Letter in Liberty, November 1992, p. 6

The State of the State Misstated (as published--heavily redacted/rewritten)

I suspect J. Neil Schulman ("If Execution Is Just, What Is Justice?" September 1992) started from a desired conclusion and worked backward to come up with an argument to support it.

He repeats the tired claim that since "the state is no more than a group of individuals acting for a common purpose," there can be no principled reason why states can be permitted to engage in behavior denied to individuals. But his only argument to this effect is: "It is hard to imagine how the sum total of what the state may do adds up to more than the sum of the rights of the individuals comprising that group."

Failure of imagination rarely makes a good argument, and this is no exception. The obvious response for a defender of the state is that certain social institutions have emergent properties which the individuals making up that institution lack. No individual can lift 10,000 pounds without mechanical assistance, but a group of individuals can. Individual atoms of hydrogen and oxygen lack the property of wetness, but combine them in particular ways at certain temperatures and pressures and they make water.

Schulman goes on to state that "Logic dictates that if it is morally justifiable for the state to kill in just retribution, then it must likewise be morally justifiable for other individuals or groups to do as well--the Mafia, the Crips, and the Bloods included." This assumes that one group is like any other. Here, the defender of the state will simply point out that just as three hydrogen atoms or three oxygen atoms won't give you water, it takes more than sheer numbers to give you the right to kill in retribution (or to punish at all). Some guarantee of just and fair administration, for example, might be the something more.

The burden of proof that the state does have emergent properties lies, of course, with the defender of the state, but Schulman's argument does not establish, as it purports to, that "logic dictates the impossibility of any such proof." One strong argument that states can have an emergent right to punish may be found in chapter 3 of Yale philosopher (and libertarian) David Schmitz's 1991 book, The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument.

There are many good arguments against capital punishment, but Schulman's isn't one of them.

Jim Lippard
Tucson, Ariz.

Letter as written (August 23, 1992)

I was decidedly unimpressed with the arguments given in a couple of articles in the September issue. Each appeared to have started from the desired conclusion and then worked backward to come up with any premises, no matter how weak, to support that conclusion.

Robert H. Nelson argues that government-owned wilderness areas should be privatized. There are plenty of good reasons for this conclusion, but Nelson seems to think that because (some forms of) environmentalism have religious roots, the Constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state precludes government ownership of wilderness. This is the same erroneous reasoning that leads fundamentalists to conclude that evolution should not be taught in public schools, a form of guilt-by-association. Since, fundamentalists argue, evolution is a tenet of the "religion" of secular humanism, evolution is therefore inherently religious. Just because the preservation of wilderness areas may be a tenet of an environmentalist "religion" does not mean that the preservation of wilderness is inherently religious. By this argument, one could argue that anything is inherently religious, and the adjective loses its meaning.

J. Neil Schulman argues against capital punishment. While there are many good arguments to this conclusion (Stephen Nathanson's An Eye for an Eye? The Morality of Punishing by Death, 1987, Rowman & Littlefield, is a good collection of them), Schulman's argument doesn't appear to be one of them. He repeats the tired claim that since "the state is no more than a group of individuals acting for a common purpose," there can be no principled reason why states can be permitted to engage in behavior denied to individuals. But his only argument to this effect is to state that "It is hard to imagine how the sum total of what the state may do adds up to more than the sum of the rights of the individuals comprising that group." Failure of imagination rarely makes a good argument, and this is no exception. The obvious response for a defender of the state is that certain social institutions have emergent properties which the individuals making up that institution lack. No individual can lift 10,000 pounds without mechanical assistance, but a group of individuals can. Individual atoms of hydrogen and oxygen lack the property of wetness, but combine them in particular ways at certain temperatures and pressures and they make water.

Schulman goes on to state that "Logic dictates that if it is morally justifiable for the state to kill in just retribution, then it must likewise be morally justifiable for other individuals or groups to do as well--the Mafia, the Crips, and the Bloods included." This assumes that one group is like any other. Here, the defender of the state will simply point out that just as three hydrogen atoms or three oxygen atoms won't give you water, it takes more than sheer numbers to give you the right to kill in retribution (or to punish at all). Some guarantee of just and fair administration, for example, might be the "something more."

The burden of proof that the state does have emergent properties lies, of course, with the defender of the state. I am not denying this, but only pointing out that Schulman's argument does not establish, as it purports to, that "logic" dictates the impossibility of any such proof. In fact, one strong argument that states can have an emergent right to punish may be found in chapter 3 of Yale philosopher (and libertarian) David Schmitz's book, The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument (1991, Westview Press).