The Common Good Sense of Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

In the sciences a great many initially controversial ideas have reached the status of common sense. Yes, the earth revolves around the sun. No, leaches do not cure all the diseases they had been used to try to cure. The earth is really quite old, unlike what the literal reading of the good book suggests. And, no, women aren’t inferior to men because somehow their emotions render them stupid.

Now as far as I see matters, freedom is superior to any and all forms of servitude, now and ever, however little this had been acknowledged in the past and still is in other parts of the globe. That is now common sense to me. Just as rape is plainly immoral and sexual unions must be voluntary, so all human conduct that’s peaceful must also be undertaken as a matter of choice. Subjugating anyone to another’s will is not much different, no matter what area of human life it involves, from subjugating an unwilling woman to the will of a forceful man.

But for some odd reason that escapes me, really, a great many quite prominent and intellectually prestigious people disagree with me. It seems to all of them quite OK to coerce others to do various things that these others do not agree to doing. Like paying into the social security fund, or following the orders of the Food and Drug Administration or the Drug Enforcement Authority. Thousands of such institutional arrangements, whereby some more or less large group of people get the legal authority to order others around, are approved of by prominent people. The excuse is usually that unless this authority is granted to these folks, some very good things will not get accomplished.

But that is simply a lousy excuse for running roughshod over other people, to limit their liberty and hand over to others the power to run their lives. It is again common sense to me that if you aim to enlist some fellow human beings in a project that is important, valuable, noble or such, you must confine your means to convincing, never to coercing them. How could it be otherwise? I stick with Abraham Lincoln here, who said, famously, that “No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.” Just seems so obviously true that I find objections to the idea bordering on insanity. I can only have some measure of patience with such objections based on my realization that for centuries and centuries human beings have lived under the yoke of a bunch of pretenders to higher authority and this has warped their good sense.

No, I am not naïve. I realize well enough that dozens and dozens of fancy arguments, theories, motivations and such back the case for subjecting some people who want to go their own way--who want to follow their own choices--to the will of others. In the history of political philosophy and theory hundreds of brilliant figures have advanced interesting, often very sophisticated, arguments defending the divine right of kings, the absolute authority of majorities, and the like. Thousands and thousands of pages have been written to promote the fiction that some men are good enough to coerce others, in the name of various goals, desires, dreams, ideals, or notions of the common good. But none of these, I have come fairly early in my reading to realize, carries the day. Freedom simply--as well as in all its complicated renditions--triumphs over all the more or less oppressive alternatives.

Why then so much resistance to the idea? Well, the governmental habit is one explanation I have discussed often and find still to be a powerful notion. But there is also the fear of liberty--some just believe that unless powerful hands take over the running of human affairs, vital matters will be neglected. Why those powerful hands should manage to escape the same obstacle, namely human folly, to running matters properly that seem to such folks to prevent free man and women doing it beats me. The evidently blind confidence in some magic selection process that will put only wise and virtuous people into the positions of the coercers is baffling.

It is time that the superior regime of freedom becomes an article of common sense, not in constant need of having to be defended, intellectually, politically and physically!

America Was Special

Tibor R. Machan

Despite its awful flaw, slavery, at the start, America had begun as a country founded on very special, radical principles. More importantly, these principles are true--they aren’t merely myths or superstitions men and women held for a period of time. That we all have basic rights to our lives, liberty, etc., is true and not just some fiction (as the late George Carlin liked to maintain in his curmudgeonly fashion). After all, nearly all of the criminal law across the globe recognizes it, at least implicitly. But few countries incorporated these truths into the daily fabric of their citizens’ economic lives.

Of course not even in America was the economy fully free. Nor did freedom of speech or even religion rule the realm completely, without some serious exceptions. But compared to other regimes around the globe, the ideals and ideas of a free society took greater hold here than elsewhere. That is what made the place exceptional, that’s why millions fled to it, that’s what made it a sanctuary to so many and still does.

The differences between countries are not like those between geometrical shapes. They are more gradual, so that while North Korea is a radically different place from America, Germany or New Zealand is not. And today more and more countries are adopting legal principles, institutions, and public policies that resemble those favored by the American Founders and Framers.

In some regions of the globe, such as India and China, some of these principles, especially those bearing on economic matters, have been embraced quite adamantly. That wouldn’t yet make them fully free countries; not even the US can be so called, given its oppressive drug laws and some other public policies. But in certain vital areas of human affairs, such as commerce, science, technology, and the like, embracing even less than fully the principles of liberty will mean a great deal. And one thing it will mean is that the people of these countries will become far more productive --and they will also be consuming a lot more--than they used to. So America is gradually having to face people from elsewhere who are competing in the global economy. And they are enjoying the fruits of this competition and making matters more difficult for those in the USA.

Just as when America fielded the famous basketball “dream team” but eventually faced teams from other countries that learned to play equally well, so America has been enjoying considerable advantage in many areas which it no longer does, if only because the obstacles to being part of the competition are being removed in other places. That would mean, among other things, that Americans will have to work harder and smarter in all areas of production than they did previously in order to keep up their standard of living.

In addition to these geopolitical changes, there is also all the technological developments that face people in many industries. No one can sit on his or her laurels and expect to just coast to easy success. As with a marathon race that is being run now by millions more than earlier, so with the global economy the contestants are facing a great deal of pressure now. (A good book about this is Fareed Zakaria’s recent Post-American World.)

All of this would of course be welcome news to those who find it thrilling to face new challenges in life. But if statis is one’s habit or preference, if one wants to be settled into a job, business, or profession without making adjustments, without having to be alert to the new opportunities that keep coming up, one will not be enjoying the current market place.

In fairness, of course, one needs to acknowledge that quite apart from the global economic changes facing us, there are also all the obstacles we face that bureaucrats, meddling politicians, and their cheerleaders in the media and the intellectual arena place before us and that make matters doubly difficult as we come to terms with challenges in the market place. Free men and women are more likely to meet these than are those whose minds and bodies are in partial bondage to mal-practicing governments.

So beside learning to deal with new peaceful developments around the globe, it is also vital to work on removing the artificial, indeed criminal, intrusions that make it difficult to adjust to novel situations. This is why politics is no luxury but a realm where vigilance in making improvements is as necessary as anywhere else in our lives.

What kind of Equality?

Tibor R. Machan

So called progressives--who wish to sell us on the idea that their rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence amounts to moving forward whereas it is, in fact, blatantly reactionary--like to make fun of the American Founders’ and Framers’ ideas. One of those ideas that has come in for some drubbing is where we are told that “All men are created equal.” In fact, several elements of this statement have received much ridicule. One is that it talks of “men,” another that even if it is taken more honestly as referring to adult human beings, it is plainly false. There is, of course, yet another part of it that is often derided, namely, that human beings were created by God, even though by “create” one can mean both something religious and secular.

What about the idea that human beings are created equal? Aldous Huxley is reported to have dismissed this as follows: “That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.” Yet, Huxley and all whose who gleefully join him in his attempt to debunk the Founders seem not to have been paying sufficient attention to the actual words of the Declaration. Immediately following “That all men are created equal” is the sentence “that they are endowed, by their creator, with certain unalienable rights.” Which pretty much implies that this is where all of us are equal, namely, in our possession of the unalienable rights--among others--to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What is clear from this is that the Founders didn’t believe something ridiculous like Huxley suggests they did, namely, that “all men are equal.” Just look at any group of human beings and it is patently absurd that they are equal. We are all individuals, with a great variety of unique, distinct, different, and even special attributes that make up who we are. Despite this, however, we are also equally in possession of our rights.

Just consider this: all marathon runners differ from one another yet they are also equal in having to start from a certain spot and having to finish at another. But this equality is very limited and contributes just minimally to their status as marathon runners. The students in my university classes are clearly unequal on many fronts yet they are equal in having to pass certain tests, write certain papers, take part in class discussions.

So the equality that the American Founders identified about human beings makes perfectly good sense: however much they all differ--however unequal they may be in their talents, opportunities, physical prowess, wealth, health, and beauty--they are equal in having fundamental, unalienable individual human rights to their lives, liberty, pursuit of happiness and many others not possible to list.

Yes, the Founders proposed that human beings have many more than just those basic rights. That is why when the Bill of Rights was crafted, it included the Ninth Amendment which states that “the enumeration in this Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Framers worried that listing some of the most basic rights may mislead folks into thinking that they meant human beings have only those, whereas in fact human beings have many, many more rights than what the Declaration or the Bill of Rights could possibly list.

This is not difficult to grasp. Neither the Declaration nor the Bill of Rights states that human beings have the right to, say, laugh, sing, play billiards, or to get on their knees and say prayers yet, of course, every adult human being has the right to do these things. And how do we tell that the Founders and Framers thought so? Because they listed very broad principles only, such as the rights to life and to liberty. If one has the right to one’s life, it clearly means that one has the right to a whole bunch of peaceful, non rights-violating undertakings, given that life consists of innumerable such undertakings. Similarly, to have the right to liberty means to have the right to act in innumerable ways that do not violate anyone else’s rights. But a brief, succinct declaration, or a brief list, cannot possibly mention all the rights human beings have. The terms used are abstract ones, indicating a great many more concrete elements--just as when one uses the term “furniture” to indicate all those chairs, tables, beds, sofas, drawers, etc., that is meant by it.

My suspicion is that in the battles for people’s minds and hearts a lot of people who find it inconvenient that others would have the rights the Founders and Framers indicated wish to make it appear the American Founders and Framers were confused and what they proposed can be simply dismissed. Well, they are very wrong about this.

My Uninvited Speech at KOCE-TV’s 35 Anniversary Bash

Tibor R. Machan

A colleague asked me to come and sit with him and his pals at the table to celebrate KOCE-TV’s 35th anniversary celebration. I went, though with some trepidation, given that KOCE-TV is a “public” television station in Orange County, CA. It is mostly funded from contributions but does receive about 10% of its operating expenses from the government, via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I was informed by one official at the organization.

Compared to many other subsidized undertakings, the amount isn’t huge but, still, it does involve robbing Peter a bit so as to support Paul with the latter’s preferred projects.

As I was driving to the bash, I was toying with the fantasy of giving a little talk at the event, just in case I had the chance to make clear to some folks what I have against such “public” funding. No one asked! I just sat at the table with some familiar people and listened to glowing reports about KOCE-TV’s contribution to Orange County’s cultural scenery. But I figure it might be of some use if I did jot down what I would have said to the assembled celebrators. Here it goes:

“Ladies and Gentlemen. Thanks for the opportunity to be at this celebration. I am very much in favor of what KOCE-TV has done and is doing here in OC, excepting perhaps a few programs that tend toward statist propaganda instead of bona fide education or entertainment. This mirrors my support for numerous other similar projects and programs partially funded from taxation, including AIDS research, the jazz and blues offerings at KKJZ-FM, Long Beach, CA, as well as numerous scientific, medical, artistic, and even some environmental undertakings.

“What I find morally unacceptable, however, is how some of the funds for these and other worthy projects are obtained, namely, by confiscatory taxation. Taxation is a relic of feudal times when the monarch and his minions extorted funds from those who lived ‘within the realm.’ In those systems it was governments--the king, for example--that owned nearly everything (other than one’s soul). So one had to pay for the privilege of making use of the monarch’s property. But numerous revolutions, in American and France, for instance, finally corrected this idea, namely, that governments own the resources in a society. Instead, the Lockean idea of individual private property rights was identified as the proper principle of ownership. Locke also defended the idea that human individuals own their own lives--ergo, the unalienable right to one’s life and liberty--and thereby undermined the feudal doctrine of serfdom and indentured servitude.

“So, ultimately the funds being used at KOCE-TV and innumerable other public undertakings must be obtained from people by voluntary means, something that KOCE-TV and many other ‘public’ radio and television stations seem to accept since they, too, tend to prefer obtaining support from voluntary contributions. I am simply making note of the fact that this is what should happen with all the funds, not just the bulk of them. Thanks for your attention.”

Of course, no one asked me to say anything like this. Nor did anyone ask some others in the audience who shared these ideas, even though several people from KOCE-TV did stop by our table and smiled about how we were critical of some of their funding methods. (In Orange County, CA., there is at least some general awareness of these ideas, even if only in a somewhat condescending fashion, as if those who hold them hailed from some bizarre region of the globe!)

On a more general note, this issue raises the question, also, of what it means when a country is called “free.” For some, like the famous Venetian political thinker Machiavelli, it meant that the country isn’t being ruled by another one in the neighborhood; it means, in other words, political independence. For the American Founders, however, being free was spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. A country is free if it established, maintained, and secured all of its citizens’ unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Accordingly, then, if governments deprive citizens of their resources, some of which they would devote to pursuing their happiness as they judge fit, the freedom of the country they are supposed to govern is compromised.

So, the larger issue for me when I was sitting through KOCE-TV’s 35th anniversary bash was one of human individual freedom. Maybe this wasn’t a major assault on that freedom but wherever I notice such an assault, major or minor, I choose to make some hay about it.

Politicizing Science

Tibor R. Machan

As many who read my columns would know, I am an avid reader of Science News, the magazine of the Society for Science and the Public located in Washington, D. C. It's now been a few decades that I have been kept abreast of developments in a great variety of sciences, natural and social, by reading this publication.

Recently the editors have made some changes, some of them quite desirable but others objectionable. For example, the size and format has changed. The magazine now is no longer a little thin "book" but is, like so many others, a formidable size and the writing is more developed than it has been in the past. Some new features have also been added but one of these is not a welcome one, at least not by anyone who would insist on keeping government and science separated other than where military readiness requires it. The feature I am referring to is called "Comment" wherein various luminaries opine about science and public affairs.

In the issue before me, for example, Steven Hyman, provost at Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, offers his opinion about how attitudes toward governmental support of science education fare in America versus elsewhere around the globe. Hyman is, of course, doing what all special interest advocates do, namely, asking for more money for what concerns them, in this case the growth of research, development, and science education. Like other special interest representatives, Hyman makes his wishes clear now that there is likely to be regime change in Washington: "[I]t is much to be hoped that the next president of the United States will recognize the benefits of a healthy scientific enterprise. Ideally the new administration will craft policies to produce steady growth in federal research budgets, more welcoming immigration policies for foreign scientists and respect for science...."

Actually, ideally, if that is not too fanciful a term to use in this context, the federal government--indeed, any government--of a free society ought to refrain from backing any science that does not directly bear on its job of securing the rights of its citizens. That is what government is for in free countries and any other kind of support for science is no different from supporting special groups of citizens rather than the public as a whole.

In a free society the support of the public as a whole consists of providing everyone with the liberty to pursue his or her own ends in voluntary cooperation with like-minded and willing fellow citizens. It is wrong--political malpractice--to take funds away from some and transfer it, without their consent, to others for however worthy a purpose. Whether other countries breach this principle of free government is irrelevant. Just as in the United States the freedom of the press and of religious worship is protected and a proper separation between government and these elements of society is legally upheld to a substantial degree, so there should be no involvement in the funding of science.

One example Hyman mentions of what he believes needs more support than it receives is stem cell research and it is a good one because it illustrates just how similar government funding of and involvement in science is to government funding of and involvement in religion. Many citizens believe it is wrong to do stem cell research, mostly on religious grounds. Whatever one may think of the merits of this belief, in a free country citizens have the right to live by their convictions provided they respect others' equal rights. But taking funds from some of them to support work they believe is immoral violates this principle. And stem cell research isn't the only kind that involves such a violation.

Now my ideas on this topic are, of course, radical and will not even get a fair hearing in the mainstream media (which, being so fond of the First Amendment, really ought to get on the same page with me here). Nonetheless the point needs to be made, especially when someone who is as prominent as Steven Hyman chimes in on the opposite side.

My more immediate concern, however, is that Science News is drifting away from its mission of giving good coverage to scientific work toward becoming a platform for what is clearly an insidious political agenda. I guess the temptation to steal from Peter to fund the work of Paul, if you like Paul's work a lot, is too powerful to resist.
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Machan is the editor of Liberty and R&D (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002).

Doubting One’s Mind

Tibor R. Machan

A central topic of philosophy throughout the ages has been whether human beings can trust their minds, including their sensory awareness and thinking. Skepticism about this has been a major challenge and many from Socrates to such recent and current thinkers as Ayn Rand and John Searle have responded with more or less elaborate arguments defending our capacity to get things right about the world.

Just now a new source of skepticism has surfaced, from within the field of neuroscience. In a recent review essay of several books on the topic, “How the Mind Works: Revelations,” published in The New York Review of Books (6/26/08), Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff write, “In fact ‘external reality’ is a construction of the brain.” Several of the authors they discuss argue this point. As the review notes, “In general, every recollection refers not only to the remembered event or person or object but to the person who is remembering,” meaning that memory is not about an objective reality but of some mishmash of subjective experience and external influence.

In essence, then, what one understands about the world and oneself is really not what actually exists but what is constructed by one’s mind with the use of other cognitive tools. The problem with this is that it makes no sense in the end because what the researchers are telling us would also be covered by their claim and so it is also just some mental construction, which then is also some further mental construction, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. But that cannot be. At some point the researchers would have to accept that what they are telling us about the human mind is actually so, not also just a construct or invention.

In any case, why would there be so much interest in discrediting the human mind, of writing elaborate tomes that argue that our understanding of the world and ourselves is fabrication, not objectively true?

Some folks say that to a question like that one needs to answer by following the money--that is to say, checking who is gaining from these so called findings. I am not such a cynic. As far as I can tell, some of these scientists and the reporters who seem to be so gleeful about what this work produces may well be sincere. Yet I also suspect there is something fishy afoot here and my suspicion is that there is a tendency on the part of many of these experts to come up with findings that assign to them a special role in the world. They are, in effect, the only people who have a clear handle on how things go with human beings. They are the only reliable source of facts--as Rosenfield and Zinn say, “In fact. ‘external reality’ is a construction of the brain.” You and I are not up to snuff about the matter, we are deluded and misguidedly think that when we see a red coffee cup on the kitchen table, there really is such a cup there. But Rosenfield and Ziff and the scientists they are reviewing will inform us that “there are no colors in the world, only electromagnetic waves of many frequencies.”

But if you just think for a moment, this is nonsense. It is like saying there is no furniture in my living room, only chairs and tables and sofas. Well, but it is those chairs, tables, and sofas that are the furniture. It is, then, the electromagnetic waves doing certain work that are the colors, so colors do indeed exist in the world. Thus telling someone that there is a red cup on the kitchen table is exactly right! It may not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what is there but few people need to have that in order to cope quite well with the world around them.

The same problem faced some physicists who claimed that there is nothing that’s solid in the world because everything is composed of atoms and atoms, in turn, are mostly empty space with only very tiny bits of material substance swirling within them at enormous speeds. Ergo, solidity is an illusion. But this is to drop the context of discussions where the distinction between, say, solidity and liquidity comes up. It is misguided to make the leap from one context to another where the focus is quite different.

When we ordinary humans notice the world around us, learn to identify what it contains, begin to understand the forces at work in it, if we pay attention we can get it right for the purposes that we need this understanding. To try to undermine this confidence based on highly specialized research is misguided and perhaps ill conceived. It appears to assign to some people some special status even though, by their own accounts, no one ultimately can figure anything out.

Liberty and Hard Cases

Tibor R. Machan

One book I edited has the same title as this column and focuses mainly on how a free society would cope with disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. When the nature of a just society is discussed, those who defend big government solutions to problems tend to start with orphaned children and catastrophes, claiming that only by means of massive government intervention can a society cope. But then, of course, it becomes evident that big government advocates—actually, advocates of governments with extensive scope, way beyond the task of securing the rights of the citizenry—don’t stop with the dire cases. Instead they move on to advocate government intervention into every nook and cranny of people’s lives. The tendency is toward totalitarianism, with just a few exceptions such as freedom for the press and for people religious choices. Everything else, however, seems to require government meddling, just as was believed in the thousands of years when monarchies ruled virtually everywhere because the king was thought to be God’s representative on earth.

Starting with disasters has considerable emotional advantage for statists. People are rarely as frightened as when they contemplate the prospect of facing natural calamities. (The fire that came close to destroying the canyon in which I have my small house punctuated this for me.) Only diseases like cancer or sudden heart attacks scare most folks as much. And in a state of panic one is less likely to be rational, to assess things calmly, carefully, in a principled way. It was William Pitt who warned—in 1783—that “Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.”

So, even dire emergencies are no excuses for forcing people into service to one another. Their lives belong to them and no one may conscript them to provide involuntary service! Especially when the proper course to take so as to reduce the damage from natural calamities is so near at hand. This is private insurance and the related industries that would develop in the absence of the state’s promise of bailing people out. Yes, getting used to not depending on government, the Nanny State, Uncle Sam, and monarchs of all kinds may be difficult and even difficult to imagine for those who lack confidence in the capacity of human beings to abide by the rules of civilized society. Yet, as with all great goals that are difficult to achieve, it is worth aiming for.

Just as in time people learned to do without serfdom and slavery, they could similarly learn to do without subjugating their fellows in times of dire need, even severe emergencies. It may not be an idea whose time has been fully apprehended, gleaned, but it is one that is, nonetheless, imperative to aspire to for all human beings.

In most areas of human life we find people subverting principles of morality and justice but this is no excuse for giving up on those principles. In whenever those principles are subverted, excuses bubble up readily—from bank robbers and adulterers to child molesters and rapists. The strong urge to violate those principles is simply not excuse for failing to try to purge their violation from our lives.

All this needs to be considered when one approaches the issue of how people ought to cope with disasters, calamities, emergencies and other occasions that appear to necessitate the violation of unalienable human, individual rights. The idea of justice that requires respect for and protection of those rights may at times seem impossible to put into practice but that is merely a function of most people’s centuries old reliance on using other people against their will, without their consent.

A dedication to refusing to yield to such habits could very well bring to the fore a different era, one in which governments will be confined to their proper job, securing our rights, and we take up the various more or less trying tasks of coping with our lives, including in emergencies.

Property Rights and the Very Badly Off

Tibor R. Machan

Is it reasonable to always demand respect for property rights? This is the question raised by some critics of the (Lockean) idea that human beings have the unalienable right to their lives, liberty and property which may never be subject to violation within the legal system of a free society. Some claim that it is unreasonable to demand this of those in dire straits, the extremely poor, who would only manage to survive and flourish by violating these rights of the well off. Thus, the argue, the welfare state in which laws are passed that permit taxing the well to do so as to provide for those in dire straits is just.

Of course, most of the welfare obtained via taxation doesn’t serve to benefit people in dire straits but owners of sizable business firms that seek support in times of economic downturns. The welfare state tends to support those afraid of competition from foreign industry and farmers, not unwed mothers who cannot find work by which to support their children. But some of the recipients of welfare are in dire straits, through no evident fault of their own. And, the argument goes, it would be unreasonable to demand of such people to refrain from taking from the well to do what they need.

As I have argued, since some of what those in dire need require would be the result of the labors of other people, this implies that it is unreasonable to demand of those in dire straits to abstain from coercing productive people to labor for them, to part with what they have produced, to even give up parts of their bodies if they can do without those parts. But that cannot be right—how could it be unreasonable to demand that people not be forced to labor for others? Does not forced labor violate the rights of those who are its victim? If one also adds that those in dire straits may very well have ample opportunity to obtain what they need by offering to work for the well off, to engage in innovation, enterprise and other efforts that can peacefully secure for them what they need to survive and flourish, the case that they may coerce others to work for them loses even the emotional appeal that at first inspection it possesses.

The most that this kind of reasoning advanced in support of the welfare state establishes, then, is that those who are well off ought to be generous toward the very needy, that in emergencies those who can should lend a hand to those who are genuinely helpless. Indeed, that is what the virtue of generosity amounts to: it inclines decent persons, ones of good character, to come to the aid of deserving but badly off people. That would be the civilized solution rather than one that resorts of coercive means and treats those well off as unwilling tools or instruments of the badly off, not as people who are ends in themselves and must give their consent whenever they are utilized by others, even the very hard up among us.

There can, of course, be circumstances so unruly, so desperate and catastrophic that reasonable conduct is impossible, something that Locke himself realized, referring to them as ones where “politics in not possible.” In such cases the world is so topsy-turvy that the principles of civilized behavior cannot reasonably be expected to be followed.

What does not follow from this is that the legal system of a society must be adjusted so as to accommodate emergencies, to require of well enough off citizens to be constant Good Samaritans. As the saying goes, “Hard cases make bad law.” One does not demand that a system of law change because of certain dire circumstances, especially since it would imply that some people get to place the rest under legal obligation to perform service that should come from good will, not at the point of a gun.

In a recent issue of Science News, the magazines that reports much of the path breaking scientific research around the globe, one short item noted that the degree of charity and philanthropy in societies with substantial free, unregimented markets is much greater than in top down planned societies. So not only it coercive welfare unjust but it seems to discourage good will among citizens. And it is mostly such good will that takes the best care of the truly needy among us!

Is traveling a human right?

Tibor R. Machan

Liberty first had to do with the freedom to travel. In time it came to amount to a condition in which no one forces one to submit to another’s will, a condition of not being prevented by others from doing what one chooses to do. So, for example, free enterprise means no one is authorized to stop others from producing and trading; free press means there may be no bans on one’s decision to write and publish what one decides to. Of course, one may not be able to do much that one is free to do—I am free to sing operas but I am not able to do so. No one is stopping me from betting big bucks in Las Vegas but, alas, I have no big bucks to bet. It is one thing to be free to act, another to be capable of doing so, a point lost on many political thinkers and public policy proponents.

The matter I wish to explore here, very briefly, is whether a person has a right to the freedom travel. In one sense, of course, yes—everyone has the right to be free to travel because normally no one is authorized to prohibit it for others. But travel involves the use of resources and it isn’t true that everyone has the right to the resources that are required for travel. If one does, others may not interfere but if one doesn’t, one will not be able to travel. And what kind of resources are at issue?

For one, to travel, one needs some area where a trip can take place. A trip from Los Angeles to Japan, for example, usually requires fuel, a vehicle, some open route that connects the two places, etc. None of these is a free good. So although one has the right to undertake the trip, one may not have the ability to do so. And even the right to undertake the trip is something akin to the right to the pursuit of happiness—the result is not a right. No one has the right to be happy! That is something one needs to achieve. But all have the right to pursue it.

Most people travel by car and plane, though many still use a bike, motorized or not, or even a horse. But most importantly, in order to travel, one must have some sphere wherein the trip takes place—a road, a railway, a waterway, or airway. And these are not free goods by any means. Moreover, in a fully free society, in which there are but very minimal public spheres—those needed to administer the legal system (meaning where a court house, military base and police station may be located)—no one could simply enter some sphere and use it to travel from one place to another. In such a society roads would be privately built and owned, as would homes or apartment houses. And just as one may only enter and make use of these latter if those who own them give one permission—or have reached mutually agreeable terms of exchange—the same would hold for all the spheres where travel can take place.

Now for quite a while no need for buying or renting spheres of travel may have appeared necessary—like air, they appeared to be free goods. Yet what had been a free good once may not remain so as more and more people make use of it and it becomes scarce. The air mass, for example, is barely a free good, as are water masses. Land hasn’t been a free good for centuries, at least not where most people would want to live and work. The upkeep of these valuable spheres isn’t cheap. Nor do they benefit everyone equally—some people can do without much use of land or water while others wish to make a great deal of use of them (e. g., folks who like boating want a lot of water available for them, while golfer would prefer large parcels of land).

The belief that travel and its major tool, roads, is something that must be available to everyone in equal proportions is folly. Clearly not everyone wants to travel a great deal but, also, not all who do are willing to take care of what they make use of or pay others do it for them. Which is of course exactly what we learn from the doctrine of the tragedy of the commons: public realms tend to get neglected, overused, and depleted, whereas private realms get reasonably well cared for.

Perhaps the concern that’s most directly addressed by these considerations is environmentalism. If the principle of private property rights had been respected and protected for all the time that spheres or travel became scarce, there would arguably have not developed as much environmental abuse as many who concern themselves with these matters contend. What appear to be free goods simply do not get well taken care of and by treating travel as some kind of God given right of everyone—so most people believe they may go anywhere anytime the mood strakes them—a great deal of trouble comes to face us all.

The Liberty We Must Have

Tibor R. Machan

It is becoming more and more fashionable among political thinkers and even politicians to disparage the kind of individual liberty championed in the American political tradition. Several scholars—e. g., Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago—have argued that what really matters most is something called positive liberty. This is the notion that people have liberty only when others provide them with the resources that enable them to do what they would like to or should do. And there is a use of the idea “liberty” or “freedom” along these lines—you are free to fly to Paris only if you get funds to pay for the trip. But it used to be understood, maybe still is normally, that to get this kind of freedom or liberty one needs to earn the funds to pay instead of take it from other people by way, of say, taxation. But that is now challenged by the idea that what we lack but need or want is something we are entitled to from others and governments exist to serve us by obtaining it all from these others and they have no say in the matter.

This is the thinking of collectivists, people who believe we all belong to one large group and everyone must pull together to make everyone get what he or she needs or wants. Never mind consent! Individuals are a fiction, anyway, the story continues. Individual rights are nothing but periodic grants of the group to some members if there is public benefit from it. Even freedom of the press is defended this way by many political thinkers—people have it only because it advances the public interest! Indeed, by this view one’s rights come from the government instead of, as the American Founders held, the government serves us by securing the rights we have by virtue of our human nature.

Some thing is seriously amiss here. Notice, for example, that when people are convicted of a crime and are then incarcerated, it is not positive liberty that they lose but the (negative) liberty of not having others interfere with their lives. Why? Because such negative liberty is most important. It is only if one’s negative liberty—freedom from interference—is intact that one can embark upon survival and flourishing, including by means of free interaction with others (in, say, commerce, education, and other social affairs).

Now and then people may be in dire straits and come to rely on help from others and this is usually forthcoming from motives of generosity, compassion, kindness but not from some idea that they are entitled to support. That would place us all into involuntary servitude to the needy. And, normally, when such help of the needy is forthcoming, those who extend it are given thanks. But when others do not interfere with us, do not murder, assault or steal from us, no thinks are due! That’s because we have the right to live and be free and this freedom is not some gift from other people we need to be grateful for.

With the replacement of the American sense of individual liberty by the one imported from a very different (and, by the way, reactionary) tradition—namely, socialism and, now, communitarianism—there is, of course, more and more talk of forced public service. Politicians are advocating required community works and even the military draft is being mentioned as in need of reestablishment. That is the result of the idea that as individuals we do not exist and we are all just part of some larger entity—the state, nation, community, humanity—and must be made to pull together as such.

Of course, all this is proposed by, you guessed it, individuals, ones who take themselves to be special, not like the rest of us! Such ambitious folks would gladly take over the governance of the lives of other people and send everyone to do the job they believe must be done, never mind our puny individual agendas.

I can only hope that this ruse is in time grasped by more and more folks and the idea of the genuine freedom of the individual recovers its prominence in political thought.

Blue Laws: Unjust and Unequal

Tibor R. Machan

Sometimes I will go out of my way to visit one of those outlet malls. Not only do they have some pretty good deals but often I can find clothing that actually fits me—a bit oversized sweaters or short sleeved shirts seem to get dumped there to be available for the likes of me.

I was driving up on I 85, all the way from the Florida panhandle to Gastonia, North Carolina, midday one recent Sunday, when I spotted what looked like a promising strip mall in South Carolina, with a bunch of these outlet shops visible from the road. I got off, gassed up my rental and headed to the stores—only to find that South Carolina blue laws coerce the stores not to open before 1:30 PM. Now this is just the kind of small but not inconsequential restraint of trade I really detest—politicians forcing people to stay away from stores so they will more likely attend church (or some such noble motivation driving them to intrude on other people, just as politicians are won’t to do, be it for the sake of religion, the environment, social justice, or whatever). Not that these measures are so onerous—they are more a nuisance than anything except, of course, for the merchants (who are losing portions of their livelihood in consequence of this paternalism) and certain customers (who may want something pronto). So while perhaps no great harm to most of us, these blue laws do amount to a potentially damaging intrusion for quite a few people.

This is the kind of measure people who defend them write off as a central feature of democracy but it just won’t wash. Why does a majority of some community get away with doing something that no individual citizen would, namely, forcibly come between a merchant and customers? Who are these people anyway that when they come together and form a group that’s larger than those who don’t share their agenda they get to impose on others their will, make them into subjects? What they prohibit is, of course, all peaceful stuff, nothing violent against any innocent third party. The arrogance, nay, viciousness of it!

But there is more. Of course, some folks manage to be exempt from these so called public policies—policies that turn out to bear only on some members of the public. The food court was open and doing fine business! And so were the adjacent gas stations as well as the several motels in the surrounding area. Why? How come these people may do brisk business all day Sunday, while those trying to do the very same thing—namely, make a living from commerce—are forbidden to do so?

It is clear enough from this relatively innocuous example that the bulk of such paternalistic, nanny state measures is deployed totally unfairly, completely in opposition to the spirit, even letter, of the idea—embodied in the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution—that everyone must be treated by the authorities as “equal under the law.” Not however those making money off of gasoline sales or renting rooms in their establishments, for some bizarre reason.

Now for my money the more folks in South Carolina—or anywhere else, for that matter—can beat these insane “public” blue law measures, the better. I look upon it as I did draft dodging and still view tax dodging. I defend them as ways of escaping from various degrees of tyranny!

But aside from that, it should be an embarrassment for the policy makers in these regions to realize just how they violate the principle of impartiality. For that is what they do as they so cavalierly intrude upon the lives of citizens when what they ought to be doing is securing their unalienable individual rights to, among other things, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

It all goes to show you how far America is from having fully appreciated the meaning of the revolution that created the country. This revolution was about demoting government, removing it from the position as the sole sovereign in the land and assigning to individuals that sovereignty that had for centuries been accepted as belonging to the state. In some broad respects the revolution did have its impact and made things more just across the land, even the globe! But in many respects matters haven’t changed much. The insidious governmental habit is live and kicking and producing the messes it has always produced where it has been and continues to be in evidence.

South Carolina’s blue laws are just a tiny tip of the iceberg. What’s worse, of course, is that hardly any of America’s eager-beaver politicians running for office address these intrusive measures. Of course not—they are all eager to get in on the game and impose on us their own agenda as soon as they get into office.

Is it Progress?

Tibor R. Machan

One of the very first novels, read in Hungarian translation back in Budapest when I was about 10 years old, was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer followed and then quite a few of Zane Grey’s, Max Brand’s and Earl Stanley Gardner’s works, all of which I read for entertainment as well as to get a whiff of American culture. This was shortly after WW II ended and there was a chance, and lots of hope, that the Americans, not the Soviets, would come to Hungary to run the post-war show. Alas, Yalta killed that.

Though Huck Finn was indeed a very entertaining novel, it also left a lasting impression about some of America’s troubles in its first century. But there was, also, much hope expressed in the book and by the time I managed to be smuggled out of the communist hell whole Hungary had become after 1948, my mistaken understanding was that there was no racial divide in the country. Once I arrived here, midyear 1956, just before Budapest exploded and the Soviet grip began to loosen a bit—only to harden soon again—I was quite surprised to learn that the country had still suffered from a racial crisis. The few months I spend going to American high school in Germany gave little hint of this because the school, including the track team and band I had joined, gave l no evidence of segregation and racism, quite the contrary. My best friend at the school was black and the band, too, was fully integrated so I didn’t have much of a clue how backward race relations were stateside.

My first American school was West Philly high where whites were in a small minority and my claim to fame was that I was asked to try out for the virtually completely black football team as the kicker! (I didn’t make it since I kicked like a soccer player.) And later, when I enlisted country in the US Air Force and lived with a very tall and intellectual black airman named, of all things, Ivan, the race issue once gain didn’t surface for me—Ivan was a great room mate.

In time, however, I became aware that no all was quiet in race relations in America but it mostly baffled me, as did much of the injustice I have witnessed in my personal life as well as in my new country. It was always a mixed bag, though, since most of what I encountered personally seemed quite peaceful and friendly between members of the two races and bad news came from the public sector, mostly. Still, it was sad, given the potential I saw in the country for the elimination of such acrimonious human relations. As I became more and more involved in political theory and focused more and more on social and economic affairs, I also grew restless about this and in time I learned that the whole issue of racism was an immense but unnecessary flaw in America. More and more I was looking for signs of improvement everywhere, especially on the personal front. So whenever I witnessed an interracial friendship, romance or marriage, I felt a strong pang of pleasure. So nice to notice sins that the cancer was abating! I often choked up from a feeling of hope and relief, brought on by the realization that people were breaking through the barriers, that it wasn’t all whites and blacks in America who took part in the acrimony that gave the free society its main low grade.

So you might think that I would be joining all those who are hailing Senator Barack Obama’s ascendance to the Democratic candidacy in this presidential election year. And, yes, to some extend it does bring a measure of satisfaction.

Unfortunately this satisfaction is overshadowed by the fact that Senator Obama is one of the major American politicians who stands against America’s founding principles of individualism, of everyone’s right to his or her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Indeed, the leftist political economic public policies the Senator is hoping to press upon us all in this country nearly totally undermine the mostly symbolic victory his candidacy achieved on the racial front. If anything, what would have been true progress is had a black individual with full commitment to those principled risen to prominence on the political front. If someone, who embraced the principles of limited government, one devoted to securing our rights, made it to the front of the line that would have been progress and worth real celebration.

But what Senator Obama shows is that black or white, American political culture is in a thoroughly reactionary mood. It is embarking on embracing servitude, dependence not on private but public, official masters who promise to deliver to millions the impossible dream of full security from life by means of an ever expanding welfare state. Being so associated with the ancient regime, whereby government—be it king, emperor, tsar or the representatives of a majority of voters—takes over the realms and engages in widespread paternalistic care taking, Senator Obama does not represent progress, never mind what his race is.

No Foreign Music In America?

Tibor R. Machan

Since some people want to make Americans buy only American farm or other products, the question is why they don’t advocate keeping out of the country all those foreign musicians, opera singers, orchestras, bands, conductors, actors, directors, and all kinds of other non-natives who peddle their trade and wares on our shores. I recall that, for a while at least, Canadian universities had a policy of not hiring teachers from America because, well, there are far more American teachers qualified for the positions in that country and the graduates there would have had to compete in a demanding market. But that is just what is the case with many artists, as well as doctors and scientists--they are taking jobs that might be taken by Americans.

Of course the idea is obscene. Yet that is just what protectionism relating to farming or car making or any other profession or industry amounts to. Globalization means no trade restrictions between countries, none! The labor or professional market place as well as any other should be completely free of government interference except when it comes to explicit, avowed, declared enemies of the country. But don’t even suggest this to Senators Obama and Clinton!

Anyone who whines about cultural dilution is, of course, way too late--for centuries on end such dilution has been going on big time. Professor Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has made this abundantly evident in his great book, Creative Destruction (Princeton University Press, 2004). He showed that in no area does purity prevail, none, not in folk music, not in folk dance, not in cuisine, not anywhere. Indeed, the bulk of artistic creativity--or, indeed, fashion and style--consists of mixing traditions and then remixing them and on and on with the process so pervasive that no one can trace the result to any specific region of the globe, to any “people”.

Very sadly often the call for purity is but a disguised form of hateful prejudice. One of my close relatives who still lives in the country from which I hail used to whine about how foreign elements are destroying the country’s artistic and related heritage. Of course, this was but a disguise because what was really so offensive to this individual was that there were a good many Jewish professionals, artists, intellectuals, and educators in the country that some wished belonged to them alone!

Mind you, there is no harm in wanting to be within familiar surroundings now and then. I recall once my family took a brief trip to the German city of Augsburg while I was working in Lugano, Switzerland, and as we arrived in midtown we noticed how tall, like we were, people there are as compared with folks in Ticino, which is the Italian sector of Switzerland where Lugano is located. And one of us exclaimed that this was a welcome feeling, being among people who were tall like us. And why not? Unless one makes this into some kind of crusade against the not-so-tall, unless one punishes one’s children for falling in love or wishing to marry such a not-so-tall individual, there is no harm in the feeling of comfort among those similar to oneself.

Indeed, in personal relations people quite freely, unapologetically show preferences like this, based on features in people with which they are more comfortable than with others. So long as one’s reason and intelligence kick in and one refuses to extend such mere preferences into some kind of doctrine of specialness or purity, no harm, no foul.

People who come from Germany may well prefer German music, literature, or poetry, whereas ones from Poland or Italy or Syria may be drawn, at least quite often, toward what makes them feel at home. Doing this as a matter of principle is, of course, nuts--one shuts out a great deal of human creativity when one sticks one’s head in the sand along these lines. But settling into familiar surroundings can be a very pleasant experience for most of us.

And for some of us a more cosmopolitan taste feels better since we come from various places that are huge cultural, artistic, and architectural melting pots. Fact is, the world has room for all these varieties of preferences and likes and so long as they are pursued in a civilized, peaceful fashion and nothing deep is made of them so that hostilities strike root, that’s just as things should be.

Harry Reid’s "Voluntary" Taxation

Tibor R. Machan

On the Web Site, FreeLiberal.com, to which someone guided me, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada defended the idea that taxation in America, especially the federal income tax, is voluntary. His basic argument was, believe it or not, that elsewhere in the world people lack the many loopholes we enjoy here. (These, by the way, are the loopholes Senator Reid and his fellows in the Senate are constantly promising to close!) So while the Senator’s case that taxation is voluntary rests on there being loopholes in the system, he is vehemently opposed to those loopholes. Which means that even in his own twisted terms, the Senator does not really believe in the voluntariness of taxation only in that it isn’t so bad here as elsewhere.

But let’s rewind a bit. Does the fact that taxation in American includes many loopholes make it voluntary? This is like claiming that when one is put in jail and there happen to be several escape routes from it through which a few prisoners can break out, the prisoners are there of their own free will! Well, Senator Reid & Co., a dysfunctional prison is still a prison and a tax system that isn’t as harsh as the worst is still a coercive system.

Some people used to defend slavery on the grounds that slaves were often treated well by their masters and that if they were not slaves, their lives would face many obstacles they do not face as slaves. But this does not justify slavery one bit. Life is often harsh for free men and women but this is no excuse for enslaving them even by relatively nice masters.

Voluntary payments are available only when not making them does not land one in trouble with the law. Maybe the trouble in which not paying taxes lands people in America isn’t as severe as in some other regions of the world. But that doesn’t make taxation voluntary. Voluntary means no adverse consequences are imposed by government on those who refuse or fail to pay, period.

What taxation resembles most closely is organized criminal extortion. And this is because that is exactly what taxation amounts to in its customary home, namely, a feudal system. In such a system the monarch or some minions of the monarch, who are all in fact criminals by civilized standards, collect payments from the people because they live and work in the realm that is deemed to belong to the monarch. Even in such systems the power of the monarch can be restricted somewhat and the extracted payment need not be onerous. Just as in our country people aren’t entirely incapacitated because of taxation, in feudal systems many people were and are willing to put up with what the monarch extorts from them, either in forced payment or in forced labor.

Furthermore most of us would rather live in America, with its extortionist tax policies, rather than on some desert island where no one is bothering to take away one’s resources. That’s because despite the vicious nature of taxation, clearly things could be worse. Just as in personal matters of violence there are degrees of severity, so with the violence done by governments. Where I used to live as a child, in communist Hungary, matters were far worse and for some far worse than for me even there. The place was still a tyranny!

None of this makes taxation a proper public policy, any more than some type of relatively mild slavery, such as serfdom, is morally acceptable. Human beings ought to be completely free from each other’s intrusiveness, even when that isn’t very likely to happen. Just as with fitness, the fitter the better, so with liberty, the freer the better.

What a truly free country ought to have is a system for funding law enforcement, maintenance, and administration paid for by way of voluntary fees, just as everything else in a free society is paid for. Of course, the fees one would pay could be imperative for most because law and order are so valuable. And as with, say, long term health or auto insurance, nearly everyone would very likely pay up! A contract fee, for example, a bit like a sales tax, could do the job, especially when one figures that we are here discussing funding the legal system of a genuinely free country, one the strictly limited government of which sticks to its task of securing the rights of the citizenry. But one could still opt out and just rely on a hand shake an so avoid the fee!

In any case, taxation is anything but voluntary, even if in different places it can be more or less unjustly intrusive. But, of course, Senator Harry Reid would not admit this and chooses, instead, to concoct an incoherent story to live with his complicity in the injustice of the institution.

Hijacking Individual Rights

Tibor R. Machan

When John Locke identified, in serious and reasonable detailed ways, the nature of human political liberty--as a natural right of every human being--for a good bit political thinkers in the West were in awe. What a notion--it is not governments that are sovereign but individuals persons! Much of the political universe went topsy-turvy for a while. Law books were reworked, myths about inherited titles got busted. A revolution was spawned, with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in America as its most significant consequence.

But all this was, of course, a bit too good to be true. Very soon a bunch of prominent thinkers--apologists of the state--began to undermine Locke’s discovery. Jeremy Bentham, for example, ridiculed the idea of natural, unalienable--in his work Anarchical Fallacies he wrote that “Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible [that is, unalienable] rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.” Bentham was an extreme empiricist and since natural rights is a normative idea, an idea about how we ought to related to each other, he scoffed at it, regarded it unfounded in observable fact.

Henceforth Locke’s natural rights, including the right to life or liberty, became less and less respected by political thinkers. One result was that instead of the original negative version, as Locke laid it out--a prohibition against invaders--various critics began to defend so called positive rights.

The Lockean idea of the right to liberty implied that no one may intrude upon anyone--it was supposed to be a “No trespass” sign. Only if invited are others admitted into one’s life and one’s property--“person and estate,” in Locke’s language. But with that idea becoming less and less well respected, all hell broke loose and nowadays rights are being peddled as entitlements to what others did or owned. This is the origin of today’s dominant doctrine of welfare rights--people believe that others may be forced to work for them, to pay for what they need and want, that they have a right to other’s lives and property. Ergo, the triumph of the welfare state, not of the fully free society sketched so well in the Declaration of Independence.

Of course there are many who accept what Locke discovered and reject the fiction of positive or welfare rights, unearned entitlements. Their view accords well with moral philosophy as well as common sense.

Why would others have any claim on one’s life and property if both of these belong to oneself? And why would they not belong to oneself? One’s life is certainly not anyone else’s and what comes from the productive activities of this life, namely, one’s property, doesn’t belong to anyone else either. The only legitimate way other people can come to share one’s life and property is if their owner willingly parts with them. I may choose to work for someone, as an act of generosity or in return for payment; I may choose to share my resources with others, again as a gift or in exchange for something they might be willing to do for me or give me.

But this excellent idea turned out to be radical and still seems quite unfamiliar, even odd, to millions across the globe. They hold on to the ancient fiction that people belong to some tribe, nation, ethnic group, clan, society, state, nation or some other band. The fact that such a position means really nothing more fancy than that some other people get to rule you, that not you but others own you, that you are a subject or even slave of others, doesn’t sink in for too many folks because there is always some kind of sophisticated story--narrative, in today’s language--provided to justify it. You belong to the community! We are together and you must subjugate yourself to the greater whole, and so forth and so on. That deceptive term “we” manages to hoodwink millions into letting a few self-anointed leaders run the show, take hold of people’s labor and resources and use these as they see fit. And if you don’t comply, even simply refuse to agree, you are dubbed some kind of anti-social cretin.

People have free will--despite what so many thinkers now want to claim, namely, that we are moved about by impersonal forces--and they can think up lots of pseudo-justifications to make us all into their peons. They can persuade themselves that when they think of something that appeals to them, they are authorized to coerce us all to support the idea, never mind about our plans, goals, hopes, and aspirations.

This is how a very good idea, the unalienable individual rights of everyone, got to be perverted and corrupted into the idea that your life and works don’t really belong to you at all but to “us,” meaning, the few who perpetrate the ruse.

The Big Lie Again

Tibor R. Machan

Just to make it clear that association with prestigious institutions does not guarantee veracity, Professor Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, has chimed in with yet another distortion of reality, one that several prominent folks have been perpetrating over the last few years. I am thinking, for example, of Paul Krugman, Princeton University economist and columnist for The New York Times.

Both of these folks have been repeating the claim that ideas favoring the free market are widely championed in America. Foner wrote this in The New York Times Sunday Book Review recently: “Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ‘The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936’ [is a book the presidential candidates ought to read] because it demonstrates how the marriage of engaged social movements and an activist government can promote the common good even in the most dire economic circumstances, and offers and alternative vision of the market fundamentalism that now dominates American politics.”

I have dealt extensively with the myth of government’s capacity to promote the “public” good and how that idea tends to mean the agenda of people who differ from what most others like to promote. In the American political tradition the public good comes to nothing less or more than securing everyone’s fundamental, unalienable individual rights!

What jumps out at a reader in the quote from Foner is the out and out myth he is peddling, namely, that “market fundamentalism dominates American politics.” If you doubt me, just listen to Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain and notice how little confidence each of these major contemporary political figures shows for the free market. The current Congress has no interest in free markets either. Instead it keeps supporting farm subsidies and numerous protectionist measures. Liberal Democrats, in turn, are openly hostile to free trade--notice how both Senators Obama and Clinton keep hammering away at NAFTA (which, by the way, Bill Clinton supported), a measure that gives at least lip service in favor of the free market. (Not that even NAFTA fully endorses economic freedom!)

Why on earth is it so necessary for Professor Foner and his ilk to peddle this big lie, namely, that the free market is favored in America these days? No one but Congressman Ron Paul treated it as a good thing and his vote totals did not come close to suggesting that the idea dominates American politics. So why the lie?

I believe that enemies of the free market are worried that any problems in the American or indeed world economy might be laid at the feet of the real culprit, the mixed economy or welfare state. Because it is welfare states that in fact dominate politics nearly everywhere, including in America. The mixed economy is an uneasy combination of extensive government economic intervention and pockets of free market activity.

American political opinion, pace Professor Foner, has been swinging back and forth between more or less extensive government interventionism. That is what has dominated American politics, what with all the regulatory agencies, minimum wage measures, eminent domain policies, subsidies, protection from foreign competition, etc., etc.

But if one can convince people that economic problems stem not from this mess of the mixed economy but from market fundamentalism, they may decide to try even more interventionism, more government regulation, more central planning exactly as advocated by Senators Obama and Clinton and not at all vigorously opposed by Senator McCain.

The Big Lie! It was once associated with Plato’s Republic, where the philosopher king was required, in the imaginary perfect state, to mislead the public for its very own good! Maybe Professor Foner shares this idea: Lie to the American public about what kind of economic philosophy is dominant so they will then accept the opposite idea, namely, socialism.

In fact, however, this lie is of no help to anyone, not even Professor Foner (since his reputation is seriously sullied from perpetrating it).

“Supposed Universal Values”

Tibor R. Machan

Professor of history Sean Pollock at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio, recently wrote about Senator John McCain’s foreign policy views in a letter to the Sunday New York Times Magazine. He asked, I think rhetorically, “Does McCain not see that by intervening militarily in foreign countries and by justifying such intervention in terms of supposed universal values, America stands in the tradition of imperial powers whose policies and practices have tended to engender the kinds of insurgent movements he fears?” I focus on this here because the question raises some important issues.

One is whether when people like Senator McCain support military intervention, do they in fact invoke “supposed universal values” in support of their position? I don’t know but if former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan--certainly familiar with the Bush administration--is to be believed, the war in Iraq has little to do with any such values. It has to do with oil. Or perhaps with some obscure UN resolution. Or maybe the support for McCain’s position comes from the United Nation’s covenant of “the responsibility of protect” against tyrants and/or natural disasters.

Certainly if there are universal values, ones all people ought to embrace and governments in any country should protect, it does not follow that foreign governments must intervene when they are being violated. These governments are, let’s remember, public servants of their own citizenry, not of the populations of foreign countries. Nothing at all about there being universal values requires intervention of any kind. If I believe that my neighbor ought to show tenderness toward his children and he doesn’t, I am not authorized to meddle in his family life. Perhaps I am justified in thinking badly of him, even of trying to encourage him in various civilized ways to change his ways. But no intervention is supported by such universal values.

Professor Pollock shows disdainfulness toward universal values, otherwise why did he say “supposed.” Maybe he wants to guard against the tendency he ascribes to Senator McCain by his skepticism. Yet, this tendency to intervene by someone who holds such universal values does not follow from holding such values. This is especially true of liberal democratic countries that are committed to the principle of freedom of choice. Unless another country is aggressing against its neighbors--or there is strong reason that it will do so imminently--no justification exists to intervene. Furthermore, not all intervention in support of such values, when justified on the grounds that apply--not merely that there are such universal values--amounts to imperialism. But I’ll leave that point aside here.

When, for example, a country is ruled by brutal thugs and the bulk of the citizenry is desirous of outside help intervention is not at all imperialistic. But even then the help must come only if the citizens of the country capable of giving it approve. Otherwise help must come from volunteers since the legal duty of a country’s government and military is to provide protection to its citizenry, not to citizens of other countries.

A liberal country’s foreign policy must not amount to aggression, not even to humanitarian intervention. Force must only be used in defense of the country itself, or of a friendly ally. That is what the government officials of a liberal country swear to when taking office, to protect the constitution of the country, meaning, to protect its integrity and citizenry from those who would attack or seriously threaten them.

None of this denies that there are some, perhaps just a few, essential, universal values every society should follow, ones that all governments should protect in their society. Senator McCain’s belief in military intervention need have nothing at all to do with his embrace of universal values such as human rights for all. As a senator in a free society he is sworn to secure rights for those who elected him not for people abroad. But this does not mean those people abroad do not possess those rights just as citizens at home do.

It is a logical fallacy, which has some very deleterious results when committed, to think that the existence of universal values implies that one must become the police that should provide the protection of those values. Something else is needed for this to happen, namely, to become properly authorized to give that protection.

Marx Was Partly Right

Tibor R. Machan

Most literate people know that first on the list in Karl Marx & Frederick Engels' Communist Manifesto of what needed changing to achieve socialism is the abolition of the right to private property. This follows, of course, from the very idea of socialism, which sees humanity or society as an organic body, akin to a termite colony. Individuals no longer exist in such a system, so privacy and private property must go, too.

Marx also made a prediction that in modern democracies there wouldn’t be a need for violent revolutions because the citizenry will get rid of the legal protection of private property through the electoral process. Too many people will get fed up with the volatility of freedom, including the free market place, and gradually achieve socialism by voting in politicians who will eliminate the obstacle of legally protected private property rights to central planning.

Marx thought that central planning would serve society well but he based this idea on his confidence that human nature will change. Instead of people wanting to achieve various goals of their own, they will in time come to aim only for the public good. He believed that once matured, “the human essence is the true collectivity of man.” The new man, then, will not be like you and me or anyone today.

This is an important element of socialism and central planning because only if it is true will the theory of public choice, which completely undermines confidence in central planning, be avoided. Public choice theory addresses human being as they are now, not as they would turn out to be in Marx’s vision of a socialist society. If Marx is wrong and human nature will not change, then public choice theory shows that central planners will make a mess of things, not help out at all. Central planners, being ordinary humans, will aim at fulfilling their own agendas, not some vague public purpose.

A unified, one-size-fits-all public purpose makes sense within the context of the Marxian idea of the new man, one who cares nothing for himself or herself, only for the whole society. This is like people in a team or orchestra who are not focused on their own private agendas but that of the group. It works fine in small organizations which human beings join voluntarily because they do in fact promise to fulfill their own goals, only with the aid of other people. But in Karl Marx’s picture no need for voluntary joining exists. People will be born as socialists, by their very nature.

Because the Marxian idea is a myth--history is not driving us toward socialism and the new man--the socialism aimed for by Marx and his followers has to be brought about coercively, by brute force--see Stalin or Hugo Chavez, as examples. This is even so when people elect politicians whom they entrust with public service because those people, of course, haven’t a clue how to achieve some mythical comprehensive public good. So even when elected by majorities, as Max thought they would be in democracies, promoters of socialism will be thoroughly stymied by their own unavoidable ignorance of what really benefits us. We are not all the same; indeed humanity as it actually is consists of a huge variety of individuals with an equally huge variety of different ways of attaining their best interests. No central planners can achieve this, ever.

But Marx did have it right that in their impatience and frustration with the free market, people will attempt the impossible. (Marx, of course, didn’t think socialism is impossible.) Consider, for example, environmental issues. Many are panicked about how well protected private property rights leave much of the environment uncared for--e. g., rain forests, the polar bear, etc., etc. So they then wish to entrust the care to politicians and planners. They envision some kind of supreme plan that will bring about a healthy ecosystem. But no one really knows what that is and planners are just as prone to mismanage it all as individuals, only the scope of their mismanagement is far greater, so the damage they do is huge. (In fact most of the current environmental mess is due to government central planners who built ridiculously huge projects using government's power to violate private property rights, as in the case of the TVA and the many humongous dams around the globe.)

Impatience is what produces all this. It is true that with a regime of legally protected private property rights no grand scheme is in the offing. Yet that impossible dream motivates too many people, however futile it is from the start. The only real prospect is the piecemeal, strict private property approach and that is what encourages--though it does not guarantee--the responsible use of the environment.

Just as the perfect is the enemy of the good, so the myth of guaranteed environmental health is the enemy of a reasonably healthy one. Too bad, but Marx did have a point about people’s impatience. Yet certainly it isn’t going to lead to any socialist utopia.

Elites, Good and Bad

Tibor R. Machan

Democrats are all bent out of shape about how to think about elites--the group in society that claims to be superior to the rest of us. Senator Obama is dubbed an elitist for saying that many turn to religion out of frustration. Senator Clinton is trying to flee her own elitist legacy, what with an education from various elite institutions. So what is so bad about being a member of the elite?

In many previous ages and even now in many regions of the globe certain people were deemed to be above the rest, as a matter of their birthright. They were and are considered to be part of the natural aristocracy--rulers by excellence! This means that they need accomplish nothing at all to rank high among human beings. The feudal system is rife with this notion, as are many other in which class warfare is afoot.

But there can be aristocrats who deserve their higher standing in society. This would arise from having achieved something worthwhile, such as a great scientific discovery, an engineering or some kind of artistic feat. Such accomplishments would ordinarily gain a person recognition and even standing in a community. And so one could join the aristocracy or elite without the fiction of having inherited it in some mysterious, mythical way.

Trouble is that when the semi-official philosophy in the land is egalitarianism, even this sort of elitism is frowned upon. No one is supposed to be regarded as having higher rank than anyone else--that is one thesis of egalitarianism. And among liberal democrats this philosophy is rampant--nearly everyone gives it lip service even when it is totally absurd (such as the folks do at National Public Radio, which is one of the snootiest organizations in the country).

Many trendy notions contribute to the mess--for example, relativism and subjectivism about values. If what makes something worthwhile is only a matter of a subjective feeling--some simply like it more than other things--there can hardly be any rational reason for attributing to it higher rank than to competing accomplishments. If it is all relative whether one deserves the Nobel Prize in economics or physics, then the idea that the achievements of these people are superior to that of others and the prize is deserved make no sense. Thus, egalitarianism must rule! Everything people do is of equal worth or, indeed, worthless. The very idea of “worth” becomes meaningless since no objective standards are supposed to exist by which to assess what we do in any realm at all.

Post-modernism, which is but a recent version of subjectivism and relativism, also produces this egalitarian outlook. It is all a matter of how you look at it, you see, so how could anything really be a more worthwhile achievement than something else?

Clearly the liberal democratic ethos embraces some of these ways of thinking about the world and about human conduct. For example, all of the poor are equally deserving, never mind how they got to be poor. All of the sick, too, are equally deserving of support, never mind how they got sick (say by accident or because they acted recklessly). No one is a failure in school or at work, only impaired somehow. No one is at fault in a divorce! And so forth and so on.

When these views dominate in a community, such as in the Democratic Party, any type of aristocracy or elitism is a liability and those who wish to flourish--to win votes for example--must reject any thought of earned merit by anyone. That is just what we now witness with Senators Obama and Clinton, a desperate effort to deny any kind of special achievement, even while they both contend, paradoxically, that they deserve to become president of the United States of America because of their superior judgment and character!

Elitism, however, is actually quite all right when it involves earning one’s high rank, in science, the arts, athletics, and in other spheres where human beings set out to triumph. But an ultimately condescending egalitarianism obscures this fact. The phony humility of such egalitarianism aims to deny something entirely unavoidable in human affairs, namely, that some do better than others and thus deserve more! Those will be the accomplished elite and no effort to deny this fact will manage to actually avoid it. Such denial will merely produce confusion and contradiction, neither of which reaps any benefit at all.

A Socialist America?

Tibor R. Machan

It is becoming increasingly likely that soon the United States of America, which supposedly won the Cold War against the socialist Soviet Union, will become a socialist society. A comparable country would be France, prior to the presidency of Szarkozy.

This is the conclusion to be drawn from what two of the presidential candidates who have a solid prospect to reach the White House have been saying over the last several months. Both, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama have indicated in no uncertain terms that they prefer an economic order in the United States that is regimented by the plans of some folks from above, not by the free choices of individuals from below. She has said that what America needs is “a commander in chief of the economy.” He has decried American capitalism and the profit motive that is its main economic engine. She has taken advice from neo-Marxists Michael Lerner of TIKKUN magazine, he has stated that the greatest influence on his thinking and values was his mother, an avowed socialist and communist sympathizer.

I am not using “socialist” and “communist” as scare terms, only as accurate descriptions of what the two potential nominees of the Democratic Party believe. They are not simply welfare statists, people who believe that along with a substantial free market the country needs to have supportive federal and state governments who provide people with last ditch economic security in the face of the vicissitudes of market forces. No, the two candidates appear to be impatient with such meager measures and want to take the reigns once they enter the White House and shape the country’s economic affairs according to a specific vision. They both believe in the planned economy (with just a bit of hesitation from Senator Obama who has indicated in a few of his speeches and interviews some skepticism about extensive government regulation).

Why are these people champions of socialism? Because, it seems, they believe that economic affairs in a society ought to be completely predictable and risk free. Only a system that guarantees success for everyone--never mind whether his or her work is in demand, whether luck is on his or her side, whether he or she is skilled and talented--would satisfy the criterion of a just socio-economic order for these candidates. And if the spontaneous processes of the free market fail to achieve this goal, then government must enter to regiment the country so that things turn out properly, as envisioned by those seeking such a system of guarantees.

This is what is called utopianism in the field of political economy. Most people know that it is an impossible dream, an ideal that can only be achieve in fantasy, not in reality. The world simply doesn’t work in a way that can provide everyone with economic and related success. To wish for this is comparable to wishing for a marathon race that everyone will win! Impossible. (George Orwell’s Animal Farm shows this nicely!) And to attempt it must then involve massive coercive force. That is just what happened in socialist bloc and why their system failed and left the countries where it was attempted a colossal economic mess form which recovery will take decades.

Unfortunately over the last several decades most Americans have been taught by teachers who pretty much share the two Senators’ economic philosophy. In elementary school students are indoctrinated about all kinds of topics, from sex to the environment, and how government must deal with problems therein. The idea of individual freedom is, turn, nearly completely neglected. In high schools there is very little economic literacy being taught and most students are educated to care about fairness and equality, not about initiative and risk. In colleges and universities there is now very little in the curriculum that reminds students of the most productive but also unsure economic system, namely, capitalism. Instead the dream world of the top down managed economic system is most widely championed.

In the American political arena there is hardly anyone who opposes these trends. Certainly the Republicans cannot be counted on to challenge the socialist vision since in the main they have their own similar moral authoritarian vision to offer. The ideas and ideals of the Founders are nearly cast to the side by all but the small group of libertarians who aren’t at this time a viable political alternative.

Maybe this is a temporary setback. I believe in the long run the free market alternative is going to be triumphant. But for the time being it is losing. So we need to prepare for some pretty awful times.

Libertarianism Isn’t Utopian

Tibor R. Machan

Although it is prudent to be skeptical about the entries found at Wikipedia, the on line encyclopedia offers a sound account of utopias: “Utopia is a term for an ideal society. It has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempted to create an ideal society, and fictional societies portrayed in literature. The term is sometimes used pejoratively, in reference to an unrealistic ideal that is impossible to achieve....”

At a recent conference I directed for Freedom Communications, Inc., the criticism that libertarianism is utopian took center stage. It was advanced by a respectful critic, one who was not disdainful but merely doubtful about the soundness of libertarianism as a viable approach to thinking about public affairs. The gist of the doubtful thesis amounted to the claim that libertarianism is altogether too negative about government, indeed, that libertarians tend to hate politics and all that’s associated with it.

I found myself inspired to reflect upon the critic’s charge, especially since just a few weeks ago I penned a column contending that contemporary politics has become thoroughly corrupt. It is now virtually routine for politicians to be panderers, people who seek to be elected to public office on the basis of offering voters benefits that they will deliver at the expense of others. For virtually every politician the first principle seems to be to promote wealth redistribution, taking from Peter and handing some of what was taken to Paul, while keeping a good bit for politicians and their employees, bureaucrats.

Is this evidence supporting the claim that libertarians hate politicians, consider government all bad? Not quite.

When one considers an institution or profession as having been corrupted, it is generally understood that there could be instances of it that are not corrupted. Corruption means having gone bad, having seriously deteriorated from the proper, legitimate sort. Like a bad apple or rotten tomato, corrupt politics assume that there could be a right sort of the thing.

Libertarianism is a political stance that is well sketched out in the Declaration of Independence, a document that the American Founders--mainly Thomas Jefferson--crafted and signed on July 4, 1776. Seeing that the anniversary of this date is the most significant American holiday being celebrated every year in America, and that’s about to happen this year, it may be useful to quote the few lines that lay out the conception it proposes as to the nature of a proper government: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....”

The libertarian view of government is that this institution has as its purpose to secure the unalienable rights of the citizenry that’s to be served by the government via certain just powers. Government, in turn, becomes corrupt when this purpose is abandoned and others take its place. Politicians, who are supposed to run for offices that contribute to the proper purpose of government, become corrupt when they run for offices that do not contribute to this proper purpose but to others, including coercive wealth redistribution, coercive micromanagement of the lives of the citizenry, coercive regulation of commerce, science, health care and many other aspects of the lives of the citizenry.

Admittedly, this conception of government is not what has been most prominent throughout human history and, indeed, across the globe in our own time. Even in America, where the Declaration was penned and was supposed to guide the drafting of the constitution of the federal government (and even, in time, state governments), the idea is revolutionary. But that isn’t what is vital in this discussion.

What is vital is that for those who see the view sketched in the Declaration as sound, as do most libertarians, government can be understood in positive, benign terms and need by no means be “hated.” Only when governments become corrupted do they become objects of derision, even hatred, mainly because their powers are then utilized for unjust purposes, which is a grave dereliction of their duty.

Think of it like this: Medicine is a wonderful, positive profession but when medical professionals abandon their purpose and utilize their skills--powers--to perpetrate quackery, they have become corrupt and are deserving of criticism, even sanction. That is just what the libertarian thinks about most governments, now or in the past. But the libertarian isn’t deluded into thinking that even the best possible government will be a road to the solution of all social, let alone, personal problems people face in a country. Now that’s utopianism.

Pursuing your Happiness

Tibor R. Machan

When the Founders made happiness part of America’s political fabric they made clear that what each of us has a right to is the pursuit of it. As with all individual rights in this political tradition, the right to the pursuit of happiness is a right to take actions of certain sorts, ones that are aimed at achieving our happiness. Even the most basic right, to one’s life, is a right to take a great many actions. Life, after all, consists of being active! The right to private property, too, is a right to take actions that result in the acquisition of valued items.

Sadly, of course, while the Founders of America did give serious thought to the right to the pursuit of happiness, there was no consensus at all in the country, nor is there today, that pursuing happiness is a good thing, that it is something we all ought to do. Indeed, most moralists have tended to argue the opposite—it is renouncing one’s happiness that makes one a good person! Unselfishness is good, selfish pursuits such as wanting to be happy are bad.

OK, that debate is not going to get resolved here. I will just assume that happiness is something worth pursuing—it isn’t just the right to this pursuit that’s a good thing. But at this point one can ask another question, namely, how one can effectively pursue happiness. It is a big question but I will dodge this one too—almost. Instead I wish to explore just how any individual—almost—can improve his or her chances of being happy, of enriching his or her life in the broad sense of becoming better and better off as a human being. I want to focus on a small part of this kind of self-enhancement, of becoming happy.

One way that our happiness can be improved upon, of course, is technology. Indeed, the central point of technology is to help human beings to become happy or at least happier than they are. Gadgets are a clear, uncontroversial case in point. They reduce or even eliminate chores in our lives, helping us save a great deal of time which we then can spend on a great variety of rewarding activities. But some of the new high tech devices of our day do even more—they make possible some extra enjoyments, ones not available in the past.

Consider, for instance, that if one travels a good bit and has a laptop computer with Internet capability, one is now able to listen to innumerable radio stations from across the globe, including some that play nothing but a great variety of types of musical fare. You can be doing work in Europe or Asia but in the evening spend time not just reading a good book but also listening to your favorite classical, jazz or country music station. (One such Internet offering is called Luckyseven.com and has a dozen plus music stations with hardly any interruptions.) If music isn’t your fare, well there are newspapers and magazines to read “on line.” I personally have a pretty rich collection of photographs, including several dozen very appealing works of art which I can run as a slide show. I personally gain immense satisfaction from having photos of friends and family and places I have visited around the globe and a wide variety of paintings available too look at, all the while listening to my favorite music.

Not everyone will make use of the Internet for such purposes but I am willing to bet that most people can find it a rich source of pleasure that suits their tastes and preferences. There is also the Internet based phone system, such as Skype, that for but a few cents makes it possible to avoid the expense of hotel phones and reach friends and families from virtually anywhere.

Now as I see it if one is just a little bit computer savvy, one has a gold mine of resources for improving one’s life in small and not so small ways. One can keep up with important information, of course, but I am now referring to matters that make one’s life more enjoyable than it otherwise would be.

Indeed, it is arguable that if happiness—which consists of a variety of activities and endeavors—is something that human beings not only have a right to pursue but ought to seek, it is our responsibility to find out how new technology will help us be happier than we would be without it. There is much to be upset about as we go through our lives but there is also a great deal that is quite rewarding, if only we pay attention to the world and take advantage of what all it has to offer.