Friday, October 19, 2012

Machan's Archives: PBS & NPR, America's Pravda & Izvestia

Machan’s Archives: PBS & NPR, America's Pravda and Izvestia

Tibor R. Machan

        It is a feature of American culture that's most upsetting though hardly anyone makes much of it at all. Indeed, I know several avid defenders of the free society who make regularly and eager appearances on National Public Radio and I have to confess that I myself have appeared on one or two Public Broadcast Service programs when allowed to make a pitch for a society that would have no such things, namely partly government funded TV or radio programming.

        When I first left Hungary, in 1953, and came to live in the West, I settled for a while in Munich where my father and stepmother worked for Radio Free Europe.  This outfit was partly American government--CIA--funded, beaming programs into Eastern European, Soviet bloc countries and supposedly countering communists propaganda.  But at heart the idea of the American government doing this turned out to be a paradox since what is wrong with communist countries is precisely that they place everything in society under state control, including broadcasting the news, educating the young, science, entertainment and athletics.

                    That is just what is supposed to be so different between communism and capitalism: the state and the society are supposed to be separate in the latter.  Yet here was RFE doing just what the communists were doing, entrusting government with broadcasting. (I recall how eager I was at one point shortly after I came West to have the American government give massive funding to Olympic hopefuls so they would defeat Soviet athletes and show how much better American athletes can be than Soviet ones, not realizing for a good while how paradoxical this was--sports should not be the purview of government in a genuine free country.)

        Yet, what we have had in America and many Western countries for decades on end is, you guessed it, virtually the same thing as they had in the Soviet Union and its colonies, namely, government run radio and TV, just like the two government published and managed "newspapers" in the USSR, Pravda and Izvestia, not to mention all their other media. Instead of showing a confidence in the institutions that emerge spontaneously in a free country, from the initiative of free men and women, Americans abandoned the principles of their system to mount a counter-offensive. Let's defeat communism by becoming, well, partly communist! What a self-defeating policy that is.

        These days a good example is PBS's broadcast of Professor Michael Sandel's lectures on justice from Harvard University.  Sandel is smart and erudite but at heart a propagandist for a planned society, only in degrees different from what the most earnest of the Soviets had hoped for (but, of course, couldn't bring off because of how it contradicts human  nature).  There is, of course, nothing objectionable about Harvard broadcasting Sandel's lectures at its own expense but there is decidedly something wrong with Sandel getting even partial government funding for his partisan lectures.  He is not a teacher who gives an fair and accurate representation of different ideas of justice but someone who subtly nudges his students and audience in a particular ideological direction. 

        Am I exaggerating in considering Sandel a propagandist, albeit a subtle one? Well, here is how he handled Aristotle's political philosophy.  

        The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defended a fairly intrusive type of political system in which the government or state--although some dispute this interpretation--aimed at making people good.  OK, this is a pretty standard rendition of Aristotle but in laying it out one needs to make note of the fact that it may well miss something vital about justice.  This is that very likely no one can really make people good--that task needs to be everyone's own (other than those crucial impeded).  

                   Human goodness is arguably something every individual has to bring about for himself or herself.  Otherwise it is nothing but regimentation and what we get is perhaps good behavior but clearly not morally virtuous conduct.  Aristotle, probably somewhat influenced by the experience of the extreme tyranny of the city state of Sparta, accepted the idea that people can be forced to be good.  This is what the classical liberal ethos has corrected about ancient political philosophy--human beings need to choose and cannot be forced to be good!

        Now Sandel gave no mention of this problem with Aristotle.  He made it appear (by failing to discuss the point) that whereas Aristotle had a noble concern with human goodness, the more recent tendency in (especially American libertarian) political philosophy to restrict the power of government and leave citizens to their own resources when it comes to living a morally good life was inferior to it.  But it isn't.  Classical liberals pay plenty of attention to human goodness but they realize it cannot be engineered!  Communitarians and welfare state liberals to the contrary notwithstanding, people cannot be forced to be good!  It is a distinctive element of human life that people's goodness must be their own doing not that of behavior modifiers, brain-washers or the bureaucrats.

        To make it appear that this approach to politics fails to promote human goodness is a distortion.  That is why I call Sandel's lectures propaganda.  If they were fair-minded, by presenting this kind of critique of Aristotle and others who want to force us to be good, it would be educational.  And by being put on PBS, a partly government funded TV network, the lectures come very close to resembling what the citizens of the Soviet Union and its colonies received from Pravda and Izvestia.

                   When recently Mitt Romney said he would shut down PBS and Big Bird, there was a lot of bellyaching about it but Romney, who isn’t even a libertarian, was correct.  It isn’t the task of government in a free country to do entertainment, not even education.  It is supposed to keep the peace, protect individual rights, period.

Monday, October 15, 2012

A Note on Biden and Abortion

Note on Joe Biden and Abortion   

Tibor R. Machan


His pro-life abortion stance should be much more of a problem for Vice President Joe Biden then the media has made it thus far.  And his Left Wing base is giving him a pass, quite unjustly. Here is why:  

If, as the Veep claims, a conceptus or zygote has the rights of a human infant--especially the right to life, so that no one may end its life, including the pregnant woman who is carrying it--then the issue cannot, pace Mr. Biden, be a private decision.  Analogously, if I have an infant in my home I have no right to end its life, not unless it is a direct, unambiguous threat to my own (like a violent intruder would be).  

Self-defense would be the only justification to a pro-lifer for having an abortion.  Otherwise for pro-lifers terminating a pregnancy with the result of the death of the zygote would amount to homicide, possibly out and out murder.  And anything along those lines opens the matter to a criminal inquiry, which is certainly not a private matter.  

So it is clear that the pro-life position has problems with the stance that a government or a law enforcement agency must stay out of a pregnant woman’s “private” life.  The pro-choice stance doesn’t have this problem since it doesn’t recognize a zygote as in possession of the right to life.  Zygotes are potential but not actual human beings (although they are, of course, human zygotes).  But being that they do not have the rights of, say, babies or infants, just as a human toe or finger doesn’t have the rights of a person.

Accordingly, a pro-life position, such as Joe Biden’s, has altogether too much intrusive statism about it.  Government or law enforcement would be authorized to defend the zygote from anyone who would choose to destroy it; even its accidental death, as in a miscarriage, would arguably be subject to legal scrutiny, as would that of any human infant.

         While Joe Biden is relatively silent about his stance on these matters, the surrounding issues should not be overlooked by the media. His current position is duplicitous!  I do not believe Joe Biden or anyone on his team has fully addressed these matters. And the Republicans are probably going to avoid it since they are no less likely to be confused about it.