No. I’m defining “right to do something” consistently. An armed robber has no right to take my wallet forcibly, because he is not the established monopoly of force; however, the established monopoly does have rights to my wallet, and it effectively demonstrates the rights every April 15th..

Nonsense. You are destroying the meaning of “right to do something“ by conflating it with “monopoly power“. This is hardly any more justified than simply conflating it with “power“.

An act doesn’t become “right” merely because it is done by those possessing monopoly power. The mass slaughters perpetuated by history’s various dictatorships are not “right” just because those who did it held “monopoly power”. Why on earth would you claim such a thing? It’s ridiculous.

The net effect of your approach to concepts is to obliterate any possible distinction between right and wrong. According to your definition — since both are acts of “monopoly power” — the police officer who interrupts an attempted rape, thereby saving the rape victim and apprehending the rapist, has the same moral standing as did Hussein’s thugs who dragged women at random off the streets of Baghdad into the regime’s rape rooms for a night of torture. According to your definitions, both parties had an equal “right” to do what they did. To equate rapists and murderers with those who protect us from rape and murder is a moral obscenity.

And this statement:

So the just man is a thief, and property is theft.

This is more nonsense. This is the logical fallacy of the “stolen concept”. The concept of “theft” only has meaning as a contrast to the antecedent concept of that which is “rightfully owned”, i.e. that which is, properly, “property”. To claim that property itself is theft, is to use one concept — “theft” — to deny the legitimacy of the very concept — “property” — that gives “theft” any meaning, which is, literally, a contradiction in terms.

Your entire epistemological approach destroys the meanings of concepts by obliterating the legitimate distinctions between them. It’s just like the ridiculous nonsense you’ve peddled here before that “capitalism is whatever capitalists do” and “a capitalist is anyone who controls capital”. This means that Stalin — who did indeed “control capital” — qualifies as a capitalist and his acts of mass murder and the looting of millions of individual’s property become acts of “capitalism”.

Defining a concept so that it can mean one thing and can also mean the opposite thing is to give it no specific meaning at all; such a definition renders the concept meaningless and useless. This approach to definitions is errant nonsense that only sows epistemological confusion and destroys the utility of concepts.

And the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the Torah itself. Same idea.

Only government can determine how much liberty a man needs to be free.

It has more guns than everyone else. Might makes rights.

You are conflating the power to do something with the right to do it. Any armed robber has the power to relieve you off your wallet. That doesn’t give him the right to do so.

Why do we have to spell things out for you? I come to the Cafe for education… Why are you here?

Nice.

I asked if the wealth acquired as a result of inherited beauty should be treated the same as wealth acquired as a result of one’s parentage.

Fine then. It shouldn’t be, because it can’t be and because taxing away someone’s beauty offends personal liberty. Entitlement to govern a parcel of land is not simply a matter of personal liberty. A parcel of land I’m entitled to govern is not any part of my person. Conflating the two is nonsense.You might argue in Lockean terms that a peasant’s homestead, the land he directly works himself, ought to be his property and that his sons working the same land ought to inherit the title for the same reason, but we certainly aren’t discussing a peasant’s homestead in Kennedy’s case. For all I know, Kennedy’s trust is full of Treasury securities, pure entitlement to tax revenue. No, I do not believe that people have an inalienable right to pass their heirs a pile of entitlements to tax revenue.Inherited wealth (in the ordinary sense of the term) is not acquired simply as a result of parentage. “Hereditary title” has nothing necessarily to do with genetic relationships. The term refers to a titleholder’s right to choose his successor. Choosing children is only customary. I’ve inherited property from someone unrelated to me myself.

Professor Boudreaux’s argument went as follows:
1)Many people praise Senator Kennedy’s compassion
2)Professor Boudreaux attacks those who say this by citing Kennedy’s tax
returns with Ronald Reagan as evidence to the contrary
3)The claims of these woolly-headed liberals are false

I think you are right. Professor Boudreaux’s attack was not ad hominem. He
used evidence to contradict the funereal oratory. But, it was in poor taste.
Whatever Senator Kennedy’s ethical weaknesses, a respectful silence is a
better response to the effusion of praise that he has received. The praise is
a conventional response to the death of a famous person. Pointing out his
weaknesses is just poor taste.

“In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity . . . [Government must] create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”

“Kennedy’s personal psychodrama mirrored the nation’s. His divisions were our divisions; his struggles, our struggles. Kennedy was us.”

Well, no. While is may be true that the nation has been, as Bork put it, “Slouching toward Gomorrah”, Kennedy’s “personal psychodramm” is quite a different kettle of fish.

Kennedy was not “us.” The statement if meaningless claptrap meant to evoke a connection. Rubbish, pure rubbish. That all people “struggle” is definitional in a world of scarce resources. Did Teddy “struggle”, yes; does everyone else, yes. So what? But “his struggles” were definitely NOT “our struggles”; for example, did anyone else “struggle” to beat the rap at Chappiquiddick?

I wasn’t referring to any comment you made abourt “title expiration”. I was referring to your argument agains inherited wealth in general.

Martin Brock: “Conflating a fashion model’s beauty with a forcible claim of mastery over some parcel of land is your self-deception, not mine.”

I did no such thing, Martin. I asked if the wealth acquired as a result of inherited beauty should be treated the same as wealth acquired as a result of one’s parentage. And you referred to wealth in general, not to a parcel of land, in your original statement.