Column on Relativism v. Terrorism

It?s all a Matter of Perspective, Isn?t It?

Tibor R. Machan

An amazing thing about a good deal of higher education is how little one
hears form the professors when it matters most. Take the famous idea,
endorsed by many very prominent teachers in innumerable Western
universities, that what is right and wrong is all a matter of perspective.
The prominent?indeed, arguably most famous?American radical pragmatist
philosopher Richard Rorty (who is teaching now at Stanford University)
made it clear several years ago that no one can know right and wrong apart
from how his or her own community see it. There is no right and wrong
apart from one?s group. As Rorty put it, in his comment on the demise of
the Soviet Union: ?[We] cannot say that democratic institutions reflect a
moral reality and that tyrannical re¬gimes do not reflect one, that
tyrannies get something wrong that democratic societies get right.?

If you change the particulars, Rorty would have to agree that neither can
we say that terrorists get it wrong when they murder children in London or
Madrid or New York City. No, all we can say is that we stand with our
group, while they stand with theirs.

Of course, this kind of thinking is ancient, not at all new, but in most
periods of human history the major thinkers rejected it. Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Aquinas, and Spinoza, to list just some of the greatest
thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition, held that while it is
difficult, human beings can learn of some basic truths. Or at least they
held out hope for this, especially in the realm of ethics and politics.
The American founders were among these, which is why they declared
themselves in support of unalienable individual rights to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness for everyone.

But today, probably more so than ever before, the dominant idea in most
universities is that no basic truths about ethics and politics are
possible to identify. Multiculturalists teach this. Moreover, the books
the likes of Richard Rorty write are brought out by the most prestigious
publishers in the world?e.g., Cambridge University Press. Yet, when bombs
go off killing dozens and more in New York, Washington, London, Madrid,
and Cairo, one doesn?t find Richard Rorty and his followers parading their
seriously crafted views to the general public. No matter how hard one
looks to see if such missives have been published, there is nothing
written by those folks about how it is false that terrorists ?get
something wrong that democratic societies get right.?

Surely at this point one can wonder whether Rorty & Co. really mean what
they claim to believe in their more academic publications. Or perhaps they
are merely teasing their students with outrageous ideas and when they
leave their study, in the fashion the 18th century Scottish philosopher
David Hume described, they no longer take their ruminations seriously.

But this is a luxury we cannot afford, to make reckless pronunciations
about truth, justice, knowledge or virtue in our professional capacity but
reject them when we step out of our offices into the real world. Because
out students often do listen to what we say and when they take the
material we so strongly champion with them into their lives, the stuff can
turn out to be deadly for them and indeed the rest of us.

The practical implications of the kind of view Richard Rorty and other
relativists propound amount to no less than that the positions of the
terrorists and of the victims of terrorism are basically indistinguishable
as to their merit or worth. In the total scheme of things, as best as we
can tell, the two are on the same footing?or, put another way, neither has
any better footing.

Maybe Rorty & Co. would reply, but this doesn?t mean the victims must
accept their victimization, must believe they shouldn?t resist. Such
declamations, however, are unconvincing because the thrust of the original
relativist idea is exactly that, namely, terrorists do not have positions
that are in the end worse than those of their victims. Such a view is
debilitating, practically, and can utterly confuse people about where one
ought to stand on terrorism. It is, indeed, just the view terrorists would
most likely want us to embrace so we become impotent, philosophically and
ethically, as we try to come to grips with their vicious conduct.

I think Rorty & Co. know this. This is why we do not hear from them in
these times. But then they should remain silent at other times, too.

Column on Service & Citizenship

Service and Citizenship

Tibor R. Machan

Once again a famous public figure chimes in with complaints about how
America has seen the end of the connection between service and
citizenship. I am talking about David M. Kennedy?s Op Ed in The New York
Times, a recent exercise in finger wagging if there ever was one.

Let?s just see?must there be a connection between service and citizenship
in the first place? Dr. Kennedy, who is a professor of history at Stanford
University, believes that serving in the military should be coerced, that
conscription is best, and that a volunteer military is a mercenary
organization.

To start with, those are false alternatives?volunteers can be far more
dedicated and dutiful than conscripts, although they also get paid.
Indeed, citizenship is antithetical to a certain kind of service, to
servitude. It was prior to the emergence of citizenship, when those living
in a country were deemed to be subjects and serfs, that service was big on
the agenda for everyone. They were all supposed to serve the king and the
upper classes. With the emergence of citizenship came the idea that people
lived for their own goals, not those of the king and his buddies.

So, yes, in a sense American society has abandoned the insidious notion
that people are to serve the state or monarch or some other self-selected
bunch as soldiers or anything else, for that matter. Sovereignty for
everyone means just that?none of us is a conscript to other people and
their purposes for us. But perhaps there is another, more benign sense of
service, the disappearance of which is being lamented, although I am not
sure. But let?s be charitable?the service Mr. Kennedy may have in mind is
helping our fellow human beings when they are in need, being generous,
even charitable, to those who are in dire straits. Maybe it?s this that he
sees disappearing from American society.

Here is an idea: Maybe the welfare state itself is to blame. After all,
when we are taught by our public philosophers that people have a right to
public assistance?health care, minimum wages, unemployment compensation,
education and so forth?the idea might come across that as with all rights,
all that?s required from everyone is to stand aside. Your right to your
life is, after all, something everyone respects by standing aside, by not
murdering you. Same with your right to freedom of speech or religion?these
require for others to abstain from intrusive conduct, period.

Generosity or charity, being of service to those who are in need, on the
other hand requires of us that we do something for people of our own free
will, because we deem it the right thing to do, not because they are
entitled. I help others not because I am their servant but because I
believe I should help them. If I have already been coerced to support all
those government entitlement programs, my helpfulness becomes moot.

So, it seems, what is undermining service is actually that forced service
that everyone must be part of, the welfare state. It is this insidious,
coercive program of assistance to all, deserving or not, that has produced
the demoralization that shows up in people not going that extra yard to
help their needful fellows. And who is to blame for this? The very people,
like Mr. Kennedy, who are eager to put us all into the service of others,
into what is best called plain old involuntary servitude.

What Mr. Kennedy & Co. do not seem to appreciate is that coercion kills
generosity and charity and, yes, service. It substitutes forced taking and
labor for free giving. It
turns citizens into subjects, people whose own will doesn?t count and who
must, instead, bow to the dictates of the government and fork over their
resources not because they are convinced there is a worthy goal to be
served but because a gun is pointed at them and they have no choice but to
come up with their resources to fend off that gun.

Is it any wonder that under such a system voluntary help?even voluntary
military service?is a bit hard to come by?

Column: In The Shadows of Terrorism

In the Shadows of Terrorism

Tibor R. Machan

London, UK. The little hotel, The Sanctuary House, where I stayed this
time was located, unbeknownst to me, just the other side of the New
Scotland Yard, so when I got there on July 21st after my flight from JFK,
I felt some relief. Terrorists probably will not do their vicious deeds in
the backyard of the cops. I was invited to give a talk on ?The Free Market
and Its Moral Foundation? at a small classical liberal-conservative
institute, Civitas, by my friend and fellow philosopher David Conway.

It was ironic?the very day I was laying out the moral case for a
free
society, four new attempted bombings occurred in London, based, in part,
on the terrorists? conviction that nothing about Western Societies is of
any moral worth at all. Of course, the big question is what is to count
as moral. They believe duty to tribe is, whereas in fact self-perfection
as human beings is our true moral purpose in life.

As I left Civitas and did some walking about London while
experiencing
plenty of jitters, I recalled some similar feelings from when Budapest was
being bombed in my very early youth. I reflected on why these terrorists
have such a warped view of human morality. (I also stopped to call my
mother who brought up that very thing, about how living in Budapest during
World War II felt much like it feels living in the shadows of terrorism
now.)

I was also assisted in my reflections by a novel I was reading, by
Daniel
Silva, The Prince of Fire, which is all about terrorist doings throughout
Europe, all in the name of their warped sense of morality.

The bottom line is that terrorists believe in the virtue of tribal
loyalty. It is, for most of them, a matter of us against them, as a group.
No, it?s even worse?as a bee hive or ant colony. For these terrorists a
baby is not some innocent individual human being but something that?s part
of the evil body, the body that?s those infidels who are not with us. It
is all ?we,? ?we,? and ?we? again, or ?us,? and ?us,? and ?us? again.
Individuals do not matter. Even parents and siblings are just part of the
tribe?if they are hurt or killed it is because this was an act against the
tribe that it is a bad thing, never mind them as individual persons. That
is why revenge needs to be carried out against anyone deemed as part of
those bad others?children, neighbors, relatives, people who look like
them, who eat the same kind of food, what have you.

What is so outrageous as well as frightening about this is that
much of
the world has viewed human affairs along such lines throughout human
history. Individualism, while far more true than tribalism, has not been
fully appreciated by people. Even in much of Europe, the idea of the Serbs
versus the Croats or the Irish versus the English, the Jews versus the
Christians, or the immigrants versus natives is still very prevalent, even
dominant.

It is no wonder that so many Europeans feel more ?understanding?
toward
the terrorists! The distinctive American view of individualism, wherein
it?s the individual?s actions that establish who someone is, not where
someone comes from, what tribe one belongs to, is novel, unfamiliar. Even
in America it is mostly a matter of the gut, not of the mind?too many
people are philosophical collectivists or communitarians, not
individualists.

Yet, of course, it is individualism that is truer about us and it
is also
this viewpoint that encourages more peace and harmony among people. With
any individual there lies only a tiny bit of power, whereas tribes, even
small ones, pack quite a punch. So if individuals within some tribe get
crazy angry about something, chances are considerable that major damage
will be done. An individual is relatively impotent in these matters and
the risk of angry outbursts and barbaric temper tantrums are thus
minimized.

In the end, of course, tribes are mainly disguised ways for some
members
of them to gain and keep power. They are nasty fictions behind which the
few who are privileged and unjustly favored hide their vested interests.
They are the ones who are most threatened with the idea of individualism,
of a rejection of collective duty and guilt. So they will carry on with
their terrorism seeing that without it, they have really nothing left and
nothing of value to fake.

Column on "The American People" (w/correction)

What?s it with ?The American People??

Tibor R. Machan

Too many media people seem to revel in this, at least judging by the
various reporters discussing the forthcoming Supreme Court nominee and the
Karl Rove fracas. I am talking about the constant references to ?the
American people,? or ?Americans.? A poll is taken, involving some 1000
people out of around 150 million, and suddenly these reporters?for
example, John King of CNN?know what the American people think, want, wish
for, approve of, disapprove of and the like. These reporters are
notoriously loose about the use of this phrase. (Mr. King is also very
happy to routinely provide information about what unnamed but supposedly
important people think about innumerable issues. Frankly, I think he is
just telling us what he thinks without admitting to this.)

Anyway, I don?t know about you, but when someone refers to ?the American
people,? I tend to check with the one nearest me, namely, myself, and see
if what is being said about this bunch of individual human beings squares
with the report. You may have guessed?it rarely if ever does. By what
reasoning, then, does it turn out to be such a confidently and frequently
used phrase? Has the science of poll taking been perfected so much that
from asking a bunch of heavily loaded questions of a few folks via the
phone and getting their input, a firm, confident conclusion can be reached
about what the American people think? I very seriously doubt it.

But never mind me, for a moment. This country is awash with about 150
million adults, from enormously varied backgrounds and with a wide variety
of points of view on everything from the quality of movies or education to
the merits of politicians and various proposed public policies. All the
fuss about diversity should alone testify to this, not to mention the
hullabaloo about multiculturalism. From its earliest days, America has
been populated by people from many backgrounds and with a wide variety of
opinions, yet somehow the bulk of big media reporters don?t care about
that at all. They treat the polls uncritically as representative of what
can only amount to a fictional entity, ?the American people.?

Is this all accidental? Are these reporters simply stupid? Are the
interpreters of the polls, like Bill Schneider?one of the ever-present
media wonks?naïve? Or may we speculate that they are stacking the deck in
favor of certain suppositions they like which then can make their reports
and speculations seem well grounded? I think the answer is fairly obvious.

The plain truth seems to be that these media folk have no interested at
all in learning what the American people think or want or whatever. To do
so, they would actually have to go out and gather information from, yes,
the American people. And these people, in all their diversity and variety,
would tell them something far more complicated and complex than what they
wish to believe about them. There would not be just one idea about Mr.
Rove or what kind of jurists should be put on the US Supreme Court. No,
there would be hundreds if not thousands of ideas about these and
thousands of other matters that media is professional sworn to report on.
But instead of going about its task with due diligence, with competence
and conscientiousness, the reporters engage in malpractice, plain and
simple. They ?report? on the views of a mythical beast, if you will, that
can then be enlisted to peddle whatever opinion they like to peddle.

I bet that most of the American people haven?t figured out just what is
the matter with Karl Rove and all this outing of (it appears) an inactive
CIA person who, from what I have learned, was never quite named. Most of
the American people appear to me to have much better things to do with
their limited time than fret about this issue.

As to whom Bush should nominate for the US Supreme Court, I don?t know
how many Americans really care about this. I do, but until I get some clue
who are the prospective nominees, I will not dwell on the topic a whole
lot. I, too, have other tasks to attend to, tasks my busy life offers up
quite readily. So, when Mr. King and Mr. Schneider report on the views of
?the American people,? I find them to be engaging in fancy, not news
reporting. But it isn?t likely to be accidental.

It seems, as already suggested, to have a goal, namely, to support an
agenda. In the case of the Karl Rove fracas, this agenda seems to be to
make it appear that everyone in the country is outraged by the shenanigans
of the Bush administration. And in the case of the Supreme Court
nomination, it seems to be that everyone is dead set against Bush getting
one of his favorite selections on the court.

Or maybe these guys are stupid and naïve, not pushing an agenda. Maybe
they do believe in the fairy tale of ?the American people.? Maybe they do
overhear some folks chatting in a lavatory and think this is reliable news
material that their viewers and listeners must be told about (from
?unnamed sources?). Maybe it is the artificiality of the media business
itself, with its manufactured urgency about everything, even stuff that no
one in his or her right mind can think is really urgent. (After all,
although news reports are strictly scheduled, actually newsworthy stuff
isn?t, so one can appreciate the need for cooking the news.)

Still, I would argue that it is not professional for journalists, big or
small media types, to avoid the hard task of learning what the multitude
and diverse American public thinks, believes, wants and so forth, in favor
of a simplistic reference to ?the American people,? as if such a being
really existed.

Column on Government Favors

Who Do You Blame For Favors?

Tibor R. Machan

It is one of Ralph Nader's ongoing complaints about American corporations
that they control the American government. A great many on the Left share
this view and so badmouth corporate commerce endlessly. Business
corporations are supposed to possess their enormous control over
government by means of infusing huge sums of money into campaigns, as well
as by doing all kinds of other very expensive favors for politicians. By
getting very chummy with government, corporate managers secure for
themselves lasting friends in most administrations and succeed at
influencing legislation and regulation. Mr. Nader thinks that it is this
process that accounts for most of the ills of our society.

And to a large extent he is right. Anytime some groups of citizens,
especially those with tremendous resources, get up close and personal to
politicians, the standard of equal protection under the law for all of us
is bound to be violated throughout the society. That corporations are more
successful at this than, say, artists--although the latter do manage to
obtain a pretty good share of support--is not mysterious. Business
corporations are economic units brought about by millions of people coming
together and entrusting their wealth to managers of businesses in the hope
that they will prosper from this, which certainly is a good and
unobjectionable idea. When these managers approach government so as to
gain special favors, clearly the system has become corrupted. But who is
to be blamed for this, who is doing something wrong?

Ordinarily if someone tries to bribe a judge or police officer and
succeeds, the major fault lies with these officers of the law. They are
sworn to remain impartial, fair, objective and are supposed to refuse
point blank any efforts to undermine these character and professional
traits that are necessary to the performance of their duties. Sure, trying
to bribe them is a bad thing but taking the bribe is far worse.

Suppose, however, that judges and police officers are officially on record
inviting bribes from people in whose cases they are involved. Suppose the
system, as in the case with those of many foreign countries, is frankly
and unabashedly open to pay-offs and influence peddling. Now those who
approach officials in such a system with more or less successful efforts
to gain favors certainly could not be blamed. It is the system that would
be at fault, and indeed often is throughout the globe. And so it is with
corporate influence on the American legal and political system.

The original idea of the American founders was that governments are
instituted among us to secure our rights. Yet certain provisions of the US
Constitution opened the door to distract government from this proper
task--consider how the First Amendment talks of how we may all approach
government with our grievances, which has come to be interpreted as an
invitation to lobby government for favors. The powers of governments, too,
have departed from those just powers that a government may gain through
the consent of the governed. Instead governments meddle in all sorts of
affairs, especially economic ones, by means of, say, the interstate
commerce clause of Article I, Section 8 of the federal Constitution.

Once a system of law is so corrupted, it is like umpires or referees
opening themselves to influence by players and racers in sports. If they
get the message that it is all right to do so, it is rather curious to
blame them for it. Yes, influencing umpires and referees corrupts the
game but it is the system that makes this possible that's responsible, not
those who take advantage of it. At some point refusing to do so can become
suicidal.

That is just how many business corporations look at the American legal
system: It openly invites them to exert as much influence as possible and
not pitching in can actually amount to professional malpractice under the
prevailing circumstances.

Ralph Nader & his pals on the Left ought to devote themselves not to
business bashing but to
reforming the government so it operates along lines we demand of honest
judges and cops, to not play favorites and to have a system of laws that
makes playing favorites outright impossible, illegal. But then, of course,
he wouldn't have a change to lobby for his own pet projects either and
that is what he really seems to want to do, not clean up the system.

Column on Why Rights Based Systems are Sound

Why are Rights Based Political Systems Sound

Tibor R. Machan

In a previous column I noted that the US Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo
spells a victory for utilitarian or consequentialist notions of just
or good human communities. This is because in Kelo the majority held that
the right to private property may be violated not just for public use,
which is not really an exception to rights but a requirement of a system
in which rights are properly defended, but also for various purposes
private individuals pursue, if these purposes seem to advance overall
welfare or well being. In Kelo, in particular, this overall welfare or
well being consisted of economic development. (Of course, one can dispute
whether this is really so, but that's not the issue--assuming violating
private property rights advances overall welfare, go ahead and violate to
your heart's content, said the court, in effect.)

Is it a good thing that this utilitarian or consequentialist idea of a
just or good society gained headway via Kelo? After all, its spirit is in
clear violation of the political idea sketched in the Declaration of
Independence which took our basic rights to be unalienable, impermissible
to violate for any reason. So is this development in American political
history in which the Founder's notion of justice is abandoned and John
Stuart Mill's and those of other utilitarians (and pragmatists) is
embraced a good thing?

I ardently reject this and here is why: Human beings are moral agents and
their moral agency requires a legal order that secures for them their
basic rights, including the right to private property. When and if their
rights are indeed secured, they will have the chance to choose between
right and wrong conduct, although it is more likely that they will choose
right conduct since if other people's rights are also secured, no one will
be able to dump the bad consequences of his or her choices on others; they
will have to live with their mistakes and this will very likely discourage
them from making mistakes over and over again. Still, the possibility of
their making mistakes, of doing wrong cannot be avoided in a rights based
system, just as when the right to freedom of speech is protected, there is
no way to guaranteed that all who exercise it will only say worthwhile
things, or when the right to freedom of religions is protected all those
who exercise it will only believe in what is true.

But then why is still kind of system, one based on rights, the sound one?
Because it fits human beings better than the alternative, which would have
a legal system constantly promote welfare or well being, good things. The
fact is, that no one can ever devise a legal system and public policies
that guarantee good results. Putting people in charge of this massive
project is most likely to backfire in a big way. Politicians are not gods
or even angels, so what they plan is bound to contain many mistakes and
when they plan for others whom they do not know, that likelihood is
overwhelming. Also, politicians and bureaucrats are just as tempted to
dump their errors on others but being in power does not serve to
discourage them from doing so, quite the opposite. So, in point of fact,
to entrust the task of promoting economic or any other valuable
development to politicians and bureaucrats--the city of New London, CT, as
in Kelo--is futile and very likely destructive. Indeed, that is the big
lesson of the fall of the Soviet Union and its allies--they all had
centrally planned and/or regulated systems which entrusted leaders to
promote welfare and it all came apart for that very reason. The city
fathers of New London, CT., or of any other city in the world, are no more
able to do well at the task of promoting the public welfare than were
those in the Kremlin.

So, a rights based system of justice has a much better prospect at
promoting good things all around than one in which public officials are
supposed to engage in planning for the welfare of society. A rights based
system sets the citizenry free and in freedom they are better positioned
to promote overall and of course their own well being--which is really the
same thing--than if they are regimented about.

Thus Kelo was indeed a very bad decision and it would have been much
better to stick to the teachings of the American founders and affirm
individual, including private property, rights for Americans everywhere,
including in New London, CT.

Column on Kelo & Utlitarianism

[Please edit/proof read this column closely. Tibor Machan]

Kelo & Utlitarianism

Tibor R. Machan

If one judges by the Declaration of Independence, the American political
tradition is clearly an instance of affirming the merits of rights based
political theory. Rights based political theories consider justice in
terms of whether a legal order establishes, maintains, upholds the rights
of members of a community, that is to say, principles that identify the
sphere of authority of these members, wherein they are in charge of making
decisions, regardless whether these decision achieve certain desired goals
of leaders, majorities, God or some other aget apart from the individual
involved. Just as in the case of the right to freedom of speech, rights
based law is concerned not with whether the exercise of a right is
agreeable or good but with making sure that the right is protected--I may
disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it.

A different approach to political theory is propsoed by utlitarians or
consequentialist who hold that a just or good society is one that promotes
certain values and rights are subordinate to these values--only if the
respect for and protection of the individual's right to, say, private
property or freedom or religion leads to more of the desired or desirable
values than does the violation of such a right does the right deserve to
be respected and protected.

There has been a widespread and ongoing debate among defenders of the free
society about whether a rights based or consequentialist political theory
is sound. Some of the debate is a bit extreme in that thw two sides appear
to have absolutely nothing in common--rights based theories are supposed
to care nothing at all about whether anything good comes of a society
based on rights, utilitarian or consequentialist theories are supposed to
care nothing about principles and individual liberties. But there are more
compatible versions of the two positions, as well. Some rights based
theories admit that, in the end, one of the main points about respecting
and protecting individual rights is that such respect and protection is
the best approach by which individuals can purpose their proper goals in
life--e.g., their happiness, a virtuous life, and so forth. But, of
course, the rights are necessary for them to do their own effective
pursuing of these goals, which is essential for the value of such pursuits
and even
for the achievements of the values. A happiness isn't worth much if it
isn't the result of the choices and decisions of the individual whose
happiness it is supposed to be. At the same time, many consequentialists
admit that values should be pursued in a principled, orderly fashion and
indeed one cannot really effectively achieve values helter skelter,
without paying close attention to principles. So the two schools are not
all the far from each other, yet they do emphasize different issues of law
and public policy.

In the infamous Kelo v. New London City, CT, case the US Supreme Court
ruled, narrowly, in favor of a consequentialist or utilitarian approach to
American law and public policy. It said, basically, that if the goal of
economic development--which without argument the court accepted as a
highly desirable goal for members and representatives of communities to
pursue--is advanced, individual rights--in this case to private
property--are to be violated. This, clearly and unambiguously went
contrary to the principles of the Declaration in which individual rights
are identified as unalienable and government taken to have as its proper
goal to secure these rights. So on that score there is little that can be
reasonably disputed: the court sided with the consequentialist-utilitarian
side in the famous and ongoing classical liberal, libertarian debate.

It is, of course, an interesting question whether so siding the court did
the right thing--in other words, which side of the old debate is correct.
My only point here is that few if any commentators--and I have read quite
a few of them--have made note of this point, namely, that
consequentialism-utilitarianism has conquered the majority of the court.
Actually, quite a few of those who objected to the Kelo decision are
themselves closely aligned to this group of classical liberals and
libertarians than to the rights based group. I am curious why they didn,
then, champion the court's decision.

Column on What Some Don't get About Terrorism

[Please edit/proof this before publishing]

What Some Don't Get About Terrorism

Tibor R. Machan

It is very dismaying but not beyond grasp why some folks do not
understand the viciousness of terrorism. The bottom line is: tribalism. It
is also called collectivism--socialist, fascist, communitarian or any
other type of irrational lumping of human beings into groups they have
never chosen to join.

Any time a terrorist attack occurs, a great many people wring their
hands trying to figue out just what is amiss with such barbaric conduct.
Be it an IRA, Palestinian or radical Muslim (suicide) attack, there is the
usual acknowledgement that terrorism is horrible and the people doing it
are over the top, but then the focus turns to whatever is supposed to have
provoked it--usually George W. Bush and his predecessors' foreign policy
measures. And some of this, of course, isn't beside the point in making
sense of certain of these events.

Yet this focus on provocations misses the must basic issue, which is
that terrorists lack the most elementary traits of civilization, which is
to treat individuals as individuals, as sovereign, self-directed agents
who aren't responsible for the misdeeds of their fellow human beings. If
you insult me, hit me, steal from me, or do any other untoward deed toward
me, it is utterly unjustified for me to go after your sister, your
neighbor, someone who looks like you, someone sitting near you, someone
who lives in the same country as you do. If you have been wronged by A,
the only recourse that is justified, morally and should be legally and
politically, is to put you on trial and convict you of your bad deeds,
period. Such due process is the bedrock of a civilized society and anyone
who resorts of so called repriasals that fail to meet this strict
criterion may not be rationally excused.

There is, of course, in our age the widespread temptation to explain
everything people do, as if they were bad storms coming off the Atlantic
Ocean or viruses attacking the nervous system. The source of this
temptation is the old philosophical doctrine of materialism, the view that
everything in nature happens because some prior event caused it to happen.
This is, indeed, the origin of much of social science and social
engineering but it misses a vital point about human life. People are
agents, they do not simply react to what happens to them. So to really
explain their conduct, it is not enough to gather up the data of what
happens around them. It is imperative, for a decent understanding of how
people act, to consider their own thinking and intentions and motives,
things over which they have ultimate control.

Once you look at it this way, you have to realize that a terrorist
is a vicious, irreponsible thug who refuses to control his own emotions
and lashes out, often with much intelligence and savvy, at some target in
the fashion of a toddler who is throwing a tantrum. And toddlers are not
civilized beings, as any parent knows. Only toddlers can be excused
because, well, they are too youg to have the capacity to act more
rationally, to be civilized. This exaplation isn't, however, available for
terrorists. They are adults and they ought to thinkg before they lash out
in their violent, reckless ways.

It is true, of course, that some of what terrorists think about is
awful and their anger can even be justified. It is what they do about what
they think about and their emotional reaction to it that is vile. And no
matter how valid some of their complaints are, tearing into the lives of
innocent people is morally inexcusable. The way, however, many of them
think is to lump other people together, in some sort of irrational
corporate fashion, as if all of those in London had consciously,
voluntarily joined in with a club with a mission statement forged by, say,
Tony Blair, a mission statement that terrorist find objectionable. But
this is wrong. Certainly a bunch of kids on a subway cannot by any stretch
of the imagination be so regarded. Nor can most citizens of London. Nor
those of Israel or New York City. And to fail to realize this is the mark
of the barbaric.

Sadly, the people of the world have tended to think in this triablist
fashion for centuries and centuries and even some of the most well
educated, erudite blokes do not get it. The imperative for us all is to
get it and to make as sure as possible that evereyone around us gets it.
It is individuals who are responsible for their conduct and striking out
at their neighbors and friends and family when you find this conduct
intolerable is a rejection of a basic feature of human civilization.

Columno on At the Movies

At the Movies

Tibor R. Machan

Ordinarily I am not a paranoid person, so this hypothesis of mine is not
the usual type. But recently I have noticed that when I see serious
American movies, mostly the ideological take in them tends to be
anti-capitalist, anti-free market, against free trade, anti-business,
anti-corporate?in short against most things associated with the United
States of America. Granted, there are policies by the US Government that
I, too, find very upsetting but these aren?t what these movies tend to go
after?like increasing meddling in people?s personal lives, Court decisions
that favor the government over the private sector, preoccupation with
political correctness and so forth. No, the targets of these movies tend
to be ordinary American values.

It is difficult to list all the movies that incorporate some of these
themes in a rather underhanded, subterranean fashion?little asides by the
heroes, championing of people who show their ?virtues? by embodying these
attitudes, etc. There are the more blatant ones, though, such as Wall
Street Glen Gary, Glen Ross, Erin Brockovich, and some of Steven Segal?s
propaganda movies about how American business is so nasty to that sacred
cow of Hollywood, the environment.

It isn?t only the movies?television drama and even sitcoms serve as
vehicles for these sentiments (Law and Order this and Law and Order that,
Boston Legal, and similar shows all do it, sometimes in pretty
entertaining ways). Despite some pretty good writing on these, it has come
to be something of a pain to watch such fare for anyone with a serious
regard for the ideals with which America is associated, such as
individualism, freedom, commerce, profit making, the bottom line,
industrial development, wealth creation, and the rest. The good guys are
usually people who find all this abhorrent and only love a pristine pure
environment and peddle rank altruism?not benevolence but self-sacrifice.
Such protagonists consider all developers mean and nasty people, while the
villains are, of course, developers and makers of SUVs and anyone who
would have a good word to say about them. (The movie and TV fare is rife
with such alleged thought crimes, by the way.) I think you probably
recognize what I am saying here but may be so used to it that you don?t
take notice any longer. (My son keeps telling me to just relax and enjoy
the show and ignore the ideology but I am not willing to heed his advice.)

Interestingly, though, as in the old Soviet Union, where serious movies
all had to hail socialism, communism, or at least accept them as the norm,
in America now it is science fiction movies and cartoons that manage to
sneak in various American ideals and ideas. Take, for example, this recent
Batman Begins flick that has no patience with modern liberals excuses for
violent criminals, or last year?s big hit, The Incredibles, about a group
of retired comic heroes, in which incompetence was dissed while
exceptional talent praised. Both imply considerable disdain for the
intellectual community?s favorite ideology, egalitarianism.

These animated and sci-fi flicks aren?t my own favorite types, so I only
catch them now and then, when someone I trust recommends them out to me.
Despite their much more appealing values, I am not all that drawn to this
type of fare?I have never quite managed to suspend disbelief, so science
fiction stuff just doesn?t work so well for me (but I am not a
one-size-fits-all kind of guy about such matters). The few of these movies
I have attended do remind me of what used to be said about those old
Soviet movies, namely, they seem to allow the themes of individualism,
freedom, capitalism, meritocracy, pride, good versus evil and the like to
emerge rather forcefully in the fashion of a sort of aesthetic black
market.

In Batman Begins, for example, we see the idea that crime should be
excused because of ?mental illness? pooh-poohed head on, depicted as
mostly an excuse for escaping personal responsibility and fostering the
therapeutic state. (Thomas Szasz would have been delighted with this part
of the movie, I am sure.) No show starring Susan Sarandon or Paul Newman
would allow such heresies?they would puncture too many of the modern
liberal dogmas to which these folks are attached and which are their
vehicles for peddling the interventionist government they so love.

But it seems that science fiction screen writers, as well as those
renegade South Park producers, manage to get away with championing values
that the serious folks will not embrace and feature in their offerings.
Although there is no out and out state censorship of these values in
America as there was in the old USSR, not yet at least, it is arguable
that a kind of cultural peer pressure is in force such that only movies
that seemingly offer nothing but technical razzmatazz get to say some true
and unusual things about human nature and life.

I haven?t done a scientific survey but think there is something to my
impression. I urge my readers to check it out for themselves.

Brief Essay on Kelo vs. its Libertarian Defenders

Kelo v. New London City, CT, versus the Free Society

Tibor R. Machan

There are some (relatively few) champions of individual or private
property rights who actually and oddly defend the recent US Supreme Court
ruling in Kelo v. New London City, CT, authorizing city governments to
condemn private property and then give it to other private parties because
the new owner will enhance economic development. (See attorney Stephan
Kinsella?s post at [http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella17.html.]
This purported libertarian justification seems to rests on the view that
while the federal government has no authority to take private property,
local governments do because the Bill of Rights constrains only the feds,
no one else. So the admonition in the Fifth Amendment to take private
property only for bona fide public use does not apply to New London City,
CT. Furthermore, the position holds, if government engages in taking, it
is better to do it for a genuine private than a nonexistent public use.

This is an opinion that would be conducive to a genuine anarchist and who
holds that no public uses exist at all, that is, nothing may legitimately
be used for citizens as citizens, such as court houses, military bases or
police stations. For bona fide anarchists these are all private projects.
(The details of why this is so is a bit complicated and, in any case,
misguided?libertarian ?anarchists? do endorse certain bona fide public
concerns only they refuse to call it that, just as they believe in
government but refuse to call it by that word and invent, instead,
neologisms such as ?defense agency? or ?justice service? or whatever. For
more, see Tibor Machan, ?Revisiting Anarchism v. Government?
http://www.liberalia.com/htm/tm_minarchists_anarchists.htm.)

There is much to be objected to in all this, however. There are, in fact,
some projects in any community that pertain to the maintenance of justice
and certain properly limited institutions are required for that purpose.
Since all citizens, qua citizens, adhere to certain very limited public
objectives, takings for public use amount to following exactly what all
the citizens want, namely, to make sure justice is upheld within the
community over which governments have been instituted so as to secure our
rights. For that strictly limited purpose it is OK to obtain property from
private parties since, in fact, they are on record consenting by their
very citizenship to such specific, limited takings. It is akin to why
citizens may be subpoenaed for trials?because they are on record, with
their citizenship, supporting the objective of achieving the pursuit of
justice. This point is rarely explored by libertarian anarchists?they
insist on reducing all public realms to private ones, thus hoping to
eliminate politics as a bona fide, legitimate concern in human community
life.

However, limiting takings to bona fide public uses is in fact perfectly
justified within a free society because it amounts to nothing more than
the expression of what individual citizens all must have at least
implicitly agreed to, namely, the task of upholding justice. It is,
however, an abuse of this legal power to take private property for private
use, something to which citizens have clearly not agreed qua citizens,
quite the contrary. It is just so that private property and other rights
are effectively protected or secured that governments?including what the
libertarian anarchists call ?defense agencies??are instituted in free
societies.

The libertarians who support Kelo v. New London City, CT, do so, also, on
what they regard to be sound constitutional grounds, claiming that the
Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution properly limits only the federal
government, not city, county, and state governments which may make laws
entirely independently of any admonitions of the US Constitution. Because
of the belated incorporation measure that extends the scope of the US
Constitution to the entire country, they regard such application as urged
by most defenders of private property rights in Kelo to be misguided?only
those who love the Leviathan would then criticize Kelo; right minded
people would understand that Kelo is in fact sound from the viewpoint of a
proper understanding of the scope of the US Constitution.

Actually, although this may be proper legal theory in a highly esoteric
sense, as far as the libertarian objective of instituting government for
the purpose of securing our rights (as per the Declaration of
Independence), it is misguided tedium. Since the Constitution has been
applied, in ever since incorporation, to cases, for example, baring on the
rights to freedom of speech and religion, as well as to freedom to bear
arms and to be free of coerced confessions (the latter also part of the
Fifth Amendment) of all American citizens, it is now completely
unrealistic to insist on the reversal or incorporation. The best that we
can get is a possible reversal of the Court?s rulings in favor of
governmental measures that depart from what government is properly
authorized to do in a free society?federal, state, country or municipal
government?namely, the protection of every citizen?s individual rights.
Kelo failed in this miserably, so Kelo needs to be condemned, period,
whatever the technical razzmatazz about the structural undesirability of
incorporation may amount to.

The main motivation behind the contrary stance of some libertarians seems
to be that they consider empowering small governmental units to be less
hazardous than empowering the federal government (even if both should not
be so empowered). It seems to be especially objectionable to such
libertarians that a branch of the federal government would be empowered to
rule on what constitutes securing our rights (especially at the local or
municipal level), so when they fail to do this securing, or actually do
the opposite, these libertarians play the ?bite the bullet? gambit instead
of construing what the branch does wrongheaded. For instance, in Kelo v.
New London City, CT., these libertarians just hold that whatever the Court
says about anything other than the powers of the feds must be wrongheaded.
Yet that is effectively beside the point today. Moreover, it would render
some of the most potent legal measures in defense of individual rights?all
those listed in the Bill of Rights?nearly irrelevant other than when the
federal government usurps those rights. But these rights are actually
routinely violated by all levels of American government and if the Courts
can function as bulwarks against such violations, I say go for it. We need
all the help we can get and no arcane technicality of what is by now
pretty effectively obsolete constitutional law should stand in our way.

If one keeps in mind that libertarian ?anarchists? are really not
anarchists?since they do believe in law and its administration and they do
accept some agency having jurisdiction in such matters?and if one then
keeps in mind that takings for purposes of enhancing such administration
is necessary provided compensation is provided, then it is clear that
government has proper legal authority only to take private property for
public?which is to say, strictly limited legal administrative?use. The
incorporation issue is irrelevant here, not one concerned with the basic
principles of a free society. Kelo, then, did grave violence to individual
or private property rights and one can only work to have the Court reverse
itself, not to lend it any kind of credibility.

Column on my guilty pleasure

My Guilty Pleasure

Tibor R. Machan

Yes, I have one, and I am not sure I can be forgiven for it. I like
reading The New York Review of Books, this country?s most erudite liberal
?book review? magazine. (It is only nominally a review because too much of
it departs very significantly from the substance of the books being
discussed and lets reviewers scurry all over the disciplinary landscape if
just a bit of what they discuss is related to that substance.) Of course,
I like the learned, if highly opinionated, essays included in each issues;
some of them are nearly completely unrelated to politics, such as the
abundant discussion and disputation about the nature of consciousness and
the varieties of fine arts. But even the most explicitly political work is
enjoyable to read.

Yet that alone wouldn?t make reading The New York Review the guilty
pleasure it is for me. There is one attribute to this publication that is
so blatantly paradoxical, so outlandishly contradictory, that each issue I
receive provides me the joy of seeing everyone in the editorial department
squirm?or to turn a deliberate blind eye?so as to be able to live with
himself. You see, The New York Review of Books is nothing if not
dogmatically egalitarian in its political economical philosophy. Such
legal stars writing for it as Ronald Dworkin have attained near celebrity
status in their advocacy of a level playing field in nearly all realms of
social and economic life. (His book Sovereign Virtue [2002] lays out his
case in detail.) Mandated affirmative action is just one case in point?The
Review?s contributors consistently defend it. Yet another indication of
its egalitarianism is the scholars it has targeted for debunking, such as
the late Leo Strauss and Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell. (Some of
the treatments are, however, quite good, as when in a recent piece
Professor Mark Lilla of the University of Chicago Committee for Social
Thought straightened out may liberals about whether Strauss can be blamed
for the current American administration?s neo-conservative zeal in foreign
military policy matters.)

The fact is that The New York Review of Books is one of this country?s
most elitist publications. One need only read it for about a year to
notice that the selection of works to which the editors pay attention is
uncompromisingly prestigious. The authors whose books get reviewed
invariably have the highest possible academic pedigree, as do the
reviewers themselves. The publishers, too, are ranked the
highest?virtually no books from non-prominent presses get discussed. And
as far as letters to the editor are concerned, only the highest ranking
correspondents manage to get it?I know, since for about 30 years I have
tried to chime in and never managed to get published, despite writing some
very good letters, ones that are routinely responded to with considerable
interest by the Review?s authors when I send them a version of my comments.

The pleasure of seeing these adamant champions of equality of results on
all significant fronts completely ignore their own counsel is indeed a
significant one for me, someone who thinks fairness toward and equal
treatment of people in nearly all areas of life (outside the protection
owed our individual rights by the legal authorities) is bunk. When the
premier journal in the country that peddles the egalitarian line cannot
manage for the life of it to live by its own egalitarian edicts, that is
certainly a pretty clear hint that egalitarianism is an impossible dream.
I, of course, consider it a dreadful dream, a nightmare, but the editors
of The New York Review evidently believe in it with all their hearts and a
bit of their minds, yet they are unable to do what that very social
philosophy requires, namely, give a fair chance to those who do not meet
their standards, whatever they may be, within the pages of their
publication.

Witnessing one?s adversaries being hoisted on their own petard is indeed
a guilty pleasure of mine (which is why I find the idea of taking US
Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter?s home in an eminent domain measure
by the city where he lives, one he recently helped authorized, so
appealing). The New York Review provides that pleasure in each issue by
combining a straightforward, uncompromising practical elitism with the
relentless and unyielding political and legal message of egalitarianism.
This certain contributes evidence for the naiveté and ultimate futility of
its social-political message.

Column on G8 Ethics

Ethics at the Movie

Tibor R. Machan

The Girl in the Café is a very recent film about two people who meet,
begin to like each other, then go together to a G8 meeting in Reykjavik,
Iceland, and cause a stir with their unorthodox way of attempting to
influence those taking part to solve world poverty. The bottom line of
their exhortation to the G8 representatives is to spend billions and
billions, which the two protagonists are represented as believing will
indeed achieve the goal. All skeptics are dismissed as corrupt, greedy,
petty and lazy realists, without an ounce of ethics to their characters.

The resistance to their message consists of pretty unconvincing, shallow
reasons, with only a bit of substance and mainly outrage at the
intrusiveness of the girl from the café who is accompanying the British
bureaucrat, her love interest, as she offers uninvited advice on various
ceremonial occasions (during which all are expected to ignore the agenda).
The message of the girl?and thus the movie?completely ignores the task of
the diplomats and of how nearly impossible it is for them to do much
besides posturing a lot and making futile deals with other peoples?
resources.

Indeed, this is perhaps the most glaring folly of this movie, as it is of
those who keep imploring the G8 representatives each year?this time
meeting in Scotland in early July?to solve the problem of poverty around
the globe, especially, of course, in Africa. The exhortation here depicted
assumes, without any serious reflection and discussion, that (a) these
diplomats own the resources with which they are to solve the problem of
poverty, (b) the poverty is a kind of problem that can be solved by
forking out huge amounts of money and paying someone with the required
skills to do the work, and (c) poverty is indeed something that can be
dealt with independently of a great number of other problems faced in the
regions of the world where it is so widespread. Let?s take a brief look at
these assumptions.

The diplomats at G8 meetings are not a group of billionaires on the order
of a Bill Gates who might have the realistic option to write a check and
buy poor people whatever would alleviate their poverty once and for all.
They are elected and appointed officials of mixed regimes who must give an
account of their decisions to citizens, voters, supporters, opponents and
so forth in their countries. Many of these people ?back home? do not even
believe, for a variety of good or bad reasons, that their resources ought
to be devoted to what is quite controversially called ?poverty
elimination? around the globe. So exhortations to the G8 are misdirected,
plain and simple?both in this movie and among thousands who chime in on
this topic every year around the world.

As to the next assumption, poverty is not some disease that the right
dosage of a medication, applied by a competent physician, will cure.
Poverty is a condition of lacking resources that has a great variety of
causes, some completely out of the hands of those who are poor, some to a
small extent under their control, and some even of their own making.
Sending billions to the poor isn?t even in the cards?the billions go to
politicians and bureaucrats and they haven?t a clue (or have no interest
in) what to do to solve the problem.

Then we come to the greatest source of poverty, namely, the massive
political mismanagement that is routine in most poor societies,
mismanagement that includes taking billions of attempted aid and pocketing
it for the politicians and bureaucrats officially in charge of helping out
the poor. Another, even more crucial, part of this mismanagement is the
utterly perverse legal infrastructure of the societies in which poverty is
rife and renders its eradication virtually impossible without out and out
revolutionary changes. People in most of the poverty stricken regions of
the globe are not permitted to produce and keep the fruits of their work,
they cannot invest, they are taxed and otherwise put down on a regular
basis and no amount of help is going to work unless these circumstances
are permanently altered, something which the G8 diplomats cannot do.

The Girl in the Café makes for a heart-rendering story but it is
completely misguided and casts totally unjust aspersions on many people
who would certainly be interested in solving the problem of world poverty
if it were in their legitimate power to do so. But it isn?t, not with all
the phony national sovereignty?which actually means ruthless, oppressive,
dictatorial force?at the disposal of those political leaders and
bureaucrats in the relevant regions who have no interest at all in
pitching in with what is really needed to deal with the problem.

Column on Rights & Courts

Rights and the Supreme Court

Tibor R. Machan

Over the years I have been paying heed to what the US Supreme Court does,
not as some expert but as an reasonably well educated lay person. And one
observation I have come away with is that if a case comes their way, the
Court either returns it to a lower court or offers a rather narrow ruling,
although often with broad implications.

Critics of the Court, in turn?often including those on it who issue a
minority comment?refer to provisions of the US Constitution and/or
precedents with which the rulings being offered seem to conflict. A most
notable criticism is that the Court has invented some right that isn?t
mentioned in the US Constitution. This is was repeated a lot about Roe v.
Wade, where the Court was being charged with inventing a ?right to
privacy,? as well as in a previous case involving the attempt to ban
contraceptives for sale in Connecticut. More recently the Texas sodomy
case drew criticisms claiming, once again, that there is no right to
privacy mentioned in the US Constitution, therefore claiming that gays
have the legal right to engage in sexual conduct in the privacy of their
home is wrong.

Interestingly, though, recently the court ruled that the city of New
London, Connecticut, has the authority to expand the power of eminent
domain from taking for public use to taking for the purpose of economic
development (and in the process for private use). This time critics lined
up to denounce the court for its sanction of the violation of the right to
private property. But is that correct? What the court did is to sanction
expansion of eminent domain which may imply such a violation but only if
the US Constitution lists such a right. But does it? It mentions private
property in the Fifth Amendment but there is no mention of any right to
such property.

What is interesting about this is that many of the same critics who
complain about the justices inventing rights in certain rulings seem to be
complaining about the justices not upholding rights in others. Yet, in
both kinds of cases there are no rights being mentioned in the US
Constitution, not at least explicitly. Instead the rights at issue in
these cases are deemed by the justices who want to uphold them to be
implicit, as well as by the critics who complain they haven?t be upheld.

The only way this can make sense is by taking one amendment in the Bill
of Rights very seriously which is nearly always neglected, namely, the
Ninth. This amendment states that ?The enumeration in this Constitution,
of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people.? Since the Founders and the Framers were not
collectivists, ?the people? must mean ?the individuals who make up the
citizenry of the country.? Indeed, it is these people who the Declaration
of Independence claims possess ?unalienable rights; [and] that among these
rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.?

So the inference that there are rights we all have in America other than
those explicitly listed in the Bill of Rights makes good sense. So those
who complain abut justices inventing them need to argue that the ones they
claim were being invented aren?t among those not enumerated ones mentioned
in the Ninth Amendment. And when critics hold that the justices failed to
uphold rights not explicitly mentioned, they too need to take the Ninth
seriously and argue that it implies such rights, for example, the right to
private property.

Of course, that would be an impossible task but it is quite likely that
the Founders and Framers knew this quite well. Their task wasn?t to list
all the rights we have, only the ones under the greatest danger at the
time. And they wanted to spell out the limited powers of government.
Beyond what those limited powers entailed for purposes of government
administration, the people would, of course, retain all the rights they
had, namely, to do anything they chose to do. And when a government
measure would infringe on their rights to do what they choose to do, the
courts would properly strike it down.

Trouble is that by now government has vast legal powers, sanctioned by
the various courts, and anytime the courts?or critics complain that they
fail to?uphold some individual rights, it all sounds quite arbitrary, both
the pros and the cons being based not on the Bill of Rights but on
personal likes and dislikes, on various moral or other convictions and
lack thereof. But that?s not law but its very ruin.

It would be much better if the courts, all of them, really stuck to the
Bill of Rights and what it implies. This is that we all have the right to
do whatever we choose to do (implied by the liberty to which, per the
Declaration, we have an unalienable right), provided we do not violate
someone else?s rights. That is indeed the ideal of a free society that has
been associated with America and it would be best for the courts and its
critics of stick to it.

Column on Promoting RIght Conduct the Right Way

Promoting Right Conduct?the Right Way

Tibor R. Machan

Most of the time people try to justify coercing others to do things on
the grounds that they know what?s right and those others don?t or, in any
case, will not comply. Even the recent 5 to 4 eminent domain ruling by the
US Supreme Court can be viewed along such lines: The city officials
believed they knew what the private property owners ought to do and so
they may make them do it. In that particular case, economic development is
supposed to be right and good, so let?s make those property owners bend to
the will of those who understand this. Ergo, eminent domain which,
although the US Constitution authorizes it only for taking private
property for public use, is now authorized for takings transferred to
private parties who will do ?the right thing? (e.g., develop land and pay
more taxes to the city).

Never mind that most often those claiming such knowledge do not actually
have it. Even if they do, this is just the sort of barbaric approach to
making people do the right thing that was to be stopped by deploying the
principles of the US Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

If you know what the right thing is for someone to do, you may not coerce
him, you need to convince him of it, you need his consent. That?s because
we all have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. And having a right means one who has it gets to decide how to
exercise it. And that may not always conform to high standards. (Just
think of the right of the free press?doesn?t mean all journalists produce
the best stuff they could. Indeed it means lots of them produce drivel.)

But if one is not supposed to coerce people to do the right thing, what
is one to do about all the misbehavior that surrounds us? Well, the answer
is one must use civilized means. Eminent domain measures are barbaric
means?taking from people to give to other people without the permission of
the former. Imagine if one took this message of the Court to heart and
proceeded to run around one?s neighborhood bullying everyone who doesn?t
behave up to snuff to do the right thing. That?s what violent gangs
presume to do!

Civilized conduct requires that one promote the right conduct of other
people not by coercion but by persuasion, example, instruction, urging,
imploring, and, at worst, ostracism and boycott. Human beings, in short,
must deal with fellow human beings peacefully even if those others don?t
do the right thing. Unless someone is aggressive towards another, whatever
wrong he or she does must be approached peacefully. That is what amounts
to civil conduct, as distinct from the behavior of brutes in the wild that
subdue one another violently.

But why abstain from such brutishness when it comes to people dealing
with other people? Is that just a quirk or is it required somehow from
human beings?

Most generally, if one makes other people do the right thing without
their consent, these other people are deprived of their chance to earn
moral credit, deprived of their dignity. They are treated as mere puppets,
as little children, not as adults who need to make their own decisions so
as to be morally praiseworthy, commendable. The reason animals may
ordinarily be forced to behave as we want them to behave is that they are
beasts without a moral sense?and even then it is nicer to manage them
gently instead of roughly. But with human beings it is imperative that
they aren?t pushed around, aren?t forcibly made to do the right thing.

Even with kids, as they grow older it is more appropriate to provide them
with good examples of decent behavior instead of browbeating them. That is
how understanding of what?s right is promoted, rather than mere
compliance, mere following orders out of fear (which then tends to produce
rebellion a the first chance anyway). Sending out the cops to have people
do the right thing is the wrong way to act. Making laws and regulations
that must be followed lest one go to jail is not how morality is promoted
among people.

It is one of the most revolutionary aspects of the American political
tradition that this lesson was given official expression by the Founders.
By now, however, America?s political leaders have nearly completely
forgotten it all. Now they resort to the same regimentation of other
people that they had rejected on the part of the likes of King George the
3rd. It is time to regain the momentum the Founders unleashed and promote
right conduct the right way?peacefully.

Column on some fraudulent uses of language

Some Tricky Ideas to Watch out For

Tibor R. Machan

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a very influential social and
political philosopher who argued that although human nature is benign and
good, society has corrupted us all and now we are pretty nasty and also
?everywhere in chains.? He also defended the dubious idea of ?the general
will,? some superhuman source of obligation we must all obey, out of which
grew all kinds of harmful collectivists ideas that are used by some folks
to rationalize the violation of individual rights.

Rousseau?s notion of the innocent and good savage, corrupted by society,
is actually a great confusion. If we are all so nice and gentle to begin
with, how come society turned out to be so nasty and mean? What is
society, anyway, other than large assemblies of human beings; so if
society is making us all nasty, it is, of course, people who are making us
nasty. And then they certainly didn?t start off being so nice and gentle,
after all. If they had, they wouldn?t perpetrate the corruption Rousseau
blamed on society. If society is nasty, then, well, people managed to
become nasty all on their own, society or no society.

A recent letter writer to USA Today demonstrated the influence of
Rousseau, yet again, when he wrote, ?Basic human instincts, unless
corrupted by society, bear natural traits for morality and ethical
integrity.? So, again, we are all good to start with but something
insidious called ?society? corrupts us and we end up not so nice. And on
and on goes the nonsense.

A related issue arises when people say that it is their culture that
makes them think this, do that, and so on, as if there were some big,
transcendent being called ?culture? that went about doing stuff. But what
is culture? It is, really, no more or less than the various institutions,
artifacts, projects, and the like that people produce and which become the
defining attributes of certain groups of them living in certain regions of
the globe?the Germans, Swiss, Israelis, and so forth. Culture cannot make
people to anything since culture is people doing things.

Why is it so tempting, then, to keep talking about how society does this,
and culture does that? Probably because it caters to the myth that no one
is really responsible for his or her conduct, for what is on his or her
mind, for the good and bad things that come out of what one does. No,
it?s always something else?society, culture, the country, you name it and
it?s what?s responsible. We, in turn, are but puppets being manipulated
and none of us makes things happen, none is responsible. But we also
desperately need some wise cadre that will repair culture and get
everything straightened out for the rest of us under culture?s influence.
Yet how come they have escaped the influence of culture so they can repair
it all?

The same kind of ruse is perpetrated by the big ?we? that many people
make use of when they want to coerce everyone to follow their lead. We,
for example, in Orange County, have decided to have a light rail system or
we, in Washington, DC, decided to build a massive sport stadium. In
virtually every community around the country and, indeed, the world, there
are those who make use of this royal ?we? to peddle some project they do
not have the honesty to call their own and the diligence and wherewithal
to convinced others who don?t share it to come on board with their
support. No, by using this ?we? they aim to convinced both themselves and
others that the idea in question is indeed everyone?s idea and, thus,
everyone may be taxed and otherwise coerced to support it since they too
want it, really.

The bad habit of not calling such folks to task on their tricky uses of
language has a very high price indeed. It is the way the much more solid
notion, the idea that everyone has a right to his or her life and works
and others must ask for it if they want to make use of it for some more or
less glorious purpose, is lost in the shuffle. But this shouldn?t happen.

To resist the ruse, it is best for everyone to pay attention and notice
just what the we, the society, the culture actually is and whether these
terms are being used accurately or, as I would maintain, mostly so as to
perpetrate a fraud.

Column on Tolerance & Respect

On Tolerance and Respect

Tibor R. Machan

The concept ?tolerance? does not really capture the attitude of most
Americans, even Westerners, toward those with whom they disagree, although
that is what people say when one doesn?t believe in banning another?s
viewpoint from being expressed, another?s ways from being practiced. So,
for instance, if you aren?t gay and dislike how gays conduct themselves
but you don?t believe in interfering with them, you are regarded as
tolerant toward gays.

This, though it sounds a bit judgmental, is actually quite right. One
tolerates things of which one disapproves or what one dislikes?I used to
tolerate humidity while living in Auburn, Alabama, which certainly didn?t
mean I was fond of it, quite the opposite. I put up with it, reluctantly.
And many of us tolerate some of the annoying habits of friends without
pretending we like them but recognizing that it?s their lives and we do
not get to mess with it.

Respecting another?s views is also often used to characterize this
attitude of disagreement which doesn?t move toward interference. ?I
respect your position,? some say, ?even though I completely disagree with
you.? This, too, appears at firs to be a misstatement since if one really
disagrees with another?s position, it is quite impossible to respect it.
You think it is wrong, for crying out loud, so why then would you respect
it? One respects achievements, accomplishments, getting it right, not
being wrong about things.

But perhaps the complaint is a bit too picayune. When we tolerate
something, perhaps we are making the point that although we disapprove of
or dislike it, we do not believe we ought to do anything hostile to those
whom we tolerate. We are dealing, after all, with adult human beings and
what we probably do respect is their autonomy, their sovereignty?which is
to say their right to choose. Respecting a right isn?t the same at all as
respecting how it is exercised. It is, instead, respecting the fact that
someone is a grown up, mature enough to make one?s own decisions about
important matters in one?s life. It is, as contemporary lingo puts it,
respecting another?s space.

Even tolerance involves this element of acknowledging that other people
get to govern themselves and no one ought to deprive them of this
opportunity even if they fervently disagree with or dislike what they do.
Their lives are their own, not ours, and so they are the ones to guide how
it will be conducted. The right to the pursuit of one?s happiness means
this, too?not imposing, by force, goals on other people even if one
considers them wrong.

Both tolerance and respect for others in these limited ways are part and
parcel of a free, civilized society. Such a society is marked by mutual
acknowledgement that we are adults and as such we have both the right and
the responsibility to run our own lives without being interfered with as
if we were children or severely impaired. This is why such attitudes are
regarded a matter of human dignity. This dignity doesn?t arise from
achieving great goals in one?s life but in having the capacity to govern
oneself. This is why when old people are treated like kids they often
regarded it as an affront to their dignity?they may not be as quick as
they used to be but they are quite human and deserve to be treated as such.

One reason all this is worth reflecting upon is that the US Supreme Court
has struck a massive blow against both tolerance and respect in these
senses of those terms with the Kelo v. New London City (CT) when it
sanctioned the use of eminent domain?forcible but legal taking of private
property?by city governments for purposes of violating the rights of
individuals and small businesses so as to make them fall in line with some
plan the city has hatched and which benefits other private parties, a plan
they want everyone to conform to. Of course, it is assumed, rather
naively, that such plans represent that of the majority of a given
municipality or other legal jurisdiction. Yet even if this were the case,
imposing the plan on others is to be intolerant, to fail to respect their
basic right to self-determination.

If I have obtained, free and clear, a small shop in a city and manage to
run it profitably enough to keep it solvent, for others?for many others?to
crush my enterprise is both intolerant and disrespectful. Certainly, these
others do not need to approve of my enterprise but in a civilized society
they must tolerate it. Nor do they need to have any respect for what I am
embarking upon but they owe respect to my standing as an adult human being
who is free and responsible.

Instead the US Supreme Court joined with all too many local officials in
wiping out tolerance and respect for individual autonomy and sovereignty
by legally authorizing others to impose their projects on the rest whether
they choose it or not. They have endorsed the ancient concept of
paternalistic government. And that is not democracy?it is the rule of the
tyrannical mob, a form of barbarism.

Columns on PBS & NPR

America?s Perverse "Public" Media

Tibor R. Machan

The Soviet Union had no free press, privately owned, politically
independent, competing publications dealing with ideas and whatever else
readers would find of interest. The old USSR had Pravda and other state
run newspapers and broadcast outlets.

This kind of media exists in other parts of the world but the United
States of America was to be a haven for a completely free press. Sadly,
even there broadcast media fell into the hands of government?the feds own
the electromagnetic spectrum and dictate a good deal of the structure and
even content of radio and television (via, for example, the licensing
process supervised by the Federal Communications Commission). Still, even
with this intrusiveness, radio and TV do not get funded by monies extorted
via taxation. There is still a pretty good semblance of competition on the
airwaves, especially with the arrival a few decades ago of cable TV and
the Internet.

One thing is, however, way over the top in American media affairs. This
is the prominence of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting
Service. These networks are all-pervasive. NPR is in nearly every medium
to large size city, certainly wherever there is an institution of higher
education, dominating the airwaves in college and university towns with
its substantial news coverage, interviews, commentaries and other fares.
PBS is also present in virtually every TV market.

Yet there is really no proper place for either of these networks in a
country with a free press. Both take substantial monies from
government?for example, via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?a
funding that is totally antithetical to the principles of a free media.
Such a media is supposed to function independently of government, with no
strings attached to politicians and bureaucrats. And no one in a free
society may be coerced into funding any media outlet. It involves
expropriating their support for views and programming with which they can
very well disagree. It is like forcing the Catholics to support the
Methodists! All this in stark contrast with a free press where you buy
the paper or the wares commercials peddle if you so choose but if you do
not choose, they do not come to take your money for their ?services.? But
NPR and PBS take everyone?s money to help provide its offerings.

When it comes to these offerings they are, quite naturally, highly
editorialized, very partisan (although often at a level beyond day to day
politics), and completely uninterested in balance (which is usually a
farce, when attempted in the media). All you need is to listen to just one
day?s fare and you will encounter very distinct viewpoints broadcast. I
urge you to give NPR?s ?Fresh Air? interview program your attention and
you will learn just what ?soft ball? interviewing is all about?inviting
your favorite authors and giving them a forum, partly at taxpayers?
expense, to promote their works. There is hardly a difficult challenge
presented to these friends of NPR. It?s all done in the style of ?throwing
the Christians to the Christians.?

Mind you, I often listen to NPR stations for their classical music and
jazz and blues programming. But I do feel a bit guilty because I am
benefiting from stolen goods, paid for in part by citizens who may well
have no interest in such music and are, nevertheless, deprived of some of
their resources and of the chance to support what they judge preferable. I
am not, however, discussing the aesthetics of NPR and PBS, both elitist
outfits to the hilt and both ripping off a bunch of people who would much
rather fund alternative forms of news and entertainment.

So, in light of the fact that there is no place for NPR and PBS in a free
country, the current debate about whether to make these more balanced is
completely moot, irrelevant, beside the point. Demanding fairness of media
is like demanding it from religion or art?ridiculous, especially where
editorializing and opining are concerned. What needs to be done is to
privatize both of these organizations, totally, and let them fend for
themselves just as bowling alleys or shoes stores must.

Column on the Court's 6/23 Ruling (improved)

Betrayal at the Supreme Court

Tibor R. Machan

In the 1840s a debate raged about whether strikers may be punished as
economic saboteurs because they disrupted commerce. Some argued that the
police power of government authorized prohibiting strikes on the grounds
that government is to keep commerce in motion and forbid work stoppages.
This, indeed, is the theory of monarchical government in which the king or
queen or tsar decided how people must live, what purposes they must pursue.

At that early time of the American Republic, however, the courts
ultimately affirmed the principle of freedom of association by
invalidating the use of the police power whenever it involved the
violation of individual rights. Strikers, the courts held?in, for example,
in judge Lemuel Shaw's ruling in Commonwealth v. Hunt, (in MA, 1842)?
were exercising their right to withdraw from their employers?the right of
free
association?and this trumped any paternalistic police power that had been
imported into American society from abroad where, of course, kings and
other supreme rulers and not individuals were understood to possess
sovereignty. This is one reason, still, why many people around the globe
are considered, strictly speaking, to be subjects, not citizens?they lack
sovereignty, or self rule.

The US Supreme Court has now reversed itself on the score of what counts
for more in this country, individual rights or state power. In a 5 to 4
ruling issued on June 23, 2005, in Kelo v. New London City (CT), the court
held that the city of New London, CT, had the legal authority to place its
idea of economic development above the individual rights of citizens in
New London, in this case their right to private property. They decided to
expand the police power of government, in this case its eminent domain
power, way beyond what the US Constitution specified it in the 5th
Amendment. In that Amendment private property was deemed to be subject to
eminent domain measures only where the purposes of taking it was public
and even
then individuals would have to be properly compensated for what was taken
from them. A public purpose is one that serves the interests of everyone
in the community in relationship to his or her citizenship. As citizens,
we are all in need of police stations, court houses, military bases and
the like, since all these serve the purpose of securing our basic rights
from
those who would violate them. (That is the public purpose governments are
instituted to secure for us all, as the Declaration of Independence makes
clear. The Constitution, in this case, merely codified this idea into the
law of the land.)

But New London, CT, as other cities across the USA, has decided to
violate the right to private property so as to promote the city officials'
conception of economic development. (This idea, of course, of ?economic
development? is foreign as an official goal to a political order based on
individual rights, since something can be one individual?s or group's
economic development
while not another?s, depending who one is, what one?s goals are in life,
etc. Such collectivist notions as ?a city?s economic development? are
antithetical to fee societies.) The individuals whose rights were so
violated brought suit which then went all the way to the US Supreme Court.
They had hoped that this body would show loyalty to both the spirit
and letter of the American legal tradition by following in the footsteps
of the court that ruled against the police power in the case of striking
workers and in favor of individual rights.

Alas, it wasn?t to be. And that is not really a very great surprise,
although it is, of course, a terrible disappointment and travesty of
American justice. The 5 to 4 decision pretty much follows in the footsteps
of other recent decisions in which individual rights have been trampled
upon?the case of medical marijuana, the case involving forcing farmers to
fund public service propaganda in which they do not believe, etc., etc.

Some people who profess a love of liberty actually defend this decision
on the grounds that the US Constitution should only be taken to limit the
powers of the federal government. By this line of reasoning your city,
county or state government could completely ignore the Bill of Rights and
censor movies, newspapers, and books, establish a government church, and
violate individual rights if only the federal government is prohibited
from doing so. But this line of reasoning does not work in a country that
is supposed to live by the principles of the Declaration of Independence,
ones that affirm every individual citizen?s unalienable rights to, among
other things, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So, in fact, the Court?s ruling is yet another nail in the coffin of
individual rights in the United States of America. It was supposed to be
the protection of individual rights that constituted the prime public
purpose in this country. Now, instead, the several, disparate purposes of
pressure groups being served by various political bodies have taken center
stage and individual rights are legally dead.

Which is to say, soon we can say ?Good bye? to
America the
beautiful, since it is the sanctity of individual rights?not the Grand
Canyon,
the Empire State Building, Hollywood movies or the Pacific shores?that
made
this country beautiful.
-----------------------------
Machan teaches business ethics and political philosophy at Chapman
University, Orange, CA. For more on the topic of this column, see his
Private Rights
and Public Illusions (The Independent Institute, 1995). He is a research
fellow at the Hoover Institution and advises Freedom Communications, Inc.,
on libertarian issues.

Column for the Fourth of July

Why Bother Celebrating the Fourth?

Tibor R. Machan

The Fourth of July is my all time favorite holiday?it is supposed to
celebrate the Declaration of Independence and its revolutionary idea that
it?s not governments, states, monarchs, kings, tsars, and the like that
possess sovereignty, with the rest of us subjects to their alleged
superior will, but we, individual human beings, we are the sovereign ones.
That idea was revolutionary and unpopular then and, let me assure you, it
is no different now.

The bulk of the world, including most Americans, pretty much reject it,
either explicitly (as with those within the academic political philosophy
and science, as well as much of the journalistic community) or implicitly
(as with those within the general public who clamor relentlessly for
ruling their fellow human beings via the government for various worthy
goals of their own).

Our courts, especially the US Supreme Court, give very little credence to
the Declaration?s political ideas. This is evident from how readily they
scoff at the notion that individuals have a right to the pursuit of
happiness (which clearly implies obtaining and using marijuana for medical
purposes), or that they have the right to their lives and liberties (which
also clearly implies they may produce and obtain property in peaceful ways
and not be subject to federal or state regulation and interference for the
sake of various critters). The courts have stood up in defense of
innumerable government powers that have nothing at all to do with the
single just power of government, namely, what it needs to secure our basic
rights. On June 23rd the US Supreme Court sanctioned perhaps the grossest
of abuses of government powers, namely, the feudal police power or eminent
domain, which the US Constitution had restricted to be used only for a
genuine public purpose (such as taking private property so as to build a
cour
t house or a police station). In its ruling on June 23rd, 2005, in the
case of Kelo v,. New London, the Court affirmed, instead, that takings for
whatever purposes governments deem desirable?economic development, tax
revenue increase, you name it?are OK.
Just how reactionary this ruling is can be appreciated that back in the
early 1800s the court struck down the use of the very same kind of police
power for purposes of prohibiting labor stoppages because, despite the
fact that according to the common law practice government had the power to
promote economic stability, the US Constitution implied that the rights of
laborers trumped such police powers. So it ruled, in Commonwealth v. Hunt,
45 Mass. (4 Metc.) 111 (1842) that despite the fact that labor strikes
clearly amounted to an impediment to a community?s economic well being,
the rights of laborers superceded any government interest to promote such
development.. So, clearly, this recent ruling by the Supreme Court is
reactionary! It treats collective goals?that are really just the goals of
some people in a community--as superior to individual rights, such as the
right to private property.
Legislatures, too, care not a bit for human liberty, being as they are now
totally habituated to lord it over us with whatever project their members
deem to be worthy of everyone?s support. City, county, state and federal
projects get funded galore from resources that ought to be for individuals
and their voluntary associations to allocate as they choose. Instead every
branch and level of government dips into our pockets with total
impunity?including by means of the most blatant abuse of the Fifth
Amendment?s ?takings? clause that in fact empowers them all only to take
property for public use (meaning court houses, military bases or police
stations, all of which are means for securing our basic rights). Nowadays
our representatives see no limit whatsoever to their alleged power to
take, take, and take some more.

So what then are all these people celebrating, when the very institutions
created to secure our rights are hell bent?and have for decades been hell
bent?on violating these same rights in every nook and cranny of our lives?
Where is the respect for and joy about the actual content and meaning of
the revolutionary document that?s supposedly be celebrated on the Fourth
of July?

There may be one bit of silver lining within all these ominous clouds of
creeping tyranny. That is that around the rest of the globe more and more
people are clamoring for their liberty, their individual sovereignty, even
without fully grasping its implications. The Soviets were sent packing; it
looks like some of the Latin American and even African countries are
finally abandoning the bad habit of tolerating dictators; relatively free
markets are emerging in China and the former Soviet satellites, and the
world is gradually becoming a global economy where millions and millions
are beginning to get a chance to compete and prosper (even as their
intellectuals and politicians want to contain the trend).

Americans, however, more often than is good for anyone, are regressing.
They are becoming like so many of the Europeans, especially the French,
begging for government protection of their vested interests, be these of
the economic, environmental, scientific or educational variety. As in the
pre-revolutionary eras, when only members of certain favored classes had
the legal protection to try to flourish in life?usually at others?
expense?these champions of protectionism (protect my job, my favorite
bird, my favorite sport, my preferred scientific project, you name it)
give not a hoot about everyone?s equal rights, based on everyone?s equal
humanity.

No, these folks follow not the ideas and ideals of John Locke and the
American Founders but those of Thomas Hobbes and the rest of the ?war of
all against all? champions. They are hoping, in their incoherent ways, to
win over governments to their causes, getting the bureaucrats and cops to
do their bidding while completely neglecting the idea that both these
professionals are supposed to serve all members of the public, equally,
with the protection of the peace.

Maybe what we need is to abolish this holiday altogether, drop the
pretense that most people care about anything besides the fanfare, fire
works, and barbecues. Let?s just admit that freedom had a short and uneasy
career on this continent and was mostly sacrificed on the altar of power,
of the power of some over the sovereignty of others. And even the others
didn?t seem to mind enough to protest. Then, perhaps, some will begin to
think about what has been lost and take certain necessary steps to recover
it all, whatever that would be.