Column on being robbed

So I was Robbed

Tibor R. Machan

The other week I went to San Francisco for a conference, parked in a
?Public Parking? place, on a busy corner (2nd and Howard), and my car was
broken into and a bunch of stuff stolen. And I am partly to blame.

Yes, I wasn?t thinking clearly. Living as I do in a neighborhood where
homes and cars can be left unlocked, I got spoiled. And all I had to do is
stop to think a minute. Once before, in the 70s, the same thing happened
to me in the same beautiful City by the Bay?then someone broke into my old
Volvo and stole a nice leather coat I bought a few months before in
Berlin. And when I lived in Palo Alto for a year to work at Stanford, I
experienced my first home burglary.

Although this is no evidence of any trend?other than perhaps of my
mistreatment by Bay Area thugs?it should have been on my mind as I locked
up my car and walked away from it. So the rest of my Easter weekend was
spent on damage control since my lap top, which was part of the loot,
contained information that could be used to some hacker to get into my
various accounts and maybe purchase things (although these are mostly
online book shops, so I doubt they will be of great interest to someone
breaking into cars).

It goes to show you that while, of course, it is the perpetrator who did
the worst thing here, the victim, too, could have acted more wisely,
prudently, and therefore is guilty of misconduct. That lesson isn?t often
heeded. I didn?t heed it much on this occasion but I promise to be better
henceforth. In many instances those who should know better and act
accordingly miss out by not realizing there are hazards all around us,
some posed by nature, some by others. The natural hazards are, of course,
more easily anticipated?California often shakes, so one can do better by
preparing for a quake here and there; Florida is hit by hurricanes often
enough so one should probably make sure one?s home is sturdy; and the
Midwest has its floods, the north its deep freezes and so forth.

But there are also too many other people who are hell bent on making life
miserable for the rest. From simple vandalism to brutal murders and
terrorism, these folks are vicious, mean people who will not be
discouraged by finely fashioned welfare programs or by the sentiments of
social workers or anti-globalists. No, they have gone corrupt. And they
will lash out and anyone can become their victim.

Yet, the victims, too, are doing something less than exemplary by not
paying attention to such people, by downplaying the reality of their
existence, by forgetting that they are out there, especially in certain
regions of the neighborhood or globe, praying on whoever is distracted,
whoever forgets about them, whoever thinks they will just go away some day
because of all the good will some people waste on them.

I am writing all of this in part so as to fix the matter in my own mind,
good and hard, not to continue with my own complacency. Sure, I had an
alarm, sure it was broad daylight, and sure in was in the middle of a
mostly civilized city on a sunny weekend day. But not only is it common
sense to take extra measures in any big city but I had personally been put
on alert. Yet I chose to be out to lunch, something I detest when I let
myself do it.

As I say, I promise. In the meantime I will continue with my damage
control, get things fixed, replace the losses, see if my insurance covers
any of it, and become better about coping with the vile ones of the world.

Oh, yes, I also went to the police to report this and the cooperation was
fantastic?well, not really. The officers?half a dozen of them sitting
there, chatting and joking and barely paying heed when I made my
report?pretty much regarded this event as something that?s solely my
problem, not theirs. I don?t know for sure, but I suspect they were more
interested in victimless crimes?drug offenses, prostitution, whatever?than
in cruising about the avenues of San Francisco, being alert so as to stand
ready to secure our rights.

All the more reason to be more alert oneself.

Column on Terri Schiavo's Sad Saga

Terri Schiavo?s Sad Saga

Tibor R. Machan

By the time this is being read, Terri Schiavo may have died. But she is
virtually dead now, or so it has been reported by several doctors who
should know. The situation isn?t so unfamiliar to many of us who have had
relatives who have become nearly dead or brain dead and whose life amounts
to little more than a forcibly induced condition.

I am now old enough to have made my will instructing that if I ever reach
such a state, I do not want anyone to prolong my mere survival. Why?

Well, to begin with, I do not believe in imposing the cost of any such
procedure on my relatives, let alone on total strangers. There is
certainly no moral--and there should be no legal?duty for the latter to
provide me with life supports, period, however much the ?laws? of my
community disagrees with me on this. The law is just wrong when it coerces
others to serve someone with such?or indeed any other?support. How dare
impose such burdens on people who didn?t sign up for the task of their own
free will? That is grossly unjust.

In the Terri Schiavo case the matter is clearly complicated by the fact
that hardly anyone dares bring up the issue of who is supposed to pay for
all this support. But it is plain that if the parents want to do so, let
them?her husband should relinquish his role as next of kin since no one is
taking it seriously anyway. His report of Terri?s own choice to let her
die if the current situation is to arise is apparently treated as
irrelevant for many who are chiming in on the case, even though by all
rights it is he, for better or for worse, who should have that authority.
Well, if he is not allowed to exercise this authority, he should just let
the parents take over the care of poor Terri. (I am not privy to all the
legal complications but that is what seems to me the decent way to handle
it. Certainly if I were in Terri?s position and someone, say a devoted
student of my philosophical works, wanted to keep me going, I would not
expect my children to refuse, although they should not be held responsible
for an
y of the burdens this would create.)

I believe much of the trepidation about Terri?s fate has to do with this
misguided notion that society?that is to say, other persons?must finance
anyone?s life support system. Unless she got sufficient medical insurance
to pay for her continued support, it isn?t justified that she be gaining
the support from people who do not want to provide it. It may appear to be
heartless?which, by the way, it isn?t?but no one owes another to serve
them unless there is an explicit or at least clearly implicit agreement to
that effect in force.

No doubt there are people all around who disagree, who believe that other
people?s need counts as a justification for conscripting unwilling
strangers to provide help. Well, that is to endorse slavery, or at least
involuntary servitude. Slaves, too, were thought to owe their lives and
labors to their masters, not to themselves. Conscripts, too, are robbed of
their will to live as they choose usually because the people who control
the government believe they are entitled to make them serve a goal they
believe is very important.

Free men and women, however, are not owned by anyone other than
themselves. Nor is their labor, nor their resources, available, morally
speaking, to be seized by others, even those who are in dire straits. That
is the price of liberty?not being able to take from others what others
refuse to give of their own free will.

Alas, neither conservatives nor liberals in the USA care much about these
elementary matters today. Never mind that the fundamental political
document of this country, the Declaration of Independence, spelled out the
idea clearly and unambiguously?namely, that each and every human being has
an unalienable right to his or her life and liberty and pursuit of
happiness (among other rights). This means that others may not take their
lives, infringe on their liberties unless permission from them has been
obtained.

However much even millions may desire that Terri Schiavo be provided with
more time, so that some miracle might make her recover, it should not
occur at the expense of the lives and liberties of people who haven?t
volunteered for this task.

Correction

Please change Anthony Scalia to
Antonin Scalia in my column on The Forgotten Ninth Amendment

Column on Scalia and the Ninth Amendment

The Forgotten Ninth Amendment

Tibor R. Machan

In a recent talk US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia criticized his
fellow justices for making law, a role he believes belongs to the
legislature or the people themselves. Justices, he argued, are there to
interpret the US Constitution and this they must do by reading it as it
was intended back when it was framed and when it was later amended. In his
dissent Scalia wrote,

The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the
issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment
will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death
penalty....? The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's
moral standards.

The charge Scalia has leveled at his colleagues?five of them, the
majority who ruled for abolition of the death penalty for juveniles and
the mentally impaired?is the substance of the general criticism usually
labeled ?judicial activism.? This view decries it whenever the court rules
as if there existed rights which are not explicitly mentioned or
enumerated within the US Constitution. One of the most famous of these
unenumerated rights is the right to privacy and the majority of the court
has ruled in several recent cases that various state laws violate this
right and are, therefore, unconstitutional, invalid laws.

In his recent public talk Justice Scalia argued that the idea of a living
constitution is essentially wrongheaded because it leaves the country
without a firm basis of law by which it can be governed. Instead of a
stable set of constitutional principles, justices have come to make laws
based on their ?personal policy preferences,? thus undermining the classic
doctrine of the rule of law (as opposed to that of arbitrary governors).

The case Scalia makes has a good deal going for it because it is indeed
part of the theory of politics in the USA that the role justices play does
not include making laws, only interpreting the Constitution when some
legislation is challenged through the courts (and reaches the US Supreme
Court). The living constitution idea is, indeed, destructive of the rule
of law and of democracy itself because it encourages arbitrariness, the
departure from governance by law toward governance according to the
justices? own convictions.

Yet, there is a problem here because Justice Scalia ignores the Ninth
Amendment to the US Constitution, the one that states unequivocally that
aside from rights enumerated in that document, the people have others, as
well. The Ninth states that ?The enumeration in this Constitution, of
certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people.? So, while this does not sanction any kind of
loose, ?living,? constitutional doctrine, it does make clear reference to
rights that aren?t explicitly listed in the US Constitution, rights that
we nonetheless possess.

What would be those rights? Pretty much to do everything and anything the
government isn?t authorized to prohibit. Indeed, the point of the US
Constitution does not appear to be to spell out our rights in particular,
other than to spell out for emphasis of some of the most crucial ones. It
is, rather, to state what the strictly limited powers of government are.

As to whether this authorizes the US Supreme Court to strike down state
and federal legislation that permits the execution of juveniles or the
mentally ill, the situation is complicated. It is arguable, however, that
one role of the court is to spell out the logical meanings of terms within
the constitution for our own times, meanings that have clearly undergone
some rational evolution.

Just as in physics the term ?atom? no longer logically means exactly what
it meant 300 years ago, so in political theory and jurisprudence the term
?human being? could reasonably require some updating. If it is found, for
example, that children and the mentally disabled lack the full capacity of
adult humans, this could reasonably require interpreting provisions of the
US Constitution and other laws accordingly.

And that is just what seems to lie behind recent rulings: for example,
the young, who in our day aren?t permitted to enter into contracts, to
marry on their own, or to vote, would probably not warrant being judged
guilty of crimes exactly as they were when certain nuances in
understanding what human beings are had been overlooked or were not
clearly understood.

Against Scalia it can be argued that although the idea of a living
constitution is dangerous, so is the idea of a frozen one. Reasonable
development in the meaning of the terms in the fundamental laws of the
society is to be expected and should not be thwarted in the US Supreme
Court?s deliberations and rulings. Those who protest that this is
anti-democratic need to consider that the Founders were not pure democrats
by a long shot?just consider the electoral college, which is blatantly
anti-democratic.

Column on thanking a bad man

Appreciation for A Bad Man?s Words

Tibor R. Machan

This is something I would never have thought I?d write?words of
appreciation for the last words of a vicious murderer. Yet I believe they
are due, even though the man who spoke those words is now dead, executed
in Texas for murdering a nurse in the 1980s for a payment of $1500.00.

It is reported that George Anderson Hopper, who received a lethal
injection for the murder of Rozanne Gailiunas in 1983, was asked by the
warden if he had anything to say before he was to die and here is what
this man said:

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. The things I did changed so many
lives. I can?t take it back. It was an atrocity. I am sorry. I beg your
forgiveness. I know I am not worthy of it.? And he is reported to have
uttered this ?with his voice breaking with emotion.?

Now this is today a rather remarkable event, with someone who has done
something morally terrible accepting his guilt and making an effort to
seek forgiveness for it. It shows, for once rather clearly, that some
people accept responsibility for their evil deeds instead of merely
putting up all kinds of excuses and ?explanations? for how they behaved,
as if it had nothing to do with them at all.

In our era it is fashionable to look upon human behavior as but the same
kind of event as the rain fall, an earthquake, a mosquito bite, or a
tsunami?an impersonal bit of motion in the course of the unfolding of the
multitude of impersonal motions throughout the universe. This idea, that
people are just bits and pieces of matter moving about without any hand in
their own activities, is unfortunately encouraged by a pretty dubious
report of what scientists, especially physicists, and by some evolutionary
biologists, have discovered. By this account of how the world is,
everything is fully determined to go the way it must. That doesn?t mean we
know how it will all turn out, although if we knew all the laws of nature
and had a full list of the stuff populating the world, that, too, could be
done. We don?t so, the story goes, there are going to be surprises?that is
how Stephen Hawking, the famous Cambridge astrophysicist, accounts for our
alleged illusion of free will.

But this story is more metaphysics?and a bad kind to boot?than science.
It simply assumes that the universe has no room for free will. It doesn?t
show this at all. And the evidence is clear that people cause much of what
they do, including the scientific work that supposedly gives them this
story, not to mention all the artistic, technological and ordinary, day to
day, production and creativity we witness from them, for good or ill. The
story so many people in the academy tell?that we just are moved objects
and cannot ourselves move anything of our own, that we lack the capacity
to initiate any of our behavior so cannot reasonably be held responsible
for it?is an extrapolation and a hasty one at that.
Instead, a much more credible, though a bit more complicated, story is
that in the universe there are many kinds of beings, and what they can and
cannot do depends on their nature. In the case of people, then, it is the
fact that we have minds that we can activate or leave dormant that
determines how much of what happens with us will turn out. If we make good
use of our minds, if we think things through, if we pay attention and
follow through with what we learn, including in the area of human
relations, things will go well, but if we are sloppy, lazy, thoughtless
and then try to act accordingly, things will go wrong and sometimes we
will end up perpetrating atrocious things, like Mr. Hopper did when he
took money to fill Ms. Gailliunas.

It is about time that some of us fess up to our complicit in the bad
things we produce, whether they be Draconian misdeeds or minor ones, like
failing to keep an appointment or turning in a class assignment on time.
All this explaining away how people act can only spell self-delusion. And
it perpetuates the myth that just fixing a gene here, or a social
circumstance there, or simply throwing a bit of money at a problem, will
make a huge difference and the world will function smoothly in a jiffy
thereafter. That, in turn, promotes the idea of the meddling government as
the God that will fix it all?with the paradoxical idea that people in
government do have the power of free will but no one else does.

Column on not coercing generosity

Coerced Altruism?s Ruinous Popularity

Tibor R. Machan

You might say I wrote the book on generosity?one of mine had this as its
topic and its title, as well, back in 1998. So when in response to a
recent column, in which I reaffirmed the propriety of freely chosen as
against coerced generosity, I received dozens of really nasty letters,
claiming that I was advocating cruelty and meanness, I had to shake my
head in dismay. Will they never get it?

A bill like the Americans with Disabilities Act, long with many others
that make it a crime not to help those who are in more or less serious
need, is clearly in violation of an elementary principle of morality, one
that is captured in a slogan from the famous German philosopher, Immanuel
Kant. ?Ought? implies ?can,? said Kant?who is otherwise not my favorite
(because he continued to support a very destructive idea, namely, dualism,
the notion that reality is divided into two incompatible, the factual and
the mental, realms). In this, however, he pointed his finger at something
we all can easily accept, if we but think about it a little: If one is to
do the right thing, it must be done freely, un-coerced, voluntarily.
Otherwise we are simply behaving as we are forced to by others, something
for which no moral credit could accrue to us, something that does not make
us decent people and does not make the action morally worthwhile.

In a truly free human community, what measure of generosity, charity,
philanthropy is to be forthcoming from people may not be forced upon them
and the beneficiaries may not use the force of laws and regulations to
elicit what they need and want from others. This is true in the case of
all so called civil rights laws, too, be it for the benefit of members of
any type of minorities, be they of some race, gender or disabled group.

For instance, when immigrants come to a free society, they, unlike those
who come to certain states of the United States of America, are not
entitled to be provided by laws and regulation with special language
assistance in their schools or places of work. They need to do the
catch-up work with freely given support, not support gotten at the point
of the gun. And that goes, also, for all disabled persons, however much
this may seem to them unfair or even unjust. It is far more unjust to
initiate force against people so as to help one?a point that should be
easy to appreciate in simple personal relations in which it is plain
common sense that morally no one may coerce another to be helpful, even in
cases of dire straits.

In the community in which I live a disaster struck a merciless blow upon
a family, killing a teen and destroying their home recently in a wild yet
well populated canyon during heavy rains. In at least partial response,
thousands from the neighborhood, including about 75 business
establishments from near and far, gathered for a commemorative feast and
raised quite a bit of support for the survivors of the disaster,
voluntarily, with no one rounding them up to provide the support. This is
the way help is secured in a civilized, decent, and free society, not via
threats to put people in jail or of fining them if they are not willing to
give of their own free will. That is a central difference between how free
men and women live in one another?s company and how barbarians do, who
extract what they need and want by actual or threatened brute force.

Yet, in response to my recalling what would seem an obvious
point?especially in a country that put on record (and the government of
which makes a big deal of advocating for all) the conditions by which free
people live together, as wall is in the spirit of George Orwell?s
admonition that "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the
restatement of the obvious" (http://oaks.nvg.org/wm4ra8.html)?I got an
inordinate amount of flack. No, I am not complaining?I merely lament this
fact and make note of it as a disturbing sign of how fragile the idea of
liberty is in the very country in which the Founders considered each
citizen as having the unalienable right to acting freely and one that had
a tragic Civil War fought in large measure so as to abolish slavery,
involuntary servitude.

Column on Evil and The Welfare State

Welfare Statism and Evil

Tibor R. Machan

For a long time I have been reading works in political and social theory
and most of the well published ones?by major commercial and university
presses?agree with this passage that is quoted in The Status Syndrome
(2005), a recent book advocating various government measures to save us
from anything and everything that ails us:

The success of an economy and of a society cannot be separated from the
lives that members of the society are able to lead?. We not only value
living well and satisfactorily, but also appreciate having control over
our own lives.

The author of the passage is Amartya Sen, and the statement comes from
his own very prominent book, Development as Freedom (1999). Both he and
the author of the book to which the passage serves as the epigram believe
that the problems of most societies need more vigorous government
involvement and that those who champion the unfettered and admittedly
non-utopian free society are very mistaken.

Given that for innumerable decades the major Western powers have been
vigorous welfare states and that the claim that free markets have
reigned?say under Margaret Thatcher in England and Ronald Reagan in the
USA?is an out and out lie, it is a valid question to pose why all this
transfer of wealth to the people organized by governments simply hasn?t
done the job of fixing things for those at the lower rungs of the economic
system. There are probably several reasons but a few stand out.

Most generally, the ?lives that members of the society are able to lead?
just isn?t available for even the most energetic welfare statist to
guarantee. There is always something that undermines the grand project of
remedying everything via coercive means, including (a) bureaucratic
rip-offs, (b) lack of the requisite knowledge of what would actually help
people most, and, yes, (c) the bad choices of the very people who are to
be helped out.

There has enough been said about (a) and (b) by well known social
theorists to fill a library but (c) is something else. In our era it is
simply too surly to suggest that many, many people are personally
responsible for much of what happens to them in life. No, it?s got to be
something else, always. (This is also why many intellectuals cannot let
go of the idea that terrorists may really be vicious people, not victims
of, say, globalization or American imperialism.)

But there is a bit of good news now, which may finally enlighten our
decently motivated statists and their academic defenders, people who think
every problem has a solution if only you throw enough money at it and use
sufficient force to get it fixed. Professor Michael Stone of Columbia
University, a psychiatrists to boot, has chimed in with a surprising
(though largely old fashioned) piece of news. As reported in the English
magazine THE WEEK, ?He found that while some [of 500 serial killers in
both the US and Britain he studied] suffered from mental illness or had
been damaged by some event in their history, others were perfectly sane.
They simply enjoyed killing.? As the professor put it, ?Such people make a
rational choice to commit terrible crimes over and over again. They are
evil and we should be able to say that formally.?

Which pretty much opens the door that other people may not be quite so
evil as serial killers but could perpetrate bits and pieces of evil
themselves, including refusing to do much good for their own lives. So
when Sen states that ?we [i.e., all of us] appreciate having control over
our own lives,? he is wrong?some people simply do not appreciate this and
choose, instead, of float about, aimlessly, no matter how much effort is
put into helping them out of their misery.

Of course, most of us who pay any attention to the world, beginning with
our family and neighbors and friends, know this well enough and have
always. There are ne?er-do-wells about everywhere, people who are lazy,
irresponsible, and hopelessly incorrigible on that score, apart from the
really vile ones the professor was studying. And in large societies there
are very many of them and they will always be there. With the welfare
statists? refusal to acknowledge their existence, however, the fruitless
effort to fix these people?s lives by sacrificing the lives and labors of
others for their sake continues, despite the evidence that they will not
be helped.

Perhaps these people need to learn a thing or two from professor Stone
and start admitting that some people ask for their own misery and public
policy and political theory need to take this into account.

Column on thanking a bad man (sans typo)

Appreciation for A Bad Man?s Words

Tibor R. Machan

This is something I would never have thought I?d write?words of
appreciation for the last words of a vicious murderer. Yet I believe they
are due, even though the man who spoke those words is now dead, executed
in Texas for murdering a nurse in the 1980s for a payment of $1500.00.

It is reported that George Anderson Hopper, who received a lethal
injection for the murder of Rozanne Gailiunas in 1983, was asked by the
warden if he had anything to say before he was to die and here is what
this man said:

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. The things I did changed so many
lives. I can?t take it back. It was an atrocity. I am sorry. I beg your
forgiveness. I know I am not worthy of it.? And he is reported to have
uttered this ?with his voice breaking with emotion.?

Now this is today a rather remarkable event, with someone who has done
something morally terrible accepting his guilt and making an effort to
seek forgiveness for it. It shows, for once rather clearly, that some
people accept responsibility for their evil deeds instead of merely
putting up all kinds of excuses and ?explanations? for how they behaved,
as if it had nothing to do with them at all.

In our era it is fashionable to look upon human behavior as but the same
kind of event as the rain fall, an earthquake, a mosquito bite, or a
tsunami?an impersonal bit of motion in the course of the unfolding of the
multitude of impersonal motions throughout the universe. This idea, that
people are just bits and pieces of matter moving about without any hand in
their own activities, is unfortunately encouraged by a pretty dubious
report of what scientists, especially physicists, and by some evolutionary
biologists, have discovered. By this account of how the world is,
everything is fully determined to go the way it must. That doesn?t mean we
know how it will all turn out, although if we knew all the laws of nature
and had a full list of the stuff populating the world, that, too, could be
done. We don?t so, the story goes, there are going to be surprises?that is
how Stephen Hawking, the famous Cambridge astrophysicist, accounts for our
alleged illusion of free will.

But this story is more metaphysics?and a bad kind to boot?than science.
It simply assumes that the universe has no room for free will. It doesn?t
show this at all. And the evidence is clear that people cause much of what
they do, including the scientific work that supposedly gives them this
story, not to mention all the artistic, technological and ordinary, day to
day, production and creativity we witness from them, for good or ill. The
story so many people in the academy tell?that we just are moved objects
and cannot ourselves move anything of our own, that we lack the capacity
to initiate any of our behavior so cannot reasonably be held responsible
for it?is an extrapolation and a hasty one at that.
Instead, a much more credible, though a bit more complicated, story is
that in the universe there are many kinds of beings, and what they can and
cannot do depends on their nature. In the case of people, then, it is the
fact that we have minds that we can activate or leave dormant that
determines how much of what happens with us will turn out. If we make good
use of our minds, if we think things through, if we pay attention and
follow through with what we learn, including in the area of human
relations, things will go well, but if we are sloppy, lazy, thoughtless
and then try to act accordingly, things will go wrong and sometimes we
will end up perpetrating atrocious things, like Mr. Hopper did when he
took money to kill Ms. Gailliunas.

It is about time that some of us fess up to our complicit in the bad
things we produce, whether they be Draconian misdeeds or minor ones, like
failing to keep an appointment or to turn in a class assignment on time.
All this explaining away how people act can only spell self-delusion. And
it perpetuates the myth that just fixing a gene here, or a social
circumstance there, or simply throwing a bit of money at a problem, will
make a huge difference and the world will function smoothly in a jiffy
thereafter. That, in turn, promotes the idea of the meddling government as
the God that will fix it all?with the paradoxical idea that people in
government do have the power of free will but no one else does.

Column on Ad Hominem attacks on freedom

When Elites Use Ad Hominems

Tibor R. Machan

A book came to my attention with a promising title, so I bought and began
to read it. The author is William M. Sullivan, a senior scholar at the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the book is Work
and Integrity, The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America (2005).

With such a title I was hoping for, though admittedly not quite
expecting, a non-politicized discussion of the ethics of work and
professionalism. Alas, there is some of this in the book, but much of it
is also devoted to putting down anyone who thinks these matters can be
handled without involving a massive government?especially, licensing and
regulatory?bureaucracy.

OK, but this would not be so bad if our distinguished author went about
arguing for his support of these measures, ones that have been on the
books for ages and yet have spawned a situation that has prompted the
author himself to lament endlessly the unprofessional conduct of
professionals. Instead, when it comes to the issue of whether the private
sector could deal with professional credentialing, we get no argument at
all, only name calling. Mr. Sullivan does not hesitate at all to deploy
one of the least civil of rhetorical devices in discussing issues, namely,
ad hominems.

It may be recalled by some that the Nobel Laureate economist Milton
Friedman wrote a book, Capitalism and Freedom (1962) in which he
argues?yes, he actually argues?against professional licensing, making the
case that a free society does not deserve to be burdened by such demeaning
public measures, ones that treat professionals as requiring the
supervision of a bunch of force-wielding bureaucrats. A free society can
have its own watchdog agencies, ones, however, that do not have the status
of the monarch but simply one among many service agencies like the Good
Housekeeping Seal of Approval folks.

So what does Mr. Sullivan offer in rebuttal to this line of argument
Friedman goes to great pains to develop? Nothing, not unless you consider
calling Milton Friedman a ?market fundamentalist,? someone among ?those
who allow their enthusiasm for the ideals of markets performance to
develop into fanaticism,? an argument. Sullivan says that Friedman is
wrong because he fails to make any room for non-market institutions doing
something to enhance professionalism, whereas, of course, Friedman does
nothing of the sort. He simply wants to exclude coercive measures, which
in Sullivan?s view makes him a fanatic.

Now being a fanatic about liberty hasn?t ever seemed to me such a
dangerous thing. As when Barry Goldwater said, ?extremism in the defense
of liberty is no vice,? so neither is fanaticism in defense of it so
awful. Abolitionist were fanatics, as were anti-Vietnam War demonstrators,
and civil rights activists?meaning they were really, seriously opposed to
what they deemed to be unjust. Calling them ?civil rights fundamentalists?
wouldn?t suffice to take issue with their position. Arguments, however,
might?as we have seen when prominent law professors have taken issue with
those activists.

But cheer up. When prominent scholars from very prestigious organizations
lash out at various ideas with venom, you know those ideas are making an
impact. And they should. Free market fundamentalism, like Criminal justice
fundamentalism (a la the ACLU) or human rights fundamentalism (as per
Amnesty International) can indeed be a wonderful thing and attacking it in
such uncivil ways may give it something of a boost.

Licensing of professionals is, in fact, a form of prior restraint and is
not tolerable where human beings are supposed to be left free until they
have been proven guilty of a crime. People doing work in the various
professions need to be credentialed without violating this ideal and a
little fanaticism in support of that will do us a lot of good.

Maybe we ought to thank the likes of Mr. Sullivan for showing how
impoverished have become defenders of all the myriad government measures
that treat people as if they were beholden to the state, not to their own
conscience and the expectations of their free customers and clients.

Column on ADA "abuse"

ADA is Easily Abused

Tibor R. Machan

Some 18 years ago the Feds made a law that compels all kinds of business
establishments to accommodate disabled people. This law is often abused,
of course, as, for example, when people want jobs despite lacking
elementary skills to do them or when they demand that restaurants make
accommodation for their disability even if they are able to cope with just
a little extra effort.

But it is not abuse that?s the problem. It is the idea that businesses
are to be made the involuntary servants of people whose disabilities they
do not consider profitable or otherwise worthy to accommodate. Yes, this
may sound harsh but it is far harsher to coerce these establishments to
make accommodations. They are not there for the sake of these customers
but for making a living for their owners and investors. And there is no
moral justification in the slightest for being made legally beholden to
anyone, however unfortunate the person may be.

To some extent nearly everyone has special needs?which is why eye
glasses, canes, hearing aids, and the like are wonderful inventions. Yet,
despite their great value to those who need them, no one has the moral?and
should have the legal?authority to order anyone to produce these
implements. It is up to the inventors to come forth with their
contributions, which then can be used to great benefit by millions of
people.

But the US federal government, with the typical will to power attitude
when it comes to the bulk of the things they now embark upon, believe they
may coerce restaurants, amusement parks and other establishment to render
it simple for disabled people to make use of their facilities. How come?
If no one may force us to invent helpful implements for the disabled, why
may anyone force us to provide them with extra help?

Mind you, it is often decent to make provisions for those who need some
extra assistance. Generosity will often motivate vendors to do just that,
and this is praiseworthy. It is, however, something they themselves must
choose to provide, and to be coerced into doing it is far worse, morally,
than not extending the generous gesture. Not only that?there can be other
perfectly legitimate goals that could well be more important to the
vendors than to help the disabled.

Disability has a devastating impact on many people but, as already noted,
it is part of life. We all have a bit of it. None of us, however, is
morally entitled or authorized to compel others to help us because of our
disability. Indeed, if this were a right thing to do, there certainly are
millions of people around the globe who could just enslave us to serve
them, to provide involuntary servitude for their benefit.

A particularly egregious case of someone with disability harassing
various businesses has finally come under legal scrutiny in California. As
reported at ABAJournal.com, on February 18, 2005, ?A federal judge last
week accused a San Francisco law firm of ?plainly unethical? conduct in
its representation of a wheelchair-bound man who has filed some 400
lawsuits against California businesses since 1998 for alleged violations
of the Americans With Disabilities Act.? The man is 34 year old Jarek
Molski who in 1988 had a motorcycle ?accident??of which I would like to
know more, since that doesn?t tell us who was at fault?and has been going
about the state harassing various establishments if they do not
accommodate him. He has been especially vigilant in suing various small
wineries in the San Louis Obispo area.

The judge who finally put a stop to this called Moski ?a vexatious
litigant,? one who perpetrates a "scheme of systematic extortion designed
to harass and intimidate business owners into agreeing to cash
settlements." The law group going to bat for this man, The Frankovich
Group of San Francisco, is protesting the judge?s ruling, as is to be
expected, and who knows how the case will end up.

But here is the lesson: Once a bad law gets on the books, there is
probably no way to nail anyone for abusing it since one can only abuse
what is generally good. The ADA law is generally bad, not because disabled
people do not often deserve a break?although, again, this may not include
people who go out of their way to engage in risky conduct or, especially,
those who act recklessly. It is bad because it is coercive, conscripting
vendors to benefit the disabled, something no one deserves, not even for
the sake of providing such help.

Column on Million Dollar Baby

Ethics vs. Politics in Million Dollar Baby

Tibor R. Machan

Who has a right to one?s life? The individual whose life it is, that?s
who. And what does that entail? That it is up to that individual whether
to strive to continue to be alive, to thrive, or to discontinue living, to
stop thriving and discontinue living.

But having a natural (and justly protected legal) right to end one?s life
doesn?t make the act itself morally right. One has rights to do what is
wrong?just think of the right to freedom of speech, how often when it is
legitimately exercised what comes out is wrong! The right to be wrong is,
however, a right, nonetheless.

And it is also true that sometimes ending one?s life can be the right
thing to do, although there is probably no general account of when that
would be. Living in constant, unrelenting extreme pain could qualify?no
one is obligated to carry on in such a state unless there is a decent
prospect of recovery. One may also risk one?s life for various purposes
that merit such a risk, such as protecting the freedom of one?s country or
the safety of one?s loved ones or, for some folks, even going mountain
climbing.

In the Clint Eastwood directed movie, Million Dollar Baby, this issue
comes up quietly, as it did in Whose Life is it Anyway, which starred
Richard Dreyfuss some years ago and explored the topic head on. Whether
the answer reached is the right one is, of course, one of the vital
questions in morality and also of medical ethics. But there is first the
question of whether anyone has the right to end his or her own life, with
or without assistance from someone else.

The answer to this last question is a clear cut ?Yes.? It is one?s own
life and however wrong it may be, or right, it is up to one to decided
whether to end it. Of course, there are some complications?if one has
obligations to others, say one?s children or creditors, the answer is
different since one has made commitments one must first fulfill. But all
rights can face such complications?I have a right to my property but if I
have used it as collateral for a loan, that changes things. I have a
right to my liberty but if I chose to be married, some of my liberties
have been freely restricted by me.

Still, the fundamental issue is the same: It is the individual who has
the right to decided whether to live or die since it is he or she who has
an unalienable right to life. To defend this idea is itself not so simple,
especially since there are many views contrary to it. Some hold that the
individual belongs to humanity?communists thinks so. Or to
society?socialists believe that. Or the community?communitarians hold that
view. Or to God?which is the view of various religions. Some even believe
that there is no individual at all?some eastern philosophies subscribe to
this idea.

This isn?t the place to work out the issue in full but it is possible to
remind ourselves that at least in the American political tradition,
derived from the philosophical works of classical liberals?most
importantly John Locke?one has an unalienable right to ones? life. One is
sovereign, self-ruling. And that implies that no one else may interfere
with one?s authority to guide one?s life as one will, be this for good or
for ill, so long as no one else?s rights are being violated in the process.

Accordingly, Million Dollar Baby depicts what must be understood as a
sound political or legal doctrine, even if one can take issue with its
morality. Sadly, few make this distinction. Few are now taught in school
that what the Founders meant by all of us having equal unalienable rights
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, among other things, means
that everyone must accept everyone?s ultimate authority about matters as
controversial as whether one will live or die and whether one will seek
assistance in either task.

Column on Political Rights

What Happened to Political Rights?

Tibor R. Machan

Political rights are the rights of citizens to take part in political
affairs. But that doesn?t tell us much?it depends on what count as
political affairs. Today, unfortunately, nearly anything can become
political. The US Constitution and the constitutions of many nations
around the globe no longer limit the scope of the political. One can
practically vote on anything, lobby for anything, legislate anything, so
long as there are enough or loud enough voices agitating about the matter.

This is why democracy today has become an illiberal device, one by which
liberty itself is imperiled. The result is that democracy is imperiled,
too, since majorities will at times vote to eliminate all opposition, so
the minorities will become disenfranchised.

A movement spreading political rights is afoot, supported by the very
prestigious Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen of Harvard University?s Department
of Economics. It is called the capability movement. Sen advocates the
spread of political rights, which at first sounds the right thing to do.
Surely everyone in a country needs to have his or her right to take part
in the political process protected. This is simply the extension of one?s
right to liberty, the liberty to weigh in on political matters.

Trouble is that by ?politics? Sen and his followers around the globe,
including the United Nations, have in mind any issue that concerns people.
Sen?s comments about democracy make the point clear: ?Democracy can make,
I think, three major contributions to a country. First, since political
freedom is an important freedom, the freedom to participate, to speak and
to vote is part and parcel of human freedom that we have reason to value.
Democratic freedoms have intrinsic importance, no matter what else they
achieve.? He goes on: ?Second, a democratic political system is
instrumentally important, both (1) because it gives the rulers the
incentive to respond to problems and predicaments of the public (the
government has to take note of opposition criticism as well as the
possibility of electoral defeat), and (2) because information becomes more
easily available and shared with democratic practice.? Finally, he adds,
?Third, through allowing and encouraging public discussion, democratic
political systems can help the formation of values. For example, the
importance of gender equality or of protecting minority rights or of
taking note of inequalities in the distribution of economic fortunes or
social benefits can become more fully understood through forceful
democratic dialogue and discussion - but all this can be suppressed if
political freedoms and electoral politics are suspended.?

Now notice, first of all, the slip of tongue where Sen says that
democratic systems ?allow? public discussion. In fact, such discussion is
a matter of one?s right, not someone?s permission. More important,
however, is the view that ?through forceful democratic dialogue and
discussion? such issues as ?taking note of inequalities in the
distribution of economic fortunes or social benefits can become more fully
understood.? Just what does this come to?

Simply that democracy in Sen?s mind?which I need to stress is a very
influential mind these days?really has to do with a sort of Hobbesian war
of all factions against all factions for whatever goodies there are to be
distributed and equalized. What this does to democracy is make it into a
war zone where, in the end, some faction can win at the expense of the
others.

Mind you, the intention behind this, especially in the case of Professor
Sen?who has been deeply concerned with poverty, especially famines, all
his career?is decent enough: by making it possible for all to take part in
politics, the least well off will have a chance to obtain what they need.
The problem is, however, that in a limitless democratic polity there will
indeed be ?forceful democratic dialogue? and a lot more, which tends to
favor not the poor but those with savvy, with the expertise to get what
they want from the government.

This is what the theorists of public choice have demonstrated over many
years. Led by another Nobel Laureate, Professor James M. Buchanan of
George Mason University?who, sadly, is not as influential as Sen?they have
show that politicians and bureaucrats know all too well which side of
their bread is well buttered. That is the side that favors the wealthy and
powerful factions of society. In short, a bloated democracy is not only
unstable, unjust, but also bad for those who lack clout.

Instead of such a system, a constitutional democracy, which limits the
scope of politics so that people cannot deploy the system to rob or
conscript Peter for the sake of Paul, is far more desirable. And it is,
most of all, more just. It rests on the idea of basic rights to one?s
life, liberty and property, of which political rights are but a limited
albeit important part.

Column on Further Paradoxes of Full Equality

Further Paradoxes of Full Equality

Tibor R. Machan

The folks who would rob us of our liberty in a pinch never give up. All
you need to witness this is to read a bit?look at the magazines I check
out regularly, The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, or the
Op Ed pages of The New York Times. They keep coming up with different
versions of roughly the same warmed over arguments against the free
society, even though no such society is anywhere in view. But they know
its argumentative force, so they keep recycling every piece of
intellectual ammunition they can think of.

Most recently The Times ran a piece by a professor from London?yes, they
are importing them these days, as do many of our premier academic
institutions (just think of Peter Singer at Princeton, who hails from
Australia, or Alasdair MacIntyre at Notre Dame, who came to these shores
from the UK)?arguing that when a society doesn?t equalize people?s
circumstances, this is a very bad thing indeed. Overall health suffers,
among other things, as does nearly everything else.

Professor Michael Marmot?s example?or journalistic hook?is the Academy
Awards; he claims the winners live longer than the losers and he then
segues into his main point: It would be so fine a thing if everyone could
be made equal everywhere. This would help, of course, those who now end up
at the low end of the totem pole. Never mind that there would be no totem
pole, in this dream.

After a lot of razzmatazz?some of which is rather convoluted but aims to
show that income and related inequality is responsible for all the bad
things in America and indeed the world?Professor Marmot announces that he
will not be looking at the Awards. As he puts it his ?thoughts will be
elsewhere.? We may assume they will be devoted to worrying about why there
aren?t more public policy efforts afoot trying to equalize everything in
society.

I have a suggestion, though, for Professor Marmot?he might consider
reading two classic literary works that address his dream world head one,
George Orwell?s Animal Farm and Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison
Bergeron." What these wonderful tales teach is something our visiting
professor?visiting, that is, the pages of The New York Times?fails to
consider. This is that the attempt to equalize everything in the world
ushers in the worst of all inequalities, namely, inequality of political
power.

What would be needed to make everyone equally well/badly off? A police
state, that?s what. The late Harvard political philosopher Robert Nozick
made this point a crucial element of his classic Anarchy, State, and
Utopia (Basic Books, 1974). He postulated the aggressive public policy of
equalization, combined with the measure of liberty no one can reasonably
consider giving up, namely, people spending their left over income?after
the Draconian taxation such equalization would require?as they choose. So,
millions of them would spend a bit on seeing Kobe Bryan play basketball?or
Clint Eastwood direct a movie or Britney Spears perform on stage?which
would immediately create enormous inequalities. To remedy this, what is
needed? Nothing less than a massive police operation that removes the
unequal wealth from these favorites and redistributes it all on a daily
basis.

But this is no mere bad dream. Already progressive taxation is rampant in
America and elsewhere but, of course, the editors at The Times want more.
Yet?and here is the hypocrisy involved in all this?The Times wouldn?t
think for a moment allowing someone to weigh in against Professor Marmot
despite his clearly unequal advantage of appearing in its prominent pages,
no. Their unequal advantage in the market place of ideas isn?t going to be
given up for the sake of their very own proclaimed egalitarian treatment
of, for example, those who proselytize for ideas The Times folks do not
like. No dice on that score.

Which is simply to point out that this notion of full equality is
nonsense from the word go. It isn?t only the Academy Awards that puts the
lie to it but the editorial policies of The New York Time, a most vigilant
champion of equality except where it?s editors could actually do something
about it, namely, give a fair representation of competing political ideas.
Just think what they would do if they ever got the power to foist equality
upon us everywhere!

Column on Conflict of Interest the Other Way

Conflict of Interest the Other Way

Tibor R. Machan
A constant beef of critics of various regulatory panels is that their
members have financial ties to industry. For example, a recent piece in
The New York Times made much of the fact that the FDA panel that didn?t
demand that all anti-pain drugs be pulled off the market had 10 members
who had ?industry ties.? Written by Gardiner Harris and Alex Berenson, in
the February 25th issue of The Times, the article, ?10 Voters on Panel
Backing Pain Pills Had Industry Ties,? lamented the fact that not all the
members of the panel were completely independent of firms in the industry
they were asked to oversee. It is typical of the pro-regulation media to
keep insisting that anyone who has ever done any consulting for an
industry must be biased in favor of that industry. While there can be some
justified concern here, not unless there is evidence of bias is there
warrant for indicting these people for any malfeasance.
Of course, the FDA or any other regulatory agency is going to appoint
people to panels who know their stuff, and such people are bound to have
had some connection with the industry they know. Drug firms, for example,
need expert advice and they get such advice from university professors who
will also likely to be asked by government to oversee the regulatory
process. Does it follow necessarily that such people will blindly favor
the interest of those in the industry that has hired them in the past? Of
course not. But it is always tempting to impugn their integrity by such
association. If they have worked for the industry, they must be biased. It
doesn?t, however, follow by a long shot.
Now what is interesting is that the same media that is jumping all over
the people who have worked for various firms in a certain industry,
claiming these people are basically corrupt, does not ever consider those
in the academic world as being suspect of special interests. Yet, most
people in the academy work for government. Even the most prestigious
private universities, like Harvard or Princeton, get gobs of money from
the feds, to do research, produce papers on this or that topic of ?public
interest,? consult about public policy, etc. These folks are deeply
beholden to government. It is virtually their bread and butter?or at least
their considerable extra pocket change. Without the government
associations they would not be invited to innumerable conferences, asked
to publish in various journals, contribute to encyclopedias, write text
books, do peer reviews, sit on agency panels, and so forth.
In other words, the bulk of so called independent scholars aren?t
independent at all?they owe their soul to the company store, which is the
government of the United States of America or, in many cases, their state
governments. Yet few news organizations call these folks, with evident
links to governments, to task for their conflict of interest. Why?
This is the governmental habit that a few people have managed to write
about. Yet they have also managed to be ignored, to a large extent.
Jonathan R. T. Hughes penned his book, Governmental Habit Redux: Economic
Controls from Colonial Times to the Present (Princeton University Press,
1991), so as to call attention to this fact but, alas, grand media outlets
like The New York Times pay scant attention to their message.
The fact is that innumerable professors throughout the most prestigious
universities of this and many other countries are avid supporters of
government regulation, supervision of the private sector, regulation and
supervision, all of which require their very own professional
?assistance.? They write the scholarly studies that show the need for all
this regulation and supervision. They supply the apologetics for the
expansion of government control of the economy and all the professions,
all the high-sounding rationales about equality, for abating of poverty,
for reduction for injustice via government controls, involving the
expansion of government?s scope in our lives.
Yet where is the mainstream media pointing out this conflict of interest?
Nowhere, that?s where. One may, then, call into question all the
moralistic concern with conflict of interest when it comes to associations
between experts and the industry they are being asked to judge. After all,
government is the biggest of all industries, yet those who judge it,
nearly all of them recipients of government?s largesse, do not get their
integrity called into question by the same media that bellyaches about the
alleged corruption in the private sector.
I say, clean your own house, major media, before you start pointing
fingers.

Column on "Bogeyman" blabber

Was Communism a Bogeyman?

Tibor R. Machan

Forgive me for my memory but I remember clearly that communism wasn?t a
bogeyman, not in the sense that of an imaginary evil demon parents invoke
to scare kids into doing the right thing. Yet that is what some folks want
us to think about communism and the Soviet Union, the massive state that
promoted it. By viewing communism as a bogeyman, they can then divert
attention from its bona fide evil and focus their gaze on the far less
vicious excesses of some anti-communists, like Joe McCarthy and his pals.
This is just what critics of the late Sidney Hook tried to do and what
some defenders of the recently deceased playwright Arthur Miller?s
selective scolding of anti-communism peddle.

Look, there is no doubt that one can fight an evil in ways that are
themselves wrong. If someone insults me, I can respond in several ways and
some of these will be wrong. Even if someone attacks me physically, I can
respond badly, by, say, attacking his child or friends in turn. So, yes,
some of the ways people tried to repel communism were not admirable.

But they weren?t addressing some bogeyman either and to say so reveals a
moral blindness. It is akin to calling slavery a bogeyman with which
people tried to cope, against which they deployed various strategies, some
better than others. Or racism or other forms of injustice. But to justify
the worst ways of dealing with injustice it is quite wrong to dismiss the
injustice itself as some kind of bogeyman.

Now there is a related approach one can take to belittling the concerns
some of us have with evil. This is the post-modernist tactic of claiming
that there are multiple perspectives for viewing the world, some of which
will construe certain things as evil, but others will see them
differently. You know, ?Your freedom fighters are someone else?s
terrorists.? This is the idea of ?multiple narratives??varied ways of
telling a story about something. So, there is the ante-bellum narrative
about slavery, the white supremacists narrative, or the who cares about
black-and-white morality (pragmatic) narrative. By peddling the idea that
any narrative is as good as any other, one can then pretend that one?s own
dismissing of slavery as evil is just an equally valid narrative.

The very same technique can be deployed for discrediting those who saw
communism as a vile system of politics, or those who saw the Nazis as
racist totalitarians. Post-modernism has provided us with these
approaches to dealing with our adversaries. We do not need to argue with
anyone about the rights and wrongs?the blacks versus the whites, as some
people put the matter?of communism, slavery, Nazism, racism, and the like.
No, we can just say, well it all depends upon your point of view.

Of course, this backfires rather immediately. What about the black versus
white of dealing in black and whites? Is it all black?that is to say, is
it wrong?to invoke firm standards about what is right politically or
morally or is it all a matter of shades of gray? And how do we tell what
the proper shade is that we should focus upon, if there are no blacks and
whites?

Truth is those who denounce black vs. white thinking?those who consider
all political or ethical value judgments a matter of creating bogeymen by
which to scare children?are themselves quite wedded to certain blacks and
whites, only they don?t wish to discuss these, to defend their own
standards but merely hurl ad hominems at others to try to discredit their
version of black vs. white.

This ploy will perhaps work in the effort to secure oneself a reputation
of erudition, of being above the fray, of not fitting into a
category?liberal, conservative, libertarian, communist, fascist, and so
forth. But only for a bit.

After just a little more thought it becomes clear that such folks have
their own categories they fit quite well, namely, the category of people
who lack forthrightness and wish to win by rhetorical savvy rather than by
means of sound reasoning?obscurantists.

Communism is bad and those who saw it as such were right, even if not all
ways of dealing with it were sound, proper. Let?s admit that some ways of
organizing society are bad, very bad, and this is not something to be
obscured with post-modernist mumbo jumbo.

Column on Ownership, True and False

Ownership Society?True & False

Tibor R. Machan

President George W. Bush is about ownership like most defenders of
abortion rights are about choice, highly restrictive and selective. The
only choice these abortion rights activists prize is the choice to
terminate a pregnancy. Everything else they?I have in mind Planned
Parenthood and NOW type people?are eager for government to control,
regulate, or prohibit. So their support of choice is bogus and smacks of a
special agenda, having little to do with an individual?s right to liberty.

Mr. Bush, in turn, seems to believe in ownership of just a tiny portion of
the fruits of one?s work that everyone must hand over to the Social
Security Administration, and even there he doesn?t actually champion
ownership, plain and simple, but highly circumscribed, regulated
?ownership.? (He will not ?permit? anyone to take the money to Las Vegas,
for example. But what kind of ownership is it that the president controls
like that?)

Maybe Mr. Bush needs to have it explained just what ownership means. And I
have just the teacher for him, the famous 20th century philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Norman Malcolm, one of his students, tells the following
story about him in which ownership is spelled out very instructively:

When in very good spirits he would jest in a delightful manner. This took
the form of deliberately absurd or extravagant remarks uttered in a tone,
and with the mien, of affected seriousness. On one walk he 'gave' me each
tree that we passed, with the reservation that I was not to cut it down or
do anything to it, or prevent the previous owners from doing anything to
it: with those reservations they were henceforth mine. (Norman Malcolm,
Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Memoir [London: Van Nostrand Rinehold Co., 1070],
pp. 31-32.)

In short, when you cannot use or dispose of something as you judge fit and
as its nature allows, it isn?t yours?calling it yours is ?absurd or
extravagant.?

George W. Bush, then, isn?t talking about ownership at all. He has in
mind the sort of possession parents make possible for their kids when they
allow them to use the car or have a party at the house: they will remain
in full charge but the kids are allowed some leeway with the thing.

That is the kind of ?ownership? subjects had in feudal monarchies.
Monarchs gave them permission to use some of what they owned, maybe to
encourage them to work harder so they can then be taxed heavier.

True ownership is when one has the right to use and dispose of the owned
items as one sees fit. This is the theory of the right to private property
that John Locke, the grandfather of the American Revolution, spelled out
in his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1764). It is well summarized,
paradoxically enough?but with a misguided emphasis?by Karl Marx: ?the
right of man to property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose
of the same arbitrarily, without regard for other men, independently from
society, the right of selfishness.? (Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed.
David McLellan [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977], p. 53.) Of course,
this right is not just a right of selfishness but also a right of
generosity, charity, gift giving, and free exchange or commerce.
(Aristotle was well aware, way before Marx and Locke, that to be generous,
one needs to own something to be generous with!)

True ownership only exists when one has the unalienable right to obtain,
hold, and allocate property in any way one chooses apart from violating
the equal right of others. This is just the kind of ownership that neither
Mr. Bush nor his adversaries want to acknowledge, let alone secure legal
recognition for. The parties in the current debate don?t want ownership at
all. They are only dickering about how much of the results of their work
will government allow people to control, with all the parties calmly
accepting government as having the role of being able to grant such
permission.

This, in fact, is the very idea of government that the American
revolution had been fought to overturn, one whereby it is the sovereign
and the people are its subjects. It is pretty sad that only two and a half
centuries after that vital turning point in human history, the leaders of
the country the revolution spawned completely ignore its essence, namely,
individual sovereignty and the unalienable right to govern one?s life,
labor, and its results without the permission of the king!

Column on New Republic Style Pragmatism

Another Liberal Duplicity

Tibor R. Machan

The New Republic, that venerable Left of center publication, just came
out (dated February 28th) with its 90th Anniversary Issue. Its general
theme is ?To Liberalism! Embattled And Essential.?

By ?liberal? is meant here not classical liberalism, which made the case
for limited government, individual rights and the free market. No, instead
we get the corrupted sense of ?liberalism? that means making government
the caretaker of society, empowering it to regiment us about, redistribute
the wealth people create and otherwise subvert nearly all of the
principles of the original liberalism.

There is too much in this issue to cover in a column but one piece in
particular is worth discussing. Senior Editor Jonathan Chait penned it and
it?s called ?Fact Finders.? It addresses the difference between so called
conservatives and modern liberals, especially as regards the issue of
which side is wiser about the nature of government.

Basically Chait is defending a pragmatic liberalism, which is an
unprincipled approach to governing a country, one that sees no limit?for
example, principles of individual rights to, say, private property?to what
the state may do to set things right. His prime example is that among
conservatives who support Social Security reform some, the libertarians,
actually want the system abolished, even if this has to happen slowly. And
he correctly observes that the reasoning behind this hasn't much to do
with the particular superior results of such reform (vis-à-vis the
national economy, individual retirement benefits, or GNP). It has to do
with the general idea that a free society?one without a bloated public
sector-that is, one with a government of strictly limited scope?is
superior overall to one wherein government meddles in everything.

The fault Chait finds with this isn?t so much that it?s wrongheaded but
that it is, as he dubs it, an a priori rather than pragmatic approach to
public policy matters. He is a follower of Jeremy Bentham, who argued that
?there is no right which, when the abolition of it is advantageous to
society, should not be abolished,? as if ?advantageous to society? where a
piece of cake to spell out.

Chait, sadly, caricatures the libertarian?s ?a priori? approach, making
it seem like a dumb-stubborn, mindless embrace of the free society. He
quotes Milton Friedman, quite out of context, saying that ?freedom in
economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood,
so economic freedom is an end in itself,? as if this meant ?Economic
freedom, come hell or high water.? In fact, Friedman and most libertarians
champion principles of freedom because history shows them that when upheld
in a society, they are, in the main, better for purposes of reaching
desirable goals than are the methods involving coercion.

Principles of political economy, not unlike principles in engineering and
medicine, are what one comes to learn to be general guidelines of action
based on extensive study, on empirical and/or thought experimentation, and
so forth, not any kind of blind commitments. But let that go for a moment.
Pragmatists don?t realize that pragmatism itself is a general approach and
relies on its soundness based on what we have learned from similar studies.

What is interesting in Chait's essay is that no mention is made of how
most modern liberals are themselves "a priori" supporters of various civil
libertarian ideas, such as freedom of speech, due process in the criminal
law, fairness in the administration of the law, etc. Here it is
conservatives who have been more pragmatic?if prior restraint works, let's
use it; if giving up habeas corpus for a while achieves greater security,
go for it; if censorship achieves some good, it's fine, etc. Modern
liberals, however, have, in the main, opposed this?that is, after all,
what the ACLU is all about.

I wonder why Chait fails to discuss this internal conflict within modern
liberalism and, indeed, within conservatism?why is pragmatism so good when
it comes to some policies but should be avoided when it comes to others?
At least libertarians tend to have a coherent approach?they see liberty as
a good idea across the board, whatever projects people embark upon. They
trust the lessons they discern from history and the study of human nature,
namely, that free men and women will deal with problems better than those
who are regimented about by others.

Chait hasn?t, nor have others in The New Republic, managed to challenge
this truly principled (?a priori?) approach in the slightest, and for good
reason?it is, after all, the stance of all of the practical sciences in
which general principles are relied upon to guide future actions, leaving
changes to be made only once the principles have been shown to require
reformulation.

Column on Science and Sense (sans Typo)

Science and Sense

Tibor R. Machan

These days sciences multiply like rabbits. And in each broad field there
are sub-fields by the dozens, even hundreds. It?s difficult to keep up
with them, even if you, like I, subscribe to a few magazines that report
the latest news from most of the disciplines. (I read Science News and
used to read The Sciences until recently it was discontinued.)~~I ran
across a report from England about the new scientific study of happiness
and that reminded me of a professor of psychology, David Lykken of the
University of Minnesota, who is working on how happiness ?really works.?
And then there is a scholarly publication, The International Journal of
Happiness Studies. Some of these folks are assuring us that being happy
doesn?t make you, well, very happy after all. This is what Professor Lord
Layard is telling us?what makes us happy, in fact, is to see that others
aren?t too much happier than we are. So another science is in the offing!

But I am suspicious about whether these fields really can claim to be
sciences, if by ?science? one means a rigorous, systematic study of some
aspect of reality, one that can be replicated and tested by any reasonable
person. And my suspicion was reinforced recently as I was in US World &
News, in the Health & Medicine department, a piece titled ?Mysteries of
the Mind.?

Here is the sentence that gave me pause, a quote from University of
Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan: "Most of what we do every minute of
every day is unconscious?.Life would be chaos if everything were on the
forefront of our consciousness." This is supposed to be a conclusion drawn
from a scientific study.

But just consider the claim for a moment. It is one that everyone can
double check since it is supposed to be true of us all and pertains to
something we can all do easily enough, check what goes on with our minds
and how it relates to what we do. Is it really true that ?most of what we
do every minute of every day is unconscious?? I made a survey of my own
doings and here is what I did just a few minutes ago. I got out of my car
and locked it up after getting out the mail from the passenger seat. I
walked up the front steps and unlocked my door, checked my answering
machine, put the mail on the dining room table, opened some of it and
threw the envelops from them into the trash. Then I came to my computer
and checked my email, answered a few posts, after which I wrote a letter
to someone and addressed an envelop to the person, made some copies of
some bills and stuffed it into the envelop with the letter, sealed it, put
a stamp and return address sticker on it and put it to take to the Post
Office next time I drive by it. Then I remembered reading the piece from
US World & News Report when I was on tread mill at the gym and looked it
up on the magazine?s web site and began writing this piece.

I think I am being fair and accurate at~recounting my doings within
several of the minutes during which most of what I am supposed to be doing
is being done unconsciously. But none of what I did was done
unconsciously, quite the opposite. And I even remember it all. So where
the beef here? Perhaps the good professor means by ?doing? something
different from what the word means in ordinary language. Or maybe he means
not ?unconscious? but ?unselfconscious.?

My breathing, of course, is going on unconsciously, as is the circulation
of my blood. Even some of the scratching I do when my head or ear itches
might accurately be considered a kind of unconscious doing, although if I
pay attention I can make note of it, so it can easily be called to
consciousness. I look around with my eyes a lot, from the keyboard to the
monitor of the computer, sometimes at the mountains outside my window
(which I can see now that the rains have subsided).~~I am not fully aware
of all these doings?or rather, I do not monitor myself and make note of
them, but they aren?t unconscious either. They are done unselfconsciously,
though, since I do not think about doing them.

Consider that when you drive much of what you do you pay scant attention
to, yet if you were to run into someone, you would be held responsible.
But why, if most of the stuff you do is done unconsciously? No one can be
held responsible for unconscious doings?they are not really doings,
actions or conduct at all but mere happenings.

OK, point made. This statement by a scientist just doesn?t pass muster,
however well educated the bloke may be. At least he spoke carelessly.
Perhaps he was even misquoted, but that would be a serious journalistic
faux pax, not to be expected from US World & News Report. Assuming then
that the report is good and neuroscientist Paul Whelan said what I read,
how come it is so far off?

I don?t know. Maybe he wanted to get quoted with something
outlandish?not all scientists are above being tempted by trying to get
publicity through overstatement?it can bring grants and issue in
promotions. But most of them would not, I assume, sacrifice their
integrity for the sake of this. So go figure.

In any case, it is best to be cautious, so whenever one can check out
for oneself whether a claim issued by a specialist like this fellow Whelan
is true, it pays, I think to do the test for oneself. In this case
Professor Whelan flunked.

Essay on Science & Sense

Science and Sense

Tibor R. Machan

These days sciences multiply like rabbits. And in each broad field there
are sub-fields by the dozens, even hundreds. It?s difficult to keep up
with them, even if you, like I, subscribe to a few magazines that report
the latest news from most of the disciplines. (I read Science News and
used to read The Sciences until recently it was discontinued.) I ran
across a report from England about the new scientific study of happiness
and that reminded me of a professor of psychology, David Lykken of the
University of Minnesota, who is working on how happiness ?really works.?
And then there is a scholarly publication, The International Journal of
Happiness Studies. Some of these folks are assuring us that being happy
doesn?t make you, well, very happy after all. This is what Professor Lord
Layard is telling us?what makes us happy, in fact, is to see that others
aren?t too much happier than we are. So another science is in the offing!

But I am suspicious about whether these fields really can claim to be
sciences, if by ?science? one means a rigorous, systematic study of some
aspect of reality, one that can be replicated and tested by any reasonable
person. And my suspicion was reinforced recently as I was in US World &
News, in the Health & Medicine department, a piece titled ?Mysteries of
the Mind.?

Here is the sentence that gave me pause, a quote from University of
Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan: "Most of what we do every minute of
every day is unconscious?.Life would be chaos if everything were on the
forefront of our consciousness." This is supposed to be a conclusion drawn
from a scientific study.

But just consider the claim for a moment. It is one that everyone can
double check since it is supposed to be true of us all and pertains to
something we can all do easily enough, check what goes on with our minds
and how it relates to what we do. Is it really true that ?most of what we
do every minute of every day is unconscious?? I made a survey of my own
doings and here is what I did just a few minutes ago. I got out of car and
locked it up after getting out the mail from the passenger seat. I walked
up the front steps and unlocked my door, checked my answering machine, put
the mail on the dining room table, opened some of it and threw the
envelops from them into the trash. Then I came to my computer and checked
my email, answered a few posts, after which I wrote a letter to someone
and addressed an envelop to the person, made some copies of some bills and
stuffed it into the envelop with the letter, sealed it, put a stamp and
return address sticker on it and put it to take to the Post Office next
time I drive by it. Then I remembered reading the piece from US World &
News Report when I was on tread mill at the gym and looked it up on the
magazine?s web site and began writing this piece.

I think I am being fair and accurate it recounting my doings within
several of the minutes during which most of what I am supposed to be doing
is being done unconsciously. But none of what I did was done
unconsciously, quite the opposite. And I even remember it all. So where
the beef here? Perhaps the good professor means by ?doing? something
different from what the word means in ordinary language. Or maybe he means
not ?unconscious? but ?unselfconscious.?

My breathing, of course, is going on unconsciously, as is the circulation
of my blood. Even some of the scratching I do when my head or ear itches
might accurately be considered a kind of unconscious doing, although if I
pay attention I can make note of it, so it can easily be called to
consciousness. I look around with my eyes a lot, from the keyboard to the
monitor of the computer, sometimes at the mountains outside my window
(which I can see now that the rains have subsided). I am not fully aware
of all these doings?or rather, I do not monitor myself and make note of
them, but they aren?t unconscious either. They are done unselfconsciously,
though, since I do not think about doing them.

Consider that when you drive much of what you do you pay scant attention
to, yet if you were to run into someone, you would be held responsible.
But why, if most of the stuff you do is done unconsciously? No one can be
held responsible for unconscious doings?they are not really doings,
actions or conduct at all but mere happenings.

OK, point made. This statement by a scientist just doesn?t pass muster,
however well educated the bloke may be. At least he spoke carelessly.
Perhaps he was even misquoted, but that would be a serious journalistic
faux pax, not to be expected from US World & News Report. Assuming then
that the report is good and neuroscientist Paul Whelan said what I read,
how come it is so far off?

I don?t know. Maybe he wanted to get quoted with something outlandish?not
all scientists are above being tempted by trying to get publicity through
overstatement?it can bring grants and issue in promotions. But most of
them would not, I assume, sacrifice their integrity for the sake of this.
So go figure.

In any case, it is best to be cautious, so whenever one can check out for
oneself whether a claim issued by a specialist like this fellow Whelan is
true, it pays, I think to do the test for oneself. In this case Professor
Whelan flunked.

-----------
Machan is R. C. Hoiles Professor of business ethics at Chapman University,
Orange, CA. He is research fellow at the Hoover Institution and advises
Freedom Communications, Inc., on libertarian issues.

Column on Ordinary Language & Truth

Ordinary Language & Big Truths

Tibor R. Machan

My graduate training occurred during the last years of the reign of
ordinary language philosophy. This was a school in the discipline that
held that whatever philosophical truths could be learned, they were
contained in the ways people spoke about everyday things. The idea was
that such talk had to be pretty much on the mark, otherwise we would go
astray a lot and we do not, actually, not in everyday matters. So if we
just pay close attention to how people talk about such things, follow the
implications, we could learn a good deal about basic things too.

I wasn?t fully convinced of the promise of this way of doing philosophy
but it did have some merit. I ran across an example of it recently that is
actually quite revealing.

When someone asks, ?How will I manage this?? and gets the answer, ?You
will manage somehow,? we see something rather profound going on: One
person is expressing confidence in another?s ingenuity, without having a
clue just exactly how that ingenuity will show itself. There is also the
suggestion in this exchange that people do manage to figure out how to
handle problems without having to be told what exactly they need to do.

I actually think this says a lot about why a free society makes
sense?namely, because human beings are capable of figuring out how to
solve problems and do not need the Nanny State to take care of them. Such
a big idea is hidden right there in how people understand one another in
life.

There is another pointed way of talking that packs a bit of philosophical
insight. When people mess up, often you will hear them say, ?Damn it, I
didn?t think.? Indeed. That seems to suggest that the source of much
mismanagement in life is the fact that people do not think about things,
they don?t pay attention enough. And they seem to know that it is their
fault when they don?t, otherwise you wouldn?t witness them slapping the
sides of the heads when they say this thing about not having thought about
something.

Yes, ?I wasn?t thinking? is often said with an attitude of
self-recrimination because it is evident that here is something we are all
free to but often fail to do, namely, think. It is mostly what goes wrong
in my class rooms, for example?my students just do not put their minds to
full use. Instead they are drifting, day dreaming or simply lull about
mentally, in a daze. And they could snap out of it if they just made that
determination. All my classroom razzmatazz, all my shenanigans will not do
this for them.

There are many other things we can learn from paying attention to how
people reflect out loud. I focus on the above instances because I find it
important to lend full credence to the fact that people can do things of
their own, that they aren?t puppets being moved by some puppet master?or
the stars or their genes or DNA and such. It is the fashionable official
doctrine of our time, advanced by lots of intellectuals, scientists,
pundits and such that what people do is always something they had to do.
There is no free will, in other words. Crimes are not the result of
culpable misconduct but of forces that compel us to act badly. We are in
the grips of biological or cultural evolution, so that none of us is free
to think for ourselves and thus need take no responsibility for doing
either well or badly at the task of making sense of the world.

This is an especially odd thing for professional intellectuals to
believe. After all, if all that they think and say just had to be thought
and said by them, why should we care? What credibility does such
parrot-like behavior carry? If what you say you had to say, then when
someone who disagrees says the opposite, the same applies, and the same
thing goes for those who judge all this to be right or wrong, ad
infinitum. No one?s judgment can then be relied upon to be independent,
unimpeded, unprejudiced. Then why pay attention? The whole thing is absurd.

Anyway, sometimes it pays to listen to how folks talk in their most
natural mode, when they aren?t driving home some big agenda but deal with
the day to day issues they face. If their talk on such occasions carries
some implications, these may be worth taking into serious consideration as
we try to make sense of the big picture.