Human Fear and the Non-Aggressive answer.

[sg909]

Firstly I will be using the term, presumption of innocents I would like to define this as: ones right to be treated as innocent until they say or do something that is an act of aggression against someone else's property, person, or state of mind.

 

Recent events have forced me to explore the importance of the non-aggression principal as it relates to our presumption of innocents. Statism owes its growth in large part to the collective call for preemptive aggression, this can be seen clearly when examining public sentiment in regards to our border security. In order for preemptive aggression to become politically expedient the statist must capitalize (I use that word loosely) on the fears of its subjects. In my opinion it goes to reason that more societal fears, will stimulate more statist "solutions".

Although we know fear is a reality of nature I have always believed that the philosophy of non-aggression is the only solution. Without statism people will voluntarily give up there own presumption of innocents, if by doing so they feel more secure. For example it seems reasonable to believe that without the TSA, airline companies would implement there own screening methods in order to provide security and peace of mind to their customers. Another example of this is a landlord who hires a private security guard to protect his properties, in this case people have a choice to move into such a neighborhood if they are ok with such security measures and free to live somewhere els if they deem these measures to be over-reaching. Although all preemptive security measures are borne of good intentions, I believe only those that are voluntary in nature produce outcomes that are consistent with their intended goals.

Forced preemptive security procedures, such as governmental droning of the sky's, breeds vitriol by individuals who are acting peacefully yet having their presumption of innocents violated. Often you hear the argument made that if you don't have anything to hide then you have nothing to fret from such measures. I would respond by saying that once someone or some group of people have granted a person or group of people the ability to forcefully and legally presume guilt by violating a persons expectation of privacy, searching ones belongings, or kidnaping them directly, then corruption and/or sociopathic behavior take root. (a case study is the Stanford prison experiment) If however everyone voluntarily participates in the security measures through a contract or through choice of service (by this I mean walking into a store even though you know it has security cameras) then these sociopathic tendencies are mitigated by the market.

If our goal is to be morally consistent, then I don't see how we can say a person, either a government employee or a private citizen, has the right to carry out aggression against another persons state of mind based only on a presumptuous suspicion. However, if one person feels threatened from another because that person is walking behind them on a sidewalk in broad daylight and they chose to turn around and hit that person out of fear, it seems reasonable that society will see that this person is overly paranoid and they will face consequences for their actions. I think Stefan has a principle called the YAD principle that, to me, covers situations such as this.

To summarize, I think we as libertarians must expect presumption of innocents not only from government but from each other as well. Thats not to say we can not profile or presume, that is human nature, but when we let our fears lead us to unwarrantedly aggress against another person we should recognize this as a violation of the non-aggression principle.

[sg909]

I would like to update my definition of Presumption of Innocents so as to better express my intended message: Ones right to be treated in a non-aggressive manner until they say or do something that is an act of aggression against someone else's property, person, or state of mind.