It seems to me that you are basing your argument on the concept that there is an absolute set of rights and wrongs and that all people who are willing to truly reason will arrive at the same conclusions. This is the core belief that I contest, that all thinking, reasoning people will come to the same moral conclusion in any given set of circumstances. But it seems to me that this is exactly the scenario you would have to produce to have a perfectly aligned Liberty League. For just as absolute selflessness destroys indivual liberty, absolute selfishness removes the collective power needed to defend individual liberty. I.e. what incentive do I have to fight for your rights? If a law were to be passed outlawing posting to weblogs under the moniker "John", how is my personal libery affected? Only if I think in a collective manner that if your rights can be abridged then so too could mine and thus I must fight for your individual liberty to effectively protect mine. A form of goverment based purely on indiviual liberty would be no more effective or just than one based purely on the collective good.

Silence, you are correct. John is saying there is an absolute set of rights and wrongs. Further HE is right about that. For example: Rape is wrong under any circumstances. There are places in the world such as the old Taliban where they believed it was moral. Does that make it moral for them and immoral for us?

All people, "who are willing to truly reason," WILL reach the same conclusion on issues that require moral judgements. The important distinction here is between moral absolutes and mere preferences, such as music, literature, spirituality, and car size. (Moral absolutes relate to all actions that involve using force against others.)

Secondly, the threat to YOUR personal liberty is clear when a law is passed outlawing "John" weblogs. For individuals to work together to prevent the passing of unjust laws is NOT "thinking in a collective manner." It is appropriately selfish to defend not only yourself but your values. When individual liberty is recognized as a moral imperative this includes the liberties of others. For individuals to form a common government that works to protect individual liberties and provide for the common defense is also NOT collectivism. It is in fact the founders intent for this country, and despite abuse our nation is suffering from the internal collectivists and the latest entitlement programs, life, liberty, and the (individual) pursuit of happiness is what makes US great.

I was out with some "sophisticated" Europeans the other night. Very nice, bright folks who are considered fairly conservative in the UK and Ireland.

Discussing the war (I was the only pro-Iraq-liberation at the table) I was told that "You [America] are forcing your values on everybody..." I mentioned that maybe forcing some values on the Taliban wasn't the worst idea.

I could not get them to agree that slavery as practiced in the Sudan was a universal wrong. Stunned, I pressed them: "so chattel slavery is just a lifestyle choice?"

They think that just as America emerged from the practice, others will follow in due time. I don't believe that, but fair enough.

It's a long-winded story but these people are not commies or Guardian readers. Yet they cannot sanction the correctness of action in Afghanistan, much less Iraq. I fear for the Anglosphere...

Point well made about individuals acting together to form a government that protects individual liberties. I was purposely taking the selfisness to an extreme, much like the suicide bomber takes selflessness to the extreme.

I am simply not a believer in absolutes. Thinking people must come together, debate, compromise, and sometimes just live with a majority decision. You can say that murder is absolutely wrong, but how do you define it? All countries allow killing in war, most allow exceptions for self defense, and some as a punishment for crimes. In fact both we and the Taliban had the death penalty, but there was a huge difference in the crimes for which it could be invoked. So, is the death penalty moral or amoral? Seems to me that it depends on the circumstances. Many of those who are against the death penalty claim an absolute moral value against the taking of another human's life. I am not sure how they view war, I suppose an argument could be made that war itself is amoral. How far do you have to go to have an absolute definition for your absolute wrong? Most states have two classifications of murder and another two for manslaughter, plus negligent homicide, depraved indifference and many nuances within the law for each. If it requires tens, hundreds, or thousands of pages to define it, is it still an absolute?

I claimed the following absolutes in this discussion:

1) Chattel slavery is wrong
2) Refusing to educate women is wrong

I think those are absolutes; my European friends think that I am imposing my standards. I also fear that by saying there are no absolutes, you have abolished the foundation upon which you can build a coherent framework.

It seems to me from the way you describe your conversation in Europe that a second issue is at stake, the right or responsibility to correct wrongs. Even if you were to agree that Sudanese slavery is wrong, could you agree that the US or a European country has the right or responsibility to step in and correct the situation? This seems to me an important distinction. For example, western culture still thinks of adultry as wrong, but it is no longer a punishable offense. It can be grounds for divorce for sure, but there the law is really looking at it as more of a breach of contract (marriage vows) rather than an immoral act. There are many countries where adultry is punishable, and quite severely. We can agree that the act is wrong while also feeling that the punsihment is wrong.

To me an absolute takes away reason by its very definition, it is absolutely wrong regardless of reason or cirumstances. If your morals are to be arrived at by reason as John Galt suggests then I contend that there can be morals and there can be absolutes but there can be no moral absolutes.

Can you find an exception to this absolute moral law: The initiation of force against another is a crime.

I also find it ironic that in claiming "there can be no moral absolutes" you are making an absolute statement about morality. In addition to its irony it is also self-contradictory.

Can I force my child to go to school? Can my government force me to pay taxes? How do you define initiation? Did we initiate force against Iraq by invading? Saddam certainly initiated some force against his own people and his neighbors, but what is the statute of limitations? Are our actions just a reply to his initiations? How far back can you go? Is there a single initiation of force like the big bang that makes all other initiations replies?

Exactly, "no absolutes" is self contradictory. "Reasoned morals" is also an oxymoron. Morals are absolute in nature and prevent reason. Morals rquire an absolute judgement, right or wrong. Reason requires you to examine the cirumstances and pass judgement based on a reasonable conclusion. You can think that your morals were reached by reason, but as soon as you act upon them as morals they become absolutes and detached from the reason that brought them into being.

"Can I force my child to go to school?" No, and the fact that kids sometimes play hookey is evidence of this.

"Can my government force me to pay taxes?" Yes, and this is a crime.

Initiation means just what you think it does, but this doesn't mean it's a crime to PREVENT a crime. If we knew the Zeros were on their way to Pearl Harbor and shot them down before they got there it would have been an act of self-defense. The same principle applies to Iraq. His past agressions were not justification, but evidence that his assurances about future intentions were not to be believed. As David Frum said on the new Dennis Miller show last night, "When you see an auto assembly line with workers carrying out duties, and stocks of raw materials in the warehouse, you don't conclude that it's not building cars simply because the lot happens to be empty."

Regarding your attempt to forever segregate morals from reason, I think we are returning to previously covered ground. Marriott said, "Reason is the only thing that can lead one to morality, or a morality that is moral anyway." You're just saying that's not the morality you're familiar with, i.e. "God's law." (I'm not saying you believe in religious morality, only that you believe that's the only absolute morality that exists.) But moral means the right, not the commanded. Some of the ten commandments are objectively right but the rest are dictations of preference and/or obeisance. Correctly identify which are which, and why, and you advance the cause of human civilization.

Regarding absolutes - absolutes only prevent reason if they are based on faith rather than reason. If an absolute is arrived at by correct reasoning then it is the result of reason and not the lack thereof. How about gravity? If I go to the top of this building and jump off without a parachute etc., I will fall. That is an absolute arrived at by reason and science and those who dispute such absolutes wind up dead.

A similar process can be followed to determine moral behavior based on reality but that too is the subject of another book. I recommend, "Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand," by Leonard Peikoff.

Without moral absolutes based in reality, human beings have no framework for living as JK pointed out. Slavery, rape, and murder are wrong for everyone in every culture. Yes, I do realize that determining which killings constitute murder and which accidents or self-defense does take thousands of pages. But, yes, if it takes thousands of pages to define it, it is still an absolute.

I cannot come up with a circumstance under which rape, or slavery, would be, "right," can you?