MarkStoval | Murray Rothbard once observed that the first truth to be discovered about human action is the simple fact that human action can be undertaken only by an individual human actor. Only humans have human ends and preform acts to obtain those ends. If the truth is that only individual humans can act purposely to attempt to accomplish their goals, then we must ask if there is anything that a group of two men or more may morally do that would be immoral for them to do individually. After all, this observation means that nations, states, collectives, churches or other groups do not act, but rather these are abstractions that are shorthand for the individual humans that form the group and it is the individual humans in the group that do act.
It may be a useful metaphor to say that the American military invaded Iraq, but it is not the real truth. The truth is that millions of men and women took actions that supported the killing and brutal occupation of the Iraqi nation. The metaphor is only useful as long as we understand that it was really an invasion by many individual humans each preforming individual tasks that went to make up the overall invasion. The metaphor often is used to obfuscate the truth that each human that was involved in any capacity is responsible for his own actions and guilty of any crimes committed by the collective. Read Entire Article
