Right of Conquest

[untermensche]

US influence has never been anything but might and claims of the right to use it. The US is not an example to anyone except criminals.

Well, duh. Just like the Gulf War. The US threatens to use force if another country attempts conquest of another. When the US fades, and it certainly is fading now, that threat goes away. Pax Americana will come to end soon.

That was an operation where many nations went to the UN and there was general agreement in the UN and Resolutions about the matter.

That was the UN acting as it was intended to work. Not any comment about the US.

 

[Trausti]

US influence has never been anything but might and claims of the right to use it. The US is not an example to anyone except criminals.

Well, duh. Just like the Gulf War. The US threatens to use force if another country attempts conquest of another. When the US fades, and it certainly is fading now, that threat goes away. Pax Americana will come to end soon.

That was an operation where many nations went to the UN and there was general agreement in the UN and Resolutions about the matter.

That was the UN acting as it was intended to work. Not any comment about the US.

Okay. So the US contribution to the Gulf War was only incidental? Could've happened without the US?

 

[Elixir]

How can you differentiate "right of conquest" from "result of conquest", when the conqueror can spell out rights in laws that they can cite without contradiction and enforce without hindrance?

They can't, and didn't. The population would not, in fact, accept a purely dictatorial government over the long term.

You can't differentiate right of conquest from result of conquest, but in the case of North America, "they" (Europeans) did (and do) spell out rights in laws that they can cite without meaningful contradiction and enforce without significant hindrance. That, as a result (aka a right) of conquest.

I am asking for a counter-example: a law or a legality that exists aside from what is established by conquest.

The entire system of law supposedly exists by common consent, not conquest.

Politesse, I KNOW you are not that naive. "We the people" meant the slave owners and land owners. The conquistadors. They even set up a Senate and an Electoral college to ensure that while all the slave and land owners had a seat at the table, others were functionally if not nominally, excluded.

Not only is there no endorsement of violent conquest as a means to create new rights or title, I would argue that such a practice is in direct opposition to the principles of domestic tranquility, liberty, and common defense.

At the time of the writing the conquest was complete and needed no endorsement as a fait accompli. Domestic tranquility meant "no slave uprising", "no Indians killing white settlers" etc. It didn't mean "no trail of tears" or "no whipping slaves".

Now, they did not at the time believe that they were granting these rights to everyone within the land area of the Colonies. This is obvious. However, because they set up an ongoing system of law, redress of grievances, and the creation of new rights by common consent, the American people were able to amend the Constitution....

Zackly. The law of unintended consequences caught up with the founders.

over time to attempt to ensure equal representation under the law.

FIFY. We are not there yet, by a considerable distance. And there is no assurance that we ever will be, what with fascist Trumpsuckers all over the place, even in the government.

By diplomacy and common agreement, not by violence.

Diplomacy is a very-nearly-lost art and agreement is less and less common in this country.

"I killed him, so I get his stuff" is not a legal argument that would be recognized in any American courtroom as valid.

Only because the coup attempt of Jan 6 didn't succeed. If they had killed all the democrat legislators, hung Mike pence and installed Trump as dictator like he wanted (as Putin instructed him), "I killed him, so I get his stuff" would very much have been the operative principle whereby the government was overthrown, and any judge who ruled otherwise would be summarily silenced.
American justice and equality, to the extent that it exists or has ever existed at all, is a gossamer film of societal superficiality that serves mostly as a mechanism whereby the barbarism of our actual practices can be ignored.

 

[Politesse]

human rights are like religion - they don't exist in a vacuum. they aren't inherent to the natural order of biological life and they aren't a naturally occurring element of the universe.

And yet, you keep talking about "natural law", as though we were somehow beholden to it even over and above the rights we define for ourselves. Your position is not consistent.

i keep talking about 'natural law' because it's a term with a definition that means the thing i'm talking about.

well ok... i'll grant you my use of the term 'natural law' is questionable, since that label is technically applied to a specific field of argument trying to justify the existence of god, but even the most basic use of reading comprehension could conclude that i'm talking about ethology when i say that, especially given the other terms i've used to describe the same thing.
and for the purposes of this reply i asked 4 people i know what they think of when i say 'natural law' or 'law of the jungle' or 'law of nature' and they all responded with thinking of those terms corresponding to ethology, so i'm reasonably certain that i'm not going out on a limb to say that even if i was using the terms wrong, i was doing so in a common way.

so i'll go out of my way here to be extremely generous and give you the benefit of the doubt that you're having some kind of inability to figure out the concept of a colloquialism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology

also, i'm not talking about ANYTHING other than the fact that your original question is invalid due to actual literal history. i'm not making a value judgment about humans or commenting about anything related to human nature, so i have no idea what the hell you're on about suggesting that i'm saying we're beholden to anything.

though, i need to heed my own posts and remember that you don't reply to people, you just hallucinate straw men and then vomit out completely unrelated garbage based on your own insanity, so i don't know why i keep thinking your responses should have any connection to what you're replying to.

If you answer is "it doesn't have a legal or ethical basis", that doesn't make my question invalid. Yes and no are both valid answers to valid questions.

I'm aware of the evo psych crowd, though I don't recall any of its principal thinkers ever directly endorsing the concept of a right of conquest. They have observed that we (and many of our primate cousins) have a general proclivity toward violence, but that isn't the same thing as basing a government, or land ownership, on institutionalized violence. Indeed, my assumption would be that most evolutionary biologists are aware of the relatively recent nascence of governments as a whole concept, let alone land ownership.

 

[Politesse]

You can't differentiate right of conquest from result of conquest, but in the case of North America, "they" (Europeans) did (and do) spell out rights in laws that they can cite without meaningful contradiction and enforce without significant hindrance. That, as a result (aka a right) of conquest.

So your argument is contingent on proving that the enforcing the Constitution of the United States faced no contradiction or hindrance in its execution? Hoo boy do you ever have some reading to do. No, "uncontroversial" is not a term anyone would ever have thought to apply to American law. We lost damn near half the country to disagreements over Constitutional law within eighty years of its publication. And most of the entities that were significant political powers in North America before its publication refuse to recognize as binding on themselves, to this day. For instance, the Haudenosaunee, Cherokee Nation, Sioux Confederacy etc recognize its authority over the United States, but not over their own internal affairs, and insist that it is only legally binding on individuals who accept American citizenship. Nor have any conceded the legality of US seizure of their former places of habitation. Even though all three were subject to violent reprisals and genocide, and so should therefore fall under the purview of this supposed "right of conquest". You say you're being practical here, but as a practical matter, if trying to impose something causes a war, I do not think a reasonable person would describe that as "without meaningful contradiction." What does "meaningful contradiction" mean, if not outright and continuing refusal to recognize it?

 

[untermensche]

That was an operation where many nations went to the UN and there was general agreement in the UN and Resolutions about the matter.

That was the UN acting as it was intended to work. Not any comment about the US.

Okay. So the US contribution to the Gulf War was only incidental? Could've happened without the US?

Saddam could not have invaded Kuwait without all the years of US support.

 

[Trausti]

That was an operation where many nations went to the UN and there was general agreement in the UN and Resolutions about the matter.

That was the UN acting as it was intended to work. Not any comment about the US.

Okay. So the US contribution to the Gulf War was only incidental? Could've happened without the US?

Saddam could not have invaded Kuwait without all the years of US support.

You’re not disproving my point.

 

[untermensche]

Saddam could not have invaded Kuwait without all the years of US support.

You’re not disproving my point.

You have not proven anything.

After the first Gulf War, after the elder Bush pushed Hussein out, the US abandoned the Shiites as they rose up against Hussein to be slaughtered. The second was a huge act of terrorism not approved by the UN.

 

[Trausti]

Saddam could not have invaded Kuwait without all the years of US support.

You’re not disproving my point.

You have not proven anything.

After the first Gulf War, after the elder Bush pushed Hussein out, the US abandoned the Shiites as they rose up against Hussein to be slaughtered. The second was a huge act of terrorism not approved by the UN.

My point is that it is Pax Americana that prevents right of conquest or might makes right. Without the US intervention, Saddam would control Kuwait today.

 

[steve_bank]

The question is part of our cognitive dissonance.

The Geneva Conventions did not ban war, it laid out rules. Mostly around the old war staegy of massed troops tp avoid civilian casualties.

It is online, I believe in the conventions captured territory is supposed to be returned.


Israel claims a right to colonize the Wesr Bank. The conservatives justify by gid and a biblical mandate.

China has arbitrarily redrawn maritime boundaries to include fish and other resources. After minerals were found in Tibet China annexed a piece of Indian land for a transit corridor an claims Taiwan. The kind of behavior that led to WWII.

Inian and China are now shooting at each other, and there is India vs Pakistan over what amounts to a useless mountain region. Casmir.

Legality can only apply when there is an enforcement of rules. Take your pick om a moral position. Survival of the fittest, manifest destiny, might make right, and the rest.
Who grants any rights?

 

[untermensche]

You have not proven anything.

After the first Gulf War, after the elder Bush pushed Hussein out, the US abandoned the Shiites as they rose up against Hussein to be slaughtered. The second was a huge act of terrorism not approved by the UN.

My point is that it is Pax Americana that prevents right of conquest or might makes right. Without the US intervention, Saddam would control Kuwait today.

The US went into Iraq killed and tortured and overturned the government.

The right of conquest is very much alive and the US is doing it all over the place.

 

[prideandfall]

My point is that it is Pax Americana that prevents right of conquest or might makes right. Without the US intervention, Saddam would control Kuwait today.

the problem with this assertion is the fact that saddam wouldn't have been capable of invading kuwait in the first place if it wasn't for the US.

that's basically applying the logic of a protection racket to international affairs.
"nice country ya got there... would be a shame if someone were bomb it into the technological stone age. give me money and i wont' do that. ooooohhhhh lookit how i'm protecting you from being bombed!"

there's only a very few instances in the last 80 years where the US intervened militarily where the need for US military intervention wasn't the fault of US interference in the first place.

 

[Trausti]

My point is that it is Pax Americana that prevents right of conquest or might makes right. Without the US intervention, Saddam would control Kuwait today.

the problem with this assertion is the fact that saddam wouldn't have been capable of invading kuwait in the first place if it wasn't for the US.

that's basically applying the logic of a protection racket to international affairs.
"nice country ya got there... would be a shame if someone were bomb it into the technological stone age. give me money and i wont' do that. ooooohhhhh lookit how i'm protecting you from being bombed!"

there's only a very few instances in the last 80 years where the US intervened militarily where the need for US military intervention wasn't the fault of US interference in the first place.

However you slice it, the US controlled the world order post-WWII. Without the US, there is nothing preventing right of conquest by other nations.

 

[untermensche]

Post WWII the US has been a violent bully disrupting nation after nation.

Not for any good purpose.

So corporations can plunder and profit.

 

[Trausti]

Post WWII the US has been a violent bully disrupting nation after nation.

Not for any good purpose.

So corporations can plunder and profit.

Sure, why not.

 

[prideandfall]

However you slice it, the US controlled the world order post-WWII.

yes, because the US was the only world power that wasn't utterly decimated by world war 2 - it's easy to control the world when the world has been completely crippled by a conflict that you didn't participate in.

Without the US, there is nothing preventing right of conquest by other nations.

except for the whole "no country had the military or the will to go around conquesting anyone" thing, sure - at least up until the 1950s when europe started to recover.
after that, pretty much every time there was a conflict for the US to "prevent" the US caused the conflict in the first place, so it could be equally said that without the US there is nothing causing a right of conquest in other nations.

 

[Trausti]

However you slice it, the US controlled the world order post-WWII.

yes, because the US was the only world power that wasn't utterly decimated by world war 2 - it's easy to control the world when the world has been completely crippled by a conflict that you didn't participate in.

Without the US, there is nothing preventing right of conquest by other nations.

except for the whole "no country had the military or the will to go around conquesting anyone" thing, sure - at least up until the 1950s when europe started to recover.
after that, pretty much every time there was a conflict for the US to "prevent" the US caused the conflict in the first place, so it could be equally said that without the US there is nothing causing a right of conquest in other nations.

Fine, but the notion of legitimate or illegitimate county/occupation only comes about because of American hegemony. That's an American/Western viewpoint. Once the US fades away, we're back to right of conquest.

 

[Bomb#20]

Everything is a fair bit more complicated than any description; but that's the chief underlying principle of English land law in a nutshell.

And yet, you cite no actual law.

Certainly I cited actual law: the actual land law of England. I take it you mean I cited no actual statute. English Common Law isn't statutes; it's precedents: accumulated case law, decisions of countless judges over nearly a thousand years of countless disputes. It's not on me to cite an Act of Parliament making the Queen own the land. That's not how it works. If you want to claim I'm wrong, burden of proof is on you to cite an Act of Parliament making the Queen no longer own the land. This is basic to how law works in England. I'm not making this up.

At the Norman conquest of England, all the land of England was claimed as the personal possession of William the Conqueror under allodial title. The monarch thus became the sole "owner" of all the land in the kingdom, a position which persists to the present day.​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escheat

And your caveat here seems to acknowledge, without fully acknowledging, that the government you are citing no longer exists, except a mythic institution of its own.

The heck caveat are you talking about? "Not applicable in Scotland"? England never conquered Scotland; the countries got merged because the same guy inherited Scotland from his mother and England from his father. "Everything is a fair bit more complicated"? English law distinguishes between what the Queen owns privately and what she owns in her role as monarch; it distinguishes between what she owns as Queen of England and what she owns as Duke of Lancashire and what she owns as Duke of Normandy; between yada yada and yada yada... Of course the government I'm citing still exists.

They are both equally endorsement of legal transfer of ownership by right of conquest. Further, the philosophical bases for the two impositions are identical: they are both equally appeals to counterfactual mythic history.

What law are you even citing here? You cite Chochenyo territory as an example, but I've never met a Chochenyo person who recognizes the so-called Right of Conquest, and I believe I know most of the surviving members of that particular people, their numbers are not many.

You misunderstand. I didn't offer an opinion on what Chochenyo people recognize. When I said people who allude to the idea of "recognizing" "indigenous" title are endorsing Right of Conquest, I wasn't referring* to Chochenyo people; I was referring to you. You effectively endorsed Right of Conquest, when you called (I presume) Alameda County "Chochenyo Territory", and when you implied they have a "title" to that land, a title the rest of us can "recognize" or not -- as opposed to having a title the rest of us grant to them. I'm arguing with you, not with them.

The reason claiming Alameda County is Chochenyo Territory constitutes endorsing Right of Conquest is that Alameda County used to be occupied by the Esselen tribe. About 1500 years ago the Chochenyo's ancestors drove them out and seized the land. The Esselen now mostly live down in Monterey County.

(Source: https://www.wikizero.com/en/Chochenyo )

(* Of course, if any of the Chochenyo also claim they have "indigenous" title, then those specific individuals are endorsing Right of Conquest too. But if as you say land ownership wasn't recognized in the first place then that doesn't sound like they're claiming "indigenous" title.)

But there was no customary law that would justify expelling the Spanish from the town; good neighbor, bad neighbor, the land wasn't anyone's to govern absolutely, and indeed there were no defined borders to apply governance within.

Sounds like somebody's culture wasn't static for 1200-odd years.

And why do you feel that a "counterfactual mythic history" is a good, sound basis for making any kind of claim, anyway? Like you sound really dismissive of these justifications, but you are also using them. So that's pretty odd. What are you arguing for here?

What the heck are you on about? No, counterfactual mythic history is not a good, sound basis for making any kind of claim. Where do you see me using that sort of justification? England? I already told you straight up "Not how I'd set up a system of government". I was reporting what English law is, not claiming it was justified.

You're the one who appealed to counterfactual mythic history as a basis for your "allusion to the idea of recognizing indigenous title", right up front in your OP, when you wrote the words "Asking for a First Nation". You were not asking for a First Nation. The Chochenyo are not the First Nation; neither are they "a" First Nation, as though that were even a meaningful concept. They are simply a nation, one among many nations in a series that began long before there were any Chochenyo.

The widespread Canadian custom of calling Beringian-Canadians "First Nations" is a lie. It's a lie well-suited to promoting the counterfactual historical myth that Beringian-Canadians are somehow an iota more indigenous than English-Canadians and French-Canadians and Jamaican-Canadians -- a counterfactual historical myth that's being spread in order to insinuate falsely that some Canadians have more right to be there than other Canadians based on whose ancestors moved to Canada earlier. No Canadian has a duty to tug his forelock to any other Canadian merely because his immigrant forebears arrived more recently. Everyone born in Canada is exactly as indigenous as everyone else born there. So I do hope you don't persuade any Americans to adopt that racist Canadian custom here.

 

[Bomb#20]

I note that despite all the anger people feel toward the question being raised, no one has yet cited any real evidence that the Right of Conquest is a recognized legal principle in any currently living nation. The closest thing to this was citation of medieval England, a country that no longer exists and whose modern incarnation has repudiated this notion very specifically ever since the end of the Napeolonic Wars.

I was not citing medieval England. I was citing 21st-century England, which still has laws going back to 1066 that have never been repealed by Parliament. And the fact that modern England has repudiated Napoleon's Right of Conquest in no way implies that modern England has repudiated William the Bastard's Right of Conquest. Countries' legal systems are not required to be philosophically consistent.

 

[untermensche]

Post WWII the US has been a violent bully disrupting nation after nation.

Not for any good purpose.

So corporations can plunder and profit.

Sure, why not.

It is modern day conquest.

The US did not prevent conquest by doing it.