If we can simplify. You own your house, just as the US citizens own this country. If someone barges into your house, ignoring your rules, and squats on your property, there is NO rule anywhere that says you can't throw them out on their ear. And you can use whatever level of force is necessary to accomplish that objective. The same applies to the US.

Indeed!

No one here has rejected the Ayn Rand statement you quoted, only the strained reinterpretation of it to mean the opposite rationalized by dropping context and previous explanation.

Property rights are first established on owned land, not by claiming to make land more productive than a previous owner from whom it is seized.

Ayn Rand was not defending your views in the VOS, which cannot be presumed as "the point" of what you had in mind in introducing the thread while leaving it ambiguous. She did not say that "nations" have some rights. She said that all rights are individual and government officials do not act by right in their capacity as government officials. Her essay "Collectivized rights" opposed the notion of collective rights. The "rights of a nation", in contrast to collectivized rights, as she used it there means the rights of the individuals in it, who delegate, not surrender, specific rights to a proper government to act to protect their rights.

You cannot understand Objectivism by selecting out of context quotes from The Ayn Rand Lexicon without a systematic, integrated understanding of previous explanations, paragraphs or even the same paragraph. When she used the phrase "Such a nation has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other nations" she based it on what she meant by those terms and had just explained. She could not repeat every explanation in every sentence. Governments do not have rights.

A "free association" territory on this planet is a fantasy, unless you create a floating city state outside of territorial waters that can be defended. All of the land mass is already under the jurisdiction of collectivist states. I define any group of like-minded individuals who would make up such a state as a collective assembly. Objectivists too easily fall into the unachievable concept of Anarchy if they try to pretend that as if by magic a significant assembly of individuals will somehow have a universally identical understanding of , and willingly follow Objectivist principles without constraint. I see many highly intelligent people in this forum who can't agree on all the facets of Objectivism.

The choice of the word immolation was mine. America is committing suicide, in many ways. Its citizens are committing suicide by electing and re-electing leaders who brazenly say they are "managing the decline". Regarding the safety/security infringements, of course, we are in agreement.

Correct. She also stated that it may not be in a nation's self-interest to execute such an invasion, however.

The US' citizens have chosen to get rid of their rights. They have chosen their own immolation.

When the government of a free nation "is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of its citizens and has no rights other than the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific, delimited task (the task of protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense)", that government is acting based on rights granted to it by its citizenry. The United States acted in such a limited fashion for many years, particularly from 1865-1900. That is a granted right, but nonetheless a right. What db and Kh have argued for a month, perhaps two years given her statements on Friday, is that an individual's freedom to travel trumps the right of a nation to its territorial integrity. It does not, because in order for that to happen, the rights of citizens of the nation must be sacrificed. Those citizens have a reasonable expectation that their nation will fulfill the "specific, delimited task (the task of protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense)". When the nation ceases to fulfill that task, the nation has no reason to exist.

Those who disagree with The Virtue of Selfishness quote at the top of this thread are arguing that the rights of the citizenry to delegate their defense to their nation must be abrogated in favor of non-citizens' right to travel. Moreover, when they deny the reason for the nation to exist, they are ultimately denying its right to exist. In doing so, Objectivists are guaranteeing that there will be no nation that honors Objectivist values. Those who argue that the right to travel supercedes a nation's rights to exist and defend itself are arguing for ... anarchy. If a free nation, as defined by Rand, cannot defend its own territory and make laws consistent with Objectivism via its social system and form of government, then it must provide sanction to its own immolation.

Indeed.

A collectivist Objectivist territory is an oxymoron. A 'free association Objectivist territory is possible and one that can exist, allowing others to visit or move in regardless of their originating society or culture, excepting that within the geo-political region that they are subject to the jurisdiction and can respect all others individual and natural rights.

But how does one "develop ownership". You could argue that the first person to productively utilize a piece of property has developed ownership, but it's awkward for the people who were there beforehand.

If you purchase the empty lot next to your house and leave it vacant because you like the room, can I build a house on it, thereby making it more productive and "developing ownership"?

In fact, isn't this the argument behind "eminent domain" where the government decides that someone else would make more productive use of the land than you?

And it usually works the other way around. You get possession of the land and then put it to productive use. You have to get possession of it from someone who owns it, or if you can't bring yourself to accept that a government can own land then someone who controls it to the extent that they have mutually accepted right to grant ownership.

Well said.

Well said.

j, we're getting confused here in our not understanding the difference between inherent rights of the individual and granted rights (authorities) from the individual to the government formed by those individuals and staffed by other member individuals elected by the individuals within the jurisdiction.
edit for clarity.

No, not at all. Men come first with the property they've earned on their own or purchased from the person who had first developed ownership. Then a country is mutually formed by the individuals within a certain defined geo-political region. A country has no actual existence within the concept of rights and no property rights other than those granted by the individuals within the jurisdictional area. The country's only interaction with property rights is the resolution through it's courts of disagreements between property owners, and protection of the individual property owner through the application of retributive force for those that violate the property owner's property and individual rights.

I think we're getting confused between a few concepts here--being ownership and proofs of ownership, jurisdiction, geo-political nation/states, and inherent rights of the individual vs the authority granted to a jurisdictional government by the individual property owners.

As to waging war, again a country is not an entity. The individuals that are citizens within that geo-political area are entities that can wage war and within Objectivism can only do so to stop aggression against the citizens of the country and to resolve jurisdictional disputes with countries that want to aggress with force instead of work through agreed upon court systems of venue.

If one is going to take a direct quote from The Virtue of Selfishness and choose to re-interpret it based on one's application of the 'first principles' of Objectivism rather than to accept the quote at face value for what it said, then Objectivism will no longer be ... objective. Given that logic, Objectivism will suffer from one problem that has long plagued Christianity. With every person being able to interpret Objectivism for himself/herself rather than what Ayn Rand said herself, Objectivism will dissolve into splinter groups, each of which has a slightly different interpretation.... Didn't that already happen once?

When anyone can set himself/herself up as being able to re-interpret what Rand meant rather than stick to what she said or wrote, we wind up with what William Shipley wrote, "And now Ayn Rand is not an Objectivist."

in other words, we must not defend against invasion of the u.s.

I disagree. . we are being invaded by illegals daily, and we
defend this nation as our own, as Rand said. -- j
.

Anyone who rejects the statement at the top of the thread directly from The Virtue of Selfishness is who I am talking about. At this point, that includes db, Kh, Michael Aarethun, and Zenphamy. There must also be others, but I do not know who they are yet.

What you have said thus far, ewv, is not inconsistent with what Rand wrote.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/nat...

The context that you seek goes back to the month-long argument between the Hallings vs. several others, including myself, regarding the freedom to travel vs. national sovereignty. Ayn Rand did recognize national sovereignty for what she defined as free nations. The point came to a head on Friday when Eudaimonia during his broadcast agreed with me, instead of the Hallings and Zenphamy.

If you read the full link under National Rights under the Ayn Rand lexicon, you will see that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were specifically eliminated from those nations having rights, because they refuse to recognize, respect, and protect the rights of individual citizens.