The Nonsense of "A new world order"

Tibor R. Machan

Business Week reports--July 6, 2009, page 8--that Roger Altman, Deputy Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, now CEO of an investment banking boutique (Evercore Partners), has, like President Sarkozy of France, concluded that it's the end for capitalism. As Business Week tells it, Boltman wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that "The era of laissez-faire economics is over, and statism, once discredited, is making a comeback--even in the U.S. Also out of vague is globalization."

Yes, Virginia, there are still many grown up people who believe that there has been rampant laissez-faire economics around the world, especially in the United States of America and especially during the last few decades. Business Week's account of Bolton's opinions also seems to accepts, without any skepticism, that statism is something novel while the laissez-faire is old.

Sadly this is all wrong. Statism has been the norm for thousands of years, what with countries throughout history being ruled from top down and with their economies being managed as if they were firms instead of societies. It is only in the last 400 years or so that the classical liberal idea of a relatively free economy has caught on here and there, and even then mainly in the rhetoric of various, sometimes admittedly prominent academic economists, not in the public philosophies of nations. To its credit, Business Week does suggest that any move away from globalization is going to prove to be "an especially hard toll on developing nations." It might have added the plain historical fact that prior to the emergence of the halting policy of very partial laissez-faire most of the world lingered in utter poverty. Apart from the rulers and their minions, few people had any wealth to speak of. Only in the most recent and brief period of history has the limited measure of global free trade managed to bring forth prosperity for ordinary people who are constantly being badgered about it, what with all the denunciation of commercialization, greed and such in light of some degree of enthusiasm for this new development. Statism, which has retarded not only commerce but nearly every decent human endeavor way in discernibly brutal ways, has been the norm, just as one of the few--relatively speaking--prominent champions of laissez-faire, the late Milton Freidman observed. And Thomas Jefferson made it clear to that governments tend to expand in power and freedom tends to be in retreat more than not.

So, the point to get clear on, is that the current retreat from the small measure of laissez-faire around the globe and, especially, America, is quite routine. Such reactionary developments do not deserve to be designated as the dawning of "a new world order." Properly put, these developments would be a return to the miserable political economies that have dominated the world for over centuries but with a few short periods of relief here and there. And such statism has usually been promoted by those in the ruling classes, like Mr. Altman, who see in it the makings of a rightly ordered universe. It is the idea that you and I and all people ought to be in charge of their own lives and ought to pursue our various projects freely, in voluntary cooperation instead of as regimented by these rulers, that is new.

But those who insist on directing the rest of us even when no one asked them to, have no interest in getting the historical facts right. The idea of laissez-faire economics arises from the long suppressed and struggling idea, finally asserted by the American Founders, that no one may rule another or, as Abraham Lincoln put it, that “No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.” The rulers, of course, would not hear of this, in large part because living by that principle would deprive them of the opportunity to rule. (This, more than anything else, is the source of anti-Americanism in the midst of the world's upper classes, given that America is closely linked to the idea Lincoln gave voice to, even if in reality it hasn't followed that principles by a long shot!)

Hope versus Reality

Tibor R. Machan

In his column in The New York Times on June 25, 2009, Judge Richard Posner wrote that "The most promising reform would be to give the Federal Reserve, the National Economic Council or the president’s Council of Economic Advisers the ability to collect and analyze financial intelligence and do emergency planning. Regulators failed to prevent the financial collapse not because they lacked adequate powers but because they lacked information, a culture of inquiry and a contingency plan." But then he immediately adds that "There were abundant warnings of impending economic disaster. Had they been investigated rather than ignored, we might not be in the fix that we are in today."

The confidence shown in regulators in the first statement seems to me to be plainly undermined by the historical claim in the second, one that seems to follows from a certain plausible understanding of public choice theory, actually--ignoring rather than investigating warnings would come naturally to those who are, whether consciously or not, embarking upon vested interest dealing, in this instance working for regulations to continue instead of doing what might make them unnecessary in time. Regulators have a good job and it is no surprise that they might work not so much to fix problems they perceive in the market place but to keep working at what keeps them employed and well fed.

In free markets, to the extent that they exist, such vested interest dealings are checked by competition and budgetary constraints (to the extent these are not thwarted by government policies that often produce monopolies). A shoe repairer may be tempted to fix shoes not quite as well as they need to be fixed but just enough that they will last a while but need to be returned for further repair. Indeed, automobile repairers are often suspected of this. What, apart from conscientiousness, keeps such folks on the straight and narrow is competition, the knowledge that if they don't do the work well enough someone else will jump in to do so. One main reason that bureaucracies are generally sluggish and unenthusiastic about serving the public--as distinct from private vendors--is this element of constant competition, combined with the fact that bureaucrats gain their income from taxes which can often be raised with impunity by those who hire them.

What public choice theorists claim is that bureaucrats have a far better opportunity to yield to the temptation of malpractice than are those in the private sector. The theory does not claim that all bureaucrats are cheats and all those in the private sector are professionally responsible. But it identifies an evident tendency and shows it to exist through the study of economic and political history. Common sense supports this, as well, when most people notice that if they go to, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles (one of the more visible government outfits), they mostly get a reluctant, bored, at times even curmudgeonly treatment, whereas in the private sector the routine tends to be eagerness to serve, to generate and keep business.

There is an element about public choice theory that economists do not emphasize often enough, namely, that the objectives of regulators are often very obscure, unclear, even contradictory. For example, governments often embark on historical preservation but at the same time they are supposed to make sure that building and other facilities are properly managed, kept safe, etc. But historical preservation mostly require keeping things in their original form, while the pursuit of safety involves making use of the most up to date technology and science. One can generalize this kind of conflict within government policies all over the place--which is what accounts for vigilant propaganda against smoking while tobacco farmers keep receiving government subsidies.

As far as I can tell, entrusting to government officials anything other than the job the American Founders understood as theirs, namely, securing our basic rights, is seriously misguided. Not only is most government regulation a violation of due process, meaning it acts preemptively by restraining professionals in various fields of endeavor who have not done anyone any wrong. But it is also an ineffective devices, just as Judge Posner points out in his article.

Why We can But You or I cannot be Great

Tibor R. Machan

The evidence for this is overwhelming and out there for most to observe. Take the Academy Awards, where those receiving Oscars routinely disclaim personal credit but claim it aplenty for the team, the association, the group. Or take most team sports where any mention of one's own superb contribution is suppressed in favor of how great the team has been.

America or Germany or any other country is often praised for superior achievements while individual Americans or Germans need to show humility lest they be deemed braggarts. Even in sports such as tennis, where there's a dominance of individual performance, taking credit for doing well is rare. Either bona fide or feigned humility appear to be what's acceptable and practiced, albeit sometimes with a wink.

But why? What's wrong with laying claim to one's achievements provided one is honest about them? Yes, one can get ridiculously arrogant, such as the late great chess master Bobby Fisher was. And here and there, close up to a good shot, most tennis players exhibit pride on the court, at least with body language. Still, the idea that "we are great" is far more easily put out there than "I am great," even though it is rare that we can be great without those who make up us also being great.

My suggestion is that most folks are too intimidate by all the preachings that surround us concerning how we must be unselfish, how taking credit is vanity or conceit, while praising our fellows is nearly always deemed to be appropriate, commendable. Some of this goes hand in hand with the practice of judging people as ethical or moral only if they benefit their fellows, not when they do well for themselves. The Princeton University philosopher and famous animal liberation champion makes a great deal of how we must all be altruistic--recently he chimed in on the current economic downturn with an essay on how despite suffering setbacks, we all have the obligation to send resources to people in poor countries. That is what will make us decent people, not being prudent and attentive to our own needs and wants and those of our intimates. Which of course raises the issue of why other people are so deserving of support while those urged to provide the support are not. (Which once again brings to mind W. H. Auden's quip that "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.")

What seems to underlie much of this is that for centuries the major religions tended to denigrate people as sinners, mostly, who need to redeem themselves by serving other people (who then needed to do the same, on and on, ad infinitum.) And this probably came from comparing people to angels and God, mystical entities who certainly had it all over us "mere" humans. Even in the increasingly secular modern era, the view of the human self didn't see all that much improvement. I have in mind, for example, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes' very influential idea that people are mostly power hungry and if not restrained by a supreme authority would just as soon destroy one another than live together creatively and productively. Original sin got transformed into basic (vicious) instinct! And with that many human tendencies and activities also got besmirched. Sex, which is human as well as animal about us all, is a good case in point. Rarely has it gotten a sensible, levelheaded treatment in the major religions or philosophies. (So much if it got driven underground and lingers in back alleys or on the bizarrely labeled adult cable TV programs.)

But when you consider it without prejudice, are human beings really so bad? Sure, they can be and often are but on balance they would seem to be rather decent, hard working, conscientious, and kind, at least most of them most of the time. And they are also quite self-regarding--most of us get up in the morning thinking first of ourselves and our loved ones, not of our neighbors. So basic decency and self-regard can easily go hand in hand--indeed, it is difficult for me to imagine people loving their neighbors who lack love for themselves.

But then why make all those gestures of humility, of self-abnegation? Maybe because, in addition to some very bad teachings from various sources, there is the desire to be liked by others who might not appreciate demonstrated self-regard, pride, and self-esteem. Whatever the best explanation, though, one thing is clear enough. It is not a good thing to have a general, overall demeaning opinion of oneself. It tends to undercut what one does in one's life on many, many fronts, as a professional, friend, spouse, parent, and the rest. A little--maybe a lot--more frank admission of one's worthiness, if justified, would seem to be warranted.

And while most people are reluctant to give themselves even deserved credit, they show that some such acknowledgement is necessary for them as they do not hesitate giving credit to the group of which they are a member!

Tricking Us Into Conscription

Tibor R. Machan

Most Americans seem to think it is so quaint to be taken to be a member of the huge American family or team or tribe. But it is a trick.

Being a member of some group immediately creates obligations other members may impose. Team members must contribute to the team’s efforts. Club members must pay dues. Family members must do chores. And so on it goes.

In most instances, however, one joins groups on one’s own initiative, without being forced into membership. Apart from the now nearly completely abolished draft, most Americans aren’t familiar with forced labor, with being conscripted. They do not look upon paying taxes, for example, as having their resources confiscated. Most take it as a kind of fee for services. And quite a few actually claim that taxation is voluntary, never mind that it isn’t.

The trick of getting burdened by innumerable obligations that certain self-appointed leaders spell out and enforce has to do with selling millions of people on the idea that their lives belong to the nation or clan or tribe, not to them. Never mind that this goes squarely against the American Founders’ idea that everyone has an unalienable right to his or her life. We are now in the era of a supposed second bill of rights which FDR concocted and which makes us all into conscripts. We are forced to serve and on terms we have but a little bit to do with. Certainly the idea of the consent of the governed, the consent of the taxed and taxed and taxed again and again, has disappeared from public discourse. Instead no one is asked for his or her consent now; just being born makes one part of a team, with all the attendant duties.

The best description of this comes from the French father of sociology, Auguste Comte, who wrote two hundred or so years ago:

"Everything we have belongs then to Humanity…Positivism never admits anything but duties, of all to all. For its social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of right, constantly based on individualism. We are born loaded with obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. Later they only grow or accumulate before we can return any service. On what human foundation then could rest the idea of right, which in reason should imply some previous efficiency? Whatever may be our efforts, the longest life well employed will never enable us to pay back but an imperceptible part of what we have received. And yet it would only be after a complete return that we should be justly authorized to require reciprocity for the new services. All human rights then are as absurd as they are immoral. This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely."

This is the public philosophy now in vogue, being propagated by President Obama and Co. And it is a vicious, enslaving thing, this is, certainly foreign to the unique American political tradition.

The reason many are hoodwinked by it all is that of course any self-respecting human being realizes that joining with other people is a fine and dandy thing, indeed, provided those other people are themselves decent folks and fully respect one’s human rights to one’s life, liberty and property. In other words, if these fellows do not kill, kidnap, or rob one, they are usually swell company.

But what we are having foisted upon us now is not the idea of voluntary cooperation but of conscription. And that is a no-no.

I am not sure how these thuggish people will be resisted—there are too many of them these days, sadly. But they must be. They have no authority to bully us around. And I for one will keep agitating against their perverse agenda so long as I have the energy to do so.

Don’t Trust Obama Climate Change Report

Tibor R. Machan

This morning I woke to a lengthy report by NASA showing alleged imminent disaster from climate changes. The report states unequivocally that some huge percentage of the change is human induced, although nothing shown demonstrates or supports this claim. The time line of many of the videos showing erosion and melting of snow is not clear and there are no comparisons to earlier changes in the earth’s climate, no indication of whether other periods of the earth’s history have had changes similar in size or frequency. But the report has one clear feature. It is scary and anyone not in the know about these matters cannot but be worried from what it contains. And I am not in the know—I am no expert, that's for sure, nor are most American citizens.

So why should it be distrusted? Well, pretty much for the reason that virtually all government reports need to be distrusted—remember those WMDs—especially when their policy implications are the accrual to government of massive powers to control the lives of the citizenry. All of the recommendations broadcast in this report would, if followed, require massive transfer of resources from the private sector to the government, in addition to the imposition of aggressive regulations and controls, i.e., violaitons of our rights.

The bottom line here is, not at all surprisingly to anyone who has focused on how governments everywhere tend to function, that governments must have more power to deal with a crisis, with no clear proof of the need for any government intervention—no one’s rights are being violated other than by some externalities (which is nothing new). But even if something needed to be addressed, there is no reason to believe that the government is competent or suited to be the agent of remedy. That is not what governments are about. When, however, they are entrusted with—or simply grab—a job unsuited to their competence and mission, the results will be highly regrettable.

One need not attribute ill will to those who propose these massive government “solutions” to problems facing us, including at the global environmental level. The conceit that "we are the government, and we are here to help" is an old one, all the way from ancient Sparta to modern Washington, D.C. Folks with power tend to imagine themselves wise, as well, but that is a grave mistake. It has gotten many societies into terrible trouble, when government is taken to be the master who will deal with all the problems. Invariable the citizens become servants of the master.

The way the report came across from NASA, by the way, fully confirms such worries. There was no mention of any skepticism about global human induced climate change—specifically, global warming—despite the fact that world wide the number of highly educated skeptics is growing. The computer models, on which predictions are made which, then, supposedly justify various coercive precautionary measures governments, are to undertake are now in considerable dispute. (Oddly, the recent economic fiasco is being blamed by some of the analysts on the flawed models used to estimate the significance of various types of risks but no one seems to be considering that this should be a warning about trusting such models in other areas.)

For me, personally, there is virtually no excuse for increasing the power governments wield over citizens, none. The most general but also persuasive reason is simple: governments are but other people and these other people have no credible authority to control the rest of us no matter what the excuse that’s invoked this time—with numerous others, equally suspect, having been invoked before.

But the governmental habit is very difficult to extinguish and people haven’t begun to work on that task until rather recently, with the American Founders having given a major but by no means necessarily lasting impetus for such extinction. If anything, the current political leadership across the U.S.A. has all be abandoned that brilliant legacy of Jefferson, Madison, Jay and Co., that began to demote government from its pretense at superiority. President Obama seems to be entirely unaware of—or resistant to—their teachings.

Taxes, Greed and Prudence

Tibor R. Machan

Never mind the attempt at intimidation by some, like the Nobel Laureate Woody Clark, claiming that if you work to reduce or let alone to abolish taxes, you are greedy. You are not. You simply have a common sense understanding that there is something basically amiss with a system that coerces you and millions of others to part with your resources for services that would appear to be either hardly needed or, where need, capable of being funded without using force. Moreover, not only are you not guilty of the vice of greed. You can take pride in your practice of the virtue of prudence. Because what this moral virtue requires of us all is that we make sure we and those we are responsible for are well taken care of.

So, for example, check ups at the doctor and regular workouts are a function of prudence, as is brushing your teeth regularly and driving the roads carefully. (That famous financial firm featuring the rock of Gibraltar as its logo isn't called Prudential by accident.) We should all, especially if we have families and other intimates to care for, be prudent, which includes taking good care of our resources. So, then, not permitting the tax collector to raid these is clearly one instance of being prudent, not being greedy. The more of your resources you can keep from the extortionists, the more praiseworthy you are!

Of course there are the apologists for this reactionary public policy, one that really belongs in the age of feudalism when the population was taken to be beholden to the royal family and its goons. The justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr., is supposed to have said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization and since he was a smart and powerful American justice, many think what he said must clearly be a pearl of wisdom. (Actually, the source of the statement is a bit obscure. Holmes is said, by Justice Felix Frankfurter, to have "rebuked a secretary’s query of 'Don’t you hate to pay taxes?' with 'No, young fellow, I like paying taxes, with them I buy civilization'.") In any case, the sentiment is way off. It is not just a ruse but a paradoxical one at that.

Civilization, if one can sum up its nature in just a few words, means relating to our fellow human beings peacefully, respectful of their dignity and sovereignty, never using them against their will. This is what distinguished civilized folks from barbarians throughout human history. But when we focus on governments it becomes evident that these agencies have routinely managed to circumvent the principles of civilization simply because a minimal partion of their work is quite useful, the portion that America's Founders so clearly pinpointed in the Declaration of Independence. This is where governments are assigned the role of securing the rights of the citizenry, the sole purpose for which the institution exists.

So what Holmes is supposed to have said is quite wrong--taxation is a major subversion of the principles of civilization, principles which are supposed to guide us all toward dealing with one another peacefully, not through extortion.

Ah, but you will not find this view widely discussed, let alone championed, among academics, even historians of ideas, let alone public officials, the majority of whom live off this extortionist device, just as the king and his minions used to with impunity, in most parts of the world and in America back before the Revolution demoted them all to mere citizen status!

So, if you have come by your resources, your wealth, honestly, have no shame when you also work hard not to let the government rip you off. Yes, of course, legal services--courts, the police, the military and such--need to be paid for but not by this means. Extortion is how organized criminals come by their "income." It isn't supposed to be the method of public finance of a genuinely free society.

The fact that in the course of emerging from centuries and centuries of oppression via a great varieties of rulers--Caesars, Pharaohs, Czars, kings, and even democratic majorities that disregard individual rights--much of the world is still sticking to taxation as its way of funding its legal systems doesn't make that right, any more than the fact that there was slavery and still is serfdom in many places makes those right. The task of civilized people with a concern for the quality of their system of government must be to discover and implement ways of funding legal systems in a bona fide civilized fashion, without taxation.

Communities for People, not Ants

Tibor R. Machan

No sooner does one speak up in support of individualism than some clever folks will accuse one with wanting to isolate individuals, to destroy human community life. But this really is bunk and is either a misunderstanding or an out an out attempt at distortion.

Just because human adults require independence of mind and a sphere of personal authority, which is secured by protecting their basic rights, it doesn't mean at all that they do not greatly benefit from community life. There is little that's more satisfying to human beings than one or another kind of association they can forge with their fellows. Think of marriage, family, company, team, chorus, orchestra, and on and on with the myriads of ways people come together and make the most of it.

Alas, there is one way of forming communities that is simply unsuited to people, namely, coercively, when they are herded into groups they do not choose based on their own understanding and goals. That is very much what prisons are, involuntary communities, and the only reason they are supposed to exist is to house those among us who refuse to live peacefully with their fellows.

No defense of individualism except the crudest sort omits the fact that when individuals come together much of what makes their lives worth living is made possible by their togetherness. And, yes, at first we are involuntary members of one community, the family, at least until we grow up and have reached the age of free choice. That, indeed, is what parents and guardians ought to aim for when they raise children, to prepare them all for becoming competent, loving, responsible and adventurous independent adults.

Yet forcibly grouping people immediately undermines this by depriving the young of their opportunity to hone their skills at making decisions for themselves, decisions that are usually quite unlike the decisions others need to make. That's because we all are unique in many respects, all the while that we are also much alike. As one of my favorite philosophers Steve Martin put it in his novel, The Pleasure of My Company, "People, I thought. These are people. Their general uniformity was interrupted only by their individual variety."

Of course much of this is evident from the history of the more Draconian and brutal attempts to make us all one, such as those witnessed in the twentieth century but also back in ancient Sparta. But sadly too many people keep holding on to the vision of human associations without remembering that the "human" must be very closely heeded when one embarks on these. Human beings, more than anything else in the world, are individuals, with minds of their own which however much they learn from others must get into operation from their own initiative. While other living beings are pretty much hardwired to do the right thing by their nature, our nature is that we must learn what that right thing is and then embark on doing it of our own free will. This, mainly, is the source of everyone's individuality, while, of course, our physical constitution pretty much duplicates itself in every one of us (although even there a great deal is unique to everyone).

You might forgive me for bringing in a bit of personal history here but I do have some experience to draw upon here, namely, of having lived under communism for much of my early years. And my father was an avid fascist, supporting the Nazis all his life. And neither of these recommends itself for a promising human community life. Nor do any of the communities that try to go just a bit in their direction, figuring they can somehow square the circle.

Human communities are indeed marvelous but only when they do not squash the human individual. When they do, when they try to compromise the principles of individualism, look out. They will try to lie and cheat and bamboozle since only that way can coercive community life be made credible. They will emphasize the fabulous goals and forget about the vicious means by which they propose to reach them, like conscript armies or schools or any other collective endeavors do which we aren't asked but are forced to join.

The Collectivist Trick

Tibor R. Machan

There is an unforgettable scene in the classic film, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), starring Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott and a host of others. At one point one of Sellers' characters, the mad scientists with the heavy German accent, is making a presentation and while doing so his right arm and hand engage in movements, as if these were not part of Sellers at all but had an independent will. The arm keeps shooting out to give the Heil Hitler sign and it needs to be restrained by the other arm. The character is clearly internally conflicted and the arm is damaged.

This scene comes to my mind a lot when I encounter not only popular politicians but also sophisticated political theorists who insist that we all belong to some collective being--the nation, state, culture, ethnic group, humanity, or the people. That's because when one thinks of human individuals in this collectivist fashion, their own conduct--the actions they take on their own independent initiative--are seen by such collectivists as out of line, just the way the Sellers character's arm was out of line. And when that happens, individuals must be put in their place as servants of the collective just as Sellers' arm had to be!

For many centuries the battle between individualism and collectivism has underpinned the more particular political controversies evident everywhere around the globe. Do you own your own life--do you have an unalienable right to to as it states in the Declaration of Independence, following the ideas of John Locke and some other classical liberals (although not all that many)? Or do you belong to the group--family, neighborhood, community, nation, etc., as for example was enthusiastically argued by the father of sociology, the French Auguste Comte and is being argued today by such communitarians as the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor and the American sociologist Amitai Etzioni, among many others?

Why bring this up now? Because the dominant political thinking in America and indeed many other places has pretty much given up on the quintessentially American idea that you and I and the rest of us have an unalienable right to our lives. President Obama, for example, is an avid supporter of the ideas of his former Chicago Law School colleague, Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein, in championing what is known as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights, in opposition to the Founders' original bill which is draw from the Declaration.

In that original bill the rights all citizens, indeed all human beings, are supposed to possess are prohibitions on other people who may wish to intrude on one's life without one's permission. That is what the right life is, a prohibition of murder. And the right to liberty, a prohibition of assault, battery, kidnapping, rape, etc. And the right to property, a prohibition of robbery, burglary, trespass, and other kinds of takings without the owners' permission.

The Second Bill of Rights, in contrast, lists rights to other people's works, time and belongings, such as, say, the right to health care or a minimum wage or a paid vacation. All these, ofter called "entitlements" (even while of course that begs the central question), would treat citizens as part of a group with unalienable obligations to the rest of the group. And since this is a fantasy if taken literally, the thesis amounts to claiming that some people, allegedly speaking for the various groups to which we are supposed to belong--which have prior claims on us, prior to ourselves--get to call the shots as to how we ought to live our lives, what and who we must work for, support, feed, etc.

Now if individualism is even remotely right, these so called entitlements or new rights turn out to be fraudulent, tricks by which to promote involuntary servitude, period. But if collectivism is correct, in any of its forms, then the claims made upon our lives, work, time, property, and so forth can all be treated as dues we owe! (Even then, of course, it doesn't follow that anyone is authorized to enforce those duties, but never mind that for now.)

And that is why the individualism versus collectivism dispute is so vital and remains the most important one, disguised only with some difficulty as being about loving one's country, humanity, family, other people, the poor, etc. No. Those are all pseudo issues. The real one is to whom does the individual human being belong?

Mini Business Ethics & Freedom

Tibor R. Machan

In matters of ethics one is best equipped to understand when one is close up. Politics is different, as is law, although one reason for having courts is to hash out cases with all the details on view. Otherwise misjudgment lurks nearby.

A recent incident brings to light how business ethics bears on our day to day affairs and how it is really impossible to handle these the way so many people, especially politicians and bureaucrats, would like to, namely via government regulation.

Someone near me found a TV repairer on the Internet and set up an appointment, after trying to make sure the repairer knew a thing or two about the set in need of work. The repairer asked that he could come out on Sunday and it was agreed that that would work out fine. Between 11 AM and 1 PM was the window for the visit.

By noon it was evident that something went astray--the repairer got lost or met with some mishap. But once reached by phone it turned out he wasn’t lost or anything. He was just delayed for reasons the customer didn’t need to know. But he would be there by 2, latest. By 3:30 PM another call went out but only a voicemail system answered it. The customer indicated some irritation with having to wait so long without being informed as to the new time or the cause of the delay. At 5 PM the repairer finally called saying the deal is off, he will not be there to fix the set, period.

Now there is and should be nothing illegal about what the repairer did, anymore than there is or ought to be anything illegal when people fail to keep their promises. Still, failing to keep a promise can be quite costly and in this case the cost was that the customer had to just sit and wait and wait while a lot else could have been done, errands taken care of, etc., instead.

Now with thousand of this kind of malpractice quite a lot of losses could be chalked up, not to mention the irritation. So the temptation often arise to bring in some kind of law enforcement.

But the customer here was, in effect, asking for the mess since there was no reason to just accept the repairer’s word in the first place. And even if that was all that was convenient, there is still some kind of recourse through an outfit such as the Better Business Bureau. So, clearly, brining in any kind of legal authority would be (a) unjustified and (b) impractical.

There are zillions of these minor mishaps in commerce, often easily seen as the fault of one or another party to a verbal deal. And that is to be expected, after all, in multilayered commercial relations, where tripping up is possible on so many fronts. Nor is this the case only with commerce! The way to cope here, however, isn’t to empower government officials, who are themselves just as capable and even more likely to misbehave as are the parties to all the deals that are mismanaged.

The customer in the above case cut the losses and went on to get service elsewhere. And that is just what these minor or even major business ethics infractions need, not some bureaucracy that is teaming with busy bodies who pretend that they can rectify matters in these kinds of instances and even far worse ones, despite being way removed from the cases and needing to pay attention to their own problems. (This is the gist of what James Buchanan’s and Gordon Tullock’s public choice theory teaches!)

Sometimes those who defend the free market--or freedom in general--overstate the promise of these, as if perfection would always emerge from free men and women going about their affairs without government intervention and regulation. That promise is unjustified and is due mainly to the fact that many economists who support free markets do not believe in objective values, in anyone being able to tell right from wrong, good from bad. It’s all subjective, they believe. And then, of course, nothing wrong can happen so long as people act freely and interact voluntarily. But this is a very mistaken idea.

Freedom does not promise perfection by a long shot. But those who insist on perfection are themselves being irrational and fail to realize that bringing in governments just makes things worse, in the main. That’s because governments use coercive force from which human affairs very, very rarely benefit!

Catering to Altruists

Tibor R. Machan

In a speech presumably addressing “the Muslim world,” President Obama tried to be quite critical of American culture while making hardly any mention of some of the Muslim World’s outrageously immoral legacy. Let me for now not focus on how accommodating Obama managed to be toward the Muslin countries, many of which make no bones about being, for example, officially misogynous and awfully crude about punishing so called criminals. Nor is it worth discussing now how Muslim countries treat homosexuals. While America the terrible, the one Obama appears to believe is in constant, relentless need to apologize for itself, is always put on the defensive, the Muslim world seems to be getting a pass from Mr. Obama even regarding its most barbaric practices. It is really annoying to have the president of the United States of America carry on this way.

In this speech Obama said that as president of the USA it is his duty “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear” and that “Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.”

But wait just a minute. Sometimes stereotypes are actually accurate, especially when they are about people in a very homogenous society. It was not altogether insulting when during the Third Reich people formed a very unfavorable image of Germans as such. Sure there were exceptions but as a rule the Germans were then a very disagreeable, ugly lot. Sitting by and even taking active part while 6 million Jews are being exterminated by one’s leader--Fuehrer--lends itself to people thinking badly of you, of all of you, in fact. So sometimes stereotyping makes very good sense.

Just think of how often the early European immigrants to the Americas are now seen as vicious invaders who treated the natives with nearly universal brutality. Is that some “crude stereotype”? Or maybe it is in fact the truth, generally, with only occasional significant exceptions?

Then consider, also, what Obama thinks is a nasty stereotype of America, “a self-interested empire.” To start with, empires have no selves--they are not individual human beings, no collective entities. Empires consist of some rather few rulers in a country, ones who take advantage of their position to bully others around the world. Often this bullying is anything but self-interested--most often it is perpetrated as an intensely altruistic mission, one aiming to export only good thing to other lands. It is usually such altruism that leads to the policy of building empires, even if some elements of empire building do flow from a country’s rulers’ interest to benefit themselves.

Then there is the plain fact that America is not being stereotyped when understood as a country that welcomes a certain kind of self-interest on the part of its citizenry. After all, the American Founders were very fond of everyone’s right to the pursuit of happiness, something that can properly be regarded as selfish. I for one make no secret of my desire to live a happy life and, thus, to be significantly selfish, though not to the point of intruding upon my fellows, ripping them off, demanding that they live for me, something many altruists appear not to mind doing.

That, by the way, is what’s so disingenuous about altruists--they advocate that other people think not of themselves first but of them! Just a pretense at generosity, then, not the genuine article which is actually the feature of those who seek happiness and are glad that so do others!

When I was ready to escape Europe, especially communism, a major reason was that in the West and in America, especially, there appeared to be a public policy afoot based on the belief in everyone’s basic right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--all rather selfish things, if you ask me. A country that makes this its official public policy rather than some phony “ask not what you can do for yourself but what you can do for your country,” is truly user-friendly for its population. And so I gladly accept that stereotype about America, despite our current president’s cavalier belittling of this aspect of the country.

Finally, for now, why is it the president’s job to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam or America or anyone else? Is the president our moral guide? Is he our parent whose job is to cultivate ethics in their children? Not at all--he is the presiding officer of the federal government, period.

It is pathetic how perverse an idea of political leadership guides this new president. He should back off already.

Politics as Fantasy

Tibor R. Machan

It began with Socrates and his pupil Plato who in that world famous dialogue, Republic, set out to discuss human excellence. In the process Socrates used an analogy, the perfect or ideal society. It was easier to study than the individual human soul. (We do this when studying chemistry, for example, and we use huge plastic balls to stand in for atoms and such, tiny entities we cannot study directly.)

One point Socrates is supposed to have made, according to Plato, is that this ideal society they sketched wasn't meant to be some blueprint for people to try to implement. It was more like a model and was supposed to play the same role, as a means to emphasize what's important to keep in mind as one thinks about politics. For example, while Socrates spoke of a philosopher king, that was to stress the importance of human reason in forging policy not the need for some actual super-person, a king.

But that point has been widely misunderstood for centuries--and indeed there is some ambiguity in the dialogue, so disputation on it is to be expected. Too many folks have taken Socrates and Plato to have wanted us all to strive to implement an ideal society. Since, however, their purpose wasn't that at all but ultimately to sketch how human beings should live, what should guide their conduct--namely, careful thought one would carry out sometime (maybe way) before the conduct in question--the numerous attempts to implement the ideal society had to fail.

Indeed, some very sophisticated students of Plato's works defend the position that the main teaching of the Republic is that politics can have only a limited function in making life good for people. What they need to do is to direct themselves--their own lives and those of their fellows who will consult them--thoughtfully and not wait for some king or government to figure things out. The capacity of politics to do good is very minimal by this account.

If this is indeed the teaching of Socrates and Plato, it oddly anticipates the teaching of the American Founders. They also believed that human happiness or success in life must be an individual and social but not primarily or even mainly a political feat. Which is why they wrote that government's role is to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of our happiness, nothing more than that. But this lesson has been rejected by too many people since time immemorial. They keep seeking total salvation from politics and we are back to this again, with the leadership of President Barack Obama. He apparently shares the ideas of The New Republic magazine's erudite modern liberal columnist, Leon Wieseltier, who just recently wrote that "contrary to what [Americans] have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government...etc."

This kind of thinking is extremely hazardous. It exemplifies the valuable but often forgotten cliche, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." It does this with nearly the same tendencies in matters of politics as did the efforts of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and a host of others throughout human history who wanted to implement the prefect plan.

By aiming to do everything for us, by pretending to have the answer to innumerable questions, Mr. Obama is facilitating the ruin of the great project of the Founders, as well as of Socrates and Plato, namely, to restrain oneself when assigning tasks to governments, to bureaucrats, to politicians and to all their eager beaver little helpers at prestigious universities and publications.

Not unless we return to heed to teachings of those folks who knew how limited the capacity of politics is for improving on human life will we have a good chance at a decent life and society.

Is Judge Sotomayor's Tolerance of Bias Shocking?

Tibor R. Machan

Just after President Obama selected her as his nominee for the seat opened on the U. S. Supreme Court by the retirement of Justice David Suiter, some statements came to light that seemed to call into question Judge Sotomayor's loyalty to judicial impartiality.
As reported all over the media, the judge made the point once, in 2001 speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging." No, she didn't say it should or it is a good thing that it will but that it will, in fact, make a difference. She had also said, that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Of course, such an attitude about making decisions on the U. S. Supreme Court--or, indeed, on any court of law--is objectionable or would be if someone where to champion being seriously swayed that way in applying the law of the land. Yet, is it objectionable if one states that one's sex or ethnicity is going to make a difference?

Many people in the fields studying human judgment hold this view. Recently a guest speaker at Chapman University's research center in experimental economics, Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, gave a talk titled "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences" in which he argued that not only is bias inescapable but it's a good thing from the point of view of epistemological efficiency. In plain terms this means that human beings are better off when quite often they rely on their biases as they judge the world and their fellows around them. Part of why this may be so is that it's impossible to know all the relevant information pertaining to an issue; so relying on certain habits of mind formed by one's past experiences--which gave one a bias or prejudice, though not necessarily an irrational one--is unavoidable and valuable. It is a mistake to believe, this thesis suggests, that anyone can be totally impartial when making significant judgments about the world.

So when Judge Sotomayor tells us, in the spirit of full disclosure and based on what contemporary psychology and epistemology teach, that someone with extensive experience of a culture and the people in it is probably more likely to reach more reliable--"better"--conclusions than someone who is utterly unfamiliar with these, she is saying something pretty simple and true. Yes, it may sound to some like excusing some kind of ethnic bias but it need by no means amount to that. And in the case of Judge Sotomayor, who in the very same talk she gave at UC Berkeley Law School--used to be called Boalt Hall--also insisted that every effort should be made to leave one's personal (including political) preferences outside the court room, making mention of what appears on any fair reading a simple attestation of a fact should not be taken as a grievous professional fault.

A scholar I respect a great deal compared the admission of bias on the part of Judge Sotomayor to such an admission by other professionals whose skill is vital to the performance of their tasks. This scholar noted that if Judge Sotomayor were a brain surgeon or some other medical specialist, there would be no mention of empathy as any sort of professional qualification.

Yet even in the field of medicine we are often concerned with "bedside manners"--which boils down to what are called people skills--on the part of healthcare professionals. I can personally testify that when a doctor who is working to improve one's health treats a patient with total indifference, as if the patient were some kind of inanimate object rolling by on a conveyor belt instead of a human being with concerns and fears and such, this is not welcome and I can only assume that in the evaluation of such a professional it would make a difference--though by no means substitute for professional, skill, competence, or excellence.

I am no expert on who is or is not qualified to sit on the U. S. Supreme Court but I suspect that some of the reservations I have encountered in the media--voiced by various conservative commentators and even legal theorists--is something of a reach. I would be much happier if the dispute about Judge Sotomayor focused on her legal proficiency and not on her perhaps not to well expressed concern about showing a deep understanding of those standing before judges across the legal landscape.

Do All of us Expect to be Millionaires?

Tibor R. Machan

Sunday is the day when even profit making broadcasters must do service or pro bono work. And this mostly consists of broadcasting programs misleadingly labelled "public affairs." (I say this because none of these programs is actually about what matters to everyone, to the public, but only to one or another special interest group and, mostly to bureaucrats and their groupies.)

On May 30th there was such a program on ABC-TV's Los Angeles station, KABC, called "ABC7 Presents: California's Financial Crisis." I took in some of this but, believe me, it is only worth your time and effort if you need to write and talk about such things professionally. Sure, just a bit of it would probably benefit some viewers since they would witness just how inept most of these folks are. That might lead them to start reassessing their own willingness to rely on such people to give leadership to anything that's of concern to them. They show no skills that would indicate any such qualification, I assure you.

But some of what these folks say can serve as points of reference as one embarks on learning about how government is administered. What kind of thinking goes on in the minds of such folks? And does such thinking give any indication that they will be wise and virtuous enough to be California's rulers? (Yes, I said "rulers" because that is what they do vis-a-vis the rest of us, lay down and enforce thousands of rules they pretend will set things right.)

Take, for example, some comments made by Laura Chick, California's Inspector General. But before I get to that, just consider this woman's title: Inspector General! Is that an office anyone ought to hold in a genuinely free country? I think the answer isn't difficult to arrive at.

Ms. Chick was laying out her very original insight that greed is the source of our troubles. Then she added this gem about what brought on the current financial mess: "We all were planning to become millionaires." No data provided, not even some unofficial survey about what people want when it comes to their economic lives. Nada, just an unsupported, reckless announcement about us all.

Sure, there may be some people whose aim in life is to turn into millionaires, most likely, however, the bulk of those who do become millionaires--and I do know one or two such people--did not and still do not have being a millionaire as their goal. They wanted to do well professionally, running a business or working in an interesting field, and the matter of their anticipated earnings and wealth came later. For those who are in the wealth care profession, professionals in business, garnering a good return on the investments they make for their clients and for themselves does occupy a major focus of attention but even most of these folks tend to have numerous other aims in life, relating to family, friends, various causes they want to see flourish, etc.

It is not the case that most people are consumed with greed or, indeed, any other vice, even if virtually all of us dip into some vices throughout our lives but only out of neglect or bad judgment, not as a devotion, as Mr. Chick and her types appear to suggest. But maybe the reason they so readily ascribe greed to us all is that their idea of greed isn't being obsessive about acquiring great wealth at virtually any expense, including their integrity. No the idea of greed these people seem to have in their minds came across during this discussion rather clearly and it was a shocker.

Nobel Laureate Woody Clark--who is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute and an economist concerned with climate change as well as with California's "hydrogen freeway" project--gave the clearest expression of this peculiar notion of greed when he said that when people do not support higher taxes--as for example the majority of voters in California's recent referenda clearly did not--they are being greedy. (Sure, since most of them refuse to fund the projects he loves!) So greed means, for these folks, not wanting to hand over a goodly portion of their earnings to politicians, bureaucrats, and their little helpers to do with as these folks want but to keep it to do with as they want.

If that is greed, folks, then of course nearly every sane citizen is consumed with greed--I certainly am. I like to spend my own earnings on goals I have come to find worthwhile, including some personally satisfying goodies but also my children's education and enjoyment, as well as to benefit various charities around the world, especially when disasters strike. That is, I guess, how I manage to be greedy, according to Ms. Chick and Mr. Clark.

As John Stossel would say, "Give me a break." But I am glad these remarks were made on this serious Sunday "public affairs" forum--held, by the way, at the Milken Institute the directors of which aren't reputed to be wild about relying on government to manage our affairs. That way at least those who take the time to check out how these folks think can learn that there really is no hope in trusting them to do any good for anyone, let alone for "the public."

Education and Philosophical versus Political Correctness

Tibor R. Machan

You will know what I am after here when I tell you how much I dislike it when people talk of "her majesty" or "his highness" as they talk of various pretenders to heads of countries around the globe and throughout human history. For me such terms are like ones out of faerie tales because, well, there are no kings or queens or any such thing except in myths. In other words kings are really not what they pretend to be, namely, God's chosen leaders here on earth. As with all in-born status that places some above others not in height or even talent but in political authority--some may rule and others will be ruled--the whole monarchical idea is a lie. Yet even now one can encounter references to these pretenders, right here in the United States of America, as if they were the real McCoy! Poppycock, I say. Was it not the American Founders who participated in the revolution that demoted these pretenders, who showed that world that no one is by nature the ruler of someone else?


Of course in all of history, wherever there have been human inhabitants, such pretentious ruses and the accompanying distortions of language have been ubiquitous. It is not so much that the thought of it ought to be banned by law. No ideas should be regarded as subject to censorship, which is the ultimate objective of construing certain ideas as politically incorrect. The Pope, the Reverend Moon, Father this and Sister that--all these are titles dependent on a dubious narrative, Most of them are offices with no rational reason for them. But the idea of them all, however debatable, has to be tolerated in a free country, even if those ideas are a threat to the freedom that's so central to such a country. Yes, then, folks ought to give them all up, just as they have given up superstitions of any sort. But this has to happen through enlightenment, education, reflection, conversation and other peaceful means, not through government intervention. A free country defers to the market place of ideas when it comes to what ideas will be deemed worthy of embrace. So, for example, it should not be government that chooses between creationism and Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, any more than it should be government that chooses between one or another religion or ethics.


It is another thing, however, for citizens themselves, independently of government, to consider some ideas philosophically incorrect. Just what is and what is not will, of course, be subject to eternal disputation, especially in societies where ideas of any kind have the protection of the legal system. Even racist ideas, even anti-Semitic ones, indeed any kind of bigotry must be given legal protection and their criticism needs to be confined to argumentation, ostracism, disputation, debate and such.


There is just one big problem with this. When a country tries to combine freedom of thought and speech with government administered education there will be irresolvable conflict. In a system of private education competition among schools would take care of philosophical correctness. In some schools certain books will be featured in the library, in others they will not, and students and their parents will be able to select which they want to be exposed to.


But when government delivers a coercive system of "education"--actually mostly indoctrination, since no alternative is available to the bulk of us who have to pay for and use such a system--any selection of books, magazines, films shown in classes and so forth will amount to implicit censorship of the materials not chosen. They will be deemed as having been banned--whereas in a private system selection by the administrators of some schools and library officials will not preclude exclusion by others. It is government's one-size-fits-all approach to education that stands in the way of free inquiry.


Unfortunately, in many societies people want to mix elements of liberty with elements of coercion, as if that were something trouble free. It isn't--the courts will struggle forever with trying to square that circle. Only by getting government out of education can that matter be made consistent with the principles of a free society and fit for human beings whose minds must forever be free to think.

One Size Fits All--Not Really

Tibor Machan

The current--May 23, 2009--issue of Science News is celebrating astronomy and the 400 years of the telescope. And they are all very enthusiastic about it over there at the magazine, so much so that a guest editorial by David H. DeVorkin, senior curator for astronomy and the space sciences at the National Air and Space Museum, is featured seriously promoting the idea that “every person on Earth should look at the night sky through a telescope in 2009, as Galileo did 400 years earlier.” This was a declaration put forth back in 2006, in all earnestness, by Rick Fienberg, former editor of Sky & Telescope magazine.

OK, it is a fine thing indeed that there are enthusiasts like Mr. Fienberg and Mr. DeVorkin in the field of astronomy, just as it is a fine thing indeed that there are enthusiasts in all the sciences and technologies human beings have embarked upon over the centuries. Except for one thing.

This is that such enthusiasts seem too often to convince themselves, without a scintilla of hesitation and skepticism, that everyone else must join them in their excitement about their field. This is a bit like those basketball or baseball or tennis fans who are convinced that their sport is the tops and people who don’t share this outlook must somehow be suffering from a serious blind spot.

It is folks like that, especially outside sports--which, after all, are normally understood as but forms of entertainment and tend to amount to a person’s idiosyncratic preference--who insist that what they are enthusiastic about everyone ought to support and, worst of all, be taxed to fund. These are the people who when a new president moves into the White House have already filled the mailbox there with letters insisting that it is absolutely vital that the object of their enthusiasm gain greater and greater public funding--i. e., get funded at other people’s expense.

So as to make this palatable, these folks will insist that what they are after is in the public interest, not anything for the benefit of private individuals or special interest groups. You wonder what nudges a country toward economic bankruptcy! It is this blindness, this belief that everyone’s object of enthusiasm is deserving of everyone else’s even unwilling support, never mind whether they share the enthusiasm.

No doubt much of what such enthusiasts are excited about is not only interesting but often enough useful, at least eventually. No doubt, too, that astronomy is a great field of study, as are hundreds of others that may just now bear little practical fruit. Nor is it the case that only what does bear such fruit is worth investigation.

But no enthusiast has any right, any moral authority, to compel the rest of us to share his or her choice for what is most vital in human life, in communities, in the world. If they cannot convinced others of the merits of their field of interest, enough so that it will gain material support as a matter of voluntary consent, then they have come to a dead end, morally and politically. Going on to insist that other people’s priorities ought to be subjugated to theirs, that they may dip into other people’s resources even if not welcomed to do so, that is not mere enthusiasm, devotion to a worthy cause. That is, quite simply, larcenous, the unjust expropriation of what belongs to others.

I know that when it comes to these noble goals, it isn’t supposed to matter that each of us has his or her own agenda, goals we value and want to back. Self-sacrifice is deemed to be so elevating, even if one doesn’t engage in it of one’s own free will but at the point of the government’s guns.

But that is simply false. So the enthusiasts need to learn how to go out and raise voluntary support or turn to other pursuits that they can afford and for which they do not need rob and steal from others.

Invitation to Altruism (Again)


Tibor R. Machan


It was when I was in college at Claremont Men's (now McKenna) College that John F. Kennedy got elected president. Very handsome guy, really Camelot in spades, no denying that! But something seemed rotten underneath all that democratic royalty, at least to me. As time went by, Kennedy started to loose the halo around his scull, what with his infidelities and his rather inept political maneuverings, not to mention his detestable holier than though statism. Had he not been so tragically assassinated and thus, like a martyr, gained much unearned adoration from a great number of sympathetic American citizens, he would very likely have turned out to be a politician kind of like Gary Hart--lots of flash but little substance.


When Kennedy came out with his famous, "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; as what you can do for your country," I didn't approve of it at all. I believed then as I still do that this sentiment belonged not in a free country but a totalitarian one, in Hitler's Third Reich, for example, or in ancient Sparta. How dare anyone write off the lives of millions of human beings as having as their life's purposes nothing but service to the government (or state)?


Well, very unfortunately, we are back to this once again. The New Republic published a special insert in its June 3, 2009, issue, titled "The Forgotten Masterpieces of Henry Fairlie" (pp. 14-15). One of these alleged gems ends as follows: "Ideas in politics must sometimes go underground for a while; the time is not favorable to them. But underground they gather new energy and still work their way into the roots of the nation's life, until the people again feel the need for them. One day some new president will find other words to summon the people from their private pursuits to remember their obligations to the Union, the Republic, the Res Publica--the state." These lines were written February 3, 1986, just around the time Ronald Reagan reminded us that government isn't the solution but the problem. Mr. Fairlie makes no bones about preferring Kennedy's idea--which harks back to that of most Pharaohs and Caesars with its insidious demeaning of the value of the lives of individuals--to that of Mr. Reagan; nor did The New Republic dig up the Fairlie quote by accident. Clearly the editors meant to tell readers that now, with the presidency of the new Kennedy, Barack Obama, we may be able to reorient the country in the direction where people will swallow the myth that their lives belong to the state.


And TNR's editors are not alone. Numerous books, written by political theorists housed in very prestigious academic institutions, have recently given philosophical meat to the reactionary statism and altruism Kennedy and Mr. Fairlie champion. Peter Singer, the animal liberation activist at Princeton University's department of philosophy, is one of the most voracious advocates of altruism, so much so that he wants people to sacrifice themselves for other non-human living beings whose liberation he considers a priority! There is also Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy who believe that the state owns everything and it is by its permission that we get to use a bit of it for our well being. Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor who used to have Mr. Obama as a part time colleague at the University of Chicago and now heads up the regulatory regime of the new pres, advocates that we have no rights by virtue of our human nature but only because the government grants us some.


The era in which the American Founders' notion--that government exists to serve individual citizens who have fundamental, inalienable rights no one can take from them and which the government exists to secure for them--has come under serious attack on all fronts. It is frightening. Let us not fiddle while Rome burns, please, let us not!

Power Really Does Corrupt As it Expands


Tibor R. Machan


Lord Acton, the British historian is widely known for at least one of his observations. This is that "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Acton made this observation amidst a whole lot of insights and analyses that have gone down as the treasures of late classical liberal political thought. His most famous insight has by now become a cliche, a truth that we all know even if we fail to heed it in our daily lives and public affairs.


It is for this reason, among others, that the works of such contemporary libertarians as Professor Robert Higgs are so vital--they give substance to Acton's cliche, if you will, in such books as Crisis and Leviathan (Oxford University Press, 1989), where Higgs demonstrates with umpteen historical examples just how much governments that acquire power during so called emergencies and with the explanation--or excuse--that this power is simply needed to cope with the emergency mostly keep and expand that power after the emergency has stopped and been handled (usually without the need for the expanded powers of governments).


Most of us do not have the time and inclination to do the historical research that a scholar like Higgs makes his daily occupation despite the fact that without a solid background in the study of such history most of us become the gullible pawns of politicians and their academic cheerleaders (of which there are simply a lot more than academics who unearth the nuggets of knowledge that shows us how vicious and useless the use of power is in human affairs). We are just now witnessing exactly what Professor Higgs and some others have pointed out through most of their careers.


Take, for example, Christopher A. Preble, a former commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy and now the director of foreign policy studies at the Washington, DC, Cato Institute, whose recently published The Power Problem (Cornell University Press, 2009) revisits some of the territory Higgs has mined but with a focus on very current foreign and military affairs. The preamble to the book is itself worth its price. It is a quotation from General Colin Powell's My American Journey. Power reports that "Madeleine Albright, our Ambassador to the UN, asked me on frustration 'What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?' I thought," Powell goes on to comment, "I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board."


Albright's obscenity does not by any means stand as a rare instance. I personally attended a speech given by Irving Kristol, the godfather of the neo-conservative political movement and a powerful influence in Washington, DC, where Kristol advanced the idea that a country needs a little war now and then so as to light the spirit of its young men! And this talk was the keynote speech for the Philadelphia Society several years ago, before either of the Iraq wars got under way. (A friend of mine who has worked in the field of political philosophy and, in particular, on just war theory, told me after he heard Kristol that it was one of the very few times in his life that he was tempted to physically assault someone for what his speechifying!)


The sad truth is that the power problem is completely non-partisan and today it is President Obama and his team who are churning out rationalizations for building up Washington's arsenal of bureaucracy, with its massive weaponry given by Congress. Although the American Founders had hoped that their arrangement of power in the capitol of the nation would manage to contain the beast, in fact they miscalculated. And what was to be a bone fide free country, with a strictly limited government--limited via the Constitution and various devices of separation of powers--the United States has gravitated from being a promise of liberty for all to a promise of power to a rather large political sector.


It would be a great project to cut this power back to its proper scope and size!

Are There Basic Principles?


Tibor R. Machan


Some of President Obama's recent speeches have raised a vital issue that often lies in the background of particular policy discussions. For example, the president has made it abundantly clear that he is a pragmatist, especially about economic matters. (He does not appear to be pragmatic about waterboarding or torture, more generally!) And there is a perennial question involved here: Are there any permanent, lasting, stable principles of human life, including ethics and politics?


Some, of course, will immediately invoke God and Biblical pronouncements. But this doesn't settle anything since among human beings there are really quite a few religions and some have very different ideas about morality and politics. Which of these is to be treated as fundamental? Within each religion the answer is easy enough but when we have numerous religions facing us, how do we choose? Some answer this by talking about faith. Yet faith, sadly, varies too much among us and has the problem of not offering a common basis. Which is why there are so many different faiths. And while the sciences are often in dispute, also, at least in principle they adhere to a common method, one accessible to anyone who isn't afflicted with some malady.


Apart from religion, then, are there fundamental truths? Over the long history of human thought few principles have remained unchanging excepting very few. I am thinking here of the principles of logic. Very few people, very few schools of thought, dispute that logic is fundamental to everything. In every discipline, in every concern of ours, if one makes a logical mistake one's case crumbles. Just think of the courtroom where if a witness is caught in a contradiction, his or her testimony is immediately discredited. Why? Because a contradiction is impossible--reality will not tolerate it. A thing is what it is, no exception! Nothing can both have and at the same time lack a property or feature--it's got to be one or the other.


But logic is so general in its scope that it doesn't point to very specific information. All it says is that whatever we know, it cannot violate the laws of logic. Is there anything more specific that is stable, lasting? For example, what about the principles of ethics? Or the U. S. Constitution? Are these simply some matters that hold fast for some people but others are exempt? For example, is torture really altogether unacceptable, evil? Or is that only given American values? Are those values applicable to all human communities? Why?


The answer the American Founders and their followers have given is that the basic principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are pretty close to being indeed applicable to all human communities because, well, they rest on human nature, something that is stable, lasting in the world. Yes, there are disputes but they are all conducted with the expectation that some right answer will be found. (Consider a recent book by the Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate. It defends the idea of a reasonably permanent human nature. And consider common sense, also. After all, we still read the works of human beings from centuries ago, just as if they were working from within the very same frame of reference, with but minor variations, from which we work!)


So long as we are consider human affairs, there will be some principles that will be basic simply because we are dealing with a fairly stable part of the world. And that's so, also, with other fields of inquiry and knowledge; we may be quite ignorant about much of what makes up the world, some of it we have managed to grasp pretty well--at least when we make use of the knowledge we seem to meet with considerable success in, say, medicine, farming, manufacture, building, even child-raising!


So, yes, there are some principles we have managed to identify over the span of human history that are stable, lasting enough, so we should hang on to them unless there are very, very good reasons to change our minds. And some of these principles may be economic ones, so being entirely pragmatic about economics, as Mr. Obama insists on being, is not a good idea--it tosses overboard centuries of learning in that field of human knowledge.

Libertarianism Reaffirmed


Tibor R. Machan


So the other day I was awoken from my occasional complacency and shocked to be told that Glenn Beck, Fox TV's most recent addition of conservative commentators, has been calling himself a libertarian. Wow. That's all libertarianism needs, to have become the victim of this confusion or perhaps out and out distortion. Therefore let me spend a few paragraphs again on just what libertarianism is.


The libertarian political philosophy is defined as one according to which the most fundamental principle of public affairs, admitting of no official compromise, is that the right to individual liberty of everyone in society is the most precious value to be upheld, protected and promoted by the law. If you read the Declaration of Independence carefully, its basic theme is libertarianism, plain and simple. Everyone has basic, unalienable rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (among other, less fundamental rights). This includes all men and women who carry on peacefully in their lives, however much their personal conduct may or may not conform to a given ethical or religious code. The political philosophy of libertarianism, along with the ideas sketched in the Declaration, are what a genuine free country is about.


Libertarianism is not an aesthetics, not a religion, not a personal ethical code, not even first and foremost an economic theory. Abraham Lincoln captured this when he said that "[The American system...] has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwined itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle 'Liberty for all'--the principle that clears the path to all--gives hope to all--and, by consequences, enterprise, and industry to all.”


One of the major elements of libertarianism, especially crucial to recall when considering whether conservatives are libertarians, is that it is committed to a purely defensive foreign and military policy for a county; no aggression is acceptable by the standards of a bona fide free country. (George Washington's farewell address, in which he warns about entanglements with foreign countries, is a precursor of libertarianism vis-a-vis foreign affairs.)


More germane to my motivating point here is that libertarianism tolerates no public policies that deny the right to liberty to any segment of society, none. And it refuses to let governments interfere with people's private conduct, including their ill advised private conduct such as the consumption of anything that can produce harm for them. That's not a political project in a free society. Nor is the prohibition of gambling, prostitution, tobacco smoking when this does not involve dumping harm on others, censorship, religious heretic-ism, nothing. It is all about individual liberty.


And it is this that makes libertarianism so revolutionary, so much the advancement of the achievements of the American founders, something that altered the focus and tone of public policy throughout the world. And this also explains why libertarianism is so difficult to promote, since the bulk of humanity was raised under regimes wherein the right to individual liberty was systematically denied. The governmental habit, which is so evident throughout American society today, not to mention elsewhere around the globe, is not easy to change. Too many people hope to gain advantages in life by forcibly--though not always brutally--imposing their ideas and ideals on others. (Recently supporters of such impositions have come up with a new term, "nudging," to serve their purpose of making their version of tyranny palatable.)


No, Mr. Beck is no libertarian. But no one in a free society is permitted to force him to change his corrupt use of the term. All that can be done is to engage in that eternal task of vigilance in support of the proper understanding of the free, libertarian society. Which also shows, clearly, why libertarianism is not utopian--it doesn't promise to solve political problems permanently. The defense of liberty can never end, never conclude in a final triumph.

"Rewards" of Determinism?


Tibor R. Machan


A few weeks ago I speculated on the motives of certain researchers at UCSB's new neuroscience center, suggesting that they are there's something "cooking at some of America's higher education institutions." The wording here can imply that those involved are up to no good or something a little circumspect, even devious. Someone to whom I showed this column as I was preparing it took issue with me. writing that what is suggested "leaves a bad taste. It patronizes hundreds of legal and moral scholars, which is especially unbecoming given that many of them (including those at UCSB, whom I know well) have already given enormous thought to the issues you raise, and are not in fact refuted by your attempted 'gotcha'."


Anytime in arguments among intellectuals motivations are introduced, one risks taking a false step. First, few people know why others champion a position on some controversial topic, although sometimes one can guess fairly well. Still, it is strictly speaking bad form to raise the issue of motives. (Yes, yes, it is done all the time but still, doing it can indeed leave a bad taste.)


Of course, the history of ideas is filled with discussions that do indeed impute questionable motives to one's adversary. Most notable is Karl Marx who in fact built the ascription of dubious motives to those whose views he criticized right smack into his theories. For example, he labeled those with whom he disagreed ideologues, meaning they invented respectable sounding ideas just to hide their true motives of wanting to exploit the workers and rule the realm. (In the end there wasn't a lot else to many of Marx's "arguments" but these kinds of ad hominems.)


As to the people I criticized and charged with being up to something, well, really, I don't know but a few personally. (A most famous early one of their ilk, the late Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner, was actually after gaining control over other people by his promotion of the notion of a technology of behavior!) Yet, I believe a little caution in considering the program at UCSB is in order. After all, the bulk of those who will be spending the $10 million grant their institute received are determinists, people who deny that we human beings have free will, can originate our ideas and actions and are moved by impersonal forces such as genes, neuron firings in the brain, environmental stimuli, etc.
What, you may wonder, could anyone gain from looking at people in this way, depriving them of control over their lives?


Several agenda's could be advanced by determinism. A good example comes to mind with the late Harvard University political philosopher, John Rawls, who championed a largely egalitarian society in part because, as he wrote in his famous book, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), "The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is ... problematic; for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit." Which then suggests that those who are well off couldn't have earned it, nor could anyone actually deserve any credit for what he or she has achieved. And such a view is taken by many to justify wealth redistribution, something often deemed best left to well educated men and women in government (often fetched out of academia).


Of course the opposite position, which ascribes freedom of the will to people (normally) has its own public policy suggestions, even perhaps implications, such as that the more deserving among us should have more power to rule, to set the society's priorities and obtain the "society's wealth." Indeed, as a libertarian I am often charged with being but a mouthpiece of the rich because in a free society there would be no justification for taking from those who are well off so as to benefit those who aren't. Not that this has anything to do with the merits or demerits of libertarianism but many people still insist that such a "gotcha" move is powerful in at least discrediting someone with a given position in political economic matters.


Still, arguably considering the motivation that leads someone to advance an argument the very ethics of sound scholarship and argumentation regards it best not to bother with it. What ought to count is whether someone's position is justified, not whether he or she may by chance achieve some hidden agenda by it.