This article contains wording that promotes the subject through exaggeration of unnoteworthy facts .(March 2024) |
This article is part of a series on |
Libertarianism in the United States |
---|
The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is the legal or moral rule that states that any person is permitted to do everything with their property except aggression, which is in turn defined as the initiation of forceful action, which is in turn defined as 'the application or threat of' 'physical interference (property breach) or fraud (contract breach)', any of which without consent. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] The principle is also called the non-initiation of force. [7] The principle incorporates universal enforceability. [8]
The non-aggression principle is a central idea in libertarianism, and minarchism and a fundamental principle in voluntaryism, anarcho-capitalism (legitimate force theory) and international law, namely just war theory. [9] [10] [11] [12]
Part of a series on |
Anarcho-capitalism |
---|
The principle has been derived by various philosophical approaches, including:
Negative and positive rights, according to the Rothbard-Berlin definition, are sovereignty claim rights where person A imposes on person B and obligation O, without declarative volition of B. In case obligation O is satisfied by refraining from actions of pure 'physical interference' with A's property, understood by necessary causation of a 'forceful circumstance', it is called a negative right and it is called a positive right otherwise. [19] [20] [21] To every claim right of person A to obligate person B corresponds the obligation on B, so the obligation corresponding to a negative right is called a 'negative obligation' [22] and an obligation corresponding to positive right a 'positive obligation'. [23] Examples of negative rights are natural right to self-ownership and property like land and territorial sovereignty of a government including possibly the right to enforce the law on all inhabitants. Examples of positive claim rights are intellectual property rights and personality rights when these are claimed to hold everywhere instead of only on property. A sale contract to receive a product is not a sovereignty claim right at all. Negative sovereignty claim rights can also be inviolability's against negligence torts on some person or thing. Defamation, free-market competition or refusal to offer a delivery service are not forms of damage that are tortuously necessarily caused by an action of pure 'physical interference'. Bans on these actions are positive obligations and the right to inviolability of these actions are positive rights.
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Both libertarian supporters and opponents of abortion rights justify their position on NAP grounds. One question to determine whether or not abortion is consistent with the NAP is at what stage of development a fertilized human egg cell can be considered a human being with the status and rights attributed to personhood. Some supporters of the NAP argue this occurs at the moment of conception while others argue that since the fetus lacks sentience until a certain stage of development, it does not qualify as a human being and may be considered property of the mother. On the other hand, opponents of abortion state that sentience is not a qualifying factor. They refer to the animal rights discussion and point out the argument from marginal cases that concludes the NAP also applies to non-sentient (i.e. mentally handicapped) humans. [24]
Another question is whether an unwelcome fetus should be considered to be an unauthorized trespasser in its mother's body. [25] The non-aggression principle does not protect trespassers from the owners of the property on which they are trespassing. [26]
Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff has argued that a fetus has no right to life inside the womb because it is not an "independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person". [27] Pro-choice libertarian Murray Rothbard held the same stance, maintaining that abortion is justified at any time during pregnancy if the fetus is no longer welcome inside its mother. [28] Similarly, other pro-choice supporters base their argument on criminal trespass. [29] In that case, they claim that the NAP is not violated when the fetus is forcibly removed, with deadly force if need be, from the mother's body, just as the NAP is not violated when an owner removes from the owner's property an unwanted visitor who is not willing to leave voluntarily. Libertarian theorist Walter Block follows this line of argument with his theory of evictionism, but he makes a distinction between evicting the fetus prematurely so that it dies and actively killing it. On the other hand, the theory of departurism permits only the non-lethal eviction of the trespassing fetus during a normal pregnancy. [30]
Anti-abortion libertarians such as Libertarians for Life argue that because the parents were actively involved in creating a new human life and that life has not consented to their own existence, that life is in the womb by necessity and no parasitism or trespassing in the form of legal necessity is involved. They state that as the parents are responsible for that life's position, the NAP would be violated when that life is killed with abortive techniques. [31]
The NAP is applicable to any unauthorized actions towards a person's physical property. Supporters of the NAP disagree on whether it should apply to intellectual property rights as well as physical property rights. [32] Some argue that because intellectual concepts are non-rivalrous, intellectual property rights are unnecessary [33] while others argue that intellectual property rights are as valid and important as physical ones. [34]
Although the NAP is meant to guarantee an individual's sovereignty, libertarians greatly differ on the conditions under which the NAP applies. Especially unsolicited intervention by others, either to prevent society from being harmed by the individual's actions or to prevent an incompetent individual from being harmed by his own actions or inactions, is an important issue.[ to whom? ] [35] The debate centers on topics such as the age of consent for children, [36] [37] [38] intervention counseling (i.e. for addicted persons, or in case of domestic violence), [39] [40] involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment with regards to mental illness, [41] medical assistance (i.e. prolonged life support vs euthanasia in general and for the senile or comatose in particular), [42] [43] human organ trade, [44] [45] [46] state paternalism (including economic intervention) [47] [48] [49] and foreign intervention by states. [50] [51] Other discussion topics on whether intervention is in line with the NAP include nuclear weapons proliferation, [52] [53] human trafficking and immigration. [54] [55] [56]
Randian author Ronald Merill states that use of force is subjective, saying: "There's no objective basis for controlling the use of force. Your belief that you're using force to protect yourself is just an opinion; what if it is my opinion that you are violating my rights?" [57]
Some libertarians justify the existence of a minimal state on the grounds that anarcho-capitalism implies that the non-aggression principle is optional because the enforcement of laws is open to competition. [58]
Anarcho-capitalists usually respond to this argument that this presumed outcome of what they call "coercive competition" (e.g., private military companies or private defense agencies that enforce local law) is not likely because of the very high cost, in lives and economically, of war. They claim that war drains those involved and leaves non-combatant parties as the most powerful, economically and militarily, ready to take over. [59] [60] [61] Therefore, anarcho-capitalists claim that in practice, and in more advanced societies with large institutions that have a responsibility to protect their vested interests, disputes are most likely to be settled peacefully. [62] [63] Anarcho-capitalists also point out that a state monopoly of law enforcement does not necessarily make NAP present throughout society as corruption and corporatism, as well as lobby group clientelism in democracies, favor only certain people or organizations. Anarcho-capitalists aligned with the Rothbardian philosophy generally contend that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its very nature because, it is argued, governments necessarily use force against those who have not stolen private property, vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud. [62] [64] [65]
Some proponents of the NAP see taxes as a violation of NAP, while critics of the NAP argue that because of the free-rider problem in case security is a public good, enough funds would not be obtainable by voluntary means to protect individuals from aggression of a greater severity. Geolibertarians, who following the classical economists and Georgists adhere to the Lockean labor theory of property, argue that land value taxation is fully compatible with the NAP.
Anarcho-capitalists argue that the protection of individuals against aggression is self-sustaining like any other valuable service, and that it can be supplied without coercion by the free market much more effectively and efficiently than by a government monopoly. [66] Their approach, based on proportionality in justice and damage compensation, argues that full restitution is compatible with both retributivism and a utilitarian degree of deterrence while consistently maintaining NAP in a society. [60] [67] [68] They extend their argument to all public goods and services traditionally funded through taxation, like security offered by dikes. [69]
Supporters of the NAP often appeal to it in order to argue for the immorality of theft, vandalism, sexual assault, assault, and fraud. Compared to nonviolence, the non-aggression principle does not preclude violence used in self-defense or defense of others. [70] Many supporters argue that NAP opposes such policies as victimless crime laws, taxation, and military drafts. NAP is the foundation of libertarian philosophy. [16]
NAP faces two kinds of criticism: the first holds that the principle is immoral, and the second argues that it is impossible to apply consistently in practice; respectively, consequentialist or deontological criticisms, and inconsistency criticisms. Libertarian academic philosophers have noted the implausible results consistently applying the principle yields: for example, Professor Matt Zwolinski notes that, because pollution necessarily violates the NAP by encroaching (even if slightly) on other people's property, consistently applying the NAP would prohibit driving, starting a fire, and other activities necessary to the maintenance of industrial society. [71]
The NAP also faces definitional issues regarding what is understood as forceful interference and property, and under which conditions does it apply. [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] The NAP has been criticized as circular reasoning and a rhetorical obfuscation of the coercive nature of right-libertarian property law enforcement because the principle redefines aggression in their own terms. [79]
Critics argue that the non-aggression principle is not ethical because it opposes the initiation of force even when they would consider the results of such initiation to be morally superior to the alternatives that they have identified. In arguing against the NAP, philosopher Matt Zwolinski has proposed the following scenario: "Suppose that by imposing a very, very small tax on billionaires, I could provide life-saving vaccination for tens of thousands of desperately poor children. Even if we grant that taxation is aggression, and that aggression is generally wrong, is it really so obvious that the relatively minor aggression involved in these examples is wrong, given the tremendous benefit it produces?" [71]
Zwolinski also notes that the NAP is incompatible with any practice that produces any pollution, because pollution encroaches on the property rights of others. Therefore, the NAP prohibits both driving and starting fires. Citing David D. Friedman, Zwolinski notes that the NAP is unable to place a sensible limitation on risk-creating behavior, arguing:
Of course, almost everything we do imposes some risk of harm on innocent persons. We run this risk when we drive on the highway (what if we suffer a heart attack, or become distracted), or when we fly airplanes over populated areas. Most of us think that some of these risks are justifiable, while others are not, and that the difference between them has something to do with the size and likelihood of the risked harm, the importance of the risky activity, and the availability and cost of less risky activities. But considerations like this carry zero weight in the NAP's absolute prohibition on aggression. That principle seems compatible with only two possible rules: either all risks are permissible (because they are not really aggression until they actually result in a harm), or none are (because they are). And neither of these seems sensible. [71]
Some supporters argue that no one initiates force if their only option for self-defense is to use force against a greater number of people as long as they were not responsible for being in the position they are in. Murray Rothbard's and Walter Block's formulations of NAP avoid these objections by either specifying that the NAP applies only to a civilized context (and not "lifeboat situations") or that it applies only to legal rights (as opposed to general morality). Thus a starving man may, in consonance with general morality, break into a hunting cabin and steal food, but nevertheless he is aggressing, i.e., violating the NAP, and (by most rectification theories) should pay compensation. [80] Critics argue that the legal rights approach might allow people who can afford to pay a sufficiently large amount of compensation to get away with murder. They point out that local law may vary from proportional compensation to capital punishment to no compensation at all. [60]
Other critics state that the NAP is unethical because it does not provide for the violent prohibition of, and thereby supposedly legitimizes, several forms of aggression that do not involve intrusion on property rights such as verbalsexual harassment, defamation, boycotting, noninvasivestriking etc. If a victim thus provoked would turn to physical violence, they would be labeled an aggressor according to the NAP. However, supporters of the NAP state that boycotting [81] [82] and defamation [83] [84] both constitute freedoms of speech and that boycotting, [81] [82] noninvasive striking [82] [85] and noninvasive discrimination [86] all constitute freedoms of association and that both freedoms of association and of speech are nonaggressive. Supporters also point out that prohibiting physical retaliation against an action is not itself condonement of said action, [87] and that generally there are other, nonphysical means by which one can combat social ills (e.g., discrimination) that do not violate the NAP. [82] [86] Some supporters also state that while most of the time individuals choose voluntarily to engage in situations that may cause some degree of mental battering, this mental battering begins to constitute unauthorized physical overload of the senses (i.e., eardrum and retina) when it cannot be avoided and that the NAP at that point does apply. [31]
Many supporters consider verbal and written threats of imminent physical violence sufficient justification for a defensive response in a physical manner. [88] [89] Those threats would then constitute a legitimate limit to permissible speech. Because freedom of association entails the right of owners to choose who is permitted to enter or remain on their premises, legitimate property owners may also impose limitation on speech. The owner of a theatre wishing to avoid a stampede may prohibit those on her property from calling 'fire!' without just cause. [90] However, the owner of a bank may not prohibit anyone from urging the general public to a bank run, except insofar as this occurs on the property of said owner. [81]
In a 1948 interview with Donald H. Kirkley for the Library of Congress, H. L. Mencken, a writer who influenced many libertarians, puts an ethical limit on the freedom of speech:
I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I do not think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I have not got a right to press it on anybody else. [...] Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors. [91]
Supporters also consider physical threats of imminent physical violence (e.g. pointing a firearm at innocent people, or stocking up nuclear weapons that cannot be used discriminately against specific individual aggressors) sufficient justification for a defensive response in a physical manner. Those threats would then constitute a legitimate limit to permissible action. [92] [93] [89]
Critics argue it is not possible to uphold NAP when protecting the environment as most pollution can never be traced back to the party that caused it. They therefore claim that only general broad government regulations will be able to protect the environment. Supporters cite the theoretical "tragedy of the commons"[ clarification needed ] and argue that free-market environmentalism will be much more effective in conserving nature. [94] [95] Political theorist Hillel Steiner emphasizes that all things made come from natural resources and that the validity of any rights to those made things depends on the validity of the rights to the natural resources. [96] If land was stolen then anyone buying produce from that land would not be the legitimate owner of the goods. Also, if natural resources cannot be privately owned but are, and always will be, the property of all of mankind then NAP would be violated if such a resource would be used without everybody's consent (see the Lockean proviso and free-market anarchism). [97] Libertarian philosopher Roderick Long suggests that, as natural resources are required not only for the production of goods but for the production of the human body as well, the very concept of self-ownership can only exist if the land itself is privately owned. [98]
Consequentialist libertarian David D. Friedman, who believes that the NAP should be understood as a relative rather than absolute principle, defends his view by using a Sorites argument. Friedman begins by stating what he considers obvious: a neighbor aiming his flashlight at someone's property is not aggression, or if it is, it is only aggression in a trivial technical sense. However, aiming at the same property with a gigawatt laser is certainly aggression by any reasonable definition. Yet both flashlight and laser shine photons onto the property, so there must be some cutoff point of how many photons one is permitted to shine upon a property before it is considered aggression. However, the cutoff point cannot be found by deduction alone because of the Sorites paradox, so the non-aggression principle is necessarily ambiguous. Friedman points out the difficulty of undertaking any activity that poses a certain amount of risk to third parties (e.g., flying) if the permission of thousands of people that might be affected by the activity is required. [99]
Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. Anarcho-capitalist philosophy extends the concept of ownership to include control of private property as part of the self, and, in some cases, control of other people as private property. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society the system of private property would still exist, as it would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police, similar to a state apparatus. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement, particularly its right-wing strands, and was a founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects.
Libertarians have differing opinions on the validity of intellectual property.
The libertarian perspective on immigration is often regarded as one of the core concepts of libertarian theory and philosophy. There is considerable disagreement among libertarians as to what stance towards immigration best accords with libertarian principles. Some hold that restrictions on immigration are an infringement of the rights of immigrants and other property owners and constitute a threat to individual liberty. Others maintain that open borders amount to a policy of forced integration on the part of the state, and that protecting the rights of property holders requires that present governments adopt much more discriminatory policies on who is allowed to enter a country.
Libertarians promote individual liberty and seek to minimize the role of the state. The abortion debate is mainly within right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and social conservatives as left-libertarians generally see it as a settled issue regarding individual rights, as they support legal access to abortion as part of what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body and its functions. Religious right and intellectual conservatives have attacked such libertarians for supporting abortion rights, especially after the demise of the Soviet Union led to a greater divide in the conservative movement between libertarians and social conservatives. Libertarian conservatives claim libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle (NAP) apply to human beings from conception and that the universal right to life applies to fetuses in the womb. Thus, some of those individuals express opposition to legal abortion. According to a 2013 survey, 5.7/10 of American Libertarians oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a German-American academic associated with Austrian School economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, and opposition to democracy. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), senior fellow of the Mises Institute think tank, and the founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society.
The homestead principle is the principle by which one gains ownership of an unowned natural resource by performing an act of original appropriation. Appropriation could be enacted by putting an unowned resource to active use , joining it with previously acquired property, or by marking it as owned.
Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own body, often expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity meaning the exclusive right to control one's own body including one's life, where 'control' means exerting any physical interference and 'exclusive' means having the right to install and enforce a ban on other people doing this. Since the legal norm of property title claim incapacitates other people from claiming property title over the same resource at the same time, the right to control or interfere with one's own body in any arbitrary way is secured. Anarcho-capitalism defines self-ownership as the exclusive right to control one's body as long as the owner does not aggress upon others, leading to the concept of the sovereign individual. In Minarchism the 'exclusive right' is understood by separating the 'liberty-to' from the 'liberty-from' where for each person the 'liberty-to' is restricted by all the 'liberty's-from' of others, effectively subjecting the 'liberty-to' to the ban on the usage of force. Thereafter self-ownership means the exclusive right to control one's body insofar considering action between inhabitants and not involving the state, making it roughly a pacifist morality only among inhabitants. Self-ownership is a central idea in several political philosophies that emphasize individualism, such as libertarianism and liberalism.
Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been, and continues to be, a major influence on the right-libertarian movement, particularly libertarianism in the United States. Many right-libertarians justify their political views using aspects of Objectivism.
In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.
Frank Van Dun is a Belgian philosopher of law and classical liberal natural law theorist. He is associated with the law faculty of the University of Ghent. In 2013 he was awarded the Prize for Liberty by the Flemish classical-liberal think tank Libera!.
Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism, or right-wing libertarianism, is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a type of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to property and income. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, the non-aggression principle, and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.
The Ethics of Liberty is a 1982 book by American philosopher and economist Murray N. Rothbard, in which the author expounds a libertarian political position. Rothbard's argument is based on a form of natural law ethics, and makes a case for anarcho-capitalism.
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto is a book by American economist and historian Murray Rothbard, in which the author promotes anarcho-capitalism. The work has been credited as an influence on modern libertarian thought and on part of the New Right.
A private defense agency (PDA) is a theoretical enterprise which would provide personal protection and military defense services to individuals who would pay for its services. PDAs are advocated in anarcho-capitalism as a way of enforcing the system of private property.
Libertarianism is variously defined by sources as there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how one should use the term as a historical category. Scholars generally agree that libertarianism refers to the group of political philosophies which emphasize freedom, individual liberty and voluntary association. Libertarians generally advocate a society with little or no government power.
Natural-rights libertarianism is the theory that all individuals possess certain natural or moral rights, mainly a right of individual sovereignty and that therefore acts of initiation of force and fraud are rights-violations and that is sufficient reason to oppose those acts. This is one of the two ethical view points within right-libertarianism, the other being consequentialist libertarianism which only takes into account the consequences of actions and rules when judging them and holds that free markets and strong private property rights have good consequences.
The position that taxation is theft, and therefore immoral, is found in a number of political philosophies. Its popularization marks a significant departure from conservatism and classical liberalism, and has been considered radical by many as a result. The position is often held by anarcho-capitalists, objectivists, most minarchists, anarchists, right-wing libertarians, and voluntaryists.
The title-transfer theory of contract (TTToC) is a legal interpretation of contracts developed by economist Murray Rothbard and jurist Williamson Evers. The theory interprets all contractual obligations in terms of property rights, viewing a contract as a bundle of title transfers. According to Randy Barnett, the TTToC stands in opposition to most mainstream contract theories which view contractual obligations as the result of a binding promise. Proponents of the approach often claim it is superior on grounds of both consistency and ethical considerations. The TTToC is often supported by libertarians.
Evictionism is a moral theory advanced by Walter Block and Roy Whitehead on a proposed libertarian view of abortion based on property rights. This theory is built upon the earlier work of philosopher Murray Rothbard who wrote that "no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person's body" and that therefore the woman is entitled to eject the baby from her body at any time. Evictionists view a woman's womb as her property and an unwanted fetus as a "trespasser or parasite", even while lacking the will to act. They argue that a pregnant woman has the right to evict a fetus from her body since she has no obligation to care for a trespasser. The authors' hope is that bystanders will "homestead" the right to care for evicted babies and reduce the number of human deaths. They argue that life begins at conception and state that the act of abortion must be conceptually separated into the acts of:
The nonaggression axiom is an ethical principle often appealed to as a basis for libertarian rights theory. The principle forbids "aggression," which is understood to be any and all forcible interference with any individual's person or property except in response to the initiation (including, for most proponents of the principle, the threatening of initiation) of similar forcible interference on the part of that individual.
It is only the lethal (or otherwise debilitating) eviction of a fetus during a normal pregnancy that departurism views as discordant with gentleness and, thus, a violation of the NAP.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)This progression of ideas must be at least temporarily embarrassed by the obvious fact that the holders of large amounts of property have great power to dictate the terms upon which others work for them and thus in effect the power to "force" others to be resources for them. I place quotation marks around the word "force" since much hinges on whether this power should count as force in the sense used above in the first principle of libertarianism.
"Right" has cogently and trenchantly been defined by Professor Sadowsky:Cf., pp. 25, 77, 79, 98 (note 2), 100–101, 107, 121, 124 (note 2), 127, 131–133, 136, 138, 142, 146, 151–153, 173–174, 220, 222.When we say that one has the right to do certain things we mean this and only this, that it would be immoral for another, alone or in combination, to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof. We do not mean that any use a man makes of his property within the limits set forth is necessarily a moral use?Sadowsky's definition highlights the crucial distinction we shall make throughout this work between a man's right and the morality or immorality of his exercise of that right. We will contend that it is a man's right to do whatever he wishes with his person; it is his right not to be molested or interfered with by violence from exercising that right. But what may be the moral or immoral ways of exercising that right is a question of personal ethics rather than of political philosophy—which is concerned solely with matters of right, and of the proper or improper exercise of physical violence in human relations. The importance of this crucial distinction cannot be overemphasized. Or, as Elisha Hurlbut concisely put it: "The exercise of a faculty by an individual is its only use. The manner of its exercise is one thing; that involves a question of morals. The right to its exercise is another thing."