Column on Property, Voting, and Taxation

[Please always proof columns before use.]

Property, Voting, and Taxation

Tibor R. Machan

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

OK, but may be this is obsolete.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Column on Judge John G. Roberts, Jr.

[Always proof before publishing!]

Judge Roberts Conforms

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Column on "taking responsibility"

The Fraud of ?Taking Responsibility?

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Tibor Machan about his Columns

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

Tibor R. Machan

Column on "We have Decided"

So ?We? Have Decided

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Column on the "success" of Nannyism

When a Success is a Failure

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Column on Corrupt "Liberty"

Peddling the Corruption of Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

Ever since the idea of individual liberty has achieved some measure of
credibility over the world, those who would be unseated by its limited
triumph had to find some way to discredit it or trump it somehow. One way
was to re-christen servitude, to make it appear like an even more
important kind of liberty than what individual liberty, properly
understood, amounts to.

When a human being is free in the most important, political sense, he or
she is sovereign. This means he or she governs his or her own life?others
must refrain from intruding on this life, plain and simple. That life may
be fortunate or not, rich or not, beautiful or not, and many other things
or not, but what matters is that that life is no one else?s to mess with.
One gets to run it, no one else does.

Now this is a very uncomfortable idea for all those folks who see all
kinds of benefits from running other people?s lives. But they cannot
champion this now in so many words, what with individual liberty having
gained some solid standing, so the only way to remedy matters for them is
to claim that their oppression brings even greater freedom to people than
the respect and protection of individual liberty.

So, we have the kind of ?freedoms? propounded by Franklin D. Roosevelt,
the freedoms now dubbed ?positive.? These freedoms do not fend off those
who would use you, interfere with you, invade your life, rob, kill, or
assault you but promise, to the contrary, to take good care of you without
your having to do much, by invading others, by violating their individual
liberties. These are the entitlement "rights" offered up by proponents of
the welfare state, all those who claim that government is best when it is
"generous," when it becomes the Nanny State?meaning, when it enslaves
Peter to serve Paul and vice versa.

I am not sure about what exactly motivates this ruse?some of it is surely
the thirst for power. When you want to enslave people, promise them a
special kind of liberty. Castro managed to win over millions of Cubans
this way, as did other Marxists in Eastern Europe and in Latin America, as
do politicians nearly everywhere.

Maybe a few folks actually honestly believed that this kind of political
alternative is best for us all, but it is difficult to imagine what would
persuade them of such a fraudulent notion. Giving people this positive
freedom must always involve depriving other people of their individual
liberty, their ?negative? freedom, which is to say, their sovereignty and
their freedom from having others interfere with their lives, from
depriving them of their resources and labor and regulating them to the
hilt.

Now, there is little that can be done about this in the short run?when
people put their minds to such deceptions, the only ultimate defense is
clear thinking and vigilance, which is unfortunately always in short
supply and needs to be slowly cultivated. Too many people are tempted by
the promise of effortless living, of getting all their problems solved at
the point of a gun turned on others who will be coerced to come up with
the solutions. This is such an addictive notion to those who are lazy, who
feel left out, or who believe that they are entitled to everything all
those who are better off already have going for them, so the power-hungry
have a good marketing ploy here. Then there is envy, too, and all the
bogus political ideologies promoted by those who just must step in to
govern the world as they see fit?as I say, I am not sure what kind of
mental acrobatics manages to allow people to live with themselves in peace
who perpetrate such fraud.

Despite the fact that there is little one can do at once in response,
other than to keep spelling out just what a ruse it all is, perhaps now
and then institutional barriers can also be built. Yet, since they too
depend upon ideas, ideas that are so easily corrupted, the only real
answer is the old one about eternal vigilance. I say, it?s worth it, so
let?s go for it.

Column on Arnold v. Gay Marriages

The Gay Marriage Fiasco In California

Tibor R. Machan

I voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger in that special election because I
found the 11th hour attack on him in The Los Angeles Times disgusting and
his political ideas were closer to mine than those of Gray Davis. Now I am
not sure I did the right thing.

OK, I find it annoying that matters like whether gays may marry ever
become part of the public agenda. Frankly, the issue should be totally
privatized?I should have no say in whether someone else gets together with
another person of whatever gender and unites in marriage, barring some
problem for public health. That is a matter of whatever creed they profess
and the practices and rituals of which they choose to follow. I may even
disagree, rather emphatically, with what they call this union. But it
simply isn?t my business and to have ?the public? butt in is very
disturbing. Do they get to butt in on which church other people attend? On
what sports they choose to follow or take part in? And whose art they
admire and support? On whether they believe in Darwin or creationism?
These simply aren?t matters for public policy and neither should it be
whether gay people marry.

Since there is no justification for ?the public? butting in here, the
vote cast in California about gay marriages is entirely beside the
point?as if they had voted on creationism versus Darwinian evolution or on
whether to go to bed at 9 PM or 2 AM. None of their business what I
believe or do, not if it violates no one?s rights. And gays marrying
doesn?t violate anyone?s rights.

So when Governor Schwarzenegger announced that he is going to stand up
for ?the people? of California by vetoing the act making gay marriage
legal, I felt betrayed. I thought this man had some appreciation for human
freedom?after all, he was once closely associated with Professor Milton
Friedman, the leader of the Chicago School of free market economics and a
champion of individual rights. But no. Arnie appears to be playing
politics with this issue, just as he seems to be gravitating toward
playing politics with a number of others these days. I would have hoped he
would simply allow the policy of laissez-faire to go forward, however, it
came about. And that is simply not to bother about gay marriages one way
or another. They aren?t something for others to decide but only for those
who want to enter into the union, even if by some accounts the idea of gay
marriage may be off (although I see no good reason to think it is).

But then politicians have managed to dismay me for decades?the last bona
fide politician I thought may have had an ounce of good sense was Barry
Goldwater but even he betrayed his own principles when it came to bringing
home the bacon for ?the people? of Arizona.

Incidentally, all this stuff about ?the people? just rings so wrong in
the context of the American political tradition. I even squirm recalling
?We the people,? since in fact the Founders didn?t really speak for all
the people, only those who didn?t believe in slavery and did, in fact,
embrace the idea of universal individual rights. But I guess sometimes one
must put a point in ways not literally correct. Yet this ?the people?
stuff is really very risky and tends to give the impression that it
confers justified power on some people over others, so one must be very
careful when using the phrase.

In any case, Governor Schwarzenegger had a chance here to affirm his
libertarian leanings, if he actually ever had any, but missed out on it.
These days I do not believe dickering about legal technicalities is
justified?however some measure of liberty manages to get on the official
books is OK by me since the entire process by now is such a mess, what
with the US Supreme Court having abandoned all semblance of reliance on
principle, letting lower courts and various political bodies lord it over
all kinds of individuals whose rights matter nothing to the justices.
(This goes for Scalia, too, by the way, who professors to be a
?textualist? but then promptly ignores the text of the Ninth Amendment
instead of grappling with it as his oath of office obliges him to do.)

So, Arnie, thanks for nothing. Next time you will not get my vote.

Column on Ideas Having Consequences

Ideas Do Have Consequences

Tibor R. Machan

Many moons ago Richard Weaver wrote the book, Ideas Have Consequences,
but some very prominent economists, one with a Nobel Prize to his credits,
disputed this notion (with, paradoxically, their own contrary ideas that
they hoped would also have some consequences).

They argued that it is not ideas but desires alone that produce actions
and policies. The point wasn?t always address against Weaver but someone
with greater star status, namely, John Maynard Keynes, the famous British
political economists who had said that it was usually the ideas of some
departed thinkers that lead to public policies.

To indicate just how wrong the skeptics were, let me report on how the
listing of a firm, Huntingdon Life Sciences, the medical research company,
announced the other day that it had delayed its listing on the New York
Stock Exchange in light of the probability of protests from animal rights
activists. (See the story in The Financial Times, 09/08/05.) This same
company had been driven out of the UK for the same reasons. Furthermore,
as The Financial Times reported, ?a farm that bred guinea pigs used in
medical research, was subjected to a long campaign involving vandalism,
firebombings and death threats. It recently announced it would close.?

I have spent a few good years dealing with the question of whether
animals have rights and concluded that the idea was a big mistake?my book
Putting Humans First (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) was my latest salvo but
I began writing on this in 1991, for the journal Public Affairs Quarterly.

Animal rights defenders, who do not always support the violence some of
the activists perpetrate, tend to believe either that animals have the
same rights humans do?to life, liberty, pursuit their happiness, etc.?or
that they deserve to be liberated because their satisfaction should count
as a goal for public policy just as is the satisfaction of human beings.
The former argue mainly on the basis that at least the higher animals have
minds like ours, while the latter believe animals of all kinds have
interests and these need to be promoted as ours are. (The former group is
led by philosopher Tom Regan from North Carolina State University, while
the latter by Peter Singer of Princeton University. Both are very well
published and widely hailed academics, although the activists, many
motivated more by sentiment than by reasons, may not even pay a lot of
attention to their arguments.)

If animals did have rights like we do, well then not respecting and
giving protection to these rights would be a scandal. That?s just how the
denial of women?s rights or the rights of members of various minority
human groups is properly understood. Just as right to lifers in the
abortion debate believe fetuses have human rights and some of them are
then motivated to firebomb abortion clinics, animal rights activists are
also motivated to violence because they are convinced that the
animals?especially great apes or others with fairly complex
mentalities?ought never to be used against their will.

But if all of this is wrong, the results of the thinking and activism can
be drastic?major medical research projects may be banned and patients
across the globe may go without medication and treatment. The question is
vital for all concerned.

In my view animals have no rights, couldn?t really, since rights are
based on the general human capacity for moral agency?for being able to
choose between right and wrong conduct. Even animal rights champions admit
that this is a unique human capacity, since they never preach to animals
about how they ought to treat other animals or humans, realizing this
would be pointless. Respect and protection of their rights secure for
human beings in their communities the condition for moral agency?their
freedom and independence. That?s what rights-based legal systems have been
all about since the writing of the Declaration of Independence, based on
the work of many thinkers throughout history (mainly John Locke).

Oddly, extremely few people have chimed in on this debate, publicly, on
the side of human beings and their rights to use the world around them to
improve their own lot, first and foremost. That wouldn?t imply at all that
animals should be treated badly, only that people are more important,
which they are even by the logic of the animal rights/liberation champions.

This brings to mind that famous saying by Edmund Burke??All that is
necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.? And it is
evil, certainly, to allow a violent and wrongheaded group of people to
bring about private and public policies that promote the banning of vital
medical and other scientific work in support of human well being.

Column on Alan Greenspan's open secret

Alan Greenspan?s Open Secret

Tibor R. Machan

When some time back one of the Archbishops of Canterbury?I can?t remember
which one it was?reportedly told the world of his doubts about God, it was
big news and something of a scandal. Certainly unbelievers and heathens
everywhere welcomed it and the faithful in the UK had their good measure
of trepidation. Understandably so. Just imagine the Pope professing
something like this?it would certainly make the headlines, maybe even
bring down the Vatican.

In 1997 Alan Greenspan, the Chair of America?s Federal Reserve (or
?central?) bank gave a talk at the Association for Private Enterprise
Education, which was held in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington,
D.C. In this talk, titled ?The Evolution of Banking in a Market Economy,?
Published in Volume XII (1997), pp. 195-203, of the Journal of Private
Enterprise, Dr. Greenspan pretty much did something akin to what the
Archbishop reportedly had done, namely, announced his skepticism of
central banking. He made clear, after giving a rather detailed account of
the organization he had been appointed to 10 years ago and chaired for
nine of it, that ?The federal safety net for banks clearly has diminished
the effectiveness of private market regulation and created perverse
incentives in the banking system.?

What did he have in mind when he made this observation? ?To cite the most
obvious and painful example, without federal deposit insurance, private
markets presumably would never have permitted thrift institutions to
purchase the portfolios that brought down the industry insurance fund and
left future generations of taxpayers responsible for huge losses.? In
short, when the feds lower risks, they encourage people to take them at
the expense of other people and this certainly proved to be the case
during the crises that brought the thrift industry to its knees. Greenspan
admitted that ?the safety net undoubtedly still affects decisions by
creditors of depository institutions in ways that weaken the effectiveness
of private market regulations and leave us all vulnerable to any future
failures of government regulation.?

But Greenspan went even further than raising these skeptical points. ?I
should like to emphasize that the rapidly changing technology that is
rendering much government bank regulation irrelevant also bids fair to
undercut regulatory efforts in a much wider segment of our society.? On
and on he went, raising doubts about the very organization that he has
chaired and where he has gained so many accolades?as well as criticisms
during several political administrations. (The man, after all, was
appointed in the Ford Administration and is still heading up the Fed!) His
rather comprehensive history of central banking didn?t paint this darling
institution of the establishment in the favorable light in which so many
hold it. Nor did he blame the Great Depression on the free market, which
is one way the Fed has gained its support, namely, through a distortion of
the history of American banking. Even without his own explicit opinions,
Greenspan?s recounting of the monetary history of the US and the role of
central banking in it showed that the institution of central banking is
very far from the safety net so many believe it to be.

Free market champions have, of course, had their complaints with
Greenspan, most of them expressing perplexity?some virulent
hostility?given his early unapologetic support of the gold standard and
total laissez faire, combined with his subsequent lack of hesitation in
heading up a government agency that is completely anathema to the free
market theory of free money. The argument Greenspan?s defenders have
advanced has been, mainly, that if you cannot avoid a dictator at the Fed,
it is better to have one in power who admits to his own lack of
qualifications to do much, say, about the monetary system, and is trying,
in the main, to urge decisions at that body that he believes lead to
results the free market itself would have produced. (I actually remember
Greenspan saying something along these lines in a long interview he gave
to Edwin Newman of NBC-TV News on a public affairs program many moons ago.)

What is most interesting to me, though, is how silent the Washington
press corps has been on Greenspan?s views of central banking. Maybe they
all like the Fed so much, they do not want to broadcast the fact that the
Pope himself doubts whether the church is even needed or doing any good at
all.

Column on Public Onwership and Lack of Care

The Myth of Public Ownership

Tibor R. Machan

Recently I have been struck by how many smart people advocate that
society and its realm belongs to us all, that we or the government owns it
all. Important books, such as Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy?s The Myth of
Ownership (Oxford UP, 2002), propound this view, while rejecting the
principle of private property rights according to which only individuals
or their voluntary associations can come to be owners.

The doctrine of public ownership had its pedigree in the history of
monarchies, although looked at up closely monarchies actually endorsed a
perverse idea of private property?everything was owned by the king and his
family, not in fact by the public. It is when monarchies came into
disrepute?since the claim that a king had the authority to own and rule
simply couldn?t be justified?that the idea came up that ownership of
oneself and property is something only individuals can enjoy. John Locke
showed that it is you and I an every other individual who owns his or her
?person and estate.? The only ownership by ?the public? would involve
government having been provided with what it needs to do its job, such a
court houses, military bases or police stations. And this public ownership
came from ?the consent of the governed.? It wasn?t the natural kind,
whereby individuals acquire stuff from nature that no one owns.

Yet some clung to the old monarchist idea and treated ownership
collectively, claiming that instead of the monarch, everyone owns society
and its realm. And there have been and continue to be many injustices that
have been perpetrated with the aid of this phony idea of public
ownership?mostly that some few people in a society get to use and dispose
of things, with the ruse that they stand in for ?the public.? But another
important injustice the idea promotes is a vast war of all against all,
with everyone?and every special group?fighting to get hold of some of what
the public supposedly owns.

We see this all around us as people and their various organizations and
associations vie for ?public support,? out of the national, state, county
or municipal treasury they all consider ?ours.? Once the government takes
private property with the excuse that it really isn?t private property at
all?that?s just a myth, after all?everyone then comes to hold the utterly
confusing notion that the loot so taken belongs to us all, whatever that
means.

A very good example of the disastrous results of such confusion occurs in
the area of environmental policy. Everyone is supposed to own the
environment. It is, then, held that government is supposed to care of it
and preserve it for members of future generations. Yet, no individual
person owns any of it, according to this ?myth of ownership? doctrine, so,
of course, no one and no group of private individuals has a stake in
caring for it. As the ancient Green philosopher Aristotle already warned,
this creates the tragedy of the commons, a state most recently identified
by the late professor of evolutionary biology at UCSB, Garrett Hardin, in
his seminal piece ?The Tragedy of the Commons? (Science, December 1963):

For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care
bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of
the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an
individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined
to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill?.(Politics,
1262a30-37)

One reason John Locke and others identified ownership as a principle of
private property rights is that such rights are natural, meaning, they
accord with human nature and the nature of human community life. Public
ownership, in contrast, is artificial, a make belief?indeed, it is public
ownership that is a myth, contrary to what the likes of Nagel and Murphy
champion and, sadly, so many others unthinkingly accept and try futilely
to implement in practice with mostly devastating results.

Private property rights do not guarantee responsible use of resources but
clearly encourage it a lot more than does public ownership?as recent
history has demonstrated all too clearly. It is no mystery, then, that the
publicly owned and maintained facility that was supposed to protect New
Orleans against the see ?ha[d] the least care bestowed upon it.?

---------------------
Machan, the R. C. Hoiles Professor of Business Ethics at the Argyros
School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, Orange, CA, edited The
Commons: Its Tragedy and Other Follies (Hoover Institution Press, 2000).

Column on Privacy v.Anti-Individualism

Another Modern Liberal Confusion

Tibor R. Machan

It has long been a central criticism of classical liberal, liberal social
philosophy that it is too individualistic. Critics have coined the term
?atomism? for their complaint?philosophers such as Charles Taylor,
sociologists such as Amitai Etzioni, and others have followed in the
footsteps of the 19th century German political economist, Karl Marx, by
claiming that the classical liberal, libertarian outlook mistakenly
construes human beings as essentially individuals. These radicals have
held that our individuality is central to what we are. Marx?s famous
charge against capitalism, that it is alienating people in all kinds of
ways, arise from lamenting this idea.

The gist of the point is that classical liberals or libertarians
understand people to be self-directed, self-motivated to enhance and
develop their own lives by taking charge of it and not by depending
primarily, at least in adulthood, on others, on society, and on various
groups. As Marx put the idea, ?The human essence is the true collectivity
of man,? arguing that people really are parts of a larger whole?society,
humanity, family, you name it.

Yet, it is interesting that one of the major beefs of those, mainly on
the Left today, who have sympathy with this outlook and, accordingly,
criticize individualism, is that the US Supreme Court does not recognize
privacy as a fundamental individual right. Be it in connection with the
abortion debate, homosexuality, or various civil liberties issues, the
critics of the conservative wing of the court?who are sympathetic with the
political Left?constantly stress the importance of the right to privacy.

Now if there is anything in the American political tradition that
encourages individual independence, the right to privacy?founded, in fact,
on that famous capitalist institution, the right to private property?is
certainly at the top of the list. If one is free to withdraw to one?s own
sphere?free to associate only with those one chooses as friends and keep
to oneself and be private rather than open himself or herself to various
groups and be public?that certainly would tend to make atomism a
possibility. (Classical liberals and libertarians, however, maintain that
this charge of atomism is bogus?the only thing they oppose is forced
membership in groups, not a great variety of voluntary associations among
individuals.)

This current championing of the right to privacy by the Left is by all
appearances quite disingenuous. It smells much like the Left's earlier
championing of freedom of speech, which in time metamorphosed into
championing political correctness, the very opposite of freedom of speech.
These principles often paraded about by the likes of the ACLU and other
Left or near-Left political groups tend, in the main, to amount to
temporary tools for advancing nothing but Left Wing power throughout the
country. How could all these socialists or near-socialists truly endorse
the right to privacy when, in fact, their social and political philosophy
does not even recognize people as individuals with a private life, let
alone a private dominion? It is as close to a ruse as anything can get in
the realm of politics.

Sadly, these paradoxes are not often pointed out in mainstream political
discussions, in part because both sides that dominate them?modern liberals
and social conservatives?are hostile to any type of bona fide
individualism. Indeed, socialists and conservatives are both against it.
Just revisit the quote from Marx and then consider the words of the most
famous conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, who said, most forthrightly,
that ?[E]ach man's private capital of intelligence is petty; it is only
when a man draws upon the bank and capital of the ages, the wisdom of our
ancestors, that he can act wisely? and that ?We are afraid to put men to
live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect
that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do
better to avail themselves of the general bank of nations and of ages.?

Of course, the radicalism of individualism is undeniable but is it true?
Yes, it is?and everyone can experience its truth by observing himself or
herself navigating the world: Although we all draw on what we learn from
others, we ourselves are the ones who put what we have learned together
and make it work for us (or fail to do so).

Column on Misusing Liberty (Check if it's a duplicate)

What if people used liberty badly?

Tibor R. Machan

If people are free to choose how to live, how to conduct themselves and
what goals to pursue, they will do commendable as well as contemptible
things. That is what liberty means--there is no justification for
regimenting any adult's life, none. The right to liberty, an unalienable
right to quote the American founders, can be used well or badly.

Why would anyone endorse this? It's risky, of course, since folks often
choose badly. But if they aren't going to choose for themselves, then
others will choose for them and, of course, others, too, can choose well
or badly. And when others don't know about someone they order about, they
will most often judge badly. Even more importantly, the most central fact
about people will be suppressed, namely, their decisive role in living
their own lives. This is crucial about human beings--self-responsibility.
Without it we do not live genuine human lives at all but the ?lives? of
circus or barnyard animals, even puppets.

For those who wish to bring in government to save us from these risks it
needs to be pointed out that there is absolutely no reason to think that
those in governments will do better than those out of government at
managing lives. Indeed, power corrupts, so those who attempt to take over
the lives of others in the hope of making these others live right will
quickly forget that goal and manage others for perverse purposes. They
will rule others to seek their own goals, to gain and keep power to
themselves. The initial helpful intentions will quickly give way to
incompetent bungling and, in time, to nothing more noble than hanging on
to power over others. This is because rulers rarely know enough about
what is best for those they rule and instead of admitting this, they will
keep trying to get it right and fail at it worse and worse.

Defenders of liberty know that free men and women will often go astray.
But that is no justification for trying to take away anyone's liberty, not
unless they try to invade the lives of others who should also be free.
Just think, if you and I and neighbor Jones isn't up to doing reasonably
well at living our lives, why would neighbor Smith be good, on the whole,
at ordering us about successfully? Neighbor Smith isn't some God but yet
another bloke, a bureaucrat or politician, who is no better equipped to do
things right than you and I are.

Government is, in short, not qualified to guide us to do what's right, as
a general rule, so it should stick to its business of keeping the peace.
The police are best employed as peace officers and not as members of the
vice squad. That would just tempt them to become corrupt, to oppress
people, since they really aren't qualified to set us all aright.

The task to straighten out people about right and wrong should not be
left to government but to family, friends, neighbors, fellow parishioners,
teachers, experts who must earn our trust and others who must deal with us
not by means of coercion but by means of persuasion. That is the
foundation of civilization, peaceful interaction among people, not the
deployment of violence to try to make us good.

Sadly, the temptation to resort of coercion is intense. People often get
impatient and think they should take shortcuts and slap us around,
figuratively or literally, rather than reach us through reason. So they
call upon government, the wielder of force in society, to hurry things up.
But that way they undermine not just the humanity of those from whom they
take the power of self-government but also themselves whose ways they have
rendered brutal and uncivilized.

Yes, free men and women can do wild and crazy, even perverse, things but
their lives are their own--that is what having the unalienable right to
life means. And these lives are for their owners to run, however
successfully or ineptly. To help, others can urge, implore, suggest,
advise, propose, even pressure in friendly ways. But no one gets to take
over the direction of these lives, not with any justice on their side, no
matter how perversely those lives may be lived.

Column on de Tocqueville and Public Spiritedness

De Tocqueville?s America

Tibor R. Machan

Alexis de Tocqueville, born 200 years ago in Paris, traveled in America
and wrote about the country in his famous book, Democracy in America. He
is widely recognized as a most astute observer of American democracy. It
is worth considering one of his points at this particular time because it
seems to have been overly pessimistic. He wrote that,

... As each class gradually approaches others and mingles with them [in a
free, democratic society], its members become undifferentiated and lose
their class identity for each other. Aristocracy had made a chain of all
the members of the community, from the peasant to the king; democracy
breaks that chain and severs every link of it.

As social conditions become more equal, the number of persons increases
who, although they are neither rich nor powerful enough to exercise any
great influence over their fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained
sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their own wants. They owe
nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the
habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt
to imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands.

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it
hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws
him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine
him entirely within the solitude of his own heart. (Democracy in America,
vol. 2 [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945], pages 98-99.)

Was de Tocqueville right? Do citizens of a democracy?by which he meant a
free society in which individualism is much prized?fail to develop public
spiritedness? Do they see themselves as lacking any responsibility toward
others in their community?

It seems this is not so and de Tocqueville was mistaken. His mistake can
be seen in just how readily so many Americans rose to help out those who
were the causalities, way on the other side of the globe, of last year?s
tsunami; he is once again proven wrong by how eagerly Americans seem to
wish to help those left in ruin by Katrina.

But why did de Tocqueville make his mistake?

Many like him, who came from an ?aristocratic? background?actually, a
background of en entrenched, not earned, aristocracy?held a pessimistic
view of human nature, especially when it comes to those who aren?t members
of their class. This has to do with their widely held belief that at the
core human beings are sinful and anti-social, so much so that they need to
be nudged along by the wellborn to cultivate any public concerns.

If one identifies ?public life? with government, then, yes, many people
in a free and democratic country do not show public spiritedness. But is
that identification correct? Can one express one?s interest in one?s
fellows in a society only via politics?

Americans have proven over and over again that they are generous,
sometimes to a fault, especially in times of crises when most of those who
suffer evidently do not deserve it. In the main, Americans do not take
kindly to indiscriminate welfare-statism but there is evidence from way
back in the country?s history that natural disasters are met with
alertness and kindness, not xenophobia, as de Tocqueville had feared.

This is probably because in a largely free society it is clear to many
people that whether others will be helped in their need is not something
to be left to their government?whose job, after all, is ?to secure our
rights??but is, instead, a task to be taken up voluntarily, of one?s own
initiative. Such ?public? spiritedness is, in fact, a more hopeful
approach to coping in times of crisis then is marshaling the coercive
forces of the state. It comes from the widespread realization among
largely self-reliant people that human beings share many risks in life and
in a civilized society they must abstain from resorting to the force of
law to cope with such risks. Instead, they need to lend their hand at such
times, from their knowledge that that is indeed the most promising way to
recover from disasters.

---------------
Machan teaches business ethics at Chapman University as is editor of,
among other works, Liberty & Hard Cases (Hoover Institution Press, 2002).

Column on Self Deprecation

The Mystery of Human Self-deprecation

Tibor R. Machan

When parents notice their children feeling low and suspect this
may persist, signaling lack of self-respect, they naturally worry. Why?
Well, without a solid measure of confidence in oneself, one is not likely
to set off on difficult journeys, take up tasks that require skill and
perseverance. Friendship and romantic love, just to mention two vital
areas of our lives, also call upon us to do well and if we see ourselves
as inept, they are unlikely to flourish.

Yet, although children are widely understood to require the
development of self-confidence, when we become adults and do, finally,
feel up to things, this is often considered hubris. Indeed, there is now a
general movement afoot, led by the likes of Bernd Heinrich, Emeritus
Professor at the University of Vermont, to denigrate us all, to show that
we aren?t anything very special in the living world. Writing for the
International Herald Tribune on August 30, 2005, Heinrich goes to great
lengths to use the very popular recent movie, March of the Penguins, to
suggest this theme. The gist of the argument is that human beings share
98% of their DNA with some of the big apes and other animals, so there
mustn?t be much difference between them and the rest of the animal world.

Alas, this is a bad argument. A little bit can mean a lot and in
the case of the impact of that little bit on what human beings are it does
indeed mean a lot. For one, human beings are the ones who make these kinds
of discoveries about the animal world, not big apes. They are the
scientists?zoologists, biologists, physiologists and others?who bring to
light these intriguing findings, whereas chimps, orangutans, and other
apes, let alone the rest of the animals, have nothing at all to say on
these matters, nothing to show because, well, they haven?t got the
faculties with which to discover all the relevant information.

The percentage of DNA we share with other animals must be
understood in context. DNA by itself doesn?t account for a whole lot. It
is the configuration of all the biological components that make up an
organism that counts. That is what enables people to forge sciences such
as biology, to produce works of art, to build cities and write books and
all the rest that is utterly absent from the rest of the animal world.

But even more importantly, only people have the capacity to
discuss these very issues of whether they and animals do or do not share
important attributes. They are the only ones, for example, who can be
implored to act in certain ways that come from paying attention to just
what animals can and cannot do, versus what people can and cannot do.
Human beings are the only animals capable of exhibit moral concerns about,
for example, other animals or the environment or anything else for that
matter.

Now if that isn?t a vital difference between us and other animals
I don?t know what is. Clearly, having moral responsibilities makes us very
different animals from even the great apes. And all those who try to tell
us that we aren?t all that different contradict themselves in the very act
of making such a claim to us about the matter rather than addressing the
great apes about it all. They show that we are very different indeed, even
as they deny that difference.

Aristotle, 25 centuries ago, already knew well enough that anyone
who refuses to study animals fails to learn enough about human beings to
be well informed. As he said, "If there is anyone who holds that the study
of the animal is an unworthy pursuit, he ought to go further and hold the
same opinion about the study of himself." This is no news. What is new is
this incessant urgency with which some folks go about trying to belittle
human beings, trying to make us feel like we don?t amount to much. Yet,
all the while they do this they demonstrate, also, that we do amount to a
lot more than other animals since they have no interest in addressing
those other animals about these issues.

Being something special in nature doesn?t give us much credit
individually, of course. Yes, we can use animals for scientific research,
even for entertainment, if this will help us flourish in our lives--all
animals do this. But that doesn?t mean we are drastically different from
the rest of the animal world, only that we do have traits and faculties
that enable us to do very different things from other animals, including
being responsible as we chose how we conduct ourselves, something other
animals cannot do.

Column on Who Owns Society

Are Societies Owned?

Tibor R. Machan

Say you wish to sell antiques, so you rent space in a building owned by
someone and agree that whenever you make a sale, some of what you fetch
goes to the owner. Professor Craig Duncan, my co-author of Libertarianism,
For and Against (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), claims this is analogous to
the nature of taxation. The country is like the building. ?The building?s
owner ? charges vendors a percentage of their sales intake?say, 20
percent?as payment for the opportunity to sell from one of the building?s
stalls?. The owner is not stealing [the vendor?s] money when he demands
this sum from [the vendor].?

According to Professor Duncan this is how we ought to
understand taxation,
not, as I argue, as extortion by some members of society (the government)
of the rest who live and work there.

But the analogy is a bad one. No one owns a free society. No one who
lives in a free society is provided with the opportunity to strike up a
deal with some owner of that society or to choose from among different
owners of societies in which he or she might live and work.

Instead, people would be born into a free society
where others, including
their parents, relatives, or guardians, own homes, places of work and so
on. Other people?the government?would not have the authority to coerce
them into paying them ?taxes? and to put them in jail if they refuse to
pay up, with no chance of bargaining about the percentage, of whether to
pay a flat fee (whether they win or lose in their various commercial
endeavors), a percentage of some possible take and so forth.

All of these latter options are, however, possible when
an antique seller
rents a stall from someone who owns a building where customers may seek
out vendors. But free societies, unlike the place where an antique vendor
may or may not rent a stall, are not anyone?s property.

Professor Duncan does, however, correctly describe societies that are not
free. In a feudal system, for example, the king or tsar or other monarch
owns the society. In a dictatorship the dictator is the owner. In fascist
societies the leader in effect owns the society. And in democracies that
aren?t governed by a constitution that protects individual rights the
majority owns the society. These owners then charge a rent from those they
permit to live and work on their property.

That kind of system is, indeed, the natural home of
the institution of
taxation. Such societies are also the natural home of serfdom, where
others than those who own it live and work only when permitted to do so.
They have no rights other than those granted at the discretion of the
owners. Both serfdom and taxation arise naturally in societies that are
owned by someone.

In free societies, however, no one owns the society.
Individual citizens
may or may not own all kinds of things in such free societies?land,
apartments, family homes, farms, factories, and innumerable other items
that may be found before human beings have expropriated them from the
wilds or what has been produced by or traded back and forth among the free
citizenry.

Of course, in complex, developed free societies the citizenry will most
likely have instituted a legal order or government, based on the
principles of freedom?individual rights to life, liberty and property, for
example. And they will probably have instituted some means by which those
administering such a system will be paid for their work?user fees, shares
of wealth owned, a flat sum, or something more novel and unheard of (e.g.,
contract fees). Citizens can come together, roughly along lines of how the
original American colonists came together, and establish a legal order or
government that will be empowered, without violating anyone?s rights, to
provide for a clear definition, elaboration, and defense of everyone?s
rights. Then, once such a group of citizens has come together and
instituted a government with just powers?powers that do not violate but
protect individual rights?the proper funding of the work of such a
government can be spelled out.

What is crucial here is that such funding must occur voluntarily, namely,
as the kind of funding that does not violate anyone?s rights. Unlike the
case Professor Duncan gives us, where someone has prior ownership over the
various items in society that can be owned, in a free society ownership is
achieved through various types of free action. This includes coming upon
something unowned and appropriating it?land, trees, lakes, whatever?or
being given in trade various things by others or, again, being born into
the world with various assets or attributes that may well be used to
create wealth through production, use or exchange.

A truly free society, then, does not belong to anyone but is a region
or sphere wherein individuals are free to come to own things. It is one
within which
those who live there are free to embark on actions that involve, among
other things, the acquisition of property. That is part of being free, not
being coerced by others to give up what one has peacefully acquired, not
be prohibited by others from embarking on various actions, including
peaceful acquisition (including production and trade).

In short, a free society is based on principles of
individual rights, not
on having gained permission from prior owners of the society on analogy
with how a renter of a stall in an antique mall comes into possession of
that stall. In free societies ownership is a right everyone has by his or
her nature as a human being and it isn?t granted as a privilege by a prior
owner.

Column on Ayn Rand & Philosophy (sans typo)

Ayn Rand and Philosophy

Tibor R. Machan

Over the years I have endured a lot of shunning and derision from
colleagues because I have admired Ayn Rand?s philosophical contributions.
Rand, who was widely know for her novels, mainly The Fountainhead and
Atlas Shrugged, sketched an ambitious philosophical system, Objectivism,
but she has never presented her ideas in the customary forums of academic
philosophy, namely, the peer reviewed journals and in books published by
prestigious publishers of books in the field. Rand was also way ahead of
everyone else in American culture in identifying the Soviet system as
vicious and vile, so she alienated nearly everyone on the Left, while
because of her lack of religious faith most on the Right also have given
her the back of their hands.

Yet she is a very popular novelist and has in time inspired a good many
scholars to explore her ideas in the various branches of philosophy and
political economy. And she has also made some novel and radical
contributions to the discipline the practitioners of which have mostly
shown disdain toward her. One, especially, is extremely vital. This is
Rand?s novel understanding of the nature of human knowledge.

A fatal flaw of much of philosophical reflection about what it is to know
has been, from Plato to our own time, that knowledge requires timeless
certainty. If you know, the story has gone, then it must be impossible to
even conceive that you are wrong. Knowledge must be absolute, perfect,
incorrigible, finished, and, as it is sometimes put, "in the final
analysis."

But this view of knowledge is an impossible ideal. Given, however, its
prevalence, the result has been a great deal of skepticism. Mostly the
prominent view is that we cannot really know, actually, or if we can,
perhaps, it?s just an approximation; maybe all we can have is probable
knowledge; and so the story goes.

And this has been especially influential with regard to knowledge about
right and wrong, good and evil. Most erudite thinkers shy from claiming
any such thing?what we think of right and wrong, good and evil, is mostly
bias, prejudice, the viewpoint of our gang, no better or worse than the
viewpoint of some other gang.

What Rand has proposed is that human beings, if they do the hard work,
can obtain knowledge just fine and dandy. And there is, of course, ample
evidence of this throughout the sciences, in technology and, let?s not
forget it, ordinary life. But what is this human knowledge?

As the name of her system makes evident, the key to knowledge is
objectivity. As Rand herself puts the point, in her book Introduction to
Objectivist Epistemology,

Objective validity is determined by reference to the facts of reality. But
it is man who has to identify the facts; objectivity requires discovery by
man?and cannot precede man's knowledge, i.e., cannot require omniscience.
Man cannot know more than he has discovered?and he may not know less than
the evidence indicates, if his concepts and definitions are to be
objectively valid.

No, I cannot establish my claim here that Rand did make a major
contribution to philosophy, specifically to the theory of knowledge. But I
can testify that this contention is very plausibly arguable, in light of
what I know of her work in this area of the discipline. And Rand herself
knew quite well that she was making such a contribution.

Ayn Rand was and is mostly known for her championing of capitalism, of
ethical egoism, of a naturalist understanding of the world, and her
romantic realism in literature. But she has always insisted that the most
vital contribution to the field of ideas has been her understanding of the
relationship between the human mind and reality, namely, of human
knowledge. What she has achieved is to establish, firmly?to quote another
philosopher, Gilbert Harman, on this topic, one who, I believe, expressed
well the spirit of Rand?s notion?that we must ?take care not to adopt a
very skeptical attitude nor become too lenient about what is to count as
knowledge.?

Only one other contemporary philosophers I know of has advance this
understanding of human knowledge, namely, J. L. Austin, in his essay
?Other Minds.? And it is an extremely vital point to make, indeed, for
without a clear grasp of what it is to know, human beings are vulnerable
to all kinds of charlatanism.

Column on Karl May & Arab Strife

Karl May and the History of Arab Strife

Tibor R. Machan

When as a kid in Europe I devoured that peculiar German author?s, Karl
May?s, novels?about American Indians (Winnetou is his most famous) and the
Near East (In the Desert toping the list here)?I had no idea that much
later in my life May?s research and the information conveyed in his books
would come in very handy. But I remembered enough from back then to take
another look recently at some of May?s work because, as I recalled, he
seemed to have a very detailed understanding of what he wrote about. Turns
out, he did, in fact, do the research so diligently that many came to
admire him for his historical accuracy. Among these were Albert Einstein,
Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Asimov, and, embarrassingly, Adolph Hitler. All
in all May appears to have been obsessed with getting it right about a
culture if he was to write about it, even in a fictional work.

What in our current geopolitical climate brought Karl May?s writings
about the Near East to my mind? I think one particular passage will help
one appreciate this. In the novel, In The Desert, published in an English
translation in 1977, by Seabury Press, and also, in 1980, by Bantam Books,
May has his hero, Kara Ben Nemsi (which I believe means Karl from
Germany), roam around the Middle East in the 1870s, taking his readers
throughout the Ottoman Empire, sampling the customs, laws, religions, and
ideologies of all the various peoples as he embarks upon his innumerable
adventures (which make his books so appealing to kids).

The following longish passage will probably explain why I think May?s
work has relevance and serves as something of a cautionary tale for
current events.

Quite apart from the ruins of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, so
visible at every step, there now rose before my eyes the mountains along
whose slopes and valleys people had lived whose racial and religious ties
can only be disentangled with the greatest difficulty. Light
extinguishers, fire worshipers, devil worshipers, Nestorians, Chaldeans,
Sunnites, Shiites, Mutazilites, Wahabes, Arabs, Jews, Turks, Armenians,
Syrians, Druzes, Kurds, Persians, Turkomans. At almost any moment, one may
encounter a member of these tribes, peoples, and sects, and who can guard
against the mistakes, lapses, and even transgressions a stranger may
commit on such an occasion! Even today these mountains stream with the
blood of the victims of national hatred, religious zeal, lust for
conquest, breach of faith, predatory instincts, and blood feuds. Human
habitations cluster along the rocks and in the ravines like vultures?
nests, a bird always ready to pounce on its unsuspecting prey. Here,
suppression and remorseless exploitation have created that bitterness that
can barely distinguish any longer between friends and foe, and the words
of reconciliation and love proclaimed by the apostles have been utterly
lost. And if American missionaries talk of their successes here, that can
only have been superficial. The ground is not ready to receive the seed.
Whatever other men of God may do, the most hostile currents combine in
wild rapids in the mountains of Kurdistan, and the waters will only calm
again when a powerful fist succeeds in smashing the cliffs that cause the
whirlpools, when the hatred has been eradicated and the ugly feuding
stamped out. Then the path will be open to those who preach peace and
proclaim salvation. Then no inhabitant of these mountains will any longer
be able to say: ?I became a Christian because otherwise I would have been
bastinadoed by an aga.? And this aga was a strict Moslem.?

Not being a specialist in the history and sociology of Middle Eastern
cultures, I couldn?t on my own attest to whether May had it right. Nor do
I share May?s idea of how things might calm down in the region. However,
when one reads a work such as The Arab Mind, by the widely admired middle
eastern scholar Ralph Patai (Hatherleigh Press, 2002), one cannot but come
away convinced that May was onto something here.

Now I am not a cultural or, indeed, any other kind of determinist and so
I do not believe in the currently fashionable ?clashes of cultures?
approach to understanding the strife that?s been unleashed recently by
terrorists from that region of the world. Nor do I hold to the notion that
in this strife only one side has perpetrated injustice galore. It would be
foolish, though, to dismiss the strong influence that the type of
education and upbringing in certain societies have on the population. It
is even reasonable to assume that entire generations of children would
become traumatized with the cruelties involved in how they are guided
toward their adulthood.

At one time in the past, perhaps, the scenario and cultural climate Karl
May describes could be confined to that region of the globe but now, with
oil having made these folks extremely wealthy, their form of life cannot
but become ripe for exportation. It is this, I think, that needs to be
kept in mind, among many other matters, in order to appreciate what we are
witnessing and experiencing in our time and are likely to have hovering
about for a long time to come.

Column on Religion, Ideology & Terrorism

Religion, Ideology, and Terrorism

Tibor R. Machan

General Robert L. Caslen, Jr., one of Secretary of State Donald
Rumsfeld?s policy crafters, told US News & World Report (August 1, 2005)
that ?It?s important that we point out that it?s not a religious or
cultural clash?It is a war to preserve ordinary people?s ability to live
as they choose.?

A more confusing statement than this is not easy to imagine from someone
who is entrusted with America?s military strategy vis-à-vis those who
would just as soon bring the country to its knees. Imagine if someone said
that the cold war had nothing to do with ideology or cultural clash but
only with whether people may choose to live as they want. Surely every
intelligent, educated person would have considered this rank ignorance. In
fact, there is no international, geopolitical strife that isn?t grounded
in some kind of religious, ideological, political, philosophical or
similar system of thought.

The very idea that people ought to have the ?ability to live as they
choose? comes from a variety of religious, philosophical, ideological, and
similar sources. It rests, in other words, on a set of ideas. Religions
are sets of ideas, as are political theories, ideologies and so forth, all
resulting from more or less careful human effort to conceptualize how they
ought to live, especially in their communities. Contrasting religion or
culture with an idea of wanting to live in peace as one chooses is utter
nonsense since that itself is one among numerous competing religious and
cultural ideas people have come to embrace and use to guide their lives.
Institutions such as laws, practices, customs, and the rest all stem from
such ideas. Religion and culture have everything to do with how we
understand we ought to live, whether by choosing our own way or getting
pushed around by others.

What is it that could lead a presumably intelligent man such as General
Robert L. Caslen, Jr., to utter such balderdash? I suggest it is yet
another religious, cultural or ideological notion, nothing less. General
Caslen is probably guided by the ideology of multicultural tolerance and
so he would like to discourage people from considering any religion,
ideology or similar systematic worldview as unacceptable, as constituting
a threat to Americans. But this is wrong.

There are religions, ideologies, and cultural viewpoints that preach
peace and mutual respect because they embrace the idea that one must
choose to embrace a creed and not have it shoved down one?s throat. And
there are religions, ideologies, and cultural viewpoints that preach the
opposite. The former can be supported, the latter cannot be, plain and
simple, by anyone who wants ?to preserve ordinary people?s ability to live
as they choose.? The idea that all religions are equally decent, that any
belief is as worthy of respect as any other is bunk?that very idea has its
opposite, namely, ?Don?t tolerate any idea that conflicts with your own,?
and then that, too, would be just fine. Unless we embrace the nonsense of
post-modernist anti-logic, this simply cannot be. (And if we embrace that
anti-logic, then anything goes anyway and nothing makes any sense at all.)

There are, in fact, vicious people around the globe, many of them
terrorists, who will use any form of destruction to vent their
dissatisfaction with whatever displeases them, and some of these people
are part of a very sizable faction of Islam. They are often called
Islamists and follow a religiously based ideology of massive violence and
disregard for individual rights and due process of law. To deny this with
the nonsense about how it has nothing at all to do with religion and
culture is to pluck out one?s eyes as one is supposedly poised to try ?to
preserve ordinary people?s ability to live as they choose.? It is to
disarm oneself in the war against such vile sorts around the world.

Instead, it is vital to know what religions and ideologies encourage,
indeed even insist upon, conformity with a program of indiscriminate
global violence. That shouldn?t be a novel project since, after all,
throughout human history several different religions and ideologies?just
think of the Holy Inquisition, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism?have spawned
exactly that kind of program. It?s shameful to deny this just as the same
kind of thing is engulfing us today. (To check whether I am on solid
ground here, please read at [
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/LondonLessonsLost1.pdf
]http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/LondonLessonsLost1.pdf.)

Column on Social Security Risk

Is State Funded Social Security Risk Free?

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last several years the idea of including some private accounts
within the social security system has gained a bit of ground in the
political arena. Not that it?s been a piece of cake. For one, most people
are used to this government confiscatory program, as they are to
government schooling or the minimum wage law. The governmental habit is
rife throughout the world, including in America.

There is, also, the way promoters of the government?s confiscatory
program distort what privatization comes to. Even this tiny bit of
option?no one actually would need to go private with the 4% that could be
put into personal accounts, it?s just an option?is mischaracterized as
uniquely risky. And that assumes there is no risk with the government?s
coercive system.

Why do folks accept this canard? Why do they buy into the story as told
by Paul Krugman & Co.? Surely governments have defaulted on many of their
promises and have left people without support as they have played
political football with various projects.

Indeed, the entire social security program is in a way a hoax?no one can
really obtain bona fide security in old age from what this program
provides. Even if you have worked like a dog all your life and the
government has extorted portions of your earnings for your own good,
getting back roughly $1500.00 a month when you reach age 65 is hardly
going to make you secure economically, socially or any other way. The
money confiscated from you by the feds is barely enough to feed your pets.

So where do the champions of this utterly failed program come off with
their ruse about how the miniscule privatized portion will be oh so risky,
while the government?s scam is brimming with certainty?

The idea, I think, stems from the belief that coercive force is something
that can always be relied upon. And there is something to this, but only a
little bit.

Whenever people reach a point of exasperation, they are tempted to deploy
force?against their children, spouses, even friends, not to mention
strangers who aren?t in a position to strike back (as it happens with all
the redistribution of wealth legislation and public service conscription).
If you cannot get anywhere with some by reasoning with them, by trying to
persuade them or by imploring them to do what you want, at last resort
smack them around a bit, just as those loan sharks do with their clients
who will not pay up.

Yet, a policy of deploying coercive force against recalcitrants is at
most a very short term, temporary solution to solving any kind of human
problem. This is true, of course, with social security as well. The
collection of this part of what the government extorts from us falls way
short indeed from solving the problem of old age economic insecurity. It?s
a pittance. Without personal savings or some other support system to
supplement it, social security will get you virtually nothing. So,
clearly, it is no solution to the problem it is supposedly designed to
solve.

And that is just what the fate of all coercive measures tends to be.
Force against other people only works well as a policy of self-defense or
retaliation. But never as the first step. The horrendous risk of deploying
coercive force is to create a citizenry that?s complacent about its
security and misguidedly relies on the government to take care of it in
old age. That is a far greater and more destructive risk than anything one
may face with the stock market or other investment options where the money
left in one?s own hands to manage for one?s own good. If people realized
there is no mythical risk-free government social security, that it is
indeed the ruse the critics must always have known it is, most of them
would likely start thinking early in their lives about their old age
security, get competent advice about it, and reap the fruit of this policy
of prudence so they really do have something to fall back upon when the
need arises late in their lives.

There is no bona fide guarantee with government?s coercive policies, only
the illusion of it, as with all reliance on a policy of coercive force in
human relationships.