An essay on our Rigths

What Rights Do We Have?

Tibor R. Machan

Since ancient times some idea of basic human rights has been considered
but not until John Locke (1632-1704) developed the idea did it become a
vital part of political theory.

The idea of ?rights? comes, in part, from the idea of ?right??correct,
true?in the realm of (natural law) ethics, concerning how we ought to act
or not act because we are human beings. From this there was a development
toward the (Lockean) idea of rights, which concerns political life?how our
human communities should be governed, organized.

1. What are our basic individual rights? Each of us has rights to our
lives and resources, including what we produce or create. We are
sovereign, no one may rule us, so slavery, serfdom, involuntary servitude
are forbidden. Any such relationship of ruler and ruled between us and
others is contrary to our nature. These basic rights are sometimes called
?relational.? They identify the principles of the most basic relations
between people, ones never to be violated, even by government, even in war
time, even in emergencies.

2. Having rights implies an obligation on the part of everyone to respect
them, not to violate them. For anyone who chooses to live in a human
community, such obligations are binding. The rights identify the ?borders?
or ?side constraints? around people, the area of their free actions and
others have the enforceable obligation not to trespass on those borders.

3. Rights are compossible, which means everyone has them and they must be
equally respected regardless of who the holder is, man, woman, black,
white, tall, short, native or from abroad. These are what the natural
individual rights are that Locke identified. Each of us has them because
we are all human beings (that is, because of our human nature).

4. Our human rights are also un- or inalienable because simply by being a
human being each of us has them and cannot lose them. Even when we commit
crimes for which we are convicted and put into jail, this does not
alienate our rights because this outcome stems from a choice we have made
that has the predictable consequence that we will be banished from society.

5. John Locke taught, and the American Founders learned, that since each
of us, in adulthood, is a free and independent person, when we live in
communities this needs to be acknowledge and we need an institution, a
legal order, so as to protect our freedom and independence. As noted,
these basic rights are prohibitions on others, so we now call them
?negative? rights. They place a ?stop? or ?halt? sign before everyone
demanding that each of us abstains from violating such rights. These
rights are about what no one is authorized to do, about such negative
obligations.

6. As Locke and quite a few others before him?in what is called the
Natural Law tradition of ethics and politics?realized, our basic rights
are natural; they are not created by people (e.g., by governments), only
acknowledge by them. And governments or law-makers do not grant these but
are themselves bound to conduct their administrative and other duties
without violating them. The laws of a just society lay out these rights in
its basic document, such as the US Constitution (in the Bill of Rights)
and legislators are to be guided by such a document to only make such laws
that do not violate these rights; justices are responsible to strike down
laws that violate them when the legislators are so zealous as to make them
despite what their constitutionally limited powers authorize them to do.

7. Some theorists make mention of positive rights but these are bogus
unless they come from free agreements among people?for example, contracts
or compacts. No one has a right to health care or old age security or the
variety of so called rights included in FDR?s ?Second Bill of Rights.? If
they did, those who need to provide them with these benefits would be
subjected to impermissible involuntary servitude. Some complain that just
because we have these rights, we aren?t obligated to respect the rights of
others, but that, too, is a mistake: If one has rights, one may protect
them and may establish a community that rests on such protection. And one
needs no permission from people who would violate one?s rights to do this!

8. As to where the US Constitution exhibits the influence of basic
(Lockean) rights theory, consider the 4th Amendment which speaks of ?the
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure, shall not be
violated?.etc.? Or consider the 5th Amendment which speaks of private
property that may not be taken unless a genuine public purpose (court
house, police station) requires it, and then only if properly compensated.
These reflects, clearly, Locke?s own identification of private property
(estate) as a fundamental right. Others, including the government, is not
authorized to do violence to this security to which we have a right. (A
reasonable search and seizure could be conducted only against someone who
is strongly and demonstrably suspected of rights violations.)

9. When the US Constitution?s Bill of Rights mentions, in the 6th
Amendment, that ?In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial, etc.,? this shows the influence of the
idea that each of us has a natural right to his or her life and liberty,
meaning that only if there is credible reason provided in an orderly
fashion may someone be incarcerated and only if there is a prompt
procedure afoot making sure that the charges against the individual will
be fully investigated. The idea that it is the prosecution who has the
duty to make a case against the defendant in a criminal case reflects the
(Lockean) idea that each of us is indeed free and independent and must be
so treated unless we have ourselves forsaken or voided such treatment by
our commission of a crime that violates the rights of someone else.

It is vital to appreciate that in a free society, one the Founders of the
American republic set out to establish, the rights everyone has may not be
set aside even in times of emergency or danger. The commitment to those
rights is what is stressed by identifying them as un- or inalienable which
means, to reiterate, incapable of being lost. The task of good government
is to protect the country, its citizens, while all the time respecting the
rights that justify that very protection. As Benjamin Franklin put it,
?Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither?.?

Column on Different Diversities

Understanding Varieties of Diversity

Tibor R. Machan

It is objectionable to fuss about diversity when all that tends to mean
is bringing together people of different ethnic, racial, linguistic, and
related backgrounds. Such diversity is about things no one can help?what
race they are, whether they are men or women, be they of Hispanic or
German origin, and so forth. These attributes are not really, ultimately,
what makes people who they are.

But, let?s face it, many people do invest a great deal in their own
membership in such groups even though they had nothing to do with it. For
some reason they derive their personal identity from them, not from
individual accomplishments. And in some instances this is actually
understandable and worth some sympathy.

Take, for example, being black in the United States of America. While
this really shouldn?t be very important to blacks or anyone else, sadly
often others make it important for them by their racists attitudes. If
blacks are often lumped together by others, treated with prejudice because
they are black, it is understandable that they will see their blackness as
important, if only in a sort of defensive way. Or make it gays or
Hispanics or what have you?in each case if such a fact about someone is
demeaned by others, it can become important to those in the target group.
Moreover, the experience of being treated with unjustified hostility, with
negative prejudice, can forge a uniting feature among those who are so
targeted.

Of course, the best situation would be if no one were ever treated badly
for attributes over which he or she has no power. It is not sensible,
however, to expect that no choices would ever be made based on such
attributes. In personal relationships, for example, people do invoke their
unaccounted for tastes and preferences for or against how someone looks,
behaves, feels, sounds, and so forth, however harmless any of this may be.
We sometimes regard someone simply based on how they do or fail to appeal
to us. And why shouldn?t we? But when this extends to determining choices
in professional contexts, that?s not admirable, even if in a genuinely
free society it may not be prohibited?the right of free association
requires not banning it. But those who do receive such treatment in
professional and other contexts where it is plainly wrong may feel a bond
with others and even come to treat this bond as somewhat defining of who
they are.

In educational and other institutions it may be reasonable to make a bit
of room for those who have a history of such experiences, especially if
that history of vital to understanding the society where the institution
is located and functions. Of course, the much more important diversity in
education institutions has to do with different philosophical, political,
religious, and similar perspectives that scholars may bring to the various
topics being studied. Sadly, this kind of diversity is not very much at
issue in the current concerns about diversity?centers, grants being
distributed, scholarship being conducted, and so forth. The racial, ethnic
and related diversity has nearly crowded out this far more important
diversity from academic institutions.

Nonetheless, those who lament the abandonment of a concern for diversity
of viewpoints need not condemn completely the other types of diversity
being stressed beyond reason these days. There is something of value in
that, since unfortunately in much of human history, including America?s,
some have had very bad experiences as members of diverse groups,
experiences that have given them useful information and a reason for them
to receive some remedial attention, something with which to balance the
adverse treatment their groups have been receiving all too often.

Those, in turn, who haven?t been lumped in with a group of others and
picked on with more or less severe and hurtful prejudice may not fully
appreciate what it is to be part of a group whose members have been widely
mistreated. And that lack of full appreciation may come across as
reinforcing the prejudicial treatment even when it is the farthest thing
from the truth.

But some serious reflection and patience can contribute to a better
understanding about these matters. It may even help wean many from their
need for what might be called tribal unity and prepare them to begin to
look to their own achievements as the main source of personal identity and
pride.

Column on US Supreme Court Squelching Liberty

Don?t Expect Court to Care for Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

The US Supreme Court ruled, on Monday, May 23rd, 2005, that to compel
people to support its propaganda with which they disagree does not violate
the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the one about everyone having
the right to freedom of speech. Yes, the court acknowledge, no one may be
coerced into funding some private party?s advertisements or related
speech. But when the government or some part of it decides it will
proselytize for something, it can make us all fund it.

Justice Scalia, writing for the majority in the 6 to 3 decision,
explained: "Compelled funding of government speech does not alone raise
First Amendment concerns." He added: "Citizens may challenge compelled
support of private speech, but have no First Amendment right not to fund
government speech."

Of course, since government has come to be legally authorized by courts
after courts to take money from people for whatever the government?s
agents want to fund, why would it not then extend this same legal
authority to fund propaganda? After all, government supports National
Public Radio, PBS, Voice of America and umpteen public service messages,
many of them contrary to what millions of American citizens want
supported. And, of course, thousands of government projects are funded
with which millions of Americans disagree.

In short, this is nothing very new. But it is a case that makes it very
clear and unambiguous that we aren?t free to spend our resources for our
purposes and that government may rob us to fund theirs. Why? Well, the
theory is, the government is us. Once the election is over, the
administration and its hooligans may all spend away at their hearts?
content since this isn?t a free country but a tyranny of the majority.

In a free country, in contrast, there would be nothing aside the
protection of our individual rights that government would be authorized to
have us all fund. That, as the US Declaration stated with no ambiguity at
all, is why governments are instituted among us: ?To secure these rights
(those listed in the Declaration, ones we all have and need protected).?
Because that is the only true public interest, the legal authorities of a
free society would be justified in spending funds on advancing it. That is
what we all would be paying the government to do, freely, by being
citizens of the country.

Supporting various special interest projects, such as promoting beef
eating, has absolutely no relationship to such a bona fide, genuine public
interest. But, because the original idea of what government is supposed to
do has been totally corrupted by now, and because one of the main force of
this corruption has been the US Supreme Court, it is hardly any wonder why
this same court reaffirmed government?s legal authority to loot us all of
our resources so as to promote yet another pet project the government?s
agents have cooked up.

As reported in The New York Times, ?Justice Scalia's opinion was joined by
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor,
Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer,? while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
concurred separately, saying that she viewed the assessments in all the
marketing cases as ?permissible economic regulation?.? Notice how chummy
all these otherwise quarrelling justice have become when it concerns
government spending the resources of the citizenry on matters having
absolutely nothing to do with the true public interest but with some
cockamamie project of its hirelings. Of course, they themselves are part
of this gang, so why would you expect it otherwise?

As an aside, this bit about how such spending amounts to ?permissible
economic regulation? is poppycock. The commerce clause, of Article 1,
Section 8, which empowers Congress ?to regulate commerce ... among the
several states? meant nothing like this mess of government intervention
the court has been rationalizing for decades now. It meant ?to regularize
commerce,? which had been irregular because the different colonies didn?t
share a common free market. The whole point was only to eliminate barriers
to the free flow of commerce, not to empower Congress to act like some
fascist or socialist economic planning agency.

Alas, if there were any integrity left to the US Supreme Court, we could
perhaps hope for some liberty in our future from that corner but that hope
has been squelched a long time ago.

Column on modern liberalism kaput

Why Modern Liberalism Is In Retreat

Tibor R. Machan

Liberalism was once a radical social philosophy because it championed
liberty, in particular, the right to individual freedom in civil and
economic affairs. In time, however, the term ?liberal? was hijacked by
those who were actually advocating a return to extensive government
interference, championing this now as necessary so as ?to make people
free.? In fact, however, what they proposed is the paternalistic state
whereby adult human beings would once again be treated as if they were
children, dependents, in constant need of being regimented by superior
leaders so they would live successfully.

So the radical liberalism that meant freeing adult individuals from
government became classical liberalism and, later, libertarianism, at
least in the United States of America. (Throughout the rest of the world
?liberal? still calls to mind the original radical meaning.) Yet the
debate isn?t only about words.

Modern liberals?or what elsewhere is referred to as social democrats or
out and out socialists?do have a different idea of what human beings are.
They think they are helpless in the face of the challenges and adversities
of nature and society. Classical liberals generally viewed people as
capable of taking the initiative, if only other people and governments
didn?t put chains on them, didn?t stop them from helping themselves.
Certainly people would have different starting points in the effort to
advance themselves?some would have more fortunate beginnings than others,
would start off healthier, more appealing or talented, born to wealthier
parents, than others. But, all in all, they could put their shoulders to
the task of improving on their lives, whatever their original situation.
And a free society, one championed by classical liberals or libertarians,
would then afford the best chance for them all to succeed at their diverse
endeavors.

Modern liberals, however, embraced a different view of human nature. They
held that we are basically moved by impersonal forces and have no capacity
to initiative any improvements on our lives. Any such improvement would
have to come from the outside, and government, with its concentrated and
massive coercive power, was the most promising candidate to bring about
such improvement. This is, in fact, the intellectual source of the switch
from the basic idea of individual rights of the American Founders versus
the idea of positive rights or entitlements that came to be the substance
of FDR?s ?Second Bill of Rights.?

Of course, many other factors influenced the change, including various
special interests parading as the public interest, but all rested,
fundamentally, on the switch from understanding people as self-starters to
seeing them as passive participants within a society. So the issue is
really about human nature?are we at heart self-governing living entities
or are we being moved about by impersonal forces and in constant need of
help from government?

Yet, as should be evident, the modern liberal?s approach to advancing the
lot of human beings is paradoxical. While denying that individuals can
help themselves if left to their own resources and to voluntary
cooperation, they affirm that governments?which are, after all, composed
of individuals?can take the initiative and come up with adequate solutions
to human problems. How is this possible? Either we are helpless, in which
case so is the government, or we can help ourselves, in which case it is
best, in most cases, to leave us free to find our own solution to
problems. Moreover, if we can take the initiative, then those who know the
problems they face, who have access to what has come to be called local
knowledge?which is where solutions most often lie?are in a far better
position to address challenges facing them than far off agencies of
governments.

So what has stymied the full development of the classical liberal,
affirmative view of human individual capabilities of free men and women?
It is, first, that the idea was simply very radical and unfamiliar to most
and, second, that those who had taken advantage of the opposite idea (that
rulers need to run everyone?s life) didn?t wish to yield power.

The modern liberal, in point of fact, turns out to be a reactionary, one
who still clings to the old idea that people in the main are inept and
require some supreme ruler to run their lives, to take care of them. That
is what supported the idea of feudalism and monarchy, with tsars, Caesars,
kings, queens, pharaohs, and other chiefs ruling the realm and the rest
relegated to the position of subjects required to follow the leaders? will.

In time, one may reasonably hope, the classical liberal?s radical but
very sensible insight about human nature?that it is fundamentally creative
and productive and needs liberty to flourish?will reemerge, having
overcome the bad habit of dependency on government. But this cannot be
expected to happen automatically?eternal vigilance is its price, indeed.

Column on Words and Pictures not being Sticks and Stones

Words and Pictures don?t Justify Violent Response

Tibor R. Machan

It?s not only some people in the Middle East who go crazy when they get
offended. You can see this kind of thing happening in many crimes of
passion right here in the good old US of A. Men and women who are upset
with what they are told or shown?such as, ?I don?t love you anymore? or
?Please just get out of my life? or some sensational images?often refuse
to deal with the rejection or offense in civilized ways.

Not only that. Entire special interest organizations are now being led by
people who respond to criticism by demanding harsh measures against the
critics. And, of course, we all have heard of those criminal defense
tactics whereby attorneys try to convince juries that their clients did
the crime because of a movie or book or something else they read or saw.

Whatever has happened to that simple but true notion that sticks and
stones may break your bones, but words?and pictures?will never hurt? The
idea behind this is that while emotions might be prompted by words and
pictures, any civilized human being ought to know how to turn away from
them and move on. This is what being a human being, with powers of
self-awareness and self-control, is about.

In anyone?s life there will be many occasions when he or she will become
upset from being called names, having favorite ideas demeaned by others,
derisive references to one?s favorite movies, teams, books, paintings, and
so forth. Any time I read a review of a book or movie or play I like, I of
course get annoyed. Most recently a prominent journal, in which I myself
have published several papers, took off against one of my favorite
thinkers and I went about wounded for a couple of hours. Then there is
always someone telling me I have behaved badly in the face of some event I
should have dealt with differently. I have lost friends, too, because I
wrote things that have offended. And upon that, I myself was accosted with
some harsh words. So it goes, but it should never break out into violence.

Our lives, as noted before, are replete with people hurling invectives at
us, dissing what we like or praising what we hate. But, yes, we can walk
away from these, shake off the insult or ad hominems, realize, after a bit
of mental and emotional shock, that no one owes us to be loved, cherished,
or agreed with about even the most precious matters.

Yet we find that political correctness is nearly abolishing the idea of
freedom of thought and imagery. Saddam Hussein, a mass murderer and
vicious dictator, is depicted in his shorts and this is supposed to be a
major crime for which not just someone who may have sneaked the photo
should apologize?for sneaking it, not for what it contained, mind you;
Newsweek admittedly misreports what some Americans did to a copy of the
Koran and this is supposed to excuse crowds of people going on a rampage?
What is going on here?

I suppose the lesson, not often enough taught?because that itself would
appear to be offensive to some?is that human beings can always regress to
savagery. There is no guarantee that they will be guided by principles of
civil conduct, by restraint and proportionality of conduct. To words, in
short, one responds with words, not with sticks and stones. Yes, words can
produce painful emotions but that?s no excuse whatsoever for losing one?s
cool, for going ballistic.

This is one of the problems with all those erudite analyses about how
terrorism is produced either by the terrorists hatred of liberty or by his
or her taking umbrage at American foreign policy measures. Neither
justifies terrorism?which is lashing out violently, sometimes with mass
slaughter, at totally innocent people. Terrorism is a kind of venting on a
grand scale and whatever other objective is associated with it does not
manage to make it anything better. Like toddlers who throw a fit, smashing
toys and even beating up smaller siblings, terrorists are out of control,
only they are adult human beings and have no excuse to offer for their
vicious conduct.

It would be very welcome if most commentators stopped providing excuses
for blowing one?s top and called for civilized, adult conduct on
everyone?s part who is feeling badly about something that didn?t cause any
damage but merely?even if wrongly?upset some people. This may help reduce
both crimes of passion and terrorism.

Column on Paucity of Integrity

The Paucity of Integrity

Tibor R. Machan

Why should I deny it, I am a moralist. Why would I sound off on so many
topics involving what people think and do, otherwise? I hope to encourage
myself and other folks to do better; I would like to do my level best,
given my resources and talents, to improve institutions. I know of no one
who chimes in about public affairs who isn?t so disposed.

So, here I go again, this time lamenting the paucity of that central
moral virtue, integrity. What is it?

My dictionary tells it pretty straightforwardly, without the nuances and
complications moral philosophers would (quite properly) add: First,
integrity means steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code;
next, it is the state of being unimpaired, of soundness, and finally it
rounds it off with the quality or condition of being whole or undivided;
completeness.

Integrity then is a human virtue of keeping all of one?s values in sight
as one thinks and acts. It is to be consistent in the adherence to and
practice of the moral virtues. It is, one might call it, a meta-virtue,
imploring us to keep all our virtues intact and not embrace them
sporadically, piecemeal, here but not there, now but not then. There isn?t
a school of bona fide moral or ethical philosophy in which integrity
doesn?t figure prominently but there are other schools that demean it
roundly.

Why do I say this vital virtue is missing from much of our culture? Why
do I claim that few people appear to be loyal to it?

Mainly because the evidence proves the point. Just watch how often, for
example, journalists will protest any interference with their liberty
while actively promoting interference with the liberty of others. Observe
how readily Enron?s executives will be condemned for failing to have, yes,
integrity itself, while it will also be argued, by the same folks, that we
should all think and act pragmatically, non-ideologically, in ways that
are flexible. Just consider how special interest groups identify their own
projects as in the public interest, while condemning the projects of
others as crass profiteering?the environmental lobbies and groups come to
mind here but they aren?t by any means alone.

Then, also, notice this nearly hysterical embrace, by some of our most
prominent public figures, of the pragmatic approach to, yes, the law
itself?Richard Posner, Judge of the United States Seventh Circuit Court of
Appeals and Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School, comes to
mind here. His volume, advocating unprincipled thinking, titled Law,
Pragmatism and Democracy, published by no less than Harvard University
Press (2003) makes no secret of how little he thinks of integrity in law
and public policy. The Rule of Law itself is decried by Posner as he
unabashedly promotes the notion that what judges should do is make their
rulings on the basis of what they believe will achieve most value in the
world, knowing full well that this is a hopelessly vague idea. As he puts
it at one point, ?No sane persons would balk at abandonment of the
conventional limitations on the power to search and seize and the power to
extract information from suspects and even bystanders? in cases where one
knows for sure these measures will help prevent terrorism.

The point of integrity is, of course, to habituate us?including our
important institutions and their administrators?to keep in mind and adhere
to all the moral virtues and principles of justice even while we are being
vigilant about some that happen just now be in the greatest peril. So, as
this applies to law and public policy, while fighting terrorists, for
example?or child molesters or rapists?due process must also be preserved.
Indeed, without such integrity it is impossible to even figure out what is
worth fighting for and why. Why even bother with fighting terrorists whose
major crime is, after all, to abandon all sense of values, to violate all
the principles of civilized society, if in defending ourselves against
them we are willing to do the very same thing?

It is nothing new, but worth reiteration: Those who are condemning
principled thinking, be this in ethics, politics, law, economics, global
free trade or you name it, are inviting complete chaos regarding how we
ought to act, what we ought to support or oppose. Indeed, in this respect
the Marquis de Sade?who championed an ?ethics of cruelty??and
Machiavelli?who thought that all that really matters in politics is
power?had more integrity than many of our current public philosophers.
These two, at least, consistently, without apology, jettisoned all virtues
and values in favor of unrestrained reckless abandon.

Column on What's Wrong with Government Regulation

State Regulation is Wrong

Tibor R. Machan

As a professor who teaches business ethics, among other subjects, I have
no illusions about the capacity for?and frequency of?business misconduct.
Like members of any other profession, human beings who embark upon
business are fully capable of malfeasance.

Yet it is quite clear that when people in business misbehave, those bent
on imposing more and more tyranny by government gleefully jump in to use
the fact not so as to instruct us about it, criticize those guilty, and
help us all to cope with it but to advocate more and fiercer government
regulation of the profession itself. To make this evident, all one needs
is consider how malfeasance in certain select professions are dealt with
by the finger wagging classes.

In my region of the world, no less so, sadly, than in many others, we now
are confronted with the misdeeds of many members of the Roman Catholic
clergy, at all levels, from parish priests to the highest authorities. The
misconduct by many of these individuals, involving the shocking abuse of
their position as teachers and counselors, is becoming increasingly
evident. And there is also the widespread effort to cover up the
malpractice, so much so that nearly all parts of the church appear to be
complicit.

Of course, while many are baffled at this, there is nothing all that
amazing about it. Those in the clergy are no less human than the rest of
us and some of their special circumstances are probably supportive of
their yielding to the temptation to carry on in abominable ways. This, as
we know, is no less so for people in many other professions.

Educators, for example, are notoriously prone to misuse their class room
podiums, so they turn from teachers into indoctrinators. I have been in
the field for nearly forty years now and have ample direct evidence of
colleagues who make no bones about advocating to their students their
particular ideology, treating their students as a captive audience for
proselytizing to them about what is dear to their hearts instead of taking
seriously their oath of office, which is to teach them about ideas and
facts and controversies without taking sides in the process.

Coaches, doctors, columnists, journalists, lawyers, engineers, nurses,
hairdressers and the lot, they all have their various opportunities to
become corrupted and many of them yield to the temptation to do so?to take
short cuts, to dodge their responsibilities, to misbehave in various ways.

Those, however, who want to strengthen the power of the government to
meddle in our economic lives are very good at ignoring that members of the
professions that are constitutionally protected from government
intervention are just as prone to malpractice, if not more so, as are
those in the field of business. The First Amendment to the US Constitution
prohibits government intervention in the professions of journalism and the
clergy and the ban on prior restraint applies there fully, so only after a
crime is suspected may intervention commence. And the principle of
academic freedom protects most teachers from interference not only from
government but even their own administrators, so only in the grossest
instances of professional misconduct will educators be reprimanded?and
that is exactly how it should be. The rest must be left to peer pressure
and other informal remedies.

But not with business. If executives in a few companies engage in
malpractice, there is guaranteed to be a chorus of calls for massive
increase in federal, state, or local government regulation of the entire
industry. Just imagine if this were done vis-à-vis Newsweek?s recent
misconduct, or Dan Rather?s or that of all the priests in the Roman
Catholic church? Yet, of course, it is clearly understood that no such
government action may be taken because?.well, why, exactly? Why are these
professions made immune by law to prior restraint but not those in
business? Are people in business any less human, any less deserving of due
process?

No. Sadly our legal system is replete with certain prejudices about
business and other practical professions, age old ones that permit some
people to meddle in the professional affairs of others even if the only
excuse is that certain other people have done bad things in those
professions. That is, in principle, like starting to regulate all
journalists because of how Newsweek?s reporters or Dan Rather behaved. Or
putting all Roman Catholic priest under government supervision because of
the malpractice of some of them.

The fundamental thing wrong with government regulation of any profession,
including business, is that it commits the logical fallacy of
composition?treating all members of a group as if they automatically
followed the bad behavior of some of them.

Column on Fawning over Galbraith

Fawning over Galbraith?to a Point

Tibor R. Machan

The New York Review of Books is a well edited magazine and the writing in
it is of high quality. That?s not to say the writers tell it like it is,
unfortunately, so the recent kudos, delivered in the way of a review of a
book about the famous Harvard ?economist,? manages to avoid saying perhaps
what?s most interesting about John Kenneth Galbraith?s recent intellectual
development.

Professor Galbraith has been as avid a socialist in the American academy
as that?s possible to be without coming off utterly ridiculous. He has
managed to cling to his Leftist-statist dreams about how a society should
be organized by blaming everything that?s gone wrong in the country on
capitalism, never mind that blaming the mixed economy and the absence of
bona fide free markets would have been much more credible and defensible.
Of course, because when it comes to truths about social affairs testing
them is difficult?we cannot run experiments sticking a few millions into
fascists, another few into socialist, then yet another into welfare states
and into capitalist laboratories?dreamers can fare well enough.

Now you may believe that I am engaging here in some distortion?isn?t it
to beg the question to call Galbraith and his American socialist pals
?dreamers?? Well, not if you listen to, you guessed it, Galbraith himself.

This famous champion of nationalization of much of American industry?in
one of his books in the 1970s, The New Industrial State?and the fierce
regulation of corporate commerce, as well as the view that consumers are
imprisoned by way of advertising (which out his The Affluent Society for
this one), ultimately changed his mind, shortly after the fall of the
Soviet Union. I recall reading an interview in Alitalia Airlines?
in-flight magazine, as I flew from Rome to Athens some years ago, where
Galbraith stated unequivocally that capitalism is the winner between the
two major alternatives in contemporary political economy. He was asked, in
an interview published in the October 1996 issue of the magazine, "You
spoke of the failure of socialism. Do you see this as a total failure, a
counterproductive alternative?" To this question he replied as follows:
"I'd make a distinction here. What failed was the entrepreneurial state,
but it had some beneficial effect. I do not believe that there are any
radical alternatives, but there are correctives. The only alternative
socialism, that is the alternative to the market economy, has failed. The
market system is here to stay."

Nothing about this appeared in the fawning review in The New York Review
of Books; the piece makes it appear that Galbraith, who is now 97, has
remained an unreconstructed socialist (of the ?democratic? variety). One
may, I believe, assume that this has less to do with what Galbraith
actually believes now than with what the author of the review, Jeffrey
Madrick, an economist at the New School for Social Research and editor of
Challenge Magazine, believes.
(Nor did Mr. Madrick report one of Galbraith most perceptive remarks,
namely, ?You will find that the State is the kind of organization which,
though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too? [[
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnkennet122465.html
]http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnkennet122465.html].)

I recall, in this connection, that when Robert Heilbroner, another long
time champion of socialism, died recently, none of the obits reproduced
his famous declaration, made in The New Yorker Magazine, namely, ??Ludwig
von Mises...had written of the ?impossibility? of socialism, arguing that
no Central Planning Board could ever gather the enormous amount of
information needed to create a workable economic system....It turns out,
of course, that Mises was right....?

You need to watch out when current dreamers loud the thinking of older
ones: Do they reveal the whole truth or only the portion that gives their
dreams some measure of respectability?

Column on NIMBY Squared, then Cubed

NIMBY Squared, then Cubed

Tibor R. Machan

Over the years I have occasionally written about goings on in Silverado
Canyon, where I live in Southern California. The place is smack in a part
of Cleveland National Forest, although obviously the strip that?s the
inhabited canyon is mostly private property.

One of the fracas has been about building a small development with 12
expensive homes. This has been lingering in various bureaucratic city,
county and whatever departments, with the delays brought about by the
NIMBY crowd, of course. Not everyone in the canyon is opposed,
interestingly, but those who are have much time and energy on their hand,
so this valuable property lies waste until the opponents are finally
placated.

Now the hullabaloo is about the possibility of a tunnel or corridor
coming through or near the canyon and, of course, there is even greater
opposition to this than to those 12 homes. The tunnel would help, it is
argued by traffic experts, ease the nearly immobile morning and afternoon
traffic on the Riverside Freeway (#91). Just as with the new homes, which
would ease some of the escalation of home costs by freeing up some lower
priced homes in Orange County, so with the proposed tunnel, certain people
would be helped by making their commute less painful and costly.

Alas, the NIMBY folks care nothing about this. They just bellyache about
how they wouldn?t be viewing only the beautiful mountains peaks but may
have to see a bit of road traffic from the canyon home windows and as they
mosey about the region.

I lived in Switzerland for two years and traveled extensively from there
to Southwest Italy and and elsewhere where tunnels about in great
numbers?big ones, small ones, wide ones and narrow ones, all types. And,
mind you, they are impressive, too, sights to behold at least to those of
us who enjoy some humanity mixed in with the wilds.

Now if you mention this hereabouts, you will hear all about the delicate
ground of Southern California, what with its various fault lines and the
like. But when you read the rants and raves about the possibility of
tunnels there is no word about that at all. It?s all about our wonderful
view and wild life and such, as if the wilds had no resilience and needed
these NIMBY folks to rescue it from human intervention.

Of course, you will never hear about how perhaps those who care so much
about the wilds should move out of their canyon homes, maybe to some city,
thus making the personal sacrifice they want everyone else to make by not
living or traveling near the canyons. The idea of the 12 homes or the
tunnel is rank villainy but their own insistence of having things go their
way is, well, the moral high ground. Sure?if you buy this, I got this
bridge in Brooklyn I could sell you for peanuts.

We live in the world alongside a lot of other people?many of whom will
not even consider responsible parenting but pop kids into it without a
moment reflection, often completely unprepared to care for them. Indeed,
many of the same folks who fret so much about the environment are also
very protective of those who are poor with large families. (They agitate
for paid family leave, for example, which clearly encourages population
growth.) But never mind, NIMBY comes first for them, whatever the impact
on those whose cost of living rises as a result.

It is simple maturity to acknowledge that space will be squeezed and that
no one has any right to live on prime real estate surrounded by wild life
that he or she didn?t bother to purchase fair and square. And part of the
price of living in California, especially, is to put up with millions of
others who also wish to live and travel there. And that means more roads,
even, sometimes, through nifty places like the Cleveland National Forest.

Column on Multicultural Paradoxes

Paradoxes of Multiculturalism

Tibor R. Machan

My own university has recently experienced a minor upheaval because the
president refused to exceed to demands to build a multicultural center.
Some who wanted such a center have claimed, rather angrily, that this is a
denial of their unique identity, an insult to who they are. The last issue
of our student paper contained quite a few such outbursts, although there
were also several letters in support of the president?s stance.

The incident brought to mind for me a paper written by a very good
friend, though I don?t believe it was ever published, on the very idea of
multicultural educational efforts. After much investigation and
reflection, this friend concluded that a great deal of so called
multicultural education is actually not multicultural at all but rather
one-sided. Among the discoveries he made is that when people study
multiculturalism they are rarely presented with an in-depth view of
different cultures. Indeed, these cultures are hardly studied as
distinctive phenomena. Instead, it is the idea of multiculturalism?the
idea that there are many different cultures and they all deserve equal
respect from everyone?that?s promulgated.

But by adhering to this idea, one isn?t immersing oneself in different
cultures at all. This notion of cultural egalitarianism is something very
few members of the great varieties of cultures around the globe actually
believe, quite the contrary.

The notion that one?s own culture has nothing over others is mostly
anathema to most who live in societies that have traditions of fierce
loyalty to certain unique religions and practices. That, indeed, is the
natural stance to take?why else would these religions and practices be
embraced in the first place, if one believed they are no better than
others around the world?

In fact, if there is a society in which multiculturalism is embraced by a
most folks, at least to some significant measure, it is the United states
of America. And this has been so from its very beginning.

In 1798 a young man, J. M. Holley, wrote a letter to his brother
attesting to this multicultural character of the new country, noting that
?the diversity of dress, manners, & customs is greater in America, than in
any other country in the world, the reason of which, is very obvious. It
is considered as a country where people enjoy liberty and independence; of
course, persons from allmost every nation in the world, come here as to an
assylum from oppression; Each brings with him prejudices in favor of the
habits of his own countrymen....? (Quoted in ?Endpaper,? The New York
Times Book Review, November 5, 1995, p. 46).

In our time, when critics of the United States denigrate its allegedly
self-deluded exceptionalism?the idea that it has uniquely favorable
attributes as a human community?it could easily be replied that the
country?s hospitality to so many different cultures is indeed one of its
unique, albeit sometimes problematic, but mostly benevolent attributes. No
one is required to swear to much more when taking up US citizenship than
to embrace the country?s basic laws. (I recall when I became naturalized
as an American, back in 1961, in Washington, DC, we were required to swear
only to abide by the US Constitution and not to hold loyal to others in
conflict with it.) No one is put through some litmus test about specific
cultural features.

This, of course, annoys some folks a great deal. The likes of Pat
Buchanan, for example, are very concerned that too many people come to
this country who give not a hoot about its cultural attributes. And, yes,
I have to admit that I myself have never come to love baseball,
basketball, and football, or hot dogs and hamburgers. Instead, I, who
consider myself quite cosmopolitan, am still loyal to tennis and gulyas
soup and espresso coffee, not to mention various types of music and
painting and drama from the old continent from which I hail. No one has
treated me badly for this, not even for my other peculiarities, partly
attributable to my accidental cultural background, and from what I have
observed this is pretty much so with millions of other newcomers.

I think my college president was right. This country is already
multicultural to a vastly greater extent than are most others (except
perhaps for a few of the big cosmopolitan cities). So he can do better
with the funds of our university than make an empty gesture toward what
usually turns out to be a rather shallow so called multicultural
educational effort.

Column on Corporations and Governments

Corporations and Governments

Tibor R. Machan

Many critics of free market capitalism focus their energies on
demonstrating that with corporations as powerful as they can become in a
free market, there is no danger as great as making it possible for them to
pursue profit freely, unregulated by government. They are convinced that
only a power that is even greater than wealthy big corporations can
contain the rapacious ambitions that are evident throughout corporate
commerce.

The idea that big corporations are untamed beasts that wreak havoc upon
civilized society is immensely popular throughout the academy everywhere
in the world, including the United States of America. Most professors in
the humanities and social sciences, a great many writers, journalists,
artist, and entertainers?centered mainly in New York City and
Hollywood?cling firmly to their view that corporations are a threat to the
well being of nearly everyone in society and that those who do not share
this belief are deluded, period. It is not only Ralph Nader who embraces
this idea and the only reason Nader hasn?t reached national political
office is that he is viewed as a naïve idealist who wants to take on
forces that must be appeased, not fought.

It is pretty clear that in a society in which people may solicit
governments for favors, big corporations will have an advantage over
others, although universities and unions are not all that far behind in
the power they wield through lobbyists throughout the capitols of the
various states and the federal government. Champions of the free society
hold, of course, that the answer to this problem isn?t to abolish or try
to regulated big business but to refashion the legal system so as to ban
favors to any sector of society. They believe that corporations should be
independent of government as much as churches are. And their idea is not
implausible since by firmly separating church and state, the American
government has, in the main, remained independent of religious control.
If, for example, a massive Roman Catholic church, with millions and
millions of faithful, can be kept at bay, surely corporations could be as
well.

Still, business corporations are probably always going to have a hold on
politicians in the legal system as currently composed. They control huge
sums of money that politicians want so as to run successful campaigns,
which isn?t the case with churches and universities. So long as election
campaigns need to be conducted and so long as people, including their
organizations, are, as they should be, free to make contributions to these
campaigns, it is difficult, critics of free market capitalism say, to
imagine a largely capitalist society free of undue big business-corporate
political influence.

Yet it is possible, slowly and over much time, to wean corporations from
government largess and vice versa. But this requires extensive education
and vigilant proselytization. The probability of such reform is small,
admittedly, but then so was the probability of abolishing slavery at one
time, or, later, segregation or the military draft. All changes of this
magnitude, that require undoing centuries of bad habits, both personal and
institutional, have a slim chance of succeeding. After all, corporations
are entrenched in the system itself, one that gives them such a bad
reputation, without many of them making a determined effort to end their
dependency.

The question then becomes whether it is of any real use to seek remedy
for corporate influence from expanded government regulation, This is what
the current movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, along with most
statist critiques of the Enron fiasco suggest?namely, that the answer to
corporate malfeasance is more and more state intervention. But the logic
of such a position is seriously flawed.

After all, if corporations have powerful, albeit wrongheaded, influence
on government today, why would government have the ability to set them
right? That is a preposterous idea. Moreover, government intervention,
even apart from clearly often serving corporate interests, is so
susceptible to corruption, to misuse, that placing one?s hope in more and
more of it is flat out incredible.

The only hope is the slow, vigilant, process of divorcing corporate
commerce?as well as all other institutions susceptible to corruption?from
government. However much existing corporations exhibit the relentless
tendency to link up with government and thus wield much more than
harmless?and perhaps well deserved?economic power, it is plainly
unreasonable to expect that the alternative of increasing government
regulation is the right solution.

Column on Targetting Individualism (sans typos)

Another Effort to Discredit Individualism
Tibor R. Machan
Regular contributor Jim Holt's column in the May 8, 2005, New York Times
Magazine is all about recent efforts to map the human brain. Some of these
are so successful that they record highly specific brain processes that
are correlated with thoughts and even subconscious perceptual activities.
But don?t count on Holt to report on such matters without a political
agenda. In discussing the fact that the human brain is split and sometimes
when the two spheres are severed things keep on going quite nicely, thank
you, he reproduces this line from New York University philosophy Thomas
Nagel, famed recently for co-authoring The Myth of Ownership (Oxford,
2002): "The ordinary, simple idea of a single person will come to seem
quaint some day, when the complexities of the human control system become
clearer and we become less certain that there is anything very important
that we are one of."
Over twenty years ago another rather prominent philosopher, Derek Parfit,
advanced a similar thesis, in his Reason and Persons (Oxford, 1984),
according to which we are each actually teams?Parfit in fact used the term
"nations"?and not single persons. The whole book was a rather clever piece
of logic chopping in which the main goal seems to have been to show that
no individual human beings exist. And so, no moral or legal order that
rests on the idea of individual rights could be sustained. Nagel, then, is
certainly quite unoriginal but that, of course, would be no problem of he
weren?t so wrong.
My new friend, Barnard Baars, a neuroscientist and author of In the
Theater of Consciousness (Oxford, 1996) made some interesting observations
to me about Nagel?s (and Holt?s) contention, which I reproduce here with
his permission:
"It's complete nonsense from a scientific point of view. My friend Stan
Franklin, who is a mathematician/computer scientist, talks about
?autonomous agents.? Humans are nothing if not autonomous agents?not in a
mystical sense, but in a very specific and causal sense.
"One of the ways we are autonomous is in terms of substitutability of
resources. On the level of food, we like to eat meat, but if that runs
out, potatoes will do. So there are options. In terms of human
relationships, we'd like to have Julia Roberts as our playmate, but there
are other fish in that sea. In terms of making a living, we'd all like to
be paid for our books, but... (etc.) I think that's one of the keys to
autonomy, substitutability of resources.
"Another is flexibility in acquiring knowledge. Humans are by far the best
learners in the animal kingdom, obviously. But acquired knowledge also
shapes who we are and how we define our purposes and interests. Gerald
Edelman, who is a heck of a lot better scientist than Thomas Nagel, makes
a big thing about the distinctiveness of the INDIVIDUAL human brain. His
Neural Darwinism gives a conceptual account of individuality from solid
biological evidence.
"So the NYT quote is complete nonsense but...it supports the social
engineering agenda. Of course that agenda keeps failing in reality!"
Most of us are familiar today with junk science in support of various
environmental and related political programs and how often the government
is eager to cash in on it. (The recent howler about the rate of obesity,
fortunately nipped in the bud shortly after it was floated, is a good case
in point.) Perhaps we need to be alerted to junk philosophy, as well, put
in the service of a political utopia?although, come to think of it, that?s
been going on for centuries. Yet, hasn?t junk science had a long career
itself, yet folks keep falling for it repeatedly?

Column on Why I Write Columns

Columns for Mind Teasing

Tibor R. Machan

What motivates people to write columns? There is no one answer that fits
all columnists?that?s a start of an answer. In my own case there is no one
motive?depends on the day, time, circumstances, my own state of mind, and
probably much I don?t even bother to learn of.

A few things I do know, about why I write columns, involve certain goals.
Among these foremost is the achievement of a world in which freedom is in
greater rather than lesser abundance, the freedom of the individual from
coercive intervention in his or her life. But why bother about this, one
might ask?

Well, I am convinced, from years of experiencing, thinking about, and
reading or otherwise studying the issue, that such freedom is a
precondition of moral conduct at any level whatsoever. Only free men and
women can choose to do what is right. And this is their first and foremost
task in life, so freedom as a condition of their community lives enhances
this task better than anything else.

Contrary to very popular belief, regimenting, regulating, ordering people
about to do what?s right is not the road to that goal at all. That?s
because choice is indispensable for right conduct. So if one wishes to
strive for a better world, one in which people more often than not do the
right thing, one cannot do much more as a general rule than promote human
liberty. Sure, one can make suggestions, implore people, advocate and
materially support this or that course of conduct, too. And one can and
should, needless to say, guide oneself to act properly. But as a matter of
the common good, championing and fighting for individual liberty is really
the best method.

Yet this is only my primary reason. Another is that I keep my own mind in
shape by writing on innumerable things. For this I need, of course, to
study, to keep up with what is going on in many disciplines. And by doing
all this I also generate discussions between me and those who take some
interest in my topics and how I treat them. This keeps me sharper than I
otherwise would be?use it or lose it, as the saying goes.

There are limits, though, to the value of the exchanges that are
generated from published writing, the main one being that some people
enter the exchange in a mean-minded fashion, wishing not to argue but to
insult and make the writer feel badly. I used to take the bait earlier in
my life but no longer. There is too much to do that?s constructive,
helpful, interesting, and so forth than to waste time on hurling insults
back and forth.

So I have this policy now?if I see an insult in the first few lines of an
email or letter?and even in a book review, when one of mine manages to
prompt one?I toss it. I don?t even continue. Sure, I risk losing some
possibly useful follow-up comments but not likely, I figure, since folks
who resort to insults usually haven?t much else to offer. And there are
lots of civil interlocutors around whom one would like not to ignore while
hassling with the uncivil ones.

In some ways there is benefit to not being a very famous columnist
because this makes it more likely that there is time to answer people who
make interesting, often critical, points in response to the mind-teasers
that short columns necessarily have to be. These missives merely raise
some issue, offer a few arguments and a bit of evidence, and then the rest
has to be worked out in more detail. And that?s OK?the division of labor
applies here as everywhere: Some folks need to do such mind-teasing both
for themselves and as a service, while others best do something else
productive.

There is also that motive of aiming to say things in ways that are
succinct yet clear. That?s sort of the artistic part of writing columns, I
believe. Crafting one is not all that simple?structure, form, expression,
language, and the rest all need to be managed reasonably well for the
thing to amount to something of value. And to get there now and then is,
of course, quite satisfying.

Column on Trampling the First (some additional quotes and corrections)

Coercive Zeal Gone Wild

Tibor R. Machan

If there are supposed to be some liberties that have still not been
massively undermined in America, they are those codified in the First
Amendment to the US Constitution. Both freedom of the press and of
religion?basically about holding and voicing beliefs of one?s own
choosing?are supposedly basic rights of all US citizens. (Some folks
dispute that this is so, claiming, I believe implausibly, that only the
federal government may not limit freedom of speech. Yet, of course, the
right is supposedly held by all citizens of the USA, anywhere?it derives
from our unalienable and equal natural right to liberty, listed in the US
Declaration, so if there is to be protection for this right, it clearly
must be provided in every nook and cranny of the country.)

These days, however, a great many people seem to believe that their
worries, sensibilities, feelings and such trump the First Amendment. I
have had a recent personal experience with just this trend.

In one of my columns I criticized the Americans for Disabilities Act for
imposing on various establishments, commercial and not, a legally enforced
duty of generosity and kindness toward disabled people. I noted that some
activists have gone so far as to harass small shops?for example, wineries
in the Central California regions (near Paso Robles and San Louis
Obispo)?with lawsuits that are then settled for big bucks in favor of the
complainants. I noted that this abuse, even officially condemned by a San
Francisco judge recently, is natural with a law that shouldn?t even be on
the books?no one?s generosity or good will ought ever to be compelled,
coerced from the person or corporation. What?s the moral merit in being
helpful to the disabled if one?s doing it at the point of the gun?

Well, several people with disability groups took umbrage with my views
but they didn?t simply leave it at writing letters to the editor to the
papers in which the column appeared. Nor did they think it enough to send
me several pretty nasty emails, claiming that I have offended them. All
that would have been par for the course and part and parcel of free?if not
entirely civil?exchange among citizens of a relatively free society.

No, all that?s not enough. The Executive Director, Ruthee Goldkorn, for
the Ms. Wheelchair California Pageant, contacted the president of the
university at which I teach and demanded that punitive action be taken
against me for voicing my views. Indeed, a demand was launched that I be
fired for my having published my views. Ms. Goldkorn wrote to Chapman's
president, saying "The purpose of this correspondence is to demand an
investigation of Prof. Machan and his prompt removal from your staff." She
went on, "I trust you will take this information very seriously, conduct a
full and open investigation and ultimately remove Professor Machan,?
adding, "This person has no business shaping minds and influencing
students of any age. He is the worst kind of bigot; the kind who hides
behind academia. He must be removed immediately." When the president
responded saying he will not fire or even reprimand me, Ms. Goldkorn
replied, ?Although Prof. Machan has received numerous emails and
correspondences expressing outrage at the sentiments expressed, I guess he
is safe and secure in his position at your institution.? Well, yes, he is,
since what he did is offer his ideas on some subject, and for this most
reputable academic institutions do not fire someone.

Several others approached the student newspaper claiming that I have done
some grave wrong for which I need to be punished by the university,
although the resulting article in the student paper never made clear just
what the complaining individuals actually wanted done. (One may wonder
what these folks want to happen to Greg Perry, a handicapped author of the
high critical book Disabling America [WND Books, 2003].)

Now what is extraordinary about this isn?t that the folks who support the
ADA and its vigilant enforcement were upset. One expects members of
special interest groups who gain government support to try to hang on to
that support. One need only check out the massive lobbying efforts
throughout the country?s various capitols to confirm the point. What is
really disturbing here is that some of the beneficiaries of these laws and
regulations are now perfectly willing to demand that people who disagree
with them be muzzled, fired, perhaps even jailed for their opinions. They
don't simply suggest such policies but demand them, as if they were
entitled to have their will imposed on the dissidents.

This outlook seems to be fueled by the conviction that everyone's support
of entitlements to special favoritism by government is of far greater
importance in our legal system than is the right of freedom of thought or
speech itself. The zeal with which they go to bat for their entitlements
is so fervent that not even the rights of freedom of speech and press are
supposed to remain in place if it means making it possible to give voice
to opposition to those entitlements.

It is interesting that often people fear the undermining of the First
Amendment from those on the political Right, mainly because they associate
such efforts with the attempt to censor pornography or blasphemy. Already
a few decades ago this proved to be a mistake, when some Leftist
feminists, such as law Professor Catherine MacKinnon, decided that
speaking badly of women should not gain constitutional protection (see her
book Only Words [Harvard University Press, 1993]). Today, thinking it's
the Right that's a threat to civil liberties is clearly wrong, what with
political correctness guiding universities and other institutions in their
hiring and promotion policies.

Although the ACLU is still holding to its defense of the First Amendment,
many statists and their constituency, including many members of special
interest groups, have nearly totally abandoned their commitment to the
free discussion of topics that make some people uncomfortable or that some
consider offensive. Which just goes to show you: Back during the McCarthy
era, when the Left was being harassed, its supporters were unyielding in
their defense of civil liberties, especially the right to free thought or
speech.

Now that they are running many government agencies, their outlook seems
to be: Forget about those inconvenient basic rights if they may hamper the
march toward total state control over our lives.

Column on Intelligent Design

Puzzles of Intelligent Design

Tibor R. Machan

When I was a child I was being raised as a Roman Catholic. I was, of
course, baptized, took first communion, and was confirmed. I attended
church pretty regularly although this was in Communist Hungary where we
later learned that many of those giving sermons belonged to what were
called ?the red priests,? members of the clergy who made some kind of
appeasement with the Communist government. Yet there were some famous
members, as well, who opposed communism with great courage?Cardinal
Midszenty, for example.

In time, however, I came to wonder just what I was believing and why. I
argued with priests after they gave sermons on angels and the duty of
self-sacrifice, finding these notions incredible. But I carried on as a
good soldier, blaming myself for daring to question. One time while in the
US Air Force, when I was about 19, I went to confession on Sunday and
heard myself saying the ritualistic sentence, ?And I will do my best not
to sin again,? when I realized that Monday I was planning to go on a date
and had every intention to sin, so I said to the priest hearing my
confession, ?But father, I am not sure I am being honest about this, since
I have a date tomorrow evening and will probably sin and I know this now.?
Without missing a beat he replied, ?Just mean it for now.?

This was that proverbial last straw on the camel?s back?it made no sense
to me to make a promise you know you are going to break by just intending
it ?for now.? It set me off on a very long journey of reexamination of
what I was believing, why, did it make sense, how dare I question
something so well established in my world, etc., and so forth.

Of course, all along I had raised questions of the elementary kind?could
God ever make a rock so big He couldn?t lift it? How could God could come
from nothing but the world needed Him to create it? If everything in the
world needs a cause, does this mean the world itself, which contains all
the causes, could be caused by something else?where would that come from?
Yes, I was a devil of a kid.

Eventually I decided to take up the study of philosophy in order to
refine my inquires, to meet up with some pretty good
thinkers?philosophers, theologians, psychologists?who would help me get
clear on some of these issues (and many others). At the end of the day?at
least for most of the days I recall?I decided I wasn?t going to believe in
these things; I simply couldn?t get past my doubts even if it showed
strong hubris. (Indeed, another nail in the coffin was reading Thomas a
Kempis [circa 1379], Imitation of Christ, who had claimed we humans sin by
seeking knowledge since this is an affront to God, the only one who can
really know.)

Nevertheless, the issue of God is always before us, especially if one
teaches philosophy, and being dogmatic in whatever side one takes is very
bad form, indeed. So now I am thinking about this ?Intelligent Design?
position that is making the rounds, although by all accounts it is a
variation on what is known as the cosmological argument.

As the Stanford (on line) Encyclopedia of philosophy tells it, ?[i]t uses
a general pattern of argumentation (logos) that makes an inference from
certain alleged facts about the world (cosmos) to the existence of a
unique being, generally referred to as God. Among these initial claims are
that the world came into being, that the world is such that at any future
time it could either be or not be (the world is contingent), or that
certain beings in the world are causally dependent or contingent. From
these facts philosophers infer either deductively or inductively that a
first cause, a necessary being, an unmoved mover, or a personal being
(God) exists. The cosmological argument is part of classical natural
theology, whose goal has been to provide some evidence for the claim that
God exists.? The current version, ID, holds that since there are numerous
facts about our world that are very orderly and work in a lawlike fashion,
and since we haven?t got naturalistic (e.g., Darwinian) explanations for
all of them, it must have been God, an intelligent designer, who created
it all.

This being a fairly big issue, I want to just convey my two big problems
with it. First, the design of the world isn?t actually all that
intelligent, considering how many matters seem to go awry all the time,
especially with us. Second, and more importantly, intelligence is produced
by a living brain, so the idea that there had been intelligence prior to
the world defies what we know pretty well?a brain requires the world for
it to exist.

I guess, I remain unconvinced and the advocates of ID need to go back to
the drawing board.

Column on Whether to Besmirch or Praise Liberty

To Besmirch or to Praise, that's the Question

Tibor R. Machan

One may, I think, assume that from the beginning of human thought there
has been this battle between those who stress our capacity to screw up and
those who focus mainly on all the nifty things we can accomplish. Just
think about the idea of original sin?why make such a big deal of the fact
that people are, of course, free to sin or do vicious things, when they
are also just as able and even more likely to act virtuously, creatively,
productively?

Alas, it would be quite a task to do the math here. Are people more
likely to do well or badly? It looks like on the whole the more optimistic
assessment wins out, although it is difficult to show this without a
pretty well worked out set of standards, ones that are likely to be highly
controversial. On a common sense level, too, the task is daunting because
the reporting of good news is so much less popular in the mainstream
media; even the fictional representation of humanity?s lot tends to stress
the dark side. In the realms of art and entertainment the macabre or
horrible, wherein people and their circumstances come off pretty much on
the downside, seems to dominate. While some religions, like the Seventh
Day Adventists, do advise us to look on the bright side of things?I am
thinking here of my favorite bumper sticker, ?Notice the good and praise
it,? which I recall them producing some years ago?mostly they tend to
focus on us all as sinners.

I am reflecting on this after having finally seen the award winning
German movie, ?Good Bye, Lenin,? about the East German lady who falls into
a coma just before the Berlin Wall comes down and, so as to spare her any
excitement when she awakens, she is kept in the dark about all the changes
that have occurred in consequence of this momentous event. As the changes
are depicted in the movie, you get a good illustration of how some folks
revel in a negatives of human affairs.

The West, of course, has been much more free for people than the East,
during the Cold War, and this can use examination and illustration in a
film like ?Good Bye, Lenin.? So what do we get from the people who gave us
this widely acclaimed little gem?

Well, the first thing about the free West that?s depicted for us is
pornography. Next come some pretty gaudy advertisements. Then scenes after
scenes of decadence. That is how the prevailing freedom in West Germany is
represented for the viewing audience.

There is not a thing about the benign creative initiative that freedom
unleashes, no showing of how freedom of commerce makes lives so much more
promising for everyone, nothing much about the bustling employment market
or about civil liberties, no. It?s all about how when you get to be free,
you can make a gory mess of things.

And for this the flick was hailed as being so insightful, so quaint, so
important to make so as to show how East German idealism had to give way
to crass ?McCapitalism.? The director and co-author, [
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0065615/ ]Wolfgang Becker, never tires of
rubbing it in that where freedom reigns, people can behave in less that
admirable, noble ways. This is probably the criticism that has undermined
the free, capitalist society for centuries, indeed from the very beginning
when the idea of human political and economic liberty began to be floated
among political theorists. Acknowledging that human beings ought to live
in freedom has always been undermined by this pessimist outlook, one that
while true, is also far less than half of the truth.

A classic example comes from Karl Marx, when he said, in his famous
essay, ?On the Jewish Question,? that ?the right of man to property is the
right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of the same arbitrarily,
without regard for other men, independently from society, the right of
selfishness.? Never mind for the moment that ?selfishness? may not be all
that terrible, should it include, for example, one?s better education, the
health care of one?s loved ones, etc. Let us just grant, for the sake of
argument, that such a right?as the right to one?s life or one?s
liberty?makes it possible for people to do some shady stuff, including to
dispose of their possessions arbitrarily, ?without regard to other men,
independently of society.?

Yet, of course, they could and mostly do make use of their private
property productively, creatively, in what is called a win-win fashion,
exchanging what they have for what others have in a way that everyone is
better off. But no. Old Karl, just like our little movie, had to focus on
the worst possible cases, on how some folks might make less than the most
efficient, most admirable use of what they have the right to do and own.

To all this I wish to recall our nifty bumper sticker: ?Notice the good
and praise it.? Just pay attention and notice if I?m right.

Column on Choosing to be Peculiar, even Dumb

The Right to be Dumb?or Peculiar

Tibor R. Machan

Suppose I decided to each at a vegetarian restaurant morning, noon and
evening, 7 days a week, on and on, without a break. Just lettuce, nothing
else. Just image it, I know it is dumb?or peculiar?but there is nothing
very difficult about imagining it, even noticing it here and there. Many
people are, indeed, dumb or peculiar, at least in some aspects of their
lives, and Supersize Me, the movie that bashes McDonald?s because there
are quite a few such people who go there to eat virtually all the time,
day after day, night after night, makes a great deal of this.

Of course, there are other people who do similar things that we all know
about, like those who go to Las Vegas and sit by a slot machine day and
night and that?s their vacation. Maybe they are just enjoying themselves,
although when you walk by and see their faces, that?s not what comes to
you mind. They seem fixated on the one arm bandit, pretty zonked out.

And there are kids who spend nearly all their days skateboarding, no
matter how often they fall, no matter how many bruises they get. And there
are mountain climbers who spend all their spare time climbing those
mountains, endlessly, climbing and climbing, no matter how many others
fall to their deaths, no matter how dangerous it is to do such a thing.
And how about those demolition derby enthusiasts? Or folks who do nothing
but play bridge all weekend, or lie out on the sun and soak it up and risk
skin cancer?

But the likes of Michael Moore and Rob Reiner?and even some at
prestigious universities?just will not get it. Some people aren?t very
sensible or conventional. But of course, the people making a federal case
of the McDonald?s enthusiasm will not accept this as fact. They need an
American villain, some typically American institution, like big business,
so they can then denounce not the stupid or peculiar people who are
overeating of their own free will but the McDonald?s big business people
who are, you guessed it, coercing them all to come and eat there. (Of
course, if you deny free will for the customers, you must also for the
vendors!)

In fact this is all bunk. I love McDonald?s French fries?every six months
or so I indulge myself in a large portion and then look forward to, with
anticipation, when I plan to do it again, six months or so later. Do I
indulge myself every day? No way. Would I like doing so if I didn?t have
to pay for it in various adverse side effects? Sure I would. But I don?t.
I like not being dumb or even very peculiar.

Am I smart or conventional about everything like I am about resisting the
temptation to gorge myself on McDonald?s French fries? No, I am not. If
you knew me better, you could probably spot a character flaw and
peculiarity or two that would show that I, too, hover near cave into some
things odd, even self-destructive, in my life. But all of it is not
irresistible?I could also do otherwise, if I choose to do so?and, indeed,
now and then I decide to drop one of my habits for good.

What is truly contemptible about the Michael Moore types is how they
assume that people have no will of their own and it is only because big
businesses advertise fat foods that they eat fat foods. Millions of
people, of course, who are exposed to the very same ads do not choose to
make McDonald?s their breakfast, lunch, and dining establishment day in
and day out. How come? They don?t choose to?they have other things they
want to do besides gorge themselves on fast food. (And in some cases
wanting to gorge oneself on fast food may not be such a terrible thing.)

It is interesting, by the way, that after the last presidential campaign
it was always the Right Wing that was charged with focusing on so called
moral values. That is entirely wrong?the Michael Moore types on the
Left?his buddies Rob Reiner, Al Franken, et al?are all moralists and
worse. They not only preach the morality of temperance when it comes to
fast foods and such. They, very much like those ladies who spawned
Prohibition about a century ago, want their morality shoved down
everyone?s throat. They aren?t happy with advocating, propagandizing,
imploring, warning and such, no. They are wannabe tyrants. Just look what
they did about smoking, getting it prohibited at private restaurants and
bars!

It?s one thing to urge people not to be dumb or carry on indulging
themselves perhaps unwisely, imprudently. It?s entirely another to coerce
them to act as you would want them to act.

Column on Death and Dying

Death & Dying

Tibor R. Machan

My friend David L. Norton?whose book Personal Destinies, A Philosophy of
Ethical Individualism (Princeton UP, 1976), should have been far more
famous than any that John Rawls and other celebrities in the discipline of
philosophy had written?wrote beautifully and wisely about aging. He gave
credit for the germ of his idea to the famous psychologist, Erik Erickson,
but David developed the idea in far more philosophical terms than Erickson
had. It had to do with how one?s perspective on one?s life undergoes
certain critical though very natural and potentially enhancing stages in
virtue of human nature itself.

One of the points David stressed is that a person with a good outlook on
life will gradually come to terms with the fact that he or she will die
and, while never abandoning the quest for living and, indeed, for
thriving, such a person will not protest or concoct fantasies in order to
manage the fact of impending death. I actually spoke with David by phone
about a week before he died of cancer and he appeared to me to have been
exemplary in how he dealt with his own imminent death.

As I have been getting older, several family members and friends have
died and, of course, I have been spending a tad more time on reflecting on
my own death than I used to. But I do remember when way back in my 30s I
probably had the experience that readied me best for my own eventual
demise.

It was when a tiny kitten I had wanted to become our household pet
suddenly developed some ailment and before anything could be done it
expired while I held it in my left hand. The kitten was suddenly no longer
there, only a dead kitten carcass, no real kitten at all. I noticed,
though, that all was very peaceful with this dead kitten, very
uncomplicated. I believe it was then that I realized that provided there
isn?t going to be too much unbearable pain or suffering, provided those
close to me don?t go ballistic about it all, I should be managing death
quite well, thank you. Because by all I can figure and have gotten used
to, have accepted in my bones by now, that after I die there will be
nothing for me to think, to remember, to consider, to argue, to feel, to
do?it will be the end of my life and, of course, of me.

Sure, there will be some remaining signs that I had been around, but that
will not matter to me at all, only to those who care about what I have
done, what I have meant to them. It is, in fact, for those who care for
me, who will have loved me, that my death will be a problem, not for me.
And about this I may be able to do something, if I give them the most I
can while I am still around, if I care for them and love them, too. I
might, also, be able to help them acknowledge that my being gone is not
what should be focused upon but that I had lived with sufficient dignity
and joy that my life can be deemed nearly all that it could be. And that,
I believe, ought to make them feel better, at least a little after I have
died.

Of course, it is one of the fascinating as well as scary things about
one?s life that few things can be fully, accurately anticipated, apart
from the next several moments?or perhaps a bit more?of one?s future. Yet
one point David, following Erickson, stressed is that this, too, is
something that one must accept and embrace and then it will not be an
obstacle to living properly and fruitfully.

This goes contrary to what I learned was a main point in Martin
Heidegger?s philosophy. When I used to teach Existentialism, I studied
quite extensively his views on death and they were nothing if not morbid
and scary. Heidegger, who despite his serious flirtation with (and one
time enthusiastic endorsement of) Nazism, remains a prominent 20th century
philosopher?still embraced by some influential philosophers who should
know better?believed that we humans are unique in, among other ways,
having to cope with the persistent dread of death. (There is some evidence
now that some other animals have to cope with it to some measure, too, but
not at the philosophical level where they can dwell upon the potentially
awesome fact of it.) There are others in the history of human thought who
have made similar points.

I, however, liked what I understood to be the ancient philosopher
Epicurious?s attitude, who taught that all that fretting about one?s death
is pretty useless and is merely going to contribute to making one?s life
more unhappy than it has to be. This left a big impression on me, so much
so that I turned into someone always a bit puzzled when my own children
find bringing up, as a concern with practical matters would require this,
the inevitable subject of my demise too uncomfortable. I keep wanting to
impress upon them that it will just be something that is best to be
sensibly prepared for, so why not simply come to terms with it?

But I guess that?s easy for me to say?I will not be around to experience
the loss.

Column on Bill Gates and Public Education

Bill Gates Didn?t Go Far Enough

Tibor R. Machan

From his address at the nation?s governors? conference, I give you Bill
Gates: "American high schools are obsolete," he said, adding, "By
obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed and
underfunded.... By obsolete, I mean that our high schools?even when they
are working exactly as designed?cannot teach our kids what they need to
know today.?

Indeed, this is part of the theme of a book I edited, Education in a Free
Society (Hoover Institution Press, 2000) and it was the substance of my
essay in 1972, ?The Schools Ain?t What They Used to be...and Never Was,?
in Reason magazine and reprinted in The Libertarian Alternative
(Nelson-Hall, 1974). Actually, I went much farther than Mr. Gates, whose
concern is mostly with how well the schools supply men and women in the
technological sector with a properly trained work force. In contrast, the
concern I (and quite a few others who share my views on this topic), have
is with how well education serves those who are being educated, be they
hard science, humanities, or social science students. Gates merely laments
that "Training the work force of tomorrow with the high schools of today
is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old
mainframe. ... Our high schools were designed 50 years ago to meet the
needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st
century, we will keep limiting?even ruining?the lives of millions of
Americans every year."

As a matter of historical fact, our public education system was designed
two centuries ago, in large part, to honor a racist public policy. This
was well researched and reported in the late E. G. West?s book, Education
and the State (Institute for Economic Affairs, 1965). Private schools were
doing just fine, providing what markets provide in exceptionally efficient
and, indeed, wise ways: a highly diverse approach to teaching students,
not the statist and mainly one-size-fits-all approach, but they also did
something very benign and decent?in their diverse and decentralized way
they extended their services to all races and religions. But the
politicians at the time couldn?t stomach this, so they decided to impose a
public education system that would be appropriately racist and
discriminatory, to fall in line with the prevailing mainstream public
philosophy of racism.

The result is what we see now, a defunct public education system, defunct
not because of some recent mistakes, as Mr. Gates contends, but because of
a fundamental flaw in it, its association with government.

Most of us who have gone through the various stages of American public
education may not realize this but we have been part of a massive
collectivized system, not unlike one the Soviet Union would have
championed and from which, in time, it choked to death. Elsewhere public
education remains partly functional only because it tends to be highly
elitists and does not aim, as it does in America, to accommodate the
egalitarian pedagogical philosophy of providing everyone with schooling,
nearly to the level of a guaranteed college degree.

The bottom line is that education, like all other productive, creative
services in society, is better off decentralized, privatized. Sure some
will have to seek out special help, but so do some as they seek to satisfy
their clothing, housing, or nutritional needs. Nonetheless, once we
abandon the fantasy that everyone needs to be subjected to the same
schooling and everyone needs to have is property taxed so as to support
this contorted system, the sort of hopes Mr. Gates, and others, with
different but equally legitimate agendas for young people, are voicing
will no longer have to go unsatisfied. There will be plenty of schools
responding to the varied needs to American students and the opportunities
that face them in all the disciplines of education. There will, in short,
be entrepreneurship in education, as there is in the software industry.

No doubt, this approach is going to be dismissed with total disdain by
some?first, by the people who are wedded in their thinking to how
government is the solution to all human problems, and, second, by those
who are currently mindlessly employed by the state educational systems
across the country and care not a whit for proper schooling but mostly for
their continued steady employment, not unlike those who have worked for
defunct and misguided?and indeed more or less unjust?institutions
throughout human history. But they really aren?t the best source of wisdom
about what young human beings need in the way of an educational
alternative to what we have now, an evidently bankrupt one.