The New York Times Meets Property Rights

The New York Times meets Property Rights

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last several years I have subscribed to The Sunday New York Times, mainly because it came with accessibility to its daily online editions.  I like to read the Op Ed pieces and editorials and chime in here and there with some sanity where the paper lays out its loony leftists ideology.  For example, I found it valuable to oppose the doctrine that people are entitled to a great variety of free goods and services, i.e., goods and services others must pay for.

When President Obama’s health insurance scheme became the subject of widespread public discussion, I was committed to pointing out how this was going to be yet another case of trying to rob Peter so as to benefit Paul, by whatever obscure criterion of eligibility.  I was targeting my points at Paul Krugman and others who served as Mr. Obama’s ideological cheerleaders.  But not just at Professor Krugman but at all those who promoted policies that would chip away at human liberty, in more or less Draconian ways.

Well, suddenly The New York Times no longer makes it possible for online readers to offer comments easily--to do so one must climb over several walls, email letters to the editor, etc., etc.  And reading the comments of other readers is no longer possible (or if it is then it is by no means as simple as it used to be).  In other words, The New York Times is making changes, most likely to save money or to avoid having to deal with contrarians among its online readers.  I don’t actually know what lies behind the changes but I do not like them.  

However, and this is a notion that the editors and publishers at The Times probably do not appreciate at all, the paper belongs to them and they have the authority--based on the right to private property--to institute the changes however much I and very probably a bunch of other readers do not like them.  We are not entitled to the provision of various services from The Times, such as accepting comments from readers, notifying us that the comments have appeared online, etc., and so forth.  The paper belongs to them not me and others whose desires are no longer being fulfilled as they used to be.  Something has changed at The Times and the publishers and editors there have the right to make the needed adjustments just as they see fit.  They do not owe me and others like me a platform for expressing our dismay with what appears in the pages of the paper.  Yes, we may wish for this very much.  We may even have become habituated to offering up our ideas for the editors and readers to ponder.  But that doesn’t entitle us one whit to being given room in the pages of The Times.

Only, the publishers and editors and most Op Ed contributors to the paper just don’t get it--they are exercising a right that they do not recognize for other people, such as those who do not want to contribute funds the Mr. Obama’s health care budget or who do not want to follow mandates to which they gave no consent! These editors and publishers just decided, unilaterally, to close me and thousands of others out from the forums they could continue to keep open to us all.  And they probably don’t even realize that this right, this authority they have to do so, is entirely inconsistent with their welfare statist public philosophy. 

No, I and others like me do not have a right to gain entrance to the pages of The New York Times, in print or online.  And the folks at The Times know this well and good and act accordingly.  They didn’t need my permission to shut me out.  It was their right to make that decision.  

Which is central to human freedom, based on the right to private property, a right The Times doesn’t much like and certainly doesn’t defend in its editorials.

What's the Fuss About those Uniforms?

What’s the Fuss About those Uniforms?

Tibor R. Machan

        Senate majority leader Reid expressed outrage about the fact that the uniforms American athletes were going to wear at the opening ceremonies for this summer’s Olympics in London, UK, were manufactured in China. No, he wasn’t complaining because the places where they were made employ minors or violate other standards of proper business.  No, he was fussing about the fact that making the uniforms was outsources.  And now it appears commitments have come forth from Ralph Lauren, who has the contract to produce the uniforms, that outsourcing the task of making the uniforms will be stopped.

        What insanity. Who makes such uniforms competently and least expensively?  That is the question, not where they are made.  Commerce isn’t about nationalism but about cutting good deals.  How many of us wear garments, use gadgets and devices, rely on various articles of clothing such as buttons and fabrics, accessories such as watches, glasses, and so forth, made who knows where by who knows whom? Why is this important if it doesn’t involve any kind of forced labor?

         Dissing Mr. Lauren for finding a manufacturer of the requisite uniforms in China or anywhere else where a good deal could be struck is vile.  That is just what he is supposed to do when he is contracted for a job like this one.  When domestic politics focuses on such perverse issues, how far are we from instigating trade warfare?  Senator Reid was sounding like the United States of America is at war with any nation in which there are firms that produce commodities that fulfill the needs of companies producing goods and services for American consumers?  Next Senator Reid will call for declaring war on any country that doesn’t fall in line with his standards of acceptable trading partnership. The Majority Leader went so far as to declare that the Olympic committee should "put [the uniforms] in a big pile and burn them." (And, by the way, this isn’t a partisan issue--several Republicans joined Senator Reid in expressing hostility to freedom of trade which made Mr. Lauren’s decision possible.)

         What kind of neanderthals are these people who want to take this “buy only American” to such extremes?  Not only is the idea absurd in the 21st century but it amounts to out and out bigotry.  What is wrong with foreign working people who can produce perfectly acceptable uniforms for American Olympic athletes?

          America is supposed to be a culture in which persons from every other culture are welcome to make contributions to science, athletics, fashion, etc., regardless of race or national origin.  So what’s with the Senate majority leader and other politicians who attempt to stir up bad blood based on an elementary cosmopolitan feature of commerce?  Lay off the bigotry already!  It is the source of the sentiments that used to lead to wars between countries.

The Open Secret to Affordability

The Open Secret to Affordability

Tibor R. Machan

For a little while I was mystified about what would make the health insurance scheme that’s at the heart of Obamacare affordable.  I was reading about the measure all around the Web and couldn’t find much information about this.  Why would this be affordable, compared to unaffordable alternatives?  

And then it hit me--and I felt ashamed for failing to grasp it right away.  Of course!  Anything you can get other people to pay for can easily become affordable!  If my kid wants me to buy her a new car, I would normally say “Sorry, I cannot afford it.”  For our family such a purchase is unaffordable, at least now.  And that’s the story with innumerable commodities and services available on the market--most of these are just unaffordable to a great many folks.  Why? Because they haven’t got the funds to buy them at the price sellers are willing to accept.  Ergo, all of this is unaffordable.

But suppose I manage to sell a manuscript to a publisher who is willing to pay me big bucks for it--yes, I am dreaming--or imagine any other good deal I can nail down; suddenly much of what my family would like to purchase turns out to have become affordable.  That would be the kosher way to come to afford what we want, namely, by increasing our resources through making good deals, being more productive, earning more funds than we did before, etc.

          But I was forgetting for a while an entirely different way stuff we want can become affordable.  We could steal or rob others of their funds and use these to increase our resources.  Much of what we want could become easily affordable by this means.  

          You can easily imagine some bank robber coming home after a heist and announcing at the dinner table that what his family couldn’t afford before has suddenly become affordable.  Maybe it would include health insurance, vacations, better furniture for the home, a new automobile, etc., etc.  Pronto--all this stuff has become affordable.

          And that is really the clue to what makes health insurance affordable under President Obama’s measure!  He has put together a system whereby a great many people who do not wish to purchase health insurance will be mandated to do so anyway.  This will bring down the price of health insurance, make it affordable to millions seeing that they no longer have to increase their own resources in order to come to afford it.  Instead, they can now legally dip into the pockets of others, perfect strangers whose generosity they cannot count on but who have some funds that can be taken from them, making the service affordable to those who would have to either do without or improve their economic situation in order to pay for it on their own.

          Not that this is anything new in the field of public finance--indeed, it is the routine.  But in most instance some kind of excuse, admittedly spurious, is offered why that approach is necessary.  

           I don’t know what one calls this approach to purchasing stuff in the field of public administration but I do have the words for it in ordinary English.  It is called robbing Peter for the benefit of Paul.  And that is at the heart of Mr. Obama’s health care program.  That is what the individual mandate is mostly about, namely, forcing those who don’t choose to purchase health insurance to part with the funds that it would take to pay for it.  Thus has something that was unaffordable for many people become affordable.  Easy as pie!

Socialism American Style

Socialism American Style

Tibor R. Machan

Mr. Milos Foreman is a renowned film director but not a good political economist. This is evident in his recent New York Times op-ed defense of Barack Obama from those who charge the president with being a socialist. (See his essay, “Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close” in the July 10th issue of the paper.)

When someone on the American political landscape is accused of being a socialist, the claim has little directly to do with Stalinism, a lot more with the kind of system they had in Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and other Soviet colonies, namely the phony promise of cradle to grave security and relentless government meddling in people's lives (goulash communism). Call it Norman Thomas style socialism, the kind that so many academic socialist in the West champion.

The brutality known as Soviet style socialism comes later. It is not the first step. But we get a good clue about its approach in America when one understands the meaning of a term like "mandate." It means coerce, plain and simple!

In socialism mandates are everywhere--all must be forced to live the same way, pay for the same health care and insurance, fall in line with state policy in matters of nutrition, conservation, energy usage, environmental ethics, climate change, etc., etc. Clamping down on free speech is never the first step, nor is shutting down the free press and nationalizing media. Or even collectivizing, banks, factories and farms.  (But check out Caesar Chavez of Venezuela and how he is imposing a near Stalinist variety of socialism.)

When governments start believing and imposing their idea of how everyone ought to live, how and when people's resources ought to be utilized, it's a clear move toward the harsh version of socialism but not yet the same thing; first you get the Swedish and Norwegian varieties, “socialism with a human face.” North Korea’s kind is a good ways down the road, which has a lot to do with the culture and history of the particular country involved. But socialism it is, Mr. Foreman's sophistry to the contrary notwithstanding (this coming from a refugee from Hungarian communism/socialism, not unlike the sort Mr. Foreman left behind in Czechoslovakia).

There is variety in the different types of socialism proposed and implemented but there is a recognizable unifying central theme in every version of it that Mr. Obama and his ideological cohorts share: people are viewed as belonging to society, as part of a hive or herd that needs to be driven in one proper direction.  One size fits all!

The major obstacle to it all being individualism and the free market that is its economic corollary.  If you are bent on moving the country toward any kind of bona fide socialism, start with chipping away at its individualist elements, like the liberty of a citizen to purchase the health insurance he or she deems suitable! Or not to purchase any at all. (The fact that in many countries such measures are already present means only that moving away from the governmental habit is difficult, with innumerable specialist interests resisting it.)

Sure, the idea can be driven home more or less forcefully--in America it is government nudging and the oxymoronically named libertarian paternalism, that’s embraced by Mr Obama and his lieutenants, e.g., professors Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes.  Theirs are the prudent, gentle approaches to socialism preferred by the likes of American socialists such as the late Norma Thomas and Michael Harrington, not the gulags or concentration camps of Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism (e.g., national socialism).

The Allure of Mandates

The Allure of Mandates


Tibor R. Machan

Peter Coy of Bloomberg/Businessweek is an avid fan of mandates (see his “The Case for Way More Mandates” 7/9-7/15, 2012, p. 24).  Which is to say he prefers forcing people to do what he thinks they should do rather than persuading them, kind of like what the USSR’s rulers practiced routinely.  (To mandate presupposes the capacity to impose one’s will!  And governments are usually powerful enough to accomplish that. It amounts to coercing others, nothing nicer!)

The major argument given for mandates such as Mr. Obama’s preferred way to get people to insure their health care is that, well, by getting a lot of people to be part of the system, the cost of it all will not be as high as otherwise.  And this is true for a while.  If a lot of people are forced to eat at the restaurant I prefer, prices will be lower there.  Higher demand for any goods or services leads to lower prices, indeed.

But this applies mainly to demand that is forthcoming voluntarily, not from having been mandated.  Conscripting customers and clients may appear to be economical but only for a bit.  In time people start finding ways to dodge conscription, like the military draft or the policies of dictatorships or tyrannies.  All the energy devoted to such draft--i.e., mandate--dodging and its prevention goes to waste and that itself will turn out to be very costly.
  

What is really disturbing is that some justices of the US Supreme Court buy into this obscene way of thinking.  Justice Ginsburg did recently when she wrote: “People who don’t participate in this market are making it much more expensive for the people who do; that is, they will get, a good number of them will get services that they can’t afford at the point where they need them, and the result is that everybody else’s premiums get raised? It’s not your free choice just to do something for yourself. What you do is going to affect others, affect them in a major way.” In other words, if one doesn’t purchase health insurance, others who want to buy some will have to pay more than they would if one did so!  And this applies to everything, so we may then assume that Justice Ginsburg prefers a market in which people are forced to make purchases of goods and services she would like to be cheaper than if people made them voluntarily.

Conscripting customers is what she is proposing and what cheerleaders of mandates, like Peter Coy of Bloomberg/Businessweek, advocate.  At bottom this means that the choices of recalcitrant citizens will be sacrificed to Justice Ginsburg’s choices.  Which is tyranny, plain and simple--some folks in society get to lord it over other folks.  For a justice of the US Supreme Court to advocate such public policies is out and out treasonous, given that the USA is supposed to have a government devoted to securing the protection of the rights of its citizens even from mobs that would wish to violate those rights.

Respecting the rights of others can always be construed as something costly.  Your private property rights in your home require me to walk around when I want to get to the other side of it!  If you refused to clean my front yard, I will need to hire someone to do it.  If an airline company doesn’t provide me with free air travel, I will need to purchase the service.  If farm workers refuse to work without pay, those wanting their services will have fork out wages.  And on and on it goes. 

So the allure of mandating services from others has to be resisted in the process of respecting their rights.  This is supposed to be elementary in a free society.  And the laws of such a society must not yield to such allure, lest it violates, betrays the principles of liberty on which it is supposedly founded and the securing of which is its government’s central task!

It is true enough that mandating that citizens--who used to be “subjects” when their rights were ignored--serve others and the goals that others consider important (indeed, may even be important) has been the norm throughout human history.  The ideas of individual rights, to one’s life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc., have only recently become prominent in considering how public policies are to be forged.  Kings, pharaohs, czars, and others who insist that it’s their way or the highway never found the regime of individual rights appealing and still do not--just check the news from around the globe, including the country in which you live. 

But as the saying goes, the price of liberty, that most precious feature of a just community, is eternal vigilance.

Another Plea for More Statism

Another Plea For More Statism!

Tibor R. Machan

I recently read Zadie Smith’s essay, “North West London Blues,” in The New York Review of Books, and found it an insulting, devious, and roundabout way of trying to justify statism. The quote from the late Tony Judt tells it all. Here is what he said:

“We have freed ourselves of the mid-20th century assumption--never universal but certainly widespread--that the state is likely to be the best solution to any given problem. We now need to liberate ourselves from the opposite notion: that the state is--by definition and always--the worst available option.”

Yes, finally humanity has made some spotty progress away from statism, from relying on government coercion to try to solve problems but of course those who love power--always for the greater good, naturally--are unhappy with this. Ms. Smith knows that respecting and protecting individual rights would be major obstacles to the statist ambition to do "for us" what she and her hero in this essay (Helen, the owner of a bookstore that seems to rely on state funding) believe “we really want but don't know we do.”

By implication, since we don't know it, we must be made--forced--to accept it from those like her and all the supposedly well intentioned petty tyrants who would dish it out with the aid of the power of government. OK, so at times some of us don't know what is best for us; in that case, if it is important enough, we need to be convinced, not coerced. Anything more is a non-sequitur! Exactly why some group is privileged not just to know some of what is best for us but also to coerce us to follow their guidance is quite unclear (unless we are children or invalids and they are our parents or guardians).

Just because now and then some others among us know better how we should proceed it doesn’t follow at all that they may assume the role of our parents and disregard our own choices, be they wise or not. So long as what we choose to do doesn’t encroach upon anyone’s rights, we must not be intruded upon. We may be advised, implored, urged, nudged, and so forth but only when we consent will our compliance be justified, an instance of having seen the light and taken the proper course of action because of it. Statism is vicious paternalism, the treatment of the citizen as an infant. None of this means that everything the petty tyrants propose is silly or vile, only that they must leave it at proposing what they deem wise and just instead of imposing it.

Who are these folks anyway to take themselves as humanity’s drill sergeants? Yes, there might now and then be an emergency that justifies pushing others around a bit but it must never be allowed to become routine, the way of the world! That is the reactionary politics of feudalism, mercantilism, monarchism, and so forth, not the politics of free men and women.

The idea that Ms. Smith and her bookstore manager Helen are authorized somehow to compel us all to do what we should--be it reading books or promoting various left-liberal causes--is out and out misanthropic. What they may provide is education, advocacy, some imploring, but never any coercion however much they are convinced that we need their forceful direction. It never follows from the fact that someone knows what’s best for another that this other may be regimented in line with that knowledge. At most what follows is that advice may be given or a peaceful movement be initiated!

The best evidence of civilization is that people treat each other as in possession of the capacity to reason and then to take advantage of that capacity, rejecting all the temptation of the barbarians to compel one’s fellows to do as one deems right. Only defending against those who use coercion upon us justifies resorting to force, not even the superior knowledge of how we all ought to act.

Acceptable Selfishness?

Acceptable Selfishness? Tibor R. Machan A big debate among business ethics professionals--teachers, consultants, etc.--concerns who should be the beneficiary of business management, share (or stock) holders or so called stakeholders. Ordinarily it is the former who are owed service from managers since they were hired to provide service to them. It’s a matter of delivering on a promise, plain and simple, no different from when one hires other professionals, such as those providing health care or car repair. But in the academic world of business ethics there has been a major influence from all sorts of people who want business to become public service professionals. It is called the corporate social responsibility or stakeholder movement and the pitch is for business professionals to become public servants like bureaucrats are supposed to be. (But a bit of reading in public choice theory will clear up this matter!) Somehow if people in the business world strive for profit, for prosperity, they are supposed to be failing to do the right thing. Not that they are not supposed to help make the firm prosper but that’s not supposed to be their primary professional purpose. That is what many in the business ethics academic community advocate. But contrast this with how many look upon the task of other professionals, especially artists or performers. A comment by the millionaire pop artists Paul McCartney bears on this issue directly. Here is what he is reported to have said: “A lot of critics go: ‘Why is he doing an orchestral thing, or a children’s song, what’s gone wrong with him?’ But this is my life, so I’m doing these things for me. If other people like them, I am really happy, that is the ultimate. And if they don’t, well, you can’t please everyone. As an artist, you just keep plugging on.” (THE WEEK, June 23, 2012, page 10) McCartney’s reasoning is generally not deemed to be objectionable, not just regarding what pop artists do but regarding artists as such. The most humble as well as the most ambitious artists are widely appreciated for doing their own thing, following their muse, etc. No one is talking about social responsibility when it comes to their work, although some of them do, of course, engage in charitable and philanthropic projects. But as far as their artistic works are concerned, it is taken to be a very selfish undertaking, done to fulfill a personal, private agenda and not to serve anyone else. It is mostly in totalitarian countries that artists are drafted into public service, like the Third Reich, North Korea or the former Soviet Union. Why so when those in the business community are always hounded about serving society, humanity, the community, etc.? Why are the personal, private objectives of artists deserving of respect but if people in business pursue their own goals, they are accused of being selfish in that sneering way--how dare they serve their own interest? Is all this just a kind of careless hypocrisy or does it indicate some sort of bifurcation in how we are supposed to live our lives? When we select a profession that pursues the creation of beauty, then it is just peachy to ignore the interest of others, but when we pursue our prosperity we are not doing the right thing. But why? What is wrong with serving our economic muse? After all, wealth creation--what I like to call wealth care--is quite as worthy a pursuit as, say, health care/creation, as in medicine (or education or in science), is it not? When a dedicated composer or painter or novelist spends years on his or her artistic projects it is surely time that might have been spent on serving one’s fellows. Isn’t that so. Why is this not some kind of insidious selfishness? Why is it OK to be devoted to one’s artistic vision, never mind how much time and effort it may take--and thus take away from public service--whereas when one engages in economic improvements one is widely denounced? One is a profiteer and people organize huge marches--Occupy Wall Street, for example--to protest this. Why not descend upon Soho, museums, galleries and other centers of artistic pursuits and complain that these people are being selfish and cruel to their fellow human beings, the poor, the sick, the unfortunately who could benefit from work done for them instead of in service to the muse? Go figure!

My Fourth of July Reflections

My Fourth of July Reflections Tibor R. Machan For some people the Fourth of July is the most important holiday in America. Sadly, not for all, especially not just now when most of the leadership of the country has made it clear that principles do not matter. What matters is what is expedient or practical, which is something very unstable. Sadly there is an element to the Fourth that has always been a liability. It is that principles of politics, economics, ethics or any other practical field have been championed as if they were like principles of geometry, logic or mathematics, namely, timelessly true, certain beyond a shadow of a doubt. Like timeless laws of nature! And no practical principles can be like that since the future can always bring to light facts that could require modifying them. This was something the framers of the American system were well aware of, which is why they included the amendment provision in the constitution. This doesn’t mean principles do not exist only that they are always to be understood within the most up to date context of their subject matter. Because the basic principles that are to be celebrated on the Fourth of July are derived from human nature, which remains stable over centuries on end, they are good guides to the way a human community should be framed or constituted. Human nature hasn’t changed for a very long time and so it can serve as a stable basis for how human communities are to be conceived and governed. Many aspects of human life change but human nature has remained stable, unchanging for centuries and so it can serve as the basis of a legal order, just as the American founders believed, based on their study of some of the great moral and political thinkers in human history. If, however, the possibility of having to make some changes, amendments, alterations, or modifications on those principle is denied, their credibility suffers. No one can reasonably guarantee that those principles will never need some alteration and by promising that they won’t, they become vulnerable to valid skeptical doubts. And those who have not liked the principles of the Declaration and the Bill of Rights, all the statists who live in the country, can take advantage of this and even ridicule the idea of our finding such stable basic principles. By making the mistake of claiming that the principles are everlasting, they are put into jeopardy at the hands of their detractors and enemies. Nor are the principles of the Declaration self-evident! It is made clear in the document itself that they are only held to be such, for purposes of making the declaration. Since they require demonstration and proof, they can only be held to be but are not in fact self-evident! Very few truths are self-evident and the Founders were aware of this--for example, the first principles of logic that Aristotle identified (since they are required to prove anything in need of being proven). Misunderstanding this has also been used by detractors for purposes of discrediting the principles involved in the founding of the country. This despite the fact that the Declaration is quite clear about the matter: “We hold these truths to be self-evident” instead of “These truths are self-evident.” Unfortunately, throughout the educational system of the country, from the elementary to the graduate levels, making this clear is difficult since strictly speaking the principles of the Declaration do not support government run educational institutions. Limited government is what those principles support and permitting government to run the bulk of the educational system expands the scope of government way beyond what it is limited to in the philosophy of the Declaration, the founding document of the country that states clearly that government is instituted so as to secure our individual rights! It would be paradoxical for most educators to take seriously the idea of limited government since they are all complicit in expanding government’s reach into the lives of the citizenry. So the proper study of the meaning of the Declaration and thus the type of country this is supposed to be would invalidate the public or governmental educational system. Which is one reason why there is no general understanding within the population of just what kind of political system the American founders produced. Most of these educators are, in fact statists, through and through, and within that framework they cannot make clear sense of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and, therefore, of what is really to be celebrated on the Fourth of July.

Anticipated Reasoning by the Court

Anticipated Reasoning by the Court Tibor R. Machan A few weeks ago I wrote in one of my columns as follows: “...[T]he discussion of President Obama’s federal policy requiring that everyone obtain health insurance has frequently focused on the fact that either an employer or individual would be forced to obtain private health insurance instead of, as Wikipedia points it out, ‘or in addition to the institution of a national health service of insurance’. And many have suggested that this is a very unusual measure since it mandates specific performance from citizens, contrary to the legal tradition of the country. One may be forced to give up property but never to carry out a task, something that is reminiscent of slavery or involuntary servitude and thus directly in conflict with the idea of a free society....” The court ruled in favor of Mr. Obama’s individual mandate on June 28, 2012, by rejecting the idea that it amounted to forcing citizens to purchase something they don’t choose to purchase and held, instead, that it is indeed a federal requirement “to give up property” (or to tax the citizens) which the federal government may impose to its heart’s content. It is just this power by government that needs now to be challenged since it extend the feudal legacy of extorting people’s resources. The extortion goes as follows: “You get to live in this supposedly free country only if you pay government--previously the monarch--funds demanded from you!” This amounts to the constitutional power to tax! It should not be, of course, since it is a betrayal of the valid, universal principle of the Declaration of Independence and even the Bill of Rights, the right to private property, the right to pursue one’s happiness with one’s work and wealth. But then remember the constitution also made slavery legal and it remained so until it was finally amended. The 13th Amendment did this when it stated “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2 says: Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” But this came later! So originally American law tolerated slavery, involuntary servitude. Well, we now see that it still does. If your resources, property, may be confiscated by politicians then one’s life is not one’s own. The first natural right, namely, to life, is still contradicted in American federal law as it has been from the start. The schizophrenia between the Declaration, which stated the most fundamental principles on which the country was supposed to have been founded, and the U. S. Constitution, the legal order by which the country was supposed to be governed, remains fully intact. This is the part of the revolution that needs to be completed, namely, the abolition of taxation. The 13th Amendment abolished serfdom, another central element of the old regime; now another needs to be, one that will abolish the forcible taking of one’s property via the feudal power of taxation. So here is a wonderful opportunity for the current crop of Republicans, with Mitt Romney leading them in the next few months, to mount a bona fide, no holds barred revolution that will complete the first one. Ron Paul might have been counted upon to lead it but one may doubt that Mitt Romney is going to go there. Too many leaders of and people within the Republican Party remain statists who believe that the government rules the people instead of serving them. I have argued for decades that what is now required is a truly just approach to funding law maintenance and enforcement. Some way other than taxing citizens must be found and implemented to fund the system that protects individual rights, a way that doesn’t also violate those rights. The contract fee approach would work, I am sure, provided it is firmly combined with a policy of strictly limited government, one that sticks to the task assigned it in the Declaration of Independence where we learn that government is instituted to protect our rights, not to run our lives.

Pragmatism's Problems

Pragmatism’s Problems* Tibor R. Machan It has now become something of a badge of honor to be a pragmatist, especially in public policy matters. Being pragmatic means promoting policies that work, being practical or even expedient. President Obama has often made mention of his own pragmatism. So have some of his most avid supporters, such as Paul Krugman and Cass Sunstein. But not only those favoring the substantially Keynesian approach to macroeconomic policies swear allegiance to pragmatism. The very prominent jurist Richard Posner, of the University of Chicago School of Law, one of the most prolific and widely respected public philosophers in our time, has been unabashed about his championing of pragmatism. So what makes someone a pragmatist? In these contexts, pragmatic suggests mainly an attitude of realism and flexibility, lack of firm principles or foundations--i.e., eschewing dogmatism or ideology--on which one’s policy recommendations are based. Here is a good sample of the pragmatic approach: “Defenders of Chicago-style law and economics want to be seen not as ideologues, but as realists. [Richard] Posner [put it this way]: ‘We ask not whether the economic approach to law is adequately grounded’ in any particular ethical system, ‘but whether it is the best approach for the contemporary American legal system to follow.’” Peter Coy, “Opening Remarks,” Bloomberg Businessweek, 6/11-6/17, 2012, p. 10. ("And how can one tell what's "the best approach" if it's all purely subjective or relative?) Even more extremely put, Posner has written as follows: "It was right to try the Nazi leaders [at Nuremburg] rather than to shoot them out of hand in a paroxysm of disgust.... But it was not right because a trial could produce proof that the Nazis really were immoralists; they were, but according to our lights, not theirs." “Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory,” 111, Harvard Law Review, 1998, 1644-45. In what is commonly taken as the pragmatic turn, Posner illustrates that when it comes to morals and politics, no truth is available to us. Objectively speaking, neither the Nazis nor those who condemned them could be said to have had it right (nor indeed those proposing that it's all subjective)! According to our lights they were vicious but according to theirs they were not--and there is simply no way to adjudicate between them and us. There is then no truth of the matter. This approach has the fatal problem of being hoisted on its own petard. For it follows from it that saying it is subjective or relative is, well, also subjective or relative; in other words, no truth of the matter in any respect is possible. (It recalls the ancient Greek sophist, Cratylus, who ended up indicating what he meant by wagging his fingers and even that couldn’t do the trick.) Why is any of this significant? For one, pragmatism of this sort gives carte blanche to those who select which policies a government should follow: whichever they prefer, since none is any better than any other, not objectively speaking. It also concedes virtual absolute authority to those who happen to hold power. They need not justify what they want. Just wanting it is enough. No one can do better, so what is the fuss? That is just how fascists view public affairs since the authority of the ruler is decisive and incontestable. See how one day Mr. Obama claims to follow the US Constitution, the next he maintains he may circumvent it, that his judgment rules! In the end all intelligent discussion of how people ought to carry on, in or out of government or public life, is pointless. The only thing that counts is who has the power, a very convenient point of view for those who like to lord it over others without having to be accountable for what they do. Pragmatism has numerous versions and not every version is so outlandish as what we see here, coming from one of the most influential jurists in contemporary America. Just for one example, Professor Susan Haack has been very critical of this kind of pragmatism, which in philosophy is associated with the late Professor Richard Rorty. But sadly in our day it is the most extreme of the pragmatists who wield influence throughout our culture. *You may have received an earlier version of this piece!

Why Are Theore Theories

Why Are there Theories? Tibor R. Machan Over the years, especially since the Internet became prominent and widely used, my own ideas have received a lot of challenges. Some of these come from people with different positions on this or that but quite a few actually come from people who find advancing theories to be mistaken. They often just wish to pick and choose from among the innumerable ideas circulating and find fault with formulating a system or general position. They champion adopting the smorgasbord as the model for how one ought to think about the world. Rhyme or reason are shunned as somehow obsolete, old fashioned and instead a hodgepodge of ideas is favored, never mind internal contradictions, inconsistencies, etc. This disposition is not all that surprising. After all, among the hundreds and hundreds of “isms” that have been advanced throughout the history of ideas, there has rarely emerged one that received universal or even widespread ascent among those who work to get it right. One reason is pretty clear--the standards of adequacy for theories in all sorts of disciplines or regions of human interests were initially impossible to satisfy. Platonism contributed to this by insisting that the right viewpoint or theory had to be complete, final and timeless, something that is impossible to achieve since human beings, who concoct the theories are mortals and cannot show that the views they hold will forever be adequate. But even once this is granted and a less demanding criteria of success is invoked, a lot of people wish to cast the idea of a coherent, consistent even if provisional viewpoint aside and just stick to this idea of a hodgepodge. But that just cannot work at all. As mindful beings, humans are in need for ideas about the world in which they carry on so as to navigate it with some measure of success. Like the maps we use to travel around--they may never be completely accurate, final, incorrigible or such but they have to be workable, help us get about. In time the less successful get identified as such and get updated, properly modified but, of course, never finished forever. For those who find this inadequate there really is no relief. The world is no static geometrical plane, no formal system that is complete. Some of the best theorists have made note of this--I think Kurt Godel's incompleteness proof is really about this, a critique of the Platonist idealism that demands of a good theory that it be perfect, finished. But, as that wise saying has it, the perfect is the enemy of the good! If this idea were properly deployed, I believe there would be fewer skeptics, pessimists, cynics, most-modernists, and such among us and many more of us would be doing work on the provisionally successful ideas that can be identified (if the impossible isn’t being demanded) instead of taking up arms, intellectually, against those who are hard at work trying to figure things out. One sign of misguided thinking along the lines I have in mind is when someone keeps putting up obstacles against a set of pretty good ideas with the preface, “But isn’t it possible that such and such could happen and require you to give up your ideas?” Up to a point there is nothing wrong with this tact but if it continues on and on, without some indication of what will suffice for the skeptic, the exercise is basically pointless. Most theorists put up with these sorts of objections because they realize that they may have missed something their theories needed to address. But that approach can become pathological. I like what Professor Gilbert Harman once wrote about this matter. He warned that we must “take care not to adopt a very skeptical attitude nor become too lenient about what is to count as knowledge” (Gilbert Harman, Thought [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976], 145). Following this advice would, I am confident, help repel those who want to give up on reason and good sense in the approach to understanding the world and one’s place in it.

The Left and Reproductive Rights

The Left and Women's Reproductive Rights Tibor R. Machan At the outset I will declare my commitment to the right of women to terminate pregnancies prior to the time a human being has developed in their bodies (roughly the 25th week*) But then I am also someone who holds that every adult individual has a full, unalienable right to his or her life. (Who else would?) But one of the contemporary Left’s favorite doctrines, communitarianism doesn’t agree. By their standards we belong to the community. Check out what Charles Taylor says about this in his book Sources of the Self or, even better, read the famous American Leftist, Cora Weiss, who was a prominent American anti war advocate during the Vietnam era, and claimed that refugees who have fled Vietnam were traitors, because, she argued, “Every country is entitled to its people [who are] the basic resource that belongs to the country.” (Washington Post, May 29, 1978) Weiss was by no means alone in her views. The East Germans argued they had full moral authority to shoot those trying to scale the Berlin Wall because such people were stealing themselves from East Germany, from the country. Then there is the famous Marxist doctrine of the labor theory of property according to which the source of all value is human labor which, however, is public property since it is the major means of production that under socialism is collectively owned. Softer Leftists, such as communitarian Michael Sandel, also contend that our lives are from birth beholden to the community and we do not have the full right to it. This reiterates the views of the father of sociology, Auguste Comte who wrote this about the topic: "Everything we have belongs then to Humanity…[Comte’s] 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." Auguste Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley Publ., 1973), pp. 212-30. OK, so what of this? Well, it is entirely inconsistent with the stance on abortion of most of those on the political Left in American. They are pro choice. But pro choice means having the right to do with one’s life as one wants, provided it is peaceful. And so long as abortion isn’t homicide, it is peaceful and every woman has a right to get one if she so chooses. However, if one’s life belongs to humanity or society or the community or the state, this pro choice position on abortion--and on innumerable other matters--makes no sense. In general, the Left rejects the idea that choices is a vital element of human life. Instead what matters is obligation (or duty) to others (or to humanity or society)! This idea is the ancient one, whereby everyone belongs to the country, the king, the tzar and so certainly it is utterly selfish to insist that one’s life is one’s own and that from this certain rights follow, even the right to terminate a pregnancy at an early stage. The left simply has no basis for insisting on this. (Not that the Right is much better. But I leave that for another time.) *This isn’t geometry but biology so the exactitude is appropriately fuzzy!

A Note on Libertarianism and Abortion

A Note on Libertarianism and Abortion Tibor R. Machan His pro-life abortion stance has only been a remote problem for Representative Ron Paul and only with some libertarians. Here is why: If a conceptus or zygote has the rights of a human infant--especially the right to life, so that no one may end its life, including the pregnant woman carrying--then the issue is not a matter of a strictly private decision. If I have an infant in my home I have no right to end its life, not unless it is a direct, unambiguous threat to my own life (like a violent intruder would be). Self-defense would be the only justification for having an abortion. Otherwise terminating a pregnancy with the result of the death of the zygote would amount to homicide, possibly out and out murder. And anything along those lines opens the matter to a criminal inquiry, which is certainly invasive and contrary to what libertarians consider justified by law enforcement agencies. So it is clear that the pro-life position has problems with the libertarian stance that a government or a law enforcement agency must stay out of one’s life, including the life of a pregnant woman. The pro-choice stance doesn’t have this problem since it generally doesn’t recognize a zygote as in possession of the right to life. Zygotes are potential but not actual human beings, although they are, of course, human zygotes! But being that they do not have the rights of, say, babies or infants. Now accordingly a pro-life position such as that of Ron Paul has altogether too much statism involved in it. Government or law enforcement would be authorized to defend the zygote from anyone who would choose to destroy it; even its accidental death, as in a miscarriage, would arguably be subject to legal scrutiny, as would that of any human infant. While Ron Paul is relatively silent about his stance on these matters, should he become a serious presidential candidate, with prospects of reaching the White House, the surrounding issues could not be avoided. They should not be! Sadly, I do not believe anyone associated with Dr. Paul has fully addressed these matters.

Machan's Archives: Troubles with "public" Resources

Machan’s Archives: Troubles with “Public” Resources Tibor R. Machan So some insist that street vendors around the country should be banned? Why? Because the majority of those doing business adjacent to the street want them to be. The issue has come up in most major cities, including New York, NY, and Santa Ana, California. We are talking about public places, of course, where everyone is entitled to do his or her thing provided the local politicians or bureaucrats can be appeased and give their permission. (Why exactly do free men and women require the permission of such folks to do anything at all?) In the 4th century B. C. Aristotle identified a very important principle of community life. He demonstrated the social value of the right to private property. This is how he summarized his case: "That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few." (Politics, 1262a30-37) This same idea was clarified by the late Professor Garrett Hardin, in his 1968 article, "The Tragedy of the Commons," published in the prestigious magazine Science. Hardin gave the example of a common grazing area used by several owners of cattle to feed their livestock. Because there are no borders identifying what area belongs to which cattle owner, the commons tend to be overused, not because of what is commonly assumed, the greed of the cattle owners, but because each cattle owners want to achieve the best possible results, namely, feed the cattle as well as possible. The principle at issue has been very fruitfully applied to environmental problems and the conclusion has been drawn by many scholars that without extensive privatization of what are now treated as public properties -- lakes, rivers, beaches, forests, and even the air mass -- environmental problems will remain quite serious and the ecosystem will deteriorate. Arguably, everyone knows that a problem exists with common ownership. Such ordinary phenomena as littering and the neglect of public parks and beaches, not to mention rentals properties, make the problem evident to us, even if we do not often reflect on the matter. The problem is that nothing much can be done about it without changing what is publicly owned to private property. And it is nearly inconceivable in some cases that valued resources can be subjected to privatization, never mind the issue of whether such a policy could be squared with the more prominent conceptions of justice that would trump the practical solutions proposed. Accordingly, even among those who are fully persuaded of the need for privatization, the political will and savvy to achieve the solution is lagging far behind the analysis that identified the solution. Still, in this area, at least, such an identification has occurred. What would be required to carry on along the lines suggested by the tragedy of the commons insight is a theory of justice that squares with it. Libertarianism is the only such theory afoot and that alone indicates what the prospects for such developments are. Since I have made the attempt to place on record a libertarian theory of justice*, I shall not dwell on that topic here. Instead I wish to provide another illustration of the tragedy of the commons with respect to public resources. In this case those resources will be less geographically and more economically telling. Still, recognizing the applicability of the analysis to this area, namely, public finance, we can perhaps consider the universality of some features of economic analysis. That might incline us to look upon the tragedy of the commons as more significant than has been thought for purposes of gleaning some insights about the nature of justice itself. Aristotle, for example, might be viewed in the passage above not as pointing to mere practical problems but also hinting at where the just solution might lie. If, furthermore, we consider the significance of "ought implies can" for a theory of justice, it could turn out that some currently popular theories, e.g., egalitarianism, will have to be seriously rethought. The Treasury as the Commons. What has not been widely noticed is that a tragedy of the commons exists, as well, in our national treasury. We have here what by law amounts to a common pool of resources from which members of the political community will try to extract as much as will best serve their purposes. Be it for purposes of artistic, educational, scientific, agricultural, athletic, medical, or general moral and social progress, the treasury stands to be dipped into by all citizens in a democratic society. And everyone has very sound reasons to try to dip into it -- their goals are usually well enough thought out so they have confidence in their plans. They know that if they receive support from the treasury, they can further their goals. So they will do whatever they can to do just that, namely, extract from the commons as much for their purposes as is feasible.’ But, as both Aristotle and Professor Hardin knew, the commons are going to be exploited without regard to standards or limits: "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it." Which explains, at least in part, why the treasuries of most Western democracies are being slowly depleted and deficits are growing without any sign of restraint. Greece, Spain, even Japan, Germany and Great Britain as well as the United States of America are all experiencing this, as are numerous other societies that make their treasuries available to the public to use for sheer private purposes. For how else can we construe education, scientific research, the building of athletic parks, the upkeep of beaches, forests and so forth than as the pursuit of special private goals by way of a common treasury? Some might try to obscure this by claiming that all these goals involve a public dimension. Of course. So does nearly every private purpose--including the widely decried phenomenon of industrial activity that produces the negative public side-effect of pollution and contributes to the depletion of a quality environment. Private goals can have public benefits and costs. But their goal is to serve the specific objectives of some individuals. When AIDS research is supported from the public treasury, the first beneficiaries of success would be those with AIDS, not those who haven't contracted the disease. When theater groups gain support from the National Endowment for the Arts, there may be beneficiaries beyond those obtaining funding but they are still the ones who benefit directly, immediately. When milk producers gain a federal subsidy by having the price of milk fixed or their withholding of production compensated, the year the first to gain from this, not some wider public. And so on with thousands of other "public" projects -- they are, actually, supporting private or special goals, first and foremost. One need only observe who lobbies for them. But because the treasury is public property, there is no way to rationally allocate what’s in there with rational budgetary constraints. Instead politicians embark on deficit spending -- taking non-existing funds, ones not yet collected but only uncertainly anticipated, and funding the requests without restraint. And there is no end in sight. Only when the country no longer has the credit-worthiness in the world community, so that its bonds will no longer be bought by hopeful lenders, will the Ponzi scheme be called to a screeching halt. We will have to declare bankruptcy and those of our citizens who had nothing at all to do with the enterprise will be left to hold the empty bag, namely, our grandchildren. Road to Solutions There is no quick and handy way to approach the problem of the tragedy of the commons. The suggestion of privatization and laissez-faire is too jarring to many people to take very seriously. Yet the problem itself seems quite intractable. Any effort to handle it by way of democratic or republican public policy seems to be a band aid, postponing a real solution for a while. Soon, however, the tragedy re-emerges because of the way that political organizations adjust -- e.g., via lobbying and special interest pressure -- to the obstacles placed before those who value such projects and will vigilantly pursue the way to fund them from the public treasury. In the case of public finance, not unless the treasury stops allowing private projects to be funded from its coffers, confining itself to the support of constitutionally specified, bona fide public projects -- the courts, the military, and police -- will there be an end that avoids the perhaps greatest tragedy of the commons. To reach such a position of financial responsibility, governments will have to sell off all the unwisely held common assets -- lands, parks, beaches, buildings, forests, lakes and such -- to private, profit seeking parties. They will thus liberate members of our future generations from the tragedy that has been so irresponsibly placed upon them by means of the proliferation of the commons. This by itself does not solve all problems that face us in the wake of the tragedy of the commons. The air and water masses of the globe aren't easily privatizable, at least not for the time being. The way to discourage their abuse will have to be researched. It may be found in the law of personal injury and trespass. People who traverse the public realm will have to confine their conduct to what is peaceful, non-injurious, lest they find themselves charged with criminal assault and trespass. In any case, the acknowledgment of the tragedy of the commons will have to precede any serious research program that needs to be mounted in order to inch closer to a peaceful and just solution. *See my book Libertarianism Defended (Ashgate, 2006), summarized in “Libertarian Justice,” Hoover Digest (No. 4, Fall, 2006): 220-224.

Obama's Immigration Machinations

Obama’s Immigration Machinations Tibor R. Machan Not for a moment do I buy that President Obama has suddenly grasped the plight of illegal immigrant children. For one, he is on record declaring that the law ties his hands about the matter--that he cannot act unilaterally, or so he said in a widely available video from just a year or so ago. Somehow this is supposed to have changed and now his sense of justice, fairness and benevolence has kicked in and led him to reverse himself. (I thought it was Mitt Romney who wobbled on public policy matters!) No. For Mr. Obama what would be the best clue to his approach to these matter is his repeated profession of pragmatism. Now in this case pragmatism would direct him to do whatever will improve his chance for reelection. If the pragmatism had to do with his having found a suitable means to help all those young illegal immigrants to finally get a solid foothold in the country they have come to consider their own, this executive decision could have been made many moons ago. Indeed, those young men and women could have been moved out of limbo a long time ago by Mr. Obama. There was no administrative reason for him to wait until now if there is none now. The only sensible explanation is that the upcoming presidential contest is getting tighter than Obama & Co., had anticipated, so now it’s a good tactic for him to play to a pretty strong special interest group in the United States, namely, Hispanics and others whose goals involve becoming American citizens any way they can and all those who sympathize with them. That is a large chunk of voters! (I am one of those immigrants who had to jump through all the legal loops in order to become naturalized.) Of course, we all feel for those who are in the state of limbo so many are whom Mr. Obama is favoring with his decision. And I don’t doubt that Mr. Obama, too, has feelings for them. People are often impelled to do what they choose to do by several motives. One or another of these may not suffice to lead them to reach a decision and to issue in decisive action. But I bet that combining some genuine feeling for the young illegals with the opportunistic interest in getting reelected pushed the president over to the side of ignoring his commitment to what he earlier thought the law required of him. He decided to ignore the nicety of involving Congress. He decided to overcome his aversion to executive decisions which he has expressed before when other presidents invoked them. And he went for what would serve his political interest or, maybe more appropriately put, his most important objective in his adult life, namely, to obtain and keep power over the American people. If at this point that required for him to make this inconsistent executive decision, so be it. Who is going to punish him for it? Most ordinary voters do not focus much on Obama’s avowed pragmatism. They do not realize that this philosophy can be used to justify the most dubious methods for achieving one’s goals, provided those methods are successful. Nor do they know that the goals a pragmatist pursues need no justification at all. One can simply pick one’s goals based on anything at all, provided the goals are practically attainable. No one can know for sure if some method to reach desired ends will be successful since the future is not something we can know. But if it has a good chance of success, why not go for it? The saying that the end justifies the means applies here precisely. So then what about the merits of the decision to grant legal status to the young people who were brought here? It’s not a bad idea except that it may make it tougher for some who are trying to gain legal status the required way. There are, after all, quotas in play in this--some limit to the number of those legalized will be in place. So merely being a good idea doesn’t qualify it as good policy. The rule of law has to play a role too, exactly what the president appears to have appreciated earlier but then tossed overboard in this current move. So, bottom line: Mr. Obama is now grasping at straws to give his reelection a good chance. One may conclude, then, that seeking and keeping political power tops his list of priorities. Just what one may expect from someone without principles.

Jobs from Forced Charity

Jobs From Forced Charity--the Socialist way. Tibor R. Machan It appears, based on the economic philosophy he has been outlining in recent weeks, that President Obama believes that jobs based on economic transactions, exchanges, trade, and so forth, do not matter, have no significance. This has a very serious foundation, to which I will turn later in this short discussion. Wealth creators produce jobs from engaging in such exchanges, mutually beneficial trade or commerce. If my neighbor hires my child to mow his lawn, he gets a mowed lawn and my child receive a few bucks in compensation. My child also may be said to be employed--in a small way. Thousands of such exchanges, from tiny to huge, constitute the free market. And they create wealth, various economic benefits and advantages, for all those engaged in them and this is also where jobs are born! People aim to prosper by improving on their lives through the upkeep of their household, their businesses, their health and fitness, their recreation, and so forth. All of these involve creating jobs. The wealth produced--incomes, return on investments, profits, and the like--enable people to go shopping for goods and services. And so it goes, around and around, wealth creation leading to job creation. But our president finds wealth creation to be a low level economic objective, one may assume something selfish. Whereas job creation is worthy, especially if it isn’t linked to this depraved goal of becoming prosperous, wealthy. What is left to create jobs? Government spending, that is what. Spending taxes taken from citizens on projects that do not make any private market agents rich, such as building up the infrastructure, giving away subsidies, paying out welfare, etc., and so forth. Now these are worthy ways of creating jobs since they come from handing out resources with no expectation of any returns. The investment in such public works isn’t marred by that dubious motive of private profit or income. No, it is handed out by the disinterested government and its public servants. It isn’t their own resources, anyway, so they can be free of any selfish involvement, any concern about getting benefits in return. So for President Obama job creation can only involve giving away the resources of taxpayers, with no thought of reaping any profits in return. And the president is upset when he is called a socialist! Yet socialism is the political economy that, among other things, rejects profit making and endorses sharing the resources of a community--as Marx had put it, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This is by Marx’s and his followers’ light a noble way to manage resources, making them all public--collective--including, of course, human labor, the most important resource of them all. All this follow from a serious viewpoint that challenges the American tradition of free market capitalism with its substantially individualist social philosophy. By the position implicit and often quite explicit in Mr. Obama’s economic policies and recommendations the society is like a huge ant colony, with everyone just a kind of cell in the whole organism. Marx called it an organic whole (or body), and it is the well being of this whole that is the objective of a government’s economic plan. Private wealth takes away from this and thus is to be frowned upon. This is also why in socialist societies being a dissident amounts to being a traitor, someone who is deserting the team by working for an inappropriate end or goal, namely, his or her own economic flourishing. If you look closely, we have with the Obama team a pretty straightforward return to the stakes of the Cold War. It was all about collectivism versus individualism and now this war had been brought home. As it stands, Obama & Co. are convinced they are on the right track. They interpret the American political tradition with an emphasis on some of its unfortunately worded collectivist elements--”to promote the general welfare,” for example. That tradition has never been hostile to communitarian goals, provided they are freely choose, with the full consent of those who pursue it. But Obama & Co. see it not as a part of the American tradition and not was voluntary but as mandatory--just read the works of Harvard University’s Michael Sandel who makes clear that we are all born with obligations to society, ones the government must enforce. It can only be hoped that this toying with the reactionary idea that people are born to be involuntary servants of their communities is rejected and the revolutionary idea that the life on a person belongs to that person and if something is to be gained from it by others, it must be contributed freely.