I decided to move some discussion from this post up to the top level here. Specifically, Watoosh wrote: "Well, if violence is defined as initiation of force (which, of course, presupposes certain property rights), then I think Rockwell is correct..." Well, if we define cats as elephants, then many people keep elephants in their house. More seriously, firstly, violence is not usually defined that way. It's defined as, you know, violence, so that, say, someone may respond violently or non-violently to someone who aggresses against them. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say, for instance, "He punched me, but I did not stoop to violence in response." And, secondly, the libertarian usage of "initiation of force" is very offbeat. If I wander onto someone's meadow, most people would not say I had "initiated force" -- I mean, sure, I used "force" against the earth to push off walking, but that's not force directed against...
You saw that this landed on Digg.com?
ReplyDeletehere is the thread.
Huh...I had tried using Google to see if anyone linked to it, and Google said no (unless I did it wrong). Does something have to be pretty popular for the "link:" feature in Google to pick it up?
ReplyDeleteI wasn't bothered so much by the people who said, "Superman doesn't work for money!"; I have gotten used to people ignoring my handling of their objection in the original article.
But what really insulted me was the guy questioning my claim that the Superman of the first four movies could teleport.