🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2926876536.0.p00004@psilink.com> p00004@psilink.com (Michael Smith) writes:
>>DATE:   Fri, 18 Sep 1992 09:59:53 GMT
>>FROM:   Brian K. Yoder <brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us>
>> ...  I am of the opinion that destroying the 
>>property of others is wrong.  Do you see a problem with that?

>Surely the only rational answer is, it depends: whose property, and what
>is it being used for. No one would deny, for example, that destroying the
>private property of the German railways taking people to Auschwitz would 
>have been a very good thing to do. 

Since such railroads were "stolen property" (stolen by the government from 
the previous owners) and since the property was being used to violate the
rights of others (the concentration camp victims), it is a matter of 
self-defense (even proxy self-defense) to bomb them.  It is a situation
analogous to a policeman taking a gun away from someone who has stolen from
me.  If you know what property rights and and why they exist, it is quite
simple to see when they apply.

>Cases that are controversial generally
>turn out to depend on what you think of the underlying activity. 

What it depends on is whether the activity violates someone else's rights.
There is no such thing as a right to violate the rights of others.

>As 
>always, close examination will reveal that absolutely nobody really 
>gives a hang about comprehensive, abstract principles (like "private 
>property"). Appeals to such principles are mere rhetoric.

I have a surprise for you.  I am such a person.  I care a great deal about 
comprehensive abstract principles.  Your admission is telling though.  You 
apparently don;t care about ideas or principles.  Your claim is an admission
that your use of words and ideas is merely a ruse to get your way rather than
a way of learning about the world.  If you are admitting that your use of words
has no relation to the facts of reality, why don;t you just shut up and go
away?

--Brian