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Is Diplomatic Immunity a Violation of Individual Rights?

Diplomatic immunity is a government-granted licence to initiate the use of force and fraud with impunity

“The purpose of law and of government is the protection of individual rights.”

“The Constitution is . . . not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.”

— Ayn Rand, “The Nature of Government” in The Virtue of Selfishness

Diplomatic immunity originated on an ad hoc basis, as the request from one king or tribal chieftain to another for unhindered passage for a courier or ambassador.

Today, codified by international treaties, it’s a grant of exemption from the laws of a country. It’s reciprocal: the grant of immunity, by one state to another, for accredited diplomatic representatives, supposedly to allow free and unhindered communication between the two governments. And, of course, to protect the representatives of State One from what it considers to be the horrendous laws and punishments of State Two.

Inevitably, diplomatic immunity is abused. For example, cars with diplomatic plates can park anywhere without penalty. The police may issue a parking ticket, but unlike you and I the diplomatic driver is under no compulsion to pay it—and if he doesn’t he can’t be prosecuted.

Between 1997 and 2002, diplomats in New York racked up over 150,000 parking tickets—over $17 million worth of fines all unpaid to this day.

But parking in a no-parking zone is penny ante stuff.

Thieves, murderers, rapists, scam artists, and other criminals can be neither prosecuted nor punished if they hold diplomatic immunity (see some examples of “diplomatic” murder and kidnapping here).

The only possible “punishment” for such errant diplomats is to be sent home—which is no punishment at all if they were acting on the instructions of their superiors.

In the terminology of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, diplomatic immunity is a government-granted licence to initiate the use of force and fraud with impunity.

That would mean any diplomat accredited to a government established on Objectivist principles could violate the rights of others in any way he or she chose—while the police, the government’s protectors of individual rights, stood by helplessly.

Given that an Objectivist government is established with the sole function and purpose of protecting everyone’s individual’s rights, it has no power to grant an exemption to its own officers—be they policemen, bureaucrats, or members of Congress—let alone to any representative of a foreign power or, for that matter, anyone else.

Clearly, this fact has significant implications for the foreign policy operations of an Objectivist government—a topic for another time.

October 15, 2014By Mark TierAyn Rand Mischief More Politically Incorrect Stuff PoliticsLeave a comment

About the author

Mark Tier
Author of the bestelling The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros, Mark Tier was the founder of the investment newsletter World Money Analyst, which he published until 1991, the author of Understanding Inflation and The Nature of Market Cycles. Since 1991, he's helped start five new (and highly successful) investment publications. When he adopted the the winning investment habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros himself, he sold all his business interests and now lives solely from the returns on his investments. His most recent books including Trust Your Enemies, a political thriller which is “Up there with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “Worthy of Ayn Rand” according to reviews on Amazon.com, and Ayn Rand's 5 Surprisingly Simple Rules for Judging Political Candidates.

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Ayn Rand on Politics:

“I know that I am challenging the cultural tradition of two and a half thousand years.”

The Passion of Ayn Rand, page 18

“The purpose of law and of government is the protection of individual rights.”

“The Nature of Government” in The Virtue of Selfishness, page 131

“There are only two fundamental questions (or two aspects of the same question) that determine the nature of any social system:
Does a social system recognize individual rights?—and:
Does a social system ban physical force from human relationships?
The answer to the second question is the practical implementation of the answer to the first.”

“What is Capitalism?” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, page 18

“A little bit of force is like a little bit of cancer.”

Letters of Ayn Rand, page 12

“Freedom vs. statism—or individual rights vs. government controls, or capitalism vs. socialism—[is] the basic issue of political philosophy . . . and, today, the only issue by which a [political] candidate must be judged.”

“How to Judge a Political Candidate,” The Objectivist Newsletter, March 1964, page 9

“[T]he Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals . . . it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government . . . It is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.”

“The Nature of Government” in The Virtue of Selfishness, page 114

"In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary."

The Ayn Rand Lexicon, page 17

"Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war."

The Ayn Rand Lexicon, page 43

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