@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:But like Cyclop and TKO you want to change the question to one that is easier to answer, and that I am not willing to do...
The question as asked is a hard question but it goes to the heart of the core of Conservative principle. What moral principle exists that could authorize the government to confiscate legally acquired private property from one citizen and give it to another? (This presumes that it is not voluntary on the part of the one who is having his property confiscated.)
There are (so far as I can tell) no moral principles which are absolute. All (like 'do not kill') are subject to negotiation with other moral principles which may conflict (moral obligation to defend your country/family etc). To take the
easy way out is to assume an absolute. Which you are doing.
Take your phrase above..."legally acquired private property". Slavery was, of course, legal not long ago and slaves were 'legally acquired private property'. Under your moral absolute, there is no moral principle "which could authorize" the state to take them from their "owner". In 18th century France, a member of the upper classes could, legally, take harvested provisions from those who worked the land possessed by that upper class member, regardless of other considerations such as local starvation or wealth/waste on the part of the aristocrat who took those provisions. There are a near infinite number of examples one might forward here to demonstrate how your moral principle (a valid moral principle) cannot be held as absolute.
I disagree that there are no moral principles that are absolute. I do agree that the absolute moral principle involved may not be obvious within a larger picture.
Slavery is a separate issue. There is no moral justification for one person owning another EXCEPT in the case of the slave being subjected to an even worse fate should he be set free. The moral choice might of necessity be to retain the slave to protect him from harm and that choice becomes easy if the slave acknowledges the situation and willingly consents to it. It is more difficult to justify if the slave prefers to take the risk of whatever perils are out there for him than rather than remain a slave.
Nor do we utilize a medieval fuedal system which was just another form of slavery.
Our founders, after much soul searching, prayer, and intense debate, essentially agreed on basic principles of what civil, legal, and Constitutional rights should be to ensure the rights of the people that they deemed unalienable. One of those unalienable rights was the Lockean principle that “Property is a natural right and it is derived from labor. . . .Property precedes government and government cannot dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily."
So what is legal is not the issue here. The focus of this discussion is what moral principle dictates what will be legal.
Through the people's elected representatives, taxation was necessary to fund the government's Constitutionally mandated role. In addition to what laws and regulations were necessary to protect the rights of the people, government taxes were to fund the defense/protection of the people and what infrastructure and policies and services would be shared by all. The common welfare was understood to apply to all citizens equally, rich and poor alike, and without respect to individual persons or property that were inviolable.
So that brings us back to the original question here. What moral principle justifies the government taking property from Citizen A who lawfully and ethically earned/acquired it, and give that property to Citizen B?
(You will note that this is a much different question that what moral principle justifies the government taking property from Citizen A and Citizen B for purposes that equally benefit Citizen A and Citizen B.)
