Tibor, thanks for this message. I concur that best focus for the public good insofar as it concerns government, at least our basic, federal government, would be on protection of the individual rights of US citizens and their descendants. The expanse of activities to that end seems, however, to have an unclear border that is pretty wide and debatable. For property-rights examples, the recognition of corporations and securities as legitimate arrangements, fruitful as they might be, would seem to take some extensive argument getting into the details. Even more controversially, in recent years, there seems to be virtually no proposal of governmental activity that does not get “in the interest of our national security” as part of its rationale. And with our long-standing defense research programs, it seems hard to draw a principled boundary on what should be included. I think, for example, of all the advances in materials science that have been made through military funding. Or the rationale of foreign military involvement that fighting enemies there is better than fighting them here later on. We could use some further bounding principles, though I appreciate that shifting the core rationale of collective defense to strickly defense of the USA, without equivocation, and sticking to the norm of not attacking except in retaliation or in immediate preemption of attack, is a considerable reigning in. But again, thanks for the reflection on the fundamental social situation and the revolutionary orientation towards individual rights. (Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 7/05, 6:02am)
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