Machan's Archives: The Democratic Ideal

The Democratic Ideal

Tibor R. Machan


         In this essay I wish to revisit democracy since all the power that our current administration is claiming for itself is supposedly justified by way of the democratic method.  But in fact only a properly limited democracy is politically just and justified.

         Democracy is a process by which some decisions are made and in the context of politics it means the kind of system that depends upon the participation of the citizenry for certain purposes.  What grounds democracy as a just mode of political decision-making is that citizens have the ultimate authority concerning certain matters in the polis.  And the reason they do have this ultimate authority is that they are, as adults, equal in their status vis-à-vis the stake they have in their political institutions, their laws, public policies, foreign relations, etc.  That they have this equal status hinges on certain extra or pre-political matters, to be discerned by way of reflection upon human nature and proper human relations. 
          For now I'll simply note that as I understand political matters, they arise from the moral fact that each individual adult human being has as his or her task in life to live it rationally, to flourish as a rational animal.  Since this task for adults can only be achieved if they are not unwillingly subject to the rule of others--in which case it is that other individual's rational choice that would be the ruling principle of one's life--in just communities human beings must be sovereign.  From this it follows that they must have a say in their own political fate, ergo, democracy.
         In any case, democracy is derivative of what human beings are taken to be as they find themselves within a community that aims at justice, a polity.  From the Hobbesian framework, democracy is recommended because all of us are nothing but bits of matter- in-motion and thus lack any significant, fundamental differentiating attributes.  Even our human nature is but nominal, a status in the world established by means of the human intellect's response to the motions that effect the brain, a response itself motivated by the drive for self-preservation or keeping in continued motion in part by naming groups of impulses effecting the brain.  We make the categories, create them by naming our sensory input as we will. So the reason for democracy a la the Hobbesian view is that nothing justifies differentiating some people from others (indeed, if one were to be fully consistent, anything from anything else, at the metaphysical, fundamental level of being.) A somewhat different reason for democracy arises from the Lockean view, one closer to what I sketched above as my own.  For Locke, at least when we turn to his political treatise, we are all equal and independent in the state of nature, i.e., prior to the formation or apart from civil society or the polis.  Adult human beings begin, never mind the precise point of reaching adulthood, as equally embarking on a human life, one that is to be governed by the laws of nature, which is reason, if one but consult it.  In other words, we are all moral agents having to live up to our moral responsibilities or duties, and in this we are all alike.  So we are all endowed with natural rights, which spell out for each of us a sphere of sovereignty or personal authority or jurisdiction.  There are no natural masters or natural slaves (although there may be borderline cases of defective or crucially incapacitated persons).  If this is kept in clear focus, one will realize that a human community starts with no one superior or inferior regarding the issue of the authority to make law and to govern.  Thus, democracy.
         But democracy is a process, morally required by the right to take part in deciding or to give consent.  It is in fact our natural right to person and estate that lies behind the right to be part of the decision-making process involved in politics.  It is not a process that is applicable to everything one might want to influence, however.  There is a proper sphere of democracy.          

Clearly there are those who propose that democracy is unlimited-only the fact that people will things to be one way or another matters.  Some interpreters of Locke have claimed this-e. g., Wilmore Kendall and his followers-as well as some conservatives, e.g., the late Judge Robert Bork.  Thus they argue that once human beings are no longer in a state of nature, they have in effect adopted democracy as a decision-making process regarding whatever comes up for public discussion, whatever a sizable number of them want to subject to this process

.           Yet this seems to me to be wrong, whatever the proper interpretation of Locke might be and I would dispute that Locke can be coherently interpreted this way.  For in Locke the justification for government lies in the need for the protection of natural rights, a protection not easily obtained (except by the strong) in the state of nature.  (And the state of nature need not be a source of much intellectual consternation-it refers to a circumstance not governed by due process or the rule of law, one we may even encounter in a back alley or away from civilization where we can be easy prey for thugs.  In the classic movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it was the situation prior to when John Wayne enabled Jimmy Stuart to establish law and order.  In actual life it is the situation one may face in the middle of the Mojave Desert or in any inner city park where law enforcement is nearly nil.)
         So Locke sees the protection of everyone's natural rights as the proper purpose of government.  Since establishing, maintaining and protecting government is itself a form of human activity that can be done well or badly, it must be guided by the principles of natural rights-its creation, development and operations may not encroach upon those rights, lest its proper purpose is undermined.  Perhaps the best way to understand this is by recalling the common sense notion that even the securing of highly valued goals does not justify the employment of immoral means.
         Quite a part from Locke, in any case, unless democracy is itself guided by norms-unless the people express and implement their will as they should and not as they should not-it becomes self-defeating.  Not only is there the problem that such a process is in violation of the rights of innocents who would be made victims of the use of arbitrary force. Unlimited democracy, furthermore, can undo democracy itself.  If democracy, for example, is applied too broadly, it is bent upon defeating its very purpose, the goal that justifies its employment.  To provide a hint via a possible result of the democratic process, suppose that we democratically vote to exclude some people from the voting process.  This is a legacy of some state governments in the United States of America, as well as the efforts of the federal government.  When the possibility of voting is linked to property ownership or some other condition, the democratic process is weakened.  It also occurs when the federal government focuses on what has come to be called inclusiveness so that, for the sake of including into the governing process members of some minority groups, it is decided that other members should be given lower representation.  Such group inclusiveness undermines the natural rights of individuals to take part in the political process, a right that derives from their right to liberty of association.  Yet the underlying justification for democracy is that individuals have the right to consent to their government.  In other words, if the democratic process can justifiably produce governmental measures that violate the natural rights of individuals, this undermines the capacity of these individuals to be full, equally free participants in the democratic process.
         Other kinds of cases abound.  If by the democratic process the rights to life, liberty or property could justifiably be abrogated or violated, those taking part in the process no longer can act freely and independently.  The majority can threaten their free judgments.  It can enact measures that will authorize vindictive official actions against the minority, something that inevitably leads to the undermining of democracy.  That is just why the "democracies" of Eastern Europe were a complete farce despite the great numbers of participants in the actual electoral process.  Thus parties, however, had no liberty to vote as they wanted, for whom they wanted.
         If when I vote I know that voting my conscience will result in having my sovereignty undermined, leading to my partial enslavement or involuntary servitude, I will not likely vote my conscience.  I will act like the victim of the mugger who is told, "Your money or your life!"  When I hand over my money I do it under compulsion not by choice.  (It is a myth that we always have a choice, for a choice that is set out by others regarding one's life, that robs one of one's life and takes away the prospects of a self-governed future, is no choice.)  If a democratic process allows the similar act on the part of the majority, the members of the minority will vote-voice their judgment, indicate their preferences-under severe constraint.  No true majority will can emerge under the circumstances.
         We can extend this analysis now to the realm of contemporary politics in Western democracies.  Let's focus on the general situation in the United States of America today.
         Whenever public programs are being cut, those who have their benefits reduced offer cries of need and those who feel for them cries of compassion.  Yet whenever public programs are proposed, which also cuts out the benefits of those who need to pay for it from higher taxes, it is contended that this is just the result of social life.  After all, "we"  have decided to fund social security, unemployment compensation, the national parks, public broadcasting, or whatnot, haven't we?  So it is no objection to this that some of us suffer losses, that some of us now have to forgo benefits, experience reduced income which can lead to reduced quality of education, recreation, home life, dental care, transportation safety, cultural enrichment, and so forth.  None of this is supposed to matter because "we" have decided to tax ourselves higher to fund all those public programs. Why is it that it is OK to violate the individual rights to liberty and property of millions of people when the lot of us decide to do this but not OK to reduce the benefits of people when a somewhat differently configured lot of us decided to do that?  Why may the choices of some individuals be ignored and thwarted by democratic decision making but not that of others trumped by the same process? The fact is that most people who talk of and like democracy in the context of the currently bloated understanding, they do so only when it supports their agenda.  It is fine to use democracy to rob the rich-it makes it valid public policy instead of theft.  But if the poor are the targets than suddenly democracy is invalid.
         Indeed, the reason is, as suggested earlier, that democracy is never enough.  There must always be some specification of the goals for which democracy is appropriate.  It isn't enough to have a democratic process-it can lead to results of widely different quality.  Sometimes the majority does right, sometimes wrong.  And the task of political theory is, in part, to identify those areas of public life that should be subject to democratic decision making.
         What are those areas?  And why are they the ones?
         Whether alone or with his or fellows, a human being may not do some things to other human beings.  Especially no one may take over another's life.  This is so whether that other's life is fortunate, well to do, talented, accomplished, beautiful, accepted by others and freely granted benefits.  In short, neither the fortunate, let alone accomplished, nor those lacking in good fortune, are available for others to be used when permission hasn't been granted, when consent is not given.  In either kind of case, no one or group may take over another's life--it amounts to the kind of crime classified, variously, as theft, robbery, assault, kidnapping, murder, battery, rape, and other forms of aggression.  And the fact that the numbers of those who do such thing s is increased and even constitute a majority of those concerned makes no difference.  Nor does the fact that some procedure has been followed as these policies are instituted, for lacking the consent, tacit or at least implicit, of those who are to be deprived, makes any such process invalid, unjust, undue.
         It is wrong to steal on one's own as well as with the support of millions.  It is wrong to enslave, to place others into servitude when they refuse, etc., no matter whether one is in the minority or the majority.
         Nor can majorities authorize certain people, their political representatives, to carry out such deeds, even if they do it indirectly, by threatening those whom they would rob, steal from, kidnap, assault or whatever with aggressive enforcement at the hands of the police.  It is wrong, then, even for the government of a representative democracy or republic to carry out such deeds.  Having done it with democratic "authorization" makes it no more right than if no such authorization had taken place.  There i s simply no moral authority for anyone to delegate to another such powers since one hasn't got them in the first place.  If my friends and I enact an elaborate process, surrounded with pomp and circumstances, ritual and ornamentation, to commence kidnapping your children or confiscating your wealth, all this is morally and politically trumped by the fact that your consent to the process has been lacking. Unless you are a criminal, who has by his or her crime in effect tacitly agreed to accept our forcible (self-protective) response, you may not be intruded upon.  Most of this is admitted by all the parties to the debate.  This is why even when the people elect certain political representatives (for example, conservative Republicans), others (for example, liberal Democrats), often claim that what results, in terms of legitimation, is wrong and should not have been done.  They maintain this in various political forums that are supposedly the spheres of democratic decision making.  So they evidently think t hat what the democratic process produces is not decisive as to what ought to be done.  Even if a law passes, critics will call it wrong-heartless, unkind, lacking in compassion. Even supporters of legal positivism, who discount any moral dimension of the legislative process, such as the obligation to be guided by natural or divine law, will protest democratic attacks upon values other than democracy. Because no one simply accepts the answer to a challenge of a democratically arrived at result which the y find morally abhorrent that, well, it was brought about by way of the democratic process-"we" did it, so it's OK, a matter of society's collective will. (Even in criminal trials, the mini-democracy of jury verdict is governed by firm provisions of due process and with opportunities of appeal.)
         It is, then, no valid answer to those who protest the taking of their life-time, income, good fortune or whatever by majority vote that, well, this is OK since it is done democratically.  The violation of the rights of individuals is no more justified by democracy than is collective callousness. Which raises the issue of how to be kind, compassionate, generous, and helpful to those in genuine need without violating the rights of individuals to life, liberty and property? 
         The answer is actually quite plain: Do it, promote it, and exhibit it by your own conduct!  When members of a society learn that moral principles cannot justly be violated by the democratic process, so they may not violate anyone's rights with the excuse that "we" did it so it's OK, they learn, also, that when the right thing must be done, it has to be done by choice, free of coercion.  So the help that the poor and needy should be given must be given at the initiative of the free citizen-via charity, generosity, philanthropy, and, yes, the facilitation of productive opportunity.

Obama's Macabre Politics

Obama’s Macabre Politics

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last few weeks, indeed since his victory at the polls, I have been listening to President Obama’s speeches quite regularly.  I wasn’t surprised one bit at his ready exploitation of the Connecticut schools shooting.  As one of his hacks, Emanuel Rahm, said a few months ago, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”  And more government control of the lives of American citizens is, as I can figure it, the priority of this president.  He believes we are a tribe that he rules and whatever chance he finds he will use to make sure everyone does what he envisions is the proper thing to do.  Give up your weapons, let the feds be the sole armed group in the country!  Treat all wealth as public, collective, and basically abolish private property rights, mostly by way of the constant increase of taxation.  Don’t respect anyone’s right to use and dispose of resources but assume full authority over these and set the priorities for what to do with them.  

I suppose there is still some semblance of liberty left in the country--mostly having to do with the free flow of opinion and the permission to engage in a great variety of artistic expression (although judging by what kind of works seem to gain the approval of the elite media even this may reasonably be doubted).

If you check the president’s inauguration speech accepting his election to a second term as president of the country, there is in it evidence of a decisive tone of postmodernist political thinking, the road to confusing the public.  That is to say, no rhyme or reason can be found in the political ideas Obama has chosen to lump together.  There is in the pile a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of yet something else--socialism, capitalism, fascism, authoritarianism, welfare statism, feudalism, and nearly every other identifiable political viewpoint.

It is almost as if he and his team is deliberately advancing an incoherent agenda, one that will leave the American people with no guide to what to expect from his administration of the American government.  There certainly is no loyalty to the central element of the American political tradition, namely the doctrine of individual rights.  Indeed, if anything, that is one feature completely missing from Mr. Obama’s political stew.  We must all comply with his vision of a human community, a vision the centerpiece of which is that “we are all in it together,” that we are one huge tribe or hive of people who individually are hapless and indeed worthless.  But even this collectivist political alternative is buried in mishmash so it’s hard to identify it and so it certainly doesn’t commit Mr. Obama to having to defend it with a coherent political argument.

The philosophical guidance to this kind of political thinking has had serious proponents, don’t get me wrong.  There is nothing original about it.  Indeed, it is a kind of chicken coming home to roost situation--the founders being the likes of the ancient sophists featured in Plato’s dialogues and the more recent irrationalists such as Paul Feyerabend (check his book Farewell to Reason) and Richard Rorty (whose essay “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” is very helpful essay for grasping Mr. Obama’s way of thinking in which the population’s unavoidably hotch potch viewpoint is endorsed as against the aim to forge a rational public philosophy).

I do not know if Mr. Obama has read all these and other irrationalist and post-modernist thinkers and consciously follows them but as a self-proclaimed (but much disputed) radical “pragmatist” the way he presents himself in his most recent political proclamations suggests very strongly that he is being deliberately obscure.  Why?

My guess is that his goal of top down control of American society is taken by him to benefit from leaving his audience, indeed the entire American public, baffled as to just what is best in political matters.

           The only explicit school of politics this approach comes close to is fascism in which the society’s leadership if left in the hands of a charismatic ruler, like Mussolini or Hugo Chavez.  Do Mr. Obama’s supporters realize this about him and his ideas?  I do not know.

My Recent Kafkaesque Experience

My Recent Kafkaesque Experience

Tibor R. Machan

It may not be the kind of experience many others have had other than at the Department of Motor Vehicles but I recently went through one that brought to mind Franz Kafka.

I have been trying to refinance my house for months but my bank, Wells Fargo, refused to even talk about it.  I had there one of the brusquest bankers, as bad as any bureaucrat I’ve dealt with from the feds.  But in time my tenacity won out and I divorced Wells Fargo but not before I went through a pretty wild bureaucratic side trip.

To get refinanced I was told I had to come up with my social security card.  I received that back in 1956 and haven’t seen it since so I didn’t even try to find it but went straight to trying to get a replacement copy.  To do this I had to send Social Security my passport to prove that I am a citizen.  (I am a naturalized one of those and having been smuggled out of Hungary, I have no birth certificate.)

I filled out the needed forms and sent in the passport but never heard back from them with the new card I needed.  Well, since I was planning a trip abroad, I had to have a passport but social security played deaf and dumb.  Finally I went to Los Angeles, a 100 mile round trip, and got a brand new passport (after spending hours on the phone about it all), which cost me a couple of 100 mile road trips to the federal building there, plus some $200 and price of passport pictures, etc., etc.  I was to pick up the new passport at 1 PM one day but of course they didn’t get it ready until 2 plus.  And dealing with these folks is a pain since they all treat you like you are some subject, never mind being a citizen of a supposedly free country by whom they are supposedly employed.

So in time I did get the new passport into my hands and was ready to board my plane.  Since where I was to go requires a visa, that added another small bureaucratic step to the proceedings.  (My private sector travel agent was very helpful with this, also very pleasant, in contrast to the public servant federal agents I encountered.)

Of course all the steps I needed to take were routine but no less drab and annoying for that. The federal building in Los Angeles reminded me of that monstrosity in Bucharest that the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşesco built over several acres, an architectural obscenity if there ever was one.  This American version was just a little bit more tolerable and no more user friendly.

Mind you, thousands go through the experience of dealing with the feds and paying for their ineptitude.  I was told that the reason I needed to come up with the social security card is that Homeland Security now requires it when one refinances or buys a home but then just after I did my best to comply with this, I was informed that it wasn’t really needed, after all. But by then I had mailed my passport off and the loss of it was pretty much guaranteed.  (It’ll probably turn up somewhere “in the system” over the next year and I will be able to stick it away as a souvenir.)

One element of these relatively petty experiences is that one just has no leverage with the several functionaries one must deal with.  Since any one of them can put a monkey wrench in the proceedings, standing there and looking intimidating in their uniforms, even I refrain from arguing with them.  (Why do they say 1 PM when it is actually 2 PM?  Why do they say they needed the Social Security card but then it turns out they do not?)  

Not that these are earth shaking matters but if one multiplies them by several hundred thousands, even millions, one begins to grasp just how inefficient governments are and how readily they muck things up in society.  The functionaries certainly do not treat you as citizen-customers to whom they need to show some deference!  They all comport themselves with the attitude that they have the upper hand and you should be grateful that they do their jobs for you. Or something.

And I am actually somewhat prepared for this kind of an experience, having been acclimated to it from my early years in “communist” Hungary and over the years as I moved through various layers of officialdom as a refugee, in the military, at state universities, etc., etc.  And all along I was actually trying to pay attention since I was also a student of the system!  

I thus feel for all those folks who are required to submit to the system!  What a nightmare!  Kafkaesque, indeed.

The Erosion of Our Freedom

The Erosion of Our Freedom

Tibor R. Machan

Often when I argue that governments must not violate our rights--they are supposed to be unalienable, after all--statists have a ready retort:  Government is already violating them, good and hard, all over the place.  

Recently I pointed out that imposing fines and constraints on gun owners who haven’t been shown to have committed a crime, not even close, is a case of prior restraint, of unjustifiably depriving a citizen of liberty since only convicted and guilty people may be so deprived. In a free country citizens may not be intruded upon by their governments without having been convicted by methods of due process.  Governments, in other words, are supposed to defend the rights of their citizens; that is their proper purpose!

My statist adversaries eagerly point it out to me that government is intruding upon as all over the place: we are forced to obtain a driver’s license, innumerable permits as we go about living in our communities (building our homes, engaging in businesses, practicing professions, etc.).  Nearly everything we do requires a license even though we are legally innocent!  Ergo: prior restraint big time!

Now some of this is accurate enough--citizens in America are indeed subjected to prior restraint left and right, up and down. Most of the time the justification given is that government must protect us against possible malpractice and government regulations and licensing are the best way to do this, never mind that our rights are clearly being violated in the process. Unalienable is a nice idea in a document like the Declaration of Independence, but let’s get real, please!  It is completely impractical in actual life, right?

Wrong.  It is not some kind of romantic, impossible idealism to insist that when anyone intrudes upon another person, this must be properly warranted--as it would be in self-defense, for example.  Just notice how easily this is grasped when it comes to sexual freedom--no amount of “necessity” or “practicality” overturns the prohibition against rape or even plain sexual harassment. Why is that so simple to grasp?  Because it is a form of intrusion that is very close to home, quite direct, not encumbered by fancy-shmancy public policy rhetoric!

Insisting that prior restraint be banned overall is just taking the above line about all uninvited intrusions by some people against others. If the intrusion is indeed invited, no problem--surgeons, dentists, personal trainers and coaches routinely intrude on us but with our permission, so that is unobjectionable.  

However, for centuries this was not so--the royal courts and similar oppressive regimes ran roughshod routinely over their subjects (!) since they were actually deemed as their owners (which is how serfdom and slavery managed to be palatable). In time the idea gained currency that such subjugation lacked justification, amounted to coercive imposition based on various fictions of class superiority, etc.  Once these were demonstrated to be unfounded, slowly but surely it dawned upon millions--as it is still dawning upon them across the globe--that the oppressors were getting away with a ruse and resisting them is just and right.

It is about time that even the more subtle sorts of oppression, involving the prior restraint I was pointing to above, be abolished.  If problems need to be solved, they must be solved without resort to some people coercing others!  Again, think how natural this is when it comes to sexual intercourse! It should be plain across the board of all human relations not confined only to sex.  The law and public policy must be adjusted to the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence, namely, the universality of our basic rights to our lives, liberty and property!  No compromise, however imperative it may appear, must be tolerated.

         When it was pointed out that the price of liberty is indeed eternal vigilance, the point of that warning was exactly to alert everyone that various sophistical, phony reasons will be used to erode our liberties.  Just recall for instance what was noted by William Pitt, the elder: “Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.”

Gun Control Obscenities

Gun Control Obscenities

Tibor R. Machan

When the massacre occurred in Connecticut, there was no call for commentary, certainly not from me who lives thousands of miles from where it occurred and knew none of the victims, the culprit or their family.  Silence was probably the right reaction, and some reflections on just how vulnerable people can be in even a quite civilized society.  I could have come up with some ideas on the effects of disarming school teachers and administrators but without knowing details, they would have been unhelpful.

What did start to prompt foul reactions from me is the politicians’ beginning to sound off.  How they took advantage of the grief surrounding the event was not only predictable but disgusting.  Promising to reenact the old and by all accounts quite ineffective federal assault weapons ban is difficult to explain as anything more than an empty political--in the worst sense of the term--gesture.  

And of course all the venom was directed not at the perpetrator, by then himself deceased--and good riddance--but at opponents of gun control legislation.  Scapegoating is what the politicians who chimed in did so diligently.  Not a single gun control opponent could be faulted for the horrors inflicted upon the victims, not a one, yet they were under moral indictment by the politicians, including President Obama, more so than the culprit.  

Just let us remember that a good many who oppose federal and other gun control laws do so on grounds that they do not want the federales to be the only armed people in the realm.  Rightly or wrongly, they are concerned that disarming the citizenry who have done nothing to deserve that is a pointless and mindless self-indulgence, nothing at all useful or helpful.  In a considerably free country people will always be able to engage in murderous conduct.  It happens day in and day out across America and elsewhere.  It is one part of the price of liberty, namely, that citizens are not shackled and bound and thus are able to carry out not just all the praiseworthy but also many vile acts.  For such acts they would best be severely punished--something, by the way, that most gun control advocates are notoriously silent about!  (I watched quite a few talks shows and read a bunch of pundits during the last several days and those lamenting the lack of police state like gun prohibition--which have been and are still favored by tyrannies and dictatorships throughout history and the globe--have expressed zero hostility toward the people who carry out massacres like the one in Connecticut.  It is, instead, always society or culture or America or some such nebulous culprit that’s being blamed, with the actual perps mostly suffering from alienation, mental disease, etc.  Among these folks the idea of human evil appears not to have any reality to it!)

Another reaction from the political class, you know which I have in mind, that’s really pathetic is the promises made not to allow such a thing to happen, ever again!  And just how is that going to be done?  Even if every school in the world will have a squadron of cops marching up and down its corridors, how will it be assured that among them there will not be some vile sadists who will take advantage of their privileged position and carry out a similar deed?  How will Mr. Obama make sure that that will never happen?  So because this is nonsense, and because Mr. Obama is certainly not ignorant about it, what we must be witnessing is rank demagoguery.

Sometimes the best response to what happens in the world is outrage, especially with those who carry out vicious deeds.  Human beings are, after all, the one known animal that is responsible for its behavior, driven not by instincts but by conscious choices.  When those choices are irresponsible ones and vile, they are the ones whose guilt should be our focus.  

As we learn from Shakespeare--from Cassius in Julius Caesar, Act 1, scene 2--"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.” Indeed, the kid who carried out the murders in Connecticut is very likely the responsible party.  Let’s get that right and then we might embark on some useful understanding of such deeds.  

Taxes versus revenues: Leslie Stahl's malpractice

Taxes versus Revenues: Leslie Stahl’s Malpractice

Tibor R. Machan

As I reach old age I shield myself from unpleasant television as much as I can.  Of course, in order to stay apprised of events I cannot afford to skip all of what is irritating but given all the repetition, I have managed to reduce exposure to much that’s bad for my nerves.

One show I used to watch regularly was CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes.  It was a kind of ritual.  But no longer, other than accidentally.  Which is why I managed to catch one of the 60 Minutes follow-ups the other Sunday evening.  In it Leslie Stahl commented on Grover Norquist’s fight against the spendthrifts in Washington.  Never mind for now her typical support of more spending and higher taxes; it is to be expected from her, a veteran Washington insider.  What was interesting is the length to which she went this time to bolster her support.

She seems to have decided that instead of using the term “taxes” for what Norquist opposes, she characterized it as revenues.  And that is dirty pool.

Taxation isn’t revenue raising.  It is confiscation of people’s resources.  Revenue is what merchants or employees earn in voluntary trade.  To classify taxes as revenues is an obvious distortion.  It is akin to characterizing the loot from a bank robbery as earnings, profits or income.  There is no way that Ms. Stahl doesn’t know this.*  She is simply falling in line with President Obama’s efforts to warp the English language for political purposes.  Like when Obama decided that imposing additional taxes on what he calls the rich or wealthy amounts to “asking them for a little bit more.” Imposing taxes on people is no more asking them for funds than is a tax a form of revenue.  Both of these distortions have to be conscious since they both clearly serve to help to pretend that something voluntary is going on when that is the farthest thing from the truth.

We aren’t asked to pay in funds on April 15th.  The funds are extorted from us with the threat that unless we mail them to the IRS, we will end up in jail and if we resist we could be killed!  And when we are taxed, the resulting funds at the IRS aren’t some kind of revenue but the fruit of unabashed confiscation.

When our celebrity journalists become complicit in the government’s confiscation of our resources, we are in bad shape indeed. The press used to be a partner in the resistance of government oppression.  Now it is like in a dictatorships, a co-conspirator, a partner in crime--think Pravda and Izvestia.

*Some many moons ago Diane Sawyer, if memory serves me right, did a report on the street thieves in Rome, Italy, and called their loot "profits." That 60 Minutes bunch is very confused or perverse.

The Statists' Continued Folly

The Statists' Continued Folly!

Tibor R. Machan

          Krugman has a regular column in The Times, so he can discuss what he chooses to discuss so why is he fussing, as he did in a recent column, that others have other topics they wish to discuss not the ones he likes? Must we all take the lead of Krugman? What conceit!

          Krugman’s “solution” to the unemployment "crisis" is no solution but merely a shift--let's burden future generations with higher costs and taxes, right? Yet what is needed is fewer obstacles to growth, that is to say less government regulation, much lower taxation, and the encouragement of private investment and innovation--in short, Hayek instead of Keynes!  What is bizarre is that Krugman and his master, Obama, are dead set on socking it to the rich, so much so that even without any need for garnering more funds from them they insist that it be done!  In other words, this bunch is interested in punitive taxation, never mind budgetary concerns.

         Is this to show the “base” that they are tough, merciless?  Is this to very visibly implement their leftist policies just to show who is in the driver’s seat now?  Is it to demonstrate to the world that America’s tradition of substantially free enterprise will not be allowed continue since it makes it possible for economically savvy citizens to succeed while those not much interested in playing according to the rules of capitalism may experience losses from scoffing at ambition?  That famous 47 % plus or minus that expects to be taken care of by government with just a minimum of effort--effort consisting mostly of political maneuvering, not smart enterprise--must not be disappointed.  Obama must continue to be their leader, guru, guide and protector!

         Looks to me that Obama is making no secret of it now: he will cater to the dependent class and only throw a few bones to the entrepreneurs, enough so they keep producing enough for Obama’s constituency to remain satisfied parasites.  Most of them feel that those who are successful in a largely free market economy don’t deserve it; they are living off the blood and sweat of Obama’s people!

          If you don’t believe me, consider a recently deceased philosopher of the welfare state from Harvard University, the place where much of Obama’s political and moral philosophy was fashioned: "The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is ... problematic; for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit." John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 104.

         In other words, as Obama put it during the campaign for the presidency: You did not build it:  “if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something--there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there....”  No, you got there mostly by accident of birth! Like the rich of the feudal era!

         None of us is successful without having gained from certain others in our lives.  No argument about that.  But, first, this doesn’t entitle anyone else to rob one of the fruits of the success.  It doesn’t follow! Second, the entrepreneurial initiative of those who do succeed is not shared by all. They may have had some help but they needed to figure out how to put that help to good use.  That is where they earned their success, not from creating things out of nothing (a ridiculous idea that the takers wish to peddle).

        The bottom line is that Obama & Co. want to promote the idea that successful people have but a tiny bit if anything at all to do with their success and, therefore--which is a colossal non-sequitur--Obama & Co. may rip them off good and hard.

        In fact, the human element in human success is enormous. What it requires from those like Obama is for them to get out of the way, to show confidence in the makers, not the takers.

The Nature of American Politics

The Nature of American politics

Tibor R. Machan

So few grasp this that it’s embarrassing.  The political purpose of America, as made pretty clear by the Founders and the Declaration of Independence, was to secure for the people a country in which they can be free as they could be in the state of nature only also reasonably safe from aggressive neighbors across the world.  Politics had been mostly about imposing power on others, robbing them of their resources, subduing them good and hard (unless they were friendly family members or fellow tribesmen). The genius of John Locke’s system of natural individual rights is that it nearly succeeded in fashioning a society that marked off for everyone a sphere of personal authority, an area in which they would have the liberty to do as they judged proper and not be invaded by others whose company they should enjoy at their pleasure, not as a matter of uninvited intrusion.

The idea was that in the wilds people could do as they judged fit except when some powerful bullies stood in the way.  Being free is a great thing but if others can, with impunity, impose themselves on one, that takes a lot away from the beauty of liberty.  So how to secure liberty but avoid the hazards posed by the bullies?  That is the question to which no political thinker has managed to find the answer but John Locke and a few others who taught the American Founders and Framers came very, very close. If a system of individual natural rights could be codified and its administrators had sufficient integrity not to cave in the temptation to compromise it, there was a good chance that the people could not only have the right to liberty but enjoy its exercise as well.

That is roughly how America developed into a relatively bona fide free society, though by no means consistently, flawlessly.  But sufficient numbers of Americans had been devoted to the project that a pretty free country came about and managed to provide for its citizenry a kind of country only here and there tasted around the globe.  For quite some time at least the idea of this kind of country kept inspiring Americans and their friends across the globe.

Now, however, we have come to the point where a completely alien bunch of “leaders” and their academic cheerleaders--especially in law schools--are slowly but surely selling out the American system.  Individualism, which is at its heart, is being besmirched all around, including by the man recently elected to be the guardian of it.  There appears to be no interest on his part and on the part of his team to further develop what the American Founders and Framers established into a more perfect version.  Rather the current leadership seems hell bent on reintroducing the system of the top-down regime, the very one that the American revolution set out to overturn.

To reverse this trend will require very dedicated citizens, maybe even ones who will have to reignite the original revolution, preferably minus some of the weaknesses of the initial one.  Fortunately, the ideas for this are readily available in the annals of American history, law and some political philosophy.  All the new revolutionaries need is to put their shoulders to the task of serious research--actually more their minds than their shoulders.

It must not be overlooked that those who are mounting the counterrevolution are a very clever bunch.  They have invaded the most prestigious institutions of learning, from kindergarten to graduate school.  They control university presses--journals and books and all.  They have overrun the popular culture, such as Hollywood and Broadway and what used to be called dime novels.  Their hunger for power is unlimited and they are ready to use all the tricks known to human beings.  They have learned well from their heroes. Here is one of them:

“Only one thing is needed to enable us to march forward more surely and more firmly to victory: namely, the full and complete thought of our appreciation by all communists in all countries of the necessity of displaying the utmost flexibility in their tactics.  The strictest loyalty to the ideas of communism must be combined with the ability to make all the necessary practical compromises, to attack, to make agreements, zigzags, retreats, etc.” [Lenin, "Left Wing Communism," 1920].

Machan's Archives: Ethics and Gouging

Machan's Archives: Ethics and Gouging

Tibor R. Machan

    During most emergencies there are those who could certainly use quite a
bit of help and it is on such occasions that complaints about gouging
surface most vociferously. The recent storms and hurricanes in
the Northeast and elsewhere saw many people having to board up their homes and
businesses and evacuate the area for safer regions. Some did not prepare
for these times prudently enough and now depend on the help of others who
have or who are in the business of storing up and selling the materials
such times require. Some just couldn’t plan ahead.

    The usual complaints on such occasions have to do with gouging—with
people, including private parties and businesses, charging much higher
prices than in times of less inclement weather for the materials that are
needed to cope with the emergency. And there is something to these
complaints, even if taking legal measures against them are completely
wrong.

    In a free society whoever is selling something is free to ask whatever
price he or she desires. Of course, when emergencies hit and the materials
are immediately needed by many people, the unusually high price will
usually have to be met or one must go without. And this makes it appear
that there is something wrong with asking the higher price.

    The truth is, however, that there is no universal principle for how
people should act in such emergencies.  Yes, there are some who ought to
be generous, at least to those who have been hit hardest and had the least
warning of the impending disaster. Others, however, who ought to have
known better and thus been well prepared, do not deserve such
generosity—they brought the problems they face on themselves and have no
moral justification for demanding that others bail them out. They will
just have to pay in order to be the Johnny come lately folks they have
elected to be.

    Exactly what is the proper way to relate to those who face these kinds of
emergencies is something one cannot tell from afar. Here is an instance
when local knowledge, with only the most general notion of propriety to
back it, is the only kind that will inform one of the facts needed to
determine what course one ought to take. Neighbors may know each other
well enough to judge whether those unprepared for disaster are negligent
or innocently ignorant or have been prevented from being well prepared by
unavoidable circumstances—say some family illness made preparations
impossible this time.

    Economists tend to defend gouging based on their view that prices are a
matter of what the market will bear. In other words, if one can sell one’s
goods or services for a high price, it is only sensible, rational to do
so. Carpe diem, as the saying you—seize the day! Any good entrepreneur
will have sympathy for this attitude and, in moral terms, it is often
quite proper since one ought to make the most of one’s assets so as to add
to them through trade.

    Yet, of course, there are circumstances in which prudence is not the
highest of the virtues to be practiced. Generosity and charity are
virtues, too, mostly for special occasions. Life is not a scene of
perpetual emergencies, at least not in relatively free societies where
people have their right to order their lives reasonably well protected.
They are sovereign, not under involuntary servitude, and so can be
expected to govern themselves.

    Given that life does confront us with occasional emergencies of various
sorts, our self-government needs to involve preparing for such events, not
expecting others similarly challenged to come to bail us out. Yet there
are also cases of really unforeseen challenges—people can be struck down
by multiple adversities all at once and on such occasions those close to
them, sometimes even strangers, have good reason to come to their
assistance.

    It is when some take advantage of those hit with such multiple
emergencies by failing to be considerate that the charge of gouging makes
sense and people should avoid doing it. Exactly when this is cannot be
said ahead of time, nor from afar, but everyone who isn’t blind to the
vicissitudes of human life will know what I am talking about.

    The bottom line is that these are matters of human choice and there is no
universal principle to guide us all to a one-size-fits-all policy.
Discretion, good judgment, is what are needed, certainly not some
politicians and bureaucrats rushing in where even fools won’t dare to
tread.  Certainly bringing in the state—the police, in other words—is wrong and tends to lead to malfeasance since it mixes human emergencies with coercive force, a bit like a marriage between the Salvation Army or Red Cross and the Mafia.
 

Machan's Archives: On Doubting One's Mind

Doubting One’s Mind

Tibor R. Machan

A central topic of philosophy throughout the ages has been whether human
beings can trust their minds, including their sensory awareness and
thinking. Skepticism about this has been a major challenge and many from
Socrates to such recent and current thinkers as Ayn Rand and John Searle
have responded with more or less elaborate arguments defending our
capacity to get things right about the world.

Just now a new source of skepticism has surfaced, from within the field of
neuroscience. In a review essay of several books on the topic, “How
the Mind Works: Revelations,” published in The New York Review of Books
(6/26/08), Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff write, “In fact ‘external
reality’ is a construction of the brain.” Several of the authors they
discuss argue this point. As the review notes, “In general, every
recollection refers not only to the remembered event or person or object
but to the person who is remembering,” meaning that memory is not about an
objective reality but of some mishmash of subjective experience and
external influence.

In essence, then, what one understands about the world and oneself is
really not what actually exists but what is constructed by one’s mind with
the use of other cognitive tools. The problem with this is that it makes
no sense in the end because what the researchers are telling us would also
be covered by their claim and so it is also just some mental construction,
which then is also some further mental construction, ad infinitum and ad
nauseum. But that cannot be. At some point the researchers would have to
accept that what they are telling us about the human mind is actually so,
not also just a construct or invention.

In any case, why would there be so much interest in discrediting the human
mind, of writing elaborate tomes that argue that our understanding of the
world and ourselves is fabrication, not objectively true? Why when questioning

the mind is itself done by human beings with human minds who,

presumably, are confident that their own questioning has merit?

Some folks say that to questions like those one needs to answer by
following the money--that is to say, checking who is gaining from

these so-called findings. I am not such a cynic. As far as I can tell, some of
these scientists, philosophers, and the reporters who seem to be so gleeful

about what this skeptical work produces may well be sincere. Yet I also suspect there is
something fishy afoot here and my suspicion is that there is a tendency on
the part of many of these experts to come up with findings that assign to
them a special role in the world. They are, in effect, the only people who
have a clear handle on how things go with human beings. They are the only
reliable source of facts--as Rosenfield and Ziff say, “In fact, ‘external
reality’ is a construction of the brain.” You and I are not up to snuff
about the matter; we are deluded and misguidedly think that when we see a
red coffee cup on the kitchen table, there really is such a cup there. But
Rosenfield and Ziff and the scientists they are reviewing will inform us
that “there are no colors in the world, only electromagnetic waves of many
frequencies.”

But if you just think for a moment, this is nonsense. It is like saying
there is no furniture in my living room, only chairs and tables and sofas.
Well, but it is those chairs, tables, and sofas that are the furniture. It
is, then, the electromagnetic waves doing certain work that are the
colors, so colors do indeed exist in the world.

Thus telling someone that there is a red cup on the kitchen table when

that is what a healthy mind is aware of is exactly right! It may not tell the

whole truth and nothing but the truth about what is there but

few people need to have that in order to cope quite well with the world around them.

The same problem faced some physicists who claimed that there is nothing
that’s solid in the world because everything is composed of atoms and
atoms, in turn, are mostly empty space with only very tiny bits of
material substance swirling within them at enormous speeds. Ergo, solidity
is an illusion. But this is to drop the context of discussions where the
distinction between, say, solidity and liquidity comes up. It is misguided
to make the leap from one context to another where the focus is quite
different.

When we ordinary humans notice the world around us, learn to identify what
it contains, begin to understand the forces at work in it, if we pay
attention we can get it right for the purposes that we need this
understanding. To try to undermine this confidence based on highly
specialized research is misguided, ill conceived, and misanthropic to boot.

It appears to assign to some people some special status even though, by their own
accounts, no one ultimately can figure anything out correctly.

Machan's Archives: The Pitfalls of Public Spheres

Machan's Archives: The Pitfalls of Public Spheres

Tibor R. Machan

"Each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect..." (Thucydides)

Everyone has an incentive to use resources freely available to all...but none has a corresponding incentive to conserve or replenish the resources. Parcels privately held are better cared for. The resource that ends up ravaged will be freedom itself.

"The tragedy of the commons," a phrase coined by Garrett Hardin, in a famous 1968 article, refers to the cumulative depletion or spoliation of natural resources to which no one holds deed but to which everyone may use. The commons in question might be a pasture in which every herdsman's cattle can graze, a lake every fisherman can trawl, a park every tourist can trash or the atmosphere. Because people pursue their goals with the means available to them, perhaps perfectly innocently, everyone has an incentive to use resources that are freely available to all, but none has a corresponding incentive to conserve or replenish the resources.

"Picture a pasture open to all," Hardin notes. "It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy."

Hardin's principle was known as early as the ancient Greeks (as well as to Thucydides ). "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," explained Aristotle in his Politics. "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it…. 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."

When parcels are privately held, owners have good reason to ensure that the resources of their lands are properly cared for. They may, for example, charge users in proportion to the amount of usage. They may plant seeds. They may send in cleaning crews. Because they receive definite benefits as a result of paying the cost of maintenance, they will most likely pay it. So, many agree now that extensive privatization of what are now treated as public properties -- certainly all public enterprises, as well as lakes, rivers, beaches, forests, and even the air mass -- will help sustain those resources and lead to more efficient development and exploitation of them.

Ducks Unlimited, a free-market wildlife conservation organization, was founded in the Great Depression in North America to preserve duck hunting for the next generations. Wildlife biologists were hired to determine the basic problem, which was habitat reduction and degradation from agricultural pressures in the Canadian and American northern plains "pothole country" where the waterfowl breed, and in the American flyways where they rest during their annual migrations.

Ducks Unlimited raises money to purchase sensitive breeding areas and way stations, thereby preventing their development; manages those lands as waterfowl refuges; and works with farmers to manage their lands in ways that will be more hospitable to wildlife populations. The organization has rehabilitated well over 8 million acres of wetland in the US, Canada, and Mexico. It does not practice an unlimited free market: many of its properties are turned over to State and Provincial Fish and Game departments for long-term management, and it contracts with the government for many of its projects. Its shows, though, how an enlightened pursuit of private goals can promote environmental advantage -- even in a 40-percent-plus tax regime.

Worldwide the biggest danger to wildlife populations is the destruction of habitat wrought by the pressures of population growth and agricultural expansion. The problem is exacerbated by the dominant model of wildlife ownership, which is socialist. Wildlife is deemed "property" of the state, even when it inhabits or encroaches upon private property. Then it’s the exerciser of property rights who becomes the endangered species.

The problem is acute in sub-Saharan Africa. There subsistence farmers in the outback must continually if illegally combat the encroachments of "state-owned" wildlife. In many areas, hunting is outlawed, leading to local explosions in wildlife populations, which then spill out of their native habitat. That poaching is rampant under such circumstances should not come as a shock.

The solution? To turn over "ownership" of the wildlife to the villages or landowners. Wildlife then becomes a benefit, bringing in hard currency from tourists, for example. Poachers now benefit from protecting and managing a valuable resource. The results have been a gratifying reduction in poaching, an increase in wildlife populations, and more effective containment of it.

In the US "preservationist" organizations like the Sierra Club seek to “save” swatches of habitat by lobbying the government to purchase environmentally sensitive and exceptionally beautiful land for parks and preserves. But the bulk of ongoing environmental funding has been contributed by those "conservationists" (chiefly hunters and fishers) who believe, not just in the preservation of environmental resources (under glass case, perhaps), but in the wise use of them.

And therein lies both the key to the success of current Fish & Wildlife policy, and a clue as to how a non-coercive, libertarian environmental policy can proceed. For, in spite of the basically socialist ownership scheme, State and Federal Fish & Wildlife programs are almost totally financed by user fees and (more nebulously) excise taxes on sporting arms, ammunition, and fishing tackle. (An excise tax is no voluntary fee but at least it has a plausible connection to the purposes being funded -- if the moneys collected are indeed funneled as promised, something that doesn't always happen with, say, the gas tax.)

User-funded Fish & Game programs are among our biggest environmental success stories. Many big-game species have made quantum leaps from their low points at the turn of the last century–there are more deer in North America now than there were at the time of Columbus, and once-endangered alligators are now endangering golfers in parts of Texas, Louisiana, and Florida! And no managed game species has ever gone extinct since the advent of managed sport hunting early in this century.

These examples from Africa and North America show that the environment would not get short shrift in a private market. It’s very difficult to subject all valued resources, including air and water, to privatization -- although not impossible, as some argue. Personal and property injury law could deal with much of what goes awry in these spheres.

The tragedy of the commons extends far beyond the environment; as Hardin himself argued, it has hitherto been best understood in special cases "which are not sufficiently generalized." The tragedy can afflict any arena in which resources are produced and then used—and in which in the link between causes and effects, benefits and costs, has been severed. Consider the US Treasury, which so many groups work hard to raid.

Even alleged solutions to the tragedy of the commons can suffer that same tragedy. Hardin, for example, despite an otherwise often astute analysis, believed that the way to solve the problem is ratcheting up the government controls. But such controls are themselves imposed by bureaucrats who are not obliged to directly bear the cost of that control. They cause further problems which invite yet more controls as remedy, and so on. If the process continues unchecked, the result is a fully state managed system. Hardin would have shied away from that end game, but he mentioned no principle that could definitively interrupt the approach to full socialization at any point, once the regulatory premise is ceded.

Under such a system all resources whatever are treated as a vast blob of commons. Goods are extracted from all "according to ability," distributed to all "according to need." The link between cause and effect, costs and benefits is severed in such a society-wide commons. As a result, not a mere pasture but an entire economy is devastated (as well as the spirits of the people). The more vigorously a given society strives for the "ideal" of full socialism, the more rapidly the pasture will be plundered.

It's fantasy, of course. There is no way to forcibly refashion human beings into the angelic ants they'd have to be to approach the socialist dream of absolute and full equality. Individuals will rarely think first and foremost of the common interest. Even those who give it a serious try won’t succeed because they will not be able to obtain the needed information to learn exactly what that alleged interest is. The common good consists of a lot of varied individual goods, the requirements for the fulfilling of which can be known best and acted upon best by the individual whose interests they are.

Indeed, the only universal, common good is a general framework that enables everyone to seek that which he deems to be important. The provision of a system of laws makes such diverse pursuits of the good life possible. The American Founders identified such a system, one that accommodates the rights of to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—with what that pursuit consists of left to each individual.

Welfare states and the tragedy: Although our own welfare state permits much more autonomous action than a fully socialist one would, it manifests the tragedy of the commons as well in the growing public sphere. An individual acting on his own must work hard for his paycheck. He expends time and effort. He may bear further costs if he thoughtlessly fritters away his funds. If he manages his budget responsibly, however, he enjoys peace of mind in addition to the goods and services he can obtain. So there is a direct and cordial relationship between how carefully an individual deploys personally earned resources and the benefits he achieves.

The market rewards those who behave responsibly. By contrast, the only cost that pleaders for government largesse must directly expend in return for the largesse they receive is that involved in pleading for their cut of the take. In other words, they must incur the cost of lobbying. The typical recipient of the benefits of government subsidy or regulation has little economic incentive to spurn what he's "got coming" -- whether or not he or she proclaims, when polled, that taxes are too high or that "something must be done about the federal debt."

The democratic vote itself is an indirect means of seeking benefits from scarce resources without the inconvenience of any limits to what those voting may consume. Whether it's labor unions or educators or scientists, everyone gropes for as much from the public treasury as possible, and many elected officials faithfully play along. Sometimes this means appointed people who favor one’s projects to the appropriate regulatory bodies. Thus the denizens of the Departments of Labor, Agriculture, or Energy may well engage in the same unfettered exploitation as the cattle owners whose cattle graze in a common pasture.*

Wait, there's more. One of the most difficult of legal dilemmas is how to protect individual rights to free expression in public realms. For example, citizens may wish to express their urgent dismay about something on public roads to which others citizens believe they are entitled for purposes of transportation. During the Gulf War, traffic was brought to standstill in San Francisco when residents there wanted to protest U.S. involvement in the conflict; someone suffering a heart attack at the time might have preferred his goal of getting to the hospital.

Perhaps as a matter of common sense public roads must clearly remain available to serve their intended purpose. But other conflicts of interest are more ambiguous. The reason so many conflicts involving religious observance at public schools seem so intractable is that whenever one acts in public spheres, one falls, at least de jure, under the rules of public policy. In a public high school, therefore, any kind of religious expression, even the most innocuous, comes into conflict (or at least is said to come into conflict) with the constitutional prohibition of the state’s establishment of religion. And of late, school officials have even gone so far as to ban the Boy Scouts from their premises, on the grounds that the Boy Scouts discriminate against gays. There may be no constitutional issue there, and it may seem unreasonable to punish local kids for an organization's national policy. But do public officials exercising publicly granted authority in public places have this kind of discretion or not? If you don't like a company's policy, you go somewhere else. That has not been so easy to do under the public school monopoly (especially prior to the recent growth in home schooling, charter schools, vouchers and other educational privatization).

*For more check out Tibor R. Machan, Ed., The Commons: Its Tragedy and Other Follies (Hoover Institution Press, 2001)