Fair enough, as a female back then, she would not have had the right to vote. Given that, she would have likely been the Susan B. Anthony of that time had she been then and there.

I used the term "America's founders" intentionally to be gender neutral. The biggest change that AR would have insisted on was the inclusion of property in the Declaration of Independence. I am sure that she would have been as confident in her stance as any of America's founders. It would have been fun to see.

if you steal my intellectual property- it is the same as breaking into my home. If you make knockoff NIKES, you have stolen my design and brand name. It takes lots of investment in money and time to develop a brand name and shoe designs. The protections of these ideas are assets. They can change ownership. They have value as long as they are protected. If they are not, they will have only nominal value. Prosecuting thieves is an act of self defense

Great point. That led to the Missouri Compromise. Hard to believe we kicked that can down the road for so long. As a human and moral issue I would have expected it to be resolved sooner than it was.

If someone steals something and I am not home that isn't an initiation of force?

I am not sure you can paint the Tea Party with one brush. Many small organizations are considered to be aligned with the Tea party but have very different issues that they concentrate on.

Rich;

Note the total absence of discussion in the Constitution of the potential exit from the Federation of any member. Slave colonies didn't think they were binding themselves irrevocably to the public opinion of the North. Neither did northerners state it explicitly.

The Founders were bright men. They saw and foresaw many things. I believe, for that reason, many southerners came to see this as duplicity. Delegates from antislave colonies anticipated the day when the issue would divide the nation and purposely failed to address it. I can imagine delegates from the antislave colonies quietly conniving to bind the slave colonies to a union in which the population of abolitionists was growing much faster than were the proslavery populations of the south. In fact, I think this is exactly how most southerners then and now see the issue.

My understanding is that the Founders also thought that slavery would eventually become unnecessary. I believe it was already on the decline. They could not have foreseen the massive increase in the need for cotton. I wonder if they could have written a plan that phased it out in 50 years? Would slave States have agreed? Anything resulting in States choosing not to join would most likely have been left out. Tough issue.

I think you are splitting hairs Maph. Ayn Rand was a strong advocate for Capitalism. What stood out most for me in this article is that the ideas of the Anarcho Capitalist seem impractical.

Rich;

Insisting on abolition at that time would have resulted in several nations, rather than one nation. Not to say the result would have been the unions of free colonies and slave colonies, it might have resulted in 13 separate nations, attempting to go their own ways, that certainly would have included slavery's propagation. Though the Constitution left room for slavery, in the minds of the abolitionists it left no room for exit. It bound the slave states to the public opinion of the antislave states.

Though an imperfect solution, I think the Founders' unwritten tactic, binding themselves together while allowing slave states to think there was a means of unbinding themselves, was their means of eliminating slavery.

Would Ayn Rand have recognized this and gone along with it? I don't know, because it required the public appearance of thoughtlessness or intellectual dishonesty. Would she have accepted the Constitution as it functioned, a plot to destroy slavery, without the public acknowledgment of that fact?

Good one.

I think that was her point. Stealing is force. Weather or not their is a physical confrontation is irrelevant.

I think the internet is seen as a perfect way to track everything about a person. Irrelevant if not monitored but perfect for big brother.