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I've "met" some really smart people on Ye Old Facebook (I still have my language set to English:Pirate, that never gets old!) One of them is a guy who calls himself a Thomist, I guess after Thomas Aquinas, and he's asked me to establish my "First Principles," as a means to begin a conversation about ethics. This has arisen from a number of brief and pithy exchanges in the comment section under our Facebook status updates, where people often post links to articles along with their outrage or approval over this or that development in society, and as often as not, the subject is our nation's wise and munificent ruling elite. Naurally, I'm inclined to respond to their Machiavellian machinations with disapprobation and scorn. This guy, Dave, tends to be a lot more amenable to the diktats of the ruling classes, especially when they dovetail with his conservative, religious point of view. Anyway, I took enough time formulating my response to his request that I thought it deserved wider reading, by all 2 or 3 people who might eventually see this blog. To that end, here it is:

First principles? Well, I believe in a radical notion of equality, in the sense that no man is superior to any other (or woman) in terms of authority. So, there can be no legitimate franchise on the use of force to impose one's will on the whole of society, any more than there can be a legitimate use of force to impose your will directly on your neighbor. Scaling up a crime like armed robbery to the level of a town, state or national government does not change it's fundamental criminality, even if you call it "taxation." That a majority of people with those political jurisdictions approve is no justification, since the common turn of the century rural southern practice of lynching was an expression of popular will which would have been overwhelmingly approved had the matter been put to a vote, yet we realize that is violation of the victim's right to life.

So, my first principles are that all humans are equally important as moral agents, and they are responsible for their own actions, all the time, and that the initiation of force is always immoral, force is only justified in defense of one's self or others against whom force has been initiated. And while I believe that the right to life necessarily precedes the right to property, that strong property rights are a necessary and logical corollary to that right to life, though i balk at calling it "self-ownership," because I think the term is awkward and inapt. Selves do the owning, they cannot simultaneously be owned. But the notion bears some useful fruit, nonetheless.

My approach to rights is that they are very useful concepts, and that they are necessary, in some form or another, for any society to function, and that there is an ideal set of them for maximum liberty and economic productivity. Those societies that place higher value on other concepts, like order, or piety or aesthetics, might choose a different slate of rights, which is fine with me, so long as membership is voluntary and one can opt-out if they find the arrangement unsatisfactory.

I prefer the libertarian ethic of self-governance and individual autonomy coupled with the non-aggression principle. Essentially, you may do whatever you like so long as it occurs on your property or property you have permission to use (or where no one has a claim), imposes no real, physical or financial burdens on me, and that it does not involve the initiation of force or fraud. Taking that concept to its logical conclusion, I take a strictly voluntarist position that rejects any authority beyond the individual, but I do see value in communities that share the same basic principles, in recognition of the fact that rights are only reified in the context of human interaction. This reality requires that one find a community of people who will respect and reciprocate the same set of rights they wish to exercise. Or, it would in a truly free society. As it is, these things are decided for us and imposed by force by a government far away.

I don't know if the diatribe above is what you were after, but I hope you can glean from it what you sought to know about my position on ethics. If there's anything you need clarified, please do ask me, I'll do my best to be more concise, but you can plainly see that brevity is not my forté.