Public Nudity Should Be Legalized

This debate is for socialpinko's tournament. That means that if you accept this debate, you agree to debate your next opponent in the tournament if you win. Resolved: Public nudity should be legalized in the US. The word “should” shall imply a moral imperative. It contends moral law requires that public nudity be legal. Public nudity means nudity in public view, not just nudity on ‘public’ property. Basic Rules: All sources must be adequately explained, source-bombing is not permitted. All general arguments must be clearly labeled to keep the debate focused. No new arguments are allowed in Round 4, and arguments that are dropped counted as concessions. You may freely add or drop any argument before Round 4 but you cannot resurrect dropped arguments. All other rules of courtesy (no needless semantics, don’t be a jerk, etc.) apply. Introduction: I will make my case in this debate by arguing for libertarian property rights and that the conclusion from my property rights argument is that no law restricting public nudity is permissible. In brief, being naked does not violate the Nonaggression Principle (NAP hereon) and thus is not wrong prima facie. Nudity, as any behavior, can only be prohibited by the owner of the property on which the behavior takes place. For the government to foist its rules on other people’s property would violate their property rights and the NAP. C1: Discourse Ethics and the NAP Argumentative discourse presupposes that the consent of the parties involved is relevant; we would not try to convince someone of something if we intended to force it on him. Likewise, it would not even be possible to convince someone to do something involuntary; if he has been convinced that he should do it than it is a voluntary behavior. Argumentative discourse thus cannot ever be used to justify initiatory force; force and reason are inherently separate. If we favor reason over force as a means of ascertaining what proper behavior is, the NAP must hold. It is necessary that we favor reasonable discourse over force if we prefer that we be correct because there is an objective link between reasonable discourse and arriving at correct conclusions whereas for the use of force no such relation exists. The reason why this is true ought to go without saying. The is-ought problem is avoided because the question “Do we prefer to be correct in our actions?” is asked and the argument proceeds if the answer is “Yes.” There is clearly no if-ought problem, and the answer must be yes if we are engaging in rational discourse because the purpose of rational discourse is to determine the correct solution to a problem. Defending property rights against assault does not constitute a violation of the NAP because the attacker has already eschewed the rationality of discourse ethics. C2: Self-Ownership and Property Rights Property rights are a necessary means of allocating control of scarce resources. My sitting in a chair precludes you from sitting in that same chair in the same way. The must natural and logical way to determine who may sit in the chair is through property rights: the owner of the chair decides. Any other method will result in a series of unsolvable problems. Property rights also exist as a natural extension of the right to self-ownership as it logically follows from the NAP. Because we do not exist in a vacuum, we cannot have any freedom to exercise our authority over our bodies if our right to also own some material objects is not granted. The owner of something exerts total authority over its use and any interference with owner use constitutes a violation of the NAP. An unowned object enters someone’s ownership through the homestead principle, which states that an object belongs to the first person to use it or materially alter it in a substantive way. We can do this to resources by extracting them from the Earth and to land by residing or working on it or by using it for some productive purpose. After that, ownership can be transferred from person to person by voluntary exchange. Stealing or initiating force against someone to restrict his use of his property violates the NAP. Our bodies are owned by the same principles as any other object. We are naturally and unavoidably the users and occupies of our own bodies and exert property rights over them. This argument and C1 draw heavily from A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. C3: Nudity and Morality Simply being naked does not violate the NAP, so it is not prima facie morally wrong. The fact that some people don’t like it is inconsequential. The only way nudity can be prohibited is if the owner of a piece of property forbids it on that property. That isn’t a law any more than a dress code for a formal event is a law. Imposing a law requiring people to be clothed on property where it is otherwise permitted by the owner violates the rights of the owners of the property by forbidding them to use their property in a specified way. Remember, property rights means total authority over the property in question, anything less is socialized collective ownership of the facet of the property that is being hijacked against the owner’s wishes and in violation of the NAP. C4: The Government and Property We could debate over whether the government legitimately owns any property, but even if it does the government already has the right to regulate behavior on its own land and that does not constitute a law. If it does not own property than any discussion of public land is pointless: the government cannot foist its rules on other people’s land without violating their property rights; it gets no special pass. I don’t think the government can own property but whether or not it can doesn’t affect my argument. In a private law society, absolutely no law forbidding public nudity could be permitted to exist. As long as the tyranny of the state exists, it is certainly not justified in aggressing against people in this fashion. Conclusion: If you want to sit around naked in your front yard, on someone else’s private property, or in a private park, and the owner of the property does not object, no one can force a law on you or the owner forbidding it. Indeed, even the owner cannot force you to put clothes on; he can only force you to leave his property. Public nudity laws are inherently unjustifiable. I have used few sources because my argument is mostly theoretical and there is nothing I could have cited that would have made these points more convincing. My argument proceeds from logic alone.