My name is [x], and I am an independent scholar specializing in Austrian Economics. I am familiar with your work on Estoppel and this is a reason why I contact you. Recently, I encountered a problem that I can’t resolve definitively. The issue involves the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) and its apparent ambiguity. I haven’t found any references addressing the role of bystanders, except for discussions of their use as shields in self-defense contexts. My question is: should a bystander remain neutral, or is voluntary intervention on the side of a victim consistent with the NAP? What would be considered the default action or non-action according to the NAP?
Me:
“it’s okay to help people”
Okay, my curt answer flushed him out:
Thanks for answering. However, recent stance of Mises folks on Russo-Ukrainian war is neutrality. And they use NAP to justify it.
My reply:
I figured there was something fishy and disingenuous about your question. You seem to be making the same stupid mistake Walter Block makes. He thinks that just because individuals have a right to self-defense, this means that nation-states also have the right to self defense. Even though he is supposed to be an anarchist who views nation-states as criminal actors with no rights. Thus he argues that just as an individual has no right to commit aggression but does have a right to use force in self-defense, nation-states also have the “right” to use force in war as long as it is essentially defensive and not aggressive. That is, Walter now maintains that libertarians do not oppose war and never have opposed war—why, gosh, golly gee shucks, after all, we only oppose offensive war, but defensive war is just fine! Nevermind that the state that wages war is inherently criminal and when it wages war it always, necessarily, violates rights: (a) the rights of its own citizens, in taxing and conscripting them, and (b) the rights of innocent victims in the target state who are “collateral victims” of its “defensive force.”
Thus Walter has the chutzpah to now criticize groups like the Mises Institute, LewRockwell.com, antiwar.com, the Libertarian Institute, Ron Paul Institute, all of which are more or less explicitly or at least implicitly antiwar, because, he says, no no no, they should not be antiwar but only anti-offensive-war. Hey, Walter, tell you what, you let us be antiwar and antistate if we want to be and keep our antiwar slogans. You can do you. Yes, we can distinguish between offensive and defensive war, but we can oppose both since even the latter involves massive and systematic rights violations. Unlike, you know, when an individual defends himself.
I suggest that when you write people you come clean right away about what you are getting at and just make your assertions if you don’t have any legitimate questions. Don’t disguise your desire to unburthen your opinion on people in the form of a faux-genuine “question” in an attempt to set them up.
I’m antistate, antiwar, and don’t give a damn whether you are Walter or not. I’m used to living in a world with people who condone aggression; a couple more are not gonna give me heartburn.
