Machan's Archives: Genuine Military Defense Anyone? (updated)
Tibor R. Machan
As much as one may object to Iran's government’s efforts to build atomic weapons, the American government isn’t supposed to be some kind of meta-police that embarks upon restraining such governments! Certainly spending American taxpayers’ funds on conducting military actions against Iran would be going way beyond the proper military role of the American government, which is to protect its citizen’s freedom from domestic and foreign criminals.
It bears remembering here that however off course the American government has gone in its role in the country, the real role it has is to be a government strictly limited to the functions laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, which is to stand ready to defend the country when it is attacked or when there is a demonstrably clear and present danger that it will be--not might be--attacked. So the criteria by which one must judge its conduct, both domestic and international, is whether it amounts to such defense.
Sadly, of course, most politicians and bureaucrats, as well as their cheerleaders in the academy and media, don’t give a hoot about restraining the power of government. After all, the same rationale that serves to justify its relentless intervention in our lives at home is what is used to rationalize it abroad. (Does it occur to folks that despite some of the rhetoric of restraint associated with the political thought of President Obama, it is modern liberalism’s interventionism that removes all principled restraint and leads to the imperialist policies of which this Libyan expedition is a case in point? Obama is, after all, a self-professed pragmatist and that means rejecting all principles as mere ideology!)
I am talking, of course, from the position of someone who has always agreed with President George Washington’s warnings about foreign entanglements, made in his farewell address and one implicit in the basic thrust of the American political tradition of limited government. The limitation is not all that tough to grasp: it is self-defense, just as in the case of when people are justified to use force against each other, namely, when they have been attacked, when they encounter an aggressor. This does not include being deprived of someone else’s productive work or resources, including Iran’s oil. If my neighbor refuses to sell me his produce or labor, I have no right to attack him and try to force him to hand these to me because I want them very badly, even need them desperately. And if he arms himself and his family to the teeth in anticipation, justified or not, of being attacked by local gangs, that too is not cause for me to attack him.
Such is the proper standard of international military policy for a bona fide free society and whether that goes contrary to domestics intellectuals, the community of nations, the UN or whoever else sounds off about it, it makes no difference. None of that is going to make it right and, furthermore, one rotten consequence of it is that all the rhetorical opposition to international banditry is certainly going to sound mighty hallow!
Once a country’s government abandons the stance by which its use of force is kept to national defense and nothing else (however tempting it is to breach it), it has lost its moral authority as it criticizes other aggressors around the globe, including that of the Iranian or Syrian government against “its own people”. Rogue regimes everywhere, with their rulers aspiring to impose their will upon everyone, will be able to point to the USA and declare, correctly: “Look at the leaders of the free world, see how they butt into all manner of misconduct by their fellow governments, so clearly it must be permissible for us to act likewise when we disapprove of what others do!”
Just as the philosophy that demands restraining government domestically is the most radical and sound political idea--just compare it to all the imperialism throughout human history embarked upon by hundreds of regimes--so this insistence that governments keep to their oath of protecting the rights of their citizens is radical, sound and sadly neglected.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
Having to Fund Immoral Policies
Tibor R. Machan
At the outset I am talking about what someone considers immoral, not what is objectively immoral. Nonetheless, millions are coerced by governments, backed by other millions, to work and pay for what they consider morally wrong. Is that right? Is it avoidable in a democracy?
Back during the Vietnam war a great many opponents of that disastrous policy wanted to withhold their taxes, or the portion of it that went to fund the war. They were mostly from the Left but that doesn’t matter. The point is that such people argued that it is unjust to make them do this. And there is something to this: why would it be OK to require something to contribute resources he or she has produced and owns to a policy deemed to be morally wrong?
Granted requiring someone to make contributions to anything is objectionable but isn’t it more so if the policy is objected to by the victim of such coercion on moral grounds? Suppose the sources of the moral objection is one’s religion. Wouldn’t that contradict the idea of freedom of religion? You are supposed to be free to choose what faith you accept and practice but then you are forced to give up portions of your life for some other faith! Isn’t that inconsistent? You are both free to choose as well as not free to choose!
Doesn’t democracy amount to such this kind of confusion? Well, not if it’s property limited, as limited government champions have insisted it should be. All this stuff about funding or not funding contraceptives would be off the table, not up for the vote.
Today we have President Obama and his minions insisting that forcing Catholics, their churches and such, provide contraceptives and the like to people who want it from them is just fine. But Roman Catholics consider contraceptives an instrument for evil, like pacifists might guns. Would it be OK to demand that pacifists hand out lethal weapons to people who want it from them?
I proposed that this is no different from forcing people to fund a war in which they do not believe, which they regard unjust. I wrote this in a comment at The New York Times on line where one can contribute comments to columnists’ views and where these comments can be further commented on by others. Well, my comment received a bunch of bizarre follow-up comments claiming that there is a world of difference between wanting to withhold support for a war and wanting to do the same for government distributing contraceptives, a policy some consider unjust. But, in fact, the former is simply a different instance of the latter but it’s exactly the same kind of thing.
It reminds me of when people who often embrace democracy whole hog but then when the vote goes against them, cry foul! But if the democratic method is accepted as a valid approach to settling disputed issue, one has no business protesting the outcome. It is rank duplicity, even hypocrisy.
But here is the rub: Mr. Obama and his ideological cohorts are pragmatists and what is so convenient about pragmatism is that you can insist on some policy here, but reject it there, embrace it one hour and then denounce it the next. Because, you see, at least the type of pragmatism that Mr. Obama has often stated is his philosophy rejects principles from the git go. Yes, there are sophisticated pragmatists who defend their unprincipled viewpoint on grounds that principles are really impossible! Principled thinking is mere ideology, not based on reality, so they hold, since reality is too chaotic, too illogical to yield sound principles that can be used in guiding conduct and criticism. But Mr. Obama hasn’t bothered to provide a defense of his unprincipled stand on a great variety of issues, like undeclared wars, deficit spending, abortion, etc.
But then what is there if reason is passe? What would political campaigns be if candidates could not look for inconsistencies in their opponents? Well, then they would be what they have become, shouting matches, throwing dirt at one another, name calling, besmirching and such, that’s what. Because once logic is abandoned, once consistency is ruled out as a criterion of admissible thought and discourse as proposed by pragmatists, we are back just a step away from the jungle where reason has no place and force rules. As that famous painting of Goya says, “the sleep of reason brings forth monsters.”
Tibor R. Machan
At the outset I am talking about what someone considers immoral, not what is objectively immoral. Nonetheless, millions are coerced by governments, backed by other millions, to work and pay for what they consider morally wrong. Is that right? Is it avoidable in a democracy?
Back during the Vietnam war a great many opponents of that disastrous policy wanted to withhold their taxes, or the portion of it that went to fund the war. They were mostly from the Left but that doesn’t matter. The point is that such people argued that it is unjust to make them do this. And there is something to this: why would it be OK to require something to contribute resources he or she has produced and owns to a policy deemed to be morally wrong?
Granted requiring someone to make contributions to anything is objectionable but isn’t it more so if the policy is objected to by the victim of such coercion on moral grounds? Suppose the sources of the moral objection is one’s religion. Wouldn’t that contradict the idea of freedom of religion? You are supposed to be free to choose what faith you accept and practice but then you are forced to give up portions of your life for some other faith! Isn’t that inconsistent? You are both free to choose as well as not free to choose!
Doesn’t democracy amount to such this kind of confusion? Well, not if it’s property limited, as limited government champions have insisted it should be. All this stuff about funding or not funding contraceptives would be off the table, not up for the vote.
Today we have President Obama and his minions insisting that forcing Catholics, their churches and such, provide contraceptives and the like to people who want it from them is just fine. But Roman Catholics consider contraceptives an instrument for evil, like pacifists might guns. Would it be OK to demand that pacifists hand out lethal weapons to people who want it from them?
I proposed that this is no different from forcing people to fund a war in which they do not believe, which they regard unjust. I wrote this in a comment at The New York Times on line where one can contribute comments to columnists’ views and where these comments can be further commented on by others. Well, my comment received a bunch of bizarre follow-up comments claiming that there is a world of difference between wanting to withhold support for a war and wanting to do the same for government distributing contraceptives, a policy some consider unjust. But, in fact, the former is simply a different instance of the latter but it’s exactly the same kind of thing.
It reminds me of when people who often embrace democracy whole hog but then when the vote goes against them, cry foul! But if the democratic method is accepted as a valid approach to settling disputed issue, one has no business protesting the outcome. It is rank duplicity, even hypocrisy.
But here is the rub: Mr. Obama and his ideological cohorts are pragmatists and what is so convenient about pragmatism is that you can insist on some policy here, but reject it there, embrace it one hour and then denounce it the next. Because, you see, at least the type of pragmatism that Mr. Obama has often stated is his philosophy rejects principles from the git go. Yes, there are sophisticated pragmatists who defend their unprincipled viewpoint on grounds that principles are really impossible! Principled thinking is mere ideology, not based on reality, so they hold, since reality is too chaotic, too illogical to yield sound principles that can be used in guiding conduct and criticism. But Mr. Obama hasn’t bothered to provide a defense of his unprincipled stand on a great variety of issues, like undeclared wars, deficit spending, abortion, etc.
But then what is there if reason is passe? What would political campaigns be if candidates could not look for inconsistencies in their opponents? Well, then they would be what they have become, shouting matches, throwing dirt at one another, name calling, besmirching and such, that’s what. Because once logic is abandoned, once consistency is ruled out as a criterion of admissible thought and discourse as proposed by pragmatists, we are back just a step away from the jungle where reason has no place and force rules. As that famous painting of Goya says, “the sleep of reason brings forth monsters.”
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Machan’s Archives: Democracy versus Liberty
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’s 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, are protected from any human agent bent on violating them.
Democracy at its best 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, 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, 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 someone is a free, which means a self-governing, person, then even the majority of one's fellows lack the authority to take over one's governance without one's consent. I cannot be otherwise unless there is prior agreement by all to accept such a process. The consent of the governed amounts to this and that 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 perform an operation 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. That would be involuntary servitude!
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, or assault another person, even if one fails to consent to this. And when government does the job of protecting individual rights, government may order one to abstain from all such aggressive actions. But that doesn't actually involve intruding on people, only protecting everyone from intrusions.
It is along these lines that the idea of limited government arises: government 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, 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 idea was 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, now the 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 salvation 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 taking part in democratic decision-making, the scope of government is no longer limited in principle or 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--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. And check developments in our time in the Middle East!
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.
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’s 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, are protected from any human agent bent on violating them.
Democracy at its best 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, 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, 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 someone is a free, which means a self-governing, person, then even the majority of one's fellows lack the authority to take over one's governance without one's consent. I cannot be otherwise unless there is prior agreement by all to accept such a process. The consent of the governed amounts to this and that 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 perform an operation 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. That would be involuntary servitude!
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, or assault another person, even if one fails to consent to this. And when government does the job of protecting individual rights, government may order one to abstain from all such aggressive actions. But that doesn't actually involve intruding on people, only protecting everyone from intrusions.
It is along these lines that the idea of limited government arises: government 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, 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 idea was 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, now the 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 salvation 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 taking part in democratic decision-making, the scope of government is no longer limited in principle or 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--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. And check developments in our time in the Middle East!
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.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Machan’s Archives: Thanks for the technology (updated)!
Tibor R. Machan
In 1972 I bought a Volvo P1800 off the Chevy used car lot in Santa Barbara, California. I owned that car for 20 years and am still sad to have had to sell it in 1992, after putting 250,000 miles on it and driving it back and forth over the USA about 17 times.
I recall this now because with all the praise heaped upon “green,” it is largely those in the field of practical science, technology, who have to endure a great deal of finger wagging. Yet, we should often extend warm thanks to the engineers who designed and produced our various technologies? I certainly did, silently but often, extend thanks to the engineers who designed my wonderful car and all sorts of gadgets that have made my life better since.
Today, instead of dissing scientists and technologists, I would like to thank the designers, engineers, and doctors. The latter, for example, have helped me regain the use of my eyes. And some are working hard to improve my back which has been operated on a few times but is still functioning pretty well, thanks to science and technology.
I often think about those people who invent the various useful gadgets we nearly take for granted these days – like the central air conditioning system in my house that makes it less of a chore for me to work at my computer, take good care of my house, and read the fine novels I love so much during the hot spells of our summers in Southern California. Or the central heat – which I rarely use because after all, I can put clothes on nearly endlessly, whereas even going about buck naked is no relief when the heat gets very high up there. I think, also, of the people who made the pain-relievers I and millions of others take when we have serious aches and pains, or those who make the supplementary vitamins or... well, you name it. Few among the elite commentators around the country appear to pay them heed other than to lament all the technology they have produced.
All you need to call up feelings of gratitude is to notice how one’s ordinary life is improved when one has the great variety of products available from the market place. Yes, sometimes I am overcome with a powerful feeling of gratitude and wish I actually knew more of those who make such things so I could thank them personally.
Moreover, I feel very protective of these folks when I hear various critics of modern technology. Today nearly all efforts to make things better for us – be it based in biology, chemistry, physics, electronics or what have you – tend to be lambasted by some high and mighty sounding Luddite. Indeed, I have resolved never to be complacent about such attacks, to rise to the defense of these folks who often simply go about the work diligently and competently but do not prepare well enough for being chided by the Luddites of the world.
Greens, in the main, and their kin across the globe tend to be thoughtlessly hostile to those who are devoted to improving our lives. Such critics give voice to an asceticism that no one who has ever had the benefit of microsurgery or ambulance transport could consider warranted.
Take as an example the folks at Oregon State University, who follow the ideas of "Simply Beautiful," a program developed by Sam Quick and Robert Flashman, whose motto is "To be content with what we have at this moment, to bloom where we are planted – this is the wisdom of gratitude, this is the very foundation of a simply beautiful life." They want everything to be simple again (as if things ever were simple). They need not preach to me their reactionary notions. This is like that time when a device was invited that restored hearing to some of those who are deaf and some outfit threw a fit about this, claiming that such an invention implies that there is something wrong with being deaf. What perversity!
Of course, we pay for these inventions and creations and those who design them mostly make a pretty decent living, so they do not go unrewarded. But few are actually thanked much. Nor are the middlemen who invest in their work and take financial risks with these designers, engineers, and inventors. They tend to be overlooked, yet they ought to be honored more often. (Now and then I think the Nobel Prize is misdirected to the pure scientists, who are having so much fun already, leaving the practical implementers less prominently acknowledged.)
There’s of course the great benefit produced by all those implements that enable us to keep in touch with parents, children, friends, colleagues and others by electronic means, by email, texting, cell phones (hands free and not), and the rest. (I personally manage to contact my new grandson via Skype and instant message with my three grown children on Google! Then there are my family members who live abroad and whom I used to have to wait for months to be in touch with, via a regular mail and an occasional very expensive phone call!)
Anyway, here is a toast to those who try to figure out ways to make our lives better for us in those more or less small ways by which someone like me, for example, can continue to read and write and drive about safely. Thank you all! The fact that everything can be abused or corrupted, isn’t their fault!
Tibor R. Machan
In 1972 I bought a Volvo P1800 off the Chevy used car lot in Santa Barbara, California. I owned that car for 20 years and am still sad to have had to sell it in 1992, after putting 250,000 miles on it and driving it back and forth over the USA about 17 times.
I recall this now because with all the praise heaped upon “green,” it is largely those in the field of practical science, technology, who have to endure a great deal of finger wagging. Yet, we should often extend warm thanks to the engineers who designed and produced our various technologies? I certainly did, silently but often, extend thanks to the engineers who designed my wonderful car and all sorts of gadgets that have made my life better since.
Today, instead of dissing scientists and technologists, I would like to thank the designers, engineers, and doctors. The latter, for example, have helped me regain the use of my eyes. And some are working hard to improve my back which has been operated on a few times but is still functioning pretty well, thanks to science and technology.
I often think about those people who invent the various useful gadgets we nearly take for granted these days – like the central air conditioning system in my house that makes it less of a chore for me to work at my computer, take good care of my house, and read the fine novels I love so much during the hot spells of our summers in Southern California. Or the central heat – which I rarely use because after all, I can put clothes on nearly endlessly, whereas even going about buck naked is no relief when the heat gets very high up there. I think, also, of the people who made the pain-relievers I and millions of others take when we have serious aches and pains, or those who make the supplementary vitamins or... well, you name it. Few among the elite commentators around the country appear to pay them heed other than to lament all the technology they have produced.
All you need to call up feelings of gratitude is to notice how one’s ordinary life is improved when one has the great variety of products available from the market place. Yes, sometimes I am overcome with a powerful feeling of gratitude and wish I actually knew more of those who make such things so I could thank them personally.
Moreover, I feel very protective of these folks when I hear various critics of modern technology. Today nearly all efforts to make things better for us – be it based in biology, chemistry, physics, electronics or what have you – tend to be lambasted by some high and mighty sounding Luddite. Indeed, I have resolved never to be complacent about such attacks, to rise to the defense of these folks who often simply go about the work diligently and competently but do not prepare well enough for being chided by the Luddites of the world.
Greens, in the main, and their kin across the globe tend to be thoughtlessly hostile to those who are devoted to improving our lives. Such critics give voice to an asceticism that no one who has ever had the benefit of microsurgery or ambulance transport could consider warranted.
Take as an example the folks at Oregon State University, who follow the ideas of "Simply Beautiful," a program developed by Sam Quick and Robert Flashman, whose motto is "To be content with what we have at this moment, to bloom where we are planted – this is the wisdom of gratitude, this is the very foundation of a simply beautiful life." They want everything to be simple again (as if things ever were simple). They need not preach to me their reactionary notions. This is like that time when a device was invited that restored hearing to some of those who are deaf and some outfit threw a fit about this, claiming that such an invention implies that there is something wrong with being deaf. What perversity!
Of course, we pay for these inventions and creations and those who design them mostly make a pretty decent living, so they do not go unrewarded. But few are actually thanked much. Nor are the middlemen who invest in their work and take financial risks with these designers, engineers, and inventors. They tend to be overlooked, yet they ought to be honored more often. (Now and then I think the Nobel Prize is misdirected to the pure scientists, who are having so much fun already, leaving the practical implementers less prominently acknowledged.)
There’s of course the great benefit produced by all those implements that enable us to keep in touch with parents, children, friends, colleagues and others by electronic means, by email, texting, cell phones (hands free and not), and the rest. (I personally manage to contact my new grandson via Skype and instant message with my three grown children on Google! Then there are my family members who live abroad and whom I used to have to wait for months to be in touch with, via a regular mail and an occasional very expensive phone call!)
Anyway, here is a toast to those who try to figure out ways to make our lives better for us in those more or less small ways by which someone like me, for example, can continue to read and write and drive about safely. Thank you all! The fact that everything can be abused or corrupted, isn’t their fault!
Monday, February 27, 2012
Faiths and Public Affairs
Tibor R. Machan
Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has made an impassioned pitch in favor of rejecting the famous doctrine of the separation of church and state. He made his position clear on the ABC-TV program, This Week, on Sunday, February 26: “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,’’ Santorum noted. “The idea that the church should have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical of the objectives and vision of our country.’’
Of course the exact statement he made is sadly hyperbolic since no one has ever advocated that church should have no influence on the operations of the state or government. Religion clearly has influence through its role in the formation of individual opinions which in a free country play a crucial role in guiding public affairs. As a matter of the faith of the citizenry, religion’s involvement in public affairs is ubiquitous.
The idea behind the church-state separation is that when it comes to public affairs or the official edicts of governments, these are not supposed to be based on church policies or doctrines but on the secular ideas of the country’s constitution, ideas that any human being is capable of grasping and criticizing, no matter his or her religion. Let us see what lies behind this position and why it is sound.
When we discuss political economy, resting one’s case on faith places one’s ideas on wobbly foundations. By “faith” is meant a mode of belief based on the will to accept or commit, often despite systematic evidence to the contrary, or on belief not based on supporting evidence of the sort available for systematic, organized, public scrutiny. Indeed, faith is often taken by its champions and adherents to be something extra rational. Its merit lies, supposedly, in the fact that it is not based on evidence or reason but often contradicts both. Thus it is harder to sustain--and it is this difficulty that is supposed to make it a noble achievement to have and keep such a faith. If it were a conviction or belief based on evidence and reason it would lack this element, or so some theologians and religious leaders maintain.
The problem with faith is that, especially concerning matters of public policy, but even vis-a-vis personal and social problems, it is rather hopeless to expect congruence or agreement to arise among very different people with different experiences, traditions, and religious convictions which are based on faith. How, then, can faith be used to reach common or public convictions?
Faith is a very private mental disposition. In many theological systems it is supposed to be at God's discretion whether someone will have faith or not. Augustine, for example, saw it as something that people acquired by the grace of God. Within this tradition, human beings are in a sense impotent when it comes to gaining faith—they are either graced with it or not.
But in matters of importance to all people, to the citizenry as a whole, it is futile to rely on such a method for reaching understanding and convictions. Indeed, there is a virtual guarantee of discord when faith is invoked. It may be appreciated, in this light, why there are nearly 4,200 different religions in the United States alone and why so many of the public conflicts around the globe find much of their source in religious views, and why religion is something that many people refuse to debate or argue (since, again, one either has or doesn’t have it). The religious based conflicts across the globe occur mostly where religion and the public sphere are thoroughly intertwined.
To be sure, religion has been present for most of history. As George Orwell illustrates in his classic book and indictment of communism, Animal Farm, there is always a priest or minister around no matter what politics happen to dominate (represented by the omnipresence of the raven through his story). Thus, Roman Catholic and other churches didn’t even collapse under the self-proclaimed atheistic system of communism and managed to live peacefully within others.
The presence of religion in nearly all epochs and societies, however, is no argument for the truth of much of what these religions proclaim—after all, most societies adhere to widespread superstitions, such as astrology, as well as all kinds of dubious practices and institutions, which arguably rest on various false beliefs about the world and about how we all should live. The pervasiveness of these doesn’t render them true.
Nonetheless, it is probably because religions consider a good deal of what is important to human life, like codes of conduct that resonate so sufficiently with common sense, that they have staying power. And there is also the plain fact that secular philosophies haven’t been sufficiently attentive to ethics or morality—often claiming that these, too, along with the descriptive parts of theologies, are myths. This isn’t a credible view and religions have thrived by holding that they alone can provide people with ethics for guiding their lives.
There are also many heroic acts by religious people against various forms of tyranny. But these don’t render the general outlook of the heroes true. For example, Roman Catholic Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary opposed the Stalinist regime in his country, invoking grounds that any secular liberal thinker could appreciate. Lord Acton's liberalism isn’t especially wedded to religion even though he himself was Catholic. Although the real concerns many religious people have about tyrannies and totalitarian regimes needn’t be based on any specifically religious convictions—unless, of course, everything one believes rests on those—the ethical leadership provided from within religion has been significant in fighting such systems.
The bottom line is that what makes us human, most of all, is that we use reason and need to do so to make headway in our daily lives. In a country fit for human survival and for thriving, religion can’t be a basis for public policy. That’s why resting beliefs on the common capacity to reason, instead of on faith, and the need to discuss with others how one should lead one’s life, has greater promise for peace and justice, especially in organized human communities inhabited by very different people.
So, one crucial reason that religiously based public policies have dubious merit is that their justification can’t be examined along lines available to us in virtue of our humanity alone. A human community, as opposed to a sectarian or religious one, can’t rest its institutions on what arises from faith—especially not if those institutions aim to be considered fairly and openly by all those who might be citizens, including members of very different religious denominations as well as many who lack any such membership.
Nonetheless, in a multicultural, highly diverse society such as those in most of the advanced civilizations today, especially the famous melting pot that’s the United States of America, the realm of public affairs cannot be approached from a religious viewpoint. Doing that would necessarily result in constant internal conflicts that are in principle unresolvable.
Accordingly Rick Santorum’s call for what would amount to a substantially theocratic society must be rejected by all reasonable citizens, especially those who realize that religion is vital to their own lives regardless of how little that religion is shared by their fellow citizens. The best defense of religion and its free exercise is not to allow any particular faith to become dominant via the political system.
Tibor R. Machan
Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has made an impassioned pitch in favor of rejecting the famous doctrine of the separation of church and state. He made his position clear on the ABC-TV program, This Week, on Sunday, February 26: “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,’’ Santorum noted. “The idea that the church should have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical of the objectives and vision of our country.’’
Of course the exact statement he made is sadly hyperbolic since no one has ever advocated that church should have no influence on the operations of the state or government. Religion clearly has influence through its role in the formation of individual opinions which in a free country play a crucial role in guiding public affairs. As a matter of the faith of the citizenry, religion’s involvement in public affairs is ubiquitous.
The idea behind the church-state separation is that when it comes to public affairs or the official edicts of governments, these are not supposed to be based on church policies or doctrines but on the secular ideas of the country’s constitution, ideas that any human being is capable of grasping and criticizing, no matter his or her religion. Let us see what lies behind this position and why it is sound.
When we discuss political economy, resting one’s case on faith places one’s ideas on wobbly foundations. By “faith” is meant a mode of belief based on the will to accept or commit, often despite systematic evidence to the contrary, or on belief not based on supporting evidence of the sort available for systematic, organized, public scrutiny. Indeed, faith is often taken by its champions and adherents to be something extra rational. Its merit lies, supposedly, in the fact that it is not based on evidence or reason but often contradicts both. Thus it is harder to sustain--and it is this difficulty that is supposed to make it a noble achievement to have and keep such a faith. If it were a conviction or belief based on evidence and reason it would lack this element, or so some theologians and religious leaders maintain.
The problem with faith is that, especially concerning matters of public policy, but even vis-a-vis personal and social problems, it is rather hopeless to expect congruence or agreement to arise among very different people with different experiences, traditions, and religious convictions which are based on faith. How, then, can faith be used to reach common or public convictions?
Faith is a very private mental disposition. In many theological systems it is supposed to be at God's discretion whether someone will have faith or not. Augustine, for example, saw it as something that people acquired by the grace of God. Within this tradition, human beings are in a sense impotent when it comes to gaining faith—they are either graced with it or not.
But in matters of importance to all people, to the citizenry as a whole, it is futile to rely on such a method for reaching understanding and convictions. Indeed, there is a virtual guarantee of discord when faith is invoked. It may be appreciated, in this light, why there are nearly 4,200 different religions in the United States alone and why so many of the public conflicts around the globe find much of their source in religious views, and why religion is something that many people refuse to debate or argue (since, again, one either has or doesn’t have it). The religious based conflicts across the globe occur mostly where religion and the public sphere are thoroughly intertwined.
To be sure, religion has been present for most of history. As George Orwell illustrates in his classic book and indictment of communism, Animal Farm, there is always a priest or minister around no matter what politics happen to dominate (represented by the omnipresence of the raven through his story). Thus, Roman Catholic and other churches didn’t even collapse under the self-proclaimed atheistic system of communism and managed to live peacefully within others.
The presence of religion in nearly all epochs and societies, however, is no argument for the truth of much of what these religions proclaim—after all, most societies adhere to widespread superstitions, such as astrology, as well as all kinds of dubious practices and institutions, which arguably rest on various false beliefs about the world and about how we all should live. The pervasiveness of these doesn’t render them true.
Nonetheless, it is probably because religions consider a good deal of what is important to human life, like codes of conduct that resonate so sufficiently with common sense, that they have staying power. And there is also the plain fact that secular philosophies haven’t been sufficiently attentive to ethics or morality—often claiming that these, too, along with the descriptive parts of theologies, are myths. This isn’t a credible view and religions have thrived by holding that they alone can provide people with ethics for guiding their lives.
There are also many heroic acts by religious people against various forms of tyranny. But these don’t render the general outlook of the heroes true. For example, Roman Catholic Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary opposed the Stalinist regime in his country, invoking grounds that any secular liberal thinker could appreciate. Lord Acton's liberalism isn’t especially wedded to religion even though he himself was Catholic. Although the real concerns many religious people have about tyrannies and totalitarian regimes needn’t be based on any specifically religious convictions—unless, of course, everything one believes rests on those—the ethical leadership provided from within religion has been significant in fighting such systems.
The bottom line is that what makes us human, most of all, is that we use reason and need to do so to make headway in our daily lives. In a country fit for human survival and for thriving, religion can’t be a basis for public policy. That’s why resting beliefs on the common capacity to reason, instead of on faith, and the need to discuss with others how one should lead one’s life, has greater promise for peace and justice, especially in organized human communities inhabited by very different people.
So, one crucial reason that religiously based public policies have dubious merit is that their justification can’t be examined along lines available to us in virtue of our humanity alone. A human community, as opposed to a sectarian or religious one, can’t rest its institutions on what arises from faith—especially not if those institutions aim to be considered fairly and openly by all those who might be citizens, including members of very different religious denominations as well as many who lack any such membership.
Nonetheless, in a multicultural, highly diverse society such as those in most of the advanced civilizations today, especially the famous melting pot that’s the United States of America, the realm of public affairs cannot be approached from a religious viewpoint. Doing that would necessarily result in constant internal conflicts that are in principle unresolvable.
Accordingly Rick Santorum’s call for what would amount to a substantially theocratic society must be rejected by all reasonable citizens, especially those who realize that religion is vital to their own lives regardless of how little that religion is shared by their fellow citizens. The best defense of religion and its free exercise is not to allow any particular faith to become dominant via the political system.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
A prominent Pair of False Alternatives
Tibor R. Machan
Jon Gertner, author of the forthcoming “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation,”* writes for The New York Times (in an excerpt from his book), about innovation in America. I spotted the piece and immediately suspected there was a hidden motive behind it, not, indeed, one that was aiming at “understanding,” the purposes Gertner purports to find behind what “our innovative forbears” had in mind, as opposed to profit! So he writes, for example:
"The conflation of ... different kinds of innovations seems to be leading us toward a belief that small groups of profit-seeking entrepreneurs turning out innovative consumer products are as effective as our innovative forebears. History does not support this belief. The teams at Bell Labs that invented the laser, transistor and solar cell were not seeking profits. They were seeking understanding. Yet in the process they created not only new products but entirely new — and lucrative — industries…."
This kind of writing, referring to some alleged belief that “we” are lead to--who “we”?--isn’t about enlightenment but about promoting a not so hidden agenda. It is that most of the talk among those who try to understand American culture, including science and technology--especially talk by economists who defend the free market, is misguided--the profit motive isn’t what advances knowledge, it is the goal of understanding that does this.
Well, why is the goal of understanding juxtaposed with profit? Isn’t, in fact, one of the elements of profit to gain understanding? Places like Bell Labs, where Mr. Gertner did much of his research for his book and for the article in The Times, were established throughout the globe so as to promote greater and greater understanding which, in turn, is supposed to give support to the pursuit of all kinds of progress, including making a profit.
So called pure science is often contrasted with so called applied science but the contrast is artificial, just as are so called theoretical and practical knowledge. Such a contrast is the outgrowth of bad philosophy, of an artificial division of human knowledge into two kinds. In philosophy it is the contrast between analytical versus synthetic knowledge, the former dealing with the relationship between ideas and the latter with the application of ideas for some “practical” purpose (suggesting that ideas on their own aren’t practical).
Of course, in philosophy, especially the philosophy of science, such a contrast has always met with strong criticism. One critic, the late Harvard philosopher Willard van Orman Quine, wrote a seminal and very influential paper on this very issue, one that, sadly, Jon Gertner appears to be unfamiliar with. It was written in 1951 and titled Two Dogmas of Empiricism.
Empiricism is a very prominent and promising school of epistemology, the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of human knowledge. The dogmas in question are that there exists factual (empirical) and theoretical (conceptual), knowledge, which are very different. From a long time ago these two dogmas have been very widely embraced but also rejected by many. Plato in his way embraced them while Aristotle didn’t, to put the matter a bit simply. As Quine’s paper suggests, all human knowledge is, well, knowledge of the world, not knowledge of two realms, such as that of facts and that of ideas. The only sense in which these two are actually distinguishable is that there is the world, the realm of facts, and there is our understanding of the world, the realm of ideas. But the latter is always in some way about the former.
Now back to Mr. Gertner’s supposedly innovative idea, namely, that people do not engage in scientific and technological research to gain profit but to gain understanding. In fact the better way to put it is that as people seek to understand the world, they achieve knowledge that enables them to address problems in the world, some of which indeed advance their well being. Which is to say that some of what understanding promotes is prosperity or profit. Some of it is of course, placed on the back burner, for possible future practical use. Some such understanding is used to play with, as it were--for experiment, speculation, etc.
But if one wishes to undermine an element of the case for a free society, including a free market place, one might like to show that understanding is a higher goal than profit and that the two aren’t actually very closely related. Pure science, which is supposed to promote understanding, can be pursued but not in contrast to the pursuit of practical goals.
So there is nothing in what Mr. Gertner argues that undermines one main reason for having a free society, namely, to secure human freedom, with government mainly out of the way other than in its limited role as the cop on the beat who keeps the peace.
*http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html
Tibor R. Machan
Jon Gertner, author of the forthcoming “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation,”* writes for The New York Times (in an excerpt from his book), about innovation in America. I spotted the piece and immediately suspected there was a hidden motive behind it, not, indeed, one that was aiming at “understanding,” the purposes Gertner purports to find behind what “our innovative forbears” had in mind, as opposed to profit! So he writes, for example:
"The conflation of ... different kinds of innovations seems to be leading us toward a belief that small groups of profit-seeking entrepreneurs turning out innovative consumer products are as effective as our innovative forebears. History does not support this belief. The teams at Bell Labs that invented the laser, transistor and solar cell were not seeking profits. They were seeking understanding. Yet in the process they created not only new products but entirely new — and lucrative — industries…."
This kind of writing, referring to some alleged belief that “we” are lead to--who “we”?--isn’t about enlightenment but about promoting a not so hidden agenda. It is that most of the talk among those who try to understand American culture, including science and technology--especially talk by economists who defend the free market, is misguided--the profit motive isn’t what advances knowledge, it is the goal of understanding that does this.
Well, why is the goal of understanding juxtaposed with profit? Isn’t, in fact, one of the elements of profit to gain understanding? Places like Bell Labs, where Mr. Gertner did much of his research for his book and for the article in The Times, were established throughout the globe so as to promote greater and greater understanding which, in turn, is supposed to give support to the pursuit of all kinds of progress, including making a profit.
So called pure science is often contrasted with so called applied science but the contrast is artificial, just as are so called theoretical and practical knowledge. Such a contrast is the outgrowth of bad philosophy, of an artificial division of human knowledge into two kinds. In philosophy it is the contrast between analytical versus synthetic knowledge, the former dealing with the relationship between ideas and the latter with the application of ideas for some “practical” purpose (suggesting that ideas on their own aren’t practical).
Of course, in philosophy, especially the philosophy of science, such a contrast has always met with strong criticism. One critic, the late Harvard philosopher Willard van Orman Quine, wrote a seminal and very influential paper on this very issue, one that, sadly, Jon Gertner appears to be unfamiliar with. It was written in 1951 and titled Two Dogmas of Empiricism.
Empiricism is a very prominent and promising school of epistemology, the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of human knowledge. The dogmas in question are that there exists factual (empirical) and theoretical (conceptual), knowledge, which are very different. From a long time ago these two dogmas have been very widely embraced but also rejected by many. Plato in his way embraced them while Aristotle didn’t, to put the matter a bit simply. As Quine’s paper suggests, all human knowledge is, well, knowledge of the world, not knowledge of two realms, such as that of facts and that of ideas. The only sense in which these two are actually distinguishable is that there is the world, the realm of facts, and there is our understanding of the world, the realm of ideas. But the latter is always in some way about the former.
Now back to Mr. Gertner’s supposedly innovative idea, namely, that people do not engage in scientific and technological research to gain profit but to gain understanding. In fact the better way to put it is that as people seek to understand the world, they achieve knowledge that enables them to address problems in the world, some of which indeed advance their well being. Which is to say that some of what understanding promotes is prosperity or profit. Some of it is of course, placed on the back burner, for possible future practical use. Some such understanding is used to play with, as it were--for experiment, speculation, etc.
But if one wishes to undermine an element of the case for a free society, including a free market place, one might like to show that understanding is a higher goal than profit and that the two aren’t actually very closely related. Pure science, which is supposed to promote understanding, can be pursued but not in contrast to the pursuit of practical goals.
So there is nothing in what Mr. Gertner argues that undermines one main reason for having a free society, namely, to secure human freedom, with government mainly out of the way other than in its limited role as the cop on the beat who keeps the peace.
*http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-and-the-bell-labs-miracle.html
Thursday, February 23, 2012
The Tenacity of the Nihilists
Tibor R. Machan
In the book Reading Obama (Princeton, 2010), James T. Kloppenberg makes a case for how the kind of approach President Obama takes to public policy is now widely preferred, to put it paradoxically, on principle at the most prestigious universities. Obama’s rejection of general principles, the kind of we find stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, is in sync with what has come to be mainstream philosophy in America.
Mind you this is no novel insight about American intellectual life. Pragmatism is, after all, America’s homegrown school of philosophy, one that on principle rejects the value of principled thinking! Now pragmatism has several versions but the one that has become fashionable is what such people as Paul Krugman ridicule by calling principled thinkers “fundamentalists” as if they were dogmatic, mindless, and doctrinaire.
Principled thinkers, such as the American founders, are nothing like this. The principles they found valid for governing a free society were learned from extensive studies of history, by philosophical education and reflection, and by reading a lot of others who embarked on inquiries about human affairs.
In a way those alleged fundamentalists whom at least the more vulgar type of pragmatists try to marginalize are like medical scientists. They learn about the criteria of good health and physical condition from their study of human life, a study that comes up with certain reasonably stable notions about what can be done to achieve and maintain good health. These notions are not Platonic forms, fixed in heaven forever and incapable of being modified and updated. But they aren’t the infinitely flexible ones that are preferred by those who scoff at principled thinking. Engineers, farmers, gardeners, pharmacists and others who take the findings of the various sciences and translate and apply them to problem solving aren’t doctrinaire or dogmatic for being guided by generalizations, principles that come out of those sciences and the experimentation that is part and parcel of them.
Indeed, all disciplines are comprised of more or less fundamental notions that come out of the studies being done in them and the practical implementation of the results of those studies. It is like a pyramid, with some very basic propositions that, to use a phrase the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made prominent, “stand fast for us,” as well as ones that are less and less well established and more subject to revisions.
Instead of denying that there are fundamentals in fields like political economy and political science, embracing a vast Heraclitian flux that leaves everything indeterminate, ambiguous and open to infinite interpretation, depending upon the personal preferences of those concerned with a discipline, a better, contextual approach is warranted. Even pragmatists tip their hats to this when they for example refuse to be flexible about the viciousness of rape or murder. They know that some things do stand fast for us, including the value of human life, maybe even of human liberty!
However, those spending reams of paper apologizing for Barack Obama’s wobbly political economic decisions and policies act as if this abyss of pragmatically invented ideas could really guide public policy reasonably, productively. (Check out Sam Tanenhaus's "Will the Tea Get Cold?" in the March 8, 2012 issue of The New York Review of Books as a good example!) They ought to check with those who study and practice such fields as medicine, engineering, farming, or auto mechanics and see if anything could be dealt with successfully without general principles, with well founded theories in them. They would find that none of these vital areas of concern can bear fruit without principled thought. And thus they could also realize that neither can the discipline of political economy.
To put the matter bluntly, so called market fundamentalists--as Krugman likes to call people who hold that the best economic arrangements in societies should rely on the free choices of economic agents--are on solid footing; it is sheer laziness not to seek out firm economic principles and theories and proceed by mere intuition, by, literally, nothing at all. Such nihilism hasn’t advanced any of the fields of study, research and reflection that human beings have relied upon to steer them toward a more and more successful way of living, including of organizing their communities.
And let us no kid ourselves: One reason the nihilist’s stance is attractive is that it supports the policy of arbitrary governing, governing that need not give any account of itself, governing that is, ultimately, autocratic and a matter of pure will. Yes, there are some authentic pragmatists and even nihilists but mostly these positions give aid and comfort to corrupt leaders and their cheerleaders in the academy.
Tibor R. Machan
In the book Reading Obama (Princeton, 2010), James T. Kloppenberg makes a case for how the kind of approach President Obama takes to public policy is now widely preferred, to put it paradoxically, on principle at the most prestigious universities. Obama’s rejection of general principles, the kind of we find stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, is in sync with what has come to be mainstream philosophy in America.
Mind you this is no novel insight about American intellectual life. Pragmatism is, after all, America’s homegrown school of philosophy, one that on principle rejects the value of principled thinking! Now pragmatism has several versions but the one that has become fashionable is what such people as Paul Krugman ridicule by calling principled thinkers “fundamentalists” as if they were dogmatic, mindless, and doctrinaire.
Principled thinkers, such as the American founders, are nothing like this. The principles they found valid for governing a free society were learned from extensive studies of history, by philosophical education and reflection, and by reading a lot of others who embarked on inquiries about human affairs.
In a way those alleged fundamentalists whom at least the more vulgar type of pragmatists try to marginalize are like medical scientists. They learn about the criteria of good health and physical condition from their study of human life, a study that comes up with certain reasonably stable notions about what can be done to achieve and maintain good health. These notions are not Platonic forms, fixed in heaven forever and incapable of being modified and updated. But they aren’t the infinitely flexible ones that are preferred by those who scoff at principled thinking. Engineers, farmers, gardeners, pharmacists and others who take the findings of the various sciences and translate and apply them to problem solving aren’t doctrinaire or dogmatic for being guided by generalizations, principles that come out of those sciences and the experimentation that is part and parcel of them.
Indeed, all disciplines are comprised of more or less fundamental notions that come out of the studies being done in them and the practical implementation of the results of those studies. It is like a pyramid, with some very basic propositions that, to use a phrase the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made prominent, “stand fast for us,” as well as ones that are less and less well established and more subject to revisions.
Instead of denying that there are fundamentals in fields like political economy and political science, embracing a vast Heraclitian flux that leaves everything indeterminate, ambiguous and open to infinite interpretation, depending upon the personal preferences of those concerned with a discipline, a better, contextual approach is warranted. Even pragmatists tip their hats to this when they for example refuse to be flexible about the viciousness of rape or murder. They know that some things do stand fast for us, including the value of human life, maybe even of human liberty!
However, those spending reams of paper apologizing for Barack Obama’s wobbly political economic decisions and policies act as if this abyss of pragmatically invented ideas could really guide public policy reasonably, productively. (Check out Sam Tanenhaus's "Will the Tea Get Cold?" in the March 8, 2012 issue of The New York Review of Books as a good example!) They ought to check with those who study and practice such fields as medicine, engineering, farming, or auto mechanics and see if anything could be dealt with successfully without general principles, with well founded theories in them. They would find that none of these vital areas of concern can bear fruit without principled thought. And thus they could also realize that neither can the discipline of political economy.
To put the matter bluntly, so called market fundamentalists--as Krugman likes to call people who hold that the best economic arrangements in societies should rely on the free choices of economic agents--are on solid footing; it is sheer laziness not to seek out firm economic principles and theories and proceed by mere intuition, by, literally, nothing at all. Such nihilism hasn’t advanced any of the fields of study, research and reflection that human beings have relied upon to steer them toward a more and more successful way of living, including of organizing their communities.
And let us no kid ourselves: One reason the nihilist’s stance is attractive is that it supports the policy of arbitrary governing, governing that need not give any account of itself, governing that is, ultimately, autocratic and a matter of pure will. Yes, there are some authentic pragmatists and even nihilists but mostly these positions give aid and comfort to corrupt leaders and their cheerleaders in the academy.
Egalitarian Fallacies Galore!
Tibor R. Machan
I assume that writers like me want to be read, not ignored. But, alas, there isn’t much we can do about this except perhaps fine tune our craft. Even that merely improves the odds. None can make others read one’s works. Thousands are simply left unread. (Do they actually burn all those unread copies?)
Or take chefs who would naturally want the public to prefer their cuisine. Still, only a few customers will give it a shot. Or all those artists whose works hang in galleries but without being viewed by visitors. Or museums no one goes to. Or athletics no one cares much about, like the ones that were popular with my family, fencing and rowing. Just compare their fan base with football and baseball!
It’s all so unfair, one might shout out, especially if one is convinced that fairness is the highest value in society, which is the essential message of egalitarianism. From everything we know it is clear that life isn’t fair. What we forget is that there’s nothing wrong with that at all. People pick pretty or colorful flowers while weeds are not taken home and placed in vases, not most of the time. How unfair is that?! Most people have preferences for the company of certain types of other people, by no means for just anyone, let alone for everyone. Your favorite actor or comic or singer isn’t going to be everyone’s favorite. And so it goes, on and on without end.
As the title of one of the late Dr. Murray N. Rothbard’s books put it, “egalitarianism is a revolt against nature”. And some egalitarians are quite aware of this, which explains why under certain political regimes that want to transform societies to follow egalitarianism there is even a push not to allow parents to favor their own children with their love and care. When Mao was the dictator of communist China, news reports came out about a father who in a flood saved someone else’s and not his own child! This “father” was hailed as a hero!
That makes sense for a consistent egalitarian. As does the banning of friendship in a society since friends get special attention from us. Karl Marx’s preferred society was communism in which one had to love everyone equally! Which is why we hoped--indeed predicted--that communism will require a total transformation of human nature! And why under Joseph Stalin his pseudo-scientific agricultural guru, Lysenko, worked on manufacturing a society with everyone the same, with no unique individuals.
Interestingly, despite the fact that President Obama and his team of intellectual backers make a lot of noise in favor of equality--just go back and listen to the most recent state of the union speech which stressed egalitarian themes at every turn--the Republicans hardly touch the topic. They should critique it all over the place, point out some of the stuff Dr. Rothbard covered and is mentioned here! But either their advisers are falling down on their jobs or are scared of the topic since sadly a good many citizens, not to mention college professors in fields like moral and political philosophy, sociology, and the like, do hold such egalitarian ideals, at least implicitly, never mind how fantastic it all is.
Once I had a discussion with someone who defended Karl Marx, saying he was really quite democratic and advocated peaceful revolutions, not violent ones. Never mind the scholarship here, although there is something to it; the problem is that when one’s political ideal is so skewed, so much “against nature,” the only way to attempt to implement it is by means of massive violence, via a totalitarian police state. Everyone must be cut to the same size, made to fit the unrealistic vision of all citizens being fully equal. (Never mind that this bring about the most insidious inequality of all, some in society having inordinately more coercive power than do others!)
Why don’t the Republicans point this out against their political adversaries in any of their speeches and in the “debates”? Is it perhaps because they too have dreams of remaking society to fit some alternative vision that goes against human nature? Perhaps unlike liberal democrats and the fierce socialist among them, many Republicans and conservatives really want to bring about a society regimented along lines of spiritual equality, with everyone forced to get ready for their perfect afterlife!
Tibor R. Machan
I assume that writers like me want to be read, not ignored. But, alas, there isn’t much we can do about this except perhaps fine tune our craft. Even that merely improves the odds. None can make others read one’s works. Thousands are simply left unread. (Do they actually burn all those unread copies?)
Or take chefs who would naturally want the public to prefer their cuisine. Still, only a few customers will give it a shot. Or all those artists whose works hang in galleries but without being viewed by visitors. Or museums no one goes to. Or athletics no one cares much about, like the ones that were popular with my family, fencing and rowing. Just compare their fan base with football and baseball!
It’s all so unfair, one might shout out, especially if one is convinced that fairness is the highest value in society, which is the essential message of egalitarianism. From everything we know it is clear that life isn’t fair. What we forget is that there’s nothing wrong with that at all. People pick pretty or colorful flowers while weeds are not taken home and placed in vases, not most of the time. How unfair is that?! Most people have preferences for the company of certain types of other people, by no means for just anyone, let alone for everyone. Your favorite actor or comic or singer isn’t going to be everyone’s favorite. And so it goes, on and on without end.
As the title of one of the late Dr. Murray N. Rothbard’s books put it, “egalitarianism is a revolt against nature”. And some egalitarians are quite aware of this, which explains why under certain political regimes that want to transform societies to follow egalitarianism there is even a push not to allow parents to favor their own children with their love and care. When Mao was the dictator of communist China, news reports came out about a father who in a flood saved someone else’s and not his own child! This “father” was hailed as a hero!
That makes sense for a consistent egalitarian. As does the banning of friendship in a society since friends get special attention from us. Karl Marx’s preferred society was communism in which one had to love everyone equally! Which is why we hoped--indeed predicted--that communism will require a total transformation of human nature! And why under Joseph Stalin his pseudo-scientific agricultural guru, Lysenko, worked on manufacturing a society with everyone the same, with no unique individuals.
Interestingly, despite the fact that President Obama and his team of intellectual backers make a lot of noise in favor of equality--just go back and listen to the most recent state of the union speech which stressed egalitarian themes at every turn--the Republicans hardly touch the topic. They should critique it all over the place, point out some of the stuff Dr. Rothbard covered and is mentioned here! But either their advisers are falling down on their jobs or are scared of the topic since sadly a good many citizens, not to mention college professors in fields like moral and political philosophy, sociology, and the like, do hold such egalitarian ideals, at least implicitly, never mind how fantastic it all is.
Once I had a discussion with someone who defended Karl Marx, saying he was really quite democratic and advocated peaceful revolutions, not violent ones. Never mind the scholarship here, although there is something to it; the problem is that when one’s political ideal is so skewed, so much “against nature,” the only way to attempt to implement it is by means of massive violence, via a totalitarian police state. Everyone must be cut to the same size, made to fit the unrealistic vision of all citizens being fully equal. (Never mind that this bring about the most insidious inequality of all, some in society having inordinately more coercive power than do others!)
Why don’t the Republicans point this out against their political adversaries in any of their speeches and in the “debates”? Is it perhaps because they too have dreams of remaking society to fit some alternative vision that goes against human nature? Perhaps unlike liberal democrats and the fierce socialist among them, many Republicans and conservatives really want to bring about a society regimented along lines of spiritual equality, with everyone forced to get ready for their perfect afterlife!
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Obamacare and Involuntary Servitude
Tibor R. Machan
However much one learns to squirm out of one’s inconsistencies, logic usually bites one in the butt. Of course, strictly speaking logic is the formal system that’s supposed to guide our reasoning process and on its own doesn’t serve much more than that vital, indispensable task. That is why it is usually studied in symbolic form--As and Bs or ps and qs. When one complains that someone is being illogical, it means that he or she isn’t following the guidelines of logic.
In any case, the discussion of President Obama’s federal policy requiring that everyone obtain health insurance has frequently focused on the fact that either an employer or individual would be forced to obtain private health insurance instead of, as Wikipedia points it out, “or in addition to the institution of a national health service of insurance”. And many have suggested that this is a very unusual measure since it mandates specific performance from citizens, contrary to the legal tradition of the country. One may be forced to give up property but never to carry out a task, something that is reminiscent of slavery or involuntary servitude and thus directly in conflict with the idea of a free society.
It has been noted, now and then, that some laws do require specific performance despite all this, such as being forced to prepare tax returns, but this has been dismissed as rather trivial. However, there is a requirement imposed upon nearly every citizen, namely jury duty and complying with subpoenas--which often takes several days, even weeks from one’s life and imposes specific conduct that one must perform. Is this not just like the individual mandate to obtain health insurance--to go out and purchase this service?
In America jury duty has been objected to mainly by libertarians who have a firm conviction that the right to liberty is a natural--and should be a constitutional--right. Thus to coerce someone to serve on a jury in opposition to what he or she chooses to do would be to subject the person to a form of--maybe not Draconian but still significant--involuntary servitude.
Thus, the argument goes, as a matter of consistency the USA is already awash with a type of compulsory individual mandate and those who complain that Obamacare is breaking with a powerful American principle and tradition are wrong. Or, put more precisely, there is strong precedence for doing this so Obamacare isn’t something extraordinary in requiring specific performance from the citizenry.
There is a good case to be made to counter this, however. Both jury duty and complying with a subpoena do demand specific performance from American citizens, yes, but arguably in consequence of a voluntary commitment they have made in choosing to be citizens of the country. Both jury duty and complying with subpoenas are deemed as necessary for the pursuit of justice. And citizenship in a free country has exactly that as its central purpose, namely, to secure justice for everyone.
So if someone has witnessed a crime and is the only one who can provide testimony about it, refusing to do so is arguably going back on the free choice of a citizen of the country committed to securing justice for all. Refusal to serve on a jury might be so construed as well, although in that case the particular individual’s compliance could well be dispensed with. One could obtain the service involved by hiring a fellow citizen to sit on the jury. This is no option in most cases that one is subpoenaed to testify about what one has witnessed.
In any case, when one performs jury duty or testifies in response to a subpoena, it could be construed as fulfilling a implied promise one has made by becoming or being a citizen of a country the legal system of which is committed to securing justice for all. And that is clearly not involved in the individual mandate that’s part of Obamacare.
Obamacare would, in fact, set at least a federal precedent by compelling citizens to follow a mandate they haven’t consented to follow, to submit to the demand for involuntary servitude!
Tibor R. Machan
However much one learns to squirm out of one’s inconsistencies, logic usually bites one in the butt. Of course, strictly speaking logic is the formal system that’s supposed to guide our reasoning process and on its own doesn’t serve much more than that vital, indispensable task. That is why it is usually studied in symbolic form--As and Bs or ps and qs. When one complains that someone is being illogical, it means that he or she isn’t following the guidelines of logic.
In any case, the discussion of President Obama’s federal policy requiring that everyone obtain health insurance has frequently focused on the fact that either an employer or individual would be forced to obtain private health insurance instead of, as Wikipedia points it out, “or in addition to the institution of a national health service of insurance”. And many have suggested that this is a very unusual measure since it mandates specific performance from citizens, contrary to the legal tradition of the country. One may be forced to give up property but never to carry out a task, something that is reminiscent of slavery or involuntary servitude and thus directly in conflict with the idea of a free society.
It has been noted, now and then, that some laws do require specific performance despite all this, such as being forced to prepare tax returns, but this has been dismissed as rather trivial. However, there is a requirement imposed upon nearly every citizen, namely jury duty and complying with subpoenas--which often takes several days, even weeks from one’s life and imposes specific conduct that one must perform. Is this not just like the individual mandate to obtain health insurance--to go out and purchase this service?
In America jury duty has been objected to mainly by libertarians who have a firm conviction that the right to liberty is a natural--and should be a constitutional--right. Thus to coerce someone to serve on a jury in opposition to what he or she chooses to do would be to subject the person to a form of--maybe not Draconian but still significant--involuntary servitude.
Thus, the argument goes, as a matter of consistency the USA is already awash with a type of compulsory individual mandate and those who complain that Obamacare is breaking with a powerful American principle and tradition are wrong. Or, put more precisely, there is strong precedence for doing this so Obamacare isn’t something extraordinary in requiring specific performance from the citizenry.
There is a good case to be made to counter this, however. Both jury duty and complying with a subpoena do demand specific performance from American citizens, yes, but arguably in consequence of a voluntary commitment they have made in choosing to be citizens of the country. Both jury duty and complying with subpoenas are deemed as necessary for the pursuit of justice. And citizenship in a free country has exactly that as its central purpose, namely, to secure justice for everyone.
So if someone has witnessed a crime and is the only one who can provide testimony about it, refusing to do so is arguably going back on the free choice of a citizen of the country committed to securing justice for all. Refusal to serve on a jury might be so construed as well, although in that case the particular individual’s compliance could well be dispensed with. One could obtain the service involved by hiring a fellow citizen to sit on the jury. This is no option in most cases that one is subpoenaed to testify about what one has witnessed.
In any case, when one performs jury duty or testifies in response to a subpoena, it could be construed as fulfilling a implied promise one has made by becoming or being a citizen of a country the legal system of which is committed to securing justice for all. And that is clearly not involved in the individual mandate that’s part of Obamacare.
Obamacare would, in fact, set at least a federal precedent by compelling citizens to follow a mandate they haven’t consented to follow, to submit to the demand for involuntary servitude!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Why not Pessimism?
Tibor R. Machan
By most accounts there is little good news about any progress toward a freer society, quite the contrary. Around the globe, of course, there are some regions that are making small moves away from tyranny but even in those few, human freedom doesn’t appear to be a priority. Instead tribal and religious conflicts are the rule, even as the more vicious rulers are losing their grip on their populations. In Syria the tyrant is hanging on by a very thin thread yet elsewhere it’s mob rule that has replaced dictatorships.
In the USA, which at one time had the justified distinction of aspiring toward a fully free society--”leader of the free world”--the system and those who administer it pay hardly any heed to human liberty; the leadership is either wallowing in calls for economic equality (as if George Orwell had never written Animal Farm) or embarking wrangles about social and religious issues. (These Republicans certainly know how to drop the ball and miss opportunities!) Every problem that gains serious attention seems to call forth simply more statism from the elite; the possibility of turning toward more freedom is routinely denounced by prominent commentators. (I cannot get over Paul Krugman’s widely respected yet totally preposterous complaints about “market fundamentalism,” something he keeps alleging has gripped the country even though no evidence of it exists anywhere.)
Despite all this, there is reason to be hopeful. First, there is that proverbial long run to keep in mind; anyone who takes a close look at the sweep of human political history has to grant that there exists at least a “two steps forward, one back” phenomenon when it comes to the progress of freedom. Then there is the recent emergence of substantial respectability for libertarianism, with the likes of Ron Paul and his son Rand championing it openly among mainstream politicians and with the likes of Fox TV’s Judge Andrew Napolitano, John Stossel and others making a libertarian pitch on a very successful cable network, with regular appearances by and interviews with consistent, uncompromising champions of the fully free society. All those Reason Magazine and Reason.com folks certainly are a very welcome presence “on the air,” repeatedly, making their points very cogently. Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is going to give it a shot as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, lending his sharp message--one I consider more coherent and on point than those of Ron Paul whose is marred by both certain domestic conservative themes and somewhat over the top ideas on international affairs--to the growing demands for freedom coming from America’s main street (as against the insistent statism we get from too many prominent academics). And there is the growing acknowledgement from many corners that the profligacy of government just cannot be sustained, not without the serious threat of a police state that would be needed to coerce us all into compliance with the resulting grotesque economic policies such as increasing taxes on productive citizens and clamping down on all efforts to resist confiscatory tax policies around the country and abroad. (It bears remembering that John Maynard Keynes considered the Third Reich as a very promising place for his policies of economic meddling by the state--see the Introduction he wrote for the German translation of The General Theory!) Also, the general population seems to be tiring of rich bashing, although there are those, like the Occupy Wall Street bunch, who continue to be ignorantly deluded about the desirability and feasibility of economic leveling.
It is wise also, I think, to keep in mind that massive semi-democratic systems are very unlikely to ever settle into a sensible political regime, given all the conflicting and often bizarre influences that guide public policies and produce truly awful elected officials--think Barney Frank here. Nonetheless over the long haul freedom is making progress. Not in all places, for sure, and with major gaps not just at the national level but in our backyards. When a totally corrupt and counterproductive war on drugs can continue in force, it does appear to be hopeless to expect increasing sanity in the country.
Yet, all in all, the trend, albeit a slow one with many detours and interruptions, does seem to be pointing toward a freer world than before.
Tibor R. Machan
By most accounts there is little good news about any progress toward a freer society, quite the contrary. Around the globe, of course, there are some regions that are making small moves away from tyranny but even in those few, human freedom doesn’t appear to be a priority. Instead tribal and religious conflicts are the rule, even as the more vicious rulers are losing their grip on their populations. In Syria the tyrant is hanging on by a very thin thread yet elsewhere it’s mob rule that has replaced dictatorships.
In the USA, which at one time had the justified distinction of aspiring toward a fully free society--”leader of the free world”--the system and those who administer it pay hardly any heed to human liberty; the leadership is either wallowing in calls for economic equality (as if George Orwell had never written Animal Farm) or embarking wrangles about social and religious issues. (These Republicans certainly know how to drop the ball and miss opportunities!) Every problem that gains serious attention seems to call forth simply more statism from the elite; the possibility of turning toward more freedom is routinely denounced by prominent commentators. (I cannot get over Paul Krugman’s widely respected yet totally preposterous complaints about “market fundamentalism,” something he keeps alleging has gripped the country even though no evidence of it exists anywhere.)
Despite all this, there is reason to be hopeful. First, there is that proverbial long run to keep in mind; anyone who takes a close look at the sweep of human political history has to grant that there exists at least a “two steps forward, one back” phenomenon when it comes to the progress of freedom. Then there is the recent emergence of substantial respectability for libertarianism, with the likes of Ron Paul and his son Rand championing it openly among mainstream politicians and with the likes of Fox TV’s Judge Andrew Napolitano, John Stossel and others making a libertarian pitch on a very successful cable network, with regular appearances by and interviews with consistent, uncompromising champions of the fully free society. All those Reason Magazine and Reason.com folks certainly are a very welcome presence “on the air,” repeatedly, making their points very cogently. Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is going to give it a shot as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, lending his sharp message--one I consider more coherent and on point than those of Ron Paul whose is marred by both certain domestic conservative themes and somewhat over the top ideas on international affairs--to the growing demands for freedom coming from America’s main street (as against the insistent statism we get from too many prominent academics). And there is the growing acknowledgement from many corners that the profligacy of government just cannot be sustained, not without the serious threat of a police state that would be needed to coerce us all into compliance with the resulting grotesque economic policies such as increasing taxes on productive citizens and clamping down on all efforts to resist confiscatory tax policies around the country and abroad. (It bears remembering that John Maynard Keynes considered the Third Reich as a very promising place for his policies of economic meddling by the state--see the Introduction he wrote for the German translation of The General Theory!) Also, the general population seems to be tiring of rich bashing, although there are those, like the Occupy Wall Street bunch, who continue to be ignorantly deluded about the desirability and feasibility of economic leveling.
It is wise also, I think, to keep in mind that massive semi-democratic systems are very unlikely to ever settle into a sensible political regime, given all the conflicting and often bizarre influences that guide public policies and produce truly awful elected officials--think Barney Frank here. Nonetheless over the long haul freedom is making progress. Not in all places, for sure, and with major gaps not just at the national level but in our backyards. When a totally corrupt and counterproductive war on drugs can continue in force, it does appear to be hopeless to expect increasing sanity in the country.
Yet, all in all, the trend, albeit a slow one with many detours and interruptions, does seem to be pointing toward a freer world than before.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
A Small Pleasure of Book Production
Tibor R. Machan
One of my books is a collection of prominent essays by mostly contemporary libertarian political-economic thinkers. Its title, The Libertarian Reader (1982), was so well chosen that years later someone quite prominent, David Boaz of the Cato Institute, also used it for a collection of essays he put together, The Libertarian Reader (1998). (Just in case you didn’t know, in the publishing world it is acceptable to make us of the titles of already published books.)
One of the hopes of authors and editors of books is of course that these will be bought and read, not to mention in huge numbers. But unless one is a famous author or so dedicated to learning of the fate of one’s works, it is rare that one learns whether they have made the rounds. (In the academic world, of course, professors often assign books they have written or edited in their classes, although such self-dealing is widely frowned upon.)
I do know that another book of mine was at least considered for display in a movie or TV program because some years ago I received a form letter asking that I give permission for a producer to do just that with my The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner, originally published by Arlington House of New Rochelle, NY (later reprinted by the University Press of America) and once reviewed very favorably in by Robert W. Proctor and Daniel J. Weeks in The American Journal Of Psychology (Summer 1990). But I never learned if this ever came to pass.
But a few days ago I was watching the coverage of the Republican presidential primaries and as I looked at the bookshelf behind Representative Ron Paul as he was being interviewed, I noticed that The Libertarian Reader was among the books on his shelves. Well, that was gratifying, so much so that I paused my TV and took a picture of it all with my cell phone camera. (It didn’t come out well but still, there it is, in living, albeit blurry, color.)
Of course, Ron Paul is known as a libertarian--he once was nominated for president by the national libertarian party. I think I even met him once when he visited Auburn, Alabama, where the Ludwig von Mises Institute has its headquarters--Paul is close to the folks at that think tank. So it would be easy to indulge in some fantasies about how he may actually have read and been influenced by some of the works collected in my book, although that would be a bit over the top. It is much more likely that he has read into another work I edited, namely, The Libertarian Alternative, published by Nelson Hall Co. of Chicago back in 1973. That was my very first book and came about because Nelson Hall just started out and sent out a notice to academics around the country, soliciting submissions of book ideas. I jumped at the chance and lo and behold got the idea accepted and the volume published. (As the later collection, this one also contains some really fine essays on libertarian political philosophy and jurisprudence.)
So although my books, now numbering in the several dozens--with around 50 featured at Amazon.com--aren’t so popular and prominent as those by Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or even Richard Epstein, at least one managed to surface in a prominent enough place, suggesting that some others might have done likewise. Not that I wrote or edited them for fame and fortune--though I wouldn’t shy from these were some to have helped to achieve them--it is still quite gratifying to see at least one make it center stage in a popular forum.
Like with happiness, so with fame and fortune, they better be the side effects of one’s dedication and passion. That way even if one fails to make it big with one’s writings, one will at least have had the satisfaction of having contributed to a good cause, namely, the exploration of the subject matter of the works one has produced.
Tibor R. Machan
One of my books is a collection of prominent essays by mostly contemporary libertarian political-economic thinkers. Its title, The Libertarian Reader (1982), was so well chosen that years later someone quite prominent, David Boaz of the Cato Institute, also used it for a collection of essays he put together, The Libertarian Reader (1998). (Just in case you didn’t know, in the publishing world it is acceptable to make us of the titles of already published books.)
One of the hopes of authors and editors of books is of course that these will be bought and read, not to mention in huge numbers. But unless one is a famous author or so dedicated to learning of the fate of one’s works, it is rare that one learns whether they have made the rounds. (In the academic world, of course, professors often assign books they have written or edited in their classes, although such self-dealing is widely frowned upon.)
I do know that another book of mine was at least considered for display in a movie or TV program because some years ago I received a form letter asking that I give permission for a producer to do just that with my The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner, originally published by Arlington House of New Rochelle, NY (later reprinted by the University Press of America) and once reviewed very favorably in by Robert W. Proctor and Daniel J. Weeks in The American Journal Of Psychology (Summer 1990). But I never learned if this ever came to pass.
But a few days ago I was watching the coverage of the Republican presidential primaries and as I looked at the bookshelf behind Representative Ron Paul as he was being interviewed, I noticed that The Libertarian Reader was among the books on his shelves. Well, that was gratifying, so much so that I paused my TV and took a picture of it all with my cell phone camera. (It didn’t come out well but still, there it is, in living, albeit blurry, color.)
Of course, Ron Paul is known as a libertarian--he once was nominated for president by the national libertarian party. I think I even met him once when he visited Auburn, Alabama, where the Ludwig von Mises Institute has its headquarters--Paul is close to the folks at that think tank. So it would be easy to indulge in some fantasies about how he may actually have read and been influenced by some of the works collected in my book, although that would be a bit over the top. It is much more likely that he has read into another work I edited, namely, The Libertarian Alternative, published by Nelson Hall Co. of Chicago back in 1973. That was my very first book and came about because Nelson Hall just started out and sent out a notice to academics around the country, soliciting submissions of book ideas. I jumped at the chance and lo and behold got the idea accepted and the volume published. (As the later collection, this one also contains some really fine essays on libertarian political philosophy and jurisprudence.)
So although my books, now numbering in the several dozens--with around 50 featured at Amazon.com--aren’t so popular and prominent as those by Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or even Richard Epstein, at least one managed to surface in a prominent enough place, suggesting that some others might have done likewise. Not that I wrote or edited them for fame and fortune--though I wouldn’t shy from these were some to have helped to achieve them--it is still quite gratifying to see at least one make it center stage in a popular forum.
Like with happiness, so with fame and fortune, they better be the side effects of one’s dedication and passion. That way even if one fails to make it big with one’s writings, one will at least have had the satisfaction of having contributed to a good cause, namely, the exploration of the subject matter of the works one has produced.
How to Win this One in November
Tibor R. Machan
Seeing that it looks like Mitt Romney may well win the Republican nomination--though it’s too early to be sure about that--It has been a concern of freedom loving Americans whether the nod given to human individual liberty by the Tea Party back in 2010 will have staying power. When the Republicans began their primaries it looked like one or another of the champions of serious liberty, such as former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson or Texas representative Ron Paul, could either make it or at least have an influence on who will. This last is still a possibility but not very likely now. With Gingrich injecting the influence of the Beltway Republican insiders into the race and with Mitt Romney derailing any progress toward a consistent political philosophy of liberty among Republicans, prospects for repeating, let alone enhancing, the central trends represented by the Tea Party--which itself has never been fully focused on true liberty--are waning. And that is very disturbing because it looks more and more like Barack Obama has no interest whatever in individual rights, in a bona fide free society and market, or even in civil liberties. What he is after is a populist reformation of the American polity, one that will usher in democratic socialism, with its confusing “market” socialism added.
This is the politics of soft Marxism; which is to say it aims to establish a legal order that’s basically collectivist, communitarian to the core. The idea is that all Americans should be treated as one huge team lead by Obama or some similar minded politician and his or her cronies, with all property (including human labor) treated as public or social, with the serious implementation of the major step Marx and Engels identified on the road to socialism, namely, the abolition of the right to private property. The modern explication of this idea was laid out by NYU professors Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, in their book The Myth of Ownership (Oxford 2002). It is an unabashed attack on the principles of free market economics and individualism (i.e., on a system of law based on Lockean individual rights).
OK, is there any chance to nipping all this in the bud? I can only think of one way to do it, namely, to conduct a political campaign that is relentlessly focused on the threat of the loss of American liberty not just in American but around the globe. This liberty is the true hope of humanity, no the egalitarian nonsense that Obama & Co. preach. What it needed is to run an articulate, self-confident, and unapologetic campaign that emphasises the minimalist thesis of liberty as against the totalitarian thesis that all of us must be herded into a collective mass (of which the best current manifestation is North Korea).
If the Republican candidate for the presidency, or per chance someone else with sufficient support, keeps to this theme and forthrightly refuses to get entangled with side issues like illegal immigration, funding Planned Parenthood, etc., etc.--details that can easily be made to serve to distract Americans from what really is politically important--there is a chance of unseating Obama and his team in time to continue the momentum of the American revolution. The candidate to do this may not yet be in evidence but whoever it will be needs to focus clearly and be superbly articulate and intellectually competent in the effort to advance the cause of liberty.
Now Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney do not sound bad in debate and on the campaign trail but their ideas are muddled and so their leadership is seriously wanting when it comes to opposing Obama’s populist appeal. That appeal rests on phony hopes and aspirations, on false promises and on magical economics. But packaged in the cool style and rhetoric of Obama and absent competent challenge, it can continue to take the country toward a major setback on the road to realizing its destiny, the fulfillment of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and, less exactly, the Bill of Rights. It is this mission that must be the candidate’s central purpose, put in the clearest and most informed terms that American citizens can appreciate and support. I am convinced it has a chance in November.
Tibor R. Machan
Seeing that it looks like Mitt Romney may well win the Republican nomination--though it’s too early to be sure about that--It has been a concern of freedom loving Americans whether the nod given to human individual liberty by the Tea Party back in 2010 will have staying power. When the Republicans began their primaries it looked like one or another of the champions of serious liberty, such as former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson or Texas representative Ron Paul, could either make it or at least have an influence on who will. This last is still a possibility but not very likely now. With Gingrich injecting the influence of the Beltway Republican insiders into the race and with Mitt Romney derailing any progress toward a consistent political philosophy of liberty among Republicans, prospects for repeating, let alone enhancing, the central trends represented by the Tea Party--which itself has never been fully focused on true liberty--are waning. And that is very disturbing because it looks more and more like Barack Obama has no interest whatever in individual rights, in a bona fide free society and market, or even in civil liberties. What he is after is a populist reformation of the American polity, one that will usher in democratic socialism, with its confusing “market” socialism added.
This is the politics of soft Marxism; which is to say it aims to establish a legal order that’s basically collectivist, communitarian to the core. The idea is that all Americans should be treated as one huge team lead by Obama or some similar minded politician and his or her cronies, with all property (including human labor) treated as public or social, with the serious implementation of the major step Marx and Engels identified on the road to socialism, namely, the abolition of the right to private property. The modern explication of this idea was laid out by NYU professors Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, in their book The Myth of Ownership (Oxford 2002). It is an unabashed attack on the principles of free market economics and individualism (i.e., on a system of law based on Lockean individual rights).
OK, is there any chance to nipping all this in the bud? I can only think of one way to do it, namely, to conduct a political campaign that is relentlessly focused on the threat of the loss of American liberty not just in American but around the globe. This liberty is the true hope of humanity, no the egalitarian nonsense that Obama & Co. preach. What it needed is to run an articulate, self-confident, and unapologetic campaign that emphasises the minimalist thesis of liberty as against the totalitarian thesis that all of us must be herded into a collective mass (of which the best current manifestation is North Korea).
If the Republican candidate for the presidency, or per chance someone else with sufficient support, keeps to this theme and forthrightly refuses to get entangled with side issues like illegal immigration, funding Planned Parenthood, etc., etc.--details that can easily be made to serve to distract Americans from what really is politically important--there is a chance of unseating Obama and his team in time to continue the momentum of the American revolution. The candidate to do this may not yet be in evidence but whoever it will be needs to focus clearly and be superbly articulate and intellectually competent in the effort to advance the cause of liberty.
Now Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney do not sound bad in debate and on the campaign trail but their ideas are muddled and so their leadership is seriously wanting when it comes to opposing Obama’s populist appeal. That appeal rests on phony hopes and aspirations, on false promises and on magical economics. But packaged in the cool style and rhetoric of Obama and absent competent challenge, it can continue to take the country toward a major setback on the road to realizing its destiny, the fulfillment of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and, less exactly, the Bill of Rights. It is this mission that must be the candidate’s central purpose, put in the clearest and most informed terms that American citizens can appreciate and support. I am convinced it has a chance in November.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Good Bye OC Register
Tibor R. Machan
Since the Fall of 1966 (if memory serves me right) I have been a columnist at what was then The Santa Ana but is now the Orange County Register. I cannot count how many columns I produced, nearly all of them concerned with demonstrating the superiority of the free society as understood in libertarianism. (Two books I edited contain some of the columns, Liberty and Culture, Essays on the Idea of a Free Society [Prometheus Books, 1983] and Neither Left nor Right, Selected Columns [Hoover Institution Press, 2004].)
None of the columns I wrote for the paper has ever been rejected or significantly altered by the editors. I am quite amazed by this but couldn’t complain, that’s for certain. It has been an amazing run and I am very grateful I was given the opportunity to be a part of the company's efforts to promote individual liberty. Unfortunately, however, the current management has decided that they no longer wish to publish my columns. Given that Freedom Communications, Inc., that owns The Register and a slew of other papers around the country, has been abandoning it's libertarian bearings over the last couple of years--the Hoiles family lost all control over the company--this is no great surprise.
I would have welcomed knowing exactly what brought about the decision but as someone who holds firmly that those who hire one are fully within their rights to let you go (unless some contract specifies otherwise, which in my case doesn’t apply)--just as are you to leave them--I have no complaints apart from finding it uncool to provide no reason after having been with the company for such a long time and having never been told of any dissatisfaction with my work by anyone there. But it’s a free country--up to a point--and people in any line of work, including journalism, are or should be at liberty to peacefully misbehave. I would be first in line to defend their right to do so even when I regard what they do objectionable. (And whoever welcomes being fired, especially summarily, never mind that by this time they paid me only a nominal fee for my work?)
The only reason this is worth a bit of public discussion is that The Register and other Freedom Communications, Inc., newspapers have been a rare libertarian voice in an admittedly shrinking newspaper-land. Indeed, Freedom Newspapers has been a rarity, founded by R. C. Hoiles back in the 1920s, consistently and unrelentingly championing individual liberty.
In 1997 I was hired with the title “Advisor on Libertarian Issues” to work for the company, over and above the writing of my columns, and this came to an end in 2010 when the company pretty much fell apart as the distinct entity it had been, championing liberty more than any other media outfit had done.
It is not easy to gauge the impact of Freedom's hundreds of editorials and columns discussing various aspects of the free society but it's probably fair to say that at least it has given a strong and lively voice to a fully libertarian viewpoint more than any other prominent media organization in the land. It has also made room on its pages to columnists like me, some far more prominent in their fields of specialization, such Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, James Doti, et al.
Just when the company abandoned its consistent editorial stance in favor of liberty some other major media organizations did, fortunately, begin to give voice to the freedom philosophy (as we liked to refer to the R. C Hoiles brand of libertarianism). Fox TV News has welcomed quite a few libertarians, such as Judge Andrew Napolitano and John Stossel, and their slate of libertarian scholars and other guest commentators. The editors of Reason Magazine, which I helped built up in 1970 and which in time has become a formidable libertarian publication, appear on Fox TV regularly; so it seems that there will continue to be voices championing liberty even without Freedom Communications, Inc., committed to doing so as intensely as it had been since its founding.
Anyway, so long and good bye Orange County Register. You have been a sharp and diligent champion of liberty even when that was hardly welcome in the USA, even in conservative (but not quite libertarian) Orange County. I am grateful for having been part of your team for quite a few years.
Tibor R. Machan
Since the Fall of 1966 (if memory serves me right) I have been a columnist at what was then The Santa Ana but is now the Orange County Register. I cannot count how many columns I produced, nearly all of them concerned with demonstrating the superiority of the free society as understood in libertarianism. (Two books I edited contain some of the columns, Liberty and Culture, Essays on the Idea of a Free Society [Prometheus Books, 1983] and Neither Left nor Right, Selected Columns [Hoover Institution Press, 2004].)
None of the columns I wrote for the paper has ever been rejected or significantly altered by the editors. I am quite amazed by this but couldn’t complain, that’s for certain. It has been an amazing run and I am very grateful I was given the opportunity to be a part of the company's efforts to promote individual liberty. Unfortunately, however, the current management has decided that they no longer wish to publish my columns. Given that Freedom Communications, Inc., that owns The Register and a slew of other papers around the country, has been abandoning it's libertarian bearings over the last couple of years--the Hoiles family lost all control over the company--this is no great surprise.
I would have welcomed knowing exactly what brought about the decision but as someone who holds firmly that those who hire one are fully within their rights to let you go (unless some contract specifies otherwise, which in my case doesn’t apply)--just as are you to leave them--I have no complaints apart from finding it uncool to provide no reason after having been with the company for such a long time and having never been told of any dissatisfaction with my work by anyone there. But it’s a free country--up to a point--and people in any line of work, including journalism, are or should be at liberty to peacefully misbehave. I would be first in line to defend their right to do so even when I regard what they do objectionable. (And whoever welcomes being fired, especially summarily, never mind that by this time they paid me only a nominal fee for my work?)
The only reason this is worth a bit of public discussion is that The Register and other Freedom Communications, Inc., newspapers have been a rare libertarian voice in an admittedly shrinking newspaper-land. Indeed, Freedom Newspapers has been a rarity, founded by R. C. Hoiles back in the 1920s, consistently and unrelentingly championing individual liberty.
In 1997 I was hired with the title “Advisor on Libertarian Issues” to work for the company, over and above the writing of my columns, and this came to an end in 2010 when the company pretty much fell apart as the distinct entity it had been, championing liberty more than any other media outfit had done.
It is not easy to gauge the impact of Freedom's hundreds of editorials and columns discussing various aspects of the free society but it's probably fair to say that at least it has given a strong and lively voice to a fully libertarian viewpoint more than any other prominent media organization in the land. It has also made room on its pages to columnists like me, some far more prominent in their fields of specialization, such Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, James Doti, et al.
Just when the company abandoned its consistent editorial stance in favor of liberty some other major media organizations did, fortunately, begin to give voice to the freedom philosophy (as we liked to refer to the R. C Hoiles brand of libertarianism). Fox TV News has welcomed quite a few libertarians, such as Judge Andrew Napolitano and John Stossel, and their slate of libertarian scholars and other guest commentators. The editors of Reason Magazine, which I helped built up in 1970 and which in time has become a formidable libertarian publication, appear on Fox TV regularly; so it seems that there will continue to be voices championing liberty even without Freedom Communications, Inc., committed to doing so as intensely as it had been since its founding.
Anyway, so long and good bye Orange County Register. You have been a sharp and diligent champion of liberty even when that was hardly welcome in the USA, even in conservative (but not quite libertarian) Orange County. I am grateful for having been part of your team for quite a few years.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
The bottom line on Obama-economics!
Tibor R. Machan
Economic fairness is impossible: an oxymoron. Since economic activities are inherently varied and often competitive and since one size doesn’t fit all and not everyone can win in a competition, no such thing as fairness is possible unless it simply means no one may be prevented from taking part. Certainly, however, the outcome will most likely be very different for different participants.
The sort of fairness and equality President Obama and his supporters are after maybe achieved around a family or fraternity dinner table or in a last will and testament where goods are being distributed among family members who each expect the fulfillment of an implied promise from elders to receive a “fair share” of the wealth left to them. “Fair” here makes sense since the idea is that no one is going to get much less or more than another. But no such expectation makes any sense throughout a country! The government owns nothing and can thus leave nothing to the citizenry without engaging in massive redistribution of wealth it doesn’t have any authority to distribute or redistribute.
When fairness is demanded, it implies that the government does have the authority to assign winners and losers in the economic sphere. As if we still lived in a monarchy awaiting the decision of the king as to who will be the beneficiary of his largess. All the subjects can hope they will receive a fair share of the wealth of the country.
But in a free country, with the principle of private property rights as the law of the land, the king or government has no business engaging in wealth distribution so the issue of fairness is entirely moot. It's a dream and where attempted, it leads to a police state. All that Mr. Obama needs to do to appreciate this is to read George Orwell's Animal Farm, a wonderful parable about what happens when equality is demanded and government tries to produce it. He might also check out the late Robert Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain example, from this book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1973) where he shows that when goodies are fairly distributed among people they will turn right around a rearrange it all so the “fair” distribution is completely upset.
Or if he wants real life cases from which to take lessons, Obama & Co. might remember the Soviet Union and investigate how things are panning out in that heavenly egalitarian country, North Korea. They could perhaps consider that in Cuba the rulers are finally realizing the futility of the socialist-egalitarian ideal and are making changes to turn the place into more and more of a free market system.
Still, there will always be those who want to level the economy. The main reason is the misguided conviction that we are, after all, in the same boat, just as are the children in a family. But the government isn’t like our parents who have made a promise to care for all their children. We aren’t the children of Mr. Obama and his administration! To try to serve us all with all the benefits that parents owe to their offspring would be futile and invites totalitarianism.
Parents, after all, own their resources and owe some of it to their children; this is not the case with governments and the citizenry. They don’t own anything at all without confiscating it. At most they may do this up to what is needed for administering the laws of the land--providing the citizenry with national defense and a sound legal system and its maintenance. Even some of this can be achieved without much government management. After all, who is the government but other citizens who have been hired to do a rather limited job in the country. It is up to the citizenry to secure for themselves economic growth, solvency, innovation, investment, etc. To attempt anything more would involve the government in tasks that free citizens aren’t entitled to.
Sadly Obama & Co. see the country as it if were some club or team where everyone is part of it and needs the same treatment as everyone else. But a country is not a club or a team--those are the results of free men and women coming together voluntarily for a great variety of purposes. The government of such free men and women must not get involved with what the clubs are embarking upon, be it business, athletics, education, entertainment or whatever else peaceful such folks will embark upon. Like the proverbial cop on the beat, the government isn’t there to pick the goals and tasks of those whom they serve in a limited capacity of securing their rights. It’s there to keep the peace, that is all!
Tibor R. Machan
Economic fairness is impossible: an oxymoron. Since economic activities are inherently varied and often competitive and since one size doesn’t fit all and not everyone can win in a competition, no such thing as fairness is possible unless it simply means no one may be prevented from taking part. Certainly, however, the outcome will most likely be very different for different participants.
The sort of fairness and equality President Obama and his supporters are after maybe achieved around a family or fraternity dinner table or in a last will and testament where goods are being distributed among family members who each expect the fulfillment of an implied promise from elders to receive a “fair share” of the wealth left to them. “Fair” here makes sense since the idea is that no one is going to get much less or more than another. But no such expectation makes any sense throughout a country! The government owns nothing and can thus leave nothing to the citizenry without engaging in massive redistribution of wealth it doesn’t have any authority to distribute or redistribute.
When fairness is demanded, it implies that the government does have the authority to assign winners and losers in the economic sphere. As if we still lived in a monarchy awaiting the decision of the king as to who will be the beneficiary of his largess. All the subjects can hope they will receive a fair share of the wealth of the country.
But in a free country, with the principle of private property rights as the law of the land, the king or government has no business engaging in wealth distribution so the issue of fairness is entirely moot. It's a dream and where attempted, it leads to a police state. All that Mr. Obama needs to do to appreciate this is to read George Orwell's Animal Farm, a wonderful parable about what happens when equality is demanded and government tries to produce it. He might also check out the late Robert Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain example, from this book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1973) where he shows that when goodies are fairly distributed among people they will turn right around a rearrange it all so the “fair” distribution is completely upset.
Or if he wants real life cases from which to take lessons, Obama & Co. might remember the Soviet Union and investigate how things are panning out in that heavenly egalitarian country, North Korea. They could perhaps consider that in Cuba the rulers are finally realizing the futility of the socialist-egalitarian ideal and are making changes to turn the place into more and more of a free market system.
Still, there will always be those who want to level the economy. The main reason is the misguided conviction that we are, after all, in the same boat, just as are the children in a family. But the government isn’t like our parents who have made a promise to care for all their children. We aren’t the children of Mr. Obama and his administration! To try to serve us all with all the benefits that parents owe to their offspring would be futile and invites totalitarianism.
Parents, after all, own their resources and owe some of it to their children; this is not the case with governments and the citizenry. They don’t own anything at all without confiscating it. At most they may do this up to what is needed for administering the laws of the land--providing the citizenry with national defense and a sound legal system and its maintenance. Even some of this can be achieved without much government management. After all, who is the government but other citizens who have been hired to do a rather limited job in the country. It is up to the citizenry to secure for themselves economic growth, solvency, innovation, investment, etc. To attempt anything more would involve the government in tasks that free citizens aren’t entitled to.
Sadly Obama & Co. see the country as it if were some club or team where everyone is part of it and needs the same treatment as everyone else. But a country is not a club or a team--those are the results of free men and women coming together voluntarily for a great variety of purposes. The government of such free men and women must not get involved with what the clubs are embarking upon, be it business, athletics, education, entertainment or whatever else peaceful such folks will embark upon. Like the proverbial cop on the beat, the government isn’t there to pick the goals and tasks of those whom they serve in a limited capacity of securing their rights. It’s there to keep the peace, that is all!
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
TSA & a Free Country: Are they Compatible?
Tibor R. Machan
Why does the TSA annoy so many of us? Not having the resources to do a survey, I resort here to what might be called educated speculation. I suspect it is because free men and women consider it invasive for government agents to order them around--pat them down, make them endure electronic surveillance, being ordered around by TSA agents, etc.--unless they give their permission.
Just because someone embarks upon air travel it doesn’t follow that such permission can be inferred, especially if the search is conducted by government agents. If a private carrier states up front that utilizing it will require submitting to various intrusions, there is a difference. People may require of visitors to their homes or business establishments to submit to certain reasonable precautionary measures, say, for hygienic or security purposes. That’s because their home belongs to them and they may impose conditions for accessing it to others even if these others do not quite understand the rationale behind the measures to which they are subjected. They can go elsewhere. But when government imposes such requirements, given the overwhelming force it wields and its monopolistic powers, certain due process provisions must be met. One cannot escape the government since it runs air traffic. Thus, not unless there is solid reason to suspect someone of misconduct or ill will may they be interfered with by the government. Otherwise the policy is arbitrary.
Interestingly, when Senator Rand Paul was subjected to the TSA’s measures on January 23, another issue, apart from due process, arose: the US Constitution disallows interference with the travel by a member of Congress. There is a bit of ambiguity about it, though. Among other things, if such an individual “breaches the peace,” the interference is warranted. Yet, what constitutes breaching of the peace? Simply embarking upon air travel surely does not. So the TSA hasn’t even the legal ability and thus the authority to detain someone like Senator Rand Paul. And arguably it should not have such authority when it comes to citizens who aren’t suspected of any crimes.
I was traveling recently and boarded a flight at Newark Airport in New Jersey and was subjected to the pat down, etc., procedure. I was informed that my right palm tested positive for a substance that had been instrumental in causing the Oklahoma City blast of several years ago. I wasn’t actually shown this, even though I asked, but I didn’t insist since I needed to catch my flight and there wasn’t much time left to do so. I didn’t carry with me any materials of the kind detected on my right palm--I was not checking bags and everything I had was put through the machinery at the security check. Despite this, I was physically patted down by some bloke, something I didn’t welcome but because of their power over me I couldn’t escape. Either I underwent the procedure or I was barred from boarding my flight.
What exactly counts as grounds for suspicion? No clue but maybe by setting off some instrument that’s calibrated some way to detect hazardous substances establishes sufficient grounds. Of course, different people can become suspicious for different reasons, based on their own experiences, knowledge, worries, etc. Risk assessment is certainly not an exact science. Much of it is based on input from experts who have different ways of weighing risks. Here, too, competition is needed to figure out what policy is best.
It is wisest not to forget that levels of fear and concern vary and that here, too, one size does not fit all. So what the TSA selects as decisive in how to measure risk may well be largely subjective. At most the best results will be an inter-subjective assessment. No wonder people feel very uneasy when they are subject to such a wishywashy system.
In this area, too, a competitive market is necessary so as to come up with results that are reasonable. Unfortunately when government manages airport security, this isn’t possible. Too many factors influence the managers and there is little hope for an objective determination or even of one that is at least plausible. Which means that policies will be debated forever and will result in policies that are arbitrary. That is the result of the tragedy of the commons in his area of concern. The king’s intuitions rule but no one can figure out whether they make sense!
Tibor R. Machan
Why does the TSA annoy so many of us? Not having the resources to do a survey, I resort here to what might be called educated speculation. I suspect it is because free men and women consider it invasive for government agents to order them around--pat them down, make them endure electronic surveillance, being ordered around by TSA agents, etc.--unless they give their permission.
Just because someone embarks upon air travel it doesn’t follow that such permission can be inferred, especially if the search is conducted by government agents. If a private carrier states up front that utilizing it will require submitting to various intrusions, there is a difference. People may require of visitors to their homes or business establishments to submit to certain reasonable precautionary measures, say, for hygienic or security purposes. That’s because their home belongs to them and they may impose conditions for accessing it to others even if these others do not quite understand the rationale behind the measures to which they are subjected. They can go elsewhere. But when government imposes such requirements, given the overwhelming force it wields and its monopolistic powers, certain due process provisions must be met. One cannot escape the government since it runs air traffic. Thus, not unless there is solid reason to suspect someone of misconduct or ill will may they be interfered with by the government. Otherwise the policy is arbitrary.
Interestingly, when Senator Rand Paul was subjected to the TSA’s measures on January 23, another issue, apart from due process, arose: the US Constitution disallows interference with the travel by a member of Congress. There is a bit of ambiguity about it, though. Among other things, if such an individual “breaches the peace,” the interference is warranted. Yet, what constitutes breaching of the peace? Simply embarking upon air travel surely does not. So the TSA hasn’t even the legal ability and thus the authority to detain someone like Senator Rand Paul. And arguably it should not have such authority when it comes to citizens who aren’t suspected of any crimes.
I was traveling recently and boarded a flight at Newark Airport in New Jersey and was subjected to the pat down, etc., procedure. I was informed that my right palm tested positive for a substance that had been instrumental in causing the Oklahoma City blast of several years ago. I wasn’t actually shown this, even though I asked, but I didn’t insist since I needed to catch my flight and there wasn’t much time left to do so. I didn’t carry with me any materials of the kind detected on my right palm--I was not checking bags and everything I had was put through the machinery at the security check. Despite this, I was physically patted down by some bloke, something I didn’t welcome but because of their power over me I couldn’t escape. Either I underwent the procedure or I was barred from boarding my flight.
What exactly counts as grounds for suspicion? No clue but maybe by setting off some instrument that’s calibrated some way to detect hazardous substances establishes sufficient grounds. Of course, different people can become suspicious for different reasons, based on their own experiences, knowledge, worries, etc. Risk assessment is certainly not an exact science. Much of it is based on input from experts who have different ways of weighing risks. Here, too, competition is needed to figure out what policy is best.
It is wisest not to forget that levels of fear and concern vary and that here, too, one size does not fit all. So what the TSA selects as decisive in how to measure risk may well be largely subjective. At most the best results will be an inter-subjective assessment. No wonder people feel very uneasy when they are subject to such a wishywashy system.
In this area, too, a competitive market is necessary so as to come up with results that are reasonable. Unfortunately when government manages airport security, this isn’t possible. Too many factors influence the managers and there is little hope for an objective determination or even of one that is at least plausible. Which means that policies will be debated forever and will result in policies that are arbitrary. That is the result of the tragedy of the commons in his area of concern. The king’s intuitions rule but no one can figure out whether they make sense!
Saturday, January 21, 2012
BBC’s Biased Coverage of Capitalism
Tibor R. Machan
On the BBC website an interview was featured recently with the famous orthodox Marxist, Eric Hobsbawm, who promptly denounced capitalism as if he had established definitively its inferiority as a political economic system. Is the BBC such an irresponsible news organization that it will feature Mr. Hobsbawm’s characterization of capitalism with no one who champions that system featured responding to him? (If you search, no such balanced presentation can be found on the BBC website.) Or is this happening because, after all, BBC is a state broadcast endeavor and has a big stake in discrediting a system that relies on private initiative?
From a Marxist perspective especially this conclusion is quite reasonable, since we are all supposed to be driven by economic motives and here is an instance that might just fit this idea perfectly. The BBC would be one of the casualties of capitalist inspired privatization! As a creature of the state it relies on confiscated resources for its operations and capitalism goes against that policy big time.
The question that was put to Mr. Hobsbawm by the BBC’s interviewer, had to do with capitalism and responsibility. That is, whether agents in a free market would be motivated to act responsibly and the answer Mr. Hobsbawm gave is “No.” Yet if people act irresponsibly in genuine free markets, this will soon be known and they would lose trust from fellow market agents. Only when governments protect market agents from the consequences of their behavior will they be able to persist in acting irresponsibly.
Moreover, if those who would regulate our economic conduct are, as they must be, human beings, why would they be virtuous while the we would not be? Why would they not use their monopolistic legal power to secure advantages for themselves, just as public choice theory (as per James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock) postulates?
What free market capitalism cannot offer, because it doesn’t control people, is compliance with all tenets of ethics. But neither can anyone else make such a promise and when they pretend they can, this invites the most insidious lack of ethics, namely, tyranny.
The bottom line here is that if you are interested in the nature of capitalism, don't ask a Marxist but a champion of that system of political economy, such as Professor Richard Epstein (NYU) or Randy Barnett (Georgetown U.) or, yes, me! Then go and find some critics and contrast their different answers and let the audience assess which approach is more reasonable.
The BBC doesn’t appear to honor this approach, the only balanced one, when dealing with the nature of capitalism. Too bad. Failing to let a competent defense of that system be aired on BBC may even promote some major economic malpractice, including the appointment of all kinds of petty tyrants who presume to know how to run our economic affairs.
“As an economic system capitalism has nothing to do with responsibility,” says the Marxist sage, yet this is perverse, uninformed, given that trust and being responsible to fulfill one’s promises is essential to free market capitalism. Indeed, one reason that that system works pretty well when uncorrupted by state interference is that those who fail to be responsible do not flourish in it unless favored with privileges they haven’t earned.
As many have pointed out, the famous association between capitalism and the pursuit of self-interest is widely misunderstood. “Self-interest” in how capitalism operates means nothing more than that people are doing what they want (since they are free to do so). But what they want to do may be for their own or for someone else’s benefit; nothing in capitalist theory spells that out. Indeed, it is a strong feature--not without some problems--of capitalist economic theory that saying that people pursue their self-interest says nearly nothing about what they are likely to do. This is because in that theory self-interest is understood subjectively. Whatever one believes is in his or her interest is exactly what is; but this makes it perfectly reasonable that someone who wants to consume heroin or engage in innumerable other self-destructive activities (by common sense standards) is actually pursuing his or her self-interest.
In any case, the main point here is that the BBC seems not to care to practice responsible journalism even while asking Mr. Hobsbawm to comment on the relationship between responsibility and capitalism. How ironic.
Tibor R. Machan
On the BBC website an interview was featured recently with the famous orthodox Marxist, Eric Hobsbawm, who promptly denounced capitalism as if he had established definitively its inferiority as a political economic system. Is the BBC such an irresponsible news organization that it will feature Mr. Hobsbawm’s characterization of capitalism with no one who champions that system featured responding to him? (If you search, no such balanced presentation can be found on the BBC website.) Or is this happening because, after all, BBC is a state broadcast endeavor and has a big stake in discrediting a system that relies on private initiative?
From a Marxist perspective especially this conclusion is quite reasonable, since we are all supposed to be driven by economic motives and here is an instance that might just fit this idea perfectly. The BBC would be one of the casualties of capitalist inspired privatization! As a creature of the state it relies on confiscated resources for its operations and capitalism goes against that policy big time.
The question that was put to Mr. Hobsbawm by the BBC’s interviewer, had to do with capitalism and responsibility. That is, whether agents in a free market would be motivated to act responsibly and the answer Mr. Hobsbawm gave is “No.” Yet if people act irresponsibly in genuine free markets, this will soon be known and they would lose trust from fellow market agents. Only when governments protect market agents from the consequences of their behavior will they be able to persist in acting irresponsibly.
Moreover, if those who would regulate our economic conduct are, as they must be, human beings, why would they be virtuous while the we would not be? Why would they not use their monopolistic legal power to secure advantages for themselves, just as public choice theory (as per James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock) postulates?
What free market capitalism cannot offer, because it doesn’t control people, is compliance with all tenets of ethics. But neither can anyone else make such a promise and when they pretend they can, this invites the most insidious lack of ethics, namely, tyranny.
The bottom line here is that if you are interested in the nature of capitalism, don't ask a Marxist but a champion of that system of political economy, such as Professor Richard Epstein (NYU) or Randy Barnett (Georgetown U.) or, yes, me! Then go and find some critics and contrast their different answers and let the audience assess which approach is more reasonable.
The BBC doesn’t appear to honor this approach, the only balanced one, when dealing with the nature of capitalism. Too bad. Failing to let a competent defense of that system be aired on BBC may even promote some major economic malpractice, including the appointment of all kinds of petty tyrants who presume to know how to run our economic affairs.
“As an economic system capitalism has nothing to do with responsibility,” says the Marxist sage, yet this is perverse, uninformed, given that trust and being responsible to fulfill one’s promises is essential to free market capitalism. Indeed, one reason that that system works pretty well when uncorrupted by state interference is that those who fail to be responsible do not flourish in it unless favored with privileges they haven’t earned.
As many have pointed out, the famous association between capitalism and the pursuit of self-interest is widely misunderstood. “Self-interest” in how capitalism operates means nothing more than that people are doing what they want (since they are free to do so). But what they want to do may be for their own or for someone else’s benefit; nothing in capitalist theory spells that out. Indeed, it is a strong feature--not without some problems--of capitalist economic theory that saying that people pursue their self-interest says nearly nothing about what they are likely to do. This is because in that theory self-interest is understood subjectively. Whatever one believes is in his or her interest is exactly what is; but this makes it perfectly reasonable that someone who wants to consume heroin or engage in innumerable other self-destructive activities (by common sense standards) is actually pursuing his or her self-interest.
In any case, the main point here is that the BBC seems not to care to practice responsible journalism even while asking Mr. Hobsbawm to comment on the relationship between responsibility and capitalism. How ironic.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
MLK’s Public Philosophy of Freedom
Tibor R. Machan
As I flew home across the country from NYC on January 16th, the holiday this year in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I had the opportunity to watch several programs on television devoted to his legacy. I was especially struck by the fact that commentators -- for example Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!," a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program" -- keep imputing to him a welfare statism that seems not to have been part of his thinking. (I have no idea what Democracy Now! is independent of since all the programs on it evidence a distinct perspective, no less so that those on Fox TV.)
During the flight I managed, also, to listen again to the entire speech Dr. King gave in Alabama, on the day before he was assassinated, and what it was mostly about is freedom, not at all about welfare statism.
There are, admittedly, several senses of the term “freedom” in use. In particular there is negative and positive freedom. The former is strongly associated with the American political tradition -- spelled out, for example, in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights -- the latter with the ideas of FDR’s New Deal. The first means being free from the intrusions of other people, including government, however well intentioned; the second means being provided with support by others, including the government through its power of taking what belongs to one so as to hand to another. So one is free to do what one chooses to do if one is free in the first sense, while one is free from having to cover one’s various expenses in the second sense.
The free society as understood by classical liberals stresses the protection of the freedom of the citizenry with a suitably framed legal system, while the society fashioned by modern liberals stresses government's providing to people what they are said to need by way of confiscatory taxation for this purpose.
It seems to me that Dr. King was talking about the former kind of freedom, freedom from the oppressive acts of most whites toward most blacks, for example. Many of those who today wish to invoke his stature and ideas for their political purposes, however, are talking about the second kind of "freedom or liberty." That is the freedom, so called, that the welfare state is supposed to protect for people, at the expense of those whose resources are confiscated so as to achieve this goal. Yet there are many who insist that Dr. King had in mind the second type of freedom -- or perhaps that he believed in both. As one commentator put it, “On that day, Dr. King spoke of two types of freedom -- one from ‘the chains of discrimination’ and one from living on ‘a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.’ Somehow his first message has been taken to heart while his second has been forgotten.” (This is what John Fullerton, founder of Capital Institute, declared in his recent essay on Huff Post.)
The problem with attributing to MLK this two-pronged idea of freedom is that if it is correct, it makes his ideas incoherent. The first type of freedom just cannot co-exists with the second. If A can be coerced to provide support for those who are “living in a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of materials prosperity,” then A would have his right to freedom violated. If anytime that someone achieves material prosperity that individual becomes a target of the adjusters who would not accept his or her freedom to make use of it, then such an individual is not free in the first sense. To steal from Peter so as to provide for Paul does not support freedom but servitude.
It is much more sensible to attribute to Dr. King the more coherent view that if the freedom of individuals to do as they choose is properly respected and protected, they will be enjoying the first kind of freedom -- freedom from others’ intrusions -- and become capable of achieving freedom from poverty. Free men and women have generally been quite able to provide for themselves, perhaps with occasional voluntary help from their friends and neighbors. That is one of the lessons of history! It is entirely inappropriate to suggest that one person’s poverty authorizes others to take from those who have managed to achieve prosperity. I doubt that Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t grasp something so elementary -- it is an insult to his memory to believe that.
Instead what seems to be happening is that people who are aspiring to rule others are invoking his good name for their coercive purposes. It would be a shame if this were tolerated by all those who admire Dr. King for his championing of human liberty.
Tibor R. Machan
As I flew home across the country from NYC on January 16th, the holiday this year in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I had the opportunity to watch several programs on television devoted to his legacy. I was especially struck by the fact that commentators -- for example Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!," a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program" -- keep imputing to him a welfare statism that seems not to have been part of his thinking. (I have no idea what Democracy Now! is independent of since all the programs on it evidence a distinct perspective, no less so that those on Fox TV.)
During the flight I managed, also, to listen again to the entire speech Dr. King gave in Alabama, on the day before he was assassinated, and what it was mostly about is freedom, not at all about welfare statism.
There are, admittedly, several senses of the term “freedom” in use. In particular there is negative and positive freedom. The former is strongly associated with the American political tradition -- spelled out, for example, in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights -- the latter with the ideas of FDR’s New Deal. The first means being free from the intrusions of other people, including government, however well intentioned; the second means being provided with support by others, including the government through its power of taking what belongs to one so as to hand to another. So one is free to do what one chooses to do if one is free in the first sense, while one is free from having to cover one’s various expenses in the second sense.
The free society as understood by classical liberals stresses the protection of the freedom of the citizenry with a suitably framed legal system, while the society fashioned by modern liberals stresses government's providing to people what they are said to need by way of confiscatory taxation for this purpose.
It seems to me that Dr. King was talking about the former kind of freedom, freedom from the oppressive acts of most whites toward most blacks, for example. Many of those who today wish to invoke his stature and ideas for their political purposes, however, are talking about the second kind of "freedom or liberty." That is the freedom, so called, that the welfare state is supposed to protect for people, at the expense of those whose resources are confiscated so as to achieve this goal. Yet there are many who insist that Dr. King had in mind the second type of freedom -- or perhaps that he believed in both. As one commentator put it, “On that day, Dr. King spoke of two types of freedom -- one from ‘the chains of discrimination’ and one from living on ‘a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.’ Somehow his first message has been taken to heart while his second has been forgotten.” (This is what John Fullerton, founder of Capital Institute, declared in his recent essay on Huff Post.)
The problem with attributing to MLK this two-pronged idea of freedom is that if it is correct, it makes his ideas incoherent. The first type of freedom just cannot co-exists with the second. If A can be coerced to provide support for those who are “living in a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of materials prosperity,” then A would have his right to freedom violated. If anytime that someone achieves material prosperity that individual becomes a target of the adjusters who would not accept his or her freedom to make use of it, then such an individual is not free in the first sense. To steal from Peter so as to provide for Paul does not support freedom but servitude.
It is much more sensible to attribute to Dr. King the more coherent view that if the freedom of individuals to do as they choose is properly respected and protected, they will be enjoying the first kind of freedom -- freedom from others’ intrusions -- and become capable of achieving freedom from poverty. Free men and women have generally been quite able to provide for themselves, perhaps with occasional voluntary help from their friends and neighbors. That is one of the lessons of history! It is entirely inappropriate to suggest that one person’s poverty authorizes others to take from those who have managed to achieve prosperity. I doubt that Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t grasp something so elementary -- it is an insult to his memory to believe that.
Instead what seems to be happening is that people who are aspiring to rule others are invoking his good name for their coercive purposes. It would be a shame if this were tolerated by all those who admire Dr. King for his championing of human liberty.
Monday, January 09, 2012
Anti-Abortion Murder
Tibor R. Machan
In Wichita a trial is under way in which Scott Roeder is charged with the murder of Dr. George R. Tiller. No disputing the charge that he did the killing and the only issue up for debate is whether the killing was murder or justifiable homicide.
The main line of argument in defense of Mr. Roeder is that Dr. Tiller himself is a murderer of children--60,000 of them as reported in The New York Times--and killing him was the only way to prevent further such murders. As The Times reports, “'George Tiller shed the blood of 60,000 innocent children,' Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, told reporters. Mr. Terry ... said that he was neither condoning nor condemning Mr. Roeder’s actions, but that people should remember the children."
So, then, the defense relies on the view that if there is injustice in a country, if the laws permit unjust acts to be committed, then citizens who want to remedy this may take the remedy they believe in into their own hands. I, for example, really, sincerely believe that taxation in official extortion by the government and all those who facilitate this extortion support or perform unjust acts. By the reasoning of the Roeder defense team, I would be legally justified in taking into my own hands the effort to remedy the injustice being committed by those complicit in taxation. If I felt the way to stop them all would be to blow up their office buildings or inflict serious injuries on tax collectors, I would have the legal authority to do this, according to the argument in support of Mr. Roeder. I should, in short, become a modern day Robin Hood--remember that Robin got money back from the taxers and returned it to the victims!
Never mind for now that the belief that abortion amounts to homicide, let alone to murder, is if not out and out false then at certainly highly debatable and mostly based on particular religious doctrine, something that has no place as the foundations of a secular legal system such as that of the USA. A human being is supposed to be a rational animal and prior to a certain stage of the development of the fetus only a potential human being exists since no cerebral cortex is present to make rationality possible. (The case becomes different with so called partial birth abortions--some of these may be homicide and even murder; some of them self-defense. The matter is not amenable to a simple discussion but even here taking the law into one's hands is very problematic.) The notion of an "unborn child" is a virtual oxymoron when most abortions occur--no child exists then. As if a caterpillar were an unborn butterfly!
But one need not enter the abortion controversy fully in order to consider Mr. Roeder a murderer. This is because in a civilized society even someone who has murdered another deserves due process--being arrested, brought to trial, convicted, and then sentenced to a particular punishment. Citizens only very rarely may avoid this process and take the law into their own hands and even then they need to follow some due process measures, such as making a citizen's arrest and bringing the alleged culprit to the legal system for prosecution. This is the crucial issue even for those who do agree that Dr. Tiller was guilty of injustices and needed to be brought to justice.
If you add to this the difficulties widely recognized about construing ordinary abortions as homicide, let alone murder, then what Mr. Roeder is charged with having done cannot be legally excused. No one has assigned him the job of administering justice in the state of Kansas. Just as someone who considers taxation outright extortion, as I do, still must proceed by following due process in the effort to stop the policy, so must anyone else who shares Mr. Roeder's beliefs.
There are circumstances, of course, when the government's failure to administer justice can serve as a justification for "taking the law into one's own hands," but these circumstances must come very close to those of totalitarian tyrannies where other methods of making changes in the legal system are completely unavailable. And when the matter is so thoroughly fraught with disputable allegations on all sides as is the legal right to have an abortion, then going slowly in making the needed changes, assuming they are needed, is especially necessary.
The reason there are courts of law and trials in civilized countries is that great care must be taken when someone is charged with a legally codified injustice; such an individual is deemed to deserve conviction by taking his or her liberty and even life in accordance with due process. A carefully laid out system, honed by years and years of legal precedence, serves the purpose of not turning the process into back alley jurisprudence or lynching. So even if the defense offered up by Mr. Roeder is plausible, it is unreasonable. Abortion is itself something highly debatable and no open an shut case of homicide by any means. Its debatability is due in part to the fact that the determination of the exact beginning of a human being--which is what the issue is in abortion, not whether human life is involved, which is very ambiguous--is a serious problem. This is not geometry, after all, but biology and ethics. One must not demand the same precision here as one can in that other, more formal, discipline, something against which Aristotle had warned some 2500 years ago.
Those who consider abortion homicide and even murder, are required to make their case in light of centuries of legal precedence that tilts against the idea. They need to defend their theologically based convictions about "unborn children," etc., without recourse to a particular religious viewpoint. Murder, for example, isn't wrong because God or the Bible or the Koran says so but because it is the intentional or negligent taking of an innocent human being's life and that rests on a secular understanding of what it is to be a human being, one that can be understood by people regardless of their religious alliance.
Tibor R. Machan
In Wichita a trial is under way in which Scott Roeder is charged with the murder of Dr. George R. Tiller. No disputing the charge that he did the killing and the only issue up for debate is whether the killing was murder or justifiable homicide.
The main line of argument in defense of Mr. Roeder is that Dr. Tiller himself is a murderer of children--60,000 of them as reported in The New York Times--and killing him was the only way to prevent further such murders. As The Times reports, “'George Tiller shed the blood of 60,000 innocent children,' Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, told reporters. Mr. Terry ... said that he was neither condoning nor condemning Mr. Roeder’s actions, but that people should remember the children."
So, then, the defense relies on the view that if there is injustice in a country, if the laws permit unjust acts to be committed, then citizens who want to remedy this may take the remedy they believe in into their own hands. I, for example, really, sincerely believe that taxation in official extortion by the government and all those who facilitate this extortion support or perform unjust acts. By the reasoning of the Roeder defense team, I would be legally justified in taking into my own hands the effort to remedy the injustice being committed by those complicit in taxation. If I felt the way to stop them all would be to blow up their office buildings or inflict serious injuries on tax collectors, I would have the legal authority to do this, according to the argument in support of Mr. Roeder. I should, in short, become a modern day Robin Hood--remember that Robin got money back from the taxers and returned it to the victims!
Never mind for now that the belief that abortion amounts to homicide, let alone to murder, is if not out and out false then at certainly highly debatable and mostly based on particular religious doctrine, something that has no place as the foundations of a secular legal system such as that of the USA. A human being is supposed to be a rational animal and prior to a certain stage of the development of the fetus only a potential human being exists since no cerebral cortex is present to make rationality possible. (The case becomes different with so called partial birth abortions--some of these may be homicide and even murder; some of them self-defense. The matter is not amenable to a simple discussion but even here taking the law into one's hands is very problematic.) The notion of an "unborn child" is a virtual oxymoron when most abortions occur--no child exists then. As if a caterpillar were an unborn butterfly!
But one need not enter the abortion controversy fully in order to consider Mr. Roeder a murderer. This is because in a civilized society even someone who has murdered another deserves due process--being arrested, brought to trial, convicted, and then sentenced to a particular punishment. Citizens only very rarely may avoid this process and take the law into their own hands and even then they need to follow some due process measures, such as making a citizen's arrest and bringing the alleged culprit to the legal system for prosecution. This is the crucial issue even for those who do agree that Dr. Tiller was guilty of injustices and needed to be brought to justice.
If you add to this the difficulties widely recognized about construing ordinary abortions as homicide, let alone murder, then what Mr. Roeder is charged with having done cannot be legally excused. No one has assigned him the job of administering justice in the state of Kansas. Just as someone who considers taxation outright extortion, as I do, still must proceed by following due process in the effort to stop the policy, so must anyone else who shares Mr. Roeder's beliefs.
There are circumstances, of course, when the government's failure to administer justice can serve as a justification for "taking the law into one's own hands," but these circumstances must come very close to those of totalitarian tyrannies where other methods of making changes in the legal system are completely unavailable. And when the matter is so thoroughly fraught with disputable allegations on all sides as is the legal right to have an abortion, then going slowly in making the needed changes, assuming they are needed, is especially necessary.
The reason there are courts of law and trials in civilized countries is that great care must be taken when someone is charged with a legally codified injustice; such an individual is deemed to deserve conviction by taking his or her liberty and even life in accordance with due process. A carefully laid out system, honed by years and years of legal precedence, serves the purpose of not turning the process into back alley jurisprudence or lynching. So even if the defense offered up by Mr. Roeder is plausible, it is unreasonable. Abortion is itself something highly debatable and no open an shut case of homicide by any means. Its debatability is due in part to the fact that the determination of the exact beginning of a human being--which is what the issue is in abortion, not whether human life is involved, which is very ambiguous--is a serious problem. This is not geometry, after all, but biology and ethics. One must not demand the same precision here as one can in that other, more formal, discipline, something against which Aristotle had warned some 2500 years ago.
Those who consider abortion homicide and even murder, are required to make their case in light of centuries of legal precedence that tilts against the idea. They need to defend their theologically based convictions about "unborn children," etc., without recourse to a particular religious viewpoint. Murder, for example, isn't wrong because God or the Bible or the Koran says so but because it is the intentional or negligent taking of an innocent human being's life and that rests on a secular understanding of what it is to be a human being, one that can be understood by people regardless of their religious alliance.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Ayn Rand & Murray Rothbard: Diverse Champions of Liberty
By Tibor R. Machan
No one should attempt to treat Ayn Rand and Murray N. Rothbard as uncomplicated and rather similar defenders of the free society although they have more in common than many believe. As just one example, neither was a hawk when it comes to deploying military power abroad. There is evidence, too, that both considered it imprudent for the US government to be entangled in international affairs, such as fighting dictators who were no threat to America. Even their lack of enthusiasm for entering WW II could be seen as quite similar.
And so far as their underlying philosophical positions are concerned, they both can be regarded as Aristotelians. In matters of economics they were unwavering supporters of the fully free market capitalist system, although while Rand didn’t find corporations per se objectionable, arguably Rothbard had some problems with corporate commerce, especially as it manifest itself in the 20th century. One sphere in which they took very different positions, at least at first glance, is whether government is a bona fide feature of a genuinely free country. Rand thought it is, Rothbard thought it wasn’t. Yet the reason Rothbard opposed government was that it depended on taxation, something Rand also opposed, so even here where the difference between them appears to be quite stark, they were closer than one might think.
When intellectuals such as Rand and Rothbard have roughly the same political-economic position, it isn’t that surprising that they and their followers would stress the difference between them instead of the similarities. Moreover, in this case both had a similar explosive personality, with powerful likes and dislikes not just in fundamentals but also in what may legitimately be considered incidentals--music, poetry, novels, movies and so forth.
Yet what for Rothbard might be something tangential, even incidental, to his political economic thought, for Rand could be considered more germane since Rand thought of herself--and many think of her--as a philosopher (roughly of the rank of a Herbert Spencer or Auguste Comte). Rothbard wrote little in the sphere of metaphysics and epistemology, although he was well informed in these branches of philosophy, while Rand chimed in, quite directly, on several philosophical issues, having written what amounts to a rather nuanced long philosophical essay on epistemology and advanced ideas in metaphysics, such as on free will, causality, and the nature of universals. Her followers, such as Nathaniel Bradnen, Leonard Peikoff, Tara Smith, Alan Gotthelf, James Lennox, and David Kelley, among others, have all made contributions to serious discussions in various branches of philosophy.
The central dispute, however, between Rothbard and his followers and Rand and hers focuses, as I have already noted, on whether a free country would have a government. The debate is moved forward in the volume edited by Roderick Long and me, Anarchism versus Minarchism; Is Government Part of a Free County (Ashgate, 2006).
Even apart from their disagreement about the justifiability of government in a bona fide free country, there is the difference between them about the subjectivity of (some) values. Rothbard holds, for example, that "’distribution’ is simply the result of the free exchange process, and since this process benefits all participants on the market and increases social utility, it follows directly that the ‘distributional’ results of the free market also increase social utility.” The part here that shows the difference between Rothbard and Rand is where Rothbard says that the “free exchange process … benefits all participants on the market.” Maybe most of them benefit in such exchanges do but some do not. Suppose someone exchanges five ounces of crack cocaine for an ounce of heroin. Arguably, at least as Ayn Rand would very likely maintain, neither of these traders gains a benefit in this exchange, assuming that both commodities being trade are objectively harmful to the traders’ health. Both are, then, harmed, objectively speaking, even if they believed they would benefit.
This may be a minor matter but it isn’t, not at least if Rothbard’s idea is generalized to apply to all market exchanges. True, from a purely economic viewpoint both parties in free exchanges tend to take it or believe that they are benefited by these. But this belief could well be false.
Now of course Rand would agree with Rothbard that just because people engage in trade that’s harmful to them, it doesn’t follow that anyone, least of all the government, is authorized to ban such trade or otherwise interfere with it. Such matters as what may or may not harm free market traders from the trades they choose to engage in are supposed to be dealt with in the private sector. Family, friends, doctors, nurses, et al., or other agents devoted to advising people what they should and should not do are the only ones who may launch peaceful educational or advisory measures to remedy the private misjudgments and misconduct of peaceful market participants. Such an approach sees public policies such as the war on drugs as entirely unjustified even if consuming many drugs is objectively damaging to those doing so.
In any case, the Randian view doesn’t assume that all free trade benefits those embarking on them. Let me, however, return to the major bone of contention between Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, namely, whether government is (or could be) part of a free country. Given that Rothbard believes government cannot exists without deploying the rights-violating policy of taxation, his view is understandable but the underlying assumption that gives rise to it is questionable. Rand did indeed question it in her discussion of funding government in the chapter “Government Financing in a Free society” in The Virtue of Selfishness, at least by implication, when she argued that government can be financed without taxation. If she is correct, then Rothbard or his followers need to mount a different attack on the idea that the free society can have a government. (And some have indeed made this argument, including me in, for example, my “Anarchism and Minarchism, A Rapprochement,” Journal des Economists et des Estudes Humaines, Vol. 14, No. 4 [December 2002], 569-588.)
Rand proposed that instead of taxation, which involves the rights-violating policy of confiscation of private property, a government could be funded by way of a contract fee, a lottery, or some other peaceful method. Whether this is so cannot be addressed here but it shows that Rand and Rothbard were not very distant from each other on the issue of the justifiability of government in a free country. Perhaps the term “government” is ill advised when applied to whatever kind of law-enforcement institution would be involved in bona fide free countries. But this is not what’s crucial--a rose by any other name is still a rose and a law-enforcement, judicial or defense agency in a free society is what is at issue here, not what term is used to call it. So, again, Rand and Rothbard seem closer than usually believed.
Yet it’s not just about taxation for many who follow Rothbard. Most also hold that the idea is mistaken that government--or whatever it is called--needs to serve a society occupying a continuous instead instead of Swiss cheese like region. The idea of a disparately located country, without a continuous territory and with the possibility of all parts being accessible by law enforcers without the need of international treaties, makes sense to Rothbardians. Not, however, to Randians, it can be argued, not unless the familiar science fiction transportation option of being “beamed up” from one area to anther (so that law enforcement can reach all those within its jurisdiction) is available. Otherwise enforcement of the law can be easily evaded by criminals.
Again, this isn’t the place to resolve the dispute between Rand & her followers and Rothbard and his. This brief discussion should, however, indicate where their differences lie. It doesn’t at all explain, however, why the different parties to the debate tend often to be quite acrimonious toward each other. What may explain this, though, is a simple point of psychology. Nearly all champions of a fully free, libertarian society are also avid individualists and often tend to insist on what might be called the policy: My way or the highway! Even when their differences don’t warrant it.
By Tibor R. Machan
No one should attempt to treat Ayn Rand and Murray N. Rothbard as uncomplicated and rather similar defenders of the free society although they have more in common than many believe. As just one example, neither was a hawk when it comes to deploying military power abroad. There is evidence, too, that both considered it imprudent for the US government to be entangled in international affairs, such as fighting dictators who were no threat to America. Even their lack of enthusiasm for entering WW II could be seen as quite similar.
And so far as their underlying philosophical positions are concerned, they both can be regarded as Aristotelians. In matters of economics they were unwavering supporters of the fully free market capitalist system, although while Rand didn’t find corporations per se objectionable, arguably Rothbard had some problems with corporate commerce, especially as it manifest itself in the 20th century. One sphere in which they took very different positions, at least at first glance, is whether government is a bona fide feature of a genuinely free country. Rand thought it is, Rothbard thought it wasn’t. Yet the reason Rothbard opposed government was that it depended on taxation, something Rand also opposed, so even here where the difference between them appears to be quite stark, they were closer than one might think.
When intellectuals such as Rand and Rothbard have roughly the same political-economic position, it isn’t that surprising that they and their followers would stress the difference between them instead of the similarities. Moreover, in this case both had a similar explosive personality, with powerful likes and dislikes not just in fundamentals but also in what may legitimately be considered incidentals--music, poetry, novels, movies and so forth.
Yet what for Rothbard might be something tangential, even incidental, to his political economic thought, for Rand could be considered more germane since Rand thought of herself--and many think of her--as a philosopher (roughly of the rank of a Herbert Spencer or Auguste Comte). Rothbard wrote little in the sphere of metaphysics and epistemology, although he was well informed in these branches of philosophy, while Rand chimed in, quite directly, on several philosophical issues, having written what amounts to a rather nuanced long philosophical essay on epistemology and advanced ideas in metaphysics, such as on free will, causality, and the nature of universals. Her followers, such as Nathaniel Bradnen, Leonard Peikoff, Tara Smith, Alan Gotthelf, James Lennox, and David Kelley, among others, have all made contributions to serious discussions in various branches of philosophy.
The central dispute, however, between Rothbard and his followers and Rand and hers focuses, as I have already noted, on whether a free country would have a government. The debate is moved forward in the volume edited by Roderick Long and me, Anarchism versus Minarchism; Is Government Part of a Free County (Ashgate, 2006).
Even apart from their disagreement about the justifiability of government in a bona fide free country, there is the difference between them about the subjectivity of (some) values. Rothbard holds, for example, that "’distribution’ is simply the result of the free exchange process, and since this process benefits all participants on the market and increases social utility, it follows directly that the ‘distributional’ results of the free market also increase social utility.” The part here that shows the difference between Rothbard and Rand is where Rothbard says that the “free exchange process … benefits all participants on the market.” Maybe most of them benefit in such exchanges do but some do not. Suppose someone exchanges five ounces of crack cocaine for an ounce of heroin. Arguably, at least as Ayn Rand would very likely maintain, neither of these traders gains a benefit in this exchange, assuming that both commodities being trade are objectively harmful to the traders’ health. Both are, then, harmed, objectively speaking, even if they believed they would benefit.
This may be a minor matter but it isn’t, not at least if Rothbard’s idea is generalized to apply to all market exchanges. True, from a purely economic viewpoint both parties in free exchanges tend to take it or believe that they are benefited by these. But this belief could well be false.
Now of course Rand would agree with Rothbard that just because people engage in trade that’s harmful to them, it doesn’t follow that anyone, least of all the government, is authorized to ban such trade or otherwise interfere with it. Such matters as what may or may not harm free market traders from the trades they choose to engage in are supposed to be dealt with in the private sector. Family, friends, doctors, nurses, et al., or other agents devoted to advising people what they should and should not do are the only ones who may launch peaceful educational or advisory measures to remedy the private misjudgments and misconduct of peaceful market participants. Such an approach sees public policies such as the war on drugs as entirely unjustified even if consuming many drugs is objectively damaging to those doing so.
In any case, the Randian view doesn’t assume that all free trade benefits those embarking on them. Let me, however, return to the major bone of contention between Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, namely, whether government is (or could be) part of a free country. Given that Rothbard believes government cannot exists without deploying the rights-violating policy of taxation, his view is understandable but the underlying assumption that gives rise to it is questionable. Rand did indeed question it in her discussion of funding government in the chapter “Government Financing in a Free society” in The Virtue of Selfishness, at least by implication, when she argued that government can be financed without taxation. If she is correct, then Rothbard or his followers need to mount a different attack on the idea that the free society can have a government. (And some have indeed made this argument, including me in, for example, my “Anarchism and Minarchism, A Rapprochement,” Journal des Economists et des Estudes Humaines, Vol. 14, No. 4 [December 2002], 569-588.)
Rand proposed that instead of taxation, which involves the rights-violating policy of confiscation of private property, a government could be funded by way of a contract fee, a lottery, or some other peaceful method. Whether this is so cannot be addressed here but it shows that Rand and Rothbard were not very distant from each other on the issue of the justifiability of government in a free country. Perhaps the term “government” is ill advised when applied to whatever kind of law-enforcement institution would be involved in bona fide free countries. But this is not what’s crucial--a rose by any other name is still a rose and a law-enforcement, judicial or defense agency in a free society is what is at issue here, not what term is used to call it. So, again, Rand and Rothbard seem closer than usually believed.
Yet it’s not just about taxation for many who follow Rothbard. Most also hold that the idea is mistaken that government--or whatever it is called--needs to serve a society occupying a continuous instead instead of Swiss cheese like region. The idea of a disparately located country, without a continuous territory and with the possibility of all parts being accessible by law enforcers without the need of international treaties, makes sense to Rothbardians. Not, however, to Randians, it can be argued, not unless the familiar science fiction transportation option of being “beamed up” from one area to anther (so that law enforcement can reach all those within its jurisdiction) is available. Otherwise enforcement of the law can be easily evaded by criminals.
Again, this isn’t the place to resolve the dispute between Rand & her followers and Rothbard and his. This brief discussion should, however, indicate where their differences lie. It doesn’t at all explain, however, why the different parties to the debate tend often to be quite acrimonious toward each other. What may explain this, though, is a simple point of psychology. Nearly all champions of a fully free, libertarian society are also avid individualists and often tend to insist on what might be called the policy: My way or the highway! Even when their differences don’t warrant it.
Monday, January 02, 2012
Cuba Awakes?
Tibor R. Machan
Cuba’s fate over the last half a century has been disastrous, although before that the island wasn’t a Caribbean paradise either. US government policies haven’t made it easier for Cubans to escape their misery since instead of opening up the routes of free trade, the US has mostly chosen to issue penalties against the country, never mind that Cuba has done little against the USA per se to deserve most of it.
The Cold War, of course, brought forth some insane policies from many participants. One of the worst was to harden loyalties to some really insane political economic ideas, if for no other reason than sheer spite. That is to be expected from a petty tyrant like Fidel Castro--whose system was about a far from socialism, let alone communism, as was Gaddafi's. But that the US kept a policy of relentless exclusion of everything Cuban wherever it had any influence is a great shame. It is one thing to recognize a tyranny for what it is, quite another to adopt its policies tit for tat.
But all this seems to be winding down considerably now. The BBC reported back on December 20th, 2011, that Cuba is now expanding outright free market reforms across the country. Ironically, and tragically for Americans, all this is happening while in America the elites--including political leaders and their cheerleaders in the academy--are pushing for greater and greater statism on nearly all fronts. Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and the country’s current ruler, seems to realize that moving Cuba in the direction of a free market, capitalist economic system is good for Cubans. As the BBC reported, “His government plans to have up to 40% of the workforce employed by the non-state sector by 2016, compared with just 10% at the end of 2010.”
One reason Cuba didn’t immediately join the Soviet bloc countries in abandoning its ubiquitous socialist policies is that as an outpost of Soviet style socialism, it was too wedded to all that central planning and also simply too stubborn to make the right move. Nothing is as irrational as the ego of a dictator since service to the citizenry is not in his job description. But just as in personal relations holding a grudge is usually injurious to those who harbor that attitude, so it is with Cuba’s stubbornness. And it seems that Raul Castro has realized this and persuaded Fidel to give it up finally.
So reportedly “for the first time in decades people are allowed to buy and sell homes and cars and take out private business loans from banks.” (Sadly the term “allowed” is still appropriate as a way to characterize the relationship between government and the citizenry, just as in contemporary China! Maybe in time Cubans will begin to question how it is that their government sees itself as permitting them to do what they choose to do!) It looks like the entire country is following in the footsteps of barber shops and beauty salons which were recently removed from state control and handed to employees. As the BBC put it, they now “work for themselves”! Sadly, though, they are still following the lead of welfare states or mixed economies, wherein governments are regarded as proprietors instead of referees! (That is, by the way, where the modern welfare and, of course, socialist state demonstrates just how reactionary those systems are, following the pattern of monarchies wherein the king was taken to own the country, including the people in it!)
Anyway, I came to praise Cuba today, not to lament that its progress toward the free society is halting and incomplete. After all, there is no country anywhere which has gone completely free!
But the fact that Cuba is emerging from its socialist dark age should be cause for celebration. Maybe, as some have suggested, it will be the former Soviet bloc countries that will take over the leadership toward a genuinely free society, with others like the USA regressing toward more and more statism. Who knows, maybe even North Korea will in time come around.
Tibor R. Machan
Cuba’s fate over the last half a century has been disastrous, although before that the island wasn’t a Caribbean paradise either. US government policies haven’t made it easier for Cubans to escape their misery since instead of opening up the routes of free trade, the US has mostly chosen to issue penalties against the country, never mind that Cuba has done little against the USA per se to deserve most of it.
The Cold War, of course, brought forth some insane policies from many participants. One of the worst was to harden loyalties to some really insane political economic ideas, if for no other reason than sheer spite. That is to be expected from a petty tyrant like Fidel Castro--whose system was about a far from socialism, let alone communism, as was Gaddafi's. But that the US kept a policy of relentless exclusion of everything Cuban wherever it had any influence is a great shame. It is one thing to recognize a tyranny for what it is, quite another to adopt its policies tit for tat.
But all this seems to be winding down considerably now. The BBC reported back on December 20th, 2011, that Cuba is now expanding outright free market reforms across the country. Ironically, and tragically for Americans, all this is happening while in America the elites--including political leaders and their cheerleaders in the academy--are pushing for greater and greater statism on nearly all fronts. Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and the country’s current ruler, seems to realize that moving Cuba in the direction of a free market, capitalist economic system is good for Cubans. As the BBC reported, “His government plans to have up to 40% of the workforce employed by the non-state sector by 2016, compared with just 10% at the end of 2010.”
One reason Cuba didn’t immediately join the Soviet bloc countries in abandoning its ubiquitous socialist policies is that as an outpost of Soviet style socialism, it was too wedded to all that central planning and also simply too stubborn to make the right move. Nothing is as irrational as the ego of a dictator since service to the citizenry is not in his job description. But just as in personal relations holding a grudge is usually injurious to those who harbor that attitude, so it is with Cuba’s stubbornness. And it seems that Raul Castro has realized this and persuaded Fidel to give it up finally.
So reportedly “for the first time in decades people are allowed to buy and sell homes and cars and take out private business loans from banks.” (Sadly the term “allowed” is still appropriate as a way to characterize the relationship between government and the citizenry, just as in contemporary China! Maybe in time Cubans will begin to question how it is that their government sees itself as permitting them to do what they choose to do!) It looks like the entire country is following in the footsteps of barber shops and beauty salons which were recently removed from state control and handed to employees. As the BBC put it, they now “work for themselves”! Sadly, though, they are still following the lead of welfare states or mixed economies, wherein governments are regarded as proprietors instead of referees! (That is, by the way, where the modern welfare and, of course, socialist state demonstrates just how reactionary those systems are, following the pattern of monarchies wherein the king was taken to own the country, including the people in it!)
Anyway, I came to praise Cuba today, not to lament that its progress toward the free society is halting and incomplete. After all, there is no country anywhere which has gone completely free!
But the fact that Cuba is emerging from its socialist dark age should be cause for celebration. Maybe, as some have suggested, it will be the former Soviet bloc countries that will take over the leadership toward a genuinely free society, with others like the USA regressing toward more and more statism. Who knows, maybe even North Korea will in time come around.
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