From: T
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2019 12:09 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: No Room on Earth for This Poor Guy

Hi Walter,

I really enjoy your back and forth with folks about Libertarianism. This latest one about spacemen and truly bad people being executed because no one on Earth would want them on their property was very entertaining.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/no-room-on-earth-for-this-poor-guy/

But I think you and AL are dancing around the biggest Libertarian issue out there regarding some poor guy or gal with no room on Earth for them.

The non aggression principle is the bedrock of Libertarianism and yet, is it not true, that when Libertarians have children they are breaking the non aggression principle. Those fetuses didn’t asked to be conceived. (I mean, I don’t remember that conversation before I was conceived, do you?)

Are we not creating humans, through conception, that the world will hurt? I don’t know of anyone, even Shirley Temple Black, who had a “Wonderful Life”.

Walter, you are the smartest Libertarian I kinda know. How do you explain how the conceiving of a human is not against the NAP?

As for myself, I have a boy and a girl (both now in their forties) that my ex-wife says (I asked her right before her death),  I conceived (Mother’s baby, Father’s maybe), and the results have been mixed. (And no I’m not talking DNA tests here. I’m talking character traits etc..)

A friend of mine once told me, “Children are a lot of bother for an uncertain result.”

But back to the basic question:

“Is conceiving a child against the NAP?”

All the best, T

PS: I went up to the xyz Bar & Grill on Monday night to get some take out food and have a beer, and what did I see at the bar? 20 New Orleans Saints football fans all wearing NO Saints football jerseys having a helluva time watching the Monday Night Football Game on the TVs! Damned odd. You New Orleaners are everywhere! Tim

Dear T:

Thanks for your kind words about me. I’ll try to live up to them.

Excellent question/challenge. I can’t see my way clear to agreeing with your creative, insightful, entertaining point that birth might violate the NAP, since the baby never gave permission for any such thing. But, for a rights violation to occur, there must be a victim. At the time of sexual intercourse, there was not yet any third party to be victimized.

By extrapolation, instead of thinking that all births violate rights, what about a woman voluntarily getting pregnant while addicted to heroin. The resultant baby will lead a “nasty, short and brutish” life, and such a mother ought to be heavily condemned. But, did she violate any right that a libertarian must respect? Again, I can’t acquiesce in the notion that she has. Again, at the time of intercourse, there was no baby in existence who’s rights could have been violated. If she hasn’t violated rights, then, for sure, no other pregnant woman has, either.

But, thanks for this question/challenge. There was nothing ordinary or run of the mill about it.

Geaux, Saints!!!!!

The Best of Walter E. Block