A Few Choice Quotes to Consider

A Few Choice Quotes to consider!*

Bannister on Theories:

“... the psychologist cannot present a picture of man which patently contradicts his behavior in presenting that picture.”  From Borger & Cioffi/Bannister, eds., Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences (Cambridge UP, 1970), p.  417.

Aristotle on Skepticism:

“It is in the highest degree evident that neither any one of those who maintain this view nor any one else is really in this position. For why does a man walk to Megara and not stay at home, when he thinks he ought to be walking there? Why does he not walk early some morning into a well or over a precipice, if one happens to be in his way? Why do we observe him guarding against this, evidently because he does not think that falling in is alike good and not good? Evidently, then, he judges one thing to be better and another worse.” Metaphysics 1006b (IV, iv, 40)

Coase on economic man:

“There is no reason to suppose that most human beings are engaged in maximizing anything unless it be unhappiness, and even this with incomplete success” (Ronald Coase, The Firm, the Market, and the Law, U of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 4.

Salzman on Comparative Political Economy:

"’Well . . . the world is basically divided into two kinds of countries—communist countries and capitalist countries.  A capitalist country is a place where people own things privately and can become more wealthy than other people.  They use money to get whatever they want, and can oppress poor people.  A communist country is a place where the government owns everything.  That way, everyone is equal, and no one can be oppressed.  Without money, people share willingly with each other and help each other rather than just helping themselves.  Everyone works for the good of the people, not just for personal gain.’ Colonel Sun thought about this for a moment, then burst into derisive laughter.  ‘The capitalists sound pretty normal,’ he observed, ‘but that communist arrangement sounds like a lot of crap to me.’" [The Laughing Sutra, p. 58]

There is a story that Communism, Capitalism, and Socialism decided to have lunch together one day. Communism and Capitalism were on time, but Socialism arrived late.  He said, "I'm sorry I am late, but I had to queue up to buy some sausage.  Communism said, "What's a sausage?," and Capitalism said "What's a queue?" [The Laughing Sutra, p. 210]

Quine on Cultural Relativism:

Truth, says the cultural relativist, is culture-bound.  But if it were, then he, within his own culture, ought to see his own culture-bound truth as absolute.  He cannot proclaim cultural relativism without rising above it, and he cannot rise above it without giving it up. [Willard Van Orman Quine, “On empirically equivalent systems of the world,” Erkenntnis, Vol. 9 (1975), pp. 327-8 (pp. 313-28).]

Roger Sperry on Reductionism:

We no longer seek ultimate nature of reality within the smallest physical elements, nor in their innermost essence.  Instead the search is redirected to focus primarily on the patterning of the elements, on their differential pacing and timing and the progressive compounding of patterns of patterns, and on their evolving nature and complexity. (American Psychologist, Vol. 50, No. 7, 506)

John O’Brien:

“The desire of one man to live on the fruits of another’s labor is the original sin of the world.” [George Seldes, ed., The Great Thoughts (Ballentine Books, 19850, p. 314]

Rand on Human Nature:

“Man gains enormous values from dealing with other men: living in a human society is his proper way of life – but only on certain conditions.  Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a social animal.  He is a contractual animal.  He has to plan his life long-range, make his own choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement (and he has to be able to rely on their observance of the agreement they entered).” [“A Nation’s Unity,” Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. II, 2, p. 3.]

Alexis de Tocqueville on business:

“The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised.” [Democracy in America, p. xxxvi]

Jostein Gaarner on the supernatural:

“So you don’t believe in anything supernatural then.”

“We’ve already talked about that.  Even the term ‘supernatural’ is a curious one.  No, I suppose I believe that there is only one nature.  But that, on the other hand, is absolutely astonishing.” (Sophie’s World, p. 360)

Arthur Miller on salesmen:

His was a salesman’s profession, if one may describe such dignified slavery as a profession…(“In Memoriam,” The New Yorker, December 25, 1995 & January 1, 1996)

Business Besmirched:

In 1769 [Benjamin] Franklin had written to his friend Henry Home, Lord Cames, the Scottish jurist and philosopher: `There seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth.  The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors.  This is robbery.  The second is by commerce, which is generally cheating.  The third by agriculture, the only honest way....'"[from Forest MacDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum]

*From my personal collection

Revisiting Our Basic Rights

Revisiting Our Basic Rights

Tibor R. Machan

Professor Lynn Hunt’s recently published book on rights, titled Inventing Human Rights, is filled with a great deal of very useful important information about the emergence of the idea of basic human, individual rights, but it also perpetuates, perhaps entirely unconsciously, a very serious and hazardous error.   

Moral and political ideas are not all that different from ones in the various sciences. Based on better and better information about the world, various new concepts need to be formed.  Electrons, for example, hadn’t been identified until after atoms were.  The prefrontal lobe wasn’t known until instruments were created that helped to search the brain thoroughly enough to take a comprehensive inventory of its innumerable parts. Initially all that was known is that there is a brain and only gradually did its busy life and large number of attributes and properties come into focus.  

In morality something similar happens.  From early times it has been clear enough that some kinds of conduct are morally wrong and that some are right.  Broadly speaking, whatever promotes the human life of an individual is right, whatever thwarts it wrong.  But the details were slow to come to light.  Politically, too, the concept of justice was in place quite early in human history — an institution or policy is just if it secures what is deserved among human beings.  But this isn’t enough to take account of the many details of the idea of justice.  In time — starting quite a long time ago, actually — it gradually became clear that human beings have certain rights, based on their nature, which then provided a fuller understanding of justice.

But, of course, there is a problem with all this.  Unlike in the physical sciences, in normative spheres there is a great deal of disagreement, some if not most of it stemming from the input from those who want to undermine the very notion of basic norms of human life.  So even if at some point human rights had been discovered — not invented — there were many who didn’t welcome this fact and mounted all sorts of ways to obscure it.  A little of this can also been detected in even the hardest science, such as physics, chemistry or astronomy.  But in the area of morality and politics it is far more prevalent since the basis of these areas of focus are more complicated and very widely and frequently disputed.

One way to undermine a moral concept, of course, is to maintain that it is merely an invention, a fabrication that serves not to help us understand how to lead a human life but merely to further some special interest.  Accordingly, for example, Karl Marx and his followers argued that the human right to private property was invented so as to aid the ruling bourgeois classes to obtain and hold control of other people. Others claim that moral notions are conventional, something people come up with or invent, not anything discovered.

Judging by her book it is doubtful that Professor Hunt had this same agenda in mind. Yet the claim that human rights are an invention plays into the hands of those who would just as soon dismiss these rights as being without any basis in facts of reality but simply a concocted myth — or, as Jeremy Bentham characterized them, “nonsense upon stilts.”

In the case of Dr. Hunt, a historian at UCLA, there is another way that the status of human rights is undermined.  She makes a lot of the fact that the Declaration of Independence associates our basic rights with self-evidence.  If they were self-evident, as she claims the Founders said they were, then they need not be argued for.  A self-evident fact needs no proof.  Thus the fact of the existence of the universe needs no proof — any effort to prove it would already acknowledge that it is true. That’s why it is a self-evident truth.

What the Declaration states, of course, is that “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” not that they are self-evident. And for purposes of a brief, succinct, inspiring announcement — a declaration — that’s all that is needed, namely, to treat those truths as if they were (that is, to hold them to be), self-evident.  

In fact, however, they are anything but. Just as John Locke and all of his followers who have labored long and hard to prove that these rights exist knew well and good.  The existence of our rights must be demonstrated, shown. It’s not enough to assume them. 

Dr. Hunt, however, claims that the Founders believed that it is self-evident that we have these rights and proposes that they function, therefore, as religious truths based on faith, not as discoveries — as inventions not as something discovered and real.  But this will not wash.  Over the centuries basic human rights were gradually identified, as a result of a better and better knowledge of human relations and community life and its role in human affairs. So by now most of us know that all of us have these rights in our communities, apart from some rare cases of crucially incapacitated people. And we can therefore confidently state, for example, that a country in which these rights are not acknowledged and protected fails at being fully just. 

          It would have been only prudent for Dr. Hunt to have seen the matter along such lines.  As it is, she is aiding and abetting those who want to support regimes wherein human rights are violated, left and right since they are deemed to be invented, not discovered.  If they are a mere invention, what could be wrong with setting them aside and inviting something else, such as the rule of leaders or committees?

I've Fired The Times

I’ve fired The New York Times, etc.

Tibor R. Machan

For years I subscribed to The New York Times online.  Then I took the Sunday Times only for a couple of years but they managed to annoy me nearly as much as the daily edition.  (I still have the online version mainly so that I can check in on the latest balderdash by Paul Krugman and leave a comment busting his bubble once in awhile. (Of course, his head is far too big to ever pay attention to readers’ comments!)

In time I decided I want to see less and less of The Times in any form, so I subscribed to The New York Observer and The New York Sun.  I get both online as well as.  They are both more easily read, since they aren’t pretending to cover the universe and so readers can keep up with their offerings.

OK, so what’s the problem. Nothing much except that in a recent editorial in The New York Observer One of those critiques of impossible public policies is offered but without the proper moral high ground backing it.  This one, titled “It’s the Economy, Silly,” published in the February 25th issue, goes after Mr. Obama for his insistence that the minimum wage be raised, nationwide.  It points out a lot of problems with the idea of the minimum wage per se, how it leads to unemployment among the unskilled throughout the country, how it often bankrupts businesses that just cannot afford it, and how it mostly costs customers on whom the increased costs are of course dumped by businesses that cannot absorb the extra production cost imposed on them in this artificial way.

OK, then what is wrong?  Well, The New York Observer ends it proper and meaty critique with the following sheepish statement: “Mr. Obama’s goal of a prosperous work force is admirable.  But he must reconsider the best way of achieving it.” Wrong!

There is nothing admirable about the government even just trying to impose a wage policy upon businesses in a supposedly free market economy.  And I remember very clearly when Mr. Obama stood up during the first election campaign for the presidency and announce to the American people that contrary to his unfair critics, he is a champion of the free market. But of course he is nothing of the sort.

No one who advocates governments imposing labor costs or wages in any country could possibly be a champion of the free market system of economics.  It is a flat out contradiction to make that claim while advocating minimum wage laws and hikes! It’s akin to claiming to be opposed to slavery except from 4 to 11 PM every day!  

          What is worse is that none of the mainstream media identifies this outlook by the president and those who share his views as something bizarre and unjust, indeed tyrannical. Even the The New York Observer, with its pretty sensible economic philosophy, cannot bite the bullet and fess up to the fact that imposing a minimum wage on the country is morally vicious, reminiscent not of free market advocacy but of elements of the Soviet planned economy!

Democracy & Gay Marriages

Democracy & Gay Marriages

Tibor R. Machan

Frankly I have no horse in this race, nothing personal in any case.  For my money you may marry your grandmother or cat, if all parties consent.

Marriages ought to be a matter of contract and not based on any myth or superstition.  Folks should not be interfered with if they want to form a family union, however it is configured, so long as it isn’t some kind of criminal gang.

What I do find odd is for the White House to butt in here, requesting that the U. S. Supreme Court invalidate various state statutes to conform to the doctrine of the ruling party or the president.  In the case of President Obama, an avowed champion of democracy in numerous areas -- whereby as far as he is concerned, majority rule may violate individual property or contractual rights (so that, for example, he supports imposing all kinds of burdens such as various taxes) on everyone because the majority agrees -- the demand that the court uphold the ban on gay marriages would appear to be perfectly acceptable to him if the majority in a state, such as California, so decides. But, alas, democracy must yield when Obama so wishes.

Democrats, be they lower or upper case types, often do not get it: if you believe that what the majority agrees to should be the law, you have no cause for complaint when insidious measures get passed in various elections in various jurisdictions.  Majority rule means just that, rule by the will of the majority.  If you think there are exceptions -- as even the U. S. Supreme Court has said there are and as most sane people would agree -- you need to show why.  The best case for them would provide support from the political doctrine of natural individual human rights.  So that if everyone has a right to speak his or her mind, no majority would be authorized to shut us up no matter how outrageous our ideas happen to be. And there are other equally well established individual rights that no majority ought to be authorized to breach.  So, yes, whom one chooses to marry if all parties agree (remember polygamy!) may not be subject to interference by a majority or its representatives.  Don’t like it but live with it, if you have any respect for the right to individual liberty!

But then do not impose on people measures, laws, regulations, etc., they find morally or otherwise objectionable unless these amount to protecting individual rights!  But it doesn’t seem to me at all that Mr. Obama and his ideological cohorts have any firm commitment to such individual rights, only to some select ones that happen to suit their pragmatic frame of mind.  In other words, they are essentially committed to a fascistic type of “legal” order wherein those who happen to sit atop the government get to tell everyone else what goes.

And they used to fancy the US a free country!  Go figure.

Libertarian Public Interest

The Libertarian Public Interest

Tibor R. Machan

A particularly irksome rhetorical ploy against the free society’s champions is that they refuse to acknowledge that there is such a thing as the public interest (or public good or general welfare or some such goal). Critics of these champions routinely wag their fingers charging that those who insist that the free society -- with its minimal government -- is the most just order that has been conceived by political philosophers and economists fail to pay heed to the public interest and focus only on what private citizens want and benefit from. (Their candidate is usually something like profit or personal pleasure!)

I wish to urge that this charge be rejected good and hard.  As I have tried to stress on other occasions, the fully free society has a perfectly proper conception of the public interest or good.  This is, to put it briefly, the respect for and protection of individual rights.  As the Declaration of Independence puts it, governments are instituted so as to secure the protection of the rights of the citizens.  And that is exactly what the public interest amounts to in a just society, nothing more.

Given the enormous variety of the citizenry in a free society, what will be the public interest or good will vary accordingly.  Since human beings are first and foremost individuals and will pursue a great variety of goals within the country in which they live, the first objective of government or law must be to make sure that everyone’s rights are secure, well protected and elaborated in the legal system.  That is what the public interest amounts to; that is why champions of the free society are the bona fide, genuine promoters of the one meaningful public interest, namely, the securement of human liberty!

The public consists of millions of citizens with sometimes minor and other times major variations in what is to their best interest.  So that they may pursue their best interest of their own initiative, as a matter of their free choice, their rights must be respected and protected vigilantly and competently.  Which is what justifies government or the legal order of a free society.  Such a society does not embrace the typical statist, totalitarian, one size fits all conception of the public good.  It would be tyrannical to do so since imposing some one conception of the good life on all citizens will require a police state and ignores what human beings are.  (To the extent that this is already routine in many societies, they are naturally coercive, statist!)

What is central here is that those who champion the fully free society do in fact have the most sensible, most coherent conception of the public good or interest, namely, a legal order that refuses to deploy just one individual’s or group’s idea of what is right for everyone to do or pursue.  The public consists of millions of diverse individuals, often pursuing goals on their own, most often, however, coming together with a bunch of others and engaging in common pursuits but always voluntarily.  The legal framework for this is what amounts to the public good or interest, not various “public” programs politicians and bureaucrats happen to select, programs that may indeed be OK for some folks but certainly not for all.

So the bona fide public good or interest is the protection of everyone’s right to liberty so everyone can choose, more or less wisely, to seek his or her own proper ends in life.  

Self-Referential Paternalist Foibles

Self-Referential Paternalist Foibles

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last several years statists have changed their tune a bit.  Instead of advocating Draconian governmental intrusions on people’s lives, in the tradition of the Soviets and other unabashed tyrants, they have at least seemingly reformed and changed their tune: now they mostly promote the Nanny state (under such labels as libertarian paternalism, nudging, and so forth).  These champions of government interference in our lives are convinced, it seems, that they can somehow select a restrained government which then can carry out various worthy regulations and regiment us all to our benefit without succumbing to the temptation of absolute power.  They appear to be heeding Lord Acton’s admonition that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely but not by refraining to support the wielding of power by some people over others. No they think they can moderate their tyrannical habits by promoting what I have called as far back as the 1970s a regime of petty tyranny.* Their intrusiveness will be gentle, delicate, subtle, considerate and kind--like those of Nannies--unless you offer resistance, in which case the more Draconian statism is just around the corner.

The most visible promoter of this kind of statism is the political theorist and law professor Cass Sunstein, now teaching at Harvard University, where he has joined  Michael Sandel and others in the effort to erase all libertarian elements of American law and public policy.  He has been promoting the paternalistic state for some time but more recently he has revved up his efforts, with books, reviews, essays, speeches, media appearances pouring out and with political allies in the corridors of power standing ready to turn his ideas into public policies and laws.

At the foundation of this paternalism lies the belief that many of us ordinary blokes need some pushing around so we conduct ourselves properly, sensibly, prudently, wisely--in short, virtuously.  Never mind that virtuous conduct needs to be freely chosen for it to amount to something praiseworthy.  Much of such conduct has to do with not harming others or ourselves and despite the widely shared belief in John Stuart Mill’s idea that not unless one harms others may he or she be forced to desist, if one holds that harmful conduct in and of itself must be averted, public policies will live up to that expectation.  The state and its cheerleaders will stand ready to run interference if we do not behave well.  

Of course, underlying all this there is a highly dubious assumption, namely, that those who will identify our misconduct and stand ready to straighten all of us out are properly fit to do that job.  In short, there is a segment of society, an elite, if you will, that is knowledgeable and virtuous to be entrusted with the power to make the rest of us do the right thing.  

This elite is somehow deemed immune to the flaws that render all the rest of us in need of the interference by the Nanny state.  These folks seem somehow to not be flawed as we are so that when they administer their remedial measures upon us, that itself is not vulnerable to malfeasance.  The good and wise operators of the government can be fully trusted with the power Cass Sunstein and Co., believe we need to have imposed upon us for us to live right.

None of this is new, of course.  Political thinking since the time of Plato and his teacher Socrates had often veered in the direction of the more or less overt tyranny Sunstein & Co. are championing.  Indeed, only a few of human history’s outstanding political philosophers and theorists set out to warn against entrusting a special group with power over the rest.  So long as the intention behind such power wielding was successfully promulgated as benign, kind, generous, helpful--that is to say, paternalistic--why oppose it?

The main reason is that no one has the proper authority to play parent to another except in very rare circumstances, mainly when he or she is indeed a parent of that other, with the responsibility to be the caregiver.  Government, as the American founders realized, must refrain from such paternalism not only because it is likely to be inept but mainly because sovereignty belongs to the adult citizens of society, all of them, a not just to some special group which is, after all, no less susceptible to malpractice as are the rest of us.  

Whatever help we require with setting us on the right course must not come at the expense of our basic rights, our nature as sovereign individuals.     

*See “The Petty Tyranny of Government Regulation,” in Tibor R. Machan & M. Bruce Johnson, Rights and Regulation (SF: Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1983), 259-288.

The Sad State of the Union

Sad State of the Union

Tibor R. Machan

          President Obama delivered a state of the union address that made no secret of his essentially statist political-economic philosophy. Apart from the details, the major message was that Americans must become part of a herd whether they actually want to, involuntarily serving the country.  Even the conservative commentator, Charles Krauthammer, characterized Mr. Obama's viewpoint without reference to its coercive nature.  That is how ingrained statism is in America now.  

         There was absolutely no reference in the speech to the quintessential American political idea, individual liberty.  Instead the president promoted regimentation of the citizenry into a collective that would be guided -- no, ruled -- by him and his friends. He didn't propose that Americans volunteer to serve each other.  He asserted that they will be forced to labor for common objectives.

         As a naturalized citizen who escaped to America from communism Mr. Obama's political vision is sadly reactionary.  It aims to take us all back to an era when kings, czars, and other forceful rulers herded populations into armies to serve impossible ideals.  What Mr. Obama completely ignored in his speech is that America is supposed to be a community that respects and protects everyone's rights to pursue their own version of human happiness!  And he promoted this idea on the back of one of the the most despicable Leftist mantras, namely, rich bashing. He evidently is counting on the prejudice of millions against those who are well off.  He is, in short, counting on the envy of Americans.

        One can only hope that Mr. Obama is misreading the American people's general outlook on social-economic issues.  Do Americans really accept that the country is involved in a class war, a war pitting those who are striving to improve their lives against those who have attained that objective!  I am hoping that the liberty I and millions of others came to America to enjoy as a matter of our individual human right will once again resume its place as America's public policy priority.*
*This comment was solicited by The Heartland Institute of Chicago, IL, and is among others submitted featured at its blog.

Bangladesh's lesbian, gay, and bisexual prejudice needs to be stopped!

This is a short essay by a friend of mine.  He has my full support, as does his cause.  The right to choose one's sexual orientation needs support and protection, no less so than other individual rights.

Tibor R. Machan
------------------------------------

Dear friends,

I would like to ask you for your support for a worthy cause I very
much care about.

In Bangladesh, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people encounter
extensive prejudice, discrimination, and violence because of their
sexual orientation. Many face discrimination at school, university,
and their workplace, are denied access to health care & justice and
find little support from family members & friends. Section 377 of the
Bangladesh Penal Code, a colonial law enacted in 1860 and left behind
by the British Empire, makes same-sex intercourse a crime punishable
by imprisonment for life. I described the impact this hostile
environment has on the daily lives of LGB people in Bangladesh in a
short article published about a year ago:
http://opinion.bdnews24.com/2012/01/24/bangladesh%E2%80%99s-invisible-minority/.

I'm a member of the Bangladesh Liberal Forum (BLF), a group of loosely
associated activists dedicated to the promotion of liberal values in
Bangladesh. We recently joined our forces with the Bandhu Social
Welfare Society (BSWS, http://www.bandhu-bd.org/) and Boys of
Bangladesh (BoB, http://www.boysofbangladesh.org/) in order to combat
homophobia in Bangladesh. We believe in the power of education to
change the world and consequently created a brochure that we intend to
use to educate people about psychological, legal, and moral issues
pertaining to sexual orientation. We will distribute this brochure at
workshops and conferences, at universities and to NGOs and government
offices in Bangladesh. We will start distributing next month when BSWS
will hold workshops about the rights of sexual minorities with
students of two universities in Dhaka (ULAB and ASA).

I would like to invite you to support us in our struggle against
homophobia in Bangladesh and help us cover the printing cost. We just
ordered 5,000 copies of the English version of our brochure (which you
can find here: <
http://rainerebert.com/What_You_Should_Know_About_Homosexuality.pdf >)
for 350 USD, and we will order a larger number of copies of the
Bengali version once the translation is completed. There is no
administrative cost, so every dollar you give will be used to cover
printing cost, and to educate people about this important issue. Your
donation may be in the form of cash or check. Please mail checks to me
at 8803 Timberside Dr, Apt 2, Houston, TX 77025. If you are in
Germany, the easiest way to give is by bank transfer (Überweisung an
Rainer Ebert, Kontonummer: 54761000, BLZ: 61491010, VR-Bank Elwangen,
Verwendungszweck: LGB Bangladesh). If you are in Bangladesh, please
contact me.

Thank you for your consideration and support. If you have any
questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes

Rainer

P.S.: I plan to thank supporters at
https://www.facebook.com/LGBT.Bangladesh - if you'd like to stay
anonymous, please say so.


Department of Philosophy
Rice University
6100 Main St, MS 14
Houston, TX 77005

United States of America

Arrogance of Power

Arrogance of Power!

Tibor R. Machan

Just how utterly reliant on sheer power is President Obama can be appreciated from the fact that no one in his administration bothers to defend his policy of confiscating people’s resources.  Apart from calling upon the phony support of a few super rich folks like Warren Buffet -- who, I understand, is by no means offering his own wealth up for use by Mr. Obama (instead engaging in customary dodging and weaving, not paying up) -- no argument has been put forth by the administration for the progressive tax policy it relies upon.  Merely declaring that the very wealthy “may be asked” to contribute a higher percentage of their belongings isn’t an argument, merely a dishonest dogma.  Why, one may ask!  What principle supports this policy of public finance?  Why must those with exceptional talent, skill, luck, etc. be punished for possessing these?  

Sure, such very rich folks may not need their resources as badly as do poorer folks but why is that a justification for the confiscatory policy?  It simply is not.  Matters concerning who needs what, how much, etc., just have no generalized answer.  “Fair share” is a made up idea, a rationalization, based on nothing more than the wish to take, take, and take some more.  Such a wish has no standing in morality or public finance!

If the country were some kind of club or organization that came together voluntarily, with the provision that dues will be progressive, the case would be different.  But just being born into a society with greater advantages and resources than others possess doesn’t by any means serve as a valid reason to be subjected to confiscation.  Consent would be needed for that, otherwise what we have is nothing different from highway robbery.  

Some gullible folks have compared Obama’s philosophy of public finance to Robin Hoodism but that’s entirely misguided.  What Robin Hood did was to take funds back from those who taxed the population!  Robin Hood correctly regarded taxes as unjustified takings, as robbery!

Some of us are luckier than others; some of us work harder and earn more than others; indeed, the citizens of a free country are a highly varied lot in many respects, including how much they are worth economically!  No one is justified in becoming an equalizer unless consent has been given to take part in such a scheme. (Imagine a marathon race in which at every new position the participants were re-positioned in line with some notion of fairness! Oh, some have imagined that already, such as George Orwell in his classic tale, “Animal Farm,” and Kurt Vonnegut in his short story titled “Harrison Bergeron.” The practice of handicapping has nothing to do with fairness but with keeping the race interesting for spectators.)  

I do not like to ascribe motives to people when they embark upon various objectionable actions or the advocacy of mendacious policies.  Who know what lies in the hearts of such men and women -- envy, resentment, naive idealism, whatever! I do know that the progressive taxation system, even taxation itself, is a vicious way to support policies and projects that one supports in societies.  (We can all come up with innumerable great ideas that maybe others should also embrace but that’s no justification for robbing others of what belongs to them so as to fund those projects or of enslaving them to labor for these!)

I suppose calling the progressive tax policy “progressive” suffices for some people to justify and implement it, to impose it on others who reject it; but it will not wash.  In the end it all amounts to sheer, raw power wielding, comparable to what a lynch mob or bandit does.

My List

My List

Tibor R. Machan

Once I learned to read there was no end to it.  I used my flashlight to make it possible after I was sent to sleep and my first books were quite a disorderly collection.  I read a bunch of historical novels in Hungarian, several about the 160 year long Turkish occupation of the country. This was followed with Hungarian translations of Mark Twain, Zane Gray, Max Brand and many other American and German novelists (Karl May). When I discovered these I simply devoured them all, nonstop. Earl Stanley Gardner’s series of courtroom stories, starring the invincible Perry Mason, never disappointed me.  Once I flew Hungary I continued with some more classical works, such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky but I kept up with the lighter fare.

I am still collecting new authors, like Philip Kerr and David Dawson and Robert B. Parker and others.  But my favorite reading still consist of the stories and novels and travelogues of W. Somerset Maugham.  The latter have been supplemented by Pico Iyer and Peter Mayle, two who can describe various parts of the globe most evocatively.  I am especially fond of Mayle’s stories of Provence, which cover history, architecture, cuisine, lodging, and all.

My profession allows me to travel to interesting parts but mostly to do work, so I am not able to tour extensively the places where conferences are being held and where I am asked to present talks. So I supplement my travels with reading the travel writers and by watching some of the travel programs, especially the ones hosted by Burt Wolf and Steven Reeves (though I much prefer the former).  Wolf has a real knack for mixing the several attractive features of the places he visits, architecture, history, religion, philosophy, literature, and art. His humor is delightful and, fortunately, he pretty much skips all politics so one can view his programs and feel like one is taking a vacation.

I finally got a Kindle--even lost one already--which makes taking along reading material on my numerous trips around the globe quite simple now. (I used to haul around books earlier and paid for this by ruining my back so I eventually needed two operations to repair it to reasonable fitness.)

Reading novels has for me the inestimable benefit of coming to know many more human beings than I have the occasion to befriend.  It amazes me how adept novelist are at entering the personalities of their character, navigating a great variety of lives so that the reader comes away from their stories with the impression of having met dozens and dozens of individuals and hundreds of situations.

Not every novelist is likely to suit every reader; different personalities will be entertained and informed in different ways.  Novelists may match up with some but by no means all potential readers.  It is like music and poetry.  While I believe there are standards of aesthetic excellence, there is also a sort of pluralism in art. Again, it is a bit like entertainment and sport--some work for me, some for you, etc., etc.

          My list may not be everyone’s but some will probably find it rewarding just as I did and still do. Friends of mine who know my taste and other values may well find dipping into the list quite satisfactory.  I certainly have enriched my life immensely doing so. 

My Vigilant Ethical Egoism

My Vigilant Ethical Egoism

Tibor R. Machan

When I was in my late teens I discovered Ayn Rand, in particular her novel The Fountainhead.  Actually I ran across her when I appeared in a theater group’s rendition of her play, The Night of January 16th, at Andrews Air Force Base, but her significance hadn’t dawned on me at that point.

What was most striking about Rand novel and much of her subsequent writing for me, both personally and intellectually, is her rejection of the widespread misanthrope that surrounded my life.  I was raised a Roman Catholic and the doctrine of original sin didn’t sit well with me from the time I first encountered it.  I took that doctrine to mean that human beings had in them a fundamental evil streak, from which Jesus rescued them if only they accepted him as their savior.  Made no sense to me but who was I to take issue with such a powerfully propagated viewpoint?  But I never quite bought it.

Rand’s ideas in The Fountainhead went clearly against this Roman Catholic, indeed Christian tradition and her reasoning for rejecting it struck a chord with me.  It mattered somewhat, also, that my own parents were fiercely misanthropic and drove this home to me very violently at every chance they could get.  Especially my father!  He was an avid anti-Semite and even championed Hitler’s ideas--on top of which I got a solid dosage of Soviet indoctrination in communist Hungary, where I was raised until my early teens--that pretty much took the misanthropic theme as far as it could go.  Individuals had no value as such was the steady message thrust at me!

To this day when I encounter echoes of this point of view, my blood starts to boil. Now and then I find some support for what I mostly felt and thought only in primitive terms but each time I witness the propaganda against individualism, against egoism and self-interest, I recover my resolve to combat the ideas with which it is expressed, be that in a simple sitcom or a movie or a piece of classical literature or a vicious political speech.  In other words, I have internalized the view that human beings are not evil but very capable of doing and being good in all their endeavors, even if they do often go astray and betray their better nature.

And on every front I find occasion to reaffirm this idea, namely, that human nature hasn’t anything inherently evil about it and those who claim that it does are not just misguided but promoting what really is evil.  Why would the self of a being like us deserve such treatment when everywhere evidence shows that human beings not just can be but actually are admirable?  How can human beings as such be viewed so negatively by very prominent figures throughout history?  Sure, some people are indeed vicious but that is not because of human nature but because of their own bad choices and conduct.  By declaring us all inherently bad those who really are such are given an easy excuse, unjustly exculpated in fact!

I didn’t need anyone to alert me to how misguided misanthropy is but it was very encouraging to find a few people, such as Rand, who didn’t fall in line with that kind of perverse thinking. I will always be proud of having joined their ranks, in my various efforts, to point out that humanity is very much a plus in the total known scheme of things instead of complying with the hatefulness of those, like extreme environmentalists in our day and many on the political Left and Right, who demean it so recklessly and unjustly.