"Even More Questions About the Ethical Questions Regarding Theft," by Derek Canino

 The continuing complexity of the nature of theft. (Part 3)

    Recently I had purchased a copy of a Magic card on an online site that assembles vendors for the purpose of selling cards.  The site categorizes the cards by price, printing, and company working within the site for the sake of making purchases convenient.  While making a purchase for a relatively inexpensive card, there was a mistake made.  I was sent a significantly more expensive version of the card by accident.  This made for a complex ethical dilemma that involved a dynamic series of factors.  It was yet again, further proof of the complexity of theft and our proprietary agreements that we make with one another. 

I am a bit mortified to admit this but, my first instinct was to take the shipping error as a victory for my card collection.  I paused to reflect the consequences of this error to the vendor that had made the mistake.  I felt justified by believing the validity of mindset of caveat venditor.  It is common in the cultural context of the United States to hold vendors accountable for mistakes made and leave such errors to the benefit of the buyer.  The nature of civil lawsuits favoring the victims of faulty products over their manufactures show this as a demonstratable pattern.  

    Earlier in the history of the United States the policy of caveat emptor was the prevalent mentality insofar as transactions.  It was up to the consumer to know a good product or company from a bad one.  This was especially true of British culture.  Things have changed significantly from the days of “you break it, you bought it.”  At my current job someone can drop a $10 jar of whatever, and the store is forced to eat the loses.  Too often the store is also forced to take virtually all refunds that are presented to it.   

    This illustrates that proprietary agreements that constitute what is considered theft are relativistic.  Moreover, the factors that determine how theft is relativistic are both cultural and temporal.  This shift in beliefs from caveat emptor to caveat venditor makes it far easier for me believe that I am entitled to keep the higher value item.  There are many who might agree with that sentiment.  Maybe that would not have been the case 75 years ago or in some other part of the world, but it certainly is the case here and now. 

    The news of my luck became a topic that I became eager to share with others.  So much so that I mentioned it to several people while playing Magic during commander night at a local game store.  One of the other players told me that I had an obligation to notify the seller on the website that I was sent an incorrect version of the card.  It would then be up to the seller and I to come to an agreement on what to do next.   The person that told me this mentioned that it was policy of the website for me to do so.  I even fact checked it, and indeed, there was a FAQ page on the website that confirmed this.  This excited a series of moral complications within me related to the situation that I was now put in. 

    I first had to come to grips with the fact that I was participating in a transaction in which I was not familiar with all the rules of.  It is not explicitly stated on the website that I would be required to have to return something if the sender made the error.  I now felt like I was in the odd position of someone who had felt they had a valid proprietary claim over the item but was mistaken.  The situation turned from a perceived stroke of luck to a burden of responsibility.  Even if it is fair to return the item to the vendor, the fact remains that I got to experience owning a superior item.  It was like going to restaurant and getting a taste of some fancy aged wine and having the waiter yank the glass away and hand me the house port.  The feeling of loss is still real. 

    This means that sometimes we form agreements about what we think we own, and we feel those agreements get violated for the sake of preventing another's agreement from being violated.  Which party gets to determine who was most damaged by the violation of agreements?  This becomes a complex ethical web that could even result in a court case and the establishment of legal precedent.   There is the example of the hunter who followed his wounded prey into the neighbor's property, the neighbor finished off the prey, and a serious question remained:  Who would claim the hunted animal since it crossed property lines?  Theft is not such a simple thing to determine. 

    Returning to the original example, I had to spend my time to send a message to the vendor.  I am now currently awaiting a response from that vendor, under a very minute amount of stress regarding whether I can keep the mistakenly sent item.  If they want it back, I need to go through the chore of sending the item back and waiting for a replacement for the original item sent.  The whole ordeal becomes a major inconvenience for me for the sake of claiming that I made a morally sound decision.  Would I have even violated an agreement if I never mentioned this to the vendor?  More significantly, if I had never mentioned this error to anyone else, I would have been ignorantly keeping something that I was not entitled to.  Maybe some form of common moral principle might have still required action on my part. 

    My example revolves around the complexity of two private parties in exchanging goods for monetary payments.  There is also the dynamic and complex nature of public ownership of items.  Another important example might be the complications regarding an item like a cart in a grocery store.  We can assume that the ownership of the cart is solely that of the company that owns the store.  However, the transfer of ownership is conferred to that of each shopper as they use the carts.  The customer then recognizes the cart as “theirs,” while it is being filled with items they intend to purchase.  The items and the cart both belong to the store while the shopping is being conducted but that changes after payment is made and the items are removed. 

    There is another problem that arises when a person walks away from their cart to find that another person has taken the cart without permission.  This is considered theft by many even though neither customer can claim ownership of the cart no matter what part of the transaction they are engaged in.  This establishes the genesis of a temporary bubble of ownership that is assumed on the part of the party who took the cart first.  No such bubble applies to someone taking the item before the first person is finished with it.  The first party must relinquish ownership and agree that they are done with the cart so that the bubble of ownership may be conferred to another party.  

    This is all based on the assumption that the first person to get the cart is the justified temporary owner.  This can also be understood as an invalid claim of ownership if say, the first person pushed the second person out of the way to grab the cart first.  Now the question is not what party got to the cart first, but rather, which party was morally entitled to the cart.  These are all agreements that exist independently of proprietary concerns but still fall under the scope of theft. 

    Interestingly, since the cart belonged to neither patron of the grocery store, neither party could press charges that the cart was stolen.  The store, however, could press charges if someone tried to take the cart home with them.  Legal, moral, and personal agreements all exist in a nebulous area that separates law from morality (see also: Positivism.)  Even though it is legal to commandeer someone's cart while they are grabbing rice, it is still considered immoral.  Furthermore, pushing someone out of the way and causing harm for the purpose of getting to the cart first, is illegal.  Situations, societal values, human understandings of morality and consequence all make up the seriousness of the agreements we all engage in. 

    The concept of taking a grocery cart becomes that of ownership within ownership or maybe; “meta ownership.”  This suggests that both understandings of ownership and agreements about what constitutes theft are on a spectrum of some form.  This spectrum relates to the seriousness of the violation of those agreements.  Stealing the cart while in the store to avoid looking for another cart is one thing, but taking the groceries from that that cart and putting them into your car is another.  What about scarce items that still belong to the store?  What occurs when there is only one bag of potato chips on the shelf and two customers both show an interest in purchasing it at the same time.  It becomes a matter of reaching an agreement between them to resolve the impending conflict.  This can involve bringing the manager of the store to try to provide some kind of arbitration to matter.  Is this fair?  Is the manager even qualified to settle such a disagreement? 

    Let us discuss the concept of temporary ownership in the sphere of public control.  For example, students told to find their own desks might disagree about who sits next to a window or at the front of the classroom.  The agreement that alacrity determines this temporary ownership is not necessarily an agreement that they all might choose.  For example, there might be a disabled (likely physical) person who prefers a seat but is unable to get to the seat of their choosing due to the slowness of moving in their condition.  It would be unfair in the eyes of many not to give them a fair chance to choose what seat to take.  On the other hand, if selection becomes a matter of giving preference to the disabled, that still makes the competition that the other students are subject to unfair.  We could even discover that the person who might have a disability disagrees with preferential treatment and will take whatever chair they can get.  These values of what desk belongs with what student continue to be agreements that we engage in. They are not set in stone, and they could change and be malleable. 

    We should also pause to reflect how it came to pass that an organization such as a company can own something.  The notion that an object is company owned can be traced back to the application of the 14th amendment.  The case of the Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886) demonstrated that the Supreme Court was willing to rule that corporations were granted proprietary rights.  This was because the 14th amendment guaranteed that they would be treated as persons and thus protected by the Constitution.  We should also note that this court decision was not unique, and the Supreme Court reached many decisions during the Gilded Age that enforced the philosophy that corporations had property rights.  It is still complex when one considers that a corporation is composed of many people and its interests are technically divided amongst them.  The method in which to determine how a given company would choose to utilize its property is determined by a form of sovereignty principle.  Whoever or whomever controls the company makes the decisions about how ownership of the company's assets.

    The sovereignty principle is used in the case of both corporate and government interests.  There is always one method or another in determining what parties have control over the nation or company.  In some cases, it is outright force of law, in others it is by monetary control, some by direct rule of the masses, and whatever system based on consensus is the system by which corporate or political sovereignty is derived. While they are both similar, it is assumed that political sovereigns can supersede corporate ones based on the assumption that political power trumps economic power.  However, based on the power of special interests, this can be disproven due to de facto control of authority.  In whatever case either political or economic, all of the rights of ownership must be established by a system of agreements that define any sort of sovereign body.  Sovereignty only exists because we agree it exists.

    The purpose of discussing differences occurring within public ownership and private ownership as they relate to theft demonstrates a clear conflict of interests in what agreements we make.  A more diverse society may become more populated with varying and conflicting agreements.  This creates a difficulty of determining what constitutes theft if we cannot isolate the rules of ownership and at what point something falls under private or public ownership.  We need to make agreements based on a larger consensus.  This of course brings us the dilemma of the “tyranny of the majority.”  This phrase indicates that despite the fact that the majority of people may benefit from one particular set of agreements, does mean that people outside that dominant group should fall victim to that society.  This might incentivize the population to create as few situations as possible for outliers to exist.

    The nature of the group matters as it relates to ethics.  To return to the original problem faced by the author, we must understand the Magic the Gathering community.  While it does not follow that Magic players are rich per say, but there is a large portion of that community that falls into a higher disposable income bracket.  People within those social circles can have a tendency to enforce stricter ethical guidelines to those communities.  Would a person have the same obligation to return to the grocery store and return a more expensive type of apple if they were undercharged?  In the case of the grocery (an arena where I work), the customer is no longer accountable once the store has collected its money.   People rarely return to the store when they underpay for items.  It happens, but it is not common. 

    Perhaps this due to some larger societal and cultural agreements about commonplace ethics.  Groceries are considered essential goods and therefore the necessity to return them would appear to be less important.  Also, it might be inconvenient and costly to travel to the grocery store to return said undercharged apples and pay for a more expensive variety.  What about the more clear-cut case of theft whereby the person walks out of the store with stolen food items?  This almost seems to be more forgivable due to the fact that people in society understand the importance of feeding yourself and your loved ones.  Of course, if someone were stealing highly expensive steaks, that level of forgiveness might be decreased.  The nature of how we tolerate theft is a value system also based on agreements as well.  We agree when someone owns something, and we agree when it is immoral when it is taken away.  We also agree when certain instances of theft are more reprehensible than others. 

    The wealth of the person taking something, the nature of the item of question, the reason behind the taking of an item, how the item was taken, who the item was taken from, and so many countless other factors determine how society (or a large portion of it) reacts to such a theft.  Circumstances matter in terms of the agreements that people make regarding property and theft.  Since all of these circumstances are factored into the equation when it is believed that theft occurred, there is no simple way to make a rule, law, or moral code.  How do we determine what is constituted to be theft, its severity, and its consequences by a system of rules?  The current American society takes those factors into consideration in both law enforcement and judicial action.  We can only hope that it is doing its job effectively. 

"Thou shalt not steal" is a handy reference but lacks explanatory power, which are the goals inherent in the essays that I am writing.

"Is War Ever Justified?" by Derek Canino

 Does jus en bello make a war truly justified? 

    The term jus en bello refers to the terms which define a war as ethical or set the terms in which a war is fought.  In this essay I will provide an answer to the question of whether there is such thing as a “just war” and whether the concept of war itself even fits the description of justice.  The most concise answer to the question is “no.”  I will argue that there are never any terms in which war is justified.   Furthermore, in this essay I will explain why belligerents may go to war, the methods in which wars are fought, the consequences of going to war, and form an overall argument to support that the notion that jus en bello is a false ethical value. 

    To begin, we must identify why belligerent nations go to war.  The most common reason is for resources.  One nation desire to obtain what another nation has, and for its betterment, seeks to breech the sovereignty of a nation for the purpose of taking its resources.  An example of this type of declaration of war can be seen most recently in the Ukraine, in which she was attacked by Russia.  Russia wanted her territory for the purposes of a pipeline that they could use to increase their nations wealth.  This attack violated the sovereignty of the Ukraine and by itself could be viewed as an aggression not in line within the terms of jus en bello.  This could be because Russia was not justified in attacking the Ukraine. 

    We must also now consider whether it is in fact morally sound to attack the nation that breached the sovereignty of the Ukraine.  The question becomes: Is it a just war to attack Russia for invading the Ukraine?  The cost of warfare begs us to wonder what is at stake for the Ukraine.  There are very serious ramifications of engaging in warfare for the sake of the national identity and wellbeing of the citizens of the Ukraine.  Is there a certainty that the quality of life of the average Ukrainian citizen will suffer at the hands of the Russian invaders?  Is there any inherent advantage or disadvantage to the existential presence of the Ukraine as a body politic?  People often assume; yes.  The Ukrainians have a right to remain a country out of an intrinsic need to support the international status quo.   

    Consider this hypothetical example:  Half of the world invades the other half of the world, and half of the world's nations become memories.  However, the quality of life of all people increased by orders of magnitude; would that have been a war of injustice?  Nations have been lost over time which include Rhodesia, Yugoslavia, Palestine, Prussia.  Does the loss of these political entities necessarily imperil the quality of international wellbeing?  I would assert that borders drawn up from the post-World War 2 period, and the post-Cold War period are considered inherently better, but that doesn’t mean that they are better to everyone.  The collapsing of certain world empires, decolonization of European powers, and rise of pan nationalistic movements are the justifications for the nascent features of the modern world map.  The international community has its own reasons for seeing to it that those borders remain as they are, regardless of what parties may find themselves at odds with them. 

    To bring things around the concept of national identity, we return to the original conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.  If it was indeed for resources alone and Russia seeking its own betterment at the cost of human life, then what is the logical response?  It is a frightful prospect to engage in warfare with a major world power as a practical matter.  Now as a matter of wartime ethics, is intervening for the benefit of a neutral country a just cause to go to war?  Should the United States have sent troops and ordinances into Eastern Europe to support the Ukrainian war effort?  Moreover, if the Ukraine was part of NATO (North Atlantic Trade Organization,) should the United States have honored their duty to engage in warfare.  “An attack on one, is an attack on all.”   

    While this seems like just and reasonable stance to a wartime approach, consider the negative consequences of such mentalities.  Those mentalities were the cause of the huge spread of warfare across the world due to the actions of a few Serbian assassins in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914.  The subsequent global conflict that arose from the principle of total warfare led to more bloodshed than the whole world had ever seen.  Not to mention, the blames that resulted from said war were the foundations for a second global conflict, a genocide of unprecedented proportions, and many years of global fear from a massive Cold War nuclear arms race.   The question of whether war for the question of honoring alliances is justified, depends on whether expanding the size and gravity of the war in question is worthwhile. 

    A serious consideration related to warfare pertains to cultural values in each nation or society.  An aggressor nation might be interesting in installing cultural values, protecting a cultural minority or majority in each country, and preserving its own cultural values abroad.  We must ask ourselves if warfare for the sake of cultural preservation is a worthwhile endeavor.  Is it worth risking life and resources for the sole objective of preserving something as artificial as a societal construct?  While it is important to place an emphasis on cultural freedoms and honoring of traditions, we must consider that cultural values are relativistic. While it might seem good to go to war to prevent the abolishing of Christianity in nation, it might not seem good to go to war to preserve national socialism (or the pejorative term, Nazism.)  What cultural values get protected are relative to the dominant cultures currently in place. 

    Historical context and the hegemony of dominant nations seem to determine what cultural values are worth spilling blood over. We cannot be too quick to assume that some belligerent force would or wouldn’t be justified in criticizing the United States for its history of dishonoring treaties with the Native American tribes.  The United States has a known history of trying to assimilate Native American tribes to American political values, religious teachings, and to the supposedly superior nature of American culture.  Were certain tribes that fought the United States' expansion westward justified in doing so to preserve their own cultural identities?  Could not a mutual state of live and let live been adopted? 

    While cultural context is significant in determining the justification for war, does it justify the tools in which that war is waged.  Using the example of the Native Americans, does warfare involving the United States industrial advantages constitute the following of jus en bello when facing the Creek who were significantly smaller in population and without the quantity of firearms?  The advance of the white population westward generated smallpox epidemic after smallpox epidemic, decimating the population.  The Creek, Iroquois, and other tribes that battled for their territory were at a massive weapon and population disadvantage, and ergo, were fighting a war that was unfair.   

    This brings us to the significant point that warfare can never really be fought on truly equal footing.  One nation usually has a population, industrial, technological, or military advantage over another.  By regulating the weapons and tactics of warfare, does international agreement really create a level playing field for belligerents to engage in warfare?  It seems that the idea of a truly fair fight is more of an idealized value than something that is achieved by virtue by rules of war.  This might continue to support the argument that jus en bello, is merely an attempt to fabricate a romanticized view about warfare to those involved in its continuance.  Warfare is merely murder with the approval of the political bodies involved. 

    The goal of warfare is the extermination of an enemy and installation of a friendly cause where desired.  Sometimes the victory is obtained by holding and maintaining a conquest.  This is demonstratable true during the period of European colonialism.  Sometimes victory is obtained by retaining political autonomy, such as France remaining a country after the Germans invaded it during World War 2.  While the motivating factors may vary from country to country and war to war, the consequences are always the same, human life. 

    I would argue here that human life is of the most valuable of possessions that humans possess collectively.  Warfare is an abrogation of those values for the purpose of ideals.  When going to war, typically people are trading lives for ideals.  Such a tradeoff is the most persistent of pyrrhic victories.  The desire of one resource for one country, or one cultural or political value, all are not worth measuring in the cost of human life.  Yet somehow, this trade seems to be a willing effort of those in political power.  

    If trading life for ideals is foolish, then it would seem the ultimate cause to go to war would be preservation of life.  If one country were to try to go to war to prevent an ethnic cleansing, such as the case of President William Clinton in Bosnia.   The United States invoked a police action, which is merely a semantic distinction from warfare, to attempt to stop a country from ethnic cleansing.  In doing so, a nation utilizes lethal force on military and/or civilian targets for the purpose of preventing killing.  While wartime propaganda might rationalize this, it remains hypocrisy.  Killing a killer does not cease to end all killing, it merely controls which political body has the right to authorize it.   

    Popular historical narratives might indulge the notion that warfare was used for the good of stopping genocidal rampages throughout the course of history.  For instance, the United States’ intervention on the behalf of the Allied Powers in World War 2 would be used as an example.  People today might argue the heroic nature of the war on the misguided notion that Jewish people were liberated from concentration camps due to the invasion of American soldiers into Germany.  This was not the case, as the Soviet Union was the nation that occupied the locations of the most heinous death camps and concentration camps.  Even though it was a joint allied effort, both nations dragged their feet in aiding those that were designated “displaced persons” after the war ended in Europe. 

    This gets into acts of war that never get considered genocide because they were against an ethnically homogenous group.  Was it genocide that the United States heavily bombed and eventually used nuclear weapons on the Japanese?  President Harry Truman caused more Asian deaths than people want to acknowledge as part of the historical record.   Given the fact that the Japanese were all Asian, was the attack simply warfare?  This begs the question of intention on part of the political party in question.  If it is the intention of the nation in question to exterminate a given race, then it becomes genocide.  If an entire race is acting as a belligerent force, then their extermination becomes incidental.   

    This makes warfare complicated with more cosmopolitan empires like the United States and nations like Mozambique.  This is completely different from the United States which houses significant populations of all races.  Since language, culture, ethnicity, and political ideologies can span wildly, the value of the cultural integrity of each nation is weighted differently.  The preservation of one nation’s culture can vary depending on what region it is; therefore, the cost of cultural preservation is disproportionate depending which nations are in question.   Is it fair to go to war with an ethnically homogenous nation if exterminating them meant that ethnicity would be gone forever?   

    We should have established three premises by this point:  first, that war for the sake of saving lives is hypocrisy, and that war to save culture is muddled with obfuscation, and third, that warfare for ideological purposes is wasteful.  It is fair to say that no cause to go to war justifies the loses in manufactured items, resources, and human life.  Despite this fact, humans have and continue to engage in the practice of warfare.  This is because the desire for the advancement of the ideology (nationalism) and fear of annihilation have provoked people to arm themselves against another.  To advance a political philosophy and to satisfy a need for security, people agree to make the quality of life significantly worse for all involved.  There must be an upshot! 

    Modernity, which is so often linked to warfare is one of the most observed historical trends is that upshot.  If one looks at a period like the Great Depression in United States history and then looks at the effects of wartime mobilization had on the country, they might determine that World War 2 brought the United States greatness in the 20th century.  This is correct to a degree, but we would be myopic to see war as a certain requirement for the improvement of economic and technological standards.  I would argue that it is international collaboration and trade that brought about these changes to the global market.  Not so much Omaha Beach riddled with the bodies of dead American GIs.   

    International cooperation occurred on a large scale between the United States and the Allied Powers out of a mutual fear of the Axis Powers.  This spurred on academics, politicians, business innovators, bureaucrats, workers, and so many others to feel they had a duty to contribute to the common good.  I would argue that this feeling of fear and dread could be pointed to entropy and stagnation as direct oppositions to the progress of mankind.  This may show the smarter aspects of ideological wars, such as the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc.  

    The rise of technological breakthroughs during war has led to weapons that certain countries would agree or disagree about using.  The term jus en bello, often describes what weapons might be considered illicit during “civilized” engagements.  I will take a moment to reflect on the peculiar nature of picking and choosing weapons with the end game of death as fair or just.  There simply is no good way to die, considering it is against our nature, as humans, to endure the end of our existence.  While some forms of death sound more gruesome and horrible than others, the end game is the same, and it is still extreme. 

    Let us take chemical weapons such as mustard or phosgene gas as an example of a wartime weapon.  It was decided during the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1908 that the use of lethal chemical gasses was forbidden in warfare.  The parlance of those times was that the weapons were "ghastly" and "cowardly."  The notion that you should look your opponent in the eyes before you snuff them, apparently carried some kind of valor.  Warfare was conducted with a great deal of melee weapons for millennia, and many modern weapons signify a turning from those values.  Land mines were also controversial for the same reason.  Deciding on the tools of warfare based on romanticized notions of the personal nature of warfare creates a very bizarre picture of why people are running around a field murdering each other.  It was kind of unusual that they wanted the fighting to be so personal yet there existed no personal animosity between the combatants.

    The drawback gas based chemical weapons was the fact that they were incredibly unreliable.  A sudden burst of wind could turn a cloud of devastating gas weapons against the very army that unleashed them.  This begs us to consider the fact that the weapons were shelved out of efficacy rather than humanitarian concerns.  In 1917, the United States manufactured quite a great deal of mustard gas that never saw use in battle.   Where do you suppose those gas containers went?  The need for them never came up, and it became a matter of waste disposal rather than disarmament.  One source I read suggested dumping it into the Chesapeake Bay.  If humanitarian concerns were behind the shelving of chemical weapons, then nuclear weapons probably wouldn’t be most nations preferred super arsenal.  

    For the sake of argument, we shall ignore the fact that valuable energy, labor, and resources went into ordinance manufacturing.  We will now consider the fact that agreements such as the Hague Conventions and the Geneva Conventions all set up the practices of fairness in wartime.  A fair analogy would be to compare the conventions to rules committees associated with major world sports.  War ceases to be a matter of life and death and becomes like an international sporting event like the World Cup.  Instead of scoring goals and winning prestige, there is carnage and the acquisition of territories or resources.  The big prize might be Poland, and the ability to determine the fate of its citizens.   It seems surreal when you consider international cooperation for the sake of international devastation. 

    In this strange comparison of war to sports, one might consider the humanitarian organizations as referees, trying to keep things from becoming too grewsome. Perhaps they are there to make sure the fans (civilians) don’t get hurt during the event.  It is usually seen as poor sportsmanship to attack the referee, which might take the form of something like Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders.  These organizations try to remain neutral from the two teams but hand out red cards for poor behavior.  If international outrage is raised enough, more nations may come out in support of one nation or another.  These are the consequences of playing dirty so to speak.  I will discuss the “fans,” as I depart from this sport analogy. 

    The role of the civilian in wartime is a very tricky problem facing both belligerents.  The people working in those societies are often producing resources and manufacturing products for a war effort, thus making them directly involved in the war.  The problem becomes a matter of whether a person is actively fighting.  Given that the civilians are typically unarmed; should it be expected that they are spared their lives during an invasion?  What about in the case of a country like the United States, where a huge portion of the civilian population is armed but not part of the military?  Does their status as civilian disappear due to the practical realities of their ability to fight?  There becomes major issues when determining combatants versus noncombatants.  Then it becomes active combatants versus inactive combatants.  These distinctions are fragile because of their ability to change.  Does training have any effect on how they should be grouped or considered?  Does it matter if they are militant as a part of their personality in general? 

    The trouble with determining what civilians are or are not, is that there needs to be an international consensus of what people are actually civilians.  Any consensus of what constitutes a civilian during a combat period would need to fall on some kind of independent arbitrator.  Given that war is so divisive and effects are so interconnected, biases will undoubtedly develop.  If civilians are killed during battle, there would need to be some way for a neutral party (if one is even possible) to act on their behalf.  This could throw off the entire tempo of the war and make war more and more of a controlled burn than a conflagration.  While this sounds preferable, it still defies the nature of a program where death is the goal.  Why do people have the ability to mitigate the lives lost in war but not avert the event entirely?

    What of the prisoners?  War has a cost to people beyond their immediate life.  There becomes a danger in leaving damaged people around to cause no end of problems.  There is no good or fair way to release or destroy a person that cannot function, desires to continue fighting, or can’t let go of their national identity.  It might simply be impossible to ask a citizen or soldier of Norway to stop adopting that identity even if the country were rightly conquered.  How a nation fairly treats its conquered people or soldiers is considered heavily in what is called jus en bello.  POW camps themselves make a huge statement about what kind of liberties a nation takes in dealing with its subjugated people. The conquerors and the conquered will almost always have a relationship based on resentment.  But even if the people are throwing flowers at the feet of the coming army, does that mean they are really following the rules of war?  How are those people supposed to know how their new sovereign will treat them? 

    Within a protocol of jus en bello, there falls on people to create some form of arbitration to determine the guilt of those who violate these codes.  The term “war criminal” describes political leaders who used unscrupulous tactics while pursuing the betterment of their nation against other nations.  There needs to be some kind of unbiased adjudicator that could oversee the details of the conflict and render a judgement about what unfolded during the periods of combat.  This doesn’t even begin to factor in the actions of individual soldiers or civilians who acted in a manner not fitting with so-called wartime fairness.  It is usually the losing nation that has its leaders held accountable.  There were no Allied generals who were found guilty during the Nuremburg Trials.  Who would prosecute the winning nations in such a case?  It seems a bit absurd. 

    War does not seem like a thing that fairness or justice really should be factored into.  It is a sad and painful state of humanity that it cannot resolve its problems on a more unified front.  However, war is only a word, and that word is only based on the condition of nationalism.  Without a world of nations war wouldn’t exist, however, that does not mean that people would stop taking from one another, hurting one another, and teaming up against one another.  In a world void of government, there would be no war, only a perpetual fight with everyone to survive.  In a world of one government, there would be no war, only a constant cycle of insurrection and repression.  This leads me to wonder if warfare is just one phenomenon possible of the same problem that people have and will always have. 

    Do rules and justice have a place in warfare, when the very existence of war defies them?  The conclusion I have reached is that in no way does any war fall into the category of a just war.  There are no rules in warfare that give a clear moral compass to someone in political leadership, or the people they rule over.  Making rules for war adds a false sense of chivalry to a practice as old and barbaric as life itself.  Often those rules degenerate when the need for victory outweighs the value of perceived moral superiority.  If one wins a war through unscrupulous means, they still have the power to control the narrative.  Even when a country admits wrongdoing, it doesn’t change that the outcome of the war changed the world forever. 

(In War:) If you break the rules and win, who is going to stop you? 

"More Ethical Questions Surrounding Theft," by Derek Canino

 The continued complexity of understanding theft as discussed in a previous essay by Maldys Shrubb.

In the previous essay I boiled down the idea of theft to a violation of agreements that parties had regarding the ownership of items.  I expounded on the premises in relation to a theft amounting to a violation of agreements rather than a simple movement of objects.  While moving objects with certain intent is considered theft, it is more commonly understood as theft if the presence of mens rea, or the guilty mind, was found at the time of the event. 

    What I feel that I must continue to explain is the vast importance of the presence of these agreements in all aspects of life and more significantly, the relationship of agreements and things beyond physical objects.  Since theft is succinctly described as a conceptual violation, one can understand that other concepts can become violated as an act that could be considered theft.  For example, if someone told you that they were going to meet you at the park at 2 o’clock, and they never showed up, you could argue that it was a theft of your time.  No physical objects transferred possession, such as the example I provided with the Magic card. 

    In some cases, people don’t consider taking items theft, such as free flyers you might find in public places.  Another thing people don’t consider theft is the concept of gift giving.  Gift giving becomes increasingly complex as you consider the nature of agreements between the benefactor and beneficiary.  Sometimes the arrangement is supposed to be temporary, and the ability or inability to return said gift becomes problematic.  It is because you make the agreement with your neighbor that you will return his weed trimmer that the transfer of the item is not considered theft.  Both parties must agree that this is the case, as most people do not wish their items to be taken without their permission. 

    Intellectual property is a vast domain of legality that encompasses an enormous number of court cases in determining if theft has occurred on some level.  People believe that their labor in creating an idea, pattern, song, etc., is only intended to be bought by means of transaction. This could also mean that someone gets control or credit of it.  Theft of things that are freely available but that someone has some proprietary claim over is commonplace.  Some people believe that theft of this kind is a victimless crime, if you consider the high number of people using file sharing programs that seek to avoid high mark ups by vendors and other corporate interests in the artistic and intellectual communities.  It is considered both thefts to try to sell Rick James’ “Superfreak” as my own song as well as download it illegally. 

What exactly does this mean for the world of theft and to what extent can theft be measured?   Can theft even include a human life (Someone stole another person’s life.)  If a person stole someone's life saving medicine, could you not argue that the cost of the agreement violation was a human life?  Let us say that one person was adept at a computer programming skill that would be deftly replaced by artificial intelligence, we can argue that an algorithm stole that person's lifetime of skill building and labor efforts.  This would push beyond even the simple barrier of the presence of criminal intent when aggregating the total cost of theft.  National identity, culture, livelihood, memories, and familial bonds all become subject to the domain of theft. 

This requires us to place a moral responsibility to determining when theft occurs, and the significance of its inimical effects on a person or persons life.  This brings us to the arduous task of determining value of all things and creating an equitable census for all goods and services that have been, are being, and will be produced by all people.  This is one of the tasks of the Utilitarians which began their inception by the scholarly works of John Stewart Mill and Jeremy Bentham.  The goal of Utilitarians is to determine net good over net harm when seeking any possible outcome.  A very difficult task which can be fiercely debated by lay persons and scholars alike. 

There are two forms of Utilitarianism which are prominent in the philosophical community.  Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism.  Act utilitarianism states that each individual act must be weighed as whether it brings more overall good than harm (not necessarily to number of persons.)  Rule Utilitarianism requires that rules or laws be conceived with the same formulaic approach as the previous form of Utilitarianism.  The two are not necessarily separate or incompatible worldviews to leading a more ethically sound life, but rather, two components of an even larger framework.  These modalities of thought must be applied to consideration of acts and even rules as forms of theft. 

With due consideration paid to a reasonably valid ethical system, we must consider how prevention and punitive measure are placed on those who violate the sacred agreements of proprietary rights.  These rights are of course more fundamental in the United States, where private property is considered a cornerstone of our societies’ national identity.   In this country two fundamental court systems have been established to determine rights and restraints on these agreements, both criminal and civil courts.  Criminal courts determine whether the person has committed an egregious trespass against the society at large, and civil courts are used in determining disputes between two parties on the matter of which party is more entitled in their claim that an agreement was violated. 

In determining guilt or whether renumerations are due are based on what is correct behavior for the reasonable mind.  This is based on the belief that what a reasonable person might think is guilt or deserving of entitlement by a jury of peers.  This system for all its merit does have some downsides.  Sometimes the claims of a reasonable person are overridden by sheer emotion whipped up by some silver-tongued demagogue.   Sometimes the valid claims are overridden by deception or unscrupulous legal practices that a clever mind might throw at a given party who might be unable to afford or have time for litigation.  It is just a fact that the court system itself is sometimes guilty of theft itself. 

The decisions made by the court system is upheld (typically) by the executive branch officials and therefore might be unstoppable by a just or unjust party or claimant.  The fact remains that someone may or may not have had their agreement violated in a manner inconsistent with their perceived notions of reasonable standards or justice.  This is just one of those awful facts of life that can occur regardless of what mechanisms of justice are being implemented or what society you reside in.  Again, it defaults back to what most people who support the court system by means of agreements would argue. 

Let us try to examine a more universal significance of the violation of agreements than try to restrict it to the American legal system.  The fact of the matter is that people disagree about what people should control what lands, what political bodies are even valid, and who is considered the leadership in any given place.  These fundamental disagreements can be boiled down to theft if we broaden the context wide enough to validate this viewpoint.  For arguments sake, let us try to view all war and destruction of the world because of theft. One nation views the land as theirs and violates another country's expectations that borders would be respected.  Again, a large-scale violation of agreements.

Theft as a worldwide concept is not even limited to the human species.  Environmental activists and animal rights activists argue that certain human projects are thefts of biomes that are essential for certain species to survive, and that such theft is deleterious to the world’s ecology.  Even the presence of inorganic materials can cause disagreements over which parties can or should control those resources.  Furthermore, there is a massive debate about whether those resources should be taken in the first place.  Does the collective human need for rare earth metals for smart phones and computer screens warrant calling its’ extraction theft?  Can humans even make agreements with the earth if theft is all based on agreements? 

I would say that the agreements still technically fall on the humans to believe and enforce.  It would just fall under the purview of the Utilitarians to decide if there are agreements worth making that prevent the taking of certain materials out the earth.  Two competing species of birds cannot make an agreement over which territory they dominate, the weaker species is simply pushed out of the area, and sometimes even out of existence.  It is only fair for one person to say another that it is theft, since more complex morality questions are reserved for humans on this planet.  Or are they?  Some animals display signs of empathy, compassion, and even the ability to treat the wounded of their own kind. Perhaps they have their own forms of agreements.

    This brings us to the complex questions of whether morality or ethics exist outside the human mind, or if they are a social construct intended to bind the species together for collective good.   What if there existed an alien species which had no proprietary restrictions and all items used by said species were never considered to be owned in the same sense as they are by people?  This might invalidate theft as an intrinsic disagreement with people as a necessity of humanity’s existence (is theft just a natural part of life?).   Some claim that communism poses a solution to the conundrum of the disagreements related to theft, but humanity has yet to see a working model of that paradigm in existence.  

    This essay is a continuation of the previous one that, given additional thought, arose a myriad of questions and state of consternation.  The author vehemently seeks to produce an argument or philosophical epiphany that could resolve the violation of people’s agreements with one another.  Sad however, that so much of our current society functions on that problematic state as a necessity.  It would be as if the fire department’s job was to both create and extinguish fires.  Is there a real impetus for people to resolve this debate or is it the inevitable course that humanity degenerates into bitter fighting over the last of the Earth’s resources? 

    I would rather not end this essay on a dyspeptic note, but I must confess that it is imperative that we see some kind of common action taken to resolve some of the existing disagreements within humanity's scope.  Peacemakers, lawmakers, environmentalists, scientists, scholars, and everyone else (really) do have their work cut out for them.  While I do not advocate an encroaching paternalistic force overseeing all the world’s problems, I cannot abide inaction.   We must find ways to understand the agreements that we make, be flexible when needed, and honor them to the best of our abilities. 

"Ethical Questions Surrounding Theft," by Derek Canino.

  The surprising complex ethical questions regarding theft.

    The question of what theft is, seems rather easy when taken at its face value.  The simple answer would be to reply, “taking something that does not belong to you.”  While this is, in many forms true, it is worth understanding how complicated such a simple answer actually is.  I will provide a brief example from an anecdote that took place in my life recently, explain the ethical questions therein, and propose a revision of how people consider the dilemmas related to theft. 

    Recently I was at a hobby shop where I completed my gaming there, and it was time to pick up a pack for participating in the event.  Paying the event cost and playing in the commander night for Magic the Gathering earns the participant a free pack.  I had asked for my pack and promptly picked it up.  It was after picking up my pack that one of the workers in the store said, “here is your [insert card name here]” while speaking in my general direction.  I had forgotten that there was a person behind me, and I thought that the clerk was talking to me.   

    I thought maybe the clerk was being nice and offering me one of his own cards or that it was a give away from the store.  Apparently, the card was being purchased by the person behind me, and I scooped up the card against the wishes of all other present parties.  It was then that I had stopped to consider why such a card was being given to me, and there was a brief moment of silence before the proprietor of the store chimed in and added, “that was not for you.” 

    Much to my opprobrium, I had taken something that I was not the intended recipient of.  I apologized profusely and tried to shake off the embarrassment of the situation.  While no one was particularly rancorous about the turnout of my actions, it did give me cause to wonder over the course of the next couple of days.  I began to puzzle deeply about my actions, the morality or immorality of my actions, the ethical ramifications of theft in general, and to what extension personal dominion or shared perception of dominion apply. 

    When I picked up the cards accidentally had I violated the trespass of theft in a moral (if not legal sense?)  The moments while I pondered why I was given that card was a period in which I was in violation of the code of conduct in that establishment.  Does being a “thief” only apply to the moments in which I had property which did not belong to me?  Is such a perjorative label only applied to a person who makes a living or a long-term habit out of such (albeit intentional) behavior?  It was true that I both committed theft and was a thief while that card was in my possession. 

    Once told about the nature of my mistake, I put the card down with all due haste and many might consider the matter to be over.   Was I absolved purely for my actions because the people present did so?  Not to mention the fact that it was the proprietor, not the clerk or the cards intended recipient, that actually remanded my transgression.  Forgiveness for such a mistake does or does not require universal agreement.   I am uncertain the standard by which one would make such a determination.   

    The proprietor would seem to be logical choice for absolution due to the fact that it remains his property until the transaction was completed.  However, given that store credit or payment might have been made, might put the proprietor's opinion of me as secondary to that of the customer.   The person who was to become the card’s new owner never actually said anything to me about the manner.  Perhaps I was should have been obliged to check with him.  Perhaps, more importantly, I should have been obliged to ask if the card was for me when I picked it up in the first place. 

    This is where the matter of theft and ownership become mired in the social contract of proprietary agreements, that we as humans, are in the habit of making. There must be some societal agreement that the cards in the store belong to whomever owns the store, and that the cards I bring into the store still belong to me.   The particular hobby shop (and others like it) include a nebulous zone of ownership because people bring their own possessions into the store. 

    The person who bought the card, as far as I could tell, was trading in his old cards and purchased a new one.  The store had to agree to remove his property and exchange it with their own.  This transaction is commonly accepted as barter and not in any way theft.  One could also argue that the stores only take a small percentage of the cards retail value in trade and therefore commit theft of another kind.  We also do not know how the customer got the cards that he was trading to the store.  Were the cards his property as a result of opening packs, trades, theft, gifts, swindling old mothers at garage sales?  I do not know. 

    Taking something that both parties agree to, but that one party may have greater need for, may change the fairness of the transaction.  Is not fairness essential to all property agreements?  Is not fairness the corner stone that tells us not to take packs of cards off of the store’s walls and walk out the door with them?  Then why is it fair for the store to give a person 40% of a card’s fair market value to a person, simply due to their willingness?  If I were a person hungry to eat, the store could easily be committing a form of theft for the purpose of making a profit. 

    Let us return to the very earliest part of this story, whereby I took the card that didn’t belong to me.  If I had picked up the card, with headphones in, and walked out of the store quickly enough, we might have had a much bigger problem.  Also, if I simply ignored the comment about the new owner of the card and walked out, then wouldn’t we also have a much larger problem?  This is of course, dealing with the two major issues of criminal intentions, and that of much larger scope of unintentional actions.   I will try to address both without adding obfuscation unnecessarily to the subject at hand. 

    Let us discuss what the legal world refers to as criminal intentions or mens rea, which literally translates as "the guilty mind." Mens Rea characterizes behaviors as criminal in nature or such that it was my intention to do something that is unscrupulous in nature for personal gain.  This would have been considered to be the case if I tried to ignore any attempt of the vendor to return the card, or if I had taken it in the first place, with the intention to deceive all parties into thinking some other version of the events.  This type of behavior is usually antithetical to a valid ethical framework and is often the antagonistic force of the ethics philosopher. 

    The challenge in determining mens rea, lies within several factors, which include whether other people have accurate knowledge of my intentions.  Did they know I thought I was just getting a random free card, or did they think it was a sneaky plan to abscond with a shiny new Magic card?  Furthermore, there is the consideration of why exactly I would have taken it.   What if I wanted to give it to a friend who was just learning to play Magic but didn’t have any money to spend?   Would the presence of mens rea be any less significant or change the outcome in any meaningful way? 

  Now we will turn away from the possibility of an intentional plan to deceive or steal a Magic card.  Let us turn to the world of unintentional action. The actual impact of the mistake I had made can vary with both the choices I made, and blind luck.  I chose to pick the card up and hold my ground for a few moments, allowing time for clarification to be inserted into the situation.  It was a triumph of my better judgement overruling my poor judgement not to ask who the card was for.  How much can we blame people for the damage their mistakes cause, and how much to blame are they? 

    What if, during my attempt to grab it, I ripped it in half.  This scenario could have caused no end of problems with no real intentional malady present.  The card in question was retail valued at $3.00 at the time (May 2025), but if the card was valued much higher, would not the impact of my unintentional theft be a more significant problem?  We can also factor into the equation the issue of Magic cards’ in a dynamic marketplace where even a small valued card could be worth thousands of dollars years later.  Even though I didn’t rip it, I did smudge it with my fingerprints (even if they weren’t especially greasy.)  Theft, unintentional, even for 3 seconds, can have a practical effect with detrimental consequences. 

    Consider how many people pickup items in a grocery store that are cold and set them down in the middle of aisles.  This is enough for them to go bad and become unsellable.  The average person thinks that you don’t steal groceries when you still have them in your basket.  Moving them around the store, even innocently being lazy, still causes damages that someone can be liable for.  Even on a small scale, the cost of destroyed groceries causes shrink, which causes further inflation of grocery store prices, which is passed on to other consumers.  Without leaving the store with a single item in your pocket, you essentially stole $0.00000001 from everyone in that store. 

    This shows that shoplifting is more than merely surreptitiously tucking a candy bar into a pocket.  It shows that the act of theft is far more complex than that.  It is the case that we think of that way, because that is theft in its easiest terms to understand.  The robber with a pistol trained on an elderly woman with the intention of taking unearned money, is a trope that lacks any explanatory power.  Why make so many distinctions or distort what people to consider to be a simple matter?  Like anything, to understand all of the moving parts, allows us to avoid making mistakes that we might be more unaware of. 

    What of the opposite situation?  That would be gifts or donations, that perhaps, someone might not want to be the recipient of.  If someone puts something into your pocket that you might not want, it is colloquially referred to as a “plant.”  Sometimes it is more obviously something that a person wouldn’t want, such as a murder weapon, illegal contraband, or even an offensive doodle.  What if the recipient of a plant decides that they suddenly desire the item in question?  Does this mean that ownership becomes attached to desire? Doesn't the fact that the desire was placed against the will of the person unethical?  This doesn’t constitute theft as many people would call it, but it does get to the fundamental issue at work here.   

    This fundamental issue is agreements of personal dominion.   Personal dominion and agreements generate sphere of understanding or compartments about pairing up items and persons with them.  This is how someone understands and item as “yours” or “mine.”  We make agreements with other people, and we share those agreements with other people in the world.  Sometimes those agreements need to be defended in a court of law, which upholds (from a legal standpoint) which of those item and person compartments we agree is true.  We needed to decide, based on objectivity and impartiality, what reasonably is considered a fair connection between person and item as bound in dominion. 

    Back to the whole reason that this mess got started.  Maybe a court of law would not have prosecuted me for picking up that card, or maybe they would have.  Maybe to make an example of me.  We can also agree that the card never belonged to me, even though I erroneously assumed that it was a gift from the clerk or for patronizing the store.  The false narrative that I constructed leading up to my hands touching the card is the basis for many so-called mix-ups.  Some would also try to hide the presence mens rea as a mere product of the above mistake for cover if caught.    

    In conclusion, I have learned not to take something given to me with being absolutely certain that it was a gift.  If I had asked the clerk, “Is that for me?”  I could have saved myself some embarrassment, the risk of further embarrassment, or the possibility of causing unintentional damage.  This is why we should stop and consider things like this as more than mere ethical commonplace and truly evaluate where we stand on these issues.  People should take just a minute in their day to consider if the things they move around in the universe fall under their moral justification to do so.  They could consider why they have this justification and whether those around them agree with it. 

"A Question of Jurisprudence," by Derek Canino

  Do we have a prima facie obligation to obey the law? 

 

    The need for obedience to the law as obligatory, is a cornerstone for a society to function as the world exists.  Any political body or sovereignty requires its citizens to obey the social contract put out before them for there to be order.  This order would create safety and prosperity for citizens who are bound to said law.  The question of this essay is to focus on the need or obligation of every citizen to obey all laws that it’s governing body decrees.  Do we obey because we agree with the law, or for the sake of obedience? 

    First and foremost, any society needs a means of creating and disseminating its legal practices.   In the United States laws are supposed to be created by an elected body and knowledge is passed onto its citizens by press, word of mouth, enforcement, or legal councilors.  Citizens in this country are in turn, are obliged to follow the rules whether they be set by executive order, congressional vote, or judicial precedent.  We must ask ourselves: Is this the most effective system of jurisprudence? 

    One of the first problems that might be encountered is the sovereignty principle.  This principle establishes that political authority is derived from some agreement by the public.  Some argue that the sovereign is determined by the masses or by a consensus of the people.  Others might argue that sovereignty's nascent point is from the presence of force.  There may be an incalculable number of methods to determining how, exactly, political power is granted to a person or persons.   

    In the case of congressional law-making bodies, people elect senators to state or federal offices.  In the case of the United States Senate, 2 persons are elected to represent each of the 50 states that compose the union.  While this is meant to balance the power of the states to the population, we encounter a troubling prospect.  This is the problem of the fact that population has exploded exponentially since the founding fathers ratified the United States Constitution (and did away with the Articles of Confederation.)  The United States has 100 people representing and voting for the interests of hundreds of millions of people.  Talking heads popularized by the press argue that the United States is becoming an oligarchy, but is that novel proposition if you consider those statistics (let us put aside the House of Representatives for argument's sake?) Can the Senators they really create fair and just laws effectively?  Are they in touch with the people they govern when their lifestyle is radically different than that of the average construction worker or IT professional? 

    Consider the Executive Branch of the government for a moment.  They are in the position to enforce the law that they might not even agree with.  Due to either the fact that the other two branches have created (possibly) draconian edicts, or the fact that the chain of command might not allow for individual judgements or decisions to be made.  Some executive officials are elected, such as the POTUS, but many are not.  To what extent do military leaders have on how law is created and enforced that most citizens even know about?  Many questions can be promulgated from the premise of executive power. 

    Judicial power in the United States is based on precedent and the holdings of judges through a network of hierarchically based regionally autonomous courts.  Local courts can make decisions that affect policy, and higher courts can overrule them.  This begs the question of whether the higher courts are aware of what is happening on the local level outside of a given court case.  Can judges, who assumedly, lived cloistered lives, have a fair opinion of a federalist experiment in law?  Finally, the Supreme Court was never an elected, but appointed body, and therefore is immune from scrutiny and recourse from the public.  This isn’t even in factoring in the lifetime appointment that goes with being a member of the SCOTUS. 

    In the United States, local and federal agencies are also law-making bodies that can make distinct impacts on the livelihood of an inordinate amount of people.  To what extent are they subject to public oversight?  The question or how one can seek a remedy from an injustice from a government agency is not always clear.  While a person can bring civil litigation against a particular agent, the agency, remains immune from legal action.  Does the public even agree to the existence of certain agencies?  Would they agree to how it practices or what persons it hires? 

    The above-mentioned premises of concluding the nature of power in the United States is only a small sample of questions or difficulties that the political leviathan is subjected to.  The conclusion must be that there are so many laws, holdings, precedents, statutes, edicts, and orders that the common person can be lost.  The topic of the book Overruled by Supreme Justice Neil Gorsuch addresses these issues.  Gorsuch’s argues summarily that people resist the rule of law when there is either too few laws or too many.  He affirms that the public would be at the greatest state of order when they know what to obey and how to obey it, and of course, whether they feel they should obey. 

    The argument of this essay now turns to the original question stated in the title.  Essentially, I believe that people have some prima facie obligation to follow the law.  People in the United States have countless laws to follow, limitless regulations to adhere to, and must be expected to do so.  The reason I argue for some, rather than simple obedience, is whether the laws are equitable.  So, in a word to my own question, I answer with, maybe. 

    The Positivist argues that law and morality are separate, and one must be applied to the other.  Some may assume that morality was inherently considered during the inception of a law. This is a common trap.  The trap is that a person might believe that obedience to law for law’s sake is going to provide justice and order.  Laws were not necessarily created to promote good as many people understand it. We, as citizens have a duty to apply morality to law after its inception.   

    So why must we scrutinize a law before we simply follow it?  Perhaps the law is created to suit the interests of a wealthy industrialist seeking to make profit and control a market.  Perhaps there was a law passed by Congress that made wearing anything but red shirts illegal.  Perhaps a lobbyist from the red dye company made many generous campaign contributions to Senators seeking to ban non-red shirts.  While this example may sound ludicrous, it does happen on some level.  Corporate, private, or corrupt interests are factored into creating the law. 

    Philosophers such as John Rawls and H.L.A. Hart addressed the question of whether following the law should be obligatory.  The answer was generally, yes, with special exceptions of when the law was being corrupted.  This seems to be the commonplace form of jurisprudence.  These, and countless other, political thinkers date back to the earliest forms of the Republic in America.  There was always a need to oversee the government and intercede in the case of tyrannical control.  The Bill of Rights and the first 10 Amendments illustrate this point perfectly. 

    Let us consider civil disobedience for a moment.  People sometimes find that laws that were created, were not created with the best intentions or were simply impractical.  These people will go out of their way to publicly defy these laws to gain attention to their unjust nature.  These people may be the difference between just order turning into brutal control.  These people, therefore, can be cited as examples when the prima facie obligation to follow law was not true. 

    Arguments against the use of civil disobedience might stem from the notion that people enter a social contract in the society that they live in.  Philosopher John Rawls injected the argument of fair play into the philosophical discussion of the obligatory nature of obedience.  Not all of us may use the public park, but we must all pay a portion of taxes to maintain it (some might say.)  One could argue that they should be able to direct a portion of where their tax dollars go specifically.  Obviously, that wouldn’t be practical, because necessary yet unpopular items may go unattended. 

    The main difficulty of the social contract argument is the problem of agreement.  How does one actively choose to be a member of a given society?  If you were a born citizen of the United States, were raised from young childhood to adulthood, then decided that you were not interested in participating the social contract: How would you opt out?  Where would you go?  If you don’t have any allies or connections in a foreign country, would you have a fair shot to make it there?  At a certain point of your life, you might be so acculturated to United States life that it would be simply impractical to live elsewhere to another nation in question.

    These questions demonstrate the parochial nature of the social contract or Hobbe’s viewpoint on social obedience.  The world is simply too different regarding regional norms and values.  The idea of cultural and ethical relativism takes a huge part of factoring into what world an outsider could even fit into.  Since we do not live in a world with a completely established set of legal values on an international level, we run into problems trying to establish universal laws based on universal morality.  International government does not really exist, and problem of working around local customs is an encroaching bugaboo.  

    As citizens of the world, rather than simply of the United States; is there an obligation to participate in a united world order?  To some extent the answer is yes, and to some extent the answer is no.   There are many factors to consider when expanding legal sovereignty over the entire planet.  If such sovereignty was achieved, accepted, and justified, would the obligation to follow the law remain the same? 

    Global world order would constantly be at odds with local or traditional legal procedures and practices.  People might have an overly difficult time adjusting to a larger hierarchical set of law.  The trouble that might arise is that obstinance might eventually degrade into insurrection against the global sovereign.  It could be the case that more would be harmed than would be protected.  Since no such global authority exists, it would be very difficult to determine how its legally nascent properties be conceived.  

    It is the case that international law and the United Nations are an existing force in the world today (as was the Legue of Nations.)  However, such entities are an amalgamation of nations still operating under their individual banners as customs to the extent that it makes little difference.  Some might say that since the United Nations does not have a completely globally participating military force that it lacks the power of a truly sovereign power.   Obedience to such authority at this point is merely voluntary and proves that its individual members do not have prima facie obligation to follow law. 

    This brings up the question of whether any individual in any circumstance of living in a communal society of some kind has an active power in law making.  The same for a duty to follow whatever laws or customs said society adopts. The issue at its core is an argument for the rights of a person or a group-based interests on whichever might be more justified.  Naturally it is hard to determine what that justification is and how it might be view objectively.  It is more likely to fall on the society to be justified than the individual simply due to numerical advantage.  Some feel that individuality is more threatening to the overall good, and some may feel that groupthink is more threatening to the overall good. 

    I still would assert that the burden of proof of righteousness is on the state, and it should be on the individual to decide what is possible or impossible for them to obey.  While there might be negative consequences, there is always the freedom to break the law.  Only the most dystopian of worlds would create laws so powerful that they were completely immutable and unbreakable.  The fact of how a society punishes, prevents, or corrects disobedience to its laws is a whole other matter.  

    Punishment is a matter that might make a person obey a law they rightly disagree with.  Say there was a $5000 fine for wearing a non-red shirt from my red shirt example above, would obedience be more justified if that meant a person could lose their home?  It is no longer a matter of whether a person should follow the law, but rather, a matter of whether they can survive the consequences of disobedience to that law.  “Should” and “can” are two semantic concepts that make a huge difference in morality.  If the fine were $50, maybe a person would be apt to disobey the law.  Does this create a moral distinction in whether obedience to the law in general is required? Is a person who obeys rules for the sake of obedience more ethical than a person fearful of punishment?  Is civil disobedience ever justified?

    Now let us take an example of what might be considered fair civil disobedience: the case of African Americans during the Montgomery bus boycotts.  Rosa Parks (and many others, even before and after her) famously defied sanctioned bus policy projected by regional law makers.   A person resisting something that would banish an elderly woman to the back of the bus seems draconian and punitive to an entire race.  People support this kind of disobedience.   However, people might be more disinclined to view the civil disobedience of premeditated murder against investment bankers as unacceptable in all cases. To what extent is civil disobedience morally permissible?  Popularity, both at the time and historically seems to win the day.

    The issue of Cannabis legalization has been a subject of much debate in the United States.  Marijuana has been traditionally seen as a tool of non-whites in America for recreational and medicinal purpose.  The “Moynihan Report,” by Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a report given to President Lydon Banes Johnson about the destruction of the African American family unit.  In his report to the president, Moynihan argued that Marijuana was adversely affecting the family unit of AF-AM households and was therefore detrimental to society.  President Johnson was swayed by the report and legislation would be enacted for years to come afterward.  This was also not a novel opinion, as Marijuana was much maligned by the white hegemony for years prior. 

    President Richard Nixon would go on to pass the Controlled Substances Act of 1971 which would categorize various narcotics and establish a means of prosecuting persons in violation of possession of those laws.  This would go on to lead to the incarceration of countless persons, much of whom were African American.  These persons, for whatever reason, felt that they had no prima facie obligation to follow such laws, and therefore suggests that entire segments of nation’s population were willing to face severe punishment to disobey.  Eventually President Ronald Reagan’s infamous War on Drugs would continue to punish an ever-increasing portion of the public, a larger percentage included non-African Americans.  The question of whether these people acted immorally in their disobedience is subject to massive debate amongst talking heads, politicians, academics, and so many others. 

    Currently there are several states in the United States that have eased off restrictions on Marijuana as a punishable offense and therefore allowed to be cultivated and sold as a consumer product.  These changes in law often bring into question the validity of the punishments that were imposed on so many people during those periods.  One can argue that change was necessary and should have been sooner, and others can argue that remaining firm on the topic was the just course of action.  The fact remains that the obligation or lack thereof, to follow the law, has changed the outcome of what legal standards have followed. 

    However, this is only the case in a few states in the union.  The Federal Government still has Marijuana classified as an illegal narcotic and the Drug Enforcement Agency is still able to prosecute persons for possession or sale of the product (at least outside of the state in question.)  The author of this essay does not know what the exact arrangement between this agency and the state governments that removed this law is exactly.  My understanding is that principle of federalism allows state the sovereignty to make its own decisions regarding the legality of Cannabis. 

    The issue stated above is only one sample of how conflicting interests in the legal climate can alter whether people feel justified in disregarding the prima facie requirements to follow the law.  Some people may say, “you can’t pick and choose what laws you want to follow.”  Those people might be forgetting the fact that a person with the wealth can relocate into certain places where certain laws aren’t in place (such as Colorado, if they want to legally use Marijuana.)  Sometimes obedience to law can be malleable. If you consider it still technically obedience in the context of the legal framework of the region that they are living in. 

    In summation, the most common answer to the question I asked is: Yes, unless the law is unfair.  How we determine what laws are unfair is ambiguous, of course.  Also, what laws are even present or how we might know what they are can be confusing.  Some argue that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but that does not mean that obligation was intentional.  That can make all the difference in the world to people.  We are always left with the choice to obey for obedience's sake or because we agree with the law.  The reason why someone obeys matters, even if it does not change the practical outcome to society.  Law functions in society because we all need to agree to follow the law.  We can also agree that flagrant disobedience can lead to bedlam.  We can only pray that we can have a country and a world where the laws are just and fair, and that all persons are willing and able to follow them. 

Robert Middlekauff Book Review

 The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. (Robert Middlekauff, (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1982.) 

    The Glorious Cause, by Robert Middlekauff is a comprehensive narrative about the American Revolution from a political and military perspective. Middlekauff's main argument in the book is that the American Revolution was inspired by the “glorious cause,” that he acknowledges throughout the book.  The term “glorious cause,” is used as an amalgam of religious zeal and rhetoric about liberty.   

    The narrative begins with the passage of the various Intolerable Acts by British Parliament. He constructs an exposition about the war by political perspectives of both the British and her colonies. Key historical figures from a top-down perspective were used to make his arguments such as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, William Pitt, George Grenville, and Charles Townshend (to name a few.)  Middlekauff makes an exemplary effort of relating the colonial experience with parliamentary politics. 

    Middlekauff maintains that early in American history, the colonists were rife with political and religious factionalism. He argues that the “glorious cause,” of political and religious liberty was a causal factor of the revolution.  The narrative describes assorted demographics that suggest that, for the inception of the Continental Army, there required a political and cultural impetus.  Religious zeal, the writings of John Dickenson, and Common Sense, by Thomas Paine, were all essential for producing the culture of revolution. 

    Middlekauff delves into the complex working of the militias and Continental Army as they were rallied by Congress. The author explores the nature of war time mobilization in a culture that valued freedom and liberty with the highest regard.  He contended that an adequate amount of a cultural phenomenon was required to unite the states into a functioning army through the capable hands of George Washington.  It is a testament to presence of the “glorious cause,” that a weaker and poorly trained army could defeat a colonial superpower like the British Empire. 

    Middlekauff had the arduous task of making the battlefield come alive to the reader. However, his ability to reach this challenge was limited, as his descriptions of battlefield encounters were often windy and confusing.  Middlekauff’s passages about battles like Bunker Hill, the Monmouth Court House, the Battle of Bemis Heights, and other key battles were difficult to follow and required a very keen understanding of battle formations. He described the arrangements of the troops, where flanks were attacked, where reinforcements were held, and other war details with great difficulty to the reader.  The common reader with little military understanding could quickly become lost. 

    The Glorious Cause did, however, capture the details of what the conditions of the war were.  His imaginative and detailed description of the winter at Valley Forge was memorable, interesting, and at times humorous. Middlekauff proved capacious in his ability to tell logistical difficulties in war time, as well as illustrating what motivated simple farmers and country folk to becoming a capable fighting force.  When Middlekauff utilized the term he coined, “the glorious cause,” he managed to prove its connectivity without making superfluous statements that belittled the readers intellect. 

    There are occasions when Middlekauff failed to direct the reader to sufficient sources in his topic sentences. His citations were missing in certain passages, sometimes using phrases like, “historians claimed...” without any mention of which historians he was referring to.  His footnotes and bibliography still suggested that Middlekauff was not outright making fallacious claims, but it can still be argued that his source notations could have used revision.  Additionally, his addition of the experiential factor of women, Native Americans, and African Americans was limited to only several pages. More effort could be placed here, while noting that there were some interesting passages in these areas.  More effort needs to be taken not to marginalize these groups. 

    Overall, if a reader was seeking to understand the Revolutionary War from a political and military perspective, The Glorious Cause is a worthwhile secondary source. His lengthy book provides both good insights and copious supply of factual information.  This book should be recommended for students and scholars with an emphasis on the first thirteen chapters and the last six chapters.  The information found in the middle of these mentioned areas still leaves a bit to be desired.   

Peter Hart Book Review

 The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War. Peter Hart. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013. 

    Peter Hart’s, The Great War is an excellent account of the Great War. Hart generated a superb narrative that follows the events that led up to World War 1 and the major timeline of the war itself. The narrative includes accounts of the Western Front, the Eastern Front, naval campaigns, the middle east (including Mesopotamia and Palestine.)  Hart utilizes sources from both a top-down and bottom-up version of the war.  

    Hart mentions the important players of British, French, and German high commands. He described Erich Von Ludendorff, Douglas Haig, Sir John French, Joesef Joffre, and numerous other generals in capacious detail.  He provided both criticisms and praise for their various military engagements and tried to maintain a neutral stance on their abilities as leaders.  His use of low-ranking military sources gave more in depth depictions of the battlefield.  The sources on the ground were almost poetic in their descriptions of the death and destruction that took place in Europe.  

    Hart’s detailed description of the weapons of the war demonstrated a deep attention to detail.  The Maxim machine gun, for example, became a memorable tool of warfare throughout the telling of the wartime narrative.  From artillery to chemical weapons, Hart was able to incorporate each novel invention of death as part of chronological depiction of mankind’s need to eviscerate itself.  

    Photographs were included in the book to give a visual aid to the reader that could contribute to a more accurate telling of the events of the Great War.  He included pictures of the battlefield, which featured the war-ravaged countryside of France and Belgium.  Photographs of key political and military leaders were also included so the reader could find it to be a more immersive narrative.  Additionally, pictures of weapons, vehicles, and trench fortifications were present in order that was chronological yet organic.   

    Peter Hart more than effectively captured the horror and despair of the Great War.  His storytelling mastery was revealed through each page in his work.  This book has potential to give a historical narrative that most of the public would find palatable.  The book also has academic potential for scholars looking to incorporate a valuable secondary source to their own work.   

    As a military history, the book, however, fails to provide cultural context to the Great War.  The events of the war are merely isolated to combat with just a smidge of political pretext.  While no author can realistically capture all aspects and facets of life that war touches, this book remains mostly combat related.  The book also minimizes the role played by the United States in turning the tide of the wars to the Allied Powers.  There is barely a mention of John Pershing's role in the war.  The United States was merely a source of fresh, well-fed bodies.  

    Overall, I found Hart’s work to be an invigorating read that kept my interest the whole way through.  His descriptions of naval campaigns left something to be desired, as there were many nautical terms that the layperson might find confusing or disorienting.  Average and academic alike can at least gain some kind of insight because of Hart’s work.  I would recommend taking the time to read through the book, as I am certain, you would not be disappointed.