Right of Conquest

[prideandfall]

Again, a claim.

Under what law or justification?

the same law or justification that allows a lion to eat a gazelle - there are things about biological life on this planet that simply are, and while we can recognize them and label them we can't really do anything about them.
since the first single celled organism devoured a different organism for sustenance the natural law of life on earth was established, and what you're talking about is just an extension of that.

sure, as humans we've developed civilization and a prefrontal cortex and such, but the concept of ousting an existing claimant in order to lay claim to a territory is a concept as old as life itself.
that doesn't need a legal justification or a law to grant it, it simply *is*.

 

[rousseau]

A fun (and semi-serious) twist to put on the issue is the rights of non-human animals.

Another (more serious) twist to put on the issue is a community that needs to conquer or disperse. For example, if everyone in say, Venezuela, is starving to death, do they have the right to invade Colombia or Brazil? If the U.S. has a biological imperative to invade Canada, are they within their rights to do so?

On some level we're starting to talk about my human rights vs your human rights. Fundamentally, there is a conflict.

 

[Elixir]

What part don't you get? What they say, goes. Period. Object, and suffer whatever penalty they see fit to impose.



Do I feel that? Fuck no. But that doesn't alter the fact that historically the conquered population gets assimilated if it is ethnically similar to the conquerors, and violently subjugated if not. Recognition is rare and irrelevant. But you knew that.



There is no "if so" (I do NOT think any conquered population willingly recognizes their conquest as rightful), and IMHO there is no legal basis other than whatever can be imposed by force - which is how such matters have been handled by humans since forever. If you're part of a subjugated population, all you can do is try to make sure none of your conquistadors are "having a bad day". Just ask Trausti.

So, for instance, when protestors seized a large portion of downtown Seattle, did that consitute a legal transfer of ownership to them until such time as it was retaken by government forces?

I'm asking a legal, not practical, question. Obviously, the US and Canada and Australia and so forth seized a bunch of land. That is not in dispute. The question is whether the seizure was legal, under their own legal principles, or not.

I am having a hard time separating legal and practical. I'd answer no to your question abut ownership of parts of Seattle. The "rightful" owner(s) ceded use of that property temporarily but never gave title to the protesters, and the protesters never (afaik) made an effort to gin up a title and represent it as legal to the former (and actual) owners. So there was no transfer.
It seems to come down to what the legal definition of legal is.
And that always comes down to who can enforce what they say is law.

 

[Politesse]

Again, a claim.

Under what law or justification?

the same law or justification that allows a lion to eat a gazelle - there are things about biological life on this planet that simply are, and while we can recognize them and label them we can't really do anything about them.
since the first single celled organism devoured a different organism for sustenance the natural law of life on earth was established, and what you're talking about is just an extension of that.

sure, as humans we've developed civilization and a prefrontal cortex and such, but the concept of ousting an existing claimant in order to lay claim to a territory is a concept as old as life itself.
that doesn't need a legal justification or a law to grant it, it simply *is*.

So

1. Humans should eat each other, fuck their mothers, and kill babies of potential rivals, because that's what Nature does and you just can't argue with whatever portrayal of Nature someone has come up with for blatantly political reasons..

2. Animals also own land apparently? Can the polar bears out vote Alaskans and get their territory back?

To put it another way, you're interpreting "Nature" very arbitrarily and ignoring the fact that humans have unique forms of society, not least of which various conflicting ideas about land tenure.

 

[Politesse]

What part don't you get? What they say, goes. Period. Object, and suffer whatever penalty they see fit to impose.



Do I feel that? Fuck no. But that doesn't alter the fact that historically the conquered population gets assimilated if it is ethnically similar to the conquerors, and violently subjugated if not. Recognition is rare and irrelevant. But you knew that.



There is no "if so" (I do NOT think any conquered population willingly recognizes their conquest as rightful), and IMHO there is no legal basis other than whatever can be imposed by force - which is how such matters have been handled by humans since forever. If you're part of a subjugated population, all you can do is try to make sure none of your conquistadors are "having a bad day". Just ask Trausti.

So, for instance, when protestors seized a large portion of downtown Seattle, did that consitute a legal transfer of ownership to them until such time as it was retaken by government forces?

I'm asking a legal, not practical, question. Obviously, the US and Canada and Australia and so forth seized a bunch of land. That is not in dispute. The question is whether the seizure was legal, under their own legal principles, or not.

I am having a hard time separating legal and practical. I'd answer no to your question abut ownership of parts of Seattle. The "rightful" owner(s) ceded use of that property temporarily but never gave title to the protesters, and the protesters never (afaik) made an effort to gin up a title and represent it as legal to the former (and actual) owners. So there was no transfer.
It seems to come down to what the legal definition of legal is.
And that always comes down to who can enforce what they say is law.

See, I've always thought that the definition of legal should come down to what's in the fucking law. If you want to talk about other philosophical justifications and so forth, you can, but if the question is "what is legal?" I sort of expect a legal justification to be forthcoming. Law is not arbitrary in a modern nation-state, there's a process for creating new laws and process for undoing old ones. 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.

 

[Politesse]

A fun (and semi-serious) twist to put on the issue is the rights of non-human animals.

Another (more serious) twist to put on the issue is a community that needs to conquer or disperse. For example, if everyone in say, Venezuela, is starving to death, do they have the right to invade Colombia or Brazil? If the U.S. has a biological imperative to invade Canada, are they within their rights to do so?

On some level we're starting to talk about my human rights vs your human rights. Fundamentally, there is a conflict.

What, liebensraum then? Do you agree that it's okay to kill people to make more room for yourself?

 

[Politesse]

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this, though. The idea is that only violence can truly produce rights, since the law is irrelevant to "practical reality".

Conclusion: I need to just start murdering the neighbors. If the basis of conduct in this country is natural law, and natural law rules that only those who exercise violence can have rights, I'm to blame for not killing every last homophobe in this country (for instance) rather than stupidly pursuing legal means of defining the rights of citizenship. Yes? Forget suing to get wedding cakes made, the ideal solution is to steal the cake and burn down the shop, in accordance with the "law of nature".

This is going to be a fun Pride month!

 

[rousseau]

A fun (and semi-serious) twist to put on the issue is the rights of non-human animals.

Another (more serious) twist to put on the issue is a community that needs to conquer or disperse. For example, if everyone in say, Venezuela, is starving to death, do they have the right to invade Colombia or Brazil? If the U.S. has a biological imperative to invade Canada, are they within their rights to do so?

On some level we're starting to talk about my human rights vs your human rights. Fundamentally, there is a conflict.

What, liebensraum then? Do you agree that it's okay to kill people to make more room for yourself?

No, I mentioned the biological imperative. The question was: if I'm starving to death, and those over the border are doing fine, is it a moral imperative for me to die without defending my life?

This exposes one of the important intricacies of the argument: there is what's legal, and then there is what's essential. Survival, for humans, is the basic imperative, and will trump what has been enshrined into law.

Sure, I don't disagree that European conquest was problematic, what I'm doing is reversing the context. If a nation is established, prosperous, stable - do others who can't prosper in their own communities have a right to that land?

 

[Politesse]

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. 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.

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. Neither in law, nor in mythic tradition either. Land ownership wasn't recognized in the first place, only right of habitation, and that was non-exclusive and granted on the basis of usufractry by common negotiation. There were violent episodes in history, but not for land, nor was the conclusion of a battle considered "legal" justification for just perching on that land forever after. If it were, the mission at San Jose would never have been permitted, they were badly outnumbered in the early years. 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.

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?

 

[Politesse]

A fun (and semi-serious) twist to put on the issue is the rights of non-human animals.

Another (more serious) twist to put on the issue is a community that needs to conquer or disperse. For example, if everyone in say, Venezuela, is starving to death, do they have the right to invade Colombia or Brazil? If the U.S. has a biological imperative to invade Canada, are they within their rights to do so?

On some level we're starting to talk about my human rights vs your human rights. Fundamentally, there is a conflict.

What, liebensraum then? Do you agree that it's okay to kill people to make more room for yourself?

No, I mentioned the biological imperative. The question was: if I'm starving to death, and those over the border are doing fine, is it a moral imperative for me to die without defending my life?

This exposes one of the important intricacies of the argument: there is what's legal, and then there is what's essential. Survival, for humans, is the basic imperative, and will trump what has been enshrined into law.

Sure, I don't disagree that European conquest was problematic, what I'm doing is reversing the context. If a nation is established, prosperous, stable - do others who can't prosper in their own communities have a right to that land?

If what you say is true, then it doesn't matter whether they have a right to it or not, yes?

Sounds like a recipe for violent anarchy to me.

 

[Elixir]

I am having a hard time separating legal and practical. I'd answer no to your question abut ownership of parts of Seattle. The "rightful" owner(s) ceded use of that property temporarily but never gave title to the protesters, and the protesters never (afaik) made an effort to gin up a title and represent it as legal to the former (and actual) owners. So there was no transfer.
It seems to come down to what the legal definition of legal is.
And that always comes down to who can enforce what they say is law.

See, I've always thought that the definition of legal should come down to what's in the fucking law.

I don't disagree - that's the only practical way to look at it.
Nevertheless, what's in the fucking law is whatever the ruling party writes down and calls "the law".
You or I can write down whatever we like and call it the law, but if we lack the ability to enforce it, we are the only ones who might regard it as "legal".

If you want to talk about other philosophical justifications and so forth, you can, but if the question is "what is legal?" I sort of expect a legal justification to be forthcoming.

Why would you expect such a thing? The Sierra Madre Principle applies here:
"I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

Law is not arbitrary in a modern nation-state, there's a process for creating new laws and process for undoing old ones.

There's more than one way to do that. You can elect legislators who can create, pass and enforce new ones, you can kill everyone in the existing government and install your own (as the insurrectionists attempted to do on 1/6) or you can even take the Genghis Khan approach and just kill everyone in the land, ensuring that nobody is going to contest your "legal" ownership...

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 evidence is that nobody anywhere is ruling anything that they didn't obtain by conquest.
A First Nations person, tribe, or other entity can prevail in a US court ONLY because white man fully conquered them and their (former) land.

* I am far from angry about the question being raised. I praise you for raising it, and admire your idealism. It can only help soften the brutality of the actual, real, extant system of "legal ownership".

 

[Politesse]

I don't disagree - that's the only practical way to look at it.
Nevertheless, what's in the fucking law is whatever the ruling party writes down and calls "the law".

But they didn't. It's a fake legal principle, it isn't actually there in the law.

Why would you expect such a thing? The Sierra Madre Principle applies here:
"I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

That was a criminal speaking, not a lawyer, and it ended very poorly for him as I recall.

The evidence is that nobody anywhere is ruling anything that they didn't obtain by conquest.

What "evidence"? All I'm getting is vague handwaving, inaccurate national histories, and appeals to "Nature".

A First Nations person, tribe, or other entity can prevail in a US court ONLY because white man fully conquered them and their (former) land.

That's a gross misrepresentation of history on a number of levels.

 

[prideandfall]

So

1. Humans should eat each other, fuck their mothers, and kill babies of potential rivals, because that's what Nature does and you just can't argue with whatever portrayal of Nature someone has come up with for blatantly political reasons..

that's what nature does when it's advantageous for the species to do so - you're making the mistake of thinking that what works for one thing works for all things.
elephants are herd animals, therefor sharks should be herd animals? bears are solitary therefor ants should be solitary?

it is not advantageous to the homo sapien species to have the same small pack characteristics of lions, because the circumstances of both species are very different.
that doesn't mean that the "law of the jungle" doesn't exist, and it doesn't mean we can't learn things about what shaped human instinctive psychology based on the environmental factors that would have impacted us prior to the advent of modern human civilization.

2. Animals also own land apparently? Can the polar bears out vote Alaskans and get their territory back?

well what is 'ownership' exactly?
animals don't own a deed to a chunk of land as recognized by human government, but yes animals absolutely have established territories that they mark so that others know that area is the domain of an existing occupant.
have you never heard of wolf packs scent-marking their territory? are you unaware that animals establish a nest, or a hive, or a burrow? do you not know that animals will stake out a section of geography and then use force of violence and threat of death to keep others out?

To put it another way, you're interpreting "Nature" very arbitrarily and ignoring the fact that humans have unique forms of society, not least of which various conflicting ideas about land tenure.

no, you're interpreting "nature" very stupidly, thinking that any single facet of it that applies to the circumstances of one species applies to every circumstance of every species, and ignoring the reality that just because humans have developed a complicated social system doesn't mean we're magically immune to the fact that the natural laws that have dictated all life on earth (including humans) for the last 3.5 billion years exist and have influenced us, whether or not we build skyscrapers or issue land titles.

i thought this was "your field" that you laid sole claim to be able to have expertise of, i'd expect a lot more from someone who thinks they own segments of knowledge.

 

[Elixir]

But they didn't. It's a fake legal principle, it isn't actually there in the law.

WHAT isn't WHERE in the law? What makes a legal principle "fake"?

That was a criminal speaking, not a lawyer, and it ended very poorly for him as I recall.

ROFL - good point! He did prevail, though, until he didn't. That's how it works.

The evidence is that nobody anywhere is ruling anything that they didn't obtain by conquest.

What "evidence"? All I'm getting is vague handwaving, inaccurate national histories, and appeals to "Nature".

Provide a counter-example them.

A First Nations person, tribe, or other entity can prevail in a US court ONLY because white man fully conquered them and their (former) land.

That's a gross misrepresentation of history on a number of levels.

Now who is "handwaving? How else does a First Nations Tribe or person gain "legal" results?

 

[J842P]

Does a military victory, alone, constitute a legal means of acquiring new territories? If so, on what moral or legal basis? Does the conquering "army" have to have the official imprimatur of their government in order for an invasion to be legal, or can random settlers acting unofficially be the basis of a new territorial acquisition?

Asking for a First Nation.

I'm not sure what moral bases could have to do with anything. It seems pretty obvious to me, barring contrived circumstances, that conquest is never morally justified.

Legally, are you asking about the United States specifically?

 

[J842P]

What part don't you get? What they say, goes. Period. Object, and suffer whatever penalty they see fit to impose.



Do I feel that? Fuck no. But that doesn't alter the fact that historically the conquered population gets assimilated if it is ethnically similar to the conquerors, and violently subjugated if not. Recognition is rare and irrelevant. But you knew that.



There is no "if so" (I do NOT think any conquered population willingly recognizes their conquest as rightful), and IMHO there is no legal basis other than whatever can be imposed by force - which is how such matters have been handled by humans since forever. If you're part of a subjugated population, all you can do is try to make sure none of your conquistadors are "having a bad day". Just ask Trausti.

So, for instance, when protestors seized a large portion of downtown Seattle, did that consitute a legal transfer of ownership to them until such time as it was retaken by government forces?

I'm asking a legal, not practical, question. Obviously, the US and Canada and Australia and so forth seized a bunch of land. That is not in dispute. The question is whether the seizure was legal, under their own legal principles, or not.

Probably not. Legality seems like a pretty irrelevant consideration. It's sort of like "international law".

 

[J842P]

So, for instance, when protestors seized a large portion of downtown Seattle, did that consitute a legal transfer of ownership to them until such time as it was retaken by government forces?

no, because the protestors were never the overwhelming local force, and never an overwhelming regional force.

basically i'd say that logistically it's a hierarchy: whomsoever lays claim to an area and has the resources to to maintain that claim through violence is the owner of that area.
lesser agents within the area can take temporary control of a small segment for short periods of time, but that's a limited scope issue of pragmatism and only lasts until the owning interest shows up to reestablish their claim.

So if they had fought back and murdered every police officer that stepped foot in their zone, and then every zone, until the world got sickened from the violence and the troops stopped being sent, you would consider the protestors to then "own" that patch of land? Under what law?

Yes, under this scenario, they do "own" that patch of land, as long as they can maintain control of it.

The question of *law* is irrelevant, a category error. It is like asking what color my computer program is.

 

[Politesse]

that's what nature does when it's advantageous for the species to do so - you're making the mistake of thinking that what works for one thing works for all things.
elephants are herd animals, therefor sharks should be herd animals? bears are solitary therefor ants should be solitary?

I don't think that at all, I think it's stupid as fuck to say that humans should follow the same "Laws of Nature" that wildebeest and artichokes do. Of course we're in differerent circumstances. That's why I think your entire line of reasoning is dumb as shit.

well what is 'ownership' exactly?
animals don't own a deed to a chunk of land as recognized by human government, but yes animals absolutely have established territories that they mark so that others know that area is the domain of an existing occupant.
have you never heard of wolf packs scent-marking their territory? are you unaware that animals establish a nest, or a hive, or a burrow? do you not know that animals will stake out a section of geography and then use force of violence and threat of death to keep others out?

So we are, or aren't, beholden to honor wolf laws? You're not being consistent here.

i thought this was "your field" that you laid sole claim to be able to have expertise of, i'd expect a lot more from someone who thinks they own segments of knowledge.

I don't "own" anything, but I do study and teach anthropology, yes. Believe it or not, it is not normal the habit of those in my field to make vague appeals to "Nature", or European custom, when proposing social theory. Or do you know something I don't?

 

[Politesse]

So if they had fought back and murdered every police officer that stepped foot in their zone, and then every zone, until the world got sickened from the violence and the troops stopped being sent, you would consider the protestors to then "own" that patch of land? Under what law?

Yes, under this scenario, they do "own" that patch of land, as long as they can maintain control of it.

The question of *law* is irrelevant, a category error. It is like asking what color my computer program is.

So you agree that violent seizure of land is not legal?

 

[J842P]

What does legitimate mean? It existed. It had definable borders and a political order. Might makes right. That’s the law of nature. Only in the 20th Century has did “legitimate” become a question of international order - like the Gulf War. Once America fads away, it’ll be might makes right again.

So you do not believe that any nation-states are legitimate? Or you believe that it is the use of mass violence that makes them legitimate?

How is it that you define "rights", exactly?

I think he is stating that "legitimacy" is not a category that applies to states. Saying a state is or is not legitimate is basically equivalent to stating "I like this state" or "I don't like this state".