Abstract
Previous chapters of this book have laid the groundwork for the analyses of the natures and moral justification of terrorism and secession, respectively. The neutral conditions of what amounts to terrorism have been set forth and defended, along with the rather demanding (on terrorists) conditions of morally justified terrorism. Prior to that “secession” was defined and a Territorialist Rights-Based (Indigenous) Theory of Secession was articulated and defended. Now it is important to ask if there exist conditions which, morally speaking, might justify terrorism against and/or secession from the United States, and if so, why? In this regard, we want to know if (1′)-(6) of morally justified terrorism (set forth and defended in Chapter 5) might be satisfied concerning the U.S. government and/or its citizens. Yet we also want to know whether the conditions that would justify, on moral grounds, secession can be satisfied in the case of Native Americans in the U.S. Along the way, it is helpful to know whether or not secession and terrorism might be morally justified in the case of the U.S. It is to these complex issues that I now turn, beginning with secession and the U.S.
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Notes
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 119.
On the correlation of rights and duties, see Carl Wellman, A Theory of Rights (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1985), pp. 54, 57–8, 74–5.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 37.
Paul Christopher, The Ethics of War and Peace (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 2000), p. 193.
For philosophical analyses of the various views of rights, see Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977); Joel Feinberg, Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Freedom and Fulfillment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), Chapters 8–10; Wesley Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919); Loren Lomasky, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974); Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); L. W. Sumner, The Moral Foundation of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Carl Wellman, A Theory of Rights (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1985); Real Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); The Proliferation of Rights (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999). A special issue on rights and justice is found in The Journal of Ethics, 4 (2000), pp. 1–165.
I assume for present purposes no distinction between duties and obligations, a distinction that has been made in Richard B. Brandt, “The Concepts of Obligation and Duty,” Mind, 73 (1964), pp. 374–93; E. J. Lemmon, “Moral Dilemmas,” The Philosophical Review, 71 (1962), pp. 139–58.
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Third Edition (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 91.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 104.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 107.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 108.
A critical discussion of Michael Walzer’s ideas on these and related matters is found in Ethics and International Affairs, 11 (1997), pp. 1–104.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 37.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 106.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 107.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 108–09.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 111.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978), p. 9. The Harm Principle is discussed in Joel Feinberg, Harm to Others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
Mill, On Liberty, pp. 10–1.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 85. Whatever rights to sovereignty and self-determination amount to, they are restricted rights, as Rawls avers, ones involving, among other things, autonomy and a cluster of rights protecting it.
J. Angelo Corlett, “Reparations to Native Americans?” in Alexandar Jokic, Editor, War Crimes and Collective Wrongdoing (London: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 236–69; Responsibility and Punishment (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), Chapter 9; and Race, Racism, and Reparations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), Chapter 8.
For an analysis of the right to self-determination, see Allen Buchanan, “The Right to Self-Determination: Analytical and Moral Foundations,” Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 8 (1991), pp. 41–50.
Both “secession” and the “right to secede” are defined in Allen Buchanan, Secession (Boulder: Westview, 1990); “Theories of Secession,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 26 (1997), pp. 31–61; “Self-Determination and the Right to Secede,” Journal of International Affairs, 45 (1992), pp. 347–65; “Federalism, Secession, and the Morality of Inclusion,” Arizona Law Review, 37 (1995), pp. 53–63; David Copp, “International Law and Morality in the Theory of Secession,” The Journal of Ethics, 2 (1998), pp. 219–45; J. Angelo Corlett, “The Right to Civil Disobedience and the Right to Secede,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 30 (1992), pp. 19–28; “The Morality and Constitutionality of Secession,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 30 (1998), pp. 120–29; “Secession and Native Americans.”
I assume here a plausible notion of moral desert. For discussions of desert, see J. Angelo Corlett, “Making More Sense of Retributivism: Desert as Responsibility and Proportionality,” Philosophy, forthcoming; Resposibility and Punishment, Second Edition (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003) Chapter 5. Louis Pojman and Owen McLeod, Editors, What Do We Deserve? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
See note 20, above.
Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 74.
See Chapter 4 of this book.
For those who might be tempted to think that Native Americans owe exit costs to the U.S. government for, say, protective services and the like, it needs to be recalled that such “services” were and are not only coerced, but they were also the very “services” (in the form of the U.S. Army) that committed genocidal acts against Native Americans by the millions, and created many of the conditions that stand to oppress many Native Americans even today.
See Chapter 4 of this book.
Copp, “International Law and Morality in the Theory of Secession,” p. 235.
Corlett, “Secession and Native Americans;” Chapter 4 of this book.
Examples of terroristic activities against the U.S. away from U.S. soil includes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and its incessant bombing of oil pipelines operated by U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum in Colombia, an oil company which is controlling land taken by the U’wa nation. Indeed, these bombings increased in protest of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s visit to Colombia on 31 August 2000. While these might be instances of FARC’s morally justified terrorism, while instances of its unjustified terrorism include its kidnappings of thousands of Colombians many of whom are children who are undeserving targets of such terrorist activities.
See R. M. Hare, Essays on Political Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 34–44; Igor Primoratz, “What is Terrorism?” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 7 (1990), p. 133; Carl Wellman, “On Terrorism Itself,” Journal of Value Inquiry, 13 (1979), pp. 250–99.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 197.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 198–99.
The distinction between combatants and noncombatants is found in Richard Brandt, “Utilitarianism and the Rules of War,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1 (1972), pp. 1f; Nagel, Mortal Questions, Chapter 5 (see also Hare, Essays on Political Morality, Chapter 5, which is a commentary on Nagel, Mortal Questions, Chapter 5); and Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, though neither philosopher applies the distinction to acts of terrorism as is found in Chapter 5 of this book.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 203.
Michael Walzer, Obligations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 67.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 205.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 205–06; Chapter 5 of this book.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Collected Papers, Edited by Samuel Freeman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); The Law of Peoples. Also see Burleigh T. Wilkins, “A Third Principle of Justice,” The Journal of Ethics, 1 (1997), pp. 355–74.
See Chapter 5 of this book. This point is based on what is said about just war doctrine in Hare, Essays on Political Morality, p. 55, Nagel, Mortal Questions; and Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars. It is also consistent with John Rawls’ seventh principle of justice among “free and democratic peoples” (Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 37, 94–5).
A similar point is made in Haig Katchadourian, The Morality of Terrorism (New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1998), pp. 26f.; “Terrorism and Morality,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 5 (1988), pp. 131–45.
For some discussions of the concept of collective moral responsibility, see J. Angelo Corlett, “Collective Responsibility,” in Patricia Werhane and E. Freeman, Editors, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics (London: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 120–25; “Corporate Punishment and Responsibility,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 28 (1997), pp. 86–100; “Collective Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 32 (2001), pp. 573–84; Responsibility and Punishment, Chapter 7; Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), Chapter 9; Peter French, Corporate and Collective Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Responsibility Matters (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), Chapters 6–7; Margaret Gilbert, Sociality and Responsibility (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); The Journal of Ethics, 6 (2002), pp. 111–98; Larry May, The Morality of Groups (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1987); Larry May and Stacey Hoffman, Editors, Collective Responsibility (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991); Burleigh T. Wilkins, Terrorism and Collective Responsibility (London: Routledge, 1992).
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 202.
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 205–06.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 92.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 92.
The nature of outlaw states is described in Rawls, The Law of Peoples, pp. 80f.
For a discussion of the notion of the justification of the use of terrorism as a means of self-defense, see Wilkins, Terrorism and Collective Responsibility, Chapter 1.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 93.
Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 93.
This proportional view of acts of political violence targeting certain wrongdoers is not inconsistent with that found in Nagel, Mortal Questions, p. 64. The proportionality of terrorism regards both those who are legitimate targets of it, and what sorts of levels and kinds of terrorism might be employed against them.
An incisive discussion of autonomy is found in Keith Lehrer, “Freedom, Preference, and Autonomy,” The Journal of Ethics, 1 (1997), pp. 3–25.
For a discussion of moral prerogatives and consequentialism, see Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Samuel Scheffler, Editor, Consequentialism and Its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Similar views are found in Buchanan, Secession, pp. 88f; “Democracy and Secession,” in Margaret Moore, Editor, National Self-Determination and Secession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); “Self-Determination, Secession, and the Rule of Law,” in Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan, Editors, The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 31 If; David Lyons, “The New Indian Claims and Original Rights to Land,” Social Theory and Practice, 4 (1977), pp. 249f; Jeremy Waldron, “Superceding Historic Injustice,” Ethics, 103 (1992), pp. 15f.
My thinking on this point of reply is congruent with that found in Rodney C. Roberts, “The Morality of a Moral Statute of Limitations on Injustice,” The Journal of Ethics, 7 (2003), pp. 115–38.
See Chapter 4.
See J. Angelo Corlett, Race, Racism, and Reparations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
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Corlett, J.A. (2003). Terrorism, Secession, and the United States: An Indigenous Perspective. In: Terrorism. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 101. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0039-0_8
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