Dove of Peace

Beginner's Guide to Peace - Walking the Path of Peace

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Measuring The World

Rights and Lefts

As you travel the path of peace and liberty, you will find that many advocates of the Non-Aggression Principle are particularly passionate in their support of property rights. This is not accidental as property rights are often the foundation, and in many cases an absolute necessity, for the support of other rights[1].

Sadly, in the U.S. and many other places, the rights to liberty and property are increasingly under attack, often in the name of supporting dubious "rights" such as free college education. This is a gross misunderstanding of what rights actually are.

Rights are claims or entitlements to things or actions. They are often divided into two types, negative and positive. Unfortunately, the names can be confusing. Negative rights are freedoms from interference by others and thus require inaction, while positive rights are obligations for others to take action. Your rights to life, liberty, and property, often called Natural Rights, are examples of negative rights and are inalienable in that no other person can make a reasonable claim to them.

Which Way?

Positive rights, on the other hand, only exist by mutual agreement, or contract, between two people or parties. You have the right to eat (a negative right), but you do not have the "right" to force others to feed you. In order to eat, you can work on a farm, trade with a grocer or convince someone to provide food through their charity, but you have no "right" to force or coerce anyone to do so. Thus, despite the confusing name, negative rights are in fact positive in that they are in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle. Ironically, so called rights such as "free" college or a guaranteed income are not really rights at all because they require the coercive extraction of property from others.

1984 Book Cover

Wrong Turns

Without the recognition of property rights, other rights such as the freedom of speech, assembly and religious worship cannot be protected. Unfortunately, when the government “owns” large swaths of incorrectly labeled “public” land, the protection of our basic rights becomes diminished.

People have become so used to the repeated violations of property rights by governments that they rarely consider the costs and ultimate outcome of such violations. A better understanding of and a more rigorous support for property rights would actually serve to decrease hostilities and conflicts.

The Foundation of Rights

Foundations

Let us first consider the right to a free press. It seems fairly obviously that a free press is heavily dependent on private property. In order to publish a newspaper, a person or group traditionally had to make a large capital investment in the printing machinery, newsprint and other materials as well as a building to house the equipment. Once printed, they next had the matter of distribution. In order to obtain widespread distribution, they needed to pay for transport either through capital investment in trucks and other vehicles or by hiring the labor and capital of others. Once a distribution method was established, however, they still encountered other property protections in that they could not force the publication into the homes of others. Even if distributing the publication for free and leaving it at the very threshold of a person’s home, there was never any compulsion by the targeted recipient to read or “consume” the publication.

King - Free Speach

The right to free speech, while not requiring the intensive capital investment of printing, also depends on property. You cannot, for example, enter someone’s house in order to make a speech without their permission. In order to express your opinions verbally, you must either 1) obtain your own property through purchase, rent or charity and then invite others to join you, 2) be invited onto the private property of others to express your opinions, or 3) rely on the existence of public property. These "public" properties are of course not owned by the public at all but are instead entirely controlled by governments.

It is in the reliance on so called “public” spaces that we can clearly see how easily governments can interfere with the right to speech. In the United States, for example, Margaret Sanger was arrested in 1912 for giving a lecture on birth control. In 1918 Eugene Debs was arrested for making a speech against the war and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested 29 times for his participation in peaceful public protests and marches.

Dead Ends

Communism

More recently, in the U.S. both the federal and local governments have taken to establishing Orwellian named “free speech zones” during events such as political party conventions and presidential speeches. These "zones" are situated far away from the event attendees, effectively suppressing speech and the right of assembly.

In a similar manner the former U.S.S.R., while proclaiming the right to religious expression in its constitution, severely curtailed its actual practice through its extensive control of property and the means of production[2]. By confiscating church property and by controlling all schools and printing presses, the Communist government of the Soviet Union made the actual practice of religion extremely difficult.

Property Under Attack

Cooperation

From these examples, then, it should be clear that the fundamental rights to speech, the press, assembly and worship are in fact dependent on the recognition and protection of property rights. Unfortunately the very concept of property is under attack, in the United States and elsewhere, as business owners are penalized by state and local governments for deciding how they wish to operate and by selecting the customers they wish to serve.

A fundamental proposition of the Non-Aggression Principle is that individuals have the freedom to act as they choose, both with their body and their property, as long as they do not aggress against another’s life, liberty or property. By extension this naturally extends to any business a person owns and is similar to the individual right to associate with whomever you choose on your own property.

Understanding Your Rights

Art Studio

Imagine that you are the owner of a two-story flat in a thriving community. You recently bought this building to house an art studio and gallery. There are living quarters on the second floor with separate entrance doors to each level and an interior staircase connecting the two.

As a property owner, you are obviously free to invite whomever you like into your home on the second floor. You are also free to defend against trespassers and to disinvite any guest, for whatever reason. As a host you know to always treat your guests with kindness and grace but visitors should also know that all hospitality has limits and that they are indeed guests in your home.

Color

Now go downstairs to your business. You are still in the same building. Should you now have fewer rights because you have descended a few feet? As a business person who hopes to sell many paintings in the community, you certainly treat your customers well. But as in your home upstairs, you should certainly be able to serve whomever you want and to also deny services if you choose.

Perhaps you are a painter who specializes in portraits but are uncomfortable doing nudes. Perhaps you do not like painting children because they are too fidgety and you do not have the patience. Whatever the reasons, it certainly seems proper that you should be free to contract with whichever customers you choose and to decline whatever work does not suit you, for whatever reason. You certainly should not have to fear being threatened with the loss of liberty and property by the State because you hurt a customer's feelings.

The Right to Choose

Rainbow Cake

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Studio 54 was a popular night club in New York. The lines were often very long to get in and the club was blatantly discriminatory in its admission policy, giving preferential treatment to the rich, famous and beautiful. No government at any level thought to press charges against the club for said discrimination at that time, although they were busted for tax evasion (the government does have its priorities).

Fast forward to 2015: When a bakery in Oregon chose not to create a wedding cake for a lesbian couple for religious reasons, the state fined the business $135,000 for alleged damages. A court in Colorado ruled against a bakery in a similar case from 2012.

Unfortunately, politicians and pundits have conflated cases like this into arguments over freedom of religion and\or speech. The issue is more basic then that. As detailed in this section, the rights of speech and religious expression are dependent on the foundational rights of property and self ownership, core elements of the Non-Aggression Principle. Until these rights are fully recognized, we will continue to see conflicts like these increase in frequency and intensity.

Nonviolent Resistance

Support for the free association of individuals and groups is a hallmark of the Non-Aggression Principle. Both forced segregation and forced integration are clear violations of the NAP.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The opposition by libertarians to aggressive government implementation of supposed remedies for past discrimination is sometimes misunderstood to be de facto support of racial and other forms of discrimination. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was in fact the free market forces that libertarians enthusiastically support, and not plodding moves by the US federal government, that most aided the removal of “Jim Crow” laws and other forms of government institutionalized segregation not just in the southern U.S. but throughout the country. It was only when the African Americans of the southern United States began to harness the peaceful power of the marketplace that other informal and State sanctioned barriers began to fall.

The Empire Strikes Back

Cross on Fire

A few years after the formal abolishment of slavery in the United States in 1865, racial segregation laws that had existed prior to the Civil War were reinstituted in a number of southern states. To say that there were a lot of hard feelings among the whites of the Deep South after the war would be the understatement of the century. The oxymoronically named “Civil War” resulted in the death of over 620,000 US citizens with the brunt of the physical destruction occurring in southern cities such as Atlanta, Georgia. Using the power of the State, a number of whites extracted retribution by curtailing the rights of blacks to vote and by placing harsh restrictions on businesses in their interactions with black customers. Racial segregation at the federal level increased in the decades that followed as well. In the 1910’s President Wilson, the first President from the south since the Civil War, formally institutionalized racially segregated departments and offices at the federal level.

The Liberating Power of the Free Market

Jesse Owens

In the face of local, state and federally instituted segregation laws, the peaceful forces of the free market worked to break down the walls. These forces became particularly strong following the end of the Second World War.

Prior to the war, the African American runner Jesse Owens had electrified the world at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, challenging Hitler’s claim of Aryan supremacy by winning four gold medals. Unfortunately the US government, oblivious to irony, continued to segregate whites and blacks throughout World War II as it fought the forces of fascism in the supposed name of freedom.

Jackie Robinson

The introduction of the first black baseball player, Jackie Robinson, to the major leagues in 1947 was one the first significant post war demonstrations of the free market’s ability to tear down walls of separation through economic incentives. Robinson’s manager, Leo Durocher, clearly understood this when he informed his initially less than enthusiastic players "I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded."[3]

Another type of market force, the threat of losing customers and revenues, also helped to break segregation. The use of sit-ins and boycotts, such as those that occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, put financial pressure on companies such as Woolworths to eliminate their racial segregation polices.

Vietnam War on Television

Unfortunately government operated institutions such as public schools and the voting box are less susceptible to market forces as government often has a de facto monopoly on these operations. Fortunately, a third feature of the free market, that of invention and innovation, provided an additional force to end segregation. It is difficult to overstate the impact of broadcast television on public opinion in the 1950’s and beyond. As television ownership in the U.S. accelerated from 9% of homes in 1950 to 87% by 1960[4], the full ramifications of government sanctioned segregation laws, and the violent defense of it through beatings, police dogs and fire hoses, rapidly accelerated public pressure on governments at all levels to rescind the segregation laws they had created.

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Essentials

- Property rights are the foundation for other rights such as speech, assembly and the press.

- In the United States, civil rights groups used the power of the free market to dismantle institutionalized segregation at the federal, state and local levels.

- Technical innovations such as television and the World Wide Web have been instrumental to challenging the power of the State.


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Notes

1. ^ "Human Rights" as Property Rights - Chapter 15 of The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N Rothbard.

2. ^ The Property Basis of Rights by Clarence B. Carson

3. ^ Jackie Robinson: Breaking the color barrier - Wikipedia.org.

4. ^ Annual TV Households - TVHistory.TV.

Picture Credits

^ Universal rights: The Ancient of Days, copy E. Painting by William Blake, 1794. Library of Congress image downloaded from Wikimedia Commons and modified by Andrew Lesko.

^ Which way? Image by Andrew Lesko.

^ 1984: Written by George Orwell, 1948. Amazon books link.

^ Foundations: An unidentified statue. Photo and alterations by Andrew Lesko.

^ A dream: Martin Luther King Jr. Public domain image downloaded from Wikimedia Commons and modified by Andrew Lesko.

^ The communist nightmare: Artwork by Andrew Lesko.

^ The Marketplace: Cook in the rue de Stamboul, Constantinople, Turkey. Public domain image from the Library of Congress, modifications by Andrew Lesko.

^ Art studio: Photo of New Orleans building and artwork by Andrew Lesko.

^ Colour: Painting by Angelica Kauffman, 1778-1780. Public domain image from the Royal Academy of Arts, UK.

^ Who invited Violence? Rainbow cake. Cake and photo by Stephanie Astono Salim, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, modifications by Andrew Lesko.

^ Montgomery boycott: Drawing by Laura Gray, first published in The Militant, 2/13/56. The Militant was a communist magazine begun by a number of American Trotskyites in 1928. I find it ironic that that a communist rag ran this cartoon. The irony is that the solution to the segregated buses in Montgomery ultimately proved to be market forces, not appeals to the State and its use of violence. As a nonaggressionist, I am strongly opposed to the communist program as a whole, particularly its opposition to private property and willingness to initiate violence to accomplish its goals. Occasionally, like a stopped clock, the communists do get it right, at least with regards to their opposition to the wars of the empire.

^ Ignorance unlimited: A burning cross. Detail of a 1921 public domain photo. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

^ Flying first class: Jesse Owens. Image of Jesse Owens during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R96374. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, modifications by Andrew Lesko.

^ Fighting back: Jackie Robinson. Photograph of Jackie Robinson in 1954 by Bob Sandberg for Look magazine. Public domain image downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, modifications by Andrew Lesko.

^ Into the living room: The Vietnam War. Image by Warren K. Leffler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine. Public domain image downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, modifications by Andrew Lesko. Notice the changes in the screen image from the original.


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