Can People be Objective?

Tibor R. Machan

Even to ask whether people can be objective suggests that they can be because such a question assumes that an answer can be given and what use would an answer be if it were not objective? But forever the idea that people can be objective, as they attempt to grasp what’s what, has been challenged. Never mind that such challenges would themselves be moot if objectivity is impossible--who would care to get an answer if it were just someone’s subjective opinion, one that’s no better or worse than the answer given by some drunk or mentally deranged individual?

But it is understandable, nevertheless, why the possibility of objectivity is widely doubted. For one, what counts as objective knowledge has often been confused with what is supposed to be absolute, timeless, unchangeable knowledge (the God’s eye point of view). This last is very doubtful, that’s true, since none of us who seeks to know anything stays around forever to make sure an answer will never change.

As the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Perfect knowledge, as imagined by Plato, for example, is an impossible dream, kind of like the perfect mate or job. But there can be good ones, of course. Objective is what the good kind of knowledge must be, the knowledge untainted by prejudice, by preconception, by bias and the like. Objective knowledge need not be final or perfect, only the best and most dependable for the time being.

But some object to this by claiming that since we are all using our human faculties to figure things out, how could we expect objectivity?

That reply, however, embodies an unwarranted assumption. It is that using our minds and our senses, indeed all our tools of knowledge, turns out to be an impediment rather than a proper means by which knowledge is to be gained. It is like claiming that because to move sand, one must use some kind of tool, like a shovel, moving it is impossible. Moving sand, truly, would involve using no tools. Or claiming that if one wants to see things accurately, one must not use one’s eyes since the eyes will pose as an obstacle to true seeing!

Now this idea that objectivity is impossible because whenever one attempts to know anything, one needs to make use of various tools or instruments, such as one’s eyes, mind, a microscope or a telescope, is based on the belief that a tool must always impede the process for which it is used. But that’s very odd. Not only does it undercut the claim itself--after all, that claim, too, came from using one’s faculties of understanding--but it assumes that everything used to learn actually impedes learning. So true learning is a kind of mindless, senseless learning. Go figure!

Now, true enough, if one is careless, too hasty or insufficiently cautious, one can fail to notice impediments to how one best uses one’s faculties--that’s one reason to be especially careful when driving in fog. But such impediments aren’t necessarily a part of our approach to understanding the world. Moreover, even to learn that one’s faculties may have been impeded, it is necessary that they are not always impeded, at least not when one discovers such impediments.

Of course, with this issue, like so many others one needs to grapple with, is complicated and has been studied forever. But to resolve it for oneself it isn’t required that one reach a consensus about it. That would dismiss the work of many excellent scientist, researchers, thinkers who have been prescient. Yes, peer review is useful but it could express widespread bias, too. For example, in the debate about climate change--does it happen, how much of it, did people’s conduct make it happen, etc.--both sides tend to insist that their opponents are not objective enough! So back to the drawing board, one might conclude.

In general, the issue of objectivity is important because if one becomes convinced that one cannot be objective, how can one trust one’s own judgments, even carefully made ones, and how can one confidently reject bogus notions and pretenders to authority? After all, then everything could be bogus, which leaves matters to con artists.

Knowing versus imposing What’s Ethical

Tibor R. Machan

Among those who champion human liberty--the sovereignty of every adult when it comes to managing one’s own life--some hold that if one could know what good conduct amounts to, one would be authorized to impose it on others. Among those who thought this was the world famous classical liberal economist, Milton Friedman. Friedman, who was an avid champion of human liberty, denied that we can "really know what sin is". By this he meant that what for people is the wrong thing to do is not something anyone can know. And he also held that one could not reasonably champion human liberty, the sort that one enjoys when others must abstain from imposing their ideas of how one ought to act, "if you could be absolutely certain that you had the revealed truth." By the “revealed truth” he merely meant whatever it is that others ought or ought not do. If one knew such things, one "could not let another man sin."

Right away there is a problem here because the argument advanced is actually supposed to show how one should act, namely that no one ought to impose himself or herself on another adult human being. So others ought to be left free. And that is, of course, based on the moral knowledge that it is wrong to make people act in ways they don’t choose to. The only exception is when they choose to impose their idea on others. But that is self-defense, not any kind of imposition.

This point actually makes it evident that in some cases we do know what amounts to sinning or doing the wrong thing--for example, when one coerces peaceful others to act as one believes they should. But that is not all. We can pretty well know that when someone wastes away his or her life, say by becoming a junkie or a bum, this isn’t something the person should do. The details may vary but it doesn’t require rocket science to know that people who waste away their lives are normally misbehaving and ought to change. What is crucial here, however, is that it is they who must do the changing, not someone else. So imposing hard work or prudence on them simply cannot improve matters.

Some argue that if you impose worthwhile conduct on others and they later realize that this is indeed worthwhile and they should henceforth conduct themselves accordingly, your imposition is justified. This line of reasoning is advanced precisely because it is widely realized that to have moral significance one's conduct must be freely chosen. So those who want urgently to make other people moral--for example, Professor Robert P. George in his book Making Men Moral (Oxford University Press, 1993)--reject the moral right to act immorally, a right to do what is wrong (provided no one is being victimized). Yet, since morally significant conduct does have to be chosen, be it right or wrong, adult human beings do have such a right. It is not a moral but a political or natural right, however.

The contrary doctrine, namely, libertarian paternalism or nudging, applies only to children. It does not to adults. One is of course welcome to attempt to persuade people to do the morally right thing, maybe even implore or exert peer pressure to encourage another to do what is right. However, in the end an adult must make the choice and not be coerced to do so. That’s part of what it means to respect human dignity. In nearly all major religions this is fully acknowledged. One must choose to accept Christ, for example. Even Stalinists believed that good communists had to voluntarily admit their flaws or ideological crimes before they could be punished meaningfully.

The only serious challenge to the idea that morally significant conduct must be voluntary comes from those who consider all of morality bogus, meaningless. In every known era of human history, including ours, there are serious moral skeptics--a recent issue of the magazine Philosophy Now features five philosophers arguing this position. Today the basis of the case rests mainly with neuroscience which supposedly shows that people are never free to choose to take actions, so in effect nothing they do is really their own doing! (This is what many defense attorneys set out to show about their clients and there are major institutes at universities embarking on research that promises to make the case for them!) But this brings up a whole bunch of other issues for which there is no room in this short essay.

Forcing Us to Do what We Choose not to do

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last couple of years many conservatives have argued against President Obama’s health care program on the grounds that it unconstitutionally forces citizens to purchase something they may not want. Imposing this kind of force conduct, they have argued, violates the right of a citizen to refrain from doing something, the right to liberty or to freedom of choice. Generally this may well be a sound objection although I am doubtful about its violation of the U. S. Constitution.

In response, defenders of Mr. Obama’s health care project tend to point to the fact that state governments require citizens to purchase car insurance. That comparison, however, is fallacious: one only needs to buy such insurance if one drives on public roads and driving on such roads is not deemed to be a basic right but a privilege since government owns the roads. This seems to be a legal distinction with some teeth to it. Mr. Obama’s program requires one to purchase health insurance no matter what, just as a matter of one’s citizenship. And car insurance, some have pointed out, serves to protect fellow travelers and is thus not, like requiring one to buy health insurance, a paternalistic policy.

But there is another measure many conservatives fully embrace that compares with making people buy health insurance: making them check on the citizenship of prospective employees. In their vigilance against illegal immigration, many conservatives insist that those who employ people may be forced to check on whether those they plan to hire are in America legally.

Now this seems to be a clear case of forcing such employers to do something they may not want to do. It is also outsourcing a line of professional work to non-professionals. Checking on the legal status of prospective employees is detective work and should only be performed by authorized agents of the law, not by private citizens. Yes, in some cases one citizen may even arrest another, but usually only in special circumstances, such as when illegal conduct is clearly evident and not something one needs to detect through the scrutiny of someone else’s legal status.

In any case, forcing citizens to engage in law enforcement is not very different from forcing them to purchase insurance. In both cases citizens are required to perform something they may well not choose to perform. One may even regard this as imposing upon citizens involuntary servitude or force labor.

Of course, here too there is plenty of precedence. When the government forces employers to collect taxes from those they employ, that is forced labor as well. The collecting of the income tax throughout the year, the requirement that this be accurately and promptly reported to the IRS, are no less forcing people to do something they do not choose to do than is forcing them to buy health insurance.

It is thus a bit hypocritical of many Americans to be outraged with Mr. Obama’s and the Democrats’ health care law. If one consistently opposed making people do things they do not choose to do, many measures of municipal, county, state and federal governments would have to be declared wrong and maybe unconstitutional.

We live in a mixed system. There are elements of socialism, fascism, communism, capitalism, libertarianism and other regimes the American legal system includes. Cherry picking some and insisting that one is doing so as a matter of principled adherence to the U. S. Constitution may not be very credible. If one is going to object to governmental regimentation, to forcing people to act in ways they to not choose to (apart from abstaining from violating the rights of fellow citizens), it would have to begin with numerous measures way before getting to Mr. Obama’s health care policy.

As with the objection to restricting corporate contributions to political campaigns--based not on what this should be based on, namely, the violation of private property rights but on its alleged curtailment of freedom of speech--the objection to Obama care is a bit forced. People are made to do so many things by their various governments that to protest making them buy health insurance because this involves making them do something they don’t choose to do simply isn’t credible.

Democracy Wont Help Egypt

Tibor R. Machan

Even without being a Egyptologist I can say with reasonable certainty that it will not help to solve Egypt’s problems to make it into an unlimited democracy. What we are likely to get is Lebanon with the heavy hand of Hamas in charge there. In Egypt it looks like the Brotherhood is ready to jump into the position Hamas occupies in Lebanon.

In any case, in none of the discussions about what lies ahead for Egypt is there ever any mention of ushering in a limited--or bona fide liberal--democracy, with a constitution that would restrain all sides and leave the citizenry in peace to attend to its own affairs. Such pluralism isn’t very likely to take center stage in that country.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak became a virtual dictator after the assassination of the previous president Anwar Sadat, with hardly any credible and sensible resistance from the population and it’s only now, that a bunch of young people appear to be upset enough with the culture he has been heading up, that his his rule is seriously questioned. Nothing much that’s rational is evident in the current developments apart from the simple insistence on the part of a great many Egyptians that they’ve had it up to here with being ruled by Mubarek team.

Now this is not so surprising when one realizes that none of the leaders around the globe, including American presidents, nor indeed many intellectuals in Egypt itself, have made a serious pitch for Egypt adopting constitutional reforms that respect individual rights. That’s not the same thing as promoting the vague idea of democracy, which as history shows, has not managed to be a bulwark against tyranny, not in Western or Eastern Europe, not in Latin America, not even in the United States of America where nearly all the good ideas failed to get democratic support or bad ones got swept aside democratically. The American civil war was no triumph of democracy, nor the New Deal, nor again all the oppressive federal measures that are burdening the country, keeping its economy hostage to populist and egalitarian notions.

Very probably the reason the U.S.A. hasn’t gone under yet is that some of its better features gained solid momentum and despite the absence of sustained political and judicial support for them these are continuing to be fairly dominant--relatively free and competitive markets, civil liberties, private property rights, freedom of religion and speech, due process, etc. But they are all gradually being replaced with the widely championed ideology of activist citizens in higher education and media, people working in the most prestigious and invincible institutions in society, who not very surprisingly want to regiment us all into compliance with a vision of full equality. (The cautionary tale about this was written by George Orwell, in his brilliant fable, Animal Farm, who was anything but a Tea Party type but, rather, a rare sensible Leftist!)

When the mobs in Egypt, who have been treated as a bunch of unruly children by Mubarek’s regime, finally couldn’t take it any more and stood up to the dictator, there is little reason to think they would become a civilized citizenry that renounces the temptation to rule others once they gain power. Their call for democracy appears to have little to do with the kind of constitutional system that America’s founders favored. Even their call for freedom seems mostly to be about being free to rule instead of being ruled.

At the personal level my fear is that those expatriates from Egypt who in the last few years decided to return in the hopes that their country would move closer to a liberal democratic model are now packing their bags again, headed back to some more stable region of the globe so as to save their necks from chaos. I know a few such people and can only empathize with their disappointment.

True self-government isn’t the sort of democracy we have seen in the Weimar Republic, in Lebanon, in Venezuela, and being widely demanded now in Egypt. It is, instead, a polity that upholds the rights of individuals not simply to take part in the vote but to live as they choose in peace with their fellows.

Obama is a Socialist—A Crazy Thought?

Tibor R. Machan

Right after President Obama’s state of the union address several Republicans, mainly of the Tea Party faction stated that he is a socialist. This isn’t the first time the claim has been made. Indeed, based on his early schooling the idea that he may well be one simply cannot be dismissed.



Not that all of us inherit our parents’ political views, quite far from it. I myself had a father who was an avid champion of Hitler and a fierce Anti-Semite, whereas I grew up to embrace libertarianism in politics and a refined version of Objectivism in my general philosophy. A great many folks I know don’t at all think as their parents did. But there are those, also, who do and in the case of Obama it seems his socialist grandmother had considerable influence on him (judging by his own testimony).



When it comes to the allegation that Obama is a socialist CNN-TV anchor Soledad O'Brien quoted Webster’s Dictionary as evidence that he is not. The passage singled out the socialist view of property, namely, that everything important is to be collectively owned, that private property “in the means of production” must be abolished. (Which, by the way, for socialists means, human labor!) The Communist Manifesto makes this clear—Marx and Engels claimed the fist thing toward establishing socialism—the stage of history prior to reaching communism—is the abolition of private property. So it would seem that there is no way that Obama could be a socialist since he has said many nice things about the market place and hasn’t ever called for abolishing private property rights, only heavily regulating it and getting in bed with certain big businesses, which strictly speaking isn’t the same thing is collectivization.



However, looking a bit more closely, it needs also to be kept in mind that Mr. Obama has often declared his own pragmatism, which is a philosophical stance of not sticking by any firm principles. And such a policy could very well be deployed exactly when one wishes to disguise one’s actual political economic philosophy. And then there is this wonderfully instructive passage by Lenin himself, certainly a bona fide communist:



Only one thing is needed to lead us to march forward more surely and more firmly to victory: namely, the consciousness everywhere that all communists, in all countries, must display the maximum flexibility in their tactics…. [Lenin, "Left Wing Communism," 1920].



But this isn’t all. What is really central to socialism is the view that we all belong to society, that there are no genuine human individuals at all, that human beings are what Marx called specie beings somewhat on the order of termites or bees that exists as a collective, never individually. The collective ownership of everything that’s valuable and important is a derivative doctrine, not a primary one. This is one reason that some socialists are actually called “market” socialists. They recognize that as a matter of efficiency—or at times public relations—it is quite OK to give a nod to certain elements of capitalism.


It is not easy to tell what is in someone’s mind, especially not if that someone is convinced that the only way to advance his or her position is to keep its true nature obscure. Indeed, among neo-conservatives this is a prominent theme, learned from the political scientist the late Leo Strauss. He argued that it is only prudent for philosophers to keep their true views a secret, if only because it would scare ordinary folks to be told that brilliant philosophers have come o believe.


Surely this could apply in the case of Mr. Obama, as well: the American public would be very upset if he came right out and said, “Look, folks, I happen to believe that socialism is a sound political economic viewpoint and will do what I can to steer the country that way. I honestly think it is better than capitalism.” Not a way to win elections, so much better to keep it under wraps.

Government Regulations: Demeaning and Costly

Tibor R. Machan

Every time I am dealing with an organizations like the omnipresent TIAA-CREF--which seems to have a monopoly on handling retirements at colleges and universities across the country--I am put through a labyrinth of bureaucratic procedures. With each turn, of course, there is a quite lengthy average--say, 7 to 13 minute--wait, mostly on being on hold on the phone. This happens also when I make airline reservations or deal with banks and other financial institutions but there is some competition there, although these, too, appear to be heavily regulated by the government which imposes on them innumerable.

Whenever I voice a protest about any of these inconveniences--actually, more than that since my life-time is being consumed when these waits go on endlessly--I am told that they cannot help it, they are required to go through all these infuriating delays by the government. Forms need to be filled out and sent off just to satisfy the state! And those people who impose these requirements are, of course, nowhere to be found so one can give them one’s opinion of their handiwork. Instead hapless office personnel are confronted with outraged citizens and are, of course, exasperated when they cannot answer their complaints with any hope of relief.

Nearly everything the bureaucrats demand is farmed out to various administrative departments at colleges and universities, primarily the offices of HR, ironically called human resources (as if what HR did at these places had any productive function are all). And, of course, when it comes to payroll offices at nearly all companies, there, too, most of the procedures are controlled by directives of governments, including that odious, vicious practice of withholding taxes, something again that the government managed to farm out to the employers who then are the object of ire of all of us who are peeved about the various tax policies.

Round and round goes the bureaucracy, treating us all as if we were robots doing service to some far off master who cannot be contacted by any of us (except in a very iffy and indirect fashion when people cast their votes). Even then, while politicians can be dismissed, bureaucrats cannot.

The one time I had anything to do in Washington, as a founding member of the Jacob K. Javits National Fellowship Program -- http://smu.edu/nationalfellowships/javits.asp -- I was told that the bureaucrats at the Department of Education, where this program was administered, never changed no matter who got elected. If Washington had a Democrat regime, the same folks stayed in the various bureaus as when Republicans were in office. And in time this became evident to me quite directly through the arrogance of the staff whose members never feared being dismissed or demoted. Their jobs were secure! (This may not always be the case, just as treasury bonds aren’t so secure when major financial fiascoes occur at the federal level.)

Now all of this is, of course, infuriating and utterly demeaning--you must stay on hold because no one ever is authorized to make outgoing telephone calls! I always feel like a royal subject, tempted to stand at attention until I am spoke to by these folks who are doing the government’s work, work that, of course, should not have to be done. Are we all involuntary servants of these people?

Then there is, of course, the waste of time and money involved in all of this. Each year I probably spend 20 to 40 hours or more dealing with the bureaucracy, directly or indirectly, and if one multiplies this across the country, the wasted time piles up incalculably. The economic value of this time is difficult to estimate but when some try the numbers turn out to be beyond belief. (John Stossel did his very first ABC-TV special on the topic of government regulation and the cost that he estimated for it went way beyond virtually everything else the taxpayers are force to pay for.)

Maybe some people do not care about this just as some people do not protest spousal abuse. But no matter--it is still very demeaning to be subjected to all this and it costs a bundle to boot, money spent that could very well go to genuine productive task that might even ease the unemployment problem in the private sector.

Civil Discourse Revisited

Tibor R. Machan

We were having lunch and the topic of how to frame a friendly, productive holiday conversation about politics and such came up. I had been thinking about what role a host might play in upholding standards of civility and what one can do if things get a bit ugly. For that they surely can get, especially in the current atmosphere which appears to contain very little in the way of argumentation and analysis and a whole lot of venting, name calling, besmirching, ridiculing, and caricaturing even by the most erudite of commentators.

One reason for the abundance of heat in and the absence of light from most discussions on TV, radio and even the dinner table appears to be that nearly all the moves have already been made by all the sides championing their cause, so what then is left? Few of the parties seem to be upgrading their stance, improving their evidence, honing their reasoning, probably because ofter years and years of believing as they do and repeatedly mulling it over, there seems to be no use for going through the exercise again and again. Grandma will remain true to her faith whatever the grand kids bring back from college bull sessions or even their courses in the way of challenges to her ideas. And the same would seem to go for grandpa and mom and dad and brother and sister, even. So mostly the family sticks to trivia or play--sports work well, since there is little at stake and the passions would tend to be shallow. (Why get all bent out of shape about Auburn’s various rivalries or the next Superbowl?) And even if one holds views one considers quite sound and important to promulgate, who has the time for this? On TV and radio the objective appears to be mainly to keep the floor, learn how to speak without breathing, wearing down everyone else, since the time limit is normally quite onerous.

But in fact it could be much better than this, from the Thanksgiving dinner table to the talk shows, if only a few points were kept in focus. Here is my own list, by no means complete:

* Recall that there is always time to go through the reasons why one holds one’s views and to gain the benefit of critical objections and insights from thoughtful friendly others, even if in the end one wants to be triumphant. It really isn’t about subduing one’s interlocutors but about making a decent effort to reach sound conclusions, to get at whatever truth is available to us.

* Recall, also, that while on some topics--religion, politics, child raising--one may different quite seriously with one’s friends, colleagues, relatives and neighbors, there is much more to life than just these areas of interest. There are people one knows who fervently disagree with one’s political views, even may dislike one for holding them, while they are congenial when it comes to great many of other concerns. I have learned over the years that even some of those I most sincerely and seriously find objectionable in one area can turn out to be, quite surprisingly, candidates for comrades when it comes to other issues. (Parents, especially, may find that people whose politics or economics they disapprove of share their own ideas about raising children and handling the household budget.) One’s politics or religion isn’t everything about the person, at least in most cases. So if time is limited, perhaps talking about movies or traveling can be a friendly territory.

* Often when we dislike others it isn’t anything dire or morally important, merely a matter of a difference in style and taste. And it is quite OK to insist on one’s style and taste for oneself without insisting that everyone else share these--they can all be quite swell people but not like what you like. I do not like baseball or football or even basketball but am very keen on tennis. Others in my circles do not share this but it would be serious folly to be critical of them for this. My favorite color needn’t be anyone else’s, nor my favorite food or even restaurant or make of car. Indeed, some people just rub me the wrong way even though there is nothing I can identify that would deserve condemnation. We don’t all have to get along on all counts, despite some Utopian thinking along such lines.

* There is much more but let me just add one idea that I have found very useful: If one wants to bring up a testy topic, one that’s pretty likely to sit badly with one’s companions, it usually helps to do what I call some meta-talk, or preparatory talk. Something like, “I will make some points now that may very well be objectionable to some of you but please bear with me and let’s run through them gently.”

So, have a good dinner visiting the folks and do not focus so intensely on how much you disagree. And heed the advice of one of my daughters: you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The Insanity Defense Debate

Tibor R. Machan

The New York Times blog featured a debate recently, in the wake of the Tuscon massacre, among several people on the insanity defense. One of the debaters, Kent Scheidegger, wrote a comment that included a point that’s often proposed but that needs some amendment.

Scheidegger said "The traditional test [of criminal responsibility] is whether the defendant was able to understand the nature of the act and understand that it was wrong. This test ... remains the proper legal and moral test. A person who understands what he is doing and that it is wrong but does it anyway is morally responsible for his act."

There’s a problem with this idea, namely, that at times culprits place themselves into a position of being unable "to understand that nature of the act and understand that is was wrong," as when they voluntarily become severely intoxicated by drugs or alcohol or some other behavior that leads to mental incapacitation. So strictly speaking while the crime is being committed, the understanding Scheidegger says is required for culpability is indeed missing; so by his account perpetrators cannot be held criminally or even morally responsible for what they have done. Yet, arguably, such persons would still be fully responsible since they ought to have been sufficiently prudent or careful prior to becoming unable to understand and embarking on conduct that requires care. Thus, if one sits at home alone (or with family likely to offer care if needed), and imbibes to a point of mental incapacitation, that's one thing; but if one does so just before undertaking tasks where the effects of alcohol or drug consumption can reasonably be expected to lead to a crime, that's another. Ignorance of those effects at the time of the commission of the crime should be no excuse--one ought to have known!

Of course these days there are innumerable reasons being offered for not holding anyone responsible for anything one does, be it criminal or noble or whatever. The most influential grounds for this come from some experiments conducted recently in which it has been determined that an agent of conduct is most often motivated un- or subconsciously. Reported cat scans of the human brain have shown that prior one’s conscious awareness of what one is intending to do, the action in question has already commenced in the brain, with consciousness coming only later. So what one is doing is in fact not in one’s conscious control. Such experiments were conducted by, among others, the famous neuro-scientist Benjamin Libet. Libet himself, while casting doubt on consciously willful conduct concludes one of his famous essays, “Do We Have Free Will?”--included in Benjamin Libert, et al., eds., The Volitional Brain, Towards a neuroscience of free will (Imprint Academic, 1999)--with the observation that free will’s “existence is at least as good, if not a better, scientific option than is its denial by determinist theory.” Yet he regards the hypothesis of free will’s existence “speculative,” but does the same with the determinist position. As he puts it, “Given the speculative nature of both determinist and non-determinist theories, why not adopt the view that we do have free will (until some real contradictory evidence may appear, if it ever does).”

Since the time Libet carried out his studies there has been considerable work on the issues involved in the free will and conscious willing controversies (work that’s continuing as I write these lines--for example, at the recently established Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies at UC Santa Barbara, which, as its web site states, “is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and education to advance understanding of the nature and potential of consciousness.” Libet’s earlier work has sparked much further work and debate but a good many neuroscientists contend now that it and further work has indeed lead to the conclusion that conscious willing is not very likely--see, for example, Daniel M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (MIT Press, 2002).

I am not going to be able to chime in very fruitfully on this topic in a short column but I do wish to call attention, briefly, to a line of argument favoring freedom of the will that seems not to be addressed much these days when only experimental science is trusted to handle the issues involved. This line of argument basically holds that the existence of free will is undeniable or on strictly conceptual or logical grounds--that is, axiomatic--since scientific knowledge itself depends on it.

Basically the point is that knowledge must involve independent, unprejudiced observation and thinking but determinism denies this since it holds that everything one does is controlled by various impersonal causes impinging on one’s conduct, including one’s observations and thinking. If that were so, then no conclusion about anything, including about the free will issue, could be considered sound since all of it would be simply imposed on us. We would not in fact be concluding from unprejudiced reasoning and observation but merely exhibiting behavior imposed on our brains and caused by such imposition.

So it is best to conclude that if science is possible, including about the human mind, free will must exist.

Confessions of a Refi Junkie

Tibor R. Machan

No, I am not actually a junkie of any sort but I sometimes feel like it when I reflect upon my history of borrowing funds against the estimated value of my home.

You see, I have been trying to encourage my and my children’s various endeavors, just as many other parents who somehow think they can are wont to do. Helping with down payments for a home, chipping in a bit with rent, or, and this is the biggie, subsidizing a love for a serious extracurricular activity, not to mention the more immediate help with daily expenses--all these and others have induced me to try to generate resources not just from productive work but at times from borrowing against anticipated income.

And so on several occasions I have done what millions have, namely, refinanced my house, mine in Southern California. I even experienced the bail-out phenomenon when I have taken over some of the credit card debts of one or another of my children.

This all has slowly subsided, of course, as they have become more productive and thus reasonably self-supporting but it has left me with fairly hefty debts which I keep paying off. (And I am now nearly where I would like to be, leaving me with just my mortgage and car loan payments.) Of course, it also means that retirement is out of the question, at least so long as I am fit to keep working and like my work reasonably well to keep me interested in it. At 70+ now, this is all a bit iffy but not beyond the pale.

In all this I believe I have behaved pretty much as most people would, given the information they possess about market conditions, public finance, etc. Once the extortion by government has transpired each year--taxes forked out on time so the dastards cannot nail me while I am relentlessly hammering at the ideology that supports their policies--I am still in a position, given the excellent management of at least one of the places where I work, to carry on, although not without constant maneuvering through the financial maze of my life.

And let’s not forget, the role of good luck in all this! I am reasonably fit, with but a few manageable maladies--back problems, sciatica, etc., and so forth--so I don’t have to shell out gobs of funds for medical care (apart from the insurance I carry through my place of employment). Not everyone has such luck and while that certainly obligates none of us to submit to servitude in their behalf, it should encourage some understanding and maybe even generosity toward the deserving unlucky among us.

In any case, if one multiplies my situation a couple of hundred million fold, leaving aside for now out and out corruption and shady dealings, it is not difficult to see that all that would lead to financial disasters, what with the government creating a political-economic environment of false signals and phony incentives which to most ordinary citizens who are trying to navigate their economic lives isn’t fully disclosed. (Who among ordinary folks knows why housing prices rose and why one could refinance on such welcoming terms? Does anyone but a small proportion of the population realize that President Clinton, among others, had foisted upon the country financial policies that made borrowing money so easy? And what about the influence of past decisions, such as making mortgage interests partly deductible from one’s taxes? Who but experts or especially savvy lay people realize the impact such policies have on the long term economy of the country and, indeed, on most of the citizenry?)

As with regular junkies--or even with people who just like to do certain things a lot and will do it more if the cost isn’t prohibitive--those who are trying to improve their economic situation will take the opportunities around them at face value and not normally realize that they often flow from the minds of tricky politicians and all their little helpers throughout the bureaucracies of the country (not to mention the academic apologists supporting them)?

That is, at least, one way to make sense of recent economic and financial undulations in America. But this is a work in progress for me, so I keep on thinking about and studying just how to make sense of it all.

MACHAN ARCHIVES: DEREGULATION IS A MORAL ISSUE*

Tibor R. Machan

There have been plenty of studies, economic analyses and investigations and related work showing that government regulation is harmful, stifling, inefficient, and otherwise destructive. Despite this, the actual regulatory onslaught continues full force, and more is to be expected. Why is this so?
The research has shown that the regulation rarely achieves the goals set for it by Congress. Studies indicate that it has undermined productivity and competition and increased political favoritism and corruption. Market failures or imperfections, so called, have not been eliminated by way of government regulation. Why do millions still continue to believe in the desirability of this discredited system?
Even those few prominent individuals who have come to doubt that regulation is useful consider it a proper function of government where it can achieve its goals. Many more believe that even where government regulation has proven to be ineffective and harmful, the task is simply to muster up greater effort, to “clean up” the agencies, to tighten regulatory specifications—never to abandon the task. In an article in Commentary Magazine several years ago, Paul H. Weaver points out that Americans overwhelmingly support “the full range of present-day public programs to which [the New Deal] has given birth. Indeed, something like half the population would like to see the government provide even more benefits and intervene in more areas of social life than it already does…. Yet by almost equally large margins, Americans also say that the institutions responsible for creating and running the New Deal state are currently in the hands of liars, cheats, frauds, and profligates.” Never mind that economists and social scientists have produced an enormous body of evidence that discredits the very activity of regulating!

Why More Regulation?
Some solutions have been offered to the resulting puzzle about the persistent belief in regulation’s desirability. Since it is mostly economists who study regulatory activity, they are also the ones interested in why their studies fail to alter policy. The explanation usually offered is that regulation has not been discontinued because the legislators and regulatory bureaucrats are like all other people- they work to benefit themselves. It’s self-interest that accounts for the continuation of regulatory activities.
This explanation, however, is vacuous. We can’t get anything from it, any more than we can from an explanation of animal behavior by reference to instincts. It doesn’t explain anything. Why do cats swim in water? Well, they have the instinct to swim in water. What does that mean? It means simply that if you throw them in water they will swim. Why do regulators continue with regulation? Well, because they carry out their regulatory schemes. This is not at all enlightening.
Of course, this misrepresents the complexity of the theory that underlies such explanations. But instead of dwelling on this here, let’s consider an alternative explanation.
People often act as they do because they are guided by certain ideas and ideals. Ideas have consequences! And many of the central ideas guiding people in their personal conduct are moral or ethical ideas. Ralph Nader, for example, often makes reference to justice. He insists that it is unjust not to prevent product failures. He insists that certain people are being victimized. He argues that certain kinds of corporate activities are evil. Freely using these concepts to explain political and economic affairs, he reflects the views of many in our culture.
These kinds of ideas and ideals are powerful guidelines and motivators of human action. And there is something distinctive about moral or ethical ideals–as opposed to, say, scientific, technological, or legal ideas–as principles of human action.
A moral idea (and idea and ideal are interchangeable here) is one that provides guidelines to human beings simply as human beings. Why should I be honest? Because by their very nature human beings as such ought to be honest. Why should I be just? Because human beings as such should be just; if an action, policy, or entire institution recommends itself on the grounds that it is just, any human being in the community should support it.

Moral Reasons
This is very different from offering an economic explanation for what I do. “It paid well” is not comparable to “It was the just thing to do.” Nor is it the same as referring to my preferences. Why did I select that ice cream) Well, I prefer it. That I selected it or that I prefer it does not imply that everyone should do the same thing.
Why then is government regulatory activity continued? Because, despite what economists and many others have demonstrated, people believe that the goals that regulation aims to accomplish are just goals; they are morally justifiable goals to strive for. A person who believes that to defend his community or to educate his children is a matter of justice is not likely to be moved- and, if his belief is correct, he shouldn’t be moved- by the fact that these will be very expensive. He will say: “I’m sorry. Those sacrifices are justified because this is a moral goal; it is one’s duty to do it.
We can talk endlessly to Mr. Nader and Co. about how costly and inefficient government regulation is. If he believes that the goals are morally superior to the other goals that have to be sacrificed so as to pursue them, he will insist that economic concerns can be discounted. This view has been voiced by David Ferber, solicitor with the SEC, in a reply to free market economist Henry Manne, both writing in the Vanderbilt Law Review. Commenting on the regulations imposed by the SEC, Ferber observed, “Since I believe Congress was attempting to improve the morality of the marketplace, I think that the economic effect is largely irrelevant.” Edwin M. Zimmerman, assistant attorney general with the antitrust division of the Justice Department, made the same point in his essay in Promoting Competition, a Brookings Institution volume. He denies that economic efficiency was ever the impetus for regulatory laws.
Plainly put, many who support regulation believe this to be the correct way to try to achieve valued goals. They are dead serious about this. And if they are right, they are also on target when they counter that objection based on inefficiency and high cost are trivial, if not outright callus.
So moral ideas are important in this area, so important that there are some who even feign moral reasons for supporting government regulation. When lobbyists and corporate executives appear before Congress and ask for handouts or subsidies or tariffs, often the bottom line is that these would be in the public interest, the public good, rhe national destiny- or for God and country, as the old saying goes. Those are usually ornaments for shortcuts on the marketplace. But unless people took such ideas seriously, those asking for favors would not bother even to mention them. These are crucial moral terms that count. There are enough people everywhere motivated by just such moral ideas.
Can anyone doubt, then, that deregulatory policies would also require moral support? It’s not enough to say, “Well, regulation costs too much and it’s inefficient.” An alternative moral perspective is needed to conclusively establish the propriety of deregulation. Economic arguments alone do not suffice. But is there anything in the way of ethics that might support deregulation?
If we look at prominent and widely articulated beliefs about what is right and wrong, we find that altruism is pervasive. Altruism literally means “otherorientedness.” This morality is a sort of grab bag for all the various moral systems the bottom line of which is that one’s life must be led so as to secure the welfare of others, either today or tomorrow. It is the view that every person’s prime purpose is to live for others—humanity, one’s country, and one’s race. There are variations on this view, but they all come to this.

Just Helping Out
When made to apply to political policy, the altruist ethic implies that government must try at all costs to achieve the goal of helping people, however bungling, inefficient, or otherwise objectionable such efforts might be. In a debate in an old issue of Analog magazine (April I975), we find this attitude well illustrated in the words of Alan E. Nourse, a fervent defender of national health insurance. He tells us that it is “not a new concept nor is it a particularly efficient concept as far as health care delivery is concerned, because many many precious dollars will be dribbled away to administration.”
Does this suffice to dissuade Mr. Nourse? Do such economic considerations lead to the conclusion that national health insurance is a bad idea? No, counters Nourse, because “‘it is a concept that might—repeat might—meet some of the desperate health care needs that exist today.” If the primary responsibility of government is to engage in helping other people, then trying, even in the face of evidence that it will not do any good, is quite justifiable. People who share those values will simply continue in the face of disastrous performance records.
But we need to consider whether altruism is really the system that should guide us in our lives. The question is not whether certain of our virtues are other-oriented, nor whether in certain circumstances we are obligated to look out for others. The question is whether we are to live our lives primarily for other people.
In a few paragraphs, all the issues involved cannot be covered. There is one interesting point to be raised against altruism, however. Why is it that everyone deserves this prime consideration from others, but not from themselves? Why is it supposed to be this daisy chain of my doing benefit to you, your doing benefit to him, his doing benefit to her, etc.? It clearly engenders meddlesomeness in human affairs. It invites more rigorous attention to other people’s circumstances than to one’s own; because if one is first morally obligated to benefit other people, then their circumstances, their needs, their aspirations, and their wishes must be known. One must obtain the maximum amount of information about those people, and one must do everything possible to find out what will indeed benefit them.
This explains why there is such widespread government information-intrusion in people’s lives. Government, too, must know about others in order to help others. It must be able to walk into private homes, for example, to make sure that welfare recipients get the right care. It is its obligation, according to altruism.
Although altruism claims that individuals should live their lives so as to benefit others but not primarily to benefit themselves, they would, just on the face of it, seem to know much more about themselves to start with. So if people do deserve a lot, why is it that others should do it for them as opposed to their doing it for themselves? This is a puzzle, and it’s worth considering. But let’s leave aside the full criticism that could be offered against altruism and take up as an alternative moral theory that, not surprisingly, is going to be called ethical egoism.

Self-Help
Now ethical egoism—in ancient Greek moral philosophy known as eudemonism—is not egotism which is an excessive concern with one’s image or at least with one’s reputation or power. Ethical egoism, in contrast, is a rational concern with one’s own bona fide happiness. It holds that every human being’s prime moral purpose in living is to achieve happiness in life- the fulfillment, throughout one’s life, of one’s potential as a human being. Happiness is the result of excellence at being human. Here, a person’s primary responsibility is not to do good for others, although it may still be true that on many occasions human beings should do what is good for others. The primary moral responsibility of individuals is to achieve their own happiness in life.
So we have an alternative ethics. Is it possible, in terms of this ethics, that in the process of regulating our commercial and many other activities, government is violating certain moral and political principles?
Government regulation usually involves the following. Some activity by some commercial agents, manufacturers, or industrialists might be of harm to someone who is going to buy their product. If it is possible- just barely possible—that these activities will produce some harm to others, the activity is prohibited or regulated. As Senator Javits once put it in a personal communication on the subject of vitamin C, the government must protect citizens against potential possible hazard.
Now watch those qualifiers: potential, possible hazards. Even a hazard is only a possible harm. A hazard doesn’t guarantee harm. A lot of people have hazardous jobs, meaning that the likelihood of getting hurt in those jobs is considerable. Now imagine a possible hazard. What then is a potentially possible hazard? To be safe in life from “potentially possible hazards,” one must be protected in everything.
If, however, one’s primary obligation in life is to achieve happiness, and if one shares this obligation with other people- so that they should achieve their happiness- then, what must first of all be protected and preserved in a social context are the conditions that make it possible for people to strive for or to pursue their happiness. For example, the Declaration of Independence refers to the protection and preservation of rights we have as human beings—the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
If these were indeed rights that we have and that ought to be protected, then in the pursuit of our happiness, someone else’s interference would be wrong, morally wrong. Not just inefficient and very costly, but morally wrong—wrong because human beings should not act that way. In most of the criminal law this point is observed carefnlly, even if not fully consistently. The burden of proof rests with the prosecution-those who believe they have reason to impose burdens on citizens. Unfortunately, the same principle goes by the wayside when it comes to administering government regulations. If members of an industry, profession, or trade engage in “potentially possible hazardous” activities, there are now legal grounds for placing heavy burdens upon them.

A Risky Business
The most persuasive argument in support of this practice involves what Ralph Nader never tires of citing the famous thalidomide case. Many European women took the drug during pregnancy but the FDA barred its distribution in the United States. It had tragic results in Europe; but in America, almost no one was hurt from the drug. Nader constantly remarks this upon, in his numerous talks and essays in support of federal regulation of the food and drug industry.
Now it is clear that if guaranteed safety is the highest value we should aim for in life, then Mr. Nader and Co. are on the right track. If it is our prime duty to make certain that other people are safe, then we should never profit from nor allow others to profit from selling them some goods or services that just might be hazardous. But if freedom to seek our own well-being, the political and economic liberty to make our own way in life, is the highest political good, then even the tragic events associated with the thalidomide case do not suffice to give support to government regulation.
Life is undoubtedly a risky business. Those who want to accept risks may not be prevented from doing so regardless of how convinced we are that they are foolish to take these risks. We may not prevent mountain climbers, auto racers, horseback riders, firefighters, and even plain, ordinary consumers of voluntarily acquired drugs and foods from doing what they have chosen to do. Nor may we gather into majorities and legislate these wise prohibitions for them.
We can, however, point out how life can be made safer! Hazards can be overcome in a free society, even when other people pose them by their sloppiness, negligence, greed, or stupidity. Government regulations preempt a crucial human virtue: the willingness of industrialists, manufacturers, professionals, to do well at whatthey have promised themselves to do well-their jobs. By usurping the field of morality, by forbidding the risky business of people’s developing themselves and getting on in society through mutual self-development, government regulation is a gross denigration of human dignity itself.
Altruism is the main moral game in town. The only place it is not advocated very much is in psychotherapy sessions and books on self-help therapy, because in these areas people have come to face up to the debilitating consequences of living by such a moral point of view. Entire political institutions, however, are built on the doctrine of altruism. Among these, governmental regulation of people’s productive, trading, or consuming activities is just one. Others include all the victimless crime laws, “blue laws,” involuntary mental hospitalization statutes; and the list could go on.
But altruism is a view that does not prepare one for coping with life on earth. It stifles personal growth, ambition, self-development; and it encourages deceit. We must claim that everything we want to do will be good for others, just so we can “get away with doing it.” And it also gives perfect excuses for our failures- “I did it for you. I lied, killed, maimed, stole, and cheated only because I meant well for you.”

Stopping Meddling
Without affirming, with utmost confidence, the alternative moral position—so that each person can realize that the prime moral goal in life is to excel as a person, to become the best one can become in life, given one’s human nature and one’s personal potentials as an individual human being-the case for stopping all this meddling in people’s lives cannot be made conclusively. Sure, governmental regulation is inefficient, devours our income, breeds corruption, centralizes enormous power, stifles production, leaves people overburdened with bureaucratic trivia; but if its goals are morally superior to others, so what? We must be heroic; we must sacrifice for the great good that we might- “repeat might”—achieve. We must toss aside this materialist concern for efficiency, thrift, and prudence. We must march on the noble trail of doing good for our fellow human beings, whether they want it or not.
If, however, we should aspire to our own happiness, if this is our primary moral task, then others should abstain from interfering with us; then regulation is not just uneconomic, but wrong. Government regulation violates our rights—period. And we have those rights because it is we, individually and in voluntary cooperation, who should strive to live, produce, trade, and consume, Only by realizing that this is a matter of profound moral truth- not merely of convenience, efficiency, cost, or pleasure (although not without rewards in these respects)—can we overcome the intellectual and basic moral force of the case for regulation.
That will not lead to instant deregulation. But it will have robbed the meddlers of their most potent weapon—the appeal to people’s frequent, even if not fully consistent, concern for doing what is right in personal and political matters. Even the famous Nobel Laureate (Princeton University) economist and columnist for The New York Times has come to see that the case for interventionism needs moral backing, so he has gone out of his way—in The New York Times (Sunday, January 8, 2011) to present what he takes to be such backing. (That he doesn’t succeed because no moral case can rely on coercion—men and women must freely choose to do the right thing for it to have moral significance.**)

Notes:

* This essay is based on Tibor R. Machan, “Deregulation is a Moral Issue,” in Ellen F. Paul and Philip A. Russo, Jr., Public Policy, Issues, Analysis, and Ideology (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1982)
**See my discussion of this point at http://tibormachan rationalreview.com/2011/01/column-on-krugmans-incoherent-moral-stance/

Krugman’s Incoherent Moral Stance

Tibor R. Machan

Finally Paul Krugman, Princeton University Nobel Laureate in economic science and columnist for The New York Times, has come clean about his “moral” position (TNYT, January 14, 2011). He has admitted that he doesn’t believe that when you earn something, you own it. (Don’t know if he believes we own things we haven’t earned, such as our kidneys or eyes! Maybe he thinks that as with earned resources, these unearned ones, especially, belong to the government which can proceed to distribute them just as Krugman thinks it can redistribute the resources citizens have actually come by through hard work, ingenuity, luck and the like.) Let’s see then whether Kurgman’s moral stance has any chance of being sound. Is it the morality by which people ought to guide their conduct in their lives? Do we and what we own belong to government to do with as government officials believe? But isn’t that slavery?

If my life doesn’t belong to me--if the norm the Declaration of Independence identifies as universal, namely, that every human being has a right to his or her life, is false--then what is true? Does my life belong to the government? If we recall that government is a group of individuals to whom a certain social role has been delegated--namely, the role of securing the rights of the citizenry--the claim that government owns our lives and resources means nothing else but that these individuals in government own our lives and resources.

But that is very odd--why would those people be in the privileged position of owning us and what to all appearances belongs to us while we, also human beings and with equal rights, do not own our lives and resources? This makes no sense.

So when we take even a cursory look at Professor Krugman’s position, it turns out to be incoherent, rank nonsense. It reminds me of the remark attributed to the poet W. H. Auden, namely, “We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.” So we all belong to government but then to whom does government belong?

The idea that we belong to government is obscene and harks back to an age when Caesars, monarchs, tsars, Pharaohs and such were believed to have been given their realm by God and everything within that realm, including all the human beings, therefore belonged to them. Later these slaves and serfs began to be called subjects, implying that they were all subject to the will of the government. This is were serfdom and even taxation have their origin.

Now we have, in 21st century America, one of the most prominent commentators and educators reiterate this horrendous outlook. Incredible. But it gets even worse.

An essential aspect of any bona fide moral position is that it must be practiced voluntarily, not because someone--e. g., government--holds a gun to one’s head and coerces one to do what is right. That doesn’t count as doing the right thing, so any such policy is literally demoralizing. It robs people of the opportunity to be morally good (or bad, of course).

A society that’s fit for human habitation must not have policies that prevent citizens from exercising moral judgment. So, OK, assume for a moment that we should devote ourselves entirely to serving other people, to serving the public good. If, however, all of this is accomplished through governmental coercion like taxation, regulation, regimentation, and so forth, there can’t be anything moral about it. So Dr. Krugman’s so called moral stance isn’t one at all. It leaves no room for morality because it makes all purportedly moral conduct involuntary, imposed by rulers and not a matter of one’s own free will.

So Krugman’s moral stance is not only incoherent but it isn’t even a moral stance. So much for the “morality” of one of America’s foremost public philosophers.

What someone like Dr. Krugman could more fruitfully do is urge people to be generous toward those in need, to give support to worthy causes, to help the poor, etc., but always of their own free will. That is what moral leaders may do, nothing else. Whether the morality they advocate is sound is another matter. But to remain something morally relevant it must not be imposed. Elementary, Dr. Krugman, really.

An Extremist and Proud of it

Tibor R. Machan

Yes, I am that for sure. an extremist. I knew if from the time Barry Goldwater announced that Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." That’s because an extremist is just someone who holds a set of positions that is internally consistent, uncompromising, and insistent on integrity.

Of course, once you enter the political fray, it is pointless to be all these things except in how you identify your political position. In one’s political philosophy everyone ought to be an extremist, even a politician, but in one’s strategies for realizing one’s principles in public policy it is quite all right to be practical, pragmatic, or prudent.

Politics takes place among thousands and thousands of people and many of them have agendas very different from one’s own. To make any headway at all in the direction of the policies that would help realize one’s political philosophy, at least to some degree, one cannot simply hold out for the vote that will agree with that philosophy. Here is where compromise is required but never in watering down one’s ideals.

It is mostly those whose views are wishy-washy but who do like power who promote the idea that compromise in how one thinks about issues is necessary, even honorable. But that is false. The world does not conform to a compromised position on anything--it is a consistent system of facts disallowing any inconsistencies or contradictions. But the sociology of politics does make compromises useful, provided one never forgets the goals that are being served by it. In and of themselves compromises are worthless--they are in fact evidence of incoherence. But as means to get closer to one’s objectives when working with a lot of folks who hold drastically different views they have merit.

Extremists are folks who stick to their guns as a matter of principle and integrity but they aren’t prevented by this from making headway through the give and take of politics. (A good case in point would appear to be Representative Ron Paul.) Dr. No, as he is often called, holds to his principles unwaveringly but he does have the skills of a politician to make progress toward his goals in the midst of colleagues with whom he doesn’t see eye to eye. Those who defend the idea that a politician must not be principles, must not hold to fundamentally coherent ideas, are hoping that they will make headway with their ideas while their opponents wobble. Some issues, especially, aren’t about how much or how little should be done but about whether certain objectives are even permissible in a free country. Abolitionists knew about this well and while many were willing to politic about various measures that more or less promoted abolition, they never caved in on the idea that blacks were human and thus had all the same basic rights that human beings have. Maybe this involved taking two steps ahead and one backwards but they knew that all in all there was no compromising their fundamental position.

Of course there can be a point beyond which no negotiations with opponents is tolerable. One could give away the ball game by going along with certain means so as to attain the necessary goals. At that point one may simply need to withdraw and wait for a more opportune time to press one’s cause.

All of this takes intelligence, discretion, even some talent and not everyone can do the job well--some have temperaments that simply don’t suit the machinations of politics. The division of labor applies here as elsewhere. The basic point is that one can be an extremist, a principled advocate of a position, and also be smart and skilled about how to make advances toward its implementation. And those who observe such people need to make sure that they aren’t protesting when such smarts are being displayed and mistake it for having compromised one’s political-ecnomic principles.

It’s a Massacre, Stupid

Tibor R. Machan

What happened in Tucson, AZ, was a massacre and not a tragedy. Perhaps some view this a pedantic detail but it isn’t--words do have meaning and a tragedy, as anyone familiar with ancient Greek literature or a bit of Shakespeare will testify, takes place when bad outcomes come from what good people are forced to decide. They are a peculiar moral phenomenon. A massacre isn’t morally peculiar but plainly, straightforwardly evil. To execute a bunch of people who haven’t been convicted within a system of due process and when the executioner isn’t properly authorized to act as the agent of punishment for crimes is no tragedy. It is a vicious crime.

Having said that, please let me reflect a bit on all those who are scapegoating now by assigning blame for the massacre not to the actual perpetrator but to something, anything, they don’t like in the world. Accordingly, you will find the likes of Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University and the Op-Ed page of The New York Times and any number of opportunists in Congress point the figure at the heated rhetoric that emerges from those in public forums who are often passionate and polemical about their political convictions. No doubt, some of these folks can go too far with labeling their opponents, unreasonably ascribing motives to them, indicting them for the likely adverse consequences of the policies they promote. That’s what happens when a lot is at stake--even the most civilized among us will tend to resort to hyperbole.

But words are not guns. Even the law, always only a questionable clue to what is and what is not moral or ethical, acknowledges that there are only a few fighting words. These are those rare case of speech that do not get the protection of the principle embodied in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution because they are deemed to be too offensive and provocative for civilized discourse. But fighting words are few. And heated political rhetoric does not qualify.

These scapegoat mongers--who, by the way, quite often excuse wrong doing on the grounds that people just cannot help how they act, that their socio-economic circumstances force them to do the vicious things they do--aren’t really concerned about properly fixing blame or responsibility for events like those that transpired in Tucson but are more likely hoping to score political points. So Sarah Palin likes to shoot big game and you find her politics objectionable, maybe what you can do is associate her with any kind of shooting, never mind the target. Or if those talk show hosts on radio and TV--for instance, Keith, Beck, and Rush--indulge in some fancy verbiage so as to drive home a point, lets treat what they say as if it amounted to fighting words, as if they could cause people to act criminally. By suggesting this one may succeed in besmirching one’s favorite political adversaries--or one could at least for a moment win over to one’s side the people who are too desperate to make sense of events that are overwhelming and for which no ready explanation is available to them.

This is dirty pool. Yet it should not be banned, any more than the rhetoric being indicted should be (as, sadly, some people are proposing). Curbing the heated rhetoric, as such censorship is euphoniously referred to, isn’t going to reduce the number of villains among us--they don’t need to be enticed; they have their warped imagination guiding them to do what is unacceptable in civilized society.

Even if one could show that a perpetrator of a massacre such as occurred in Tucson did hold a particular ideology or religion by which one might govern one’s behavior, that ideology or religion can never be held fully responsible for the ensuing conduct. That is one thing that’s wrong with holding radical Islam responsible for terrorism or Roman Catholicism for the Inquisition! All ideas must be filtered through the minds of the human agents who may make use of them. And these human agents are supposed to be reasonable enough to restrain themselves however passionately they may feel.

Somerset Maugham & I

Tibor R. Machan

My most enjoyable and rewarding reading time has been with W. Somerset Maugham. Even the works that annoy me are a pleasure to read, not to mention the many very entertaining books, short stories and essays he has penned that are dear to me.

What it is about Maugham I am not entirely sure--I pretty much just bathe in the enjoyment without doing much analysis of why it happens. But there are a couple of things about his writing that agree with me thoroughly.

One is that nearly every sentence is superbly crafted so it is suitable for those like me who are slow readers. Even if I get to read but a couple of pages just before falling asleep or being called by the dentists or doctor after waiting for the exam, sentence after sentence appeals to me. Sometimes I want to shout out my praise for him but, sadly, he has been dead for several decades now.

Some of his books contain a good collection of brief observations but they are nearly always keen ones. Here is one where he chimes in with something in my own field of philosophy:

“Looking for the special function of man Aristotle decided that since he shares growth with the plants and perception with the beasts, and alone has a rational element, his function is the activity of the soul. From this he concluded, not as you would have thought sensible, that man should cultivate the three forms of activity which he as­cribes to him, but that he should pursue only that which is especial to him. Philosophers and moralists have looked at the body with misgivings. They have pointed out that its satisfactions are brief. But a pleasure is nonetheless a pleasure because it does not please forever.” [The Summing Up (Pocket Books, 1967), pp. 35-6]

Right on, I say, even though the author isn’t some highfalutin Aristotle scholar. And there is this pithy comment I tucked away in my growing collection of worthy quotes:

"... finally science had not fulfilled the promises which the unwise expected, and, dissatisfied at not receiving answers to questions that science never pretended to answer, many threw themselves into the arms of the Church."

And there is this bitty from his rare but poignant political observations:

"If a nation or an individual values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too."

Cannot argue with that--both reason (theory) and experience (history) bear it out.

OK, so I have given just a couple of samples from the vast writing of W. Somerset Maugham to show how appealing he can be. The first of his novels I read was titled Theater and was only a couple of years ago made into a movie starring Annette Bening, Being Julia. His most famous novel, Of Human Bondage--also made into film maybe more than once, directed by John Cromwell and starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Kay Johnson--didn’t sit well with me because its subject matter was a pathetic love affair that pretty much mirrored my own pathetic love affair of the time. But there were many other works, among them the novella, Up At The Villa which was also made into a film by that name, directed by Philip Haas and starting Kristin Scott Thomas, Sean Penn and Anne Bancroft.

I am always conscious of the fact that English is my third language, learned just at the end of my adolescence, and so I am partial to writers who not only entertain me, present fascination or intrigue, but do it impeccably and there-through teach me a thing or two. And Maugham has been the number one example of such writing to me and I am still reading his works--the latest is one of his travel books, full of gems, titled The Gentleman in the Parlor: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong (Armchair Traveler Series).

How to Use the Constitution

Tibor R. Machan

Many in the just seated House of Representatives have been clamoring for a return to the Constitution. This is what appears to underlie to planned challenge to Obama care, the massive piece of legislation that President Obama has been eager to make a part of the law of the land, legislation that contains provisions that toe many in the new House appear to be in violation of the U. S. Constitution. In particular, objections have been raised against forcing citizens to buy insurance, something that clearly goes against several principles associated with the American political tradition, such as freedom of contract, freedom of trade, etc. Some of these principles have found a way into the Constitution but it isn’t always crystal clear just where in the Constitution they appear--the fifth, the fourth, the ninth, the first or which amendment or which ruling that contains precedents should constitutional watchdogs rely as they to issue the proclamation: “Unconstitutional.”

The plain fact of the matter is that while the U. S. Constitution--specifically the Bill of Rights--contains some very laudable provisions, all of them require a fairly nuanced interpretation and application to contemporary issues (such as government coercing people buy health insurance). While for some citizens this is all a piece of cake, no problem at all, for others it isn’t a slam dunk by a long shot. That’s because these folks focus on the fact that the principles incorporated in the Bill of Rights are stated in terms that had a slightly different meaning back when the Constitution was ratified from how we understand them today.

Such development in the meaning of terms is often used as an excuse for evading constitutional principles but it could also be legitimate. Terms do change their meaning, more or less drastically or radically, even in the physical science--the term “atom” as used today doesn’t mean what it had been used to mean a hundred years ago. The more people involved in the study of those matters for which such terms were coined come to know--the more information comes to light about the surrounding facts--the more likely some alteration of meaning is probable.

Now this doesn’t mean the ridiculous idea that nothing is constant in the world, nothing stands still, nothing is stable and dependable, only that one needs to be sure what is and what isn’t. Some constitutional scholarship would track just such developments--have the crucial terms of the constitution kept the meaning they had back at the time of ratification or did they change a bit or a lot? The changes wouldn’t be arbitrary, with the result that anything goes--which is the result some of the avid skeptics about the Constitution would try to make us all believe. They hold to the doctrine originally ascribed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus who held that everything is always in flux--he is famously held to have said “You cannot step into the same river twice” because, well, the river is always changing. And if all of reality were like the river, we could never count on anything to be stable or solid, certainly not principles that are supposed to govern human community life.

But the American Founders and Framers disagreed and had spelled out some--few?--principles that do apply to human community life precisely because it is, after all, human communities that are at issue, not communities of ants or birds or cows. And these beings, human ones, are not all that changeable even over the time span of centuries. We know this from anthropology, archeology, history, philology, and other disciplines that study various aspects of humanity’s past and make pretty good progress understanding them.

So there could well be certain invariable principles, ones that need to be considered in dealing with or governing people and once these make it into a constitution, that document could come in very handy in figuring out public policies and plans. But none of this would be happening automatically, not certainly from simply reading the Constitution, not by a long shot. Honest constitutional study and understanding would be needed. Only then would the imperative to pay heed to the Constitution come to something valuable, important.

The reason that objecting to Obama care would appear to be not just constitutionally misguided but a misguided way of dealing with citizens is that people are the kind of beings in the world who may not be pushed around by other people--they must have their sovereignty or rights to life and liberty well respected and protected. Unfortunately this idea is so often and widely violated around the globe and, of course, throughout human history, that it is difficult for anyone to be loyal to it.

Many people are bent on pushing other people around--always, of course, for lofty purposes--and so bringing up a constitutional objection to their doing so would be annoying for them, even undermine their philosophy of life and their aspirations to be influential in the world. So they will then commit to the philosophy of Heraclitus, a philosophy that gives them carte blanche about how to interpret the U. S. Constitution or any other document containing principles by which communities must be governed. It’s a living document, you see, which can be taken to mean whatever one wants it to me, pragmatically and not according to common reason.

Yes, it is good to refer to the Constitution but it is even more important to keep in mind the underlying philosophical clashes and to make sure which side is right.

Reexamining Democracy

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last several decades of American political life the idea of liberty has taken a back seat to that of democracy. Liberty involves human beings governing themselves, being sovereign citizens, while democracy is a method by which decisions are reached within groups. In a just society it is liberty that is primary – the entire point of law is to secure liberty for everyone, to make sure that the rights of individuals to their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness is protected from any human agent bent on violating them. Democracy is but a byproduct of liberty. Because we are all supposed to be free to govern ourselves, whenever some issue of public policy faces the citizenry, they are all entitled to take part. Democratic government rests, in a free society, on the right of every individual to take whatever actions are needed to influence public policy.

Because freedom or liberty is primary, the scope of public policy and, thus, of democracy in a just society is strictly limited. The reason is that free men and women may not be intruded on even if a majority of their fellows would decide to do so. If one is free, which means a self-governing person, then even the majority of ones fellows lacks the authority to take over ones governance without ones consent. This is what the US Declaration of Independence means when it mentions that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. In a just society no one loses his or her authority for self-government without giving it up as a matter of choice. No one gets to operate on you, no matter how wise and competent, without your giving your consent, and the same is true, in a just system, about imposing duties and obligations on people. They must agree to this. If they do not, they aren't to be ordered about at all. The only apparent exception is when it comes to laws that protect everyone’s rights. One may indeed be ordered not to kill, rob, rape, burglarize, and assault other persons, even if one fails to consent to this. And when the legal authorities do this job of protecting individual rights, they may order one to abstain from all such aggressive actions.

However, this doesn't actually involve intruding on people, only being duly authorized, via the consent of the governed, to protect everyone from intrusions. It is along these lines that the idea of limited government – or legal authority – arises: it may only act to protect rights, to impose the laws that achieve that goal, nothing more. Again, as the Declaration of Independence notes, it is to secure our rights that governments are instituted, not for any other purpose. Of course, this idea of limited government hardly figures into considerations of public policy in the USA or elsewhere. We have never actually confined government to this clearly limited, just purpose. It has always gone beyond that and today its scope is nearly totalitarian (albeit somewhat “permissive”), the very opposite of being limited. But there is no doubt that even though liberty has been nearly forgotten as an ideal of just government in America as well as elsewhere, democracy does remain something of an operational ideal. In this way liberty has been curtailed tremendously, mainly to the minor sphere of everyone having a right to take part in public decision-making. Whereas the original classical liberal idea is that we are free in all realms and democracy concerns mainly who will administer a system of laws that are required to protect our liberty, the corrupt version of this idea is that democracy addresses everything in our lives and the only liberty we have left is to take part in the decision-making about whatever is taken to be a so called “public” matter.

One way this is clearly evident is how many of the top universities in the USA construe public administration to be a topic having to do primarily with the way democracy works. Indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, even though the major issue should have been the establishment and maintenance of a regime of individual liberty, the experts in academe who write and teach the rest of the world about public administration are nearly all focused on democracy, not on liberty.

For example, the courses at America’s premier public administration graduate school, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, are mainly focused on problems of democracy. At this institution nearly 40 percent of the students attending come from 75 foreign countries, many of them from those that used to be under Soviet rule, and what they focus on in nearly all their courses is democracy, not liberty. Assignments in these courses tend all to raise problems about implementing democratic governance and leave the issue of how individual liberty should be secured as practically irrelevant. Or, to put it more precisely, the liberty, or human right, that is of interest in most of these courses is the liberty to take part in democratic decision-making. (“Human rights” has come to refer in most of these course and their texts mainly to the right to vote and to take part in the political process!)

Yes, of course, that is a bit of genuine liberty that many of the people of the world have never enjoyed, so for them it is a significant matter, to be sure. But it is clearly not the liberty that the Declaration of Independence mentions when it affirms that all of us are equal in having unalienable rights to our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Declaration speaks of a very wide scope of individual liberty, while the premier public administration school of America teaches, at least by implication, that the only liberty of any importance is the liberty to take part in public policy determination.

This, I submit, is a travesty. Once democracy is treated as the premier public value, with individual liberty cast to the side except as far as the citizenry’s freedom to take part in democratic decision-making, the scope of government is no longer limited in principle or in practice. Nearly anything can become a public policy issue, so long as some measure of democracy is involved in reaching decisions about it. And that, in fact, turns out to be a serious threat to democracy itself. Because when democracy trumps liberty, democracy can destroy itself, and the law could permit the democratically reached destruction of democracy itself!

That is just what happened in the Weimar Republic, where a democratic election put Hitler in power and destroyed democracy. If you ever wonder why it is that public forums, including the Sunday TV magazine programs, the Op Ed pages of most newspapers, the feature articles of most magazines do not discuss human liberty but fret mostly about democracy, this is the reason: the major educational institutions tend not to care about liberty at all and have substituted a very limited version of it, namely, democracy, as their primary concern. Once that is accomplished, individual liberty becomes defenseless.

Indeed, democracy is just as capable of being totalitarian as is a dictatorship, only with democracy it seems less clearly unjust, given that this little bit of liberty is still in tact, namely, to take part in the vote. (A little of this has come to be discussed recently on some programs because of Harvard educated Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria’s recent book, The Future of Freedom [W. W. Norton, 2003], which is subtitled “illiberal democracy at home and abroad.” Sadly Zakaria seems to have abandoned his concerns about the matter and is now mostly taking part in discussions about how the country ought to be managed, like a firm.) True enough, democratic totalitarianism appears more benign than a system under the direction of a tyrant but, as In Venezuela, unrestrained democracy can give rise to the most belligerent version of dictatorship since Hitler’s Third Reich. The proper approach to governance is to make all of it focus primarily on protecting the rights of the citizens to their lives, liberty and property. This extension of the idea of the body or security guard is the best model for how government should work and how their work should be appraised. Free men and women require this so as to live their lives by their own judgment and in voluntary cooperation with their fellow citizens instead of being regimented by some group of “leaders” who view themselves as knowledgeable about the public interest.

In caring about democracy mainly or only, the more robust liberty that everyone is entitled to is neglected. The result is not all that different from how feudal orders behave.

Column on A Fruitful Idea about Morality



Tibor R. Machan



As someone who often teaches the topic of ethics or morality in colleges and universities, I have noticed that most of my beginning students entertain conflicting positions about the subject. They see it either as a one-size-fits-all system of guidelines, wherein everyone has to act the same way or they are bad people, or as purely subjective, wherein nothing is either right or wrong and it’s all a matter of one’s opinion.

And this is understandable. If there are right answers to questions about how we should conduct ourselves, it seems to many those answers must apply to us all, equally. Otherwise how could they be right? So they are pulled toward what is often called moral absolutism. But it also seems quite reasonable that certain answers as to how one ought to act do not apply to all people the same way since they differ in significant ways from one another. That suggests subjectivism.

How can both of these valid insights be satisfied?

One possibility is that a sound, correct ethics offers perhaps just one set of very basic principles that are broad enough to apply to everyone simply in virtue of us all being human. But this morality would also recognize that different individuals need different guidelines, given their special situations, including their unique individuality, culture, even the climate in which they live.

We have this, for example, in medicine and nutrition. There are basic principles in these areas but when they are applied to different people, accommodations must be made to the individuals in question--are they men or women, young or old, tall or short, of a certain metabolism or another, allergic to this or that? So, while the basics of medicine and nutrition are taught pretty much the same everywhere, when they are applied, things begin to vary quite a bit.

In morality or ethics, also, we may well have certain very basic principles that we all need to heed and practice--such as “Think things through before you act,” or “Be honest with yourself” or “Don’t deceive anyone,” “Do onto others as you have would have them do onto you,” or “Pursue excellence in life.” (I leave aside now which might actually be those few sound and universal guiding principles--that takes a lot of figuring out.) But as applied to particular, individual persons, what specific guidance would emerge from such basic principles will not be the same from one person to the next.

Yet something very important about both the concerns expressed by my students and many others would be satisfied in so understanding morality: there would indeed be something absolute or invariant about how we ought to act; yet this wouldn’t amount to an artificially detailed one-size-fits-all code.

Indeed, the idea would help with many things that concern us all: a just legal system would not have many general laws, only a few, because citizens are quite different from one another and have just a few things in common as citizens. The market place would make sense, what with all its highly varied goods and services aiming to fit different customers and using the varied talents of producers. Even art might benefit from this outlook: We all tend to think, I believe, that some things really are artistically excellent while others lack this quality; yet we also realize that different people, with various special attributes, backgrounds, and so forth, will appreciate different excellent works of art. Instead of thinking that everyone is artistically blind who fails to respond to some work favorably that one admires, a great variety of works will be seen as having artistic merit to different sorts of people, varied talents will produce varied yet still artistically excellent works. Yet, there will still remain plenty of room for concluding that some artists’ creations do not cut it at all.

Anyway, there isn’t much hope of settling big issues like this in a brief discussion but perhaps some hints toward a sound approach could at least be established. Very formidable thinkers throughout human history have grappled with these matters and studying their reflections would be a prerequisite for making headway. What I’ve tried here is no more than sketch out some promising initial ideas.

The struggle--the long arc of advances in human liberty

Tibor R. Machan

Here is some good news: The march of liberty has so far proven to be generally unstoppable. Over the span of human history there have been periods during which hardly any sign of respect for human liberty had been in evidence. In other eras the globe has seen advances toward human liberty by leaps and bounds. That is to say, in some periods clear evidence can be pointed to showing that some men and women--such as kings, queens, czars, Pharaohs, Caesars, dictators, tyrants, politburos, political bodies of all types and uncivil majorities--have began to recede in their efforts to suppress other men and women, to treat them as their tools, instruments, subjects, and such. In other periods the opposite trend has been in evidence.

Still, overall the trend has been toward the spread of liberty. More and more of us have become masters of our own lives, fewer and fewer are in the position of ruling others. Even when in some areas, such as national economic policy, liberty has taken a beating, there are others where fewer impositions and restrictions are made into public policy--for example, the basic rights of members of minorities, women, gays, natives, the press, etc., are being recognized and provided legal protection alongside onerous economic policies. And globally, while the former beacon of human liberty, the United States of America--itself, sadly, never fully committed--is now rather halting in its defense of human freedom, other communities--for instance, the former Soviet and other colonies--are slowly but surely shedding the idea and practice that would have some people run roughshod over others, especially as a matter of official public policy.

Now this is not all that surprising. In any area of their lives people can do better or worse or just linger in some kind of mediocre limbo. And this is so when it comes to political matters. Sometimes, in fact, there can be improvement in one sphere of human life and a decline in others--for instance, while economic liberty can widen, it is possible for personal or cultural fulfilment to be on hold for many. Not everything is moving in the same direction at once and with the same speed. (One can easily confirm this by just checking one’s own life and noticing that there can be advances in one area while another can be faltering--one’s career can even soar while one’s health might not improve.)

All this is enhanced by the sheer fact that the surrounding natural world in which men and women may struggle to strive, to flourish, isn’t uniformly supportive--storms, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases and other adversities not of our making are often complicit in making life not so triumphant for us all. Fortunately, here, if men and women are substantially free to live their lives without being oppressed by others, they tend to do better at figuring out how to deal with these non-human adversities--the sciences, philosophy, technology, education, and other features of life tend to get improved treatment when we are free, less time needs to be spent on fending off the intrusive ones among us.

So, as one contemplates developments in one’s immediate or the broader human sphere, it is a good idea to keep in mind how even without a inevitable trend toward a better and better existence, in the long run human beings are experiencing a better and better life (just as the late Julian Simon and his students (e.g., Matt Ridley) have been stressing in the midst of the endless doom-sayings of the likes of Paul Ehrlich and Paul Krugman).

Quite often predictions of doom come from politically disgruntled folks, those who still believe that they should be in charge of others and not respect the rights of everyone to sovereignty, self-government. Also, as one gets older and senses that ones own life is slowly declining, one may be tempted to project this on to the rest of the world and declare it all going to hell in a hand basket.

No, there isn’t a guarantee of a steady march toward liberty--it is truly a matter of eternal vigilance. But fortunately there are many, many people who exhibit this vigilance in various parts of their lives, throughout human history and around the globe, and thus help keep afoot the advances toward greater and greater freedom and, alongside, a better chance of overall improvement in human affairs.