We have been very careful to ensure that no charges of original sin can be brought against `WS` by extracting only the good ideas from various intellectuals while painstakingly dissociating the project from the reputations and shortcomings of these intellectuals. There are scant few ideological icons who are untainted by identitarianism or some other form of exclusionary bias that serves to turn potential individualists away from individualism.
We would like to emphatically assert that the principles espoused in `WS` are to be taken as stated. If a particular principle is sourced from an intellectual leader or even a contributor to the development of `WS`, who *also* espouses *other* ideas that run counter to those expressed in this constitution, it is to be understood that `WS` disavows those other ideas categorically and unreservedly. We would like to unambiguously state that the goal of WS is to create polities that express and live out the idea of individualism -- that every person is judged before the law not by immutable/irrelevant characteristics (race, sex, or any other immutable/irrelevant characteristic) but by the content of their character and their actual actions in practice.
To be even more cautious, we have decided to explicitly address each of the reputations of the intellectuals we may have referenced in `WS`, here, and explicitly disavow any ideas they professed (which we were aware of) which antagonize people/groups on the basis of immutable/irrelevant attributes. If there are other statements made by intellectuals we've referenced which are anti-individualistic which we have missed, then the spirit of these disavowals should make it clear that we disavow those too. We endeavour to give reasons for each disavowed position in order to let our actually espoused principles shine through all the more resplendantly.
- We disavow her views on the European settlers' treatment of the Native Americans, and we disavow the following statement she made on Native Americans in 1974 during a question and answer segment after her talk at West Point, New York: "*I do not believe that they had any right to live in a country merely because they were born here and acted and lived like savages. ... And since the Indians did not have any property rights -- they didn't have the concept of property: they didn't even have a settled society, they were predominantly nomadic tribes -- they were a primitive, tribal culture ... if so they didn't have any right to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.*", and we disavow it for the following reasons:
- The rights of the individual stem not from its cognitive recognition or awareness of the concept of private property rights, but from his/her metaphysical identity as a member of a species which is capable of consciousness, capable of understanding and rationally governing itself by private property law. Whether or not an such an individual has conceived of the idea of private property sovereignty, its sovereignty remains its right until and unless it violates the sovereignty of another such individual.
- An individual possessing such a rational faculty loses its rights only upon committing an act which violates the private property sovereignty of another such individual possessing the like rational faculty, and the infringing individual becomes subject to the jurisdiction of its victim only as far as is required to enable recovery for damages and the additional enforcement of a penalty to disincentivize repeat offenses.
- The European settlers had full rights to homestead and to proceed according to the principles of capture law. They did not have the right to displace Native Americans from their own homesteaded settlements.
- The European settlers had full rights to defend their own homesteaded settlements and to expand into unsettled areas which had not been homesteaded (by the Native Americans). The nascent American colonies would have best represented individualist ideals by carefully registering the title to the Native Americans in the areas where they observed the Native Americans to have settled and firmly protecting their (the Europeans') own settlements.
- We also disavow her views on the Israeli-Arab conflict; specifically, we disavow this statement which she gave at the same segment at West Point, New York in 1974: "*...I am incidentally in favour of Israel against the Arabs for the very same reasons [as those she gave for being in favour of the European settlers in America].*", and we disavow them for the very same reasons as those we gave above.
- However, this disavowal is not to be construed as a bias against the Israeli side or for the Arab side. This disavowal amounts to a disavowal of the reasoning Ayn Rand used when she stated her disapproval of the idea that the Native Americans had a claim to private property rights. We have explained that rights are derived from the Identity and properties (specifically the rational faculty) of the species, and that the cognitive content of an individual member of such a species' mind does not unfit that individual from securely possessing its rights.
- The `WS` view on the Israeli-Arab situation is that we do not have an interest in the conflicts of foreign polities and they are merely, to us, two polities with their own dispute to resolve on their own. `WS` is an isolationist constitution, and unless a polity in the Israeli-Arab conflict triggers a condition in the `SovWI` law, we have nothing to say about them, whether good or bad; and should their actions trigger a response according to `SovWI` law, then whatever we may be forced to say about them, whether good or bad, will be based solely on their relationship to `WS` itself and on the interests of the residents of `WS`, and will have nothing to do with their past or present actions in the Israeli-Arab conflict. In short, **we take no position** on other nations' conflicts.
- We disavow the view that in war, the civilian populace of an enemy nation is in effect, fair game and acceptable collateral damage. We specifically disavow this statement he made in an interview with Bill O'Reilly: "*I'm absolutely not concerned with innocents -- people in the enemy territory. If they get killed that is the responsibility of their government for initiating aggression against us [The USA]. In any war when you fight the enemy, you have to take anyone in that territory and regard him as part of the enemy, otherwise you can't defend yourself. If you're concerned with the innocents in those countries you are pulling your punches and thereby jeopardizing the innocents in our countries. It's either or: if you believe in self defense you fight it to the full.*". And we disavow it for these reasons:
- Information, foresight and capabilities impose ethical obligations on an actor.
- A nation with the enhanced capabilities and technology to **feasibly** achieve its self-defense while limiting civilian casualties has an ethical obligation to employ those technologies in the manner which does in fact, limit those civilian casualties which its capabilities enable it to limit.
- Ayn Rand and Peikoff themselves use this very same reasoning when pointing out that humankind's morality consists of humans living **as humans** (i.e, rational creatures) with a holistic view of the human identity -- that a human has two hands to labour and fight with; but a human also has a rational faculty which enables him/her to observe and scientifically learn about the world, and to use that knowledge to produce with his/her hands instead of using violence, and to trade the produce of their labour with others instead of predating on others -- that a human is a being with **both** two hands **and** a mind. The enhanced capabilities granted by the mind bind the human with unique moral and ethical obligation to produce and trade as opposed to stealing and predating. With increased capability to be surgical in targeting, comes increased ethical obligation.
- A nation with the foresight/knowledge that a particular course of action in war would cause avoidable civilian death, and which has an alternative course of action which would **feasibly** achieve its self defense objectives, has an obligation to choose the course of action which would avoid incurring those avoidable civilian casualties.
- A nation receiving information which changes the ethical implications of a course of action in a negative way, where those negative consequences can be **avoided**, has a moral obligation to alter that course of action and avoid the negative ethical consequences if it can do so while still **feasibly** accomplishing its self-defense.
- It is certainly immoral for a nation to paralyze itself with inaction in the face of a threat, but a nation which, due to its advantage in capabilities/foresight/information, has a course of action which enables it to extinguish a threat and defend itself while also limiting civilian casualties is ethically bound to limit such casualties where it is in fact, feasible to do so.
