Photo - child stalked by vulture

FERGAL KEANE, BBC: Walking around here, the images are quite horrific. You've been dealing with this for a long time. What do you think?
PHILIPPE GAILLARD, Red Cross: I don't know if I-- if I still feel something. I'm-- I have a brain of iron. That's the way I've survived. That's the way I can speak to you in so clear language.
FERGAL KEANE: Is there a high price to be paid for that kind of brain of iron? Later on, perhaps?
PHILIPPE GAILLARD: Later on, maybe. For the time being, so far, so good.
NARRATOR: Soon after the killing began, Gaillard decided he had to challenge the extremist government. Rwandan troops had stopped a Red Cross ambulance and killed six patients.
PHILIPPE GAILLARD: I decided to call my headquarters in Geneva to tell the story. And my counterpart in Geneva told me, "Do you think we could make it public?" And then you think twice. I mean, because if you make it public, then you know that people might kill you, or would really decided to kill you because of what you told. It was [unintelligible] We decided to do it. So following day, BBC, Reuters, Radio France Internationale-- it was everywhere.
NARRATOR: The publicity embarrassed the extremists, and their government gave the Red Cross safe passage throughout Rwanda.
PHILIPPE GAILLARD: So these six people didn't die for-- for nothing. I mean, they-- because of their deaths, hundreds of other people could be saved.
NARRATOR: Gaillard cultivated a relationship with the extremist leadership, which he believes helped the Red Cross save 65,000 lives.
PHILIPPE GAILLARD: When-- when we talk about mass saving, I think that's best. And the only way is to talk with the people who want to kill them.
I remember one day, I met by chance Colonel Theoneste Bagosora. I told him, "Colonel, do something to stop the killing. I mean, this is-- this is absurd. I mean this-- this-- this is suicide. I mean"-- And his answer was-- there are words you never forget, you know? His answer was, "Listen to, sir. If I want, tomorrow I can recruit 50,000 more Interahamwe." So I took him by the shirt. I'm 58 kilograms and he must be 115. Now I took him by the throat, looked his eyes and told him, "Theoneste, you will lose the war."
NARRATOR: Gaillard's network of aid workers across Rwanda gave him the most accurate count of the death toll. He estimated that in the first two weeks, 100,000 Rwandans had been killed.
The Red Cross has a tradition of neutrality and public silence[*], but Gaillard decided that this genocide would be different.
PHILIPPE GAILLARD: The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is a 140 years old organization, was not active during the Armenian genocide, shut up during the Holocaust. Everybody knew what was happening with the Jews. In such circumstances, if-- if you don't at least speak out clearly and-- you are participating to-- to the genocide. I mean, if you just shut up when you see what you see-- and morally, ethically, you cannot shut up! It's a responsibility to-- to talk, to speak out.
 
 

Another example is gun control. Rand’s statements on the subject have long rankled me.

Here she is at the Ford Hall Forum in 1971 (From Ayn Rand Answers):

Q: What is your opinion on gun control?

A: I do not know enough about it to have an opinion, except to say that it’s not of primary importance. Forbidding guns or registering them is not going to stop criminals from having them; nor is it a great threat to the private, noncriminal citizen if he has to register the fact that he has a gun. It’s not an important issue, unless you’re ready to begin a private uprising now, which isn’t very practical.

I have always taken her stance on guns in the current-state-of-the-world-context. So I respond with: “Not an important issue!?” And, “Good lord, registration is only being pushed because the first step to confiscation is getting a list of who has ‘em and how many.” And, “Abominable!”

But, if she was thinking of an ideal-state-of-the-world-context, then I have to admit: Guns would not be very important (at least not for protection.) And registration would indeed be no “great threat to the private, noncriminal citizen,” because there wouldn’t be a political context where hundreds of millions were voting for politicians eager to give them their way and ban guns.

Another example is voluntary financing of national defense (indeed, of all government.)

I’ve never been able to come over to this Objectivist staple, because I see the Russians in the fifties, or the Chinese in the future raising huge capacities. I ask myself: What if voluntary financing falls terribly short? I see pacifists and appeasers everywhere in our country and it isn’t hard for me to imagine them all saying, “I’m not donating, because no one’s gonna hurt us if we just mind our own business, love is the solution.” I see the Chinese, their hands not tied by the scruples of voluntarism and non-initiation, running us over (read: “running me over”) in the first inning. I thank god no one in government right now cares a whit about compulsory taxation.

I still see it as unlikely that national defense can be funded by voluntary taxation and a small % tax seems reasonable to me.

If we got rid of everything that was against Objectivist ethics our taxes would drop by what, maybe 80% or so? Maybe 90%?

I think everyone would be happy.

I think testifying should also be paid, in the same way jurors should be paid, based on verifiable income lost during the term of service.

However, another problem is that the laws have to be just, for example testifying in drug cases I would have a problem with (unless there was also associated violent crimes, which is likely but not always the case).

I think testifying should also be paid, in the same way jurors should be paid, based on verifiable income lost during the term of service.

The problem here is that if you think someone has no right to withhold testimony on the grounds that to do so is acting as an accomplice to the crime, then the person cannot demand payment for the testimony, since it's his legal obligation to provide it.