Market Blues

by Tibor R. Machan

The free market economy is the most suited to human commercial affairs, there is no reasonable doubt about this. But a free market leaves some people with various laments that then tempt them to undermine this great institution.

When we do all our production and consumption in a free market, we are able to do well as well as badly as producers and consumers, even as we do not violate any principles of the market economy. Freedom of trade, the right to private property, and other elements of free market economic affairs can remain fully intact, yet people in the market place can do many things badly or well. People can shop carefully, prudently, efficiently, attentively and so forth. But they can also shop recklessly, inefficiently, inattentively, and so forth.

Shopping, for instance, can be impulsive, overindulgent and out-and-out stupid, and all this is perfectly compatible with the principles of the free market. Those involved in the commercial transactions aren't going to focus on helping people improve themselves as market agents. Stupid buyers will find eager sellers to please them just as careful buyers will. It isn't generally the task of buyers and sellers to watch over one another's judgments, so often these judgments will guide the behavior of either with no attention to their quality. Sometimes market behavior can be out-and-out immoral, yet so long as no theft or assault or some other violation of anyone's rights is involved, there will not be much remedy of these in the market place.

Of course, market agents do pay attention to each others' judgments and conduct and often act in reaction to finding these flawed, but only later, after transactions have transpired. I find someone in the market who acts badly and later I might avoid such a person, or I find someone who is sharp and sensible and then return for further market relationships, but this is not guaranteed. Often convenience is the primary value being sought, aside from just getting what one wants from others.

But when one steps back and thinks about markets, one may lament all this—how come there are no systematic discouragements against bad, albeit peaceful, conduct in markets? Why are people not stopped from buying stuff they should not buy, or selling stuff others should not purchase? Why are there so many ways people can easily go wrong as they navigate the marketplace?

So there is then the temptation to want to do something, anything, to remedy matters. Apart from people who want to impose their ways on the rest of us or simply want to control others, there are those who just wish for things to turn out better then they can sometimes turn out in the marketplace where people are free to do a lot of things well or badly.

They wish people would act more sensibly, more prudently, more efficiently and so forth and they realize, also, that this wish is fully justified, at least in general terms. They can also see around them individuals who aren't being stopped in the free market from
carrying on badly. And they wish they were stopped somehow.

So they then support government measures that promise to regulate human conduct in the marketplace. Never mind that such regulation is fraught with hazards, much greater ones than the conduct of free people in the marketplace, given that it always involves some measure of some people coercing other people in various ways. Never mind that the knowledge to fix things that may go awry in the free market is rarely if ever possessed by those who would set out to set things aright. Never mind that getting government involved here will encourage it to be involved there and at yet another place, so that temporary and petty tyrannies turn into massive and institutionalized ones. The mere wish to do something about the clearly undeniable prospects of some misconduct in free markets gives aid and comfort to those who would ruin it all in a vain effort to improve matters.

And there is the plain fact that making improvements on market misconduct is always open to people in peaceful ways, ones that do not involve undermining the free market. One can try to influence others to act better but, of course, this takes a bit of courage and initiative. Farming it out to government tends to suit the lazy way toward remedying matters and has the tremendous liability of contributing to the destruction of the greatest human institutions, the free society.

Leftist Hypocrisy #2342

by Tibor R. Machan

I admit it up front—I want to be published in The New York Review of Books, even if only by means of a letter to the editor. I have been reading the magazine ever since it started and often I have something to say about what appears in its pages. Now and then, actually, I have started very civil discussions with some of the authors. Many to whom I send a comment have answered and in some cases we have carried on email correspondence for some time.

But The New York Review of Books, unlike The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, National Review, The Claremont Review of Books, Mother Jones, and numerous other publications Left or Right to which I have sent letters to the editor, will not budge. I simply don't get admitted within its hallowed pages.

Well, in the very recent past one of the most frequently published authors from TNYRB, Tony Judt, got bumped from a talk he was to give at the Polish Consulate in New York City and the whole bunch of his fellow authors from that magazine have been bellyaching about this big-time. Apparently what he wanted to talk about was deemed unwanted by his hosts, so they uninvited him. But now all his pals are in a tizzy about it and there have been angry letters from them in TNYRB about this, sounding very much like the authors believe that Mr. Judt has some kind of natural or constitutional right to speak wherever he wishes to speak.

Hey, let's consider this for a moment. Mr. Judt is not wanted at the Polish Consulate, which is not some public square in the United States of America but, effectively, a private one, belonging to the Polish government. He definitely has no natural or constitutional right to sound off there, any more than he would in the Consulate of some other country or, indeed, on any terrain that doesn't belong to him or those who want to hear him.

Indeed, this is not much different from my case—I would like to sound off in TNYRB and have sent them many letters over the years (having subscribed very early to the magazine). I do not send them hate mail, nothing uncivil, only some brief missives arguing a point or making a criticism of some point made in the publication. Yet, I am excluded from those pages regularly, even while some of their authors find what I say worthy of a response when I send them the comment.

Now that is the nature of a free press. You don't get to publish in a forum where you aren't wanted. It is not your right. Newspapers and magazines and web sites belong to people and unless those people invite or permit you to sound off there, you don't get to. Not even if you are Tony Judt, friend of the editors of and of many contributors to TNYRB.

But then this is not really all that novel a phenomenon. Those on the Left regularly make use of concepts of freedom, whether deployed legitimately or not, when their agenda is at issue—while happily excluding from discussions in their forums anyone who isn't on their side.

The Left and, especially its communist wing back in the 50s were notoriously lopsided in their defense of individual rights to free expression—they insisted on it in the United States of America and other places in the West (sometimes quite wrong-headedly, as when they protested blacklists by private parties which they later eagerly employed themselves toward racists and others they didn't like much) while making no protests at all when the Soviets ran a state-owned press and publishing industry and barred anyone not toeing the party line from them.

No, The New York Review of Books is not a commie outfit and often it publishes letters protesting violations of free speech rights across the globe, be it by right- or left-wing governments. But they have a problem. They fail to understand that not every forum is subject to the constitutional protection of freedom of speech. Like my home or the Polish Consulate in New York City, for example, which are not available to their pals to peddle their ideology. Just as the pages of TNYRB aren't to me if they don't choose to have me in there.

Bush’s Disgraceful War

Tibor R. Machan

One of the saddest things about the George W. Bush years is how America’s reputation as a relatively peaceable society has become discredited. Sure, the U. S. A. has been involved in dubious military ventures throughout its history but not until now has there been a deliberate effort to embark upon a total military transformation of another country by the U. S. A. The effort has been utterly incoherent—a kind of forcing, coercing another country to conform to the ideals of the leaders of the U. S. A., ideals that are actually quite far removed from those of the founders of the American Republic. Sure, some have welcomed this—for example a good many Kurds—but on the whole no one seems to have benefited much and the citizens of the U. S. A., whom our government is supposed to serve, haven't for sure.

When George W. Bush talks of how America is fighting for freedom in the Middle East, he does not mean fighting for the freedom of the individuals of the people living in this region of the world. That’s evident from the fact that what Iraq is now and is likely to become in the near future is nothing like a country in which the principles of the U. S. Declaration of Independence will be even remotely approximated. Iraq is rife with violent public religious conflicts, more murderous today than yesterday, and virtually impervious to becoming civilized. That is to say, there is no evidence at all that a significant percentage of the population in Iraq is interested in setting aside their religious differences and confining their disagreements to civilized debates. There just is no evidence of such a prospect, not because Iraqis are incapable of living in a liberal democratic society but because the chosen priorities of the people are evidently quite different from such civilized, peaceful coexistence.

Secretary of State Rice keeps saying it is insulting to those in the Middle East to claim they aren’t prepared to live in a democracy and that would be so if it meant that Middle Easterners are somehow innately incapable of doing so. But that isn’t the case. The real problem is that too many of them do not value liberal democracy. They value imposing their religion on everyone else in their country. They are interested in nothing like peaceful coexistence of the sort familiar to Americans and other Westerners, with some attending this church, some another, and others yet another, etc., and so forth, with none insisting that those who do not share their faith be liquidated.

Now such folks are simply not willing, never mind able, to live democratically or freely. They have too many criminal inclinations they just don’t want to relinquish. And to fail to appreciate this is a kind of self-imposed blindness. It is a very costly blindness to boot, having already produced deaths that really are all in vein, however much Bush & Co. keep shouting—whistling in the dark—pretending it isn’t so. And that isn’t the only cost of this disgusting war, this abomination of American foreign policy.

A country once thought to be a beacon of the free world is now perceived by many as but a big bully. Its own form of government, a highly intrusive, meddlesome welfare state, is being exported to a region of the world that cannot afford such a system and whose population doesn’t seem to be interested in it at all. Its president is trying to sell others on the wisdom of trying to secure a kind of national freedom that only Machiavelli could appreciate and only for a country that has at least something of a unified citizenry. (For Machiavelli “freedom” meant the absence of foreign domination.) But because Iraq is a totally artificial hodgepodge of a county, such freedom makes no sense there at all. Under a dictatorship it could be intact, albeit as a function of massive state brutality but once the dictatorship has been abolished, there is nothing there to amount to a country, whom our government is supposed to serve, sort of like recent Yugoslavia. So the freedom of Iraq is a fantasy and it is this fantasy for which thousands of American soldiers and many more Iraqis have died and more are being slated to die.

In all my years as a naturalized citizen of the United States of America I have had laments and criticism of the country based on its failure to live up to its promise of a fully free society. But I have never been disgusted by its leadership as I am now. Bush needs to be sent on his way in total disgrace, as someone who has managed to destroy any remnant of America’s reputation as a bona fide free society and an example to the world of how such a society’s government should comport itself.

Reductionism, Science and Reason

by Tibor R. Machan

Some natural scientists who like to philosophize prefer the doctrine of reductionism as their philosophical position. This view is that everything in reality is but one kind of thing—there are no real differences, only apparent ones. So, for example, even though it seems like music is different from airline travel, or mice are different from giraffes, or again that a Rembrandt painting is different from the contents of one's trash can, by the reductionist account all these things are the same—atoms, or strings or, to quote a famous passage from All the King's Men, dirt:

"... there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe except what's under water, and that's dirt too. It's dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt."

Even the Bible propounds the reductionist thesis when it proclaims we all came from dust and will return to dust, although this implies that for some time we aren't dust.

Why, when in fact so many things are so different from one another if one goes by what one can see, feel, hear, touch and think about, is this notion that it's all the same so appealing? Why, when it is contradicted by the evidence we face all around us, do serious people embrace it nonetheless?

For one thing, if it were true that everything is composed of just one kind of thing, say, atoms, then if we came to know atoms well, we would have bypassed having to come to know anything else. That would be enough. We would then understand everything else just fine since, well, it is anything else at all, it only appears to be. (Why so? That's a mystery the reductionists haven't addressed.) In all periods of human intellectual history there have been very bright thinkers who have accepted this idea, from ancient times to the present. Democritus, born at Abdera in about 460 BCE, was the most famous of the Greek atomists who thought everything is but atoms, albeit configured somewhat differently, which made it appear that there are indeed different beings in reality. But that is an illusion.

Today the most prominent candidate is string theory, the notion that the world is composed of zillions of ever so tiny strings. The view is meeting with some resistance lately, though, because it tends to be untestable. But it also has a lot of champions.

In philosophy the most prominent reductionist was the Englishman Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). He got his ideas from Galileo who believed the best way to go about understanding anything is to break it into its smallest parts, then figure out the principles that operate those parts and then apply the principles to everything. A very promising idea—saves a lot of time since all one needs is to understand one thing, the smallest, and everything else falls into line.

Is reductionism credible? Depends on the criteria of credibility. If one goes by our experiences with the world, it is not—there are too many things that are vastly different from each other. Apples, shoes, cars, clouds, symphonies, dogs, bacteria, etc., and so forth. One reason there are all those different departments at universities is the fact that so many different kinds of things need to be understood to be an educated person, educated about the world. But for a reductionist it would be enough to just study subatomic physics. We'd know everything from such study alone.

But perhaps our experience is all askew. We suffer from delusions, illusions, misunderstandings galore. Still, it is difficult to reconcile that with the very fact that we try to gain understanding. Isn't understanding different from what is being understood? If our minds seek answers to questions about something, aren't the minds most often something different from what they wish to understand?

I find reductionism so contrary to the facts that face me day in and day out in all realms of my life that I tend to believe it is a hopeless quest. It makes better sense to accept that reality comes in many forms, types, and kinds and go about studying it all in the spirit of the division of labor—chemists some parts, physicists others, biologists, psychologists, astronomers, economists, and so forth yet others.

Two kinds of Stereotyping

by Tibor R. Machan

Now and then people will characterize groups in various ways. Some of this is clearly prejudice—as when one ascribes to blacks, whites, women, those from Poland, or Latin Americans certain moral attributes which some of those from these groups may exhibit but which are certainly not innate to all members of the group. Thinking that all Mexicans are lazy or that Germans are by nature methodical or, again, that Americans are phlegmatic would be such prejudice. These are traits of individuals and while some in these groups may have them, many clearly do not. One needs to see if the ascription is justified instead of making it just because someone is a member of the group. One is, to put it somewhat differently, not morally good or bad because one is born black or Australian or Chinese. One is good or bad as a result of one's own judgments and actions.

But sometimes it makes good sense to ascribe traits to people in light of their membership in certain groups. This is so when they belong to the group as a matter of their own choice. If someone, as an adult, joins the Mafia or the Nazi Party, or becomes a Roman Catholic or a Muslim, and if it turns out that such membership amounts, in part, to agreeing to think and act in certain ways, then it makes perfectly good sense to expect members to favor the thinking and acting that goes with membership in these groups. And if such thinking and acting turns out to be morally or politically objectionable, holding such members responsible for what they have freely agreed to accept in terms of thinking and acting is justified.

Even if one is born into a religion or political party—as most of us are—we aren't forced to remain members in near-free countries but in time freely accept our membership, even if only by acquiescence. If my parents are Nazis or members of the Ku Klux Klan and they inculcate their vile ideology in me, if after I reach the age of reason I remain a member, this can certainly be held against me.

Sometimes this can happen with less obvious cases. Suppose a certain profession in one's part of the world has become corrupt—for example, medicine has pretty much been taken over by quacks or the police have become an arm of dictatorial government—then becoming or remaining a member of such a group can certainly be a fault. And those on the outside have every justification to hold it against the members for staying with the group.

When under the Nazis many judges of the pre-Nazi regimes were induced to remain with their new masters, who were perpetrating gross injustice, it was perfectly valid to question the integrity of these judges—especially since, by their choice, they added a patina of fake legitimacy to the whole thing. For a while, of course, some of them stayed with their roles in the hope that they would be able to reverse trends; but in time it became obvious that such efforts were futile. Remaining a judge under the Nazis pretty much made one complicit in the policies of the Nazis.
This, of course, is a very clear-cut case and not all of them are similar. Suppose the Roman Catholic clergy slowly began to turn a blind eye to child molestation among its members. At some point remaining a member of the Roman Catholic clergy could make one guilty of supporting child molestation, at least unless one takes a clear stand against one's fellow clergy in the matter.

The same holds true for members of other professions who fail to take a stand against corruption within their own ranks. For example, when in many countries across the globe the police willingly carry out tyrannical—or even petty-tyrannical—laws and regulations, coercively intruding upon the lives of innocent people, without resigning their positions or at least speaking out against the tyrannical measures their duties entail, then membership in the police corps becomes something morally objectionable, even when there are many aspects of the work that do not involve such tyrannical conduct.

Or, say, it turned out that for someone to teach philosophy at a university it would be a requirement to distort the history of the discipline or to mis-instruct students—as was the case, for example, throughout Soviet bloc countries during the rule of the Communists and in German universities when the Nazis where in charge—some sign of resistance would be required for one to remain a respectable member of the teaching profession.

Of course, there can be mitigating circumstances—in some countries if one does not fall into line, one pretty much risks one's life. But that isn't so in America. If one refuses to protest the unjust or corrupt policies of a profession that has gone substantially corrupt, one is guilty of being an accessory—however much good one also does within the profession in question.

Say if I were urged by the administration of my university to distort the nature of some school of philosophy I am teaching and I complied. Even while remaining accurate about all the other schools, I would have compromised my professional integrity.

Accordingly, it is no prejudice to condemn people who are members of professions which have gone substantially corrupt, even if the proper objectives of the profession are morally unobjectionable and one is able to carry out some of these while performing one's duties.

Gridlock versus Monolith

by Tibor R. Machan

Being a friend of neither Republicans nor Democrats, this election like most left me pretty nonplussed. Except for one thing. I favor gridlock. The idea is that the more they squabble among themselves in Washington, Sacramento, Tallahassee or other centers of political power, the better chance people around the country have for carrying on with their own lives as they deem proper. That is, after all, the point of life in human communities. To be able to live peacefully on one's own terms and those one can come to with others. The proper role of the lawmakers and law enforcers is to secure that peace, to make sure our individual rights aren't violated. The details may get quite complicated at times, but that's the bottom line.

Given that neither of the major parties has any interest at all in facilitating this limited purpose for us—because they all want to meddle with nearly every part of our lives now, and are often encouraged to do this by the very people whose lives they bother so much (in the hope that perhaps the meddling with favor them as against others)—what is there left to hope for from politics? The gridlock.

When the power-hungry politicians are not quite in cahoots—what they want the power for differs among them significantly enough so they keep haggling about it—they get preoccupied with jockeying for the power they see available to them. If one party is in charge of the whole shebang, well, this haggling is reduced and the likelihood of messing up our lives is greater, what with all of them agreed to do it in roughly the same ways.

As everyone could see over the last term and a half of Republican presidential and Congressional dominance, these folks were just as eager as those they kept calling 'tax and spend liberals' to, well, tax and spend. Sure, some temporary tax relief was evident but with all the spending these hypocritical Republicans supported, sometime in the near future the jig will be up. (It is moreover pretty rotten to go against that somewhat reasonable idea that there ought not to be taxation without representation, which is exactly what funding government by borrowing money really comes to!)

Republicans and Democrats alike are caught in the spiral of public choice theory—they refuse to say no to anything they can do to spend your money and mine, given that we have no systematic block against it in our legal system. (My friend Jack Wheeler says this ought to be the next big item of political debate, the erection of constitutional barriers to confiscatory taxation. Dream on Jack—they all think they can square the circle somehow!)

So the only hope that's reasonable and promising is for the politicians to get completely immersed in infighting. Let the Bush team strive to increase the military budget and Nancy Pelosi & Co. fight him tooth and nail, and let Nancy & Co. try for more money for whatever interest group they want to benefit and get the Republicans up in arms about that. And the same thing on as many fronts as possible—extending government regulations, installing more environmental precautionary measures, promoting religion in public schools, whatever.

Then if we are lucky, we will get some additional scandals from the new team manning the Nanny State, so perhaps that will add some more obstacles to their getting anything done. (They all seem to think that the most important part of their job is to "get something done," whatever that "something" happens to be, even if it means adding a bunch of intrusive laws into our lives.)

No, there is nothing very positive about gridlock except for the chance that it will slow down a bit the runaway train of government intrusion in people's lives. Perhaps that will provide a little chance for people to learn better and better what the American Founders tried to teach them about the proper scope of governmental power. This is that such power is only justified when used defensively, to ward off violations of our basic and derivative rights. The rest is tantamount to nothing less than political malpractice.

The Temptation to Lie

by Tibor R. Machan

Have you noticed that when you ask someone on the street where the next post office or drug store or some other locally known place is, they usually tell you it's just a couple of blocks when in fact it is a lot farther than that? Or when someone tells you she will be there in a few minutes and then you wait for half an hour and she is still missing? Or when you are told on the phone 'May I put you on hold for a moment?' and you are still waiting ten minutes later?

Why do people prevaricate so much? It comes out big time just before Election Day—we are sure to win, the candidate states with the utmost confidence, only to lose by a substantial margin a few days later. This happened in the recent election—the Republicans came on various news programs saying their own micro-polls tell them they are in far better shape than the mainstream polls would have them. And then they lost bigtime. It happens a lot. As someone who votes Libertarian when I vote, I sometimes find candidates of the LP predicting they will win when it is completely ridiculous—they haven't a ghost of a chance in this country where the bulk of the public is suffering from what might best be called the entitlement mentality. You vote for those who tell you that you are entitled to this, that, and yet another thing, all of it paid for from other people's pocketbooks. Libertarians cannot honestly make such promises since they hold firmly to the view that stealing from Peter so as to benefit Paul is morally wrong, a view that is in fact correct. But sadly most voters believe in redistributing wealth that doesn't belong to them.

OK, so LP candidates should know by now that the time hasn't come yet that most voters recognize that stealing is wrong. Sure, they usually don't steal in their circle of neighbors but when it comes to stealing from strangers across the country, they definitely believe stealing is just fine. And all of this is happening in a supposedly Christian country, with the clear commandment from God that prohibits stealing.

But despite the facts speaking a clear message, even LP candidates predict victory. Why?

I suspect the reason is that people believe they have a duty to tell others only what will please them, what will appear to benefit them. This altruistic outlook—namely, never bring bad news to people even if that's the truth of it—is encouraging millions of people to be liars. Yes, the Post Office is just around the corner—not because that is the truth but because it will make you feel good! Yes, you will only be on hold for a moment or two, not because that is the truth but because then for a little while you will feel good and I will have seemed to be doing you a favor.

Indeed, altruism may well account for why so many yield to the temptation to tell lies to others. Many people simply do not dare to tell the truth if that truth isn't pleasant, if it doesn't promise what is desired. The truth is often unpleasant. You may have to wait for 20 minutes on hold, yes, and there is nothing pleasant about that (especially with all that cheesy music being blasted into your ears). Yes, you will have to walk ten blocks to get to the drug store and this may not promise much comfort for you but it is the truth. But for me to bring to you an unpleasant truth is to make you feel bad and my duty is, of course, to make everyone else feel good. Or so altruism would have it.

Maybe it would take a bit of patience to help people get acclimated to the truth of things, to have them face up to what's what instead of what they wish for. But in the long run it would even serve them better to learn the truth—it would set them free of illusions, free of wishful thinking. But no; instead, millions are taught to serve others, which then leads them to try to make them feel better rather than be straight with them.

Can One Respect the Police?

Tibor R. Machan

It began with the Orange County ordinance authorizing police to stop teens from smoking in public places. One of my children asked me, who are these people to tell them whether they may smoke? Isn’t that the job of parents? Don’t the cops have kidnappers, rapists, murderers, and robbers to deal with? Is it really their role in our lives to order us to stop smoking?

I really couldn’t argue with the logic here. It isn’t the proper task of the police to tell us whether to smoke cigarettes or dope or whatever, for that matter. The police of a free society are supposed to be peace officers, not parents or nannies or even schoolmarms. I did mention that what the police do is follow orders given to them by the politicians and bureaucrats but my kids reminded me that this is the excuse German soldiers used when they were asked about enforcing the tyrannical rules of the Nazis. They said isn’t it just a few steps—well, maybe quite a few—from that kind of a system when cops start taking over the jobs of parents?

Later I had a chance to talk to some of my kids’ friends—they had a little gathering at our house and I took advantage of this and asked them about their views of the police. Several of them, the more articulate ones, said they have zero respect for the police because of the kind of tasks they have willingly taken on, ones they should not be doing at all. The entire notion of a vice squad was upsetting to many of them—how can police officers expect young people to think highly of them when they are willing to follow such orders handed to them by the politicians, orders to eradicate vice! When I asked, well what do you expect them to do, some answered that they should rebel and refuse to follow these immoral orders; some argued that they should resign in protest, just as should the police of any tyrannical regime.

This led to a discussion of democracy—what about when the majority of the voters, through their representatives, order the police to enforce these rules? Some of the kids immediately questioned whether a majority may order the police to do what individuals may not order them to do—such as tell them how to behave when they are not violating anyone’s rights. They knew about lynch mobs and mentioned how despite the majority’s intention of hanging a suspect, it would be wrong to do this because no conviction has occurred, no due process has been followed.

You might say the friends of my children are a special bunch— they do some thinking about these matters quite on their own. Even in class, my kids speak up and challenge conventional wisdom. (It may have to do a little with the example I and my friends set for them!) But with respect to the role of the police, it is really sad that so many young people appear to be cynical about what is happening. After all, the proper task of the police is a very important one, namely, to deal with crime, where crime is understood as people violating the rights of other people—murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, etc., etc. This task requires serious training—the police may not fight crime by acting like criminals in the process. And that's often difficult to do—discipline, self-restraint, and knowledge of the nuances of crime are required, as well as much else. Those who take up the job of the police and do it properly do deserve respect. They are doing the quintessential public service in a free society where the public good is nothing more or less than securing the rights of individuals. So the police are a major agency of securing the genuine public good.

But when they start meddling in all kinds of things they have no business doing, when they blindly and even enthusiastically follow the orders or rouge politicians, then they have become corrupt. And young people are not oblivious to this.

Moreover, arguably seeing the corruption of the police on so many fronts, they are likely to lose respect for them where it really counts, namely, in their capacity as crime fighters. The police often needs the help of citizens in fighting crime but this help isn’t likely to be forthcoming from a citizenry that lacks respect for police officers in light of what they learn about them from their role in enforcing rules and practices that are none of their business.

On Disgusting Political Discourse

Tibor R. Machan

Rush Limbaugh may do this deliberately, seeing that he considers his radio show, in his own words, more entertainment than serious discussion. Within the latter, as a friend of mine recently put it, "we should try to behave to each other as we might if we met at a dinner party at a common friend's house. We would have somewhat better manners and even sympathy for the other guy's sincerity and point of view etc." But for Limbaugh, he seems to think, that would not produce ratings. So in response to a TV political ad featuring Michael J. Fox, the actor, who was offering his support for a candidate who backed government funding of stem cell research, Limbaugh went ballistic? Why? Because Fox appeared to exaggerate his Parkinson's disease in the ad so as to influence voters to get behind the candidate whose support might hasten finding a cure for his disease.

The basic issue here is, of course, whether it is the role of government in a free society to support medical research. It is not, especially when such research involves procedures that millions of citizens consider immoral. But that is moot at this point—both parties are perfectly willing to spend other people’s money on projects with which may who are being extorted to pay for it disagree.

So, the issues is whether there is anything wrong with exaggerating one’s illness in a political ad? Well, advertising is by its very nature a form of promotion and promotions usually overstate what is going to be appealing and underplay what is not. Ads are not informational but promotional devices and as such they use gimmicks and other means to catch viewers’, listeners’, and readers’ attention so they might get on board. So, for Limbaugh to complain is ridiculous, especially since he, probably more than anyone, overstates every one of his points, treating his opponents as if they were all vicious and his own supporters as if they were angels. No, Limbaugh is not a credible critic of anyone who is in the business of peddling ideas, policies, programs, and the like. It's really a case of “Look who’s talking!”

In general, the example Limbaugh sets is sad. Instead of arguing with Fox and others about the merits of the message—raising questions such as “Should people really support government funded stem cell research?” and “Are there alternatives that would be better?”—he lays in on the actor for seeming to play up his ailments to make a point.

Was Limbaugh credible about questioning Fox’s way of coming across in the ad (which I studied a bit)? Yes. I have seen Fox act on very recent episodes of the TV show Boston Legal and he was nowhere near as afflicted as he seemed to be on that political advertisement. But maybe he got worse in the meantime and that is what some have testified to in the wake of Limbaugh's rant. Limbaugh couldn’t tell whether this is the explanation or that Fox was deliberately overdoing it. Had he just noted his puzzle about it, had he mentioned the contrast between Fox’s behavior on Boston Legal and the ad, Limbaugh would have been within the bounds of civility, although even there what matters more is the substantive merits of what Fox was advocating.

But no. Limbaugh went for the jugular and managed to open himself up to charges of callousness and insensitivity. I watched the tape of Limbaugh as he was imitating Fox in his studio and it was undoubtedly insulting to Fox and totally unsympathetic to those who have advanced Parkinson’s.

This particular incident is not a big deal but given Limbaugh’s ubiquity on radio across the country, it would really be of some worth for him to tone it down, to adhere to standards of civilized discourse, to cut out the constant nastiness toward all those with whom he disagrees. Sure, many of those folks are themselves uncivilized in their demeanor as they go about fanning political winds. But, to make use of an old saw, do two wrongs make a right? No. Why not just let the targets of his criticism be guilty of exaggerations? Why not make an example as someone who comports himself decently even as he does battle with people who don’t?

But perhaps it is all about reading the pulse of a rather unruly, irrational radio audience. Perhaps they really do demand Limbaugh’s wild and crazy guy routine and rather have nothing to do with civilized political exchange. Maybe Limbaugh’s conduct is purely demand driven and he cares nothing about setting any kind of example.

It is too bad. In political disputes as in others, the people with whom one disagrees are not mostly monsters even if they are wrong. They can be quite decent folks on many other fronts and merely get the politics wrong. That might be a basis of reaching some agreement. But to do that one would have to show some consideration for the seriousness, even sincerity, of their thinking.

Government School Follies

Tibor R. Machan

France, England, Germany, and who knows which other countries are in deep dodo because of the impossibility of supporting both multiculturalism and state school policies. The former is in fact a corollary of individual liberty—in a free country one may practice whatever cultural practice one wants, provided others’ rights aren’t violated. Thus, wearing a black veil—niqab—should not be banned, while, of course, female circumcision should, the former being a peaceful if unusual while the latter a violent practice. The latter are the policies enforced in government schools which simply could not exist in a free country. But since they exist in early all countries, including in the free West, the conflict is unavoidable.

Educational administrators have their idea of what, for example, is proper dress in schools, for a variety of reasons, some of which may be a bit loony, some quite sound. Parents, however, ought to be free to send their children to schools with administration policies of which they approve. Not all children require identical school practices and shopping among them is what freedom is about. A free market in education would make this possible.

What makes educational diversity, along with diversity of school rules, nearly impossible is the policy of government—or “public”—education that is anything but free in the important sense of that term. (Of course, it isn’t free even in the sense of being cost-less to those who have to send their kids there; they pay in property taxes and in the loss of other opportunities for educating their kids.) Such education is coercive and imposes extensive uniformity in an area where just the opposite is most fruitful, namely, where alternative approaches to education should be competing and experimenting.

But when government runs something that it should not run, such as education (as well as such obviously diverse elements of culture as museums, concert halls, theaters, athletic competitions), the problem will inevitably surface that some citizens will be put upon while others will want their ways to be imposed on all. Everyone will want to control the "public" turf so his or her way will be the one size that will be imposed on everyone else. This is akin to how in some countries different religions fight for the public square.

In a fully free country there would be innumerable types and kinds of educational institutions. Many would be similar, but quite a few would be unique, different from most. Some would admit children whose parents want them to get mainly religious instructions, others those whose parents would not want this but focus mostly on science; some would go to schools with extensive athletic programs, others to one’s where the arts are emphasized. Some would be Roman Catholic, some Muslim, some Hindu, some completely secular—you get the idea.

The same would be the case with various other cultural institutions that have been conquered by government—actually, that are relics of the supposedly obsolete monarchical system or modern tyrannies where the royal head's or dictator's entourage could call the shots about nearly everything. Museums, for example, have to struggle with the artistic sensibilities of those who manage them versus the will of the public being taxed to fund them. And when one side wins, the others becomes alienated and this characterizes much of the cultural and political atmosphere.

Instead education, the arts, and the rest should be dealt with the way religion is, at least largely, in America. Everyone gets to go to his or her own church or temple or synagogue, with no one having to pay for it and encounter unwanted rituals, practices, customs, and sermons. This is, of course, only possible in a society that respects the fundamental right to private property, a right that implies both the exit option and the authority to keep those who are unwelcome outside. But because there are thousands of alternatives to choose from, conflicts can be avoided far more effectively than when government, making policies for all about matters that are highly diverse and involved deep seated human differences, tries to administer matters at everyone’s expense.

No doubt, this idea will immediately meet with the lament, “But what will happen to the poor?” No one seems to worry that there are poor people who must confront the issue when it comes to religion—some religions are poorly and some are richly supported and funded in free countries. And despite how important millions of people believe religions is in people’s lives, few, at least in American, cry for government funding and administration of their churches.

It is high time to extend the revolution toward a fully free society into the area of education and apply the principle there that is well accepted in religion—the separation of it from government. Aside from according with the principle of individual rights, it would also promote just peace and reasonable tolerance.

SOME GOOD THINGS!

Tibor R. Machan

Those who write about politics are bound to complain a lot. No wonder. Throughout human history governments have perpetrated more misery than all criminals combined. Indeed, it is probably true beyond any reasonable doubt that most governments have been criminal gangs -- conquerors, bullies, robbers, murderers, ethnic cleansers and other type of oppressors. It is governments, so-called, that have started wars, enslaved huge numbers of people, kept minorities destitute and powerless.

Sure, governments have had the support of many civilians but these civilians rarely had the weapons to carry out the vicious deeds for which governments are famous. Civilians can only implore, urge, plead, try to bribe -- it takes those who hold and wield power to actually commit the vile deeds. (One reason I have never been an avid supporter of the police is that however much good they do, they also tend to blindly carry out the orders of governments, orders that on the whole tend to be directed toward violating the rights of individuals all over the place. How can one admire a profession that simply "follows orders?")

Yet, all this focus on government and its misdeeds throughout the ages and around the globe can give the wrong impression. It is as if nothing good happened anywhere. But that is to confuse government with the rest of society. And in most societies there is ample good going on. Most human relations apart from government are pretty decent, even admirable. All the creativity and productivity we have around us -- those activities that enhance efficiency, those that contribute to beauty and comfort, those that heal and cure -- come not from government but from individuals cooperating in society. (I hesitate to call it the "private" sector because strictly speaking these social undertakings are not private but very much cooperative.)

Someone who focuses on all the misdeeds of governments may seem oblivious to all the wonderful results of free social cooperation and, also, of individual initiative. As an avid fan of novels, both classical and popular music, the arts, the crafts and the sciences, I am especially concerned that we in the media don't stress all the good which comes from these corners.

Each night I go to sleep to the sounds of music -- three hundred CDs playing randomly, filling my little home with the most wonderful sounds. (I could list dozens and dozens of particular performers and artists but I am sure you can fill up your own list.) Each night I read about 10 pages from yet another novel that thrills me, that takes me into the souls of carefully imagined characters. Each night I walk to my bedroom taking a look at one or another of the paintings on my walls. And when I do this, I am so grateful for all that creativity, sensitivity, imagination that fills my life with joy.

Many years ago I saw a Seventh Day Adventist bumper sticker that read, "Notice the good and praise it," and I have been a devoted follower of this little, not widely enough heeded, motto. There is really so much that is utterly fabulous in our world, from one's neighborhood to the farthest corners. But if one keeps thinking only of what politicians and bureaucrats do and say, one will miss out on these. Then there are, of course, the joys of one's family and friends and, yes, even colleagues and associates. And all these are quite sufficient to offset a good deal of the destructiveness perpetrated by government and its lackeys, those, sadly, who keep being honored with buildings and statutes and institutes and such. In newspapers there is rarely much fuss about the latest novel a local citizen has written, a beautiful painting someone in the city has painted, a symphony or song or musical composed -- certainly not on the front pages. Yet those are the substance of most of our lives. But when one turns on th e so-called news, national or local, the bulk of what is thrust at us consists of nothing but misery.

I will, of course, continue to harp on all the bad stuff, hoping it may make a bit of difference. But it is also vital to make note of just how much good stuff there is to go around.

Unjust Laws of Commerce

Tibor R. Machan

Often I think of how journalists, ministers, and others protected by the first amendment of the US Constitution have an advantage over most other professionals. What’s bad about this is that those other professionals do not have their rights to be free equally protected. This shows that there's unjust discrimination built into the most basic American law. (Check it out—there is no government agency regulating professionals in journalism or religion, while there are dozens regulating those in commerce, medicine, psychology, transportation, farming, and so forth—and ask yourself, why is this discrimination supposed to be OK!)

But there are certain other instances of unjust discrimination widespread within and fully supported by the legal system. These are perpetrated against producers, as compared with consumers, and employers as compared with employees. Producers, you see, are extensively regulated in how they choose to relate to consumers; as are employers in how they choose to deal with employees. Producers, for instance, may not discriminate as they choose their customers or clients. In a restaurant the proprietor may not bar people he or she dislikes from coming there to eat. That is against the law. So would be for a store to refuse to sell to someone based on various kinds of biases. In contrast, however, customers may avoid stores for exactly the same reason.

Sure, in some establishments there’s a sign stating: “We reserve the right refuse service to anyone,” but it is pure bunk—in America no such right of free association is protected for merchants, mainly because of an irrational backlash from widespread racism and segregation of the past. Never mind that such racism and segregation prevailed mostly because the government enforced it and when the shift began to occur, it came from the private sector first. (Yes, Virginia, it was privately owned railroads that wanted to do away with racial segregation on trains and the government resisted this! And, earlier, it was in part because private schools did not discriminate on the basis of race that public schools were established to replace them.)

In the case of employer and employee, once again the employer’s bias is prohibited but employees clearly may indulge theirs if they so choose. If someone refuses to apply for a job for which he or she is fully qualified, merely because of prejudice against the employer, this can be done with total impunity. There used to be a doctrine once, called “employment at will,” in line with which both employer and employee had their right of free association protected by law. Employers could be let go and employees could leave and no one could object, whatever the reason was, unless a contract had been violated. Not so now. In today’s employment climate only employees have their right of free association protected by law—whatever the reason, if an employee wants to leave and isn’t in violation of a contract, he or she is entirely free go and the employer has nothing to say about it.

Does it impose burdens on employers that employees can leave “at will”? Of course, but so what? If my girlfriend leaves me, that too hurts but I have no authority to keep her around against her will. Yet, employers are forbidden to exercise their right of free association; they may not follow the doctrine of “employment at will” but need umpteen formal, often economically debilitating justifications for laying someone off. They have to be fair, never mind what they want.

And this is where the ironic injustice comes in: the fact that employers don’t get to employ but employees do get to walk away at will is quite unjust. It is also unjust that merchants must serve anyone who chooses to seek their services, while customers may discriminate to their hearts’ content. Sure, the unfairness in both cases is quite unavoidable. There is nothing to be done about it, nor should anything be tried—it would give rise to a totalitarian police state to attempt to remedy such unfairness. What is not appreciated that all kinds of attempts to remedy unfairness are moving toward totalitarian regimentation. And that is entirely unbecoming a bona fide free society.

Oddly, many people on the Left denounce those on the Right for trying to regulate morality, yet attempts to enforce standards of fairness are exactly the same thing, regulation of morality, only based on a different moral standard. Both the Right and the Left are perfectly willing to deny free choice to individuals in order to promote various types of so called moral behavior while failing to acknowledge that regulated morality is no morality at all.

What is moral or ethical is often very much dependent on the context—general principles are not, but how they are acted on are. So the law must stay out of dictating to us what we ought to do except when we violate the rights of others. The discriminatory deployment of anti-discrimination laws are just one example of the mess that’s created when this is ignored.

Sam Harris and Altruism

by Tibor R. Machan

In his recent book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, And the Future of Reason (Norton, 2004), Sam Harris advances some of his thoughtful reasons for doubting the merits of a religious outlook on the world, especially with regard to politics. Harris has spawned a bit of a revolution with this work, putting many who insist that religion is essential for a civilized and peaceful life on the defensive.

In a column he penned for The Boston Globe the other day, Harris goes further and argues, contrary to widespread opinion, that religion is not only not a necessary foundation for morality but actually incompatible with genuine morality. That widespread opinion is, of course, reinforced in such classic (but dubiously attributed) quotations from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, as "If there is no God, that means everything is permitted/allowed/permissible." Harris argues, instead, that

"The truth is that the only rational basis for morality is a concern for the happiness and suffering of other conscious beings. This emphasis on the happiness and suffering of others explains why we don’t have moral obligations toward rocks. It also explains why (generally speaking) people deserve greater moral concern than animals, and why certain animals concern us more than others. If we show more sensitivity to the experience of chimpanzees than to the experience of crickets, we do so because there is a relationship between the size and complexity of a creature's brain and its experience of the world."

My concern here isn't with the battle Sam Harris is carrying on with religion but with whether or not he is right about morality. Is "a concern for the happiness and suffering of other conscious beings" a rational basis for it? Arguably, Harris is wrong here.

Perhaps the most explicitly rational ethics comes to us from the work of Aristotle, in 350 BC, in his book The Nicomachean Ethics. In this work one of the greatest philosophers in human history argues that the only rational basis for morality is human nature. Our nature, which is that of a rational animal, supports the idea that our moral or ethical excellence amounts to living life by our reason. And the first purpose or goal of such a rationally lived life is not "concern for the happiness and suffering of other conscious beings" but our own human happiness.

All of the ethical or moral virtues Aristotle identifies have as their aim, when we practice them conscientiously, to achieve human happiness in the agent's life. It is true, of course, that this rational ethics or morality includes as a very important virtue being generous or liberal toward others. But it also includes being prudent, courageous, moderate, temperate, honest, and, in politics, just. The most important imperative in this most rational of ethics is to live by right reason or prudence.

If one thinks for a moment, it would turn out to be very odd indeed to urge human beings to concern themselves primarily with others -- why on earth would others be more deserving of concern than one's self? Not only does one know one's own situation better than the situation of others so that one can act most responsibly about one's self. Not only does a concern for others as a primary responsibility tend to encourage meddlesomeness and intrusiveness other than in emergencies. But most importantly, one is, after all, a human being whose life is every bit as worthwhile as the life of another. So why then focus mainly on the lives of others, unless one has made a promise to take up that task as parents do?

In the modern age many moral philosophers have promoted altruism but that is because they believed that caring for one's self came naturally, automatically. So it would be redundant to have a moral system that also directs us to do this. Once the instinct or drive for self-preservation was accepted as innate, then it made sense to focus ethics or morality on interpersonal matters. Such was the thinking since the time of Thomas Hobbes, for example in the ethics of Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, among others.

If, however, we aren't hardwired to care for ourselves, if there is no selfish instinct in us -- and judging by the colossal mess throughout the world and history, it is a dubious idea that we all naturally take good care of ourselves -- then we must be prudent first, take good care of ourselves. Nor can we be any good to others if we do not do so.

Harris is mistaken to think that our first ethical responsibility is others -- and this quip from W. H. Auden makes pretty clear why the idea is not at all rational: "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

Freedom of Religion Misunderstood

by Tibor R. Machan

One of my guilty pleasures is watching Boston Legal, a current David E. Kelley television product. Kelley created The Practice, as well as Ally McBeal, and most of what he does is intelligent and often quite funny.

In a recent episode of Boston Legal, however, one of the topics, the right to freedom of religion, got a serious mistreatment. A favorite character has started his own law firm and hired a fellow lawyer on an "at will" basis—meaning, strictly, the relationship could be terminated by either employer or employee if either of them so chose—and shortly afterwards, because the lawyer was an outspoken Scientologist, the protagonist fired the lawyer whose religious babbling in the office he couldn't stomach.

He was promptly sued—the whole show is about everyone suing everyone about nearly anything. In many of the cases on Boston Legal there is at least a semblance of accuracy vis-a-vis American law and there is, also, a strong bias in favor of the contemporary liberal agenda: anti-big business, pro-affirmative action, anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-capitalist, anti-Patriot Act, pro-environmental harassment of everyone, pro-government regulation of nearly everything under the sun (mainly under the guise of helping the downtrodden), etc., etc. Pretty typical Hollywood fare, only a bit more clever and funny rather than, say, the moroseness of nearly all the rest (e.g., West Wing).

However, in this episode there was a glaring misunderstanding of the concept of the right to freedom of religion, so much so that in trying to make the case for the protagonist's right to fire the avid Scientologist, the firm's top lawyer Alan Shore, played by James Spader, actually advocated compromising the First Amendment protection of the right to freedom of religion so as to make room for the perfectly reasonable dismissal of the scientologist. Instead of standing up for the principle of employment at will, an extension of the principle of the right of free association—which means, insisting that the protagonist could let the lawyer go with as much justice as the lawyer could leave if he wanted to—Shore argued that we are taking the principle of the right to freedom of religion too far and the law is treating religion in general too uncritically by defending everyone's right to his or her religion, period. (One item on Kelley’s agenda is to bash religion but usually indirectly!)

Apart from defending the employment at will doctrine, which was mentioned but then quickly left aside, the defense on this particular program could also have used a private property rights defense. After all, on the premises owned by the defendant, there is no freedom of religion. Just think—your work place isn't there for you to advocate your religion, politics, or any other conviction. It's there for you to do your job.

Even in my profession, university teaching, where a special doctrine of academic freedom is widely accepted, it doesn't mean one can just do anything in one's classes. No, one has to teach one's subject matter but if one writes a book or gives a special lecture, one may say nearly anything (well, provided it is not too politically incorrect!). And certainly if you visit me and start spouting views I detest, if I make you leave my home I am not violating your right to freedom of speech!

Similarly, if you own a law firm and hire an attorney, he or she may not make the premises into some personal bully pulpit. In short, the right to freedom of religion exists on one's own premises—one's own home, office, plant, farm, book, newspaper or magazine pages, etc. One may not just up and sermonize in someone else's office! If I go to a restaurant to have a meal and instead stand on my table and try to deliver a political talk or religion sermon, and then the proprietor throws me out, I have no grounds for protesting that my freedom of speech was violated. (Of course, the proprietor could permit me to make my pitch but that isn't a matter of my right but his or her choice!). Even on so called public property one's right to freedom of speech will usually conflict with the rights of some other member of the public—a version of the tragedy of the commons and one good reason to reduce the public realm to a minimum!

Sad thing is that Mr. Kelly & Co. appear to be so hostile to the free marketplace, with its firm adherence to the right to private property (as well as employment at will), that they are defenseless against irrational demands (such as wanting to keep one's job against the employer's will) ruling the day. Not even another basic right, namely, to freedom of association, can gain a good hearing at the hands of these modern liberal Hollywood types—after all, what would such a principle make of mandated affirmative action or all the anti-discrimination laws? For these folks in the marketplace all rights are subject to being abrogated by the government for various worthy social purposes.

Is Asking for Consistency Extremism?

by Tibor R. Machan

In my business ethics class, someone recently brought up the issue of consistency—why is it desirable to be consistent, why are contradictions frowned upon? Maybe it is some kind of Eurocentric prejudice, all this emphasis on logic and rationality.

Certainly among the famous thinkers and writers there have been some who complained about insisting on these ideals that were hammered out in ancient Greece, mostly by the philosopher Aristotle. Herman Hesse, the poet, and the famous Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky—especially via his main character in Notes from the Underground (who may or may not be giving views with which he sympathizes)—have advanced the idea that reason and logic are restrictive. Indeed, much of contemporary multiculturalism carries that implication—all that emphasis on logic and rationality has no universal validity at all but amounts instead to virtual coercive impositions by those of one culture on those of the rest.

OK, this is a huge topic and only a bit of it can be treated here; namely, why consistency is desirable. First of all, because reality itself is governed by principles that are the basis of logic and rationality. It really is the case that one cannot both be at home and not at home at the same time, in the same respect; nor can one be both a fireman and not one, nor can something be round and not round all at once. And so with everything—the law of identity just isn't flexible. This is why a proposed scientific theory which contains a contradiction or inconsistency is dead in the water. And why self-contradictory testimony given in court completely discredits the witness.

As already noted, some have argued recently, along lines of the Underground Man, that all this stress on logic and reason is nothing more than Eurocentric prejudice, indeed a kind of wrongful cultural imperialism. Why should we adhere to views hatched in ancient Greece, by such folks as Socrates and Aristotle? Their prevalence is but a sign of their power, not of any superior virtue or wisdom. That's one of the themes of multiculturalism. All cultures are alike; none is superior or inferior to any other. That's not only a point about the ethical views being championed but even about the fundamental criterion of what makes sense and what cannot make sense.

A milder version of the multicultural thesis is that insisting on consistency in human affairs is too idealistic, certainly unrealistic. That is often said about politics, especially, where we are urged by some to be more tolerant of messiness, of murkiness, of fuzziness.

Here the problem is not only that trying to remain consistent and insisting that public officials do so as well is exactly the same as insisting on being reasonable, on staying true to the nature of reality. Another problem is that such a request confuses what is reasonable to expect with what is reasonable to insist on.

Of course human beings aren't likely to be consistent, logical, and rational all the time and in all matters. Some may well be so but most are likely to fall short. That's a bit like expecting total fitness from people, or only healthful eating practices. Such expectations are unreasonable themselves, which is why one should be wary of them.

But as far as insisting on logic and rationality, consistency and abstaining from self-contradiction, these are completely unobjectionable, indeed fully justified. We ought to strive to be consistent, logical, sensible, and rational—it is indeed our basic human responsibility to do so. Just as standards of good health should be kept in mind whenever possible, so with standards of sound thinking.

Moreover, just because it is not likely that everyone will live up to such standards, it doesn't follow that trying and urging us to do so is unreasonable. In fact, failing to try is just what produces more and more confusion, more and more incoherence and, indeed, chaos, say, in politics, marriage, child-rearing and so forth. It also gives people the excuse that there is nothing amiss when they hold contradictory ideas and promote contradictory policies. That we aren't likely to constantly live up to those standards is not a reason to abandon or especially deride them, anymore than the improbability of living a completely healthful life supports the idea that we ought to deride trying to do so.

Respect our Enemies— Why?

by Tibor R. Machan

Freeman Dyson, who is a famous physicist and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University, wrote the following lines in The New York Review of Books that are, in my view, worth reflecting upon:

"Yes, I wrote that we should respect our enemies as human beings in order to understand them. I do not tract or apologize for this statement. I would like only to add a more general statement, that our lack of respect for our enemies made it harder for us to deal with them effectively." [11/02/2006. p. 63]

OK, where to begin? Why should one respect someone as a human being? Does being a human being amount to some worthwhile achievement? No. Why then respect one merely for being human—Hitler was human, Ted Bundy was human, slaveholders were human, child molesters are human and it is pretty preposterous to consider all of them worthy of any sort of respect (although perhaps some did some few things that may be so, say, kept a clean house or treated their pets nicely). So, that part of Professor Dyson's claim is arguably false, unless, at least, it is seriously modified or amended.

Why would lack of respect imply lack of understanding? Much of the world around us deserves no respect at all, yet we can understand it pretty well. As a physicist, does Professor Dyson respect the electron or the quark? Do these inanimate, non-conscious beings go about earning our respect? Just how would that be, since they make no decisions, good or bad, worthwhile or not? Or are we to just respect anything, in which case the concept loses all of its distinctive meaning.

It looks like, then, that we could well come to understand our enemies, too, without respecting them. Of course, if "respect" amounts to nothing more than "giving something its due," including anything at all, regardless of accomplishment or merit, then, yes, by all means let's respect our enemies, as well as everything we need to understand—hurricanes, viruses, the plague, vicious crooks, and so forth. But then, once again, "respect" is being used quite idiosyncratically.

Now if "respect" is really synonymous with "understand," then the last part of Professor Dyson’s point is a tautology, an empty utterance—let's understand our enemies because if we don't, we won't understand them. No big news here.

Actually, often to understand our enemies it is imperative that we have no respect for them. Respecting them could well prejudice our understanding of them. We may be tempted to ascribe to them good qualities they do not have and by such means be tempted to misunderstand them quite seriously.

Now I am not familiar with Professor Dyson's complete philosophy and do not know whether, as a physicist, he believes in ethics, in the idea that some people are more deserving than others because of how they choose to act. It is often the case with natural scientists that they view the world as morally neutral, through and through, to the point that ethics is precluded even from an understanding of human existence. It is all just que sera, sera for them, with no personal responsibility, no freedom of will possible.

In such a case talk of respect is, of course, superfluous—at most it means being awed by the world, by all of it, by what are deemed vicious and virtuous deeds equally. But then, of course, the idea of an enemy goes by the wayside, too. At most some things may have adverse impact on some other things but there can be no enemy since all sides are simply playing out the ways of impersonal nature. Sure, the lion may be the enemy of the zebra and the zebra of the grass, but all such talk is myth, without any possibility of truth to it.

But as I said, I am not sure if that is how Professor Dyson looks at things—I suspect his ideas on such matters are complicated. So let us just stick to what he believed is worth presenting to the readers of The New York Review of Books.

And all in all those ideas, albeit put cryptically, don't amount to much that's useful or true. The implicit doctrine of tolerance that they contain—let's respect everyone, enemy and friend alike—is, I submit, more dangerous than the occasional mindless moralism some of his adversaries may evince. To tolerate the intolerable, as that famous neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse argued many moons ago with his doctrine of repressive tolerance, is not a virtue but a vice. If nothing else, Professor Dyson might acknowledge this fact as he considers the worthiness of those who disagree with him about these matters.

Society isn't Government

by Tibor R. Machan

David Brooks, The New York Times's conservative columnist, gave us a good example (in his Sunday, October 15 column) of a widespread confusion, especially among pundits, wonks, those too close to Washington. Let me quote his non sequitur for you. Presumptuously speaking for us, he states: "We don't think government can be neutral on values issues," like social libertarians do. "Nations are held together by shared beliefs. People flourish because they have been encouraged by society to adopt certain habits and behaviors. It's a chimera to believe individuals come up with solutions to moral questions alone: human beings are social creatures whose actions and views are profoundly shaped by the social fabric that binds them." OK, do you notice the problem?

Why on earth does Brooks assume that government's neutrality about values—and of course social libertarians mean personal moral values, not the character of law and public policy, which all libertarians claim ought to favor individual rights and thus aren't neutral about at all—implies that society, which is to say all those others with whom we all associate in our lives, should not encourage us "to adopt certain habits and behaviors?" Nothing like that follows from the idea that government's business is with a very narrow set of values, namely, as the American Founders put it, "to secure [our] rights."

Consider this: Social libertarians do not believe government ought to cook our meals, devise our exercise regime, select for us our careers, determine whom we date, decide how we should amuse ourselves and so forth. None of that is the job of the government in a free society. Yet these libertarians certainly don't have the utterly absurd idea that the people with whom we are close should have no say about any of this. Our friends and relatives and even colleagues and neighbors do and certainly should encourage or discourage us in how we act and in our behaviors. Society is very much part of the life of free men and women—society is where one learns to flourish, with the advice and encouragement of all those whom one respects.

What does government have to do with any of this? Why is the sheriff, who has a big enough job keeping the peace in the village, become not only the peacekeeper but also the dentist, preacher, teacher, editor, and whoever else influences our daily lives for us? By getting all entangled in what is a job for "society," which is to say for all those civilians who surround us, a very dangerous shift occurs. Instead of focusing on the difficult task of keeping the peace, and keeping it in a civilized rather than barbaric fashion—with what is called due process of law—the busybody sheriff will neglect his proper duties and employ his forcible means to try to shape our lives. That, I submit, is the road to totalitarianism and the only reason we haven't quite gone all the way there is that the social libertarian attitude is still live and kicking in much of our culture.

It won't be long, however, if the likes of Mr. Brooks get their way. Their careless equivocation between government and society is just what has fueled the totalitarian temptation throughout the world, whereby government takes over the totality of the lives of the citizenry and refuses to stick to what it could do well, namely, deploy its unique tool of physical force and its threat only where it is required—where crimes are being committed.

It is a sad thing that conservative pundits like Mr. Brooks have forgotten the main thing they are supposed to conserve in this country, namely, the principles of a free society. Once they start drifting in the direction of conservatives elsewhere around the globe—where the past that's to be conserved does not include the classical liberal or, if you will, social libertarian ideas of the American Founders (who believed in limited government)—they will steer government astray. They will, instead, encourage, in their capacity as vocal members of society, very bad actions and behaviors on the part of both government and the citizenry.

What’s the Fuss About Materialism?

Tibor R. Machan

You may recall that Osama bin Laden’s big complaint about the West and Americans in particular—resting in large part on his Islamic faith—is just how materialistic they all are. What’s that, this materialism, of which so many people are supposedly guilty and for which they may be killed with impunity? (Yes, Virginia, the animosity by Muslims toward infidels and such isn't based on US support of Israel or any such recent particulars--just check out Efraim Karsh's account, in his recent book, Islamic Imperialism [Yale, 2006].)

Before getting to the charge of materialism, it should be noted that whatever this doctrine is, assuming there are billions of us in the West who are materialists, that by no stretch of the imagination justifies terrorist attacks upon us. Nor does our supposed infidelity, whatever that is supposed to be—atheism, Christianity, refusal to convert to Islam, whatever. None of that authorizes anyone to attack us, not for a second. Sure, it may provide Muslims with a motive for trying to convert us—every religion, indeed, every point of view, inclines those who believe it to try to spread the thing but it does not entitle them to use force in the process. There is absolutely no merit in believing something because one has been forced to do so even if it is God’s greatest truth. Belief must come from free ascent, not fear, not, certainly, from mindless compliance. So, even if Islam is indeed God’s truth, the only proper way to spread it, to get nonbelievers to adhere to it, is peacefully. Anything else makes "conversion" entirely phony, artificial, and thus totally worthless even in terms of the faith itself even if the faithful and their holy book would have it otherwise.

OK, but what is this materialism of which so many millions are accused and which is given as a strong reason for unleashing brutal, merciless violence upon them?

Actually, materialism is many things. First, it is a metaphysical position that claims that everything that exists is made of nothing but matter. This is a very obscure idea, of course, since just what matter is supposed to be has always been in question. One idea is that anything that has mass is matter, or material.

A second prominent understanding of materialism is that it consists of liking and desiring stuff, of wanting more and more stuff, and stuff is whatever is made of matter.

The two senses of “materialism” are related. If the first is true and everything that exists is indeed matter, than one cannot escape being a materialist except by being terribly mistaken about what the world is like. Suppose you believe in ghosts. Now ghosts are supposed to be disembodied living things, so if everything is made of matter, there can be no ghosts and those who believe in them are flat out wrong. And wanting stuff is thought to follow from believing there is nothing but stuff in the world.

Since, however, the nature of matter is obscure, no one can be a materialist in any meaningful sense; no one can make it out what it is to be one. As to the other sense of materialism, namely, that one who is a materialist prefers to have a lot of stuff—likes to shop and accumulate various goodies and so forth—it has its own problems. That’s because there simply is no stuff people want that is, well, just stuff. Perhaps if someone simply collected a lot of raw dirt or sand or other shapeless mass, it would qualify as being interested in having stuff but there aren’t folks like that, not in the West, not in the East, nowhere.

What most of us do want is this and that—cars, houses, vases, CDs, home videos, books, chairs, paintings, gardens and the flowers and vegetables in them, and so on and so forth. If one is a collector of classic cars or of fancy watches or ancient artifacts—you name it, whatever it is that is being collected—none of this is simply stuff. What people tend to want, more or less of, is various kinds of things, most of them shaped by the human imagination, most of them created with ingenuity, most of them useful for this or that purpose. No one wants just stuff, although some may want more of something than makes sense.

In fact, there is no mere stuff lying about to want—it is all this or that, something or other. Even if one wants fancy rocks or gold or silver or petrified wood or sea shells, these are all desired mainly because of the beauty people see in them, not because they are simply stuff.

So, then, what is all this hostility toward materialism when either it doesn’t mean much or what it means is very, very benign indeed. (Consider, if one wants church artifacts, or merely admires them, even uses them for worship, these too are some kind of stuff but never just stuff, anymore than furniture or dishes or clothing amount to just stuff.)

I submit that the hatred of materialism is really something quite different from what it sounds like. It is the hatred of those who want to enjoy life by taking an active part in it, by trying to relate to all the different things that make up the world and to whatever can give people joy. This kind of anti-materialism is, indeed, hatred of life itself.

So, when people identify bin Laden and his followers as lovers of death, they are right and it is shown clearly by all their ranting against materialism, which is pretty much nothing other than the cherishing of this life we all live here on earth.

The Common Good

Tibor R. Machan

Liberal Democrats are having a conniption fit about the lack of any vision that unites the Democratic Party. So several of their pundit-philosophers are writing essays in which they lament this and propose remedies.

Among those doing this is Michael Tomasky who, in a recent piece for The American Prospect, suggests that “Democrats need to become the party of the common good.” Then he goes on to write, as one of his critics put it, “breathlessly,” that “We are all in this ... together, and ... we have to pull together, make some sacrifices, and, just sometimes, look beyond our own interest to solve our problems and create the future.”

I have a better idea. Let Democrats, Republicans, and the rest recover the powerful idea that got the country going in the first place, one laid out pretty neatly in the Declaration of Independence. This idea is that the common good is pursued precisely when government does what justifies its existence, namely, secure our rights. That, indeed, is THE common good in the American political tradition.

The reason is that in that tradition there are millions of disparate goods individuals pursue but only one unites them, only one is their common good. This is the protection of their fundamental individual rights. This was part of the revolutionary idea that animated the Founders and put the country in opposition to so many others, including those in Europe from which so many of its initial population fled.

In most countries throughout human history the idea was promoted that there is a rich common good, a whole slew of objectives that we all must pursue. In other words, the common good was really the collective goods of all the people, as if they really did share goods galore that they needed to promote. The one size fits all mentality was encouraged by rulers, monarchs, tsars, and the rest who needed to hoodwink us into thinking that their goals are really our goals and we cannot really, individually, have goals of our own. That was the common good—the leaders’ good peddled for the rest as their good, too.

The American Founders, guided by the classical liberal social-political philosophies of John Locke and Co., saw through this. They realized that in a big country, the millions of inhabitants, citizens, share but very few goods. (Of course, small associations—churches, clubs, corporations, professional groups and so forth—can have some common objectives all right. It is only that no such common good or objective exists for the millions of us!) And the most important—probably, in fact, only—common good we share is the protection of our individual rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It’s the one good that’s indeed good for us all, that we have in common.

If government, which is instituted to secure these rights, does its job right, it will stick to little more than making sure that everyone’s liberty is safe. Why? Because then all the millions of different individuals, and some of the groups they voluntarily form amongst themselves, will quite successfully embark on the task of pursuing all those goods that suit them. Securing our rights does that for us!

But today’s public pundit-intellectuals don’t get it. They want to find some thick public good—a whole, humongous basket of allegedly common goods—which government will set out to achieve. And they are surprised that there isn’t such a basket—in a largely free society people have their own basket of proposed goods they want to obtain for themselves. And this isn’t because they are selfish and will not make sacrifices—notice how looking out for yourself is being demeaned in Tomasky’s call to arms—but because even in what they consider appropriate objectives for which sacrifices should be made the citizenry differs significantly. They don’t need having one idea of what’s worthy of a sacrifice shoved down everyone’s throat. No, they want to choose those objectives, as well as the ways of making the sacrifices for them if need be.

Maybe the Democrats—and Republicans—ought to recover the Founders’ vision. Then they wouldn’t have to concoct an impossible one behind which they cannot manage to unite folks at all.

Politics and Logic

by Tibor R. Machan

When people talk of being logical, they mean consistent, coherent, rational. They aren't talking about the kind of formal or symbolic logic that is studied in logic classes, but rather of the kind that basic reasoning classes discuss. Formal or symbolic logic is so rigid that nothing in the real world, not even subatomic physics, reflects it completely. Logic like that is a closed system, with symbols standing in for ideas and sentences but without the normal openness of the latter.

Still, be it physics, sociology, ethics or politics, it is imperative that when we consider anything we follow the rules or principles of logic. They are the method by which we make sure, first and foremost, whether or not we are talking about reality. Why? Because reality is at its base governed by logic. When, for example, someone violates the rules of logic during testimony in a court of law, we know that something has gone wrong no matter what the issue at hand. It is simply elementary that contradicting one's self discredits what one is saying. One cannot be both at home and not at home at the same time, so saying one was just cannot be right.

Trouble is a lot of folks would like to have things several ways, ways that simply cannot all be at once. A very clear case in point is when they claim they have rights to what others also have rights to. This comes up when people talk of entitlements, especially, to what other people have or produce. Health care "rights" are an excellent example. A doctor and nurse have their basic rights to their lives, their liberty, but if you and I have a right to health care, that means they don't because we have a right to make them work for us. Any citizen has the right to his or her property -- e. g., to their skills and resources -- but if you and I have a right to welfare that requires confiscating these, and that simply cannot be. Maybe people want it but then they want the impossible.

Whenever public policy or law affirms what is impossible, the result is that some people -- bureaucrats, judges and the like -- have gained arbitrary powers. The impossible cannot be achieved, so instead of relying on the law or public policy to guide us impartially, cogently, some bloke will have to decide what goes, in defiance of sense and reason. This comes from making laws and public policies that cannot function as consistent guidelines to how we should conduct ourselves. Someone must, then, step in and make a decision that is independent of objective law, of law that can be predicted to function in the real world. Instead some whimsical choice is substituted.

For example, since both the patient and the doctor cannot have those rights they are said to have -- the patient to health care, the doctor to liberty -- the government steps in and decides, arbitrarily, whose wants will be satisfied and when. Sometimes it will be doctors -- say, when they go on strike and refuse to work for the pay they are offered -- and sometimes it will be patients -- say, when they get to force other people to pay what doctors want for their services. In such cases, and there are zillions of them, logic is violated and the law becomes a matter of some people's arbitrary, irrational decisions.

And that's basically the destruction of the rule of law, the principles which put order into human affairs so that no one gets to call the shots and we all live by consistent rules and principles. If, for example, our rights to life, liberty and property get full protection, that means entitlements must be rejected in law and public policy because enforcing entitlements violate those basic rights. Sadly, violation of that has become routine now, urged on by the likes of FDR and his current followers, champions of so called "positive" rights, rights to other people's works and resources. (Professor Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago is such an FDR epigone.) The expansion of eminent domain is another case in point. If our property belongs to us but also to the city officials who want to take it so as to improve something in the community, the result is arbitrariness, rule not of law but by the whim of officials.

It only seems that logic and life don't mesh well but what in fact does not mesh well is how many of us wish life to be with how it can be. People, sadly, often want it in several incompatible ways and politicians are only too willing to promise they can deliver them this impossible gift. The result is more or less tyrannical rule in society and the abandonment of the rule of law.

One Size Fits All Revisited

by Tibor R. Machan

Outside of politics, the place where the one size fits all approach is most tempting would be the family. Parents are often eager to urge their own tastes and preferences on their children, confusing these with the basic values, virtues and principles they do need to teach them.

My own experience with this has been rather severe—my parents were nearly fanatic athletes who insisted that I, too, follow in their footsteps. Things got so bad that as soon as I reached the age of legal maturity, I left. Of course, back in Europe and in many parts of the world the idea that one must virtually copy one's parents' lives is widely embraced and it is often inescapable because of its economic utility. In a relatively free and abundant country, however, the idea that children need to find their own way, based on their talents, desires, opportunities and so forth, is more prevalent.

Yet even in such a society the temptation for parents to insist that children follow in their footsteps is a powerful one. Even though I have guarded against yielding to it, I cannot say I am immune. Just the other day I spent time with my older children, both in their late twenties, and I noticed how they were interested in matters that leave me entirely cold. In fact, in my more self-indulgent or vain moments I even consider my own interests superior to those of many others—just as one finds watching certain kinds of TV programs silly or trivial or tasteless. And I was on the verge of expressing my disdain for my adult children's tastes and preferences when I realized what I was doing—namely, following my own parents' lead in trying to make my children into clones of myself.

It is difficult, of course, to identify just what sort of values one really must try to inculcate in their children and what are those they should be left nearly on their own to discover. What if they enjoy horror movies while you find them disgusting? What if they love to watch professional sports all weekend and do not check out a novel or seek out some good play or concert in the neighborhood? What if they wear clothes that you consider in bad taste or read gossip magazines instead of those informing them of culture and science? How about if they have no interest at all in politics or economics?

Surely some matters are important to anyone and if one's kids show no interest, trying to encourage them to look into them is not being too tyrannical. Yet, even there a delicate balance needs to be found between being pushy and giving friendly suggestions and advice. Moreover, there may be a good time to explore some things—say, a bit after they have left school so they have had their break from all the heavy mental lifting.

Parenting is not instinctual for human beings, contrary to what so many people seem to believe, judging by how unprepared they are for rearing kids. The notions that one's own tastes and preferences are high and mighty, superior to those of others, is very tempting—after all, if one has them, surely they must matter more than those others have! But that is a mistake. More often tastes and preferences are quite idiosyncratic and there can be many different ones, with none superior to others at all.

Some people prefer opera, others drama, yet others big band concerts; some are fond of tennis, others of golf, and yet others of basketball. Even though one often hears debates about which of these is superior, which inferior, it is most likely that such debates are misguided. These matters are really more about tastes and preferences, not about right or wrong judgment and conduct.

However, that is difficult for many of us to keep in mind. Some tend to confuse matters of principle, about which it is important to find common ground, and matters of pleasure, about which no common ground need to be found at all. Never mind all the self-congratulatory magazines, books, galleries, fashion venues, and forms of entertainment that are advertised as superior to all the others. In fact, in most cases, they are just some people's pleasures but not that of others.

Indeed, this point is something too many educated people—even some geniuses (who peddle their likes as if they were metaphysical truths)—overlook. Some even insist that what they prefer, what they have a taste for, be provided with special subsidies by the government—such as PBS and NPR and museums and other forums the rest of us are coerced into supporting. And all of it tends to begin with the family practice of wanting kids to follow parents in all things, something that denies the children's individuality and freedom of choice.

Freedom back in the Mainstream?

Tibor R. Machan

Other than the occasional loose and practically incoherent mention of “freedom” by George W. Bush & Co., contemporary political discourse hardly invokes the idea. It is as if the era in which human liberty was of concern had now passed.

That, indeed, was the notion that Karl Marx championed. For the old communist individual liberty was a passing fancy, mostly of concern to those who were pushing for the special interest of the rich—e. g., John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo. And while the alternative, namely socialism (not to mention the fantasy of communism) has met with serious setbacks, there still linger strong echoes of Marx’s idea that liberty has become passé. Even American conservatives seem to have given up on the ideals and ideas of the American Founders, other than in some of their neo-conservative rhetoric that tries desperately to justify going abroad and futilely attempt to change some rouge regimes.

Yet, now and then the concept of individual liberty re-ignites the imagination of even mainstream scholars and pundits. That was evident from a riveting book review published in the October 9th issue of The New Republic, written by Professor Steven Pinker of Harvard University and taking to task the book by another linguist, Professor George Lakoff, Whose Freedom? The Battle Over American’s Most Important Idea (2006). You may think what you will about either the book’s message or Pinker’s brilliant review but what is most encouraging is that The New Republic would publish a long discussion that’s focused so directly on the idea of human liberty.

In academic political philosophy and theory circles it is pretty standard fare that two conceptions of liberty have been doing battle for a couple of centuries now, usually dubbed “negative” and “positive.” Sometimes the discussion is cast in terms of “negative” versus “positive” rights, inasmuch as “rights” signify a sphere of human liberty. The idea of negative rights is just what is contained in the Declaration of Independence. It is that all adult human beings require, by their very nature, a sphere of sovereignty or self-government and others may not enter this sphere without being given permission. That is why government requires the consent of the governed, otherwise it is illegitimate. (This notion, while gaining public airing rather recently in human history has been around for a long time—check out Xenophon’s book, Memorabilia (written around 400 B.C.) in which it plays a vital role in a dialogue between Pericles and Alcibiades!)

Positive rights—which came on the heels of the fullest development of the idea of negative rights by John Locke and other classical liberals—was defended by such philosophers as Hegel, Marx, and T. H. Green and means being entitled to provisions from other people. It came to dominate political discourse during the era of FDR, who forged what’s called “the Second Bill of Rights,” filled with “rights” to services and goods other people must produce for us whether they choose to do so or not.

Obviously, these two ideas are incompatible. Pinker makes that point very well in his review of Lakoff’s book (one that's in full support of FDR’s idea): “[M]y freedom to have my teeth fixed impinges on my dentist’s freedom to sit at home and read the paper. For that reason, positive freedom requires an agreed-upon floor for the worst off in a society with a given level of affluence, and presupposes an economic arrangement that gives providers an incentive to benefit recipients without being forced to do so at gunpoint. That’s why many political thinkers (most notably Isaiah Berlin) have been suspicious of the very idea.” Certainly none more so than libertarians, who have always recognized that “positive freedom” is really the very antithesis of individual liberty.

We cannot fully explore this debate in a column but it bears noting how important it is that The New Republic made room for such a discussion by an astute thinker like Steven Pinker, who, though no libertarian himself (to my knowledge) has focused on the issue very precisely. And this in the context of reviewing a book that purports to advise the Democratic Party on what issues to stress in their push to regain Washington!

One can only hope that once again America will become a forum for some intelligent discourse on the most important idea in human political history, the idea of individual liberty.