Hi everybody,

Since I'm looking at a fair amount of travel over the next few weeks, I
thought I should at least briefly respond to Dreamer's post now.  While
some of Dreamer's points are well taken, the overall spirit of the email
leaves me at a bit of a loss in terms of how to respond.  It seems to me
that unless you're a total philosophical anarchist, most of the comments
below simply don't make much sense (at least to me they don't).

Two preliminary points:

(1) I could care less whether we employ the FBI definition of "terrorism"
or not; I'm not especially wedded to the FBI for the substance of my
worldview--and if you want to offer an alternative definition, that's fine.
I *don't* see, however, that you do that in your remarks below.  I said it
"worked for me" because I was only willing to do about thirty seconds of
web-based research to get it.  While I appreciate that there are conceptual
issues involving such a normatively loaded term as "terrorism," I don't
think the best way to address them is through the tendentious citing of
slavery, naziism, or whatever, as counterexamples.  Ted Honderich uses the
phrase "political violence"--that works for me too.  He defines it as "a
considerable or destroying use of force against persons or things, a use of
force prohibited by law, directed to a change in the policies, personnel or
system of government, and hence also directed to changes in the existence
of individuals in the society and perhaps other societies"  [Violence for
Equality, Routledge 1989, p 8]. You could cover everything up to full blown
civil war with that definition.

(2) With regard to the specific example of the Vail fires:  I don't see how
one can seriously label the arson as an act of ecological "restoration":

>Tantillo: >Well, you've got to admit that twelve million dollars worth of
>arson damage>is pretty significant.
>
>Dreamer: Was it damage?  Or restoration?

The Vail fires did little to restore nature.  The restaurant, etc. will
likely be rebuilt.  What I haven't seen anybody address here yet is the
*very important* issue that Steve Bissell alluded to, and that's the issue
of using environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act as a club with
which to stop development.  That environmentalists *DO* misuse the ESA in
this way is one of the reasons there is such growing opposition to the ESA
in this country.  Many people suspect (rightly, in my opionion) that what
motivates environmentalists in ESA controversies is not so much a sincere
and altruistic concern with endangered species as it is a general
misanthropic stance against development in general.

Other comments in passing:

>Dreamer: In my view, the employment of a police force or an FBI similarly
>embodies a lack of confidence in one's intellectual position.  If such
>coercive mechanisms did not exist to prop up powerful private interests, I
>do not believe people would be as complacent as they are in the face of
>clearly unethical environmental practices.

I guess I just don't know what to do with this.

>
>Dreamer: I am less bothered by an activist destroying private property for
>what he/she believes in than by a corporation destroying our common natural
>heritage for a buck.  I think there comes a time when such action is
>necessary, and that each of us must judge for ourselves when that time has
>arrived.  As for the self-righteous destruction of others' lives, isn't that
>what occurs when an environmental activist is sentenced to prison?  And
>isn't something amiss when someone goes to prison for working to protect our
>common heritage, while others go rewarded by the power structure for the
>short-sighted exploitation of that heritage?

While I could make the same comment as above (i.e. "I guess I just don't
know what to do with this"), let me add that thinkers going back to Plato
say that while there is a duty to oppose unjust laws, there is also
(roughly) a corresponding _prima facie_ obligation to uphold the laws, *in
general*.  Plato has Socrates explain in the Crito and in the Apology that
"if you do the crime, you do the time."  And this is what nearly all
thinkers since then who have addressed the notion of a higher law have
agreed upon.  "Render unto Caesar. . . " etc. etc. You must still respect
the overall laws of society even while rebelling against the ones that are
perceived as unjust.

Now while it is true that in the last twenty or thirty years, there's been
a general lack of consensus within philosophy about *where* the source of
prima facie political obligation lies, there is still a pragmatic consensus
(generally speaking) that the notion makes sense, except in truly anarchist
political theories.  Whether you ground obligation in consent theories,
contract approaches, notions of fairness (e.g. Rawls), whatever, there is
still a prima facie duty to obey the law.  This duty is not absolute, but
disobedience needs to be justified.  And "civil" disobedience is *civil*,
ie. non-violent.  And that's pretty much by definition. . . .  I'm not sure
the Vail fires count as civil disobedience.


>Dreamer: Then it also betrays the weakness of the cause of the private
>property owners.  The entire system of private property on which they rely
>is based on "legitimized" theft, conquest, and implied and explicit violence
>and coercion.  No one seriously pretends that it is based on principles of
>justice.

I don't know what to do with this.


>Dreamer:  Does is entirely justify it? No.  Does it explain it?  At least in
>part.  But let's expand the analogy a bit.  When a "gang" of rich people
>hire thugs do maintain fear and assist them in exploiting other humans and
>the earth, are they any better than the members of the less affluent "gang?"
>  Does it become okay if they place badges on their thugs?  If they draft
>rules saying that what they do is the law?   At what point is organized
>crime organized enough that it can call itself a government, and call any
>disobedience to its dictates "crime" or "terrorism?"
>     I'm not sure you can consistently maintain any principled environmental
>ethics and still defend the prerogatives of traditional private property in
>the way you've attempted to do in this thread.

And I especially don't know what to do with this.  If you are seriously
advocating some sort of alternative to "traditional private property" with
these remarks, then I would certainly enjoy hearing what you have to say.
But I don't see how "principled environmental ethics" and "traditional
private property" are necessarily mutually exclusive, as you *seem* to
imply in your last statement here.

As an aside, Forrest Wood Jr. has a great line in response to those
environmentalists who would so often and so cavalierly tell others what to
do with their land:  "Buy some."  Buy some land and take care of it.  Pay
taxes on it.  Work to restore it and/or make it suitable for as wide a
range of plant and animal life as it will support.  But it's very easy for
<<IRONY MODE ON>>  socially parasitic environmental activists  <<IRONY MODE
OFF>> to tell others what to do with their lives. . .  and with their
property.


>>
>Tantillo: I think the only thing your
>>under-educated American public learns from these activities is that animal
>>rights activists and environmental activists should be lumped under the
>>same category: "extremists."
>
>Dreamer:  Like the participants in the Boston Tea Party?  The public
>eventually came around . . .

<<I.M. ON>> Now this is a very fine touch. <<IRONY MODE OFF>>


>
>Tantillo:  What principle of liberal democracy would *that* fall under?
>
>Dreamer:  Self-defense.  And the preservation of humankind and the remainder
>of creation.  Locke, on whom the founders of the U.S. emphatically relied
>stated that preservation of the human species is the basis for all natural
>rights and other rules of natural law.  It is the "primary and fundamental
>law which is the standard and measure of all the other laws depending on
>it."

This is great:  in a post condemning political obligation and private
property, we turn to Locke for our ultimate grounding in natural law.

>
>Dreamer:  There are some huge generalizations embedded here.  Our political
>obligations in WHAT KIND OF society?  Most political philosophers who have
>examined this question conclude that the duty of obedience is closely tied
>to equality of opportunity to affect the policy of the society.  That does
>not exist in the United States, and only a white male in a position of
>privilege could even pretend to himself that it does.

. . . and this is just plain offensive.

Jim Tantillo




 >In any event, on what
>grounds would such political obligations "trump" environmental obligations
>or obligations to future generations?
>
>Peace and love,  Dreamer.
>>


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