Column on Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law

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Oregon?s Right to Suicide Law

Tibor R. Machan

If the Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution were heeded by our
courts
and legislatures, there wouldn?t be public controversies about whether a
person has the right to commit suicide. This would be understood as one of
the many un-enumerated rights reserved to the people, just as saying a
prayer, worshiping Satan or playing bridge are. We have the right to do
all this and nobody has the just power or authority to interfere (beyond
certain measure that make sure this is really what we want to do).

Unfortunately the United States of America has become a country
just like
the country from which it gained its independence back in the late 1700s.
It is now managed by government and nearly everything people want to do
that doesn?t please some other people needs to gain public permission.
Thus we have the US Supreme Court hearing arguments about whether Oregon?s
law permitting doctors to dispense drugs that can be used to commit
suicide is constitutional. Of course it is. The big idea about the US
Constitution, as argued so astutely by Professor Randy E. Barnett in his
Restoring the Lost Constitution, the Presumption of Liberty (Princeton,
2004),
is that citizens are free to do everything apart from just a few matters
that are the purview of their governments. Like fight wars with foreign
nations or establishing the final court system. These are matters that
governments
were empowered to do but everything else is--or should be--none of the
government?s
business.

Now they are. So, the issue is not our liberty but who gets to
control
us?states, municipalities, counties, or the feds. That is a disaster in the
development of a country that the world still considers to be largely
free. And
our public officials still pretend that they represent a free people and
are promoting freedom abroad. But heaven help Iraq if it gets the kind of
legal system under which Americans live today. The only reason the
tyrannical implications of this system are not prominently displayed in
the lives of Americans is that the earlier understanding?itself merely
partial?of the meaning of the US Constitution had been that individuals
have rights that are indeed unalienable. The momentum that such an
understanding
created is still evident, from which we get our relatively free society?a
mostly free market, due process of law, civil liberties, freedom or
religion and
the press, and some semblance of respect and protection of the right to
property and drafting of contracts.

This momentum, however, is slowly petering out and the courts and
legislatures
are doing nothing to abate that trend. No, instead they are hastening the
demise of those aspects of the country that had earned it the designation
of "a free society." (Of course, it
never was fully free?consider, among other things, slavery and
conscription as just two major contradictions to that ideal.)

Think about it for a moment: What business is it of the voters of
Oregon,
the federal government, the US Supreme Court or anyone else if someone in
the city of Eugene elects to obtain some help from a doctor in his or her
efforts to end his or her life, especially a life that is unbearable to
live for that person? Who are these meddlers anyway to burst in on such a
person and order him or her to desist?

May I remind you that we are talking about adult US citizens, not
children, ones who have in the course of making their decision to seek
such
help passed a bunch of tests to show they are of sound mind when they made
their decision? May I remind you that these adult human beings have an
unalienable right to their lives, which means they may not be intruded
upon
as they decide whether to live or to die? (Having a right means one must
be left free
by all others, including the government, to decide about what one has a
right to!)

But no. These free citizens of a supposedly free country are
required
first to ask permission of Oregon?s voters. Then they need to fend off the
United States Federal Government that wants to override the voters?
decision. And then they need to submit all of this to the US Supreme
Court, which should long ago have stated very simply: ?Leave these folks
around, it is their life, so let them decide about it!?

Instead, we have the ugly spectacle of free adult men and women
going
around in circles, begging for permission from all kinds of strangers, to
do
what is clearly their unalienable right to do.

And you wonder why the rest of the world may be a bit confused as
to just
what the government of the United States of America is promoting around
the globe?

Column on why many accept "Public" Crimes

Why They Keep Doing it?

Tibor R. Machan

Few people we know approve of break-ins, bank robberies, forced labor,
trespassing and other crimes. Sure, there are the criminals but even among
them most do not generally approve of their crimes; they tend to
rationalize them in various ingenious ways. But among the rest of us such
deeds are not tolerated, even from desperate folks. These latter should,
most will contend, find some alternative way to manage their emergencies.

On the other hand, there are millions who fully approve of voting in
various ?public? policies that amount pretty much to break- robberies,
forced labor, trespassing and other deeds. Or they vote for people who go
to various centers of political power and cast votes in favor of such
policies. And then there are all those who give support to these by
working in various government bureaus that administer the ?public?
programs that basically involve the commission of the crimes that very few
of us tolerate when they are committed without the cover of being ?public.?

Now, one answer defenders of such ?public? policies will give is that
after all, the measures had democratic support. So they couldn?t amount to
crimes (in the sense of violating basic principles of community life),
could they? However, this doesn?t clear things up fully since few among us
approve of lynch mobs whereby the majority of a community perpetrates,
say, a hanging. Even though the majority backs it, the hanging is widely
understood to be unpardonable.

There may be no ?one-size-fits-all? answer available to my question. Why
certain people accept criminal conduct dubbed ?public? policies may be
different from why others do. And most would not accept that these
?public? policies are akin to the crimes they uniformly condemn. But why?
Why don?t they appreciate that getting a great many people together and
thus empowering various ?officials? or ?authorities? to commit the crimes
amounts, well, simply to magnified criminal conduct?

One widely voiced reason given in academic circles for why the two things
aren?t at all the same is the democratic one but another is that there is
some kind of tacit agreement people in societies enter into that
authorizes the ?public? measures that are, in fact, criminal in other
contexts. Such a belief in a mythical social compact or contract has
recently surfaced in the popular press when Professor Michael Ignatieff of
Harvard?s JFK School of Government advanced it in The New York Times
Magazine. He claimed that citizens who were hurt by hurricane Katrina had
a valid complaint about lack of government help since governments exist to
protect people against disasters and other adversities.

It is true enough that in the old era of monarchies, government was seen
to be the ?keeper of the realm.? In return for this it had nearly full
authority to tell the people what they must do with their lives. The
divine right of kings doctrine helped shore up this idea. But in most
instances such government ?authority? came about by default?after some
realm had been conquered, whoever?s army did the conquering simply assumed
full powers over the conquered and their territories. There was no
question about right and wrong, about whether this was justified, only
about who had the power to carry off the deed of conquest.

In the wake of this ancient?and not so ancient?attitude about who is
authorized to control society, many people tend toward a kind of realism
in political matters. While at the personal level they disapprove of
theft, break-ins, forced labor, trespassing, and so forth, they also
embrace the notion that when it comes to the interaction of large groups,
insisting on moral standards is sort of naïve. Instead, we need to accept
that if some group is powerful enough, it will be impossible to protest
effectively against its policies once it?s been labeled ?public.? (It
doesn?t extend to the Mafia, of course.) Those who protest are seen as
idealists?including the American Founders.

Another way some defend crimes masked as ?public? policy is to claim that
as the outcome of public debate, they are legitimate. It?s a bit like
justifying a heist on the grounds that, after all, those perpetrating it
had a long and intense discussion about whether to do it. This lends the
deed a semblance of civility.

None of this passes muster. Such criminal public policies are just that,
criminal. It does, however, suggest why it?s so difficult to sell this to
millions?and to all those among them who own and manage the media. No
matter how many people approve of and back it, crime by any other name is
still a crime. The government deeds amounting to such crimes are every bit
as objectionable as when individuals carry them out. This isn?t easy to
sell, especially when so many hold out hope that they, too, will sometimes
benefit from these crimes.

Column on Pitfalls of Diversity

Pitfalls of Diversity

Tibor R. Machan

Diversity is a goal of many organizations, including private
businesses?especially those wishing to gain work from governments.
Universities across the country are holding formal sessions in which staff
and faculty are instructed about how to stop being insensitive to
minorities and anyone who might feel offended by certain language and
demeanor.

In the wake of this the burden has fallen mainly on employers to shield
vulnerable personnel from unpleasant experiences, so that, for example,
they are prohibited from asking certain questions when they hire or
promote people. Even those who have habits that can impede their assigned
work have been known to get a pass so as not to violate some provision of,
say, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Someone who is an alcoholic or
dyslexic may not be refused work or reassigned lest that be construed as
singling out the person and thus violating his or her civil rights.

It has come to light, however, that all this protectiveness toward
certain minorities may actually do them some serious harm. It turns out,
for example, that medical doctors have been reluctant to call attention to
their patients? obesity of the last several decades. ?The likelihood that
a health professional had mentioned a weight problem varied with a child?s
age and ethnicity,? reports Science News in its September 24th issue.
Researchers Cynthia L. Ogden and Carolyn J. Tabak, had written about this
matter for the September 2nd issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report. The younger the obese children, the less likely would health
professionals call attention to this to their parents and recommend any
sort of remedy.

Of course, such statistics do not say very much but it is not unlikely
that one reason for the reluctance of health professionals to alert
parents is that they find doing so awkward, potentially offensive. In my
own case when a few years ago I suggested to some of my students that they
speak up in class instead of merely sit passively as I presented the
material and discussed it with others, several of them reported me as
being insensitive to their cultural background which encourages students
to remain silent instead of raising questions and offering observations or
opinions in class. Of course, not taking part in the discussion robs
students of the opportunity to hone their skills, and I am responsible, in
part, to help them to avoid this. So what?s more important, guarding them
against possible offense or helping them gain a handle on class materials?

The more these areas of sensitivity bear on behavior that is actually a
matter of choice, not merely on attributes over which no one has any
control, the more teachers, health professionals, and others in the
service professions may find themselves hampered in the effort to
conscientiously serve their clients. A tax attorney may have to tell a
client that his or her way of preparing a report is inadequate but that
client might well take offense, construing this an insult instead of
assistance. A hair dresser might suggest a different cut for a client only
to be rebuked for insensitivity. There is, in fact, no end to the possible
ways human communication could be undermined by all this worry about
hurting people?s feelings. It isn?t just that employers must put up with
habits they consider objectionable. But they and others could well be
impeded in providing valuable information to those who can benefit from it
because such information could upset those to whom it is communicated.

There used to be a pretty sensible distinction between lashing out at
someone for something he or she had no control over?one?s race, sex,
height, national origin, etc.?and matters over which the person had or
could gain ample control?e. g., how well one speaks a language, how one
dresses, one?s hygiene, and so forth. But when government got into the
business of regulating how people interacted, some began to see an
opportunity to exploit it all. The first instance that came to my
attention was when some San Francisco taxi drivers decided it went against
their culture for their employers to require them to cut their hair or
stop wearing certain kind of garments.

Now it seems anything about anyone is coming to constitute an essential
part of his or her identity and may not be criticized, even for practical
purposes. But, as is the case with those young children whose obesity can
be a serious medical hazard, the failure to discuss some of these personal
attributes could itself be not just something uncomfortable but out and
out hazardous. For the sake of not offending someone?s sensibilities,
their well being itself could be placed at risk.

Column on Prestigious Media Ignorance

Uneducated Interviewer

Tibor R. Machan

It may be gross folly but I have had this notion that contemporary
journalists working at major media outlets had to have received a good
education. Alas, I could be very wrong.

Evidence for this comes from the Sunday, October 2, 2005, issue of The
New York Times Magazine. In it interviewer Deborah Solomon was sparring
with former Massachusetts governor William Weld, who expressed his support
for privatizing a good deal of what governments do around the country. One
of his targets was zoos.

Alas, when he gave voice to this idea, Ms. Solomon responded by saying,
?But surely I don?t have to remind you that the private sector cannot be
trusted to act in the interests of society as a whole, which is why
government exists....?

Not only does this retort fly in the face of centuries of history and
even plain common sense but it counters one of the most important insights
of contemporary economic understanding of the public sector. I have in
mind the famous "public choice theory," as laid out in detail in James
Buchanan?s and Gordon Tullock?s seminal book, The Calculus of Consent
(University of Michigan Press, 1962). (Buchanan received the Nobel Prize
in economic science for advancing the theory; Tullock didn?t because, I am
told, his degree isn?t in economics but biology or law).

The gist of the theory is that people in the public sector and the
private sector are motivated very similarly, that is, so as to advance
their own agendas. And why not? Why would someone enter ?public? service
if not to promote some cherished purpose, in this case by means of
politics rather than enterprise? Indeed, most folks who go into politics
do not devote themselves to promote the interest of some illusory ?society
as a whole.? There is no such thing??society? is a term applied to the
interlocking network of all the private and social endeavors and
achievements of individuals, nothing more. There is no entity the term
refers to the interest of which public servants can advance. There are
only the innumerable private interests, all of them with more or less
support within society, and people entering politics and working in
government are pursuing these interests, not the interest of society as a
whole. (The only common interest governments can possibly protect is the
equal individual rights of all citizens.)

Whenever people do pursue their various private interests within
government, they have one advantage over those who do this in the private
sector. This is that they can obtain resources from taxation instead of
voluntary contributions, via trade. So the pursuit of the ?interest of
society as a whole? routinely gets reckless and unrestrained. We have, as
a result, massive, uncontrolled spending on projects that have become the
purview of governments because they can legally extort?and, if that
doesn?t work, print?money with hardly any obstacles standing in their way.

Former governor Weld is right to complain and to seek some remedy from
privatization. Indeed, throughout the globe desperately broke governments
have begun doing this whenever they aren?t prevented by citizens who have
come to depend on them for handouts. (Germany is a good example where some
in government is seeking to reign in spending but free riders fiercely
object.)

In any case, one would have thought that Ms. Solomon, being as she is a
journalist in the employ of a very prestigious media giant, The New York
Times, would have some inkling about public choice theory and its
successes in understanding how politicians and bureaucrats behave. Yet,
she asserts, as if it were a self-evident axiom, that government can be
trusted ?to act in the interest of society as a whole.? Is she whistling
in the dark or is she really so ignorant as to buy into this widely
exposed old myth?

One would have hoped she is aware that governments mostly serve various
special private interests and care not a whit about society as a whole but
use the idea as a ruse. And, contrary to another myth to which she
subscribes, the only reason government exists is to secure our
rights?which is something Ms. Solomon could easily have gleaned from
reading not some obscure technical treatise but the Declaration of
Independence.

Column on Bannig Phoning While Driving

Banning Driving While Phoning

Tibor R. Machan

Richard Roy, a state representative of Connecticut, is quoted in The New
York Times, Saturday, October 1, 2005, saying "There's nothing worse than
seeing someone driving down the road, on the phone or shaving or putting
on make-up, and there's a child in the back seat." With this hyperbole he
was defending the new law in the state banning the use of cell phones
while driving a car.

Actually, cell phone use by drivers can be just as safe or unsafe as
combing one?s hair, fiddling with the CD or cassette player, searching for
house keys in one?s pocket or purse or doing innumerable other things that
may distract one. To pick on cell phone use is unjustified.

This is not to say that some people aren?t quite reckless as they drive
and use their cell phones. But, that?s not unique to cell phone use, as
already noted. Indeed, a good policy is to get away from drivers who are
talking to and looking at their passengers. It?s scary?they could get so
involved as to miss umpteen hazards. But is it sensible to ban this?

I am not disputing the authority of the managers?the government?to set
rules for the use of the roads. Clearly this is what underlies all these
rules of the road, even when they are an overreach. Anyone who owns or
manages a realm may establish rules within that realm?prohibit people from
smoking in one?s home or restaurant or offices, require them to take their
shoes off before coming in; you name it and ownership confers such a
right. Other people, of course, have the right to stay clear of such
realms when they disagree with such rules.

Unfortunately, when it comes to roads, there is no alternative to using
the ones the state administers, so unlike in the case of homes and
restaurants, there?s no choice??You want to drive, you got to deal with
the man.? That?s how it is, unless you can find some private road system
someplace, and even then the government will probably have intruded big
time. (Perhaps an exception is raceways, where the owners set the rules;
however, these are only available to qualified racers.)

So the issue of whether to ban hand held cell phones by automobile
drivers isn?t about who has the power to impose such a ban?clearly, in the
way our society is managed, the government does, although we can dicker
about whether local, county, state or federal politicians and/or
bureaucrats have that legal authority. It seems, however, that whether a
general ban ought to be imposed is very difficult to know?some drivers may
well be using cell phones and while doing so driving even more safely than
when they do not; while using them, they may well be especially focused on
their driving, whereas when they are not, they could become complacent.
This can apply to the use of any other implement?I, for example, often
shave as I drive and increase my focus on the road as I do this. Shaving,
of course, doesn?t run the risk of getting too involved with something
that can take one?s mind off the road. Selecting a CD from one?s
collection, however, can be much more distracting than using a cell phone.

When politicians and bureaucrats get involved in micromanaging how people
ought to drive, they can very easily become pointlessly intrusive. They
can be like those parents who meddle in everything their teen children are
doing and thereby drive a serious wedge between them and the kids, even
encourage rebelliousness instead of prudence. This would likely be even
worse with those who manage the roads?they are, after all, dealing mostly
with adults who pretty much hold on to the notion that they, not some
official, ought to decided how they ought to drive a car. Evasion of or
resistance to rules can become routine and this may work against the
purpose a cell phone or similar ban is meant to serve.

It seems to me that the answer is to focus not on what people do in their
cars while driving but on the actual driving they do, which is what those
who enforce the rules of the road can deal with most effectively. It
shouldn?t be an issue whether one is using this or that implement that may
for some but not for others serve to impede their driving. It should be an
issue of whether the driving is competent, which is something quite
independent of why it may or may not be.

In a free society it isn?t the state of mind of citizens that should be
the concern of law enforcement, but primarily their actual conduct.

Column on Exploiting Disasters

Exploiting Disasters

Tibor R. Machan

In the beginning of the American republic there was a debate between the
Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Neither side was advancing a fully
consistent, coherent vision of politics for America but, in the main,
Hamiltonians defended the idea of a strong federal, while Jefferson?s
supporters argued for limited and mainly local government. The debate has
never completely ended, although Hamiltonians triumphed when it comes to
how America evolved.

In our day there is little mainstream opposition to the Hamiltonian big
government vision. Both parties champion it, differing only on what
aspects of society each would like to have government control more fully,
more aggressively. Conservatives focus mainly on shaping our souls?they
want to bring church and state closer together, they demand that religious
teaching be spread across the land, while liberals are primarily
interested in having government control the economy, raise minimum wages,
regulate corporations, and tax and spend to their heart?s content. Don?t
kid yourself?each side embraces aggressive moralizing to the core.

In times of emergencies the fact that both the liberals and the
conservatives have embraced big government?not only in terms of its size
and cost but even more importantly regarding its scope of power?comes
across most clearly. The only minor dispute between these two factions
concerns which level of government should be most involved, state or
federal. Conservatives prefer that state governments wield the greater
power and carry the greater burden, while liberals champion unrestrained
federal involvement.

The fact that neither alternative is working well, no matter what the
crisis happens to be?natural, like Katrina and Rita, or man made such as
terrorism?does not bother either side too much. Sure, there are some who
sound alarms about too much government power, say, when it comes to
sacrificing civil liberties in the war on terror or, on the other side,
when massive and reckless federal spending is contemplated as a remedy for
whatever ails the country. But aside from such details, the consensus
tends to be that when people face big trouble, the way to go is with big
government.

The disaster by the Gulf of Mexico and the visual imagery that millions
of us experienced from the region, has given the Hamiltonians a
considerable opportunity to bolster their case. As an example, one need
but read Michael Ignatieff, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard
University?s Kennedy School of Government, in the September 25th issue of
The New York Times Magazine. To bolster his ongoing support for big,
unlimited federal government, Ignatieff penned ?The Broken Contract,? a
piece in which he propounds the notion that the American people have
entered into a contract which requires that they be protected by
government from all hazards and dangers and crisis. As he puts the point,

[The contract?s] basic term is protection: helping citizens to protect
their families and possessions from forces beyond their control. Let's not
suppose this contract is uncontroversial. American politics is a furious
argument about what should be in the contract and what shouldn't be. But
there is enough agreement, most of the time, about what the contract
contains for America to hold together as a political community. When
disasters strike, they test whether the contract is respected in a
citizen's hour of need. When the levees broke, the contract of American
citizenship failed.

Actually, of course, no such contract was ever entered into. In the
American political tradition if any kind of contract between the citizens
and their government exists, it involves the very limited terms of getting
protection of one?s basic rights. As stated in the Declaration of
Independence, where this political vision is sketched, it is ?to secure
these rights [that] governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the government.?

This is unambiguously put?governments exist so as to protect our rights,
not to protect us ?from forces beyond our control.? In other words,
American government wasn?t conceived as our doctor, dentist, tree surgeon,
hurricane fighter, flood preventer, and all the various professionals whom
we hire when ?forces beyond our control? threaten or invade our lives.
American government exists to fight criminals, not nature.

It should be simple to understand this. Government is made up of
politicians and bureaucrats, not professionals who know how to handle all
the varieties of disasters that we can encounter in life. Whenever
government extends itself to attempt to cope with these adversities, all
that really happens is that it grows by leaps and bounds. (The best
scholarly work on this is Robert Higgs? Crisis and Leviathan [Oxford
University Press, 1987].)

Yet, of course, even as academic cheerleaders of big government like
Michael Ignatieff admit outright that government failed in this latest, as
it has in innumerable other, disaster management, they also use the
disaster to call for more and more government.

Instead, they ought to call for taking government out of the picture and
acclimating all of us to the simple and vital fact that disasters are best
managed with paid professionals, ones who would be prepared and step up to
the plate if only government didn?t pretend to be there for us, feigning
?to protect [our] families and possessions from forces beyond our control.?

Column on Ripples of Kelo

[Please proof read before using]

Ripples of Kelo?

Tibor R. Machan

It seems like Kelo v. City of New London, CT.?the infamous case in which
the US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that private property may be taken so as
to transfer it to others who might do with something conducive to the
likes of local politicians?has energized the enemies of private property
rights. Now they are arguing that whenever the government takes property
from someone, it need not even be compensated. Why? Because it never
belonged to anyone but the government in the first place.

This appears to be the rallying cry of people from around the country
lobbying against a Congressional measure (H. R. 3824) that would require
governments to pay for taking property from citizens so that this property
could serve some public purpose. Various members of Congress?e.g., Raul M.
Grijalva and John Conyers, Jr.?are claiming that any measure that would
compensate property owners when such takings occur amounts to ?a massive
new entitlement program.? Letting folks keep what they own?or requiring
government to pay for it when they confiscate it?is now to be construed as
an entitlement, a kind of gift from the state.

Suppose a government regulatory agency declares that your backyard or
farmland must be preserved so as to provide a habitat for some endangered
species. The lobbyists are claiming that when your property is confiscated
for this purpose nothing is actually taken from you because the property
in fact belongs to the endangered species, not you, in the first place.
The Endangered Species Act supposedly implies this. The reduction ad
absurdum
of such an idea is that if some bug or virus infests your body, you may not
expunge it because they and not you have a right to be there. As if bugs,
viruses, and endangered species had the right to private property, instead
of human beings.

Here is where all the talk about animal rights has its insidious,
misanthropic results. If one holds to the myth that animals have rights,
including property rights, then these lobbyists?who will surely be
standing in line to administer any system honoring such animal rights?have
a point. (Yet even then the fact that people took possessions of the land
in question first would support the idea that if property is taken from
them, it should be compensated. By whom, you might ask. Well, by those who
want to provide the animals with a habitat, namely, the
environmentalists.)

In fact, as my book Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature?s Favorite
(2004) argued, animals have no rights and any law that is enacted under
the assumption that they do is a farce. The only reason for these laws is
that there is a large enough active constituency that wants them and wants
to be in the position to administer whatever regulations emerge in the
wake of having them enacted.

OK, some of these lobbyists may in fact be animal lovers and may be
motivated by this love to run roughshod over private property rights. And
instead of collecting the money needed to make room for their beloved
animals, they prefer going to the government and having it force human
beings off their property without even compensating them for their losses.

Of course, this procedure is nothing new. Indeed, even the US Supreme
Court?s Kelo ruling wasn?t entirely novel. People have been going to
government for many years to get their way against other people. As one
sage warned, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always
votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public
treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose
fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." (Attributed to Sir Alex
Fraser Tytler [1742-1813].)

We are witnessing this evolution now, with environmental lobbyists
basically urging that the government confiscate all private property if it
can be useful to living beings other than ourselves. This is exactly the
kind of altruism that one leader of the animal liberation movement called
for back in the 1970s, in a book titled Animal Liberation (Random House,
1975).

And it is very likely that these lobbyists will prevail, sadly, since the
courts have neglected to stand firmly in defense of the right to private
property when other objectives were advanced as reason to violate them.

Column on doing things on our own

Science versus Society?

Tibor R. Machan

One would assume science is on society?s side, which is to say that what
scientists learn can make things better for many of us. And this is
certainly generally true. But there appear to be some exceptions or,
rather, puzzles. Here what the scientists produce often leads to more
confusion than understanding.

In his book Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior (2005), Mark
Blumberg, a psychologist at the University of Iowa, argues that our
behavior is prompted by our DNA and by the environment and explores how
much of it is due to which. He is, in other words, chiming in with his own
reflections on the old nature versus nurture debate. What is so puzzling
is that there is no room left for Blumberg?and, admittedly, to most of
those who discuss the topic?for what most people outside of the scientific
community think is the main explanation for how we act, namely, ourselves.
(For that we would need to turn to the late Edward Pols, whose Acts of Our
Being [1983] explores that possibility thoroughly.)

Yes, indeed, Blumberg spends some 200 pages without ever considering that
beside how our genes and environment influence what we do, there may well
be just a bit of room for personal responsibility. That option is
apparently so absurd for him that he will not even mention it.

Yet, of course, much of society?its institutions, policies,
problems?assumes that although DNA has a serious impact on us, and the
environment matters, too, the main force in producing our behavior is the
individual, by means of the exercise of what has traditionally been called
one?s free will. This is why criminals are convicted of crimes. This is
why those in charge are blamed when various organizations, firms or
governments foul up?just think of FEMA or Enron or the Iraqi war. Even in
the scientific community, where Blumberg conducts his discussions, people
hold one another responsible for mistakes and sometimes even charge that
out and out malpractice is taking place.

So then how can a scientist write an entire book about human behavior but
omit from consideration whether and how individual agents decide to act?
How are this scientist?s readers and students going to come to grips with
all those aspects of human life that are attributed to such decisions and
actions of individual human beings and not to DNA or the environment?

Blumberg?s discussion is fascinating as it delves into many interesting
topics anyone who ponders human life would find relevant. I was especially
taken by the ruminations about language and its basis in our make-up. But
to fail to even mention that perhaps some of what people do is up to them,
that they are the ones bringing about this behavior and not their genes or
the environment, is certainly puzzling if not out and out irresponsible.

The failure may be to, in part, to the fact that a simple picture of how
the world works had for a few centuries gripped the imagination of many
students of human conduct. This picture would have it that everything
operates more or less as do the balls on a pool table?by way of nothing
more than mechanical causation. One thing moves and then makes another
move and so and so forth, endlessly. This simple?even simplistic?view of
causality leaves no room for initiated behavior. It requires that
everything be part of a daisy chain of endless causal links.

But immediately a difficulty arises: What of the claims the scientists
themselves make? Are these claims simply a product of this endless causal
chain? Must the scientist?is he or she compelled to?make those statements
and must those who disagree with the scientist make their dissenting
statements as well? And if someone were to presume to adjudicate between
the two sides, would that individual too be simply uttering statements
because, well, of an inner or environmentally induced compulsion?

If so, how is anyone ever going to gain an independent stance from which
the dispute could be adjudged objectively, without prejudice and bias?
Anything that makes utterances that cannot but be made?say a parrot or a
tape recorder?isn?t in a position to figure whether those utterances are
true. It is like anything that?s said in a drunken stupor or under the
heavy influence of drugs?practically meaningless.

What is needed is a reconsideration of what kinds of causes take place in
the world. Some are, of course, like what takes place on a pool table and
elsewhere, mechanical. But there are other possibilities, such as when
something, such as a Beethoven or Tolstoy or, indeed, Mark S. Blumberg,
the author of Basic Instinct, set out to do something original, something
creative. That is their undertaking and it isn?t going to be explainable
fully either our DNA or environment or the two of these alone.

The very idea of responsible scientific conduct rests on having to make
room for the individual person whose actions we are considering.

Column on Back to the Toads?

[Please proof read my column before using it.]

Back to the Toads?

Tibor R. Machan

Is it the toads? Maybe this time around it is hazards to some other
critter that prompts the rangers on California?s Silverado Canyon Road,
near where I live, to bar entry to the forest, by the gate. They have the
sign up, no apologies thank you, saying ?Gate Closed 5 miles Ahead.?

Each time I drive by the sign I am inclined to stop and ask the rangers
by whose moral authority they bar us from the forest, given that it is
maintained at taxpayers? expense, which also pays for their services. (I
know, of course, they have some laws backing them, but laws, as history
teaches us, can be very unjust.) Who are these people who believe so
firmly that they have the moral?and should keep the legal?authority to bar
us all from the wilds of Orange County?

At one time, as I recall, it was because some specie of toad which now
and then?actually very rarely?crossed the dirt road up there, and this
supposedly authorized those in charge to keep all human beings away. Why?
So the toad didn?t have to face the hazard of a hiker?s boots or, heaven
help us, a Jeep?s tires. So what? After all, these critters face hazards
from other critters and from the elements all the time?indeed, this has
been their lot from time immemorial. It is how nature is?some living
things live at the expense of some others.

No one seems to mind when one animal feeds off another, or off the
vegetation, thereby destroying these. It is understood to be how the world
works thereabouts, so why when people get into the picture is it supposed
to be forbidden?

My suspicion is that there?s just altogether too much misanthropy afoot
among people attracted to environmentalism. They don?t like, maybe even
hate, human beings?perhaps starting with themselves?so much so that some
of them are calling for humanity?s outright destruction. As David M.
Graber said, in his review of Bill McKibben?s The End of Nature, ?Until
such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can
only hope for the right virus to come along? (from The Los Angeles Times
Book Review, October 22, 1989, p. 9).

Notice how this remark assumes that people aren?t part of nature. But
that is entirely off the wall. People and their developments, bridges,
parking lots, museums, concert halls, SUVs and all the rest are every bit
as much part of nature as are the tunnels built by termites, dams by
beavers, or nests by birds.

What may be true, but entirely irrelevant, is that human beings are not
normally part of the wilds, that what they bring into nature is a very
creative capacity. But there is some of that within the rest of the animal
world as well?some birds, it appears now, sing just for the hell of it,
not because it serves some utilitarian function. And there is word from
research on great apes that they, too, develop various cultural artifacts,
such as games.

Now it is also true that human beings have the unique, so far unmatched
capacity, to mess things up. They are, unlike other animals, not hard
wired to carry on properly, on the whole. So they need to be criticized
and sometimes set right, including in how they comport themselves toward
the wilds.

Yet, to tell just what they do wrong and how to do things right,
standards are required and what environmentalists offer along these lines
is mostly incoherent. They seem to want for us all to ignore what benefits
human beings and only concern ourselves with non-human life. Why? What
could be the reason if not a deep seated misanthropy?

As to the toad or any other critters, let them fend for themselves, just
as they have done for millions of years before people showed up on earth.
And we, in turn, should focus on what truly enhances our lives. If that
includes caring more about other animals than we now do, so be it. But
here there is at least a source of some workable standards?our own lives
and flourishing can be our priority, just as, by the way, the lives and
flourishing of other animals is theirs, only in a hardwired way, not by
conscious choice.

What is really ironic is that in their enthusiasm for the wilds, many
environmentalists betray their own human nature by turning against
themselves, namely, people. Given that no other animals follow suit, they
ought to revise their attitude and become more pro human.

From Tibor Re: Proof reading of my columns

Tom Whom It May Concern:
I at times ask, at the top of my columns, to please proof read what you
plan to use. This is because I have noticed that almost no matter how
often I read over my columns, I do not manage to catch all the
typographical errors (and, of course, spell checks do not manage this
either, for a variety of reasons).
I have heard back only from one person who receives--although in fact
never has used--my columns, admonishing me that it is my responsibility to
do such proof reading and my asking for this help is unprofessional, etc.,
etc. I am not a prominent enough columnists to have the kind of experience
that would give me full confidence about this matter but it does appear to
me that proof reading and even copy editing are received by many writers
from editors. Certainly publishers of my books have nearly always done
this, with the exception of cases when camera ready copies were used to
print the book (yet even then the publisher often provides a penultimate
proof reading). Newspapers often employ proof readers. Most people I have
had experience with along these lines seem to appreciate that writers who
try to proof read often get sidetracked by focusing yet again on the
content and meaning of what they write, thus risking missing the typos
that others can find more readily. Indeed, as a reader of much fiction and
non-fiction from some of the most prestigious publishers, I often catch
typos in the finally published works.
So, all I can say is that if you find it unprofessional of me to request
help with proof reading, just drop me from your list. Otherwise, thank you
very much for putting up with the inconvenience of needing to do a final
read through.

Sincerely,

Tibor R. Machan

Machan teaches at Chapman University, Orange, CA, and is a research fellow
at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA. He advises Freedom
Communications, Inc., on libertarian issues.

Column on Germany's Election

Why The Germans Blinked
Tibor R. Machan
Jana Henselis, who is herself from the former Easter Germany, wrote about
the winner by only the slightest margin of the German election for
chancellor, held Sunday, September 18, Angela Merkel, that she is ?a woman
almost without qualities.? She noted that Merkel ?thought that she could
represent the whole of society by the strength of her reformer's will and
her neoliberal conception of the state.?
Merkel ran on a platform that came to the following: "I want to serve
Germany." As Henselis put it, Merkel ?described the communist system as a
sort of prison in which she learned to love freedom more than people who
were already used to it.? She didn?t approach the election from the usual
special interest perspective but argued, in general terms, again quoting
Henselis, that ?it was necessary to reduce the role and responsibility of
the state in almost all sectors of society.?
According to Henselis, this ?was too radical for most West German
voters.? And that is a very good point to make, not just of German voters
but of most people around the world, when it comes to their attitude and
understanding of the principles of the free society.
Ayn Rand, the Russian American novelist and philosopher who has been a
lifelong defender, on complex philosophical ground, of the fully free
society, told The New York Times, on February 20, 1966,
It is earlier than you think. The status quo of today is a mixed economy
with a fascist, rather than socialist, trend....Today, the advocates of
laissez-faire capitalism...are and have to be radical innovators....

This comment was made with reference to the 1964 US presidential contest
between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater and it pointed up the problem
of trying to attain a free society without an electorate that has a clear
idea of why such a society is best.

In today?s Germany, too, there are many people who have a vague notion
that a country that?s free is better than ?the communist system [which is]
a sort of prison.? Indeed, the bulk of the European?and even
world?population has a vague notion to this effect. What they lack is the
firm conviction and understanding that freedom is indeed better for people
than even the slightest measure of oppression, even for the most appealing
of reasons (e.g., various types of security or safety).

In other words, if one only feels good about freedom, has a vague notion
of its value in human community life, one will not very likely be able to
answer those who have umpteen reasons for compromising it. The passion
with which millions of people want to compromise liberty is considerable,
since this passion is directed toward various immediate personal and
vested interests, not the long range or general interest. The general
interest is about basic and purportedly lasting ideas?for example, the
essentially free infrastructure of a country and the resulting long term
public policies sustaining free institutions?while personal and vested
interests have to do with what concerns folks in the here and now. Unless
they have a solid grounding in why their general interest, namely, the
regime of individual liberty, is ultimately to their own personal
benefit?a grounding that can overcome the more emotionally immediate
desire to serve narrow personal and vested interests?they will not be able
to sustain a movement toward a genuine free society.

What was true back in 1964 in the United States of America is far more
true around the globe, including in Europe and the former Soviet bloc.
Following the fall of the USSR, what most of the citizens heard from their
leaders was a call for some kind of compromise between socialism and
capitalism. They were taught, in the main, to place their hopes in and
champion the welfare state (despite being warned by some that this is
ruinous, especially with poor economies).

Germany is still in the grips of this ambivalence that comes from a
failure to understand that a regime of freedom is indeed best suited to
human community life. Most people there, as elsewhere, including even the
United States of America, live by the ?principle? of ?trying to eat one?s
cake and having it, as well.? And this principle can only be unseated, as
it should be, by learning the lesson of why any compromise of liberty is
ultimately hazardous both the personal and public welfare.

Column on Governments "Giving Back"

[Always proof my columns if you plan to use them, please!]

When Governments "Give Back"

Tibor R. Machan

In a recent column I characterized those who want government to provide
them with even emergency support as looters of a kind. There are those,
however, who have been looted by government so much that when they accept
what the government ?gives back? they cannot reasonably be considered
looters. They are, after all, simply taking advantage of getting back
some of what was taken from them without their consent.

Matters can get complicated here, of course. What about when government
extorts from you and you do, in fact, take advantage of much of what the
government provides? Most of us use roads, the mail, the police now and
then, sometimes social security money and even unemployment compensation.
And we indirectly benefit from all kinds of special interest provisions,
such as subsidies to industries in which we may be employed. At what point
is one taking more than he or she was forced to pay for? And does it even
matter that one makes use of some of what governments offer?after all, one
wasn?t consulted, one?s consent wasn?t sought. (If someone sends you an
unsolicited package with stuff you can make use of, may the sender then
come around, after you have used up the stuff, to collect funds for it?
No, not really.)

I personally have draw salaries from several state colleges and
universities that were supported by taxes extorted from people who had no
choice but to pay (or to go to jail). All the while, of course, I was also
forced to part with my money each April 15th and throughout the year when
funds where withheld by my employers (who, quite unjustly, were forced to
be the collector of the extorted monies). I never asked for a raise but I
did accept the checks. Was I looting or was I getting back what was taken
from me and friends of mine who actually urged me to take even more so
what was robbed from them would go to something of which they approved,
namely, my work?

The principle is this: You should never initiate or support any policy
that involves confiscation from others. If, however, government has
usurped the
market in providing employment or insurance, you may accept a job or
support
provided you also work to end this policy ASAP. And if you are mainly the
victim of
extortion, then when there?s a chance of recovering some of the loot
taken, you should not hesitate to have some of your wealth restored to
you. If, however, you are not mainly a victim of government?s extortion,
then to demand and receive government support amounts to the sort of
legalized looting I wrote about in my previous column.

Both are, of course, rough principles. Indeed, one of
the tragedies of wealth redistribution at the point of a gun is that
justice is virtually killed off in the process. (This was the point of one
of my earliest papers, ?Justice and the Welfare State,? published back in
1969, in The Personalist, a now defunct philosophy journal edited by
Professor John Hospers at the University of Southern California School of
Philosophy.) The welfare state completely destroys the connection between
acting and the resulting consequences since it places the government in
between nearly all of people?s productive efforts and what will result from
them. The causal relationship is thus severed. People receive support
though they weren?t selected for this by those who produced the support
they receive. People get protection from competition by the government so
where they end up economically has no relationship to whether they have
satisfied demands in the free market place. It is all a big mess.

Nonetheless it is clear enough when some claim that
they are entitled to be taken care of by uncooperative others and receive
the extorted funds taken from these others. That is an unmistakable
instance
of official, legal looting, far more insidious than the looting that goes
on in broad
daylight. Such people are responsible for the perpetuation of public
policies
that destroy justice in society. And they do this, in part, by distorting
a sensible
idea of justice by redefining it, substituting for it the notion of
"distributive justice,"
one that assumes that some are authorized to take from certain people and
hand the loot to others.

This idea of justice is perverse because it removes
from our midst the
most important element of justice, namely, freedom of choice. Without
freedom of
choice, the quality of a person?s conduct is impossible to ascertain. If
you put a gun
to another?s head and order him to kill, who is responsible for the
killing? But if you have a
very long daisy chain of this, with elements of coercion spread out nearly
imperceptively, the
answer becomes very difficult to find. Who is doing what?s right? Who
isn?t?

The only sure thing is that those who promote the
system of such coercion are clearly doing things wrong, supporting
policies that are uncivilized by encouraging as a rule not peaceful,
voluntary human intercourse but layers and layers of interference,
intervention, meddling, regimentation, compulsion, forced labor, and
expropriation. Whoever champions such a world is doing something immoral.

Column on Varieties of Looting

Why Condemn Looting?

Tibor R. Machan

When looters took advantage of Katrina?or any other disaster for that
matter?everyone seemed to have in mind only the people who were ransacking
stores and robbing them in plain sight. These were the looters who were
widely condemned, against whom the police and military took direct action
and who, if caught, will probably pay for their deeds.

Yet in some ways these looters were at least honest and up front. There
are many, many other looters who go about it in more circumspect fashion.
They do not admit outright that they are looting but hide behind the
façade of government sponsored wealth transfer or redistribution which has
the appearance of legitimacy.

In point of fact, all those who insist on getting the government to bail
them out by getting funds out of the various treasuries that are supported
from taxes are looters, only less honest than those doing it in broad
daylight. For the essence of looting is to take advantage of a confusion
caused by some natural disaster by taking other people?s resources so as
to shore up one?s own. It doesn?t really matter at all that one fills out
some forms and instead of directly robbing others, has politicians and
bureaucrats do the dirty work. And it doesn?t matter if the goals to be
supported are themselves decent.

Of course, there is this myth about how when one goes through the
political process as one takes from others who have not be asked to give,
one is simply following the democratic process. As some people see this,
such an approach to ?wealth transfer? is one that ?we have decided to
use.? Yet, this is a farce. No one has decided apart from the people with
political clout. And that clout is very far from justly obtained. It isn?t
at all one of the just powers of government, quite the contrary.

The only just power of government is the very opposite of embarking upon
all this looting. Just powers must be acquired by means of the consent of
the governed, but, in fact, the governed give their consent but to very
few powers of the government. They do consent to having government secure
their rights, including their right to private property. That is the tacit
consent everyone gives who lives among others, namely, to respect and
protect everyone?s basic rights. Which is to say governments may only be
justly empowered to protect all persons from looters, including looters
who dishonestly go through government to accomplish their looting.

Of course, some will cry out, ?But this is an emergency.? That?s however,
disingenuous. The looting I am talking about goes on all the time, not at
all only in emergencies. Governments have nearly always been part of the
problem for which the American Founders had believed they might be turned
around and made part of the solution. They had believed that governments
could be restrained, limited, to protective powers, to securing our rights
instead as they have done for centuries and centuries, being their most
persistent and consistent violators.

Sadly, they failed to set things up so as to achieve this goal. It is a
reasonable goal, after all, since the one area where force is justified is
in self-defense. And one would hope that one could limit government to
using only such force that defends people instead of attacking them. Alas,
that reasonable hope seems to have been a pipedream.

No one disputes that some of the looting goes for ends that are
unobjectionable. One may be sure that this is so even with the honest
looters?many of them steal and rob so as to feed themselves, to stock up
on resources so they can survive. Yet, that doesn?t justify the looting,
not a bit.

In a civilized society even in emergencies people seek voluntary help,
not force others to provide them with aid. And in a civilized legal system
the same would hold. However urgent the need, however great the goal,
support for it must be gained without resort to murder, assault, robbery,
extortion and other types of rights violation. Just because the need is
great, it doesn?t follow at all, in morality, law or politics, that
someone may coerce another to alleviate it.

Sadly we are far from such a civilized society.

Column on Why Ignore the Ninth

[Please always proof columns if you use them]

Why They Fear the Ninth Amendment

Tibor R. Machan

Quite interestingly many politicians are afraid of the Ninth Amendment of
the US Constitution. Many of their intellectual cheerleaders in the
academy and media show equal disdain for this portion of that legal
document. Why?

The Ninth Amendment states, unambiguously, that there exist individual
rights Americans have that are not explicitly listed in the Constitution:
?The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.?

Why should the Constitution make this point anyway?
Because, actually,
people have innumerable rights and to list them all is impossible, whereas
listing the powers of government, which in the American system are taken
to be limited, restricted to just a few, can be listed without having to
produce a mammoth document.

I mean, just consider: You have the right to brush your teeth, to smile
at your significant other, to whistle your favorite tune, to worship the
devil, and on and on and on?everyone has these rights as free adult men
and women. That is what a free country is about, having virtually
unlimited rights to do what one wants, barring the right to violate other
people?s rights.

The powers of government in such a free country, in
sharp contrast, are
confined to what it takes to protect these innumerable individual
rights?to keep criminals and foreign aggressors at bay.

This may not have been spelled out in the US Constitution?although it was
made very clear in the Declaration of Independence?but the idea is exactly
what has been identified so closely with American political philosophy and
legal theory. It?s about individual rights?the freedom to do as one will,
provided that one is acting peacefully, non-aggressively.

So why then are all these sophisticated people, such as Professor Robert
George of Princeton University?writing in the Sunday, September 18, 2005,
issue of The New York Times?so eager to evade the Ninth Amendment? Why,
curiously, are Left leaning politicians the only ones bringing it up these
days, even though they actually disagree with the individualist philosophy
behind the Ninth other then in some very special cases?

On this last matter, just consider. People like Joseph Biden and Teddy
Kennedy make a lot of a right to privacy with reference to issues such as
abortion and gay marriages, but is this really consistent with their big
government philosophy? If a woman has the right to seek and obtain an
abortion (from someone willing to provide one), why is she not free so
seek and obtain marijuana or even harder drugs or hire anyone she wants in
her business? Why are we free to join in same sex unions and have them
declared marriages but not, in say, be free to discriminate against people
we do not want to hire to work for us? That, too, would be a choice that
someone with the right to privacy ought to enjoy, after all.

The limited scope of the right to privacy the Left embraces is indicative
that most of the Left is no different from most of the Right?such as
Justice Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork?who dislike the Ninth Amendment.
They all fear that taking the Ninth Amendment seriously would communicate
to the American people a simple but undeniable fact: The American Founders
had pretty much meant to treat them as free adult men and women, not wards
of the Nanny State. And if this is so, what role do these politicians all
have in our lives? Not a very important one, apart from perhaps standing
firm in defense of our liberties, to protect our innumerable individual
rights to do with our lives as we but not they choose.

The Right doesn?t want politicians to be forbidden
from banning assisted
suicides and gay marriages; the Left doesn?t want politicians to be
forbidden from banning the freedom of contract between employer and
employee if it doesn?t meet the requirement they want to place on
employment (for example, a minimum wage). You can just examined the
thousands of pieces of legislation passed by federal, state, county all
the way to municipal politicians to see that I am right. If the Ninth
Amendment were acknowledged as part of the federal constitution, along
with the idea that this constitution has a very broad reach indeed since
it is supposedly the law of the land, all these laws would have to be
considered unconstitutional. All these politicians would have to be
considered acting in violation of the basic laws of the land.

In short, taking the Ninth Amendment to the US
Constitution really
seriously implies that politicians would have no just powers to do 99% of
what they are doing. That is why they and their cheerleaders in the
academic world insist on ignoring and belittling this most freedom loving
provisions of the most freedom loving?though by no means infallible--legal
document in human history.

Column on Property, Voting, and Taxation

[Please always proof columns before use.]

Property, Voting, and Taxation

Tibor R. Machan

The poll tax has properly been struck down in American law?one need not
be a property owner or pay any fee in order to vote.

OK, but may be this is obsolete. Arguably, it is an ideal that fits a
kind of government that does not sanction coercive, political wealth
transfers?theft by remote control. That is to say, when a government is
properly limited to its minimal function of securing our rights?in terms
of the Declaration of Independence?s theory of just government?then the
limited voting power should be available to all citizens. We all do have
an just concern with the performance of government officials as protectors
of our basic rights.

The poll tax idea can make sense because so often American governments go
way beyond their proper function and get involved in all sorts of coercive
wealth redistribution. Following the idea of no taxation without
representation, in a somewhat roundabout fashion, a modern poll tax policy
would support the idea of ?no representation without property,? since
those who represent voters turn out to have all kinds of power to use and
dispose of other people?s property. If you have no property, then, you
should not be involved in deciding who will be representative in this game
of wealth distribution. Just stands to reason?not stake, no vote.

The remedy of eliminating any poll tax and having to own property as
qualification for voting makes sense, however, when the vote is not a
means by which people may confiscate other people?s wealth. Yet that is
exactly what the vote has become, as some famous and prescient thinkers
had forecast many moons ago. The idea is simple: Send enough folks to
Congress who will simply vote into ?law? taxation measures against those
who have wealth and, then, once they have been taxed good and hard, send
the money to those who voted them into office (not before, though, taking
a good bite for themselves for their services of performing legalized
extortion).

Some would justify this by the claim that ?we have decided this, so no
one can complain.? But that?s dishonest and means to achieve, by
linguistic trick, something that is morally vile.

Just imagine that a German responds to a complaining Jew who protests
having been sent to concentration camp, saying, ?But we have decided this,
so you shouldn?t complain. It?s the will of the people.? Balderdash. It is
no such thing. It is the will of some people and it comes to trampling on
the will of other people, plain and simple. Which is exactly what this
taxation scheme comes to, as well: by means of the bugaboo of majority
vote?that is, what has come to be the tyranny of majority?some get to rob
others of the fruits of their labor, their good fortune, and their savvy
commerce. By what right? None.

This idea that majority vote makes everything fine is becoming more and
more insidious and we can see it clearly now in the newly created
semi-democratic Iraq where it seems like a majority will simply run
roughshod over a minority, where religious fanatics of one stripe will
oppress religious minorities of another, not to mention all the secular
inhabitants of the country.

This illiberal democracy, critiqued adroitly by Fareed Zakaria, in his
The Future of Freedom (Norton, 2003), is, of course, also a direct threat
to democracy itself, to the proper kind. Just recall how Adolph Hitler
managed to get to be supreme ruler of The Third Reich! By the unrestrained
democratic method that was afoot in the Weimar Republic, that?s how. How
do lynch mobs work? Quite democratically, thank you.

This view, then, that so long as it?s all done democratically, it is
morally and politically unobjectionable is nonsense, a ruse that?s
convenient for those who want to live off other people. No doubt,
sometimes it is understandable why people are eager to gain the support of
others resources and labor, but this, from the moral point of view, needs
to be obtained voluntarily, not via expropriation and conscription.

So, yes, there should be no requirement of owning property in order to
vote. However, there should be no opportunity to vote measures into law by
which some people confiscate the belongings of others, by which they
coerce others to work for them. Let generosity flourish, but never at the
point of a gun even if it?s held by the majority.

Column on Judge John G. Roberts, Jr.

[Always proof before publishing!]

Judge Roberts Conforms

Tibor R. Machan

It would have been welcome, indeed, although admittedly surprising, to
have a nominee to the US Supreme Court, especially to the post of Chief of
the court, turn out to be a principled person. The US Constitution is,
after all, a legal document that aims to lay out a set of internally
consistent, comprehensive principles that would guide justices in their
work to make sure that various legal bodies in the country stick to what
is constitutionally mandated, namely, restraining the growth of
government?s scope and power and respecting and protecting the individual
rights of the citizens.

Instead Judge John G. Roberts, Jr., a man of great intellectual acumen?of
judicial virtuosity if not of virtue?has caved in to the contemporary
pressure to be pragmatic, to see things not in terms of right and wrong
but ?maybe,? ?perhaps,? ?possibly,? and ?it all depends.? This move of
his, performed rather adroitly during the last day of his nomination
hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was promptly hailed by The
New York Times, which selected, on Friday, September 16, 2005, his words,
?I'm not an ideologue" as its notable quote.

The Times? editors must have been beaming from joy when they heard the
Judge utter that sentence since it showed how influential their own kind
of thinking has become. Even a nominee of their nemesis, George W. Bush,
decided it?s best not to quarrel with post-modernism, wherein principles
have basically bit the dust and catch-as-catch-can thinking is the rule of
the day. It?s the triumph of the philosophy?or, rather, anti-philosophy?of
?the living constitution,? a doctrine that construes the role of justices
to be that of moral inventors, second guessers, situational legal scholars
and certainly anything but loyalists to the American constitution.

No one in his right mind would argue that the original constitution of
the United States of America was flawless. It was flawed by, among other
things, internal inconsistency?all the while it listed various rights
retained by the people and the states, including unenumerated ones, it
also empowered the federal government in ways that would in time get out
of hand and produce the Leviathan we now have on hand. This, clearly,
needed to be corrected and justices who took their oath of office
seriously as their professional ethical guideline, would have gone about
straightening out the flaws, the inconsistencies, the lack of completeness
and comprehensiveness as they ruled on cases come to them.

But that doesn?t construe the constitution a ?living document??or, more
accurately put, a cancerous organism that has gotten out of control and
begun to devour its own essential substance and structure. No, that would
merely have acknowledge that like so many good human institutions, this
one also needs to be kept in line with its essential nature. Like good
physicians, the preservation and enhancement of those essential elements
would have been part of their goal, of guarding the constitution, of
protecting it.

Just keep in mind, please that the term ?ideologue? now stands for anyone
with principles, never mind what the principles are. So announcing that
one isn?t such an obsolete sort is basically to make the attempt to
appease those who wish for justices to flay about as the political winds
demand, never mind their oath of office of protecting the constitution,
its essential substance.

If you wish to know what that substance is, you could do much worse than
consult Professor Randy Barnett?s brilliant book, Restoring the Lost
Constitution, The Presumption Of Liberty (Princeton University Press,
2004). The subtitle telegraphs the main message of the work?the US
Constitution is a legal document the default principle of which is the
idea and ideal of individual liberty. And Barnett shows this to be so with
great skill?one wishes he were nominated and confirmed to the court,
instead of Mr. accommodation John G. Roberts, Jr., the one who shuns
seeming like an ideologue, like, that is, someone with principles.

It?s not, of course, only Judge Roberts? character flaw, this embrace of
non-ideological approach to America?s law of the land, this jettisoning of
principle in favor of, well, being hailed by The New York Times as good
boy. It is also the character flaw of most of the senators, if not
all?because they, of course, wish to be left undisturbed by constitutional
concerns in their own power grabbing. It?s the flaw of most of the current
Justices, barring, perhaps, Clarence Thomas. But ultimately it is also the
character flaw of much of the American citizenry. They, after all, send
these senators to Washington and bear the responsibility for the
consequences.

Column on "taking responsibility"

The Fraud of ?Taking Responsibility?

Tibor R. Machan

Have you noticed this? Politicians can take responsibility without having
to experience any adverse consequences at all. When President George W.
Bush recently took responsibility of the federal government?s conduct in
the wake of hurricane Katrina, what exactly was he doing? What did he
think he was doing? Or his spin doctors? And when several Louisiana and
New Orleans politicians made similar announcements, what did these mean in
concrete terms? Where, one might resurrect the old question, is the beef?

Say you hit a pedestrian who?s walking across an intersection and who has
the right of way, because, say, you were messing with your CD player or
cell phone or just daydreaming. Later, once you have stopped blaming God,
the Devil, or your DNA?or, perhaps, your economic conditions or
institutional racism?you finally acknowledge that you were responsible for
the injuries the pedestrian sustained. Now what?

Presumably, you will go on to admit to a measure of moral and even
criminal negligence. This, in turn, will lead to prosecution and either
some huge fine and/or jail time. In short, the clear implication of being
responsible?that is, honestly taking responsibility?for the pedestrian?s
injuries is that you will shoulder some heavy burdens in the wake of what
you did or failed to do. The matter will not be treated as an act of
nature or God but as your doing, something you could have avoided doing
had you paid attention, had you chosen to act properly as you were driving
your vehicle.

Where is there anything comparable in President Bush?s ?taking
responsibility? for the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, or, for that
matter, anyone?s making such a claim? Nothing I can detect exhibits the
logic of genuinely taking responsibility?that is, of being responsible?for
bad things people do in these politicians? pretentious announcements. Are
they sent off to jail? Are they fined a good and hefty sum? Do they even
lose their jobs?

Now and then someone in government will be demoted or transferred to some
other position but is anyone who is supposedly responsible?and admits to
this?for bad things happening get his or her comeuppance? No. So then
what?s the point of making these announcements?

I confess to having a suspicion. The point seems to be to appear
conscientious, someone who comes to terms with his or her failings. But
failings produce adverse results and if all one does is babble on about
being responsible for those results without any bad thing happening to
one, this is all likely only for show. And that pretty much puts these
politicians on record as completely disingenuous, as deceitful people, as
officials who have no intention of actually coming to terms with their
malpractice but, instead, perpetrate a ruse upon the people they are
supposed to serve in some useful capacity.

Of course some of this is understandable. Millions of Americans and
indeed people around the globe look to government to solve their problems,
to bail them out of disasters, even though properly understood none of
that is government?s task. Governments are instituted to secure our
rights, not to cope with all the problems with which life faces us.
Natural disasters, especially, but also illnesses, misfortunes of all
kinds, are part of life and free adult men and women are supposed to
prepare for this?an elementary point any Boy Scout can teach you. However,
governments have for centuries been anointed the omnipotent security
agents of us all, a role that they are, of course, utterly incapable of
fulfilling.

Instead of President Bush making it clear to everyone that governments
simply aren?t up to the task of solving all our problems, including those
resulting from natural calamities and the subsequent confusion and
individual catastrophes and, yes, also individual failures, he produces a
sham admission of guilt. This isn?t only a fraud but a colossal insult to
all those affected by the disaster, suggesting that had he and his team
only been alert enough, there would not have been any need for personal
initiative in the wake of the disaster?everything would have been just
fine.

I suppose Bush and other politicians simply wish to keep their jobs, so
they have to pretend that it includes being everyone?s savior, never mind
that that is plainly impossible. So they step up to the podium making an
empty gesture of taking responsibility so as to continue the ruse that,
well, they might actually have been a big help.

They could only have been a big help if for decades they would have
refrained from acclimating Americans to the phony idea that government can
bail them out of all their problems.

From Tibor Machan about his Columns

Please always proof read my columns if you are posting or otherwise using
them so others will be reading them--I try to do what I can to do this but
for some reason very often I fail to catch all the typos.

Tibor R. Machan

Column on "We have Decided"

So ?We? Have Decided

Tibor R. Machan

Randy Cohen, the New York Times Magazine?s ethicist, who answers a few
question in each issue about what is and is not ethical conduct regarding
certain specific problems, recently admonished a reader for wondering
whether students who do not pay taxes ought to vote in a college town they
will leave when school?s out. He counseled that ?it is irrelevant that few
students pay property taxes. We eliminated economic requirements for
voting long ago: you needn?t own property; you needn?t pay a pool tax.?

He went on in this vein for a while in his September 11, 2005, column,
forgetting entirely that the question wasn?t about what the law is but
what someone ought or ought not to do. (All the above could be right,
historically, and it could still be wrong to vote when one hasn?t a stake
in the place where one votes. It could be construed as wrongly imposing
one?s will on others!)

I chimed in with an email to him noting that taxation is extortion. It
is the dubious institution that's based on the monarchical tradition when
governments (the monarchs) owned the realm and taxes were the tribute they
collected for permitting ordinary folks to live and work in this realm.
Kind of like charging rent in one?s apartment building. Only the monarch
had no right to the realm, as it was later discovered.

Cohen fired back with the point that, well, ?we have decided long ago? to
levy taxes, as if this could nail the ethics of it good and hard. In fact,
all this can do is confuse matters since we, of course, have decided
nothing of the sort. Some people?the American framers and many who took
political power after them?have decided to impose taxes on us all?well, on
those of us who haven?t the savvy to dodge the thing good and hard. As a
matter of us having decided?that is to say, some of us having made this
decision for all the rest of us?the implication that that makes it all OK
comes to something very bad, indeed.

After all, didn?t ?we decide? to make slavery possible in the American
South? Isn?t it also true that ?we (that is to say a lot of Germans)
decided? to engage in genocide against the Jews? (Yes, Virginia, Hitler
came to power democratically.) Didn?t, also, ?we (the Iranian mullahs)
decide? that women will be kept in their place in that country?

All this royal ?we? stuff is precisely what the American Declaration of
Independence trumps by identifying our unalienable individual rights to
our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness. According to a consistent,
honest interpretation of that venerable sketch of the new, radical,
American political tradition, we do not get to decide for other people,
not unless they consent. And such consent is meaningless if it is done for
me by you, or for you by me. It is supposed to be about you and me and the
rest of us agreeing to what happens to our persons and estates?ourselves
and our resources. That is the greatest bulwark the human mind has
identified against tyrannies, be they powerful families, individuals or
majorities.

But of course what can we expect from ?the ethicist? of The New York
Times Magazine, published by an organization of human beings hell bent on
promoting (an admittedly soft version of) socialism around the country
and, indeed, the globe. They would of course hire an ethicist who will
spread the ruse about how ?we have decided? something he and The Times
would have wanted us all to decide. In fact we haven?t decided it at all
but were pushed into it as done by the Mafia. This involves being extorted
for part of our labor and wealth all the time, in return for which we are
permitted, like their victims, to remain somewhat safe.

Not to despair, however. The idea of individual rights and of a just
community in which they are fully respected and protected is so radical in
human history that it is understandable why even an ethicist for a
prestigious magazines will not have managed to grasp them clearly enough.
The idea that support for various worthy projects must be obtained from
voluntary contributions and not confiscated is so new that Mr. Cohen is
probably totally baffled by it.

Maybe in a not to far away future it will no longer be so baffling and
even the ethicist of The New York Times Magazine will answer questions
from readers recognizing that taxation is extortion that should have been
left behind with serfdom, in the feudal era.

------------------
Machan is the R. C. Hoiles Professor of Business Ethics at the Argyros
School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, Orange, CA, a research
fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of A
Primer on Ethics (1997).

Column on the "success" of Nannyism

When a Success is a Failure

Tibor R. Machan

My favorite newsmagazine from the UK, THE WEEK, titles a brief report in
its August 27, 2005, issue?on its weekly ?Health & Science? page??Smoking
Ban Success.? The item deals with the recent finding that ?New York?s ban
on smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places ? has done wonders
for the city?s hospital workers.? This, THE WEEK reports, comes from the
New Scientist, another magazine from the UK. (THE WEEK is a news digest of
sorts, subtitled ?All You Need to Know About Everything that Matters?The
Best of the British and Foreign Media.?)

The report goes on to say that prior to the ban a group of researchers
recruited 24 non-smokers from places where smoking went on and the results
were far worse then three months after the ban commenced. The exposure to
smoke ?dropped from 3 to 0.05?; cotinine levels came down by 80% and ?the
eye, nose and throat irritations were halved.?

In short, coercing people to behave in healthful ways produces some
healthful results. But does that justify the ban?

There are, of course, two substantially different classes of public
places, those that are, in fact, not public at all, namely, privately
owned business or clubs or similar venues, and those that are public
service establishments, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles or court
houses. The former are supposed to be the sovereign realms of their
proprietors, who in a free society would have the right and authority to
decided whether smoking or hurling bowling balls or serving beer, wine and
hard liquor will go on there, provided this is fully disclosed and no one
is mislead by misinformation. The latter are supposed to be realms
wherein the public authorities or regulators decided what is to be done,
and here the decision can follow the standards that have been settle on by
way of a democratic vote or the judgments of appointed officials in line
with criteria that?s suitable to the use to which the realms are put.

That is how it would be in a free society. Since in such a society there
is no officially protected monopoly as to what bars, restaurants or
similar privately owned places can operate, these would be completely free
of official intervention except possibly after the fact, if it were to be
shown that criminal conduct ensues within them. People wouldn?t need to
go there to receive services or to obtain employment.

Just as no one is authorized to enter my home?or, at least, ought not to
be so authorized?unless there is probable cause for thinking that I am
violating someone rights therein, the same goes for all privately owned
establishments where men and women come and go of their own free choice,
meeting the freely agreed to terms of both proprietor and customer.

Now it can be argued that now and then a coercively imposed policy can
reap desirable results?for example, so far as health, wealth, beauty or
some other end is concerned that many people wish to achieve. But the
issue here is not that?no one disputes this possibility from paternalistic
legal policies.

The issue is that free men and women are not kids to be regimented about
by their elders. They are to be respected not so much for what they decide
but for being adults who are supposed to make their own choices and not be
subject to the will of other people, even if being so subject could
produce something desirable for them. This is their right but, also, when
they are treated as the Nanny state treats them, there are dire
consequences from that, too. (Just consider Katrina and how too many
people failed to cope because they were counting on government to do it
for them.)

But then in America we now are clearly gravitating toward a society in
which Nannyism is triumphing. The US Supreme Court?s ruling in Kelo v. New
London, CT, testifies to this?the court decided that if city officials
believe that confiscating private property will produce the desirable goal
(for some) of economic development, go ahead and do the taking with
impunity. The various cigarette bans, too, prove that individual rights
are now officially violated across the legal landscape and supported by
the major political factions. Each side is merely interested in having its
agenda get official backing, and then the march toward a paternalistic
order is just fine.

One of the consequences of a regime of liberty is that men and women may
not be stopped from embarking upon conduct that may do them harm. This
idea is clearly upheld, still, when it comes to freedom of religion and
press or speech. Despite the hopelessly ridiculous, often
self-destructive, creeds people embrace, they are free to do so because,
well, they are adult human beings, not children or invalids. Despite the
nonsense some of them choose to read or write, there is no prohibition
against this because, well, they are adults who are taken to be
responsible for their own lives and conduct.

The fact that this isn?t acknowledged and upheld in law about the rest of
what adult men and women would embark upon in their lives, be it for
better or worse results, is certainly not any evidence of success in our
society or anywhere else. Here Americans are, in fact, treated no better
than are women in Iran or others in various totalitarian societies.