By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources, (www.originalsources.com)
July 27, 1999
A voter asked Libertarian Candidate for President, Harry Browne a very good question relating to President Clinton and NATO's decision to bomb Kosovo, putting the question in basic, personal terms: "Can a person's house remain safe if he sits idly by, watching out of his window, as thugs ransack his neighbor's house without actually stepping onto one's own property-or should he go to the rescue of his friend and neighbor in an attempt to ward off such aggressive behavior? Isn't it just idle talk to say you value freedom, but are unwilling to help your neighbor defend his?"
Browne responded to the questions, using Libertarian principles, as follows:
"It is easy to say that one should help his neighbor-just as it is easy to say that one doesn't want children addicted to cocaine, or toddlers playing with guns, or poor families going without food. However, it isn't so easy to know the best way to achieve those goals- or to what extent one should feel obligated to-or whether one person has the right to decide these things for others."I would never deny you the right to try to do what you think best in any of these situations. But, just as you want to decide these things for yourself, so do I. Thus I can't cede to you-or to the President of the United States-the power to decide for me what is right and wrong in Kosovo, and what I must be forced to do to set right whatever is wrong. If you support the idea that the President of the U.S. should have the freedom to commit my life and earnings to a battle he has decided is right, you have taken from me the right to control my own life. You may, in this instance, agree with his decision. But realize that, when some future President makes a decision you totally disagree_ with, you will be just as committed to support it. By giving the President the power to make such decisions today, you are giving some future President the power to do whatever he wants. Are you prepared for that?
"When deciding whether 'you' want to help, there is no infallible standard or principle that can tell you how much provocation is enough to warrant your interference in someone else's life. Should you risk your life to save your neighbor's property? Should you risk even injury if you know your neighbor doesn't bother to lock his doors? Should you take the risk even if the thugs might respond to your intervention by retaliating against you and your family? Should you try to find out first whether your neighbor knows what is happening and has his own reasons for not protecting his property?
"These may seem like piddling considerations compared to the apparent black-and-white image of the good and evil in Kosovo. But the truth is that we don't know all that's going on there. We know mostly only what the President and NATO deign to tell us. And whenever we get reports from independent journalists on the scene, the reports seem to contradict the official accusations. How do you decide when to intervene in someone else's business? You do so by trying to identify the probable consequences to you of each potential course of action. Then you consider more closely those acts that should lead to consequences you believe are tolerable, while eliminating from consideration those acts that could lead to consequences you consider intolerable. There is no infallible guide, but in an uncertain world you do the best you can based on the consequences you perceive to flow from various alternatives.
"If you make a mistake, you'll pay for it. The question isn't whether you have a right to take that risk. Obviously you do. The question is: do you have the right to make a mistake that others will pay for? I don't believe so. Thus our government has no business in any foreign adventure that we might pay for-through our taxes, through the loss of our children in battle, or through terrorist retaliations. That is why the Constitution demands that our government go to war only after Congress has carefully deliberated over all the possibilities, and that is why common sense demands that our government go to war only when our own borders are attacked."
One of my readers, Andrew Neyhart, forwarded Harry Browne's comments on Kosovo to me and asked me for my opinion of Browne's anlaysis. I responded saying, in effect, that Harry Browne's statements "are very well thought out" and that while two principles I agree with him on seem to me to be the basis of his decision, he is ignoring a third principle that I believe has to the basis of a free society.
I agree that:
1. Mankind has free agency. However, does that also allow any man or group to have the right to deprive others of THEIR right to determine their own fate? Our Constitution is based on the notion that there are certain unalienable rights and the "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." At issue here in the analogy given Harry Browne is simply: What is the neighbor's responsibility if "thugs ransack his neighbor's house without actually stepping onto one's own property? Should he go to the rescue of his friend and neighbor in an attempt to ward off such aggressive behavior? Isn't it just idle talk to say you value freedom, but are unwilling to help your neighbor defend his?"
In this analogy, the thugs are depriving the neighbor of his right to property. What should you do? Well, since government is instituted among us to SECURE the neighbor's rights, and each of us has the unalienable right to our property and our lives, obviously in America we have individually shared our own unalienable right to self-protection with the government with the notion that it will protect us when the thugs arrive. What should the we do when a neighbor is being attacked? We should call the police who should come and apprehend the thugs. It is not our responsibility to risk our lives to singlehandedly save our neighbor's property. Government has been instituted in the community to secure our right to property. We most certainly DO have the responsibility to call the police to protect our neighbor's property.
If the thugs are threatening the life of the neighbor, there is another law - a moral law that may come into play. If we truly love our neighbor, we might want to risk our own life to protect that of our neighbor. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) Giving one's life to save the life of another is, indeed, a gift of love, not of politics.
If we take that analogy to Kosovo, the first thing one needs to determine is: who is the thug, who is the "neighbor" whose home is being ransacked? Who was the legitimate "owner" of Kosovo? Yugoslavia, obviously. Even the G8 agreement recognizes the sovereignty of Belgrade over Kosovo. Who are the "thugs"? If we go back into what into what now is considered ancient history, the year 1998, we find that a group of "thugs" were using armed force to take control of Kosovo - and killed the representatives of the government which had been instituted in the community to protect property and lives. A total of 300 policemen and Yugoslav soldiers were killed in 1998 while attempting to stop the thugs from taking over the property.
Now, at this point, someone is supposed to call the police. On the international level, in the past, that was the United Nations. But, Bill Clinton didn't want to call the United Nations. He called NATO. And then he called the media and identified the thugs as the Serbs and the mistreated neighbor as the Albanians who had killed the police and Yugoslavian soldiers. As Harry Browne observed: "But the truth is that we don't know all that's going on there. We know mostly only what the President and NATO deign to tell us. And whenever we get reports from independent journalists on the scene, the reports seem to contradict the official accusations."
Now, let us assume, on a neighborhood level, that the neighbor rushes over to stop the "thugs" from ransacking the house and when he does they say: "Actually, this is MY property. This man stole it from me and I am just taking it back. In fact, some of this belonged to my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather and I'm merely reclaiming it. I want you to help me kill this man so I can have this property."
Now what does the neighbor do? In real life he'd say, "Tell it to the Court." That's not what Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and NATO did. They rushed in to assist the thugs who were doing the ransacking and sought to kill the neighbor whose household was being ransacked.
What is the government with which the people of Yugoslavia shared their right to self-defense? It was not NATO. It was the Milosevic government. Yugoslavia didn't ask NATO for help in putting down the insurgents. In fact, the insurgents got help from NATO to put down the government.
So what do we have now in Kosovo? We have total anarchy. We have an influx of a group of barbarians into a nation - Albanians moving out of Albania into the Yugoslav province of Kosovo to take it out of the hands of the Yugoslavians and use it as a base for their criminal activities - drug running, prostitution, etc. And, inasmuch as the barbarians now are in the majority, we have moved to support democracy, not representative government. We as a nation have concluded that the barbarians should be able to take the property, since they appear to be the majority now, and we are helping them take it, with the apparent notion that we will share in the spoils by being able to make use of what we find in Kosovo.
Where I differ from Harry Browne involves the law. He did not mention the constitutional provision that "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" to "secure the rights" of ALL people. Generally the majority does not NEED the protection of law. It can take what it wants. Law is needed for the protection of the minority - in the case of Kosovo that would be the Serbs, the Gypsies, the Montegegrins, etc. When thugs move in - whether into a house or a province - the government instituted among the people SHOULD protect the householder. In fact, the US Constitution states that the purpose of government is to secure the God-given rights of the people.
The lawfully constituted government of Kosovo was the government of Yugoslavia. Whether or not other people in other nations like that government or not, it WAS the legal government of Kosovo. When 90 Serbian villages were ethnically cleansed during 1998 in Kosovo - what did the nearby NATO "neighbors" do? If you go back to using the original analogy, when those 90 villages were ethnically cleansed by terrorists, the concerned NATO neighbor might have asked the householder, the Government of Yugoslavia, if it needed some assistance. That didn't happen. What did happen in 1998 was the "neighbor," i.e. NATO, demanded that the "householder," Yugoslavia, withdraw all police and military forces and allow the thugs to do as they pleased.
When the "householder" (Yugoslavia) decided to go back in to protect his property, the "NATO neighbor" showed up to assist the "thugs" by bombing the "householder." The "neighbor" might have called the international police - the United Nations - to determine the law in the matter. Instead, it circumvented International law and moved in to assist the "thugs." In this situation, of course, NATO is a bigger and stronger force than the United nations and there is no power around big enough to force NATO to abide by the law. And, so we have what we have in Kosovo - rampant killing and destruction of property and apparent anarchy as the NATO powered "legal authority" permits Kosovo to be overrun by armed Albanian terrorists and bandits.
As Harry Browne points out - decisions have been made based on "what the President and NATO deign to tell us. And whenever we get reports from independent journalists on the scene, the reports seem to contradict the official accusations." How can the public, in whose hands lay the true "inalienable right" to property and self-protection make righteous decisions when the information they are given is wrong? Can we reasonably expect the people to make correct decisions when they have been lied to and when they themsleves are not suffering from what is happening?
Evidently not.
When large, powerful nations like the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy get together to flaunt international law - and the people make no protest against it - what we end up with is anarchy - which country by country seems to be disintegrating to.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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