be/_HnIsXhRDKw

(Edited by Brad Trun on 6/26, 6:45pm)

Post 201

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - 7:09pm

NEWS FLASH!!!

Trun utters truths!!! He has uncovered that Wolfer is old, and has been know to be grumpy!

(Unfortunately, after those brilliant observations he returns to his usual levels of angry inaccuracies.)

Post 202

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - 8:08pm

I found this particularly amusing:

Can anyone spell "Racism"?
Back to that, eh? Call opinions and facts on race that you don't like "racist" and use demonization and ostracization to substitute for actual arguments ...

... when it was immediately followed by this:

... an average white or oriental person possesses more innate potential.

... and then by this:

... you come across as a grumpy, jealous, defeated old man who hurls gratuitous insults at people in retribution.

This is one of those times when you just have to step back and let it soak in (in order to get the full effect).

:-)

Ed

Post 203

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - 8:22pm

You know, Ed, the only thing that made me cringe in Trun's attack on me was the word, "jealous" - Jealous? WHAT!?!?!

OMG, does he think others are filled with some kind of secret desire to be like HIM? Not in this universe. I find dealing with him to be one of those things in life that's distinctly distasteful.

Post 204

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - 8:23pm

Putting it all together (a rehash of an earlier post)

**************************
22% of your performance on an IQ test originates from additive genetic factors
20% of your performance on an IQ test originates from non-additive genetic factors
----------------------------------------
44% of your performance on an IQ test originates from shared environmental factors
14% of your performance on an IQ test originates from non-shared environmental factors
**************************

Under this scenario, 42% of your IQ is "genetic" (of genetic origin), but 86% of your IQ is "inherited" (of parental origin) -- though only 22% of your IQ is "predictively inherited" (something that you can "count on"). You get 2 things from your parents:

1) genetic alleles
2) a common (shared) environment

If parents treat siblings much differently from one another, or if siblings take it upon themselves to interact with the environment much differently from one another, then the so-called "inheritance" of environmental factors, the shared part of the environment, drops significantly. If a parent breast-fed one child, but not the other, then that would be a tremendous drop in shared environment as a factor -- but it would not be a drop in "environment" (per se) as a factor, it would not be an "increase" in the genetic component (you cannot ever get an increase in the genetic component). You will always have control over 58% of the population variance in IQ (simply by switching environmental factors around). So there are 2 questions here:

1) What part of IQ is genetic?
2) What part of IQ is inherited?

The answers to these 2 questions are not equivalent. Here is a different way to look at the issue:

***************************************
Directly Inherited/Directly transferred

-additive genetic factors = 22%

-shared environmental factors = 44%

Not Directly Inherited/Not directly transferred

-non-additive genetic factors = 20%

-non-shared environmental factors = 14%
***************************************

Under this juxtaposition, you can see how things produce your IQ score. 66% of the factors come straightforwardly from your parents -- from straightforward genetic transfer and from the very specific environment that your parents choose to raise you in -- and 34% of the factors come indirectly from "chance" combinations. In the case of additive genetic factors, you may, by chance, inherit a dominant allele from your mom which masks the expression of the allele from your dad (or vice versa). In the case of non-shared environmental factors, one kid may like to go to work with dad, who works in a mine where there is a lot of manganese and lead, while the other kid likes to stay home and play with toys. Those are chance combinations that are not directed by some straightforward process. Here is a 3rd way to look at it:

***************************************
Stable/predictable

-additive genetic factors = 22%

Unstable/less predictable

-non-additive genetic factors = 20%

-non-shared environmental factors = 14%

-shared environmental factors = 44%
***************************************

On this last view, you can predict 22% of the factors that influence your IQ, but 78% of the factors that influence your IQ resist such prediction -- most of which is potentially modifiable via parsing out all of the components and working on them separately (e.g., for instance, identifying chronic lead poisoning as an unstable factor that lowers IQ scores, and then working to eradicate lead and, therefore, to improve your IQ scores).

Nature/Nurture Conclusion

IQ performance is about ...

42% genetic
58% environmental

Post 205

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - 8:49pm

Brad wrote, "I don't want -[Kalahari Bushmen and Aborigines] to immigrate en masse to European or Asian countries . . . ."

So do you view yourself as a social planner in charge of determining the racial composition of particular countries?

Since you don't want the above mentioned groups to immigrate "en mass" to European or Asian countries, do you have a similar objection to whites immigrating to Asian countries? If you would allow some members of racial groups to immigrate to countries in which they're a minority, where would you draw the line? What kind of quotas would you enforce? And how do you reconcile that with libertarianism?

In the past, you've acknowledged that when you talk of racial differences in IQ, you're referring merely to averages and not to any individual member of a particular race. So, would you have only people with a certain IQ inhabiting certain countries, regardless of race? For example, would all the people with an IQ of between 80 and 100 have to live in one country, and all the people with an IQ of between 101 and 120 have to live in another country, and so on?

I'm just curious how you would structure your racial demographics, since you appear not to believe in freedom of immigration.

Post 206

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - 8:50pm

C'mon, Steve. Admit it. You wish you could be like Brad [brings out special Looking Glass]:

Ed: Steve, you're a racist!

Steve: Oh, back to that again, are we?? Listen, Ed, I am not a racist -- you're just a demonizer/ostracizer who pulls out the "race card" in order to use ad hominem attacks meant to substitute for issue-oriented, fact-based, logic-bounded, respect-focused argumentation.

Besides, all I'm really saying is that there is moral, social or political significance to a man�s genetic lineage. All I'm saying is that a man�s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry -- which entails the conclusion that a genetic lineage is deterministic with regard to someone's level of innate potential. Some of us, because of your genetic lineage, have more innate potential. In a crude way, then, the color of your skin determines both the content of your character, and the scope of your ability.That's all I'm saying.

And you call that racist? Sheesh!

And besides, Ed, you sit there and all you do is take cheap pot shots -- while I, on the other hand, stick to the arguments. In fact, you are such a low-down, dirty scoundrel of a man -- someone who probably tortures helpless little puppies and kittens -- you are such a horrible person, that I don't know why anybody pays any attention to anything it is that you ever have to say. You are like the scum from the bottom of the earth. So, with all of that in mind, I want to repeat myself -- you should stick to the arguments and stop using ad hominems (you idiot).

:-)

Ed

Post 207

Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - 11:26pm

IQ performance is about ...

42% genetic
58% environmental

You're getting closer to a hypothesis that is within the realm of plausibility, Ed, but you're still 9 percentage points away from that threshold.

Even supposing that IQ was only 42% heritable, race differences in IQ could still be mostly heriditary in origin because environmental advantages/disadvantages between groups can cancel out. If Asians in the US don't have better environments than European-Americans on net, then the Asian IQ advantage can be 100% attributable to genetic differences, even if IQ variation among individuals is only 42% genetic.

So you haven't refuted race realism, which finds that the racial IQ gaps are in the range of 50%-100% genetic (80% being the best estimate for the black/white gap in the US), or offered any alternative hypothesis of your own as to the heritability of racial IQ differences (which is what this thread is about).

Asians and Europeans have some environmental advantages over Africans on average, but there is more environmental variation within the races than between the averages of each race. So the black/white IQ gap has always been mostly genetic, except perhaps in the time of slavery (before IQ tests were given), and becomes more genetic as the social environments under which blacks and whites live become more similar. Frederick Douglass, assuming his IQ would have tested above average in adulthood, shows that even being enslaved doesn't prevent one's innate cognitive abilities from ultimately being realized and expressed. IQ becomes more heritable with age, and is about 75% so in adulthood according to the best science.

The genetic component of the race gaps can't be transcended, and any environmental component is likely to be caused largely by the innate IQ disparity itself (low-IQ people tend to inhabit and raise children in worse environments because of their low IQs). Therefore, as Murray suggests, we shouldn't expect the black/white IQ gap to narrow in the future (it hasn't in 40 years). That's a realist/objectivist position. You haven't offered one of your own. You can be an idealist and believe something else if you want or be a super-skeptic and refuse to believe or espouse any position, in which case reality will continue to escape your notice.

Post 208

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 4:39am

Since you don't want the above mentioned groups to immigrate "en mass" to European or Asian countries, do you have a similar objection to whites immigrating to Asian countries?

I don't think it would be in the rational self-interest of Asians to value mass immigration of whites into their countries. And it would be greatly detrimental in the case of  mass immigration of blacks, who are genetically more distant, temperamentally more aggressive, culturally more disruptive, aesthetically less attractive (by the subjective evaluations of most Asians), and less intelligent than whites on average.

No rationally self-interested European would value mass immigration of Africans and Mulsims into their cities, yet that's what's happening in Europe. Jesse Jackson has visited Sweden and told Swedes they must accept a "new Sweden" of immigrants from Africa as part of a "New World Order."  Swedes, he said, "must be morally correct" and allow themselves to be turned into a "multicultural" landing area for Africa and the Third World since Sweden once participated in the slave trade. This is the type of cultural Marxist brainwashing that gets whites to deny and oppose thier own best interests and act on unearned guilt and an inculcated moral duty to others. This historically unprecedented self-loathing, self-destroying altruism is why the West is collapsing demographically.

A republic exists for the citizens who make it up, not for the rest of the world, and not for grand universal ideals abstracted away from the values of actual people in actual nations. That Somali Muslims have large families and can't feed themselves does not entitle those Somali Muslims to citizenship here because the UN decides to ship them over as refugees. Our Constitution was not written for people born in Somalia, to endow them with a latent righ to vote and other privileges of citizenship by virtue of their coming into existence in the horn of Africa and having the potential to be brought here -- just as I was not born entitled to be a citizen of Japan whenever I feel like declaring myself one.

A nation consists of people with identities and values derived from their objective, biologically given natures. A nation isn't filled with abstractions, doesn't exist for the sake of abstract ideals, and changes when the makeup of its inhabitants change. Europeans in Africa created European societies. Africans in Detroit have created an African society.  Humans are not all the same and are not infinitely interchangeable. The global egalitarian idealization of all people as one is at odds with nature's diversity, with rational valuing, and with what the Founders intended the republic to be.

As Benjamin Franklin ("Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind") wrote,

"The Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small... I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? Why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind."

Post 209

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 11:04am

Brad,

If you continue to ignore my most important and fundamental questions concerning your political philosophy, you can't expect me to take your seriously. You call yourself a "libertarian," but you're clearly not.

You don't believe in individual rights -- the right to freedom of association among people of different races or cultures, because you would evidently allow governments to regulate the number of immigrants depending on their racial composition, but you provide no clear principle or standard governing this process.

You are a racial segregationist, who does not consider it in the rational self-interest of people of different races to associate with one another. But it's not clear to me how you would implement this in practice, without denying people the right to voluntary association.

If, for example, a large number whites choose to move to China or Japan, should the governments of these countries deny them entry based on their race? If a large number of Africans choose to move to the U.S., should the U.S. government deny them entry based on their race? If I understand you correctly, you would say yes. But the question is, with what principle of rights is this consistent?

It isn't consistent with individual rights. It is consistent with a version of collectivized rights.

Post 210

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 11:30am

...it would be greatly detrimental in the case of mass immigration of blacks, who are genetically more distant, temperamentally more aggressive, culturally more disruptive, aesthetically less attractive (by the subjective evaluations of most Asians), and less intelligent than whites on average.

Trun keeps saying he isn't racist. But look at what he wrote in that last post. He said that Blacks are more aggressive, more disruptive, and less intelligent than whites. (And, note that he didn't say that blacks have lower IQ scores on average... No, he said less intelligent, as if IQ and intelligence were the same thing.)
--------------------

A nation consists of people with identities and values derived from their objective, biologically given natures.

Here is a tie between nation and race - that was the heart of what we saw in Nazi Germany. Hitler spoke of the importance of the purity of the races and made race the foundation of nationhood and as time went on, government was a tool to protect his view of race, and became the excuse for genocide.

Trun has never called for any kind of atrocity, and at worst hints at political actions of a much milder sort... actions that don't include rounding up members of "inferior races" and I'm not saying or implying that he has or ever would go that far. But once a large enough group accept that vile concept of racial inferiority, then comes the projection of blame for any and all ills a society is suffering, and it is then that the atrocities are seen as just retribution. Racism is factually wrong, psychologically revealing, morally disgusting, and politically dangerous.

Post 211

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 1:05pm

I'm done with Brad. His non-answer to my question about how he would act when his action was related to a black person plus his characterization "natures" instead of "human nature" [considering Ayn Rand's definition of rights being based on human nature] tells me what I need to know about him. I believe Charles Murray's arguments in the Bell Curve and other writings to be based on good will towards all people. Brad's, not so much.

Post 212

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 3:52pm

William,

I am for preserving free societies and the freedoms therein. I am a libertarian.

You are in theory neutral on the issue of whether free socities become demographically upended and Islamified, but in practice you are in support of the anti-freedom transformations now playing out. You rationalize that the individual rights of leftists and radical Muslims everywhere in the world, who explicitly state that their aim is undermine and destroy Western freedoms through demographic conquest, require that the citizens of nations who value their freedoms stand idly by and allow themselves to be slowly conquered by mobs of hostile "voters" and their progeny.

You don't appeal inductively to rational values in making your prescriptive case for why people should universally embrace mass immigration regardless of origin. Instead, you attempt to deduce your open borders absolutism from the concept of individual rights and apply your deduction to all nations of the world as a moral duty. Genuine individual rights are negative, meaning people are to be free from coercion, not free to receive benefits or privileges they desire. A nation that seeks to repel invaders from penetrating its borders is using force defensively.

It would be a rights violation if a government forcibly rounded up citizens who had IQs below 100 and sent them to reeducation camps. It would not be a rights violation if a government required attainment of some IQ score (or basic language proficiency or demonstrated job skills) as a condition of entry by a foreigner. The foreigner has no positive right to enter another country's jurisdiction at will. The country's government exists to defend its citizens rights and interests, not the whole world's. If people from certain areas or with certain last names or with certain ethnic lineages are known to be riskier threats to engage in terrorism, rape, or murder, or possess deadly contagious diseases, then the government would be acting to protect its citizens' rights and interests by discriminating against any of those categories of immigrants.

"Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is the standard for convicting someone of a crime, not for setting immigration policy. Would-be immigrants who are denied entry aren't being convicted of anything or aggressed upon. Their thwarted desires have no moral standing. A nation's immigration policy exists solely to uphold and protect the rights and values of the citizens under its jurisdiction. Under universal open immigration absolutism, there would be no need for particular nations or borders to exist at all. The logical end-game of this one-world, one-people, all-equal, idealism is a single world government that forcibly prevents nations from enacting any immigration restrictions. After all, you've conceived of them as human rights violations. Do you see the problem with that conception?

Post 213

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 4:45pm

He said that Blacks are more aggressive, more disruptive, and less intelligent than whites.

Oooh..."he said that"...how dare he say that... I previously provided reams of scientific evidence in support of those claims. You haven't refuted any of the evidence.

IQ measures important aspects of general intelligence, and blacks consistently have less measured "g" than whites and orientals. You're wanting people to regard a factual proposition like this as intrinsically bad (moralistic fallacy). You're on a witch hunt for "racism," just like some Orwellian Diversity bureaucrat/Political Correctness enforcer. You admitted that you harbor radical egalitarian fantasies of merging all races into one big global brown race and only retracted some aspects of your racial obliterationist aims after you were met with social disapproval when I called you out.

Here is a tie between nation and race - that was the heart of what we saw in Nazi Germany

Argumentum ad Nazium...par for the course...

Racism is factually wrong, psychologically revealing, morally disgusting, and politically dangerous.

Yeah, Hitler's racism was. And so is your dogmatic racial Marxism.

At this point in time, I regard egalitarian racism to be a far bigger threat to my freedom and my values than Hitlerian white supremacism. What countries are white supremacists taking over? What oppressive and economically destructive policies are they implementing through the coercive mechanisms of government? Everywhere I look, I see a lot more racial oppression and violence being exacted on whites by egalitarians and anti-white racists than the other way around.

The denial of objective racial differences could lead to the obliteration of entire civilizations. This is something that all the horrors of World War II didn't result in. Jews resumed being smart and successful wherever they went. Germany and Japan bounced back to be the strongest economies in their continents. Despite their losses, they still possessed strong demographics. Now, their demographic declines may be irreversible. Japan will shrink, but it will still be Japan and could bounce back from that intact foundation. Germany and the Western world won't be able to bounce back in the same way from a foundation that is no longer Western in nature. This is an epochal, probably terminal, decline of the West, and it's being justified in the name of egalitarianism.

Post 214

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 7:29pm

Brad wrote,

I am for preserving free societies and the freedoms therein. I am a libertarian.

But you don't believe in freedom of association between citizens of one country and those of another. You don't believe in individual rights. Therefore, you're not a libertarian. The citizens of a free society are not entitled to violate the rights of foreigners any more than they're entitled to violate the rights of their own citizens.

You are in theory neutral on the issue of whether free socities become demographically upended and Islamified, but in practice you are in support of the anti-freedom transformations now playing out. You rationalize that the individual rights of leftists and radical Muslims everywhere in the world, who explicitly state that their aim is undermine and destroy Western freedoms through demographic conquest, require that the citizens of nations who value their freedoms stand idly by and allow themselves to be slowly conquered by mobs of hostile "voters" and their progeny.

Well as you know, many of our own citizens are hostile voters. If that is your criterion, then you might as well deny voting privileges to all members of the Democratic Party, the Peace & Freedom Party and the Green Party.

You don't appeal inductively to rational values in making your prescriptive case for why people should universally embrace mass immigration regardless of origin. Instead, you attempt to deduce your open borders absolutism from the concept of individual rights and apply your deduction to all nations of the world as a moral duty. Genuine individual rights are negative, meaning people are to be free from coercion, not free to receive benefits or privileges they desire. A nation that seeks to repel invaders from penetrating its borders is using force defensively.

I don't support giving people benefits they don't deserve, but if a foreigner is willing to come here and work, then he or she has a perfect right to do so, regardless of race or ethnicity. Such a willing and productive worker is not an "invader," who deserves to be "repelled" simply because he belongs to the wrong race.

It would be a rights violation if a government forcibly rounded up citizens who had IQs below 100 and sent them to reeducation camps. It would not be a rights violation if a government required attainment of some IQ score (or basic language proficiency or demonstrated job skills) as a condition of entry by a foreigner. The foreigner has no positive right to enter another country's jurisdiction at will.

He does if he's not a demonstrable threat. Assuming that he is able to live independently or has the support of a willing provider, the requirement that he have a certain IQ is absurd and a clear violation of his rights. So is the requirement that he have a basic proficiency in the English language or demonstrated job skills. Unskilled labor is always an option, and one that has been used by migrant farm workers. My neighbor came here from Mexico, and worked in the fields until he was able to secure better employment.

The country's government exists to defend its citizens rights and interests, not the whole world's.

I agree, but the government has no right to violate the rights of non-citizens, which it does if it interferes with their freedom to associate with its own citizens. It also violates the rights of its own citizens, if it prevents them from hiring foreign workers.

If people from certain areas or with certain last names or with certain ethnic lineages are known to be riskier threats to engage in terrorism, rape, or murder, or possess deadly contagious diseases, then the government would be acting to protect its citizens' rights and interests by discriminating against any of those categories of immigrants.

I don't agree that simply being from a certain area, having a certain last name or possessing a certain ethnic lineage means that one must forfeit one's right to freedom of association. The fact that there is a greater incidence of terrorism, rape or murder among a certain group of people does not mean that every member of that group should be tarred with the same brush and should therefore lose his or her rights. There is a greater incidence of rape and murder among men of a certain age, but that doesn't mean that all men of that age should have their freedom restricted by, for example, the imposition of a curfew. Of course, someone with a deadly contagious disease should not be allowed entry into the country for obvious reasons.

"Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is the standard for convicting someone of a crime, not for setting immigration policy. Would-be immigrants who are denied entry aren't being convicted of anything or aggressed upon.

Yes they are, because their freedom of action is being interfered with. Since a government does not own the country over which it has jurisdiction, it cannot deny innocent people entry and exit without violating their rights.

A nation's immigration policy exists solely to uphold and protect the rights and values of the citizens under its jurisdiction.

True, but it cannot violate a non-citizen's right to freedom of action.

Under universal open immigration absolutism, there would be no need for particular nations or borders to exist at all. The logical end-game of this one-world, one-people, all-equal, idealism is a single world government that forcibly prevents nations from enacting any immigration restrictions.

Not true. The purpose of a government is to protect the rights of its citizens. Its borders are there to denote its area of jurisdiction, but that does not give it license to violate the rights of non-citizens, which it does by interfering with their freedom of action. Nor is a one-world government the logical outgrowth of the recognition of individual rights, which apply equally to every individual regardless of race, ethnicity or country of origin. There is an optimal scale of effective governance that limits the size of political units. A one-world government would simply be too large to govern effectively.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 6/27, 7:30pm)

Post 215

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 8:49pm

But you don't believe in freedom of association between citizens of one country and those of another.

Freedom of association entails the freedom to disassociate.  Unless you are an anrchist, you accept that it's legitime for governments to hold a legal monopoly on force in a geographical area. Since it is not possible (or desireable) for one person to own all the land, the government must assume the role of defender of the whole area as if it were private property in relation to governments, groups, or individuals who exist outside the jurisdiction.

I don't prescribe restrictive immigration policies, because a nation's policies are based on the context of the values of its citizens and the particular threats it faces. But I respect the right of people to secede from nations and to form nations of their own in order to disassociate from other types of people, on any basis they choose.

I am not Jewish and would not want to live in a religious state, but I don't believe Israel is violating Muslims' or Christians' or atheists' rights all over the world, simply by seeking to maintain itself as an ethnically Jewish state. The people of Israel have decided that their security depends on being able to defend their borders from hostile neighbors who want in.

You can prefer that Israel lift all immigration restrictions and cease to exist as a Jewish state on any number of grounds, but the problem is, you don't see the need to be the least bit contextual.  Your answer precedes any investigation into the real-world circumstances.  You're lost in abstract conceptions of an ideal world that doesn't exist.

You don't believe in individual rights. Therefore, you're not a libertarian.

This is incredibly stupid. Not all libertarians believe in individual rights. I do, but contextually -- not as floating absolutes from which all laws derive for all nations universally a priori. Some libertarians are pure utilitarians who reject all notions of rights but still value liberty. Utilitarians at least appeal to people's actual real-world concerns, unlike you with your rationalistic deductions from moral commandments. You're doing little more than reading from the Bible.

The fact that there is a greater incidence of terrorism, rape or murder among a certain group of people does not mean that every member of that group should be tarred with the same brush and should therefore lose his or her rights.

Wow, open immigration for people who fit terrorist profiles. Kudos for consistency. That's what pure idealism will do to you.

Post 216

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 10:10pm

Freedom of association entails the freedom to disassociate.

I agree.

Unless you are an anarchist, you accept that it's legitimate for governments to hold a legal monopoly on force in a geographical area. Since it is not possible (or desireable) for one person to own all the land, the government must assume the role of defender of the whole area as if it were private property in relation to governments, groups, or individuals who exist outside the jurisdiction.

Where in the world did you get that idea? It doesn't follow at all from the premise of private property. People own only what they own. The government does not own the entire country, for if it did, it would own the property of private individuals within its jurisdiction, which is a contradiction.

I wrote, "You don't believe in individual rights. Therefore, you're not a libertarian."

This is incredibly stupid. Not all libertarians believe in individual rights. I do, but contextually -- not as floating absolutes from which all laws derive for all nations universally a priori. Some libertarians are pure utilitarians who reject all notions of rights but still value liberty.

"Liberty" in this context means the right to freedom of action. How can one value liberty without valuing the right to it? You say that you believe in individual rights but contextually. What does that mean? That you believe in them for citizens but not for foreigners?

Utilitarians at least appeal to people's actual real-world concerns, unlike you with your rationalistic deductions from moral commandments. You're doing little more than reading from the Bible.

So it's not a real-world concern that your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are recognized and upheld? You consider a respect for these rights equivalent to obeying to a moral commandment? Seriously?

I wrote, "The fact that there is a greater incidence of terrorism, rape or murder among a certain group of people does not mean that every member of that group should be tarred with the same brush and should therefore lose his or her rights."

Wow, open immigration for people who fit terrorist profiles. Kudos for consistency. That's what pure idealism will do to you.

You're dropping context. If you recall, the groups you mentioned were people from certain areas or with certain last names or with certain ethnic lineages. I don't regard these as characteristic of terrorist profiles. If the immigrants under consideration actually do fit terrorist profiles in terms of their own political involvement, then yes, I would not allow them entry into the country.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 6/27, 11:16pm)

Post 217

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 11:12pm

"Liberty" in this context means the right to freedom of action. How can one value liberty without valuing the right to it?

Here's where your conception of liberty collapses into contradiction. If and others set up a private community on a huge parcel of land called Trun's Gulch, membership by invitation only, we're not violating anyone's liberty by turning them away. We're exercising our liberty, our freedom to disassociate.

OK, suppose we continue to grow and built out infrastructure, begin to operate our own security services, and become entirely self-sufficient. We don't need local, state, or federal governments for anything and hate paying taxes, so at some point we all unanimously vote to secede and become a sovereign nation. We have a big enough militia to make it not worth the government's efforts to try to stop us.

We occupy the same territory and have the same policies enforced by the same threat of violence as before: entry by invitation only. (Before, we might have called the police when necessary to remove trespassers and deal with aggressors. Now, we do it ourselves.) Nothing has changed for people who want in to Trun's Gulch. Some of them are denied entry, as before.

But now, unlike before, you claim we're violating their rights. That can't be. Nothing changed for them! Either their rights were always being violated by us or they never were and aren't now. Which is it?

Post 218

Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 12:08am

Brad,

Yes, people have the right to dissociate from one another but not from the authority of a law that respects and upholds individual rights. I don't have the moral right to declare myself immune from legal jurisdiction, unless the law itself has become an instrument of oppression. And even then, it would make no sense for the government to recognize and approve of my decision not to be bound by its authority.

In any case, what you're talking about here is a proprietary community, in which the owner would have the right to exclude people at his arbitrary discretion. But the United States is not a proprietary community. You even said (in Post 215) that "it is not possible (or desireable) for one person to own all the land."

Could a proprietary community secede from such a government if it chose to? Only if the government were oppressive, and its secession were done for the purpose of reclaiming the rights of its members. This was the case with Galt's Gulch in Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

However, secession is not justified if done for other reasons such as ethnic separation. This was the reason the French speaking province of Quebec tried unsuccessfully to secede from Canada. It wanted to establish a French country that was separate from the government. Observe also that the province of Quebec is itself a government, not a proprietary community.

There is also the question of what constitutes original property. That has to be determined by a clearly established legal procedure, such as was done under the Homestead Act of 1862 in which a prospective owner acquired land by farming (developing) it over a period of five years.

For instance, suppose that a team of astronauts lands on the moon, and declares the entire surface its property, thereby denying access to any future explorers. Do they have that right? On what grounds? since they did nothing to develop the land for a productive purpose. If another team of explorers were to land there and be accused of trespassing, a conflict is likely to ensue, requiring some kind of arbitration; which is the beginning of a government.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 6/28, 12:10am)

(Edited by William Dwyer on 6/28, 8:01am)

Post 219

Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 12:36am