A Primer on Rights & Animals

by Tibor R. Machan

When one has rights, it means others may not intrude and do violence to one, even if the intrusion might do good or benefit the victim. Rights are not about not being hurt or harmed. They are about a person's freedom of choice. And some exercise their freedom of choice to do harm to themselves. Still, others may not use coercive force to "help" out. Rights, in short, are about sovereignty, self-government.

Yes, there are some damaged persons who can barely, rarely or even never exercise choice -- they lack free will. (We all do now and then, say when asleep!) But a general principle such as the right to liberty extends to all of us, even those who don't fit the typical case of a healthy human being. It extends, for example, to children, even infants, who are but at the very beginning of being able to make choices. That's because principles of human association are not like principles of geometry, but rather more like biology -- some exceptions or borderline cases are to be expected.

Animals have no rights because in general they lack moral agency, the capacity to choose between right and wrong conduct. Of course, now and then some animals behave as if they were morally aware -- that's to be expected, especially, of domestic pets that have acquired many attributes from human beings in their thousands of years of association with them. Nonetheless, although dogs may appear to experience guilt, say when they pee on the rug, that's not guilt, which is why punishing them is nonsense. Rather one may try to train them by apply some discouragements or negative reinforcement. To stand around and morally blame the dog is preposterous -- animal abuse, if you will. They cannot help what they do, not like people. (Just chiding human beings for anything, including their thinking about animals, clearly suggests this.)

Of course, trying to ascribe rights to non-human animals is a great temptation, not unlike the attempt to ascribe to people what are called "positive rights" -- entitlements to treatment that would benefit them but would really amount to enslaving those who would have to provide the entitlements. Eagerly wanted benefits are often proposed as rights, but they are not. The way to check is to see if respecting such rights would require people to provide services and goods to their fellows. If they do, there cannot be a right to such services and goods. They would impose involuntary servitude! Ascribing rights to animals rests on similar eagerness, the desire to help them. But such help must be provided by those who want to care for the animals and not conscripted or expropriated from others who have made not commitment to them.

There is, of course, a good deal more to the story of how people ought to treat animals. It is not about rights, however, but about decency and empathy. These are not political concepts, like rights are. They have to do with human moral character that would not lead someone to inflict wanton harm or damage on animals. However, just as in the wilds animals are driven, by their instincts, to make use of one another for various purposes involving their survival and flourishing, so in human life the choice to make use of animals can be perfectly appropriate. It is not the same, though, because human beings do have the responsibility to act decently and so how they use other animals is subject to moral evaluation. Even inanimate objects, like beautiful artifacts (e.g., paintings), may be treated well or badly, not because they have rights but because they are valuable, precious.

As I have argued in my book, Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature's Favorite (2004), trying to politicize our relationship to other animals is very risky for both the animals and ourselves. It shifts responsibility away from us individually and leads to our desensitization toward animals. Instead of once again relying on politics and law to solve problems, the ethical treatment of animals ought to be promoted as a matter of human decency, not of justice.

A new book by Tibor R. Machan, Libertarianism Defended (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006) is now in print in both paperback and hardback versions. It is available at ClassBook.com:
http://www.classbook.com/pages/product/product.asp?isbn=0754652165&aid=FETCH

See attachment for cover and for BackFlap blurbs.
Reviews would be much appreciated.

Tibor Machan

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Two Cheers for the Welches

by Tibor R. Machan

In their BusinessWeek column of October 9, 2006, Suzy and Jack Welch make a valiant effort to debunk the stakeholder theory of corporate ethics. This is the view that managers do not owe service first and foremost to shareholders or owners of a company but, rather, to anyone who has an "interest" in the company's activities. The idea has also been dubbed the CSR thesis, whereby the first duty of business managers is their so-called "corporate social responsibility."

The Welches do a fine job of affirming the idea that what company managers ought to be doing is improving the value of the firm for their employers, the stockholders or owners. That is indeed the moral responsibility of corporate managers, even if it is true that other moral concerns do have a place in how they make their decisions. (Just like individuals, who ought to be prudent, which is to say, strive to succeed in their lives, first and foremost, companies ought also to practice such virtues as generosity, charity, and so forth.) But there are some important points the Welches failed to call attention to in this debate.

When the stakeholder theory is made part of law and public policy, it clearly violates the right to freedom of association of managers. They have not chosen to go to work for stakeholders but for stockholders, so forcing them to serve the former is involuntary servitude, plain and simple. Free men and women should not be required to work for anyone other than those whom they have chosen as their employers. (Yes, Virginia, this calls into serious question a good many public policies in our so-called free society!) This element of the CSR or stakeholder theory is never discussed by its promoters, of which there are hundreds teaching in business schools and writing business ethics text books. It is, indeed, professional malpractice to fail to address the issue.

Yet there is something the Welches might also have discussed, albeit briefly, namely, how so many company managers act unethically by getting into bed with government. Whenever companies jockey to gain subsidies, special favors like protectionist policies, or urge government to bring anti-trust actions against their competitors, they are acting immorally. Their morally defensible position against the CSR and stakeholder advocates becomes weak when they fail to refrain from seeking government favors. (Doing this, by the way, is akin to participants in an athletic race seeking special favorable treatment from referees or judges, only far more serious!)

Unfortunately the idea of going to government for this or that favor is so widespread in society that most corporate managers probably don't even think of it as possibly unethical. I venture to guess that Suzy and Jack Welch are similarly oblivious to how widespread this kind of corporate malpractice is in our midst. Certainly BusinessWeek and other business publications, or other aspects of media covering business, seem to fully accept this kind of bad corporate conduct. After all, people in the sciences, education, arts, and elsewhere indulge in what economists call rent-seeking behavior. Get government to help you rip others off and after taking its own substantial share, transfer the funds to those making the "plea."

If the Welches will not acknowledge these types of misdeeds on the part of entirely too many corporations, their leverage against the unjust critics of corporations will seriously diminish. Their credibility as moral guides will evaporate. And that would be too bad, especially when it comes to their probably widely read insights about CSR and stakeholder theory. These are rotten, nasty ideas, albeit terribly popular among those discussing business ethics these days (too many of them business bashers, in fact). They are a roundabout, dishonest way to smuggle in and gain support for collectivism again.

To deny the right of ownership to individuals is basically to treat them as common property, as if their lives, work and resources may be used against their consent with impunity by anyone. And the Welches' help in resisting this should be much appreciated. So, two cheers for them!

A Most Unreasonable Option

by Tibor R. Machan

Not being an expert in the field of public transportation, I chime in with some trepidation here. However, the issue I wish to discuss is very much in the public domain, being debated by amateurs throughout the community. And since I've done my share of travel around the globe, with all kinds of methods evident in how people deal with congestion, I thought I could add my two cents worth. Especially since one local paper has asserted in no uncertain terms that the most reasonable option for solving the congestion that exists on the Riverside Freeway to Orange County route would be a people-mover such as being used at Disneyland and other amusement parks.

Of course, this option is a joke but those who propose it don't seem to know that. They are those among us who at any cost want to remove the automobile as a part of our lives and force us all to go back to an era where its conveniences would be renounced as too bourgeois and environmentally unfriendly. In the essay where this idea was proposed, the fact that Disneyland and some other amusement parks and recreation (skiing) regions make use of people-movers served as proof of their suitability for moving commuters from Riverside County into Orange County and back, during workdays, instead of some other approach to reducing the congestion on Routes 91, 55 and 57, the current roads linking the two areas.

Now people-movers are fine for those interested in being carted around from one attraction to another at an amusement park, from the parking area to the slopes at a skiing resort, from the parking era to the museum at the new Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and so forth. These places are attended for very specific purposes, for just a little while, after which people go back to their lives of picking up or dropping off their kids at school, little league or ballet, grocery shopping, visiting the mall or the local DMV, grabbing a bite of lunch, etc., and so forth. In other words, most people do their commuting while also taking care of business, which tends to require innumerable stops.

Anyone who believes that folks ought to be regimented into using people-movers hasn't a clue about what most people do while driving their cars to and from work. They do a lot besides getting to work and returning home. Even if the bulk of the driving occurs on reasonably long stretches of freeway or highway, once close to work or home they are very likely to pick up laundry, buy some milk and the like. This cannot be done when using a people mover -- or, it would be rather complicated since all such errands would have to occur right by the points of embarkation. Actually there is an option being considered, namely, a tunnel through the Santa Ana Mountain range, that makes much better sense (given that the alternative of private solutions, based on market forces, is not in the cards hereabouts). I have lived in Switzerland and traveled all around it, as well as Italy, where tunnels for trains and highways are ubiquitous. And they are not only highly efficient, able to accommodate private automobile use as well as public transport, but seem to be fully harmonious with a plush and abundant wilderness.

I am no expert at estimating the respective costs associated with various alternative solutions to the Southern California traffic congestion, one that takes up several hours of commuters' lives every day during which they are caught in massive tie-ups and waste horrendous amounts of gasoline. But it seems to me that the people-mover idea is a deal-breaker from the get-go. Unless one is willing to live in a country that is fully top-down regimented by some technocrats, wherein the agendas of individuals are of no significance at all and only some elite's goals matter, the people-mover idea simply should not be an option. The fact that some people believe that it is bodes badly for a culture in which individual rights and the pursuit of the happiness of these individuals are supposed to be an outstanding factor.

Will Foley Scandal Serve as Lesson?

by Tibor R. Machan

What lesson? I repeat myself by quoting Abraham Lincoln: "No man is good enough to govern another without that other's consent." And so as not to forget this, we have the likes of Mark Foley demonstrating its truth in grossly concrete terms.

The idea that politicians are to be the guardians of our morals -- an idea subscribed to by nearly all political factions throughout human history and certainly by Republicans and Democrats today -- is so off the wall that perhaps only blatant cases such as the Foley scandal can drive it home. Certainly Mark Foley is far from the first politician to illustrate what folly it is to entrust ourselves to the moral guidance of those who aspire to that job by joining the governing classes. We have many examples of crooked politicians, judges, cops and so forth, staring at us from the pages of newspapers across the land. Only the other week it came to light that innumerable small courts in New England have seen their share of systematic injustice. Then there was Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham from San Diego but a few months ago. And, of course, in the minds of most Democrats virtually all the Republicans are corrupt, while Republicans tend to think the same of Democrats.

With all the solid evidence and not so solid innuendo, the really major scandal is that the bulk of the public still considers politicians and bureaucrats qualified to enact laws, and the police to enforce them, concerning a great deal of our peaceful -- albeit at times risky and immoral -- behavior. The banning of this, the regulation of that, the criminalization of yet something else -- all of it is being done with the full awareness of the voting public.

Yet the plain and very scary fact is that these people who are drafting these laws and running on their record of having done so, are not being met with guffaws all around but keep getting elected to office!

The situation is bad enough to suggest that perhaps human beings are fundamentally flawed in their judgment and conduct, that their capacity to tell right from wrong is severely lacking. Why else would they keep going back to the politicians for help with their various problems? Why else do they keep up the silly hope that, well, maybe next time FEMA will save New Orleans, that the Federal Communications Commission will clean up filth on in broadcasting, that the Federal Trade Commission will get all commerce to be decent and honest, etc., etc., and so forth?

Ordinarily I don't share the pessimistic outlook about human beings in general, the sort that dominates thinking among environmentalists and people who teach business ethics, for example. And in fact even after a fiasco such as Mark Foley's misconduct that is not only vile on its face but demonstrates rank hypocrisy -- he has been a fervent supporter of governmental "protection" of children from Internet predators -- there is no sound reason to regard all people as innately corrupt, as some in the theological and psychological communities would have it.

Yet surely it ought to be evident to us all that human history, recent and ancient, demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that when people attain positions of power -- when they get the legal authority to regiment their fellows from Washington and other centers of officialdom -- they are very, very inclined to go bad.

Yes, this brings to mind yet another famous, oft-repeated quote, namely Lord Acton's about power that tends to corrupt and absolute power that corrupts absolutely! What is quite puzzling is how blind to this fact millions of people are. I have been attributing that blindness to, among other things, the governmental habit. After all, most of human history is mired in some people ruling and conquering and oppressing the rest, by means of sheer violence and its threat. And in most of the world nothing much as changed. So perhaps it is understandable that the alternative of a civilized approach to dealing with human problems, one that eschews coercive force, one that limits government to very minimal functions (like defensive and retaliatory force), doesn't catch on widely.

Still, when one does know just how corrosive the power of some over others is -- even in this so-called free society where it has usually been disguised as required by some emergency or last resort -- it is imperative that the more general point be stressed and such scandals as those involving Mark Foley don't get bogged down in the details of merely titillating sleaze.

America Not So Beautiful

by Tibor R. Machan

As a kid in Budapest I read a bunch of exciting American novelists, including Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Max Brand and others. I also saw some pretty exciting movies before the Soviets marched in a banned them all in 1948. Even afterward we kept trading the books back and forth in our small black market. They helped us counter the really nasty propaganda the Soviets and their Hungarian puppet regime put out against America through the government-controlled press and educational (read: indoctrination) system.

Yes, much of this was lopsided because it was, after all, mostly
fiction and cast the American past in far more favorable light than truth would have it, although Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer
contained some harsh truths about the country. Still, the viciousness of slavery and segregation and the depth of the racism did not come through fully until after I finally ended up on these shores, although by then the process of reparation and reform had been well under way. Also, I spent much time around the military in Germany in which there wasn't the racial divide that became evident to me once I came stateside.

One thing, though, was different back then from what it is now: the basic social-political philosophy associated with America had been pretty clearly and openly individualist, stressing individual
freedom, the free market economy, civil liberties and similar ideals I later learned came from the influence of classical liberalism. Of ourse, when I arrived, in the late 50s, the welfare state had become ubiquitous and both the Democrats and Republicans had gotten on board with it -- FDR, after all, had mesmerized much of the country with his utopian, anti-libertarian fantasies and promises as well as the corrupt charge that the Great Depression was the fault of individualism and economic laissez-faire.

Still, much of the language of politics, even in the era of Eisenhower, honored the ideals and ideas of the Founders, as sketched in the Declaration of Independence, whatever was the actual, messy socio-political reality throughout the country. And in time, with the national candidacies of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, these ideas received a bit of rhetorical run for their money, so that most citizens were reminded of what it was that made their country really different from the rest of the world, especially from regions controlled by the Soviets.

The fall of the Soviet empire was quite an encouraging development to those like me who had come to realize that human beings are treated most justly and are best off when they have their basic rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness respected and legally protected. I turned my attention to these matters very early in my academic career and tried seriously to do a thorough comparative assessment as between laws and public policies that were loyal to the Founders' vision and those that guided people toward one or another form of statism. Although I never believed there must be progress for the better in human history, the demolition of the Berlin Wall was very encouraging.

Unfortunately, by that time there wasn't much intellectual, academic commitment to classical liberalism, if indeed there ever has been, in the centers of learning, so the newly liberated countries received bad leadership and only here and there were they urged to embrace the principles of a fully free society. As far as America's leadership in these matters was concerned, it had long been abandoned and the two active political parties focused mainly on just how much of a welfare state -- with a focus on government controlling which parts of our lives -- should public policy promote.

It seemed, in fact, that the demise of socialism in practice energized the hordes of the faithful in the American academy to come up with all sorts of more or less reconstituted clones of the statist system. In Europe the gutless "third way" became the intellectual and political rallying vision, while America got bogged down in panic about the environment, guilt about the past, and so called wars on poverty, drugs, and terror. Freedom got scant attention! The vision of a fully free society -- resting on the idea that adult human beings must take responsibility for their lives and solve their numerous problems in civilized, non-coercive ways -- got buried in all the muck of reactionary trust in government. It was as if the country regretted rejecting the monarchy it so boldly tossed aside in 1776, and wished once again for a king -- or at least Nanny or protectionist state.

None of this needs to spell doom. People rid themselves of bad habits with great difficulty and the governmental habit is the worst; it can take decades, even centuries to overcome. One can only hope that the next generation and those following it will manage to recover the ideals and ideas of the Founders despite how the bulk of the intellectuals and academics, not to mention politicians and bureaucrats, have demeaned them.

The Times's Leftist Blindness

by Tibor R. Machan

In The NY Times Sunday Magazine, October 1st, the Profile feature,
"Questions for," is devoted to Warren Beatty on the occasion of a
revival of his 1981 movie Reds -- one that recounts the journalist
John Reed's love affair with Soviet communism -- for which he
received the Academy Award as the director. I have seen the thing
once, I believe, and it just goes on endlessly casting the beginnings of the murderous era of the Soviet Union in pretty favorable light. (As an antidote, one ought to read or see the movie of Ayn Rand's novel, We the Living! Even Reds acknowledges in the last analysis, though, that the Bolsheviks were up to no good.)

Now there is nothing all that much new about this. The New York Times has always favored the Left, however rotten it has been demonstrated to be over the decades. Even in our times, it tends to side with the Leftists in the Middle East, never mind that their latest heroes violate nearly all the egalitarian ideals The Times has been championing over the decades, such as equal rights for women, due process, gay rights, etc.! I suppose those who hate George W. Bush enough will gain the support of The Times and other Leftists no matter how bloody their hands. (Just take a look at The London Review of Books and see how they bend over backwards to rationalize every evil perpetrated by violent Muslims, never mind how these people stand against everything that's part of the liberal ethos.)

Beatty produced, directed and starred in Reds and this movie is loved by all those who supported Lenin and Stalin and the rest of those Bolshevik thugs because it makes all the supporters out to be idealists, naively hoping that this time a massive tyranny is going to end up righting all the wrongs of the world. That this can still receive approval from American Leftists just goes to show that 20 million deaths at the hands of reds isn't enough to dissuade the enthusiasts.

The late Susan Sontag was right for a while when she shocked her
fellow Leftists by saying that communism is successful Fascism. She said this, of course, several years before the Soviet system finally bit the dust, an event that showed that neither communism nor Fascism manages to be very successful at anything more than causing death and misery for millions. Still, if there were a movie made called, say, "Blacks," honoring the idealistic Nazis and Fascist black shirts, we would not see many sentimental remembrances to its creator in The New York Times Magazine.

Somehow these people still suffer from that macabre illusion that one tyranny can be more honorable than the other, what I call the Victor Navasky (of The Nation) thesis (advanced in his book Naming Names). Even after it has been shown that between the Red Soviets and the Red Chinese the toll of communism has been more than double that of Nazism, these Leftist sentimentalists just will not accept how destructive their vision has been, how much horror they have helped unleash in their blind championing of the "ideals" of the reds.

This, by the way, is what is also happening at high schools, colleges and universities across the land, with all those sophisticated Leftist professors treating the reds with kid gloves compared to how they, rightly, treat the Nazis as vicious murders. The crimes of the Right are, to them, unforgivable but those of the Left get cast in understanding terms (the struggle for the poor can lead to mistakes, etc., etc.).

With this sort of scenario on our intellectual landscape, it is
difficult to be properly upset with George W. Bush and his nearly
total abandonment of the libertarian inclinations in the American
conservative movement. Yes, Bush is a traitor to the ideals of the
American Declaration, what with his total rejection of Ben Franklin's insight that "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." But compared to the blindness of the Left, with its ongoing failure to acknowledge how evil communism was and how culpably naïve are the likes of Warren Beatty when they romanticize the commies in vehicles such as Reds, Bush is somewhat tolerable.

Worries About the Future

by Tibor R. Machan

For a moment, let's forget that the environmentalists' precautionary principle is a devastating threat to the idea of due process of law -- it is, but there are other problems with it. Why is it? Because when one anticipates that bad things might happen even though no one has been found guilty of violating anyone's rights, people begin to be treated badly. Their rights begin to be violated right and left. The mere possibility of something untoward happening leads to public policies that run roughshod over our liberties and rights. A very clear case
in point is the Endangered Species Act, which authorizes government to violate property rights merely because use of one's property might possibly hurt some critters. By this principle anyone who might commit a crime could be locked up ... whether they actually do so or not!

But there is something else at issue, something economics professor George Reisman once called my attention to in one of his fine essays critical of various aspects of environmentalism
(http://www.mises.org/story/661). This came to mind for me as I was considering my upcoming schedule of activities -- talks, conferences, seminars, and so forth.

Sometimes when a good many of these activities are planned, I get
nervous and start preparing way before necessary so that I will be
ready to cope with them all. What seems to happen is that the future, with all these planned activities in it, appears to my mind to unfold independently of the periods of time in between the events that are coming up. I see the future, as it were, on one flat canvas and it looks utterly unmanageable.

Environmentalists seem to be looking at the unfolding of the future of humanity along similar lines. They see a problem here, another there, an unanswered question concerning this, and another about something else, and these seem to appear to them all bunched up, as one huger -- possibly catastrophic -- event. Al Gore's movie is a good case in point -- thousands of years of a possible and scary future are crammed into a little over an hour and when so considered, what unfolds does come off as hopeless, unmanageable and, thus, cause for panic. And people often act irrationally when they are panicked. That is why talk of threatening our rights seems beyond the pale for both environmentalists and those worried about terrorism. The
prospects are frightening, so who cares about niceties like
respecting individual rights?

What Professor Reisman pointed out in his essay is that such an
approach to dealing with the future of humanity is completely
misguided because it omits from consideration the primary facts of
human innovation, creativity, initiative. It treats us as if we were all mere bystanders, unable to do anything about those possible dangers, whereas in fact if one considers human history, people have been quite successful in dealing with all kinds of hazardous contingencies by applying themselves. Exactly how they will do so is never easy to spell out, so those who in their panic ask, "But how will it all work out?" or "What precisely must we do to cope with this and that awful scenario?" cannot be given simple answers. (The same applies in the field of emergency ethics, those famous desert island or lifeboat cases, which are so extraordinary that one has to remember that people often come up with ingenious solutions to extraordinary problems and challenges.)

My own anxiety over my upcoming full schedules abated when I realized that I kept forgetting about the fact that there are several days, sometimes a week, in between the various events and that I will be able to prepare with little trouble for the next one after one has passed by. Time was what I forgot about, as well as my ability to make the most of this time as I came to cope with my various upcoming challenges.

Sure, there will be changes in the climate, there will be more or
less water or ice or what have you. But all of this will not happen in one fell swoop but over years, decades, even centuries, and if history is any clue, most of it will be dealt with quite competently, thank you, by those who will have to cope with it all. Nor need our basic principles of human association -- the rights we have to our lives, liberties and property -- be sacrificed for that to happen.

Doing Government's Dirty Work

by Tibor R. Machan

It has always bothered me that government carries out all kinds of
tasks that are none of its business. Collecting funds for innumerable projects people in a country undertaken by means of extortion -- taxation, in short -- is just one of these tasks. It is bad enough that a government founded on the principles of our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (among others!) extorts funds from the citizenry. But it then goes on to coerce employers to collect these funds, to become its bagmen, and hand them over to the various governments perpetrating the extortion.

Forcing employers to collect the extorted funds is really low. They must incur the cost of this collection, with overhead and special employees hired just for this entirely non-productive purpose. The money wasted in the process could have meant jobs for millions of people who, in turn, could pay for what government provides voluntarily, by various means that do not amount to extortion and that do not burden others with the collection process. But worst of all is that these companies become complicit in what is by all accounts a natural crime!

Yes, these are radical notions, but so at one time was the idea of
abolishing serfdom, which along with taxation was part of the unjust feudal system. Maybe in time taxation will go the way of serfdom but while it is still kept in force by the police of most societies, at least the collection could be more honest and straightforward. That way everyone would get a clear idea of what taxation is about, namely, expropriating people's resources at the point of a gun. Getting employers to do the dirty job manages, also, to disguise what is going on.

People who believe it's OK for a democratic government to extort
resources from the citizenry probably believe themselves to be
supporting law and order. The following exchange, written by the
ancient Greek general, Xenophon (circa 444 BCE), in his Memorabilia, should disabuse them of that idea:

Alcibiades: Please, Pericles, can you teach me what a law is?

Pericles: To be sure I can.

Alcibiades: I should be so much obliged if you would do so. One so
often hears the epithet "law-abiding" applied in a complimentary
sense; yet, it strikes me, one hardly deserves the compliment, if one does not know what a law is.

Pericles: Fortunately there is a ready answer to your difficulty. You wish to know what a law is? Well, those are laws which the majority, being met together in conclave, approve and enact as to what it is right to do, and what it is right to abstain from doing.

Alcibiades: Enact on the hypothesis that it is right to do what is
good? or to do what is bad?

Pericles: What is good, to be sure, young sir, not what is bad.

Alcibiades: Supposing it is not the majority, but, as in the case of an oligarchy, the minority, who meet and enact the rules of conduct, what are these?

Pericles: Whatever the ruling power of the state after deliberation enacts as our duty to do, goes by the name of laws.

Alcibiades: Then if a tyrant, holding the chief power in the state, enacts rules of conduct for the citizens, are these enactments law?

Pericles: Yes, anything which a tyrant as head of the state enacts, also goes by the name of law.

Alcibiades: But, Pericles, violence and lawlessness -- how do we
define them? Is it not when a stronger man forces a weaker to do what seems right to him -- not by persuasion but by compulsion?

Pericles: I should say so.

Alcibiades: It would seem to follow that if a tyrant, without
persuading the citizens, drives them by enactment to do certain
things -- that is lawlessness?

Pericles: You are right; and I retract the statement that measures
passed by a tyrant without persuasion of the citizens are law.

Alcibiades: And what of measures passed by a minority, not by
persuasion of the majority, but in the exercise of its power only?
Are we, or are we not, to apply the term violence to these?

Pericles: I think that anything which any one forces another to do
without persuasion, whether by enactment or not, is violence rather than law.

Alcibiades: It would seem that everything which the majority, in the exercise of its power over the possessors of wealth, and without persuading them, chooses to enact, is of the nature of violence rather than of law?

Condoleezza Rice’s Bad Analogy

Tibor R. Machan

In the interview conducted with her on CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes program on Sunday, September 24, Condoleezza Rice, who is the Secretary of State of the United States now, made a bad analogy. She compared the condescending attitude of racists toward blacks with the skepticism of those who do not consider it realistic to attempt to implement democratic politics in the Middle East and some other regions of the globe. She said that she believes that the view that blacks cannot handle freedom and responsibility is an irresponsible, prejudiced position and so is the idea that the people in Iraq, Iran, Syria and other countries cannot now handle democracy, for the same reason.

This is a bad analogy for several reasons. The racist claim that blacks cannot handle freedom rests on a belief in their alleged racial inferiority, the idea that because they are of a certain race, this prevents them from being able to cope with the freedom and responsibility that those of a "superior" race can handle.

That view falls apart as soon as it is understood that being black doesn’t make a person mentally and morally inferior. It is vital to realize that the racist idea attributes the inability to deal with freedom and responsibility to something over which the individuals involved have no say. They supposedly cannot deal with freedom and responsibility because they are black, something over which they have absolutely no control, no say whatsoever. If this factor is found to be irrelevant to whether one can handle freedom and responsibility, the claim about blacks turns out to be unfounded, indefensible--rank prejudice.

The claim about people in the Middle East is not advanced by those who do advance it on the grounds that men and women of their race haven’t the capacity to handle democracy. Few if any attribute their supposed inability to race. If there is anything to the skepticism about those in the Middle East and elsewhere managing to live under a democratic polity, it has to do with something entirely different.

Before continuing, it is worthwhile to mention that all the talk about democracy by members of the Bush team is too loose. Simple, unqualified democracy is not a just system of politics. It is no accident that from Socrates to the American Founders many wise and prudent political thinkers had doubts about democracy per se. For what is so wonderful, or just, about a system that simply places the majority in a position of superiority, with the minority subordinate to it? If that majority is wrong, why does it matter that it is more numerous than those in the minority?

In fact, the only kind of democracy that deserves support is the classical liberal variety, one strictly limited by the individual rights of the citizenry to their lives, liberties, property, religious worship, etc. Any democracy not so limited is no better than a dictatorship or tyranny by one individual or a small group. Possibly, agreement among members of a majority would be more difficult to achieve if they were all wrong, although 50 million Frenchman can be, as the old saying goes!

But let’s get back to Secretary Rice and her bad analogy. It is perfectly reasonable to hold that some people have chosen ideas and ideals to live by that are incompatible with any kind of democratic government, liberal or not. We certainly know of people who chose to place themselves into subservience—the followers of cult leader Jim Jones come to mind, or of the Reverend Moon, or other powerful leaders of religious and other organizations. The majority of Germans gave Adolph Hitler absolute power and thereby rejected democracy out of conviction, not because of some innate inability.

Many who have been examining President Bush’s drive to bring democracy to the Middle East—and indeed the entire notion, beginning with President Woodrow Wilson, to spread democracy across the world—dispute the idea not because they are racists who think people over there haven’t got it in them to act democratically. No. The skepticism comes from the observation of a very long history of people either having freely rejected democracy or having voluntarily placed themselves under the rule of others they deem wiser and more virtuous than themselves. Or because they are too severely controlled by some elite or clergy.

Wherever a situation like this prevails, for whatever psychological, philosophical, religious, or other reasons, it is not unreasonable—and certainly not racist—to be doubtful that America can turn the place into a functioning democracy, especially via military force.

Willie Nelson, Public Enemy?

by Tibor R. Machan

In the midst of the U. S. A. going nearly broke from the Iraq War,
the War on Terror, and a rupturing corporate and personal welfare
state, I cannot imagine something much more pointless and wasteful
than the war on drugs. In my own neck of the woods several busts have
occurred recently, bringing to "justice" cultivators of various
patches of marijuana in various swanky neighborhoods, at huge cost to
law enforcement organizations, which is to say, to the citizenry that
funds them. But that is not really the worst of it.

Willie Nelson, the singer -- who looks to me to be about as harmless
a soul on the entertainment-celebrity roster as one can imagine --
has recently been busted for having and using some pot on his tour
bus. That, by all accounts, is the reality and the symbol of the
worst aspects of this utterly insane undertaking, the war on drugs.

The man was doing no one any harm -- he could have been sipping a
beer, chewing tobacco, or having a martini but, instead, his choice
of drugs was one that happens, quite irrationally, to seriously
offend influential elements of the voting public and politicians.
This new prohibition is, of course, no more sensible, nor any more in
accord with principles of a just human community -- which is supposed
to leave us free of out of control, offended meddlesome folks -- than
was the previous nationwide prohibition of alcohol that finally had
to be scrapped because of the bona fide crime it spawned throughout
the country. In the case of Mr. Nelson, though, there is something
else that this insane, immoral war illustrates.

American prisons are filled with such harmless drug offenders! I was
recently visiting one of those, in Lompoc, California, and some 70%
of the inmates are there for having been convicted of drug-related
offenses. Some are users, some are "pushers" or dealers, some are
probably more involved on the enforcement side of the industry
(which, being illegal, cannot count on the official police to provide
any remedy for the commercial malfeasance that plagues many
enterprises).

All this is happening in what President George W. Bush and his pals
so proudly call a free country, indeed, as they would have it, the
only country on the face of the globe truly involved in spreading
liberty to all. What a crock that is and how hypocritical it must
come off to most observant foreigners, including, sadly, the worst of
them whose hatred of America and its professed system, a free
capitalist society, is very likely fed by it.

Also, since the U. S. A. has more prisoners than nearly any country
around the world, and since that's something people tend to find
disturbing about a society, namely, its huge prison population --
given that this suggests widespread serious criminal activity in the
place -- the proclamation by our leaders that we are a bastion of
liberty can only be most embarrassing and self-defeating.

Of course, free men and women can become criminals. No one should
expect a free society to be a utopia. Yet, it does reflect badly on
the U. S. A. to have so many of its citizens turn to crime. And when
looked at without a careful consideration of what counts as crime in
the country, this bodes ill for the very idea of a free society --
makes it look like freedom and crime go hand in hand. So the very
objective that supposedly animates Bush & Co. in the Iraqi war --
spreading freedom to the world's enslaved and oppressed -- can seem
rather pointless and even counterproductive, given this association
of what is deemed a free society and the proclivity to crime by so
many of its citizens.

Yet, of course, the crimes these citizens have a proclivity for are
phony crimes -- it is as if eating hot dogs were a crime, or dancing,
or watching professional sports on TV. No wonder the prisons are full
-- prisoners occupy them who have been put there unjustly, without
any good reason.

The statistics do not, of course, show this. But if one extrapolates
from the prison I visited to all the rest, it looks like the criminal
element in the country is but a fraction of those who are officially
deemed to be criminals.

I do wish Willie Nelson could generate a revolution from his own
perfectly unjust and vile arrest on the charge of indulging in the
use of marijuana. We need this war on drugs ended, immediately. Maybe
that would not only improve our reputation abroad but could divert
the misused monies funding it to something worthwhile -- for example,
tax reduction.

Hungary's Malaise

by Tibor R. Machan

Shortly after Hungary set off the fall of Soviet-style socialism in
1989, when that country's rulers allowed visitors from what then was
East Germany to leave without any hindrance for West Germany, my
mother, who had lived there for all of her life before being allowed
to leave in 1975, made some interesting predictions. The decision by
the Hungarian rulers was the first step toward the dismantling of the
Soviet Empire. But my mother thought it wouldn't necessarily lead to
panacea.

Her idea came back to me during the last few days when Prime Minister
Ference Gyurcsany, identified by some as "the golden boy" of
Hungary's Socialist Party, got himself into serious trouble with many
Hungarians for having admitted, in a leaked interview, that during
the election which got him his current job he was lying about the
country's economy "morning, evening and night." Given that this was
said in a recording that captured his own voice, Gyurcsany could not
and never did deny that he made that statement.

What my mother said to me back after the fall of the Soviet-style
socialists was that unless all those who were part of the old,
communist regime were put in jail, the country would eventually be
retaken by the former bosses because there was no group of classical
liberal leaders ready to lead the country away from its dismal
socialist past. She was confident that without such a group of new
leaders, with genuinely new ideas, Hungary would slowly return to its
old socialist ways.

What my mother said seemed to me to echo the more scholarly
reflections of Professor Janos Kornai, in his book Road to the Free
Market Economy: Shifting from a Socialist System the Example of
Hungary (Viking, 1990).

What Kornai focused on, in particular, is the temptation faced by the
newly reconstituted but unreconstructed socialists -- who were
welcomed by the post-Soviet regime to take part in Hungary's
political affairs -- to produce a nominal free market system that is,
in reality, merely a bit different from the old socialist economy. In
short, they would attempt to forge a powerful welfare state,
promising to provide all the impossible perks of the old regime, only
without the accompanying totalitarian politics. Kornai warned that
this is going to be impossible and will simply lead to economic
collapse. As the saying goes, you cannot squeeze blood out of a
turnip. A broken economy like that produced under Soviet-style
socialism simply cannot sustain the burdens of a welfare state. Why?

Because where there is no wealth, one simply cannot steal much. While
Kornai was too polite to put it just this way, the plain fact is that
a welfare state depends on there being enough wealthy people from
whom the government can steal so as to provide the perks the
politicians are always tempted to promise to the voters.

Hungarians are arguably experiencing the consequences of not heeding
Kornai's advice, and of failing to come up with a genuine free market
political leadership. Instead, for more than two decades, the country
has been trying to make do with a hodge-podge post-Soviet regime that
fails to actually give up the socialist dream. While a country such
as the United States of America can get away with such a hodge-podge
system, since its basic infrastructure has for many decades provided
reasonably firm protection to basic classical liberal institutions --
e.g., the right to private property, freedom of contract, civil
liberties, etc. -- in Hungary there is no comparable history to fall
back upon. So once the barrel has been scraped, there is nothing more
left to steal. There are no rich companies, rich individuals, rich
investors and so on who could be conscripted to come up with the
funds to sustain the welfare state.

Given this reality, what else can a socialist do but lie, lie and lie
some more? And once the citizens of the country discover this -- and
that's one benefit of having left the Soviet-style system behind,
namely, great openness about what politicians are doing -- the regime
will meet with considerable opposition. And this is how the PM is
urged to resign. He is refusing to do so but it is difficult to see
where he can go now. The jig is up, as the saying goes.

There is no socialist miracle. Unless the country generates some
solid non-socialist leadership and who persuade the citizenry to have
some patience while the economy recovers, prospects for peace and
prosperity are dim.

Puritanism at the UN

by Tibor R. Machan

Iran's president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, gave a pretty vapid talk at the
UN, intimating but rarely naming names of those he deemed guilty --
but there was a moment when his true outlook managed to surface. I
was watching him give his speech and the translator relayed one of
his sentences in which Ahmadinejad attacks all those who perpetrated
"injustice, violence and decadence."

Of course, no one wants injustice and few want violence, especially
the kind that is initiated as distinct from being used in
self-defense. But what about this outburst at decadence?

A couple of matters come to mind about that right away. First, there
is H.L. Mencken’s famous quip, "A Puritan is someone who's afraid
that somewhere, somehow, somebody might be happy!" That is just what
can be expected from a death-loving leader. What really is wrong with
the Americans and those who like them is that they export pleasure --
some of it perhaps ignoble, admittedly, but most of it simply good
fun -- around the globe.

When people learn about this way of life, they tend to respond
positively. And they begin to reject the leadership of those who are
intent on imposing nothing but drudgery on all those they presume to
lead. If it isn't your duty to suffer all the time, why would you
tolerate a bunch of leaders who insist that you be subjected to their
orders, their regimentation, their demands for sacrifices from you?
So American "decadence" is clearly hazardous to the health of these
leaders.

But there is something else about this lament about how American and
its friends spread decadence. Sadly, even the leadership in America
and Co. have some problem responding to the charge in appropriate
fashion, namely, admitting it and standing up for pleasure. In much
of the West a compromises has been reached between the official
doctrine that human life must mainly include sacrifice and drudgery
and that it may also involve some measure of pleasure and happiness.
The former position is still the widely propounded one, even among
intellectuals who ought to know better. In our very own time a whole
slew of them are writing books denouncing happiness, claiming it
isn't good for us -- indeed, paradoxically, that it makes us unhappy.
(Dan Gilbert of Columbia University is a forceful voice championing
these ideas.)

And religions throughout the West promote this notion quite
vociferously, although in most there is room made for mundane
pleasure and happiness as well. However, these are not openly
advocated, promoted. Only in the marketplace, which has never been
favored either by most of the clergy or the bulk of the
intellectuals, are pleasure and happiness approved. Sometimes this
is true also in self-help psychology books but not so boldly just
now, what with so many academic psychologists pooh-poohing it all
recently. There is still a bit of the "happy ending" mentality in
Hollywood and in the pulp fiction industry but these are deemed, by
most of the literati, gauche and pedestrian. The highfalutin' among
us don't speak up for the anti-Puritan school of thought.

So, the Iranian president did something smart. And here he is
following the lead of Osama bin Laden and the host of others who
claim to speak for Islam and the Arab world. That is, he hit the West
where the West has trouble standing up for itself. Will George W.
Bush say, openly, that it is quite OK, indeed, grand, to seek
happiness in life, even some substantial pleasure? Will others,
especially in the academy, defend "the good life," meaning a life
that is enjoyable, fun, satisfying?

No, sadly, they will not. So the charge leveled by President
Ahmadinejad will probably go unanswered. Which means all those of us
who do actually look forward to enjoying our lives will remain
intellectually defenseless unless we ourselves are confident about
our righteous path. We need to realize that there is absolutely no
conflict between benevolence toward our fellow human beings,
generosity toward those in dire straits, and a healthy dosage of
personal joy in life.

Of all people, Oprah Winfrey had it right, speaking in Baltimore on
04/10/06 at a fund raiser, when she recounted a little story: "I was
coming back from Africa on one of my trips, ... I had taken one of my
wealthy friends with me. She said, 'Don't you just feel guilty? Don't
you just feel terrible?' I said, 'No, I don't. I do not know how my
being destitute is going to help them.' Then I said when we got home,
'I'm going home to sleep on my Pratesi sheets right now and I'll feel
good about it.'"

RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC SQUARE
Thursday, September 21, 2006

Tibor R. Machan

A wonderful aspect of a free, capitalist society is that nearly everything is privately owned. That applies to churches -- they are owned by the order, such as Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Moonies, Muslims, Hindus, and all the some 4200 different religious groups (that's the number of how many different religious groups exist in the USA now [http://www.adherents.com/]) -- or by their congregations. Because a free society has no state religion, various religious groups are not involved in politically squaring off against one another. Sure, there are some political aspects of some religious orders, but in the main their affairs are left to the social and private realms of our lives.

In countries where government and religion are closely linked, efforts to rule the public square are among the ambitions of most religious groups. Just consider Jerusalem, which is constantly being fought over, both politically and physically. Arguably, whenever some religious group wins the political fight in a country, the rights of those who do not belong to this group are seriously jeopardized. Exclusion of those not among the ruling sect from public policy decision-making is routine. Efforts to gain political power by those religious groups which don't enjoy it is often the source of major upheavals.

But it also goes beyond the borders of such countries, as is evident in the current controversy over Pope Benedict's comments in which he quoted certain texts critical of Islam. In a free society -- and even in partially free ones like the USA or Canada -- such remarks may attract critical attention in various forums of disputation such as magazines, newspapers, books, conferences, university seminars and the like. Normally, though, no one is going to take to the streets, and no one is going to offer threats of violent or legal action against those with whom one is debating even very serious issue.

What leads to this substantially peaceful approach to religious disagreement and dispute is the institution of private property rights. One can gather together with one's fellow faithful and keep dissidents away or insist on peaceful terms should they be allowed to enter. Dissidents, heretics, and the like do not have free entry to sacred grounds -- they are privately held and maintained. Although in most cases church entry is not barred to non-believer visitors, it is clear that they are allowed in only if they act in a respectful and civilized manner.

Look at the places around the globe where religion permeates everything, especially the public square -- meaning politics. Everyone has the idea that everything is open to his or her influence. Everyone believes that other people's most private affairs -- their beliefs, faith, religious practices, ornaments, sacred texts -- are fair game for anyone to bother about. No one can be kept out and if one is a member of a minority faith, persecution is nearly certain. If groups are roughly the same size, they often perpetrate continual violence against one another, as in India and Pakistan.

Of course, this is partly due to the tribalism which runs rampant in such societies. Individual rights are ignored; what matters is solidarity and loyalty to some group. The groups craving such loyalty are willing to do nearly anything to stay on top, to rule the realm.

Roman Catholics in the West and elsewhere used to be like this, of course, willing to deploy whatever means would work so as to be dominant in some country, to determine what the laws were, what public policies -- which pretty much means involvement in every social and private matter important to people -- should prevail. Dissidents, heretics, unbelievers would experience vicious reprisals. Other religions would follow suit -- it was very often a matter of them versus us, based on the sacred texts and idols that were to be worshipped.

It is a remarkable achievement of the classical liberal political tradition to have begun to restrain this kind of conduct on the part of religious -- and, indeed, other -- groups. The American founders and framers, especially, established major obstacles to religious groups taking over everyone's life in society. They were to be kept within their own realms and whatever proselytizing they did had to be confined to the peaceful, civilized means of advocacy, sermonizing and preaching.

Sure, there are exceptions in the U.S. today, and various religions try to butt into the lives of everyone with trying to get gay marriages, contraception, abortion and other practices legally banned based on their particular doctrines. (One reason some religions try very hard to pass themselves off as scientifically based or condemn secular views as faith based is that this way the distinction between what is religious and what is not may be obscured.)

In any case, in a fully free society religion would be barred from the public square and that is a very good thing indeed. This doesn't ban religious views, doesn't keep these views from guiding people's personal conduct but it reduces their frequently acrimonious impact on politics.

STUCK IN THE STATIST PAST
Friday, September 22, 2006

Tibor R. Machan

There are small signs showing that many, many people even in this relatively free society are wedded to statism -- the belief that the government is the head of society, which is itself a sort of organism. Those of us not part of the government are, in turn, its subjects, subservient to it.

According to the political philosophy of the American founders and many of the framers, government is not the head of society. Instead it is instituted or established to perform a specific function, not very different from how other professionals such as educators, scientists, doctors, and so forth are. In a complex, modern society all these have grown into nearly permanent agencies. But none of them is authorized to rule us, only to perform services for which we employ them. In other words, the relationship between citizens and government is akin to that between clients and professionals, fully voluntary and with both parties enjoying equal legal status.

However, this idea is far from truly embraced even in the United States of America, let alone around the world. One way one can notice this is by observing how often people talk of how the government "permits" this, or "allows" that, or "lets" us do something else. "Permissions" are given by superiors, not equals; or by those who own some domain, such as their home or place of business. You need permission to enter or use these because someone else own them.

But government in a free society doesn't own anything except some properties needed for it to do its job of securing our rights. So when it comes to, say, writing a book or speaking our minds or traveling or doing our work, these are not "permitted" or "allowed." These are done because we have a right to do them, not because Uncle Sam gives us permission or "lets" us do them.

Yet a great many supposedly free citizens speak as though they were subjects, as if there were a monarchy in force and what people in the country do required the permission of the monarch -- king, tsar, pharaoh, or some similar ruler or even dictator. Even the welfare state aspires to such status, what with all of its regulatory agencies that issue licenses and permits and the like to citizens. The old governmental habit simply continues in substantial force, never mind that strictly speaking it was always a ruse, unfounded in anything like justice. Indeed, all talk about kings and such, His or Her Majesty and similar titles of status were always a sign of some people having managed to pull the wool over the eyes of millions of others, or simply subdue them by brute force. None of it was ever just and true. It was always on the order of some myth, not unlike talk about fairies or witches or mediums. All these are make-believe, even though some sadly give them credence.

The same is true of the idea that governments are in charge of us, give us permission to live and work, allow us to act this way or that. No. The reality is that governments are our hired agencies which have a specific job to do, not unlike our dentists or plumbers. Folks we hire to do perfectly honorable tasks do not rule over, but rather enter into voluntary relations with, us. And that's how governments need to be understood if indeed human beings are free and responsible adults, not wards of the state.

Unfortunately too much history has passed by during which the deception that there are natural rulers who get to run the lives of others has gone only mildly challenged. Too many places around the globe still smother under the influence of that despicable idea. And with the emergence of democracies the myth continues, based on the misguided notion that when lots of us get together and agree, we may run roughshod over the rest.

But whether it is one king or a million, none has the just authority to rule others. Here it is vital to remember the idea so well expressed by Abraham Lincoln: "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." And that means, among other things, that what we do which does not intrude on other people is something we need no permission to do. This is so even if it isn't the wisest or most prudent of things for us to do -- that's our business and no supervisor is part of the deal, not if we are free human beings, citizens, rather than subjects.

Muslims’ Handling of Dissent

Tibor R. Machan

Sure, not all Muslims are like that but even those who don’t join in seem not to have enough influence to stop the large mass of troublemakers. This was brilliantly uncovered by the recently deceased Oriana Fallaci, the firebrand Italian journalist who gave some instances of the Arab leadership’s thinking, including this from George Habash, the nominally Christian Marxist-Leninist: “Our revolution is a part of the world revolution,” he told Fallaci (as reported in her book The Force of Reason [Rissoli, 2004]). “It is not confined to the reconquest of Palestine.... The Palestinian problem is not an aside problem. A problem separated from the Arab Nation’s realities. Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation. Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America. It must unleash a war against the West. America and Europe don’t know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning. That the best has yet to come. That from now on there will be no peace for the West. To advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. That is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.” Or how about this from a bona fide Muslim, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, reported in Asia Times Online recently: "We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It's a universal ideology that leads the world to justice. We don't shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world. We must prepare ourselves to rule the world." Although there may well be millions of moderate Muslims, they seem not to have managed to take the leadership position in the Islamic world but left it all to these imperialists.

Recently Pope Benedict made some critical commons about Islamic doctrine. As reported by Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, the Pope said, “in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Mohammed, but it's an eternal word. It's not Mohammed's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it, whereas in Christianity, and Judaism, the dynamism's completely different, that God has worked through his creatures. And so it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He's used his human creatures, and inspired them to speak his word to the world, and therefore by establishing a church in which he gives authority to his followers to carry on the tradition and interpret it, there's an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.”
Now whatever you may think of this, agree or disagree, what’s vital to note is that in response to the Pope’s views a large mass of Arab Muslims demonstrated with several thousand flag-waving Palestinians marching in the Gaza Strip in protest against his views. "This is another Crusader war against the Arab and Muslim world," Hamas official Ismail Radwan is reported to have said in an address to some 5,000 chanting demonstrators. Even the Pakistani government got into the act, with its National Assembly, unanimously passing a resolution condemning the Pope's comments.

Contrast this with how the recent call by Roman Catholic bishops in California for us all to abandon our search of earthly joys and pleasures was met. With, well, not much. Is that because everyone agrees with the bishops? No. Quite evidently millions of Californians prefer living well here on earth, making the most of mundane pleasures and showing, what the bishops call, “spiritual indifference.”

OK, so the California Roman Catholic bishops are insulting the life style and belief systems of millions of not just California Roman Catholics but people around the Western World. Yet, do these insulted, offended people insist that the bishops be censured? Do they march against them and have their political bodies pass legislation against them?

No, not as a rule. And that is a fundamental difference between the current crop of Muslim leaders and those against whom they urge their jihad, the bulk of the population of the non-Muslim world. The latter mostly leave such disputes and controversies to be conducted in forums of civilized discussion—magazines, newspapers, university seminars, journals, conferences—and do not make it all a political and military matter, at least not in recent times. We may thank, I submit, the influence of classical liberal social political philosophy for this civilizing influence that the Muslim world clearly lacks.

It is interesting to notice, by the way, that here is where the Marxist-Leninist Left is very close to the radical Muslims. They, too, make everything political, everything subject to a physical conflict, to coercion.

Defending Wolfowitz -- Maybe

by Tibor R. Machan

Paul Wolfowitz hasn't been my hero by a long shot, given his hand in getting the United States government into the Iraq war mess. Sure, Saddam Hussein deserved to be deposed and jailed for life, although not by the American government and military. But leave that aside for now. Wolfowitz may redeem himself as President of the World Bank, what with his reported efforts to end corruption in the countries where the Bank is supporting efforts to reduce poverty.

OK, the World Bank is itself a fundamentally corrupt organization
because it lives off taxes and taxes are extorted funds, collected
coercively by governments that threaten to rob people of everything if they fail to pay up. Yes, Virginia, taxation is on par with serfdom -- the latter is the subjugation of human beings to the will of monarchs (thus the term "subjects" to designate such people, as in "a British subject"), the former a confiscation of their property, expropriation at the point of a gun.

But if one is going to be extorted, perhaps the funds could be used with some measure of prudence and wisdom. But no. As William
Easterly shows, in his The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin, 2006), nearly all efforts to aid the poor abroad have ended up making various crooked leaders rich while leaving the poor just as they were. The corruption in these countries is staggering and apparently irreparable.

Wolfowitz, who not long ago became president of the World Bank, has made some moves toward insisting that before further money is sent to these countries, the corruption must stop. For this, however, he has been getting a lot of flak, and no wonder. The report about it in The New York Times, rather sympathetic to Wolfowitz's critics, notes that as much as 10 to 25% of funds sent to such countries have been "improperly diverted."

That's way below the far more reasonable estimate in Easterly's book and what can be expected given the kind of dictatorial rule that is routine in most of the recipient countries. But Wolfowitz and others, such as John Githongo, an anti-corruption activist from Kenya "who has fled to safety in Britain" but continues to advise Wolfowitz, are criticized by anonymous UN officials -- who else, given that body's sterling record of above-board dealings -- such as the unnamed "senior French finance official," whom The Times quotes saying, "We must not use corruption as an excuse for a massive withdrawal of our help."

Oh, Yeah? What if that "help" in fact does no good at all, as
Easterly shows, other than to keep the corrupt rulers living in
obscene luxury, with enormous Swiss bank accounts? Well, I guess this French finance official isn't interested in actually helping those who need the help but in continuing the expropriation of citizens in the countries which supply the World Bank and the UN and who knows how many other organizations -- governments or NGOs -- with the funds that are being wasted. One may suppose that the French financial official knows that if it really came about that no money would be moved to these countries until they stopped their massive corruption, (a) folks may start resisting the extortion and (b) the poor of those countries might actually improve their lot on their own, given that what they produce wouldn't be robbed from them constantly as it is now and has been for decades on end.

Problem is, of course, that the World Bank cannot really occupy the moral high ground when it comes to corruption, Wolfowitz or no
Wolfowitz. As noted already, the Bank itself flourishes -- and most of its staff live about as high on the hog as do the corrupt
officials in the poor countries it is supposed to be helping out of their poverty -- because of the corrupt practice of taxation. All that first class flying about, attending of conferences in plush places around the globe, funding luxurious housing and education for their kids that World Bank officers and staff receive is not exactly an example of frugal living for the leaders of the poor countries. Quite the contrary -- it looks to me like a bunch of "respectable" crooks in fancy suits wanting to reform a bunch of disrespectable crooks in fancy uniforms. One might even suspect a bit of racism here -- it's OK for the World Bank's high and mighty to rip off the rest of us but not OK for those leaders of the poor countries! Well, maybe not.

Still, in this instance I side with Wolfowitz and wish him well in
his efforts to make something of a dent in Third World corruption.
But I am not holding my breath!

"Progressives" Aren't Progressive

Tibor R. Machan

At my university I was sitting at one interminably long meeting where sadly much time is wasted and little gets done. But during one of the discussions the person who was the leader made the point that there are faculty members of different political persuasion (a piece of vital information we all needed to be provided) and divided them into two groups, conservative and progressive. By this was meant something simply descriptive and showing not kind of bias at all.

Sadly, many people even at universities and colleges, ones who ought to know better, accept some of these labels without question. Yet given how the labels derive from words that have pretty clear meaning in our language, what those words from which they derive mean has an influence in how the labels will be understood.

Thus, conservatism derives from the perfectly ordinary word “conserve.” And this means to hold over, to stay the course, to avoid changes, at least basic ones. Conservatives, in fact, are generally taken to be those who promote forging laws and public policies by holding on to what had been the practice in the past. Those who actually embrace this method have a very interesting argument for why they promote this, nothing to dismiss blithely. So to label people “conservative” is to suggest, pretty strongly, that they want to keep with customs, laws, policies of the past. Yet one can bet that a whole lot of those called conservatives aren’t exactly like that at all. Many of them simply urge that we be careful when we make changes, not embrace some untried fad, not abandon something that has worked rather well even if not perfectly. But the label “conservative” does not include these necessary qualifications.

It is even worse with “progressive.” It’s usually the people on the Left who joyfully choose to be called “progressive”—there are several left of center and far Left publications that contain “progressive” in their title, for example. In this instance, however, the designation fails to fit altogether. That is because instead of moving forward, getting away from past practices, in short, instead of making progress, those on the Left are actually regressive, even reactionary, in their politics. I give you one major example.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of the modern Left, proposed, in their Communist Manifesto, as their first order of business the abolition of private property. They and thousands of intellectuals who followed in their ideological lead over the last century and a half have believed, often sincerely, that this made them all progressives. But that is just not so.

In the era prior to the rise of modern capitalism there was virtually no acknowledgement of the right to private property for all but some at the top. It is government—by way of the monarch such as the king or czar or pharaoh—who was deemed to own everything. So when ordinary folks like you and me occupied and worked some plot of land, for example, the government had to grant this privilege. We had no right to private property, only a grant of privilege and we all had to pay taxes for it to boot. (Remember that Robin Hood didn’t steal from the rich but from those who took taxes from us all, seeing how unjust this was!)

Clearly, then, the rejection of private property rights was part and parcel of much of pre-capitalist political economy, where it was government that deemed itself authorized to grant people rights. The idea that the individual has a natural—pre-political, pre-legal—right to private property was a radical, actually progressive notion which unseated government from its high and might position, robbed it of its phony sovereignty.

Contemporary Leftist “progressives,” then, want to return to something very old fashioned and misguided, namely, the idea that government is supreme and we are all its subjects. (Sadly, the U. S. Supreme Court has given them support in this recently, via its July 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, Ct.)

There is absolutely nothing progressive about what the Left wants and please realize that the term is applied either because of rank ignorance or as a simple ruse. The Left is, in fact, reactionary and regressive.

The Vegas Fallacy

Tibor R. Machan

It’s not just in Vegas but wherever there’s gambling (Monte Carlo, the river boats in Mississippi, etc.), a good many people who wish to win big—as opposed to those who just want to have some fun playing around at the tables—believe that somehow, against all odds, they will luck out. And a very, very few do, while thousands and thousands do not. All one needs so as to grasp this is to look at how fabulous the facilities are, how well the house is doing virtually everywhere, and how many people go home poorer than they were when they got there.

But they keep coming back. This is how the welfare state works, as well. Millions of people pay into the system, supporting massive bureaucracies and thousands of politicians, hoping that they will walk away the big winners some day. The politicians and bureaucrats keep promising the winnings but only here and there do they deliver. After all, even though the treasury gains its resources through taxation—in other words, extortion—and borrowing and printing, it still hasn’t enough to satisfy all the hopes and wishes that keep millions of faithful hanging in there rather than demanding that the game be shut down. Except that Vegas is more honest—no one promises that everyone will be a winner, only that some will be, whereas the champions of the welfare state tell everyone that government will help out—government will save us all from disasters, bankruptcies, ill health, ignorance, whatever. Vegas, yes, is far more honest.

But something similar to what keeps certain people coming back to the tables and the "one arm bandits" also encourages millions of citizens to keep their faith in the welfare state. "The next time my lobbyists, my representatives, my bunch of cheerleaders will surely succeed and I will collect the big benefits." Or perhaps, miracles of miracles, we will all be winners and no one will lose—so Social Security will never go broke! The educators, scientists, farmers, artists, merchants and all who hold out their hands waiting for the bacon to come home will all, very soon, get to be big winners.

Only it is a total ruse. Not even the extortionists who collect funds for the government have the kind of power that can get blood out of a turnip, who can make something from nothing. Even where honest budgetary constraints are absent, there is still scarcity, if only because the desire to get the benefits from the government is insatiable. Once a company, person, union or club is on the dole, the habit has been fed and the system is safe.

There are some folks, of course, who understand what a Ponzi scheme it all is but that teaching is drowned out by all the hucksters being paid to keep our hopes alive. The politicians will not tell us that they are ultimately powerless to satisfy us all. They will keep promising but delivering only bits and pieces, just to keep the habit alive. Entire industries have sprung into existence, teaching people how they need to apply for this or that government grant or subsidy. Weekend seminars abound, filled with hours and hours of instruction, banking on the largely empty hope that we can all get rich off the government, that there is some Peter out there who can be robbed so that we all, the Pauls, will benefit. Of course, Peter believes he is also a Paul, and so a daisy chain of attempted rip-offs is generated and continues with only a few souls out there yelling, “But it’s all a ruse.”

Is there a way out of this? The late Mancur Olson, author of The Logic Of Collective Action (Harvard, 1971), was pessimistic. He believed that only when a widespread and serious crisis occurs that destroys all the special interest organizations in a country, could lasting and fundamental remedies be implemented—such as a constitutional principle banning the financial corruption at the centers of the welfare state. Barring that, stupidity will pretty much impel most of us to continue to want to raid the nearly empty treasury and thus to keep the system going.

Perhaps, however, if there were widespread enough economic education—informing the citizenry that the bulk of us are losers, not winners, in the welfare state Ponzi scheme—we would not have to wait for the crisis Olson said might rescue us. But this brings up another problem: the educational system itself feeds off this scheme, relying as it does on taxation. Who in our high schools and colleges will tell students that the very system they rely upon to "educate" them is based on extortion and ultimate economic catastrophe? Maybe a few economist, but hardly anyone else. Once I was asked to be on a committee at my university that was considering what courses a public policy concentration should make a requirement. I proposed: economics. My chair at the philosophy department immediately removed me because I was supposed to promote philosophy courses, never mind what actually made any sense.

Multiply this several thousand times and you will see what an uphill fight it is to bring some economic (and, in particular, public finance) sanity to college students across the land!

Demeaning Work?

by Tibor R. Machan

So my CBS TV morning news program reports that whereas on average
Americans take 10 days vacation per year, the Germans, French,
Italians and other Europeans are up there with 25 days or near it.
OK, so what? The report suggests one interpretation of these data:
Americans cannot relax, while Europeans can. Americans are
workaholics, while Europeans have a more sensible approach to work.

As usual with stories like this, CBS TV latched on to one guy in
Boston, I think it was, who works very close to home and spends
nearly all his time at is work station, although he seems to involve his small child in what he does (the kid was in nearly every clip shown of him by his computer, for example). This resonated with me because, I too, happen to be fond of my work, to the point that if I go on some kind of holiday or vacation, very quickly I get bored with sunbathing or sauntering about some old European city and its museums and want to get back to writing and teaching. And maybe, just maybe, the average American, whoever that might be, is more like that -- he or she actually likes doing work and doesn't crave idleness too much. Does this have to do with some malady like workaholism? I seriously doubt it.

From when a child is born in America, most parents try to learn what it is the child likes to do, what talents the child has, so the child's education falls in line with these and he or she will find the kind of work that is fulfilling, satisfying. Let's assume there is a substantial culture following this pattern of child-raising. If so, then would it be reasonable to expect grown ups to crave going on vacation all the time? Why? If they did indeed manage to find a line or work or career that is self-satisfying, that fulfills their hopes for matching their preferences and talents, why would they be looking for work that gives them so much time off?

Some would say, well the only reason American workers do not, on
average, have a good deal of vacation time is that labor unions in
America are relatively weak and aren't able to bargain forcefully
enough to give their members the benefits they would really like. But this begs the question -- why are labor unions so weak? Maybe it is because they cannot come to American workers with a good deal, a better one than they receive from their employers. Perhaps most American workers do not see the employer-employee relationship along adversarial dimensions but see it as more of a win-win situation instead of a zero-sum game. It may even be that those being hired by others regard themselves as joining a company instead of being conscripted by some alien force.

There is in the wild a relationship between animals that's called
commensalism -- benefits are reaped all around with no harm coming to either side, no one is ripping anyone else off, there is, in short, no parasitism. It might be best to start understanding the relationship between various parties in the business world along such lines, not the contorted idea propagated by Marxists who see employers as exploiters and employees as victims. That world view emerged when some business worked along those lines, yes, but even then it was exaggerated. The normal circumstances of business, meaning those not contaminated by a bunch of Marxian ideology, may well be cooperation and friendly competition, not acrimony and
hostility. Just consider that in athletics there is a good deal of
competition that's vigorous as well as civilized, friendly even.

Indeed, if the socialist notion that people who hire us must want to exploit us, take unfair advantage of us, hadn't gained prominence over the last two hundred years, it might well have turned out that employees would have formed companies, kind of like partnerships in the professional world (law, engineering, medicine), and instead of being employed by firms they would be hired as a team to perform services the way a construction company is today. The whole model of employer versus employee would then have been bypassed and the idea of work being a chore from which one needs extended relief might have been avoided. After all, many who work, say, in the sciences, the arts, entertainment, even farming see themselves as doing what they
want to do and while taking a break now and then could be beneficial, the notion that they must get away from it all for as long as possible would seem odd. It is difficult to think of Chopin or Rembrandt or Einstein and their less famous colleagues looking at their work that way.

As with all generalizations about human affairs, there are many
exceptions here but, all in all, it seems more reasonable to see the working habits of most Americans as characterized by a kind of love of their work, thus their vacation habits shaped by this rather than some kind of conspiracy theory.

Kudos to Agassi, et al.

by Tibor R. Machan

Next to tennis, for me, there's only the blues that really rocks. The blues is more a participatory art for me, since I love dancing to it. Tennis, on the other hand, is my only pure spectator sport. I do play a little but not enough to speak of.

Over the years I have been witness, sometimes in the stands but
mostly via TV, to the brilliant play of such champions as Jimmy
Connors, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Ivan Lendl, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Steffi Graf, and many, many others from even earlier days, men and women both. I should admit, however, that one aspect of tennis that appeals to me very much is how close-up and personal one can get to the players merely by watching a match and some of the interviews that follow it. The enormous value of the technology that brings this game to my home is totally under-appreciated -- TV is a priceless asset here, what with all those who shoot the games with such superb skill so that I and millions of other fans can enjoy those fantastic rallies and serves and drop shots.

Of course there are other sports -- bowling, baseball, track and
field, football, golf, soccer and the rest (some, sadly, rarely shown on TV, like fencing and rowing) -- but for me tennis tops them all. No, I am not claiming some kind of universal superiority for the sport. One size does not fit all, here or elsewhere. But for those like me, this sport is dazzling, as perhaps the most individualistic of them all.

Which is just one reason I was so touched by Andre Agassi's farewell remarks after he lost to Germany's new (Benjamin) Becker in the third round of the 2006 US Open championship. The two matches Andre played before were ever so thrilling events; Agassi never dropped the ball, as it were, despite suffering enormous pain in his back, something many of us can relate to big time.

Anyway, Agassi has won eight Grand Slam singles titles, being one of only five players who won all four Grand Slam singles events over the span of his career. A great many tennis connoisseurs consider him to be, as Wikepedia put it, the most "complete and natural talent tennis has ever seen." (I actually think that in his prime Jimmy Connors was every bit as good, as was Bjorn Borg, but they didn't manage to last so long at the top as did Agassi, the only one to have won "every Grand Slam singles title, the Masters, the Davis Cup, and an Olympic gold medal." In all of this he managed to be an extremely pleasant, even sweet guy, with only his garb suggesting some measure of childish rebellion.

In his farewell remarks at the US Open this September 3rd, Agassi was eloquent, a bit overly humble for my taste (I believe someone as good as he ought to show that he understands what he himself put into it all). That stuff about "standing on your shoulders" Agassi told his New York audience is nice and good for the game, I suppose, but a little demonstration of his understanding of just how much his achievement is due to his own input would have been even more refreshing. (No, I wasn't hoping for some kind of Bobby Fischer arrogance, only a bit more of the whole truth.)

In any case, I wish to give my thanks to this wonderful tennis player and, from what I can tell, fine human being, as well. He has certainly contributed some great thrills to my life as to that of millions of others. I should even confess that as with Fred Astaire, Johnny Carson, Louis Armstrong, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, and, especially, Henre de Toulouse-Lautrec, I am very glad to have been alive during or after these people did their best work so I could enjoy it in museums or on film. (Again, hurray for that technological factor!)

Let us hope that Andre has a good, fulfilling life now that
competitive tennis seems to be in his past.

The End of Free Association

by Tibor R. Machan

Not all of the past had been the good old days but in the matter of the right to freedom of association there had been a golden age not so very long ago. What I am referring to is how people could, for a good while, freely associate for various purposes with no one from the outside breaching their terms of association. It is in this spirit, indeed, that divorce, for example, had been legalized against the desires of various religious leaders who wanted to force couples to stay together even when neither wanted to remain married! Even in Ireland and Italy, if I am not mistaken, it is now possible to obtain
a divorce, although people still need to jump some hurdles to do so. (And maybe, if they have children, some of those hurdles are
reasonable -- after all, producing offspring comes with responsibilities one shouldn't be able to dodge.)

But in a different area divorce is more and more difficult to obtain. If you hire someone for a job, the government often forbids you to discontinue the employment relationship even though when it commenced, there was no contract binding either party to continue it in perpetuity. It used to be employment "at will" as far as both the employer and employee were concerned. More and more today, however, the "at will" provision applies only to the employee -- just as if only one of the spouses would have the legal right to leave a marriage.

The same is happening in the rental market. Those who have rented an apartment are often able to remain put even though those who rented to them want them gone and no contract has specified anything different. It is as if the tenants acquired some kind of property right in the apartment just because they rented it for a while, even though by all rights both may sever the arrangement. These days, in many places, it is only tenants who have the legal authority to do this, while if the owner wants the tenant to leave, he or she faces innumerable bureaucratic hurdles. Instead of treating both parties to the relationship as having the basic individual human right to freedom of association, in many localities today only one of them has this right protected by the legal system. They are required by law to prove that they really "need" to evict the tenant, a truly bizarre notion if you ask me.

It is interesting because there's a clear case of unjust discrimination against some, while others are treated as having the right to do as they choose. The apartment owner's right to
discontinue the relationship by following the agreed upon terms is
denied, although the tenant's is upheld. (Yes, it can easily be that the owner will suffer economically if a tenant moves!) But do we hear champions of equal rights speak up about this? Do they protest the outrage of such unequal treatment of human beings -- for example, in the Los Angeles area where tenants receive such legal favoritism all the time?

Unfortunately the practice of treating tenants and renters unequally in the law has an insidious precedent born of sheer sentimentality. Rent control is the culprit. It was started, supposedly, to help out returning veterans who didn't like being subjected to market forces as they coped with their living arrangements. As if those who owned the apartments didn't have their burdens they might have wished relieved as well! Of course they did. The volatility of the free market does not favor anyone, nor does it pick on anyone. Free men and women make choices and change their buying practices. And, also, there are innovators who displace older producers and service providers -- we are all in the same boat, except for a little luck here and there for some.

The same holds for the employment relationship. Just consider --
often the departure of an employee imposes hardship on the employer, yet there should be nothing done to prevent it. Only the acceptance of an offer of a better deal should be able to change matters!

Still, too many people believe that certain others may rightfully be coerced into serving them whether they choose this or not! It is rather mystifying -- certainly seems to go against something
everybody tends to profess, the Golden Rule. Or that everyone
opposes, namely, slavery or involuntary servitude.

Of course, throughout human history people have violated the Golden rule left and right, in big ways and small. And this is still going on, especially among so-called "progressives." Chain the employer, chain the apartment owner, never mind about the gross injustice of it all!

Crime and Coercion

Tibor R. Machan

Crime, the violent type which involves murdering, assaulting, robbing, kidnapping and otherwise violating the rights of fellow individuals in one’s society, is said to be on the rise again. After a few years of decline, the figures for 2004 are up about 5 %. And, of course, people across the country are up in arms about this. Yet they have no explanation. The economy is doing reasonably well, they note, so why the rise in crime?

It is not my line of work to pour over the statistics concerning this topic, so I am being trusting here of the mainstream media where this news has been making the rounds. However, I would like to suggest one possible cause for why crime is on the increase. Couldn’t it be how widespread official coercion has become?

Our governments, whatever level you wish to include, are more and more intrusive in people’s lives. And this is so with the sanction of the highest of courts in this country—in the summer of 2005 the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that cities may rob people of their property if the city officials believe they can make better use of it than those who own it. Right here we can see clearly how the principle of criminal behavior as regards private property has gained official sanction: for surely the policy of those who engage in robbery is to regard their purposes for the use of what they take from others as of greater importance than respecting the right of the owners to make use of their property as they see fit. The criminal steals someone’s car or bicycle or money out of a bank with the belief that his needs supersede the rights of the owners. Indeed, the criminal, like the U. S. Supreme Court, probably doesn’t think the owners really are the owners—the owners are we all. And we decide to what use the stuff is to be put.

Generally, once the policy of officialdom in a society is in part to seriously, systematically undermine individual rights, is it a great surprise that ordinary citizens turn to conduct that echoes what these officials proclaim: if someone’s property is used in ways one believes is not quite fruitful, not quite advantageous, well, let’s take it from the person. We can do with it as we deem more worthwhile.

Even the more violent crimes, like murder and assault, receive encouragement from the official attitude. Since property rights are tossed out the window, why not toss other rights as well? Why bother respect the rights to life and liberty? After all, the criminal may well have a strong conviction that what he wants to do with another person’s life—someone who may stand in the way of the criminal's goals somehow—can be ignored. If a majority of the people has the authority to violate individual rights, or if the representatives of that majority do, then what principle is to stop anyone from doing just like the majority does? The “people” have decided to override individual rights, well, the criminal is one of the people, so what’s wrong with him or her doing likewise?

Criminals are joined in this attitude by some major corporations where management has decided that one way to get ahead is to bar other people from competing. The way to do that is to go to the Department of Justice and sic them on others, claiming they are in violation of anti-trust laws, some of the most coercive economic policies a government can pursue. But it is official policy, so why not take advantage of it. Or to gain subsidies from government which entails robbing Peter to help Paul. So when some owner of a small business sees another getting ahead due to business savvy, the thing to do is to stop the competitor, and since it is too complicated for small businesses to seek help from the Department of Justice, perhaps it is OK to, say, just burn down the competitor's establishment? Why not? Government is doing what amounts to pretty much the same thing by targeting companies—that are guilty of no more than being more successful than others—with the violence of anti-trust charges.

Crime is certainly not something from which governments abstain—not crimes of corruption and similar malpractice but officially sanctioned violent crimes similar to those of the Third Reich, the Soviet Union or South Africa, to name just some obvious cases. When our governments ban medical marijuana, that is a crime! When they forbid the conduct of business at certain times of the day or week, that is a crime. When they use the police with which to enforce these policies, the governments perpetrate violent crimes since, in fact, these are all peaceful activities.

The challenge is for us to figure out how to teach our children and show our fellow citizens that what governments exemplify is quite often improper, indeed criminal, practices no one ought to emulate. Then may violent crime will begin to subside.