Anti-Abortion Murder or Not

Tibor R. Machan

In Wichita a trial is under way in which Scott Roeder is charged with the murder of Dr. George R. Tiller. No disputing the charege that he did the killing and the only issue up for debate is wether the killing was murder or justifiable homicide.

The main line of argument in defense of Mr. Roeder is that Dr. Tiller murdered children--60,000 of them as reported in The New York Times--and his killing was the only way to prevent further such murders. As The Times reports, “'George Tiller shed the blood of 60,000 innocent children,' Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, told reporters. Mr. Terry ... said that he was neither condoning nor condemning Mr. Roeder’s actions, but that people should remember the children."

So, then, the defense relies on the view that if there is injustice in a country, if the laws permit unjust acts to be committed, then citizens who want to remedy this may take the remedy they believe in into their own hands. I, for example, believe that taxation in official extortion by the government and all those who facilitate this extortion are engage in unjust acts. By the reasoning of the Roeder defense team, I would be legally justified in taking into my own hands the effort to remedy the injustice being committed by those complicit in taxation. If I felt the way to stop them all would be to blow up their office buildings or inflict serious injuries on tax collectors, I would have the legal authority to do this, according to the argument in support of Mr. Roeder.

Never mind for now that the belief that abortion amounts to homicide, let alone to murder, is if not out and out false then at least highly debatable. A human being is supposed to be rational animal and prior to a certain point of the development of the fetus only a potential human being exists since no cerebral cortex is present to make rationality possible. (The case becomes different with so called partial birth abortions--some of these may be homicide and even murder, some of them self-defense. The matter is not amenable to a simple discussion but even her taking the law into one's hands is impermissible.) The notion of an unborn child is a virtual oxymoron when most abortions occur--no child exists then.

But one need not enter the abortion controversy fully to consider Mr. Roeder a murderer. This is because in a civilized society even someone who has murdered another may only be punished by following due process--by being arrested, brought to trial, convicted, and then sentenced to a particular punishment. Citizens only very rarely may avoid this process and take the law into their own hands and even then they need to follow some due process measures, such as making a citizen's arrest and bringing the alleged culprit to the legal system for prosecution. This is the crucial issue for even those who do agree that Dr. Tiller was guilty of injustices and needed to be brought to justice.

If you add to this the difficulties widely recognized about construing ordinary abortions as homicide, let alone murder, then what Mr. Roeder did cannot be legally excused. No one has assigned him the job of administering justice in the state of Kansas. As I noted already, someone who considers taxation outright extortion, as I do, still must proceed by following due process in the effort to stop the policy. There are circumstances, of course, when the government's failure to administer justice can serve as a justification for "taking the law into one's own hands," but these circumstances must come very close to those of totalitarian tyrannies where other methods of making changes in the legal system are completely unavailable. And when the matter is so thoroughly fraught with disputable allegations on all sides as is abortion, then going slow on how to make the needed changes, assuming they are needed, is especially necessary.

The reason there are courts of law and trials in a civilized country is that great care must be taken when someone is charged with an legally codified injustice and may be convicted by taking his or her liberty and even life. A carefully laid out system, honed by years and years of legal precedence, serves the purpose of not turning the process into back alley jurisprudence. So even if the defense offered up by Mr. Roeder is plausible, it is unreasonable even if one grants that abortion is itself something highly debatable. Its debatability is due in part to the fact that the determination of the exact beginning of a human being--which is what the issue is in abortion, not whether human life is involved, which is very ambiguous--is a serious problem. This is no geometry, after all, but biology and ethics. One must not demand the same precision here as one can in that other, more formal, discipline, something against which Aristotle had warned some 2500 years ago.

Why the First Amendment?

Tibor R. Machan

It has puzzled me for some time why campaign contribution is considered a First Amendment constitutional issue. If I write out a check to some candidate, I am not talking, writing an essay, carrying some poster in a parade or anything that could be construed as speech or writing, so the freedom to speak or write is moot in this context. What I am doing is making use of my own money or resources and that, of course, in a bone fide free country everyone has the right to do. Like sending money to the Red Cross or Haiti's earthquake victims. This should all be considered under the protection to the right to private property. My money, therefore my decision how it will be used. Unless I use the money to violate someone's rights, there can be no objection to my use of it.

Suppose, now that I have started a company and others are voting stockholders in it and we have decided, by following faithfully the legal bylaws, to spend some of our resources on supporting some political measure or candidate. Why should this be anyone's business other than those whose funds are being used? Why, moreover, is this thought to be a first amendment issue? It has nothing to do with religious freedom, with writing editorials or books, or pamphlets that express some viewpoint. It is giving what belongs to us, the corporation--that is to say, a bunch of incorporated free citizens citizens with full rights recorded in the Constitution--to the organization. And free men and women may not be barred from doing this.

I have heard it exclaimed that corporations are not individuals with rights. But why not? Corporations are established and maintained by individuals with rights, no different from teams or orchestras. I always think of these when this issue is raised--surely those groups are composed of individuals with rights and thus when they make a collective decision voluntarily, they are exercising their individual rights. Can't see why not. And if we have some resources we have pooled among ourselves with which to conduct business and decide that some of the funds should be spent on making a contribution to some cause, political or otherwise, who in earth could have any just authority to stop us? No one.

And all this is a matter of property rights, like my giving my car to some group soliciting such "in kind" contributions (as many now are). Or giving it to some friend. When I do this I am exercising my right to private property--doing what I choose to do with what belongs to me. And if I am part of a large group like a corporation, with all kinds of internal rules establishing how decisions about using and disposing the company's funds must be made, and these rules are followed, why would anyone from the outside get to have a say about where our funds may or may not go (so long as the recipient is no outlaw)?

All the fuss about the various US Supreme and other court rulings pertaining to campaign contributions would, I believe, subside once the matter were put into the right framework, namely, the exercise of the right to private property. It is not about free speech but about freedom to use what belongs to one as he or she--or they-- see fit.

Maybe the reason this approach has been so widely ignored is that people who favor the freedom to be able to spend one's money how one wishes to do it lack confidence these days in the Constitutional status of the right to private property, a right only mentioned in the Fifth Amendment and implicit in several others that prohibit government to embark upon various intrusive policies--unreasonable searches and seizures or the like. Sadly only the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution amounts to a flat out, nearly unambiguous statement of individual rights, comparable to what is found in the non-legal Declaration of Independence. So in order to secure the right of private property despite its neglect in the U. S Constitution, supporters have decided to try to convert the First Amendment to one that defends private property rights. But this tactic has proven to be muddled and confusing and, ultimately, disingenuous.

Tennis & Luck

Tibor R. Machan

Being an avid tennis fan, it has irked me that Woody Allen appears to believe that whether you win or lose a match is a matter of luck. That seems to have been his viewpoint in the movie he made a few years ago, appropriately titled Match Point. Then more recently he wrote and directed Whatever Works, starring Larry Davis, which seems also to drive home the notion that there is not much point in approaching one's life by way of a sensible plan. No it is all pretty much random circumstances and the pragmatic attitude of, well, "whatever works" that's going to determine how things go for a person. And one need not gather the message from his movies alone--after all, these are works of fiction and maybe Woody thinks the idea has artistic merit, true or not. So as not to leave any doubt about it, in several interviews Woody has reinforced the impression one gets from his films.

Although I find nearly every work of his intelligent and stimulating, I also consider this positions he appears to be driving home to his audiences quite mistaken. And watching the matches at the Australian Open, as I have been doing these last few days, and many of them at the U. S. Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the other tournaments I try to catch year after year suggest quite strongly that Woody is wrong about how tennis matches are won, at least the majority of the time.

There is one piece of evidence for this that shows in nearly every game played by the lineup of extraordinarily talented and hard working tennis players one sees watching these matches. This is that whenever luck does appear to play a role in winning a point, the beneficiary of this luck makes a gesture of apology, saying in effect, "I am sorry that I got you by sheer luck instead of as I would have liked, namely, my better play." Why would one make such a gesture if it is all a matter of luck? If every point is won by chance, not through concentration, training and skill, why single out the points won accidentally, so to speak, for mention? If it is all equally a matter of luck or chance, no such mention makes sense.

No one in his right mind can hold that luck or chance play not significant role in how well or badly one comes off in one's life. These certainly factor in and to deny that amounts to sticking one's head in the sand. For those who believe that we are all simply driven by impersonal forces to either succeed or fail in our endeavors, the Woody Allen thesis would come in handy. It's all just que sera, sera. Never mind how insulting this is to all those who work their butts off to get ahead and whose efforts then seems to pay off. Never mind that even the observation that it's all chance or luck loses merit, even if true, since one's making it becomes also just a matter of chance of luck, not paying attention and having figured things out carefully, correctly. And never mind how destructive it can be for people to come to believe this idea, possibly leading them to give up on trying, on learning, on training and so forth since by the tenets of the thesis none of that matters, it is all an illusion.

So this is why I revisit and try to make an effort on and off to suggest elements of life that refute this viewpoint, attempting to counter it in my small ways, so that I contribute something to the task of spreading the notion that it does matter a great deal whether one pays attention, exerts effort and so on as one goes about pursuing the goals one has chosen to pursue in one's life.

Choice and Rights

Tibor R. Machan

It's about who is to choose! Our rights identify the realm of our choices, where we and not others get to decide about how things go. When rights are violated, the violator deprives the rights holder of his or her proper, morally justified authority to chose.

So often both defenders and critics of private property rights get this wrong. They contend that property rights are mostly about who gets to have something. And while that's part of it, the more important matter is who gets to choose what happens to something.

If the politicians and bureaucrats extort 40% of my earnings I do not get to decided what happens to this. I might have squandered it, yes, just as that enemy of private property rights Karl Marx argued. But I could also have done something else, such as sent part of it to a charity, contributed it to some innovation, stashed it away so my kids might get it when they grow up, or sent it to a political candidate I support. But this is just what the confiscators of my resources prohibit me from doing. They want to destroy my proper authority to use my resources and use it themselves.

Check me out. In all cases of taxation what happens is that the taxed lose the opportunity to allocate the resources that belong to them and those who tax gain this opportunity without any consent from the taxed. But why should they? Democracy doesn't justify such confiscation, nor does being some monarch or bureaucrat or whatever, only our permission would. We are supposedly equal in having rights, including private property rights. No one else may, therefore, take what is mine or yours or anyone's and start deciding what happens to it however good intentioned that tax-taker might be, however noble are that tax-taker's goals. This is why it is so important to understand that private property rights are about our choices to do one thing, another, or yet another, not primarily about having wealth, about greed or such.

But that is just what the enemies of private property rights, starting with Marx, cannot stomach--our having the opportunity to use and dispose our labor and its results. They want it! This despite all that talk about how labor belongs to the laborer. No, that is not what the taxers believe. They believe, and many of them have actually said this, that your time and labor and skills belong to society! And they, of course, must be the representatives of the people, of society.

But that is a ruse, just as when kings claimed that they are the representatives of society or God or History. No, these folks represent only themselves and when they tax you and me and the rest and deprive us of the choices our rights entail, they are extortionists, thieves, or robbers. But most of all they remove from us the opportunity to exercise free choice with what belongs to us.

Some have tried to refute these points by the fairy tale that all wealth belongs to society, the people, or even the government. Again, these are lies. Sure, our resources are acquired with a lot of support from and cooperation with others, including the lawmakers who enacted sound principles way before we were born. But that's all irrelevant. Artist, too, paint with colors that have existed way before they started to use them but these colors, once made into pictures, become theirs and no one else has the authority to intrude on what they do with it, not unless it involves the violation of another's rights somehow.

It is best that whenever politicians and their cheerleaders speak "for us" it is recognized that they are speaking only for themselves and all that talk of "we" or "the people" or "Americans" or "humanity" is meant to disguise this fact. It's time they are stopped in carrying out this gross deception. If not, they will continue to shut off our choices in life and imposing theirs on us all.

Business Versus Business

Tibor R. Machan

One can think of business as a profession, like medicine or engineering, and ask whether it is worthwhile or valuable. Should people in their communities welcome business or not? Or one can think of business as the collection of commercial institutions, such as the banks, corporations, shops, and so forth that are active in one's community.

It is one thing to oppose the former, quite another to be critical of the latter. One may well find business valuable as an institution in a human community, something to be embraced and supported, even as one considers the great majority of existing businesses guilty of innumerable types of malpractice. The same can be so with any other endeavor, such as medicine or entertainment or farming. While as properly understood all of those could be assets in a human community, their actual manifestation at any period of time could also be highly lamentable.

In America, just as elsewhere in the world, it is arguable that too many businesses are engaged in malpractice even while the institution of business, sans the malpractice, is something very much to be prized and in considerable need. The malpractice I am referring to involves mainly getting into bed with politicians and bureaucrats whereby too many businesses are actually attempting to subvert the very nature of their profession. These outfits run to Washington and other centers of political power to gain favor against their domestic and foreign competitors and thus flagrantly betray the institution of business. Of course this is not too difficult to understand, even to excuse, given that government has become thoroughly corrupt by involving itself by picking winners and losers, in favoring various businesses and disfavoring others, with special legislation, regulation and other policies that undermine free and open competition in the market place.

Consider as an analogy professional sports. If the organizations that administers the rules of a given sport were to have established as a routine practice favoring certain teams over others, if referees and umpires took bribes as a matter of course, it would be no surprise that the various teams would try to outdo each other with their offer of bribes to these officials. Or if a judge in some criminal jurisdiction established a record of corruptibility, it would be no surprise if litigants tried to approach their case not with good arguments, not with facility with the law but by way of coming up with the most attractive bribe for the judge. Those making use of bribes would, of course, be complicit in the corruption of the system but the main fault would lie with those in the administration who make a practice of selling out, of in effect betraying their oath of office.

When Bill Gates's Microsoft Corporation was being hounded by the Department of Justice for allegedly violating antitrust laws--supposedly by means, for example, of bundling its products, something that should never be deemed objectionable let alone illegal--he was reportedly advised that his practice of staying away from Washington, of refusing to fund politicians running for election, was the source of how he was being treated. In time Gates learned his lesson and began to game the system. Instead of remaining independent of politics and relying mainly on technological and market savvy, he followed the practices of his competitors by supporting politicians of both major parties running for office. By now, of course, Microsoft Corporation is there with all the others who take part in what some call crony capitalism or what is simply the corruption of capitalism. (If the sport of tennis were administrated similarly, would we call it crony tennis or simply corrupt tennis?)

One can be an enthusiastic supporter of business as an upstanding institution in a human community but at the same time be vehemently critical of how actual firms are being managed vis-a-vis their ties with politics. But the main source of the problem is how the system of government in a society makes it not just possible but nearly imperative for people in business to become corrupt so as to be able to survive and prosper.

Tipping the Scales for Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

It has been my experience that people who take politics seriously tend to want to have their idea of a good or just system of laws fully implemented. Yet these people aren't ignorant about the poor prospects of achieving their goal. Unless a society is being ruled by some incredibly powerful individual or tight knit group, the public policies and laws will be a reflection of a hodge podge of ideas, principles, objectives and so forth. Largely democratic societies are not hospitable to just some given system of justice but will routinely be a reflection of many different notions of how human communities ought to be configured.

Nonetheless, those of us who are serious about politics will not just settle for the plain fact that we cannot have exactly what we judge best, namely, that their pure system of this or that political economy will come to dominate the realm. It would require silencing or making impotent all those with whom one disagrees, something those who strive for liberty may not even consider. Because people aren't likely to be persuaded of a particular view of how a community should be arranged--something that is true even if there is such a system that has been conceived by some of them--the best that can be achieved is some kind of a mixed political order. And no such mixed system is likely to remain in place for very long because the percentage of those who favor some one way of doing things will keep fluctuating. No sooner will a population emerge with a certain number of socialists, communists, libertarians, monarchists, theocrats and whatever combination of these can be conceived, another one will replace it, one with different percentages exerting influence over laws and public policies.

Nonetheless, despite the truth of the above, it is not futile to strive to bring about the correct, proper, truly just political-economic order. The reason is that the prospect of getting things right about how people ought to live together in their communities is so vital that the mere but real possibility of its actualization makes the striving worth it all. It's a little like striving to be as healthy or fit or, especially, as good a human individual as one can possibly be. Even without the likelihood of success it is worth giving it all a try. One way to see this is to think of it as a pursuit that is worth undertaking because were it to come to full fruition, nothing much greater could be achieved. That is how important justice is in human communities, as important as moral excellence is in a person's life.

Sometimes this outlook is deemed to be idealistic or utopian, a virtual guarantee of failure. And, yes, failure is more likely than not, although even the bits of success in this or that human community, for a more or less lengthy period of time, is by no means negligible. And without making the effort to bring about a just society, even such partial accomplishments are going to be absent from most human communities. Just as one's regular exercise routine undertaken reasonably frequently will not make one perfectly fit or healthy, it will do much more than nothing. The fight for justice is similar--even the fight itself has its valuable results and if one adds the practical accomplishments that come from even a failed effort, its value cannot be disputed.

It is important to come to terms with all this in mixed systems such as those that dominate most of the developed world. Indeed, it is coming to terms with these points and following their practical implications that has made the beneficial development of that world possible. So for those who might be tempted to become discouraged with where the fight for liberty is headed just now it should be pointed out that even a little bit of progress (or prevention of regress) is significant. Yes, the statists are making headway toward re-establishing a coercively run society in many parts of the world but those who understand how destructive this is need not despair. They need to keep in mind that without their vigilance statism would be far more extensive than it is. So they need to keep it up, and not relent, ever.

Do We Need More Guilt?

Tibor R. Machan

It is a running joke, of course, concerning Jewish mothers that they relentlessly try to instill guilt in their children along lines of, "You owe me since I brought you up." Never mind now that bringing up children is something parents usually sign up for freely and it is a fair assumption that they do so for reasons of their own. There is no gratitude required when they carry out what they themselves decided to do, only if they did it exceptionally well, super-conscientiously. (My own children owe me no more than ordinary respect and some thanks for extras. The rest was all my idea!)

In times like these, when a good many of those in some parts of the globe are hit with massive catastrophes, most decent people not experiencing plight ponder just what they might be able to do to help out. Sending some supplies or money is the usual, normal and sensible answer.

Yet there are those among us who jump at the chance to indict all who are doing reasonably well in these times of confusion and uncertainty, by claiming that we owe everything to those in dire straits; that any joy we experience during these days must be denied a place in one's life since it would be an insult and affront to those who suffer and who have perished.

I was reflecting on this not just in my usual role as a student of ethics or morality but also as an ordinary person, as I am sure quite a few of us have been doing. I had been on my morning constitutional, walking past some homes in my neighborhood, and I heard laughter coming from some porches or kitchens and thought that this is a welcome sign that the world isn't quite going to hell in a hand basket, that people go on about with their lives even when some others are having a really bad time of it. And that is, I figure, just as it should be, except for some outreach with effective assistance by those who can handle it.

But I can tell you, from having read the writings of some very influential people, including academics, that that is not what some people in prestigious places would want from us all. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, for example, that "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." And academic philosopher Peter Unger wrote--in his provocatively titled book, Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusions of Innocence (Oxford University Press, 1996)--that "On pain of living a life that’s seriously immoral, a typical well-off person, like you and me, must give away most of her financially valuable assets, and much of her income, directing the funds to lessen efficiently the serious suffering of others." If one takes these proclamations seriously, one will never have any peace at all and defeat the very thing in one's own life that one is being urged to help support in the lives of others people, namely, personal well being and happiness.

The other side of the coin, however, isn't to stick one's head in the sand and pay no attention at all to how others, even total strangers, are faring. In clear emergencies, such as what happened during the Southeast Asia tsunami a few winters ago and what is happening right now in Haiti, decent human beings will take some of their time or resources and chip in not because they may not be happy without doing so but because no such individual ignores the plight of other people who are facing sudden drastic circumstances.

It would be absurd to begrudge those who are living reasonably satisfactory lives what they have in light of the fact that there are others who aren't so well off. After all, what is one lamenting but the very fact that these others are lacking in what some of us do have (whether deservedly or fortunately)? The idea that just because there are other persons who are disabled or lacking in what they would want, no one may take pleasure in what he or she does have, may have a noble ring to it but it is complete folly. It is contrary to the very point of feeling sorry for those who are in a bad way. It suggests, implicitly, that the best state of affairs would be for everyone to be badly off, for us all to suffer. Sheer nonsense!

Clearly a proper concern for the bad lot of one's fellow human beings does not entail by any stretch of the imagination the adoption of an ascetic life of one's own. Showing care for the mishaps of others cannot even be effective if one proceeds to join them in their misery!

Planners and Earthquakes

Tibor R. Machan

It is no fun to use the Haiti earthquake as an object lesson--it may take away from the first business of the day, namely, to extend one's generosity to those who have been devastated by it. Still, once one has done one's part to help, to send off ones support, there are some lessons, also, to be learned.

One of these is that the effort by governments to plan our lives, to pursue collective economic and related goals, faces yet another obstacle. It is only a reminder, of course, since the fact of which it reminds us surrounds us day in and out, never mind the magnitude of the disruption. Even the daily weather should call to mind the impossibility of massive government planning. Yet the most powerful obstacles to government planning aren't the phenomena of impersonal but certain basic facts of human nature.

Human beings are the same in only very limited respects. Yes, we all need nourishment and air and shelter and the like but even these we need in a great variety of different ways. Even that prominently promoted idea of universal health care cannot be delivered in a one-size-fits-all fashion since people differ in what can cure their maladies, what ails them, and even in how much value excellent health is to them--a mountain climber, for instance, needs to be far more fit than a columnist!

Even at the elementary levels people are very different from one another. When we factor in their enormously diverse goals and purposes and tastes and preferences, the problem of devising plans for them from afar--a national or state capitol, let alone some international center of political power--multiplies beyond imagination. Even such a widely embraced public policy as is pursued by, say, the Food and Drug Administration of the US Federal Government turns out to be absurd, given how different people are with respect to what kind of medicines will help them, what they are allergic to, what the proper dosage is that will serve them well. Not even their proper weight can be calculated without serious qualification--we have just learned, from the UK, that having a sizable rear end can be a health benefit for some!

The brilliant father of the Austrian School of economics, Ludwig von Mises, and his Nobel Laureate pupil, F. A. Hayek, along with several of their very bright students have shown in the early parts of the 20th century that government planners face literally insurmountable hurdles. If one remembers that their plans are supposed to suit millions and millions of different human individuals, not ants or bees that tend to be pretty much indistinguishable from each other, the notion that their lives can be planned by bureaucrats in far off places becomes evident nonsense. What the economist demonstrated with their sophisticated theories (and what recent history bore out so clearly) is that no one, no group of policy wonks, can figure out how to make us all prosper, how to anticipate what will be best for us economically. Only the spontaneous workings of the free market can do this, wherein the great variety of prices manage to reflect better than anything else can what it is that people need and want and how to fulfill it all by way of a enormously complex system of supply and demand.

A massive earthquake is only a reminder of what the Austrian economists taught with their research and theoretical work--the most reasonable economic system is one that lets decisions be made on the ground, among the free men and women who make the market do its work. Of course, hardly any politicians can readily admit this since they must always pretend that without their meddling in our lives we would all remain inept and helpless. But as Adam Smith and many other economists have made clear, the best plans are laid by those who must live with them, not by people in high places. Even when a disaster like that in Haiti hits, and when worldwide efforts are extended to try to lessen its blow, it must be those at ground zero who ultimately decide what sort of help, and where, is most fruitful.

Government planning is not only an enemy of human freedom but also a major obstacle to economic efficiency.

Alarm versus Panic

Tibor R. Machan

Raising star of mainstream media, Fareed Zakaria, on his Sunday CNN program GPS (Global Public Square), chided American officials and commentators for responding to the failed, near-miss terrorist attack in Detroit with panic. He based his assessment on the fact that there have been numerous calls for greater vigilance in defense of the realm and that the errors that helped the perpetrator to almost succeed were roundly lamented and finger pointing was in evidence everywhere. Falling in line with the atmosphere of tolerance and understanding, as opposed to one of condemnation and punishment, Zakaria is concerned that by showing panic, the very objective of terrorists will be enhanced. What they want, he argued, is to scare us all out of our whits. By panicking we will have actually encouraged them to do more similar deeds, even if they do not succeed in out and out murder.

There is, of course, something to Zakaria's concern but he is also overstating his point. It sounds more like he is trying to show off his low key, civilized, worldly attitude than to aim for in depth understanding. I believe it would be far more accurate to characterize much of the reaction to the near-miss terrorist attack as alarm instead of panic. The mistakes that helped the terrorist get as far as he did were terrible and while no one ought to respond to them with panic--whoever benefits from that--it is quite appropriate to be alarmed.

The various agents who should have exercised greater professional vigilance did rightly create alarm in us all and we are right, indeed, to be alarmed and to make a special effort to thwart such attacks. This imperative is especially vital given that in a relatively free country the means available for thwarting terrorists need to be confined to what will not overstep the limits of people's human and civil rights. Panic is that would ignore the limits those rights pose to public and private efforts to cope with terrorism and the failed attempts to deal with it properly. But alarm can increase appropriate vigilance and thus guide the responsible parties toward greater success in the future.

Despite his civilized, urbane demeanor, Mr. Zakaria, who not only hosts this program but is also the editor of Newsweek International, appears himself to react to this terrorist act with more sophistry than wisdom. He seems to be eager to put down all those around the world who are really concerned about terrorism and who, moreover, believe that the attitude of tolerance and understanding toward the perpetrators may very well encourage them to try more of the same. By calling those who are concerned peddlers of panic instead of people who are alarmed and wish to learn from this experience and improve the prospect for discouraging terrorist, maybe even scaring them to desist rather than try more, Mr. Zakaria appears to be more concerned with promoting a kind of multicultural, relativist view of terrorists than is justified. When one keeps stressing that such maniacs need to be better understood instead of dealt with effectively and even harshly, one lessens the loyalty to the values of peaceful coexistence among people. Instead one is saying, in effect, "Well we realize you folks have problems and laments and while we dislike what you are doing about them, don't worry, we will not assert ourselves in ways that will stand in the way of your thinking and acting."

Of course, the approach that Mr. Zakaria seems to favor is well in line with the widespread amoralism of our age--no one is responsible for malpractice, it is all the fault of circumstances and only those are guilty of anything at all who fail to fall in line with this kind of thinking.

When we keep looking for explanations of terrorism rather than for effective ways to combat it, we suggest that terrorism is a kind of inevitable disease instead of a controllable human failing. Nothing good can come from this.

Another bit of Good News

Tibor R. Machan

Yes, yes, I am desperate--I am digging into in-flight magazines for my good news since I cannot find too many in such places as The New York Times, TIME, or Newsweek. But I am a firm adherent to the Seventh Day Adventist motto, "Notice the good and praise it!" So.

In a book of hers on marriage and its benefits, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Viking, 2010), Elizabeth Gilbert outlines a view related to the nature of marriage that I find encouraging. She was impressed with a comment from the European writer Ferdinand Mount that marriage is a revolutionary act. In relation to this observation, which isn't my focus here, she has said "Put in that way, marriage starts to look less like a stuffy old institution and starts to look more like a giant social battle between the forces of good--individuals who want to follow their own hearts and choose their own spouses--and evil--the controlling instincts of repressive authorities who fear that love. Somebody who likes to think of herself as somewhat bohemian, I found that idea exciting, inspirational, and really reassuring" (American Way, January 2010, p. 58).

Think of it--the practice of individuals following their own hearts and choosing their mates is good, while arranged marriages, imposed customs and traditions (which, among other things, give rise to honor killings and such) are evil. I don't know whether Ms. Gilbert realizes this but she has a very basic point, one that in historical terms is indeed revolutionary. The rights and value of the individual have only recently become acceptable and even today they are not widely embraced but mostly scoffed at.

It has occurred to me in the past, in relation to this point, that one area where altruism is not much promoted is in psychology and psychiatry, where people are advised about how to improve their lives. It seemed clear that if a therapist spent the hour with clients or patients advising them how they ought to sacrifice their lives to others, they would soon be fired.

One needs here to consider just what altruism amounts to. As the philosopher W. G. Maclagan made clear back in the 1950s, “‘Altruism’ [is] assuming a duty to relieve the distress and promote the happiness of our fellows....Altruism is to ... maintain quite simply that a man may and should discount altogether his own pleasure or happiness as such when he is deciding what course of action to pursue.” As presented ordinarily, by ministers or priests or in fiction, altruism means ranking the policy of looking out for others as one's priority in life, as first on one’s list of moral duties. And of all professions the helping ones, such as psychology and psychiatry, could hardly follow this policy. Self-help books, too, would not be such good sellers if they preached altruism.

Sadly, however, when it comes to addressing the public at large, in political speeches, in punditry, from the pulpit an the like, altruism is the norm. Not that people actually practice it--they could not and also remain functional. But there is a lot of lip service being given to this ethical system despite how confusing it is. As I have quoted him before, W. H. Auden put the source of confusion best when he remarked on "the conceit of the social worker," which is (quoting the Revd. Vivian Foster, the Vicar of Mirth) that "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know." The problem is, of course, that basic ethical principles need to be generalizable, something that everyone can practice in his or her life, but altruism clearly isn't. And there is that other problem of how come other people are deserving of our care and attention above everything else but we, who are also human beings, are not. Why?

In any case, it is nice to learn, right at the beginning of a new year, that the altruistic nonsense has its skeptics even among mainstream writers. I do hope that all those who read the little interview of author Gilbert while flying about the globe on American Airlines during the month of January 2010 take away the important lesson her remark teaches.

Phony Righteousness

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last decade we have heard much talk about how the rights of those held in Guantanamo Bay must be protected since they are human beings and since the American political system regards all human beings as having basic rights, including rights to due process. Indeed, this has been a theme of the American Left, when it comes to how all those who are accused of crimes should be treated. It would seem, then, that the American Left is a principled bunch and judging by how vigorously its members denounce those in the George W. Bush administration for giving advice about the legal permissibility of presidential powers, such as have some of Mr. Bush's legal advisors, one would be justified in thinking so.

But then consider another area of public policy where the American Left cares not a whit about due process. I am talking about anthropogenic global warming. In this area mere probabilities, built upon other probabilities, issuing in weak predictions, surrounded by fishy methods and the like, seem not to be at all objectionable to the Left. Millions of people are going to be forced to change their lives, incur major costs and other burdens, but never mind; the American Left favors doing something, anything, about this hazard and so due process can be cast aside and mere suspicion is sufficient to implement burdensome and costly changes.

Why is it that enemy combatants are so important to the American Left that it advocates meticulous attention to due process when it comes to dealing with them but ordinary American citizens can be imposed upon big time, with no need for rigorous proof that what they are doing causes anybody any harm at all? Why is there this double standard afoot?

I should, I think, be forgiven for suspecting that there is some hypocrisy afoot here, indeed, hypocrisy born of anti-American ideology. Since the anthropogenic global warming theory imposes burdens on Americans who engage in business and the ordinary affairs of life, they aren't worth any concern when it comes to violating their rights! Why should those in American industries be treated with respect for due process when they are being burdened by increased taxes and other hefty commitments made in places like Kyoto and Copenhagen? They are Americans which is to say unworthy human beings, at least as far as the American or any other kind of Left would have it. But when people set out to murder Americans, plot terrorist attacks against them and so forth, it is quite OK to extend to them all the protections due a human being. You tell me if there isn't something rotten afoot in all this.

But is any of this all that new? Even back when the American Left was all up in arms about the way accused communists were being treated by, say, the House un-American Activities Committee in Congress, they had no trouble with besmirching all those who voiced some criticism of labor unions and groups that clearly had America in their crosshairs. But when it came to socking it good and hard against American businesses, imposing Draconian regulations on them merely because they might possible engage in in hazardous practices, the American Left--including the ACLU--did not stand up and speak up in defense of the rights of these men and women, no sir.

Right now, after the financial meltdown which was most likely caused in large measure by public policies that wanted to provide everyone with cheap mortgage rates, the American Left is promoting public policies of more onerous government regulation of Wall Street and the banks instead of reigning in the federal government's easy credit policies. And government regulation is a form of prior restraint, acting against people who have not be proven to have done anything wrong but merely might do so and is thus inconsistent with due process.

It is time to recognize that a great many American Leftists aren't consistently principled but invoke principles only where it helps their special agenda. The righteousness of those folks has to be seen for what it is, very lopsided, very selective. All that good stuff about respecting people's rights can be cast aside when it comes to the agenda of the Left, including anthropogenic global warming.

On Uniting the Country

Tibor R. Machan

On January 3rd, just after Meet the Press, NBC-TV broadcast a radio address by President Obama and while I have become nearly completely pessimistic, even cynical, about expecting anything uplifting from politicians these days--I think there could be some and have been a very few--I listened to the whole message. I never quite foreclose the possibility that people will change course, improve, gain new insights, and otherwise depart from their bad habits. Yes, the governmental habit is so pervasive that this expectations does appear pollyannaish to many of my friends, still I never quite give up hope in human beings. And there were a few elements in the president's talk that I found somewhat agreeable. It was probably accidental, I admit, but even that is better than nothing.

In particular Mr. Obama called for unity among Americans in their commitment to fight terrorism and to weather hard economic times. Moreover, the call sounded like he meant for us to stand up against the bad guys of our own accord, to volunteer to do so, to come together as free men and women. Yes, it sounded like he meant for us to take care to thwart terrorist efforts with courage, tenacity, and attentiveness of our own. And to come up with ways to meet the current economic challenges as a matter of our own initiative, to figure out ways to cope and overcome.

This kind of call makes room for both, individual and special efforts, the kind that cannot easily be generalized except for one thing--all are efforts in the right direction but using possibly quite different approaches. That is quite fitting in a free country. Trust people to figure out what they need to do to get ahead instead of regimenting them to follow a one-size-fits-all method. For some this may mean saving for others spending more, as an example. For some it may mean staying around the house, for others getting out. And so forth and so on, as many ways as there are people, perhaps, just to so long as they do make the effort to solve their problems. Urging Americans this way amounts to the sort of leadership that's fitting for free men and women.

Unfortunately so many of Mr. Obama's policies are quite different in both spirit and substance from such appreciation of human diversity. In this country perhaps more than in any other, acknowledging the enormous differences among us is absolutely indispensable to forging proper public policy. The American Founders showed this by their example when they identified the public good in America as the principled adherence to and protection of every individual's basic rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Beyond this very general idea of the public good there is very little that is really good for everyone the same way, in the same measure, at the same time.

But instead of carrying on this revolutionary tradition in pursuing the public good, the country's politicians have reverted to the ways of early European monarchs who set out to determine what all their subjects must do and forced them to do it--be this in matters of religion, science, the arts, commerce or whatnot. So when it comes to health insurance, for example, Mr. Obama and his team insist that what they cook up must be followed by everyone--so much so as to make it a matter of law for everyone to purchase insurance, never mind their individual circumstances, their age, health, goals, etc. No, instead we all have to follow one vision. And this is so with other projects as well--education, environmental policy, scientific research and the rest.

It did, however, give me, at least, a bit of satisfaction to hear Mr. Obama sound as if for once he recognized that any sort of unity in this country, one that once aspired to be genuinely free, has to be voluntary, just as the beautiful music produced by a choir or orchestra or jazz band, while a result of the cooperation of many, many individuals, must come from free choice an not from orders above.

Maybe Mr. Obama will heed this part of his message, although I doubt it.

Rights are to Act Freely

Tibor R. Machan

I do not have a right to my car but I do have a right to buy, keep, trade and otherwise act in relation to my car. Rights are what define our range of free actions. In some cases the right to act garners us huge wealth, in others, fame, and in yet others it will gain us knowledge, health and happiness.

If I had a right to my car as such, I would get to have my car even if I paid nothing for it. Rights need not be paid for. For example, my right to my liberty--to sing to smile to think to worship and so forth--isn't something I need to pay for. Nor can I lose such a right. Even if I end in jail for assaulting someone, it is because I acted, freely, so as to land me there. Sounds a bit odd but still true! It can be appreciated by considering that prisoners retain their rights to due process, representation, and so forth while they are in prison. They do not lose their rights but when they exercise them in certain ways, there are unwelcome consequences. As when one exercises one's right to liberty by getting married and henceforth is no longer free to fool around.

So those who would insist that our rights be limited are advocating that other people, usually those in government, have the authority to violate our rights, that some people be in control over other people in disregard of their rights. There is no escaping this conclusion. Those who are naively thinking that "limiting" rights will just happen, by way of some cosmic power instead of human beings who would want to control others, need to realize that they are supporting involuntary servitude, plain and simple.

Such general points need sometimes be noted because of all the sophistic and dangerous loose talk about how rights are limited, not absolute. This is merely an excuse for not respecting and protecting people's rights, for violating them at the discretion of certain citizens who find the rights of other citizens inconvenient because they stand in the way of making use of these other people for their own purposes.

For example, to claim that one's right to the use and disposal of one's property is limited to only a percentage of what one owns, in fact, is merely to offer a spurious reason to take what belongs to others and use it for purposes to which they have not agreed. Saying that no one has absolute rights to what he or she owns is bunk--"absolute" has nothing to do with this. Either one has the right to keep and hold and trade and otherwise use and dispose of one's belongings or one does not and others then are given free reign over these (and allow one some usage). If I do have a right to my resources, then when others take these from me without my permission, they are violating my rights. And that's exactly what happens when taxes are confiscated from us all. No fancy talk about no one having absolute rights excuses it--taxation is a kind of extortion: you must hand over part of what you own and ought to be able to keep, hold, trade, etc., otherwise you are going to be imprisoned or otherwise harmed. Sure, you may get some benefits from those who confiscate your belongings but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you didn't give your consent.

At this point democracy tends to come up because the sophistic, spurious arguments for these ill gotten gains never ends. So if a whole bunch of other people--the majority of those who vote--agree that your belongings may be taken from you, it is supposed to be OK? Of course not. But because democracy concerning the selection of political representatives is highly prized, this same method is used for expropriating people's lives, liberties, and property. It should not be. Multiplying the number of the criminals doesn't eliminate the crime.

These matters are not very simple to integrate with our lives in complex societies where our actions are a mixture of free and coerced, often quite imperceptibly. Who can keep track of what we must do because otherwise we will be assaulted by the powers that be and what we do of our own free will because we have decided it is a good idea? As one goes through one's life, with all the task one faces, it is nearly impossible to tell which of the task were freely assumed and which were imposed on one by governments (of which one is surrounded everywhere). And since some of what governments do can be of considerable value, those running government have an edge--they know that hardly anyone wants to give up the security offered by the police and the military, so they tend not to protest when these agencies abuse their powers. But those who notice have the responsibility to do so!

The Myth of Surplus Wealth

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last couple of decades a colleague from a famous university has challenged me about my view that everyone has the unalienable right to private property. Now this position, derived from such sources as John Locke, the American Founders, Ayn Rand, and many others in the classical liberal, libertarian political tradition, amounts to the idea that in a just human community every adult human being is free to pursue prosperity in the form he or she desires--material wealth, intellectual resources, land, items produced by humans or nature, and so forth. The right to private property is a right of action, an extension of the more general right to liberty: everyone must be left free to pursue wealth, to take those peaceful actions that could result in prosperity (although there is no guarantee that they will). And this right to freedom of action is itself based on the yet broader right to one's life. Life is an ongoing process of action which, for human beings, needs to be initiated by the living agent. We have to do stuff to live, in short. And having the right to live entails being free to do so.

Now this critic of my thinking has argued against this idea at least in cases when some people are in dire straits, in serious need of resources through no fault of their own. And that certainly can happen, although it is far more likely to when people are oppressed, barred from taking the action needed to prosper, than when they are not imposed upon by others, especially by armed governments. What he has been maintaining is that if those in dire straits are forbidden to take from those who have what he dubs surplus wealth, then they are effectively no in possession of their own right to liberty. As it is sometimes put, those without resources are effectively on bondage. They lack the freedom to take the actions that could advance their lives. And this means that although everyone has the unalienable right to life, liberty, property and so forth, those in dire straits actually do not.

In particular my critic has stressed that those in dire straits, in serious need through no fault of their own, may not be stopped from taking some of the surplus wealth of the wealthy. And this, indeed, is roughly how people justify not just ordinary but progressive taxation--the wealthy must give up some of their wealth to those in dire straits because only that way will the latter be able to enjoy their own basic rights.

I have replied to the criticism in a variety of ways. One is by pointing out that the absence of resources is not the same as the violation of rights. I have no resources to buy myself a yacht but I do have a right to buy myself a yacht and no one would be authorized to stop me from doing so if and when I become wealthy enough to do so. In other words, I am have the right to liberty to seek a yacht for myself by peaceful means, although, again, I may not succeed.

Indeed, this is pretty plain since one may be struck down by all sorts of natural impediments--disease, calamity, earthquakes, hurricanes, and so forth--for which no one is responsible and so no one may be penalized or fined for having caused them. Those who encounter such natural impediments are, well, unfortunate, that is for sure. But this does not authorize them to impose any burdens on those who have not deserved it even if they are, indeed, in a position to alleviate the hardship. They may and probably should request help, support, assistance, and so forth. They may even organize campaigns to urge that their bad luck be addressed by their fellows. But they have no rightful authority to take anything from them, not even so called surplus resources--an idea that is, in any case, vague and subject to systematic abuse. (Is my second kidney an article of surplus wealth? My second eye? My back-up golf set? My collected vintage cars?)

It isn't true that surplus wealth makes no sense at all but only the most intimate knowledge of someone could enable us to tell if that person is in possession of wealth that he or she can easily do without. Maybe the individual is saving for a rainy day, for a time when he or she will be giving this wealth away to relatives or favorite causes. Maybe such an individual is powerfully enriched, psychologically, by holding on to wealth beyond what others may consider reasonable.

Having the right to private property means, in large measure, that the individual with that right is the one who is free to decide to what purposes his or her property will be devoted. It is a matter of who is to choose. Without this basic, unalienable right one's freedom of directing one's right is undermined not by natural causes, which can impeded anyone, but by others who are at liberty to refrain from doing so and, given this right, ought to so refrain.

Impractical Pragmatism?

Tibor R. Machan

Yes, it sounds paradoxical because by "pragmatic" is usually meant "practical, workable, functional." So when President Obama made it clear last year that he is a loyal pragmatist when it comes to economic policy, he received praise from some, especially those who denounce ideology or ideological thinking.

Yet this is not a sound approach to life or public policy because telling where one should be pragmatic and where one should hold on to one's principles no matter what is impossible. If, say, one is ideological about a woman's right to choose whether to continue her pregnancy beyond a certain point, or, alternatively, whether to preserve the life of a budding human being no matter what, is that all to the good or not? Or if one opposes rape under any and all circumstances, is one being ideological, dogmatic, a fundamentalist in the bad sense meant by the likes of Professor Paul Krugman who think that market fundamentalism is something really, really bad? What about parents who insist that their children tell the truth and not lie, ever? Are they dogmatic, mindless people and is their child rearing seriously flawed?

Yet when it comes to confiscating the resources of people for various supposedly public purposes, as per the U. S. Supreme Court's ruling in 2005 in Kelo v. City of New London Connecticut, serious legal scholars claim this is wise pragmatism, a sensible rejection of mindless market fundamentalism or ideological thinking? Why is the principle of private property rights less binding on us all than the principle of the integrity of a woman's body? Why are these same intellectuals not being pragmatic about torture or child molestation, why don't they condemn those who insist that under no circumstances may anyone commit statutory rape, as crass dogmatists?

Could it be that these folks find it convenient, to their and their preferred people's advantage, to downplay the principles of private property rights? That is surely what one would think about anyone who would counsel flexibility about matters such as rape or child abuse. There is no excuse to abandon principled thinking and conduct about such practices but for some reason it is OK to accept stealing a bit here, robbing a bit there and dogmatism or ideological to oppose that attitude?

The bottom line is that pragmatism is fatally flawed. No champion of it can identify where it is permissible or acceptable to be pragmatic and where pragmatism would be something odious and intolerable. In the case of President Obama and his public policy cheerleaders they, too, have no clue when principled thinking and conduct are required and when it is dogmatic or ideological to strictly adhere to principles. No clue at all, which then gives them carte blanche about how they should carry on with public policies or even personal conduct. Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods then can cry out, but why are they condemning us for breaking our marriage wows when they break all sorts of principles? And, worse, supporters of water boarding or even more Draconian forms of torture can invoke pragmatism, saying well it works sometimes, so given the importance of getting information from the victims it would be dogmatic or ideological to forbid it. Where is the line between conduct that may follow the pragmatic approach and conduct that may not? Where is principled conduct expendable? And why there and not someplace else?

It seems that champions of pragmatism like President Obama and his intellectual supporters have a problem here and if they think that a president should lead by example, they could be guilty of providing an impossible example for others to follow. Indeed, it is an interesting question just what Mr. and Mrs. Obama teach their own children about principles--may they be tossed whenever they become inconvenient, wherever they stand in the way of pursuing certain desired objectives like bailing out banks and auto companies with other peoples' money?

Looks like pragmatism is not at all practical, the very thing for which it is often praised. It cannot be practiced consistently, coherently, in either personal or public affairs.

No Insurance at Gun Point

Tibor R. Machan

No one is as fond of affordability as I am--well, may this is wrong but I am very fond of it. That extends to insurance. My home, car, health and sometimes travel insurance would at their best be something I can well afford. But then this is so with whatever it is that I am in the market for, shoes, food, furniture, electronics, whatever. Bottom line is I like a good deal and it would not surprise me if everyone else does too.

Now and then I do engage in a little bit of charity purchase, as when I buy some wine from those who spend some of what they gain on supporting breast cancer research or patronize a restaurant because I would like it to keep going in hard times. Even the people who come to clean my house could come less often but I just hate to take them down a notch if I can afford keeping them working.

But most of the time I want to make a good deal, no charity, no kindness, no generosity unless friends and relatives are at the other end of the trade. Thus when I hear about how the government will force insurance companies to keep selling insurance to people whom the firms judge too expensive to insure, I am outraged. After all, people who own insurance companies aren't in the business so as to do anyone a favor. No, they see a business opportunity and hope that they can come out ahead, along with those whom they insure. But if they no longer see a decent return on their investment, they would, naturally, cut deals elsewhere, just as most people would (with those minor exceptions involving intimates). Not that people in the insurance business might not wish to provide everyone with good insurance whether they can pay what is needed to make this happen. We all have wishes like that but to realize them it would be necessary to impose a deal on people who have decided they would rather make different deals, with people who can sustain their provisions of the pertinent professional service.

People who work at insurance firms need to be paid so they can feed their children, send them to school, go on vacation, buy clothing and their own insurance and whatnot. And so do those who own insurance companies and invest in them--it is all for purposes of a reasonable deal. And what is and is not a reasonable deal for all these folks is not something anyone other than they can determine. Yes, some might wish to charge more than they do but if the industry is competitive, they will not be able to do this. But to have governments coerce people to take less from a deal than they can based on the free, voluntary agreements reached with customers is just plain criminal, no different from coercing a barber to take less from a client than they freely agree would be the right amount.

Yes, it is sad that some people are so ill that covering them with insurance would require the insurer to take a loss but unless insurers have agreed to do this, freely, voluntarily, no one has the moral authority to force them into such deals. Just because it would be very desirable for such people to get covered when they need to obtain health care, it does not follow at all that insurance companies or anyone else may be forced to come to their support. Life isn't always accommodating to such hopes and wishes and aspirations. No one welcomes a huge medical expense but unless one can find some generous people, generous of their own free will instead of being forced to act as if they were generous, that's the way it has to be.

One reason people should begin to get insured early in their lives is that they are less likely to need services at that point and they can get deals from which insurance companies can profit, just as they would want to profit from them when they have a need for medical care. Forcing either the provider or the provided to get into deals they do not judge to be sound for them is tyranny, not help.

It is too bad that in a so called free country such elementary points are all forgotten, especially once government enters the fray. (And in insurance deals governments keep things expensive by, for example, forbidding us to buy insurance from outside the state in which we live, a perfectly artificial imposition on us all.)

Stossel's Blues

TIbor R. Machan

John Stossel is a fine journalist with a serious libertarian political orientation. (I once worked with him on his ABC-TV Special, "John Stossel Goes to Washington," broadcast a few years ago and still in circulation.) He has just moved to the cable station, Fox Business News, where he hosted a pretty good program on the health care and insurance topics recently. Stossel and Whole Foods owners John Mackey were quite effective in laying out the case for a free market in the fields of both health care and health insurance, at least until they came up against a rabid and smart enough statist, Russell Mokhiber, who demonstrated that if you aren't fully consistent in your support of human liberty, you are going to be utterly vulnerable to the arguments of the detractors.

If you have been around the block a while trying to show folks that living in a fully free society is not only more economical but also more just than living in alternative systems, you will know that if you give even a millimeter to a statist, he or she will grab your arm and swallow it up good and hard. So when Stossel and Mackey insisted that there is plenty wrong with the prevailing approach to health care and health insurance in these United States, and that no Canadian system can compare to one based on the principles of the free society, this well prepared adversary, activists Mokhiber, stopped them in their tacks by asking such questions as, "Would you privatize the national forests?" "How about a free market in education and roads?" and "What about the public funding of thousands of parks across the country?"

Stossel may be a libertarian in the depths of his mind and heart but he is working at what is in the end still a mainstream TV network. And extending the principles of the free society to education, parks, forests, roads and the like is so way out there for most people, even those most loyal to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, taking on these rebuttals is just too taxing. And Mokhiber knew this very well and never let go of the idea--so that in the last analysis John Stossel and John Mackey were trapped in a dilemma: they either embrace a pure libertarian position in which there is no room for any wealth redistribution and public works--everything must be privatized apart from the judicial system and the military--or they have to accept the socialist health care proposals of the liberal Democrats, better known as Obamacare, as just another task the government can take over.

Stossel tried to escape his dilemma by saying that the issue is big versus limited government but this won't work. It isn't the size of government, really, that is of concern but its proper scope. Matters pertaining to the protection of the basic and derivative rights of the citizenry are the government's purview but nothing else, including parks, forests, lakes, roads, and so forth. But this consistent libertarian idea, implicit in the Declaration of Independence but not explicated by the American Founders--indeed, compromised by them when they wrote the Constitution and tolerated slavery, for example--still doesn't sit well with most Americans, including the audience that watches John Stossel on the Fox Business Network. The sad truth is that millions of people around the globe, including in America, want to be free up to a point but not completely. They will sell their right to liberty for some allegedly guaranteed security by way of Medicare, unemployment compensation, social security, etc. and so forth.

And once these compromises on the right to liberty are accepted, it becomes impossible to give liberty a principled defense. "How come you are willing to tolerate coercing people to pay for public parks and forests and Medicare but not Obamacare?" Indeed, how come. Once the principle is abridged, those who don't want any liberty at all for anyone have a clear path before them. Sure, they might like some liberty for themselves but for that all they need to be is pragmatists, just as Mr. Obama and those with him proudly claim to be.

I do not envy Mr. Stossel who I am sure would gladly go all the way with liberty but working in a more or less mainstream industry he feels he cannot do so. Maybe he ought to try anyway.

Rand and Libertarianism

Tibor R. Machan

The question still comes up, "What does Rand have to Contribute to Libertarianism?" Of course, late in her life Rand tried to disassociate herself from libertarians, whom she called "hippies of the Right." In fact, of course, what she found most objectionable about libertarians is their alleged disdain for a philosophical foundation for their political ideas and ideals. Rand was convinced that philosophy matters very much in the defense of a free society. She stressed, moreover, that in the last analysis she was not a capitalist, not an egoist, not even an individualist but, first and foremost, a champion of human reason. From this, she argued, one can infer most of what really matters to us all, including the vital importance of a free society.

Libertarians, however, tend to want to have an open door policy--they don't want to exclude people from the rank of those who defend liberty even if their defense is wrong or weak or really badly put. Be you a Moonie or Christian or even socialist in your personal viewpoint, libertarians want to extend an invitation to you. This seems only sensible, strategically prudent--it will swell the ranks of those who will support human liberty, never mind why. Yes, hippies, too, were welcome and still are, as are Mormons and prostitutes and bowlers. The more the merrier. It is quantity that matters, not quality, since libertarianism is a political movement, primarily. It needs to have its supporters swell in numbers as far as possible.

Rand, however, believed that without the best case for liberty, liberty would lose out no matter how good the numbers. No ill founded doctrine of liberty can hold up against all the attacks from the various sophists who are eager to show how flimsy the defense of human liberty really is. Today it is the communitarian, especially, who mounts a sophisticated case against freedom by first attempting to discredit elements of libertarianism such as individualism. For Rand unless a sound case for these elements exist, it makes no difference how large the number of libertarians is. In the end it is the soundness of the argument that matters most, or so she believed, because she held that human beings are rational animals and only when ultimately something appeals to their reason, will they give it long term support.

One aspect of Rand's position that has not managed to make itself heard clearly is her view that what you think isn't the result of your personal history and, indeed, this idea follows the long appreciated view of most philosophers that one ought not to commit the genetic fallacy, of judging a viewpoint by the history and origin of those who advance it. Rand is now being more and more judged, even by sympathizes such as the authors of the two recent biographies, one from Doubleday, the other from Oxford, not so much by whether her case for her ideas is sound but by reference to her upbringing or history. Since she was raised in Soviet Russia, she is often deemed to be captive of her origins. This is nonsense, of course, considering how many others who find her ideas sound didn't share her history at all. I did and that has been held against me by adversaries all my career, but they have used it mostly as a ploy since they new that many of those whom they embraced, refugees from right wing dictatorships, were not biased by their history, only educated by the experience of it. And that holds for the likes of Ayn Rand and me. But to acknowledge this would mean giving up a possibly effective weapon against our ideas!

But why do her recent biographers keep insisting on committing the genetic fallacy? I think the reason is that contemporary biographies are all written under the influence of scientism, the view that everything must be explained (away?) by means of efficient causes in a person's life--upbringing, nutrition, climate, economy (a la Marx), psychology (a law Freud), etc. To understand Ayn Rand, then, amounts to have explained her along such lines. This is what is demanded by modern (mechanistic) science (though not by contemporary science, which has largely shed its mechanist premises).

There is an important scholar of recent times who fought against such a way of understanding thinkers of the past. Leo Strauss, of the University of Chicago's Committee of Social Thought, insisted that those who try to understand Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and many other great thinkers by these means fail miserably and miss out on their valuable teachings. And, of course, they are also facing a fatal paradox: If the subjects of their study are to be understood by explaining away their thinking, then so must be the biographers, as well. And that would leave truth out of the equation completely.

On Distributive Justice

Tibor R. Machan

For a long time political philosophers and such were interested in identifying the nature of justice. It started with Socrates and lasted to when John Stuart Mill did his work, although by that time there had been talk of this thing called distributive justice. By now most political theorists dwell on little else.

Yet I have never quite understood why the idea has become so prominent since it is clearly question-begging. Distribution is something done by people who have things to distribute, who are legitimate, rightful owners of what may be wanted from them about town. Money, mainly. So in our day government takes money from people--the resources they have made, earned, found, won or whatever--and hands it to some other people (after taking a good cut for itself). How the distribution goes may be judged as arbitrary, fair, unfair, corrupt, or, just. But all this couldn't even begin if it were determined that the initial taking of the resources is wrong. And as I have managed to figure these matters, taxing people is wrong. That means that distributing what is taken in taxes is also wrong. Accordingly distributive justice could not be justice at all. It is at most something touched by a bit of generosity, as when bank robbers divvy up their loot among some needy folks, in what is taken to be a Robin Hoodish way (but Robin just took money back that had been taken in taxes instead of taxed people).

Why is taxation wrong? It is depriving people of what belongs to them without their consent. Sure, some people in a society may consent, by voting for it, to the taking of other people's resources but that couldn't possibly make the taking anything better than confiscation, an unjust taking because it involves coercion and lacks the consent of the owners. And this is what had been realized, more or less, when individual rights were finally clearly enough understood and affirmed by some political philosophers. Few came right out and condemned taxation because they held the mistaken belief that the administration of a just legal system required it, but it does not. They had similar ideas about slavery in various places until finally they gave that up. They should have given up taxation along with its conceptual sibling, serfdom. Both of these had their home under feudalism and other types of monarchy since in such systems the government--king, czar, pharaoh, dictator, ruler, politburo or whatnot--owns everything and thus when people live and work withing the realm, they are made to pay taxes as their rent and fees. Government in such systems permits people to live and work and charges them for this by making them serve in the military, subjecting them to forced labor, etc., etc. The benefits government provides are privileges, grants from the sovereign to the subjects. Such systems do not recognize individual rights!

Distributive justice is a weird hybrid that combines feudal or monarchical features with those of a fully free society, one in which it is individuals citizens who are sovereign, not the government. But the two, wealth-distribution by government and justice plainly enough don't mix, despite how sophisticated folks claim they do. Justice requires acknowledging the sovereignty or self-rule of individuals, with what little government is warranted existing with the full consent of the governed. This government has no rightful authority to do any confiscation or conscription at all. Its sole function is that of a protector of individual rights or, as the American Founders put the matter, to "secure [the]... rights" everyone has by virtue of his or her human nature. (In America much of this was discussed but sadly not fully applied since a bunch of perverse ideas, held by powerful recalcitrant people, needed to be accommodated for the sake of establishing a sustainable country.)

When one hears of distributive justice--or another version of this oxymoron, social justice--it is best to conjure up the idea of a square circle or worse, a free slave. Governments that have resources to distribute came by it unjustly, by seizing it from people who are the just holders of those resources.

As to how legal services might be paid for, well, that is important but the answer cannot be "by confiscating the resources of those for whom they are being administered."

Equality is Irrelevant

Tibor R. Machan

Equality is a deceptive political concept. In the hands of the American Founders it had great merit since it was based on those aspects of human nature that everyone not crucially impeded does in fact share, namely, everyone's basic rights.You and I and all the billions of people in the world and throughout human history are and have, of course, been quite different from one another while we also possess our basic rights to life, liberty and property.

In certain respects the difference among people stems from the plain fact that human individuals are at a certain level utterly unique, irreplaceable. This is why no substitution can be made for a deceased friend, a spouse, a member of one's family. Once you grow close to someone and know him or her intimately, there is just no one like that person. Which is one reason the deceased are mourned so much--they will be missed because no substitution for them is possible.

Human beings are in some limited respects the same but in most respects different. And this is further complicated by the fact that some of their differences as well as some of their similarities are innate, just a matter of what they were born to be, so to speak, or accidental, due to circumstances over which they have no control at all; other differences and similarities are the result of their choices, be these good or bad ones, by they trivial or morally significant.

So both equality and uniqueness are part of normal human life. The results of this can be extremely wide-ranging and the last thing that would be sensible to expect is that some pattern of equality, be it economic, social, religious, ethical, medical or anything of this sort can be implemented or should be attempted. The Procrustean temptation is an incredibly hazardous one. Its sources are many, some benign and some mendacious but all to be guarded against.

For example, often people find a way to carry on in their lives, including how they drive, bring up kids, cook dinner, arrange the furniture, choose a career, invest in the market, etc., and so forth, and this often suggests to them that others need to follow suit. Wouldn't the world be just swell if everyone followed one's example, seeing how it has been so fruitful for oneself? But, of course, different folks, different strokes, more often than not. Different people will enjoy different sports, entertainment, tourist attractions, cuisine and all. And even more importantly, they will actually be better off pursuing different objectives, ones that really suit them well but not their fellows, certainly not most of the time. Indeed, this is well borne out by the fact that when people recommend things, they can usually do a creditable job only when they do so to someone they know very well, at least within the sphere of the recommendation. "You just have to see this movie or go to this store or eat at this restaurant or take your vacation here, etc., etc.," said to a total stranger tends to be quite risky, even reckless.

On the continuum from what is universal, applicable to us all as human beings, to what is only right for a given individual human being, there is a vast array of options suited all the way from what suits millions to what only some here and there and, finally, to just a solitary single one individual. This is what the American Founders, guided by their study of political history and thought, especially the ideas of John Locke, suggested, which is why their claim that we are all created equal had to do with "equal with respect to having certain basic rights" and not with equal opportunities, equal conditions, equal consequences and the like. Equality under the law, of course, is what their idea clearly implies but not other kinds of equality promoted to much these days.

Yes, Virginia, there are those very influential, even powerful ones, who want us all to be engineered into one type, all to be serviced by the same public policies ("options" is a really insulting term since they are not optional for citizens to, say, pay for!). Yet, what a just society is characterized by is that its principles are suited to an incredible variety of citizens, all carrying on as they choose, provided they do this in peace, without invading others or their realms. Egalitarians would toss all this out to institute their one-size-fits-all policies, except of course for one element, namely, that they alone should run the show, no one else. Sharing power isn't on their agenda, especially sharing it with everyone by letting everyone enjoy sovereignty.

Finally, in answer to the claim that equality is necessary to stop envy, I wish to quote Nobel Laureate Edmund S. Phelps:

"The idea that ordinary people are anguished by the thought that other people have extraordinary wealth is also cultivated in fashionable circles without the presentation of any evidence. Most people are practical enough to see that when, say, they have to go to the hospital for tests, what matters is whether the right kind of diagnostic machine is there for them, not whether there is a better machine for others somewhere else."