Posted by Diana Hsieh on 1 August 2011 at 8:00 am Leonard Peikoff, NYC Mosque, Objectivism,Politics’http://www.philosophyinaction.com/blog/?p=5083Aug012011 For the past year-and-some, I’ve been re-reading Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand with a few local Objectivist gals. (We only read about 30 pages per month, so our progress is slow!) A few weeks ago, we read the chapter on “Government” — and doing so raised a nagging question that I’ve had related to last summer’s heated debate about the NYC Mosque.On Facebook, I’ve seen some Objectivists defend Leonard Peikoff’s position that the NYC Mosque ought to be forbidden by law by saying “the right to life trumps the right to property.” At first, I thought that Peikoff must have said something like that in his podcast on the topic. However, I was pleased to discover that, although I still disagree with aspects of that podcast, that’s not true. Here’s what Peikoff said, according to Trey Givens’ transcription:Let’s start with property rights. Property rights are limited and they are contextual. You cannot do anything you want with property even though it is yours, not if its ramifications objectively entail a threat to the rights of others. You can’t build a bomb in your home. You can’t even build a big bonfire in your backyard legitimately because the principle of rights is that property rights are a derivative of life as the standard and there can be no right to threaten anyone’s life nor indeed to threaten anyone’s property.

Second, rights are contextual. In any situation where metaphysical survival is at stake all property rights are out. You have no obligation to respect property rights. The obvious, classic example of this is, which I’ve been asked a hundred times, you swim to a desert island — you know, you had a shipwreck — and when you get to the shore, the guy comes to you and says, “I’ve got a fence all around this island. I found it. It’s legitimately mine. You can’t step onto the beach.” Now, in that situation you are in a literal position of being metaphysically helpless. Since life is the standard of rights, if you no longer can survive this way, rights are out. And it becomes dog-eat-dog or force-against force.

Now, don’t assume that any unsatisfied need therefore puts you in this metaphysical category. For instance, you are very poor and you are hungry. Well, you need feed. But in a capitalist society, even in a mixed economy, that is not a metaphysical deprivation. There’s always all sorts of choices and ways in a free society for you to gain food. Always.

I agree with that portion of his podcast, and I think that’s consistent with what he says inObjectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand about rights as as unity:In content, as the Founding Fathers recognized, there is one fundamental right, which has several major derivatives. The fundamental right is the right to life. Its major derivatives are the right to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

The right to life means the right to sustain and protect one’s life. It means the right to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the preservation of his life. To sustain his life, man needs a method of survival—he must use his rational faculty to gain knowledge and choose values, then act to achieve his values. The right to liberty is the right to this method; it is the right to think and choose, then to act in accordance with one’s judgment. To sustain his life, man needs to create the material means of his survival. The right to property is the right to this process; in Ayn Rand’s definition, it is “the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.” To sustain his life, man needs to be governed by a certain motive—his purpose must be his own welfare. The right to the pursuit

of happiness is the right to this motive; it is the right to live for one’s own sake and fulfillment.

Rights form a logical unity. In the words of Samuel Adams, all are “evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.” It would be a crude contradiction to tell a man: you have a right to life, but you need the permission of others to think or act. Or: you have a right to life, but you need the permission of others to produce or consume. Or: you have a right to life, but don’t dare pursue any personal motive without the approval of the government.

I don’t think that Peikoff’s views in his podcast or book can be properly summarized as “the right to life trumps the right to property.” That implies a false theory of rights, according to which rights can conflict, and when they do, the “lesser” rights must give way to the “greater” rights. That’s not just wrong: it’s an outright rejection of the demands of logic in politics. That’s because the whole point of calling something a “right” is to identify it not just as one value among others to be weighed, but instead to say that it’s a “trump.” Rights are supposed to settle — authoritatively — what people should be permitted to do. If rights can conflict, then rights aren’t meaningful any longer. They’re just a mush of who-knows-what.

Of all the errors in modern politics, the idea that people’s rights routinely conflict is probably the most pernicious of all. It opens the door to any and all rights violations — from OSHA to Medicare to the ADA to the Drug War — because when logic is removed from politics, it’s deuces wild.

So if you want to summarize Dr. Peikoff’s position, I’d think that something along the lines of “property rights are contextual, and in the context of America’s war against militant Islam, the property rights of the enemy are null and void” would be more accurate.

As for my own views, I agree with Peikoff’s general claims about rights in wartime. I continue to disagree about the proper application of those principles in the context of American’s current foreign policy. In particular, I regard voiding anyone’s property rights by any means necessary in an undeclared and unfought war as extraordinarily dangerous to the liberties of all dissenting Americans, including Objectivists. However, as is true for all mosques, any terrorist connections should be vigorously investigated — and prosecuted if confirmed.

Over the last year, the controversy over the project has died down, but I’ve not heard whether the project has been abandoned, delayed, or continues. I hope that it’s deader than Bin Laden, but if not, I’d be interested to hear about its current state.

October 10, 2011Property Rights Equals The Right to LifeCharlotte Cushmanhttp://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/property_rights_equals_the_right_to_life.html

If you live in the state of Wisconsin, own a cow and board it at a dairy farm, you may think that you can drink the unpasturized milk that your cow produces. Not so fast. A judge hasruled otherwise.

The judge wrote: "Plaintiffs argue that they have a fundamental right to possess, use and enjoy their property and therefore have a

fundamental right to own a cow, or a heard (sic) of cows, and to use their cow(s) in a manner that does not cause harm to third parties. They argue that they have a fundamental right to privacy to consume the food of their choice for themselves and their families and therefore have a fundamental right to consume unpasteurized milk from their cows."The plaintiffs are correct. They do have a right to their property and to dispose of it any way they wish as long as they do not cause harm to anyone else. But the judge says they do not have that right and by saying that he is telling them that they have no right to their own life.

As Ayn Rand said, "The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life."

But, but, but...the plaintiffs might consume milk that could make them sick. If we can control what someone else does with his own property when it concerns no one else but him, and when no one else is hurt, then where does it end? Who decides if vitamins are okay to take? Who decides what restaurants are okay? Who decides what you should be eating? Who decides what clothes you should wear? Who decides if you should see a chiropractor? Who decides if your children should go to Montessori school? Who decides what car you should have? Who decides if you should go to church? Do you see where this leads? Do you own your own life or not?

The issue here is not whether or not pasteurized milk is safe. The issue here is property rights. If the government can tell us what we can consume, they own us. It is as simple as that.

About the author: Charlotte Cushman is a Montessori educator at Minnesota Renaissance School, Anoka, Minnesota. She has been involved in the study of Ayn Rand's philosophy since 1970.

Life, Liberty and the Right to PropertyNick Ottens | February 27, 2010

http://atlanticsentinel.com/2010/02/life-liberty-and-the-right-to-property/

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Since the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom published by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journalwarned that, “Government interventions in financial markets and the automotive sector have raised concerns about expropriation and violation of the contractual rights of shareholders and bondholders” in the United States, it is prudent to explore the necessity and the importance of the protection of property rights even as the question is largely ignored in modern day discussions about the proper role of government.

The United States Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, asserted the “self-evident” truth that men are equally endowed “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), principal author of the

Declaration, took inspiration here from George Mason’s (1725-1792) Virginia Declaration of Rights which was adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776. It claimed:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

As much as people should have the right to pursue happiness, it is unfortunate that no explicit protection of the right to acquire and possess property, as expressed by Mason, was written into the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson however was no less convinced of both its necessity and righteousness.

Writing on April 24, 1816 to French economist and businessman Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817), Jefferson opined that “there exists a right independent of force; that a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.” He argued against the democratic expropriation of property in the same letter, stating that “the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime,” and breaks up the very foundations of society.

In the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, issued by the Second Continental Congress on July 6, 1775, Jefferson explained what well-defined, legally protected property rights had brought about in his country: “The political institutions of America, its various soils and climates, opened a certain resource to the unfortunate and to the enterprising of every country and insured to them the acquisition and free possession of property.” Almost thirty years later, delivering his second inaugural address before the nation on March 4, 1805, then-President Jefferson decreed that “equality of rights [be] maintained, and that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.”

“To every man from his own industry” — compare that to the marxist idiom, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” which condemned so many nations to impoverishment if not outright starvation during the last century.

The United States were founded upon the very premise that each man is entitled to his own life and the fruits of his own labor and for well over a century, as Jefferson predicted, those freedoms brought forth a prosperity which man hadn’t known for hundreds of years.

Yet as the United States and the rest of the Western World industrialized, the significance of the protection of property rights was either disputed or neglected. French politician and self-declared anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) showed marxists the way in 1840 when he professed that, “Property is theft!” — a slogan happily reiterated by antagonists of the state up to this very day.

Although far from radical as Proudhon was, twentieth century Keynesians and similar do-gooders have given rise to the notion that private property is really not private at all; that it belongs to “society” which has mysteriously “granted” individuals to hold property in the first place.

In her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, philosopher Ayn Rand warned against what she callled the “fraudulent alternative” offered by modern day collectivists — that of “human rights” versus “property rights,” as though one could exist without the other. “The doctrine that ‘human rights’ are superior to ‘property rights’ simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others,” wrote Rand who declared that “no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality — to think, to work and to keep the results — which means: the right of property.”

In “Man’s Rights,” published in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), Rand again stressed the inseparability of the rights to life and property; the latter being the “only implementation” of the former.

Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Rand added that the right to property is a “right to action,” not the right to an object. “It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it.”

That is the full meaning of “the pursuit of Happiness.” No man is born in the United States, entitled to happiness or the efforts of others. Yet each man is born with the right to produce and trade for his own sake; to pursue happiness on his own terms, for, as Jefferson noted, America insures both the unfortunate and the enterprising “the acquisition and free possession of property.”

“To every man from his own industry” was and ought to be the guiding principle of proper government in the United States. A government dedicated to upholding such standard of justice will allow its nation to prosper whereas the very opposite wrecks havoc upon a country as half a century of Communist rule in Eastern Europe amply demonstrated.

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