I believe a soldier or officer of the law should be permitted to use lethal force against someone with a knife against Mona Lisa’s throat as much as they are permitted to use it against someone with a knife against an innocent person’s throat. This is the only type of property damage I can equate with murder—both being extreme crimes against society. Destroying great art diminishes the entire human race.
Most people balance the feelings of others against their own self-interest. THESE are “normal,” people.
Normal people would conclude that the supposed sadness of two million people that couldn’t be arsed to cough up a single penny is not, in fact, any kind of real sadness at all.
I would hazard a guess that people who acted as though this supposed suffering was in any way actually significant would be described as per DSM-5 301.50.
Then, good for him. He owned a piece of marble, and and destroyed it. As was his right to do so.
Of course, that virtually never happens. Because as a general rule, the people that have enough money to buy David are not prone to then destroying that investment.
But if they chose to, they’d be just as justified as if they piled fifty million in cash into their backyard barbeque and lit it on fire.
What about it? That woman didn’t own the painting, and was not authorized to “restore” it. This has nothing to do with the issue, except that if she had bought it, she’d have been perfectly free to do as she pleased with it.
What about it? Guess who the Sistine Chapel belongs to? If they wanted to do it over with a velvet Elvis next to Jesus (“The King and the Lord,”) they can. Where do you see any right whatsoever to dictate otherwise?
And?
My point is not, “Don’t worry, artwork will never actually be damaged.” My point is: people can damage their own personal property.
Wouldn’t that work for the other side too? If they can force you to share your private art collection, then its a right.
Yes.
Well, I say “bad for him,” because I’m less concerned with personal property rights than I am with preserving the cultural heritage of the human race.
Yes, I acknowledged that in the post you’re responding to. What it has to do with the issue is your contention that nobody would buy a work of art, just to destroy it. My point is that sometimes, people acting out of good intentions can still destroy a work of art. This is an example of such a person.
Right. I’m not arguing that they don’t currently have the legal right to plaster the whole thing over, if they want. You suggested that no rational actor would destroy or deface a valuable piece of art, because the art would always be more valuable to a different collector than as a pile of rubble. The Sistine Chapel (and the defaced Greek statues in my next example) is another example where the impetus to deface a work of art was in no way counterbalanced by the monetary value of the work.
Okay. We should pass a law so they can’t do that, for certain items that are we, as a culture, feel are more important than personal property laws. In the US, we already do that for historic buildings. Is there any reason we should not do the same for historic sculptures or paintings, as is done in other developed nations?
Ah yes, Bricker’s old legal = good proclamation.
But it seems that in these case the law is not entirely on Bricker’s side. As many have posted above we do have laws about national heritage sites that prevent people from knocking down Ford’s theater to put up a parking lot. Or from digging up the Indian grave site in their back yard to sell on Ebay without first letting Archeologists look at it.
So therefor we have decided as a people that art or at least Histororical culture which seems to fit the examples given in the OP. The only question that remains is whether Bricker will agree that the asked question is factually answered and that he is wrong, or grudgingly admit that there can be more to a debate that just what the law says.
Of course the logistics of collecting that single penny from two million individuals is not worth considering in this scenario.
You’re quite wrong.
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The examples in my OP contained both instances of real property and personal property.
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I don’t know of any law that prevents me from buying Vermeer’s “The Kitchen Maid,” and using it as kindling in my home’s fireplace. That’s personal property.
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I know of several instances of laws that restrict what you can do with real property. They are called “covenants,” and run with the title to the land. This is how my homeowner’s association can force me to repaint my garage with something earth-toned instead of electric blue.
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In the cases of covenants, which do indeed protect real property from destruction by the owners in some cases, those covenants were a part of what the owner bought – that is, they bought the land, and the building, but not the right to destroy the building at will. There is, thus, no conflict between these sorts of protections and what I’m talking about.
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The examples of real property in the OP were premised on the Greeks selling the Parthenon, or the Italians selling David. In these cases, they would be acting legally as governments, and not implicating any such covenants.
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So there’s not one blessed thing I’m wrong about.
If the law is not persuasive, then I simply declare that I’m right and you’re wrong, a declaration which has equal standing with yours that you are right and I am wrong.
Right?
No, it’s not. We can change it to a dollar and then we need only 20,000 “sad” individuals and a GoFundMe page.
This statement is misleading. The right to ownership of private property must be established by a system of government and laws, but this may or may not derive from collective community consent (examples of both are easy to find).
This is by no means necessarily true. Indeed, many systems of government (sensibly) include provisions that rights established in law are difficult - often prohibitively difficult - to revoke, even if a large majority of “the community” favors this.
You still haven’t addressed the National Historic Landmark program.
The NHL Program requires the support of the property owner(s) before a property can be considered for designation as an NHL.
How’s that for an address?
We’ve been over this. Moral philosophy is the field by which we try to figure out what comprises right and wrong. You talk about what basic underlying ideas you can agree on, and reason from there to what’s right and what’s wrong. This is how the laws you study get made. Sort of.
It’s perfectly possible to discuss what’s right and wrong without confining oneself to matters of legality and also without limiting oneself to content-free declarations.
The prior times we’ve been over this, it was clear that there was an insufficiency of basic underlying ideas in common, rendering your proposed framework unworkable from the starting square.
In your OP, you suggested that there was no moral, ethical, or legal justification for preventing the owner of a work of art from destroying it. Since it appears that you are correct, and there is no legal justification for it, and you refuse to discuss the moral or ethical aspects to the debate, what is left that you want to see discussed?
Art is a “luxury” compared with necessities like food. Does this affect OP’s sense of morality?
Thought experiment:
Sir Martin Moneybags buys up all the food for miles around for his banquet, but none of the guests show up. Meanwhile the poor hungry villagers have gathered around so they can enjoy the feast vicariously. (Small loss, they could barely have afforded any of the food anyway.)
With no guests to feed, Sir Martin Moneybags prepares to incinerate the now-useless food in front of the eyes of the villagers. It’s his food and he’s trying to be helpful to the villagers. (“Feed a man today, he’s hungry tomorrow. Let him know food isn’t free and you’ll teach him ambition; he’ll be thankful forever.”
But Robin Hoodlum shows up, steals Moneybags’ food and gives it to the hungry villagers.
Who is acting legally? Who is acting morally?
I don’t refuse to discuss the moral or ethical aspects. I just think the discussion will be very short when it’s with anyone with whom I share little common ground for an ethical or moral framework. An appeal to the moral correctness of your view, for example, is unavailing if you premise an argument on the lack of a moral right to the ownership of property. I grant you that I cannot prove such a moral right to ownership of property exists except by pointing out that lots of people think I do and I agree with them. But that’s not proof, nor is there proof that such a moral right does not exist.
Thanks for the concession with respect to the historic landmark program, by the way, which was not at all buried or ambiguous, but instead upfront, clear, and open.
Yes, that does affect my sense of the issue. And it’s for precisely the reason you posit: Art is a luxury. Capriciously depriving persons of art they don’t own anyway is not a wrong that justifies puncturing the right of ownership. But capriciously depriving hungry people of food is wrong, at least by my lights. I would agree only that you can morally choose to feed your hungry self instead of another; you cannot morally choose to destroy food instead of feeding the hungry.
I don’t “premise” the argument on that lack. Instead, I reject an argument premised on that right. What moral system do you hold that has such a premise? Surely not “eye of a needle” Christianity.
Uh, no. If there’s such a moral right to ownership unfettered by qualifications, then taxation is theft and zoning laws are immoral. Not many people at all agree with those positions. If you’re positing a qualified moral right to ownership, then that’s broadly in agreement with what I said.