| | What in the hell is "metaphysical" survival? Assuming that this simply means normal survival, the argument Glenn summarizes is clearly bogus. Let's examine the premises to see why.
Premise 1: When your metaphysical survival is threatened, property rights are no longer protected. (Peikoff gives the usual example of a person violating someone's property rights in order to survive.)
The mosque would not be a direct threat to our survival, unless you can show that the clerics who would preside over it are radical Islamists who would use it to mount further attacks. But in that case, stopping it is a simple matter of retaliatory force, which is always justified. There is no need to invoke emergency ethics.
Premise 2: Allowing the building of a mosque near ground zero would be seen as capitulation and would send a message that we are weak to the Islamic fundamentalists, thereby threatening our metaphysical survival.
This premise could justify virtually anything. Suppose that our failure to murder the innocent children of devout Muslims would send a message to Islamic fundamentalists that we are weak. Are we then justified in murdering the children?
Conclusion: The property rights of those who want to build the mosque are not protected in this case. (I think Peikoff was assuming that it's a private property issue, even though, I believe, the property is publicly held.)
Apparently he didn't even bother to check whose property it was; otherwise, he would have seen that it was publicly owned.
(Edited by William Dwyer on 8/02, 1:16am)
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"permission [to build a mosque near Ground Zero] should be refused, and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity."
