Atlas Shrugged Part I, the Movie

Tibor R. Machan

I saw the movie Atlas Shrugged, Part I (to be released on April 15) and I liked it a lot, just as I did the book when I first read it in 1961 while serving in the US Air Force near Washington, DC. (The maiden ride of the John Galt Line was back then the most riveting segment and it still is for me, in the film.)

I ran across Ayn Rand’s ideas without much fanfare--I was in a theater group I helped start and run back then and we decided to put on The Night of January 16th, a curious little number in which after a fascinating trial (pitting independent entrepreneur against leach), a jury is picked from the audience after each performance. The cast and staff used to stay up until the wee hours debating how the verdict should have gone and why the jury went one or the other way.

After that no Ayn Rand for me for a year. Then I saw some mates reading The Fountainhead just after I read a nasty review of Rand’s first major novel--there were others, such as the novella Anthem and the very well done We The Living before--The Fountainhead by of all people that snide novelist Gore Vidal. The short of it is I read and liked the novel, again especially some features of it (e.g., where the importance of the human individual is asserted and defended). I was won over to Rand in part because I already held individualist views having survived a stint under Soviet communism--actually, as Susan Sontag so perceptively asserted many years ago, fascism--and a Nazi parent’s brutality. Such collectivist, communitarian regimes held out no attraction to me by then. Yet I lacked the education to figure out just why a human individual should be acknowledge as the center of values and Rand helped me figure this out.


Right or wrong, I found Rand--whom I met, in 1962, for a 30 minute private chat but who banished me, too, later, from her group of close knit students--sensible, passionate, a bit bellicose, and all around very insightful about nearly all aspects of philosophy. Then came Atlas Shrugged for me, three years after its publication, and I read it on a single day in one fell swoop, that is how vivid and good a read the book was and, judging by its phenomenal sales worldwide, still is for its contemporary readers.

Of course, there was a lot more meat in it than that fantastic train ride. So, for example, I cut out Galt’s brilliant speech, a long one that critics used so as to try to ridicule the novel, and with several buddies at Andrews AFB used to sit up weekends scrutinizing it. (Of course, no one much ridicules James Joyce’s lengthy stream of consciousness in his avant guard novel, Ulysses, or some of the Left wing political monologues included in, for instance, Swedish writer Henning Mankell’s The Man from Beijing. That’s partisan literature for you--Rand infuriated both the Left and the Right and some never could treat her honestly.)

I saw Part I of the movie a few weeks ago and although it didn’t grab me as did the book when I first read it--how could it have?--it is a very good picture; it’s modern, serious, chuck full of poignant anti-statist and pro-capitalist dialogue (unlike most Hollywood products these days). The central theme is captured very well--about how when the mindful, productive, creative, and industrious folks in the land have had enough of the meddlers in Washington they go on strike and leave the place in shambles. The acting is good, much better than it was in the film version of The Fountainhead (with Gary Cooper and Patricia O’Neal--except for Cooper’s superb courtroom speech) and the production values are outstanding. The train and the bridge, made of Rearden metal, are rendered flawlessly!

Even if billions go see Atlas Shrugged 1, 2 and 3, it will not, as the novel didn’t (to Miss Rand’s reported consternation), change the world--you would need attentive, thoughtful viewers for that and one can never guarantee this (a central features of human existence). Yet it will brighten the day, even perhaps the week, for many who go see it and might inspire quite a few who are new to Rand to give her ideas a good study. I did and I never regretted it for a moment!

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Tibor R. Machan is the author of 40 plus books including Ayn Rand (Peter Lang, 2001) which was recently translated into German by Lichtschlag Medien und Werbung KGm.

Machan Archives: Wanting but Reproducing

Tibor R. Machan

A while back at the Dallas/Forth Worth Airport I had to wait for two ours to board my flight back home so I sat before a TV set beaming forth CNN’s various scary stories. (Even as the traffic there was quite calm, and even as my two days’ of lectures in New Orleans proceeded amidst a city now showing mostly evidence of human resilience, the “news” came to nothing but scary stories!)

Included in the bad news viewers were being offered there was story of a family’s financial struggles, one in which both parents worked, earning about $55k per year, voicing drawn out complaints about how strapped they are. They had children already, in their early thirties, plus “one on the way.” Which brought up the issue, at least for me, if they believe they are so strapped, what business do they have bringing yet another child into their home?

Of course, the reporter covering this heart wrenching scene did not pose such a question. That would have been heresy. No, instead the reporter got sympathetically on board with the drift of the couple’s laments, suggesting nothing about the possibility of parental malpractice involved in bringing a new child into the world when by their own understanding they are economically unprepared for this. Never mind that having children in 21st century America surely is something over which people have considerable control. A simple question like, “If you are so strapped financially, why did you decided to have another child?” could have focused the issue quite nicely, but no such luck.

Instead the CNN reporter and the anchor both looked reproachfully not upon the parents with the financial wows but upon “American society” that on their view failed to do justice to the helpless, victimized couple.

Exactly when have journalists decided that children just pop into existence for couples who then must be seen as victims of various economic contingencies? OK, so in some cases the couple’s religion will not permit family planning of some type but surely if that’s so, one can deploy some alternative methods, maybe even abstinence. Yes, Virginia, you are free to say “no” if the other options are ruled out by your convictions. And that, indeed, would be the responsible thing to do, by all appearances, if it doesn’t seem like you can care for another child in your home.

Granted, one is rarely in the position to pass moral judgment based on a mere news report, although the producers and reporters giving us the information certainly do not hesitate indicating their own moral views, if only by their facial expressions and head shaking and turns of phrases. (All one needs is to watch a bit of Lou Dobbs, who has replaced the late Peter Jennings as the frowning, head shaking, dog faced commentator on domestic and world economic affairs, what with his intimation that the answer to everyone’s problems must be yet another protectionist measure by the federal government.)

It would be one thing if reporters and those who write their scripts would discipline themselves and remain really neutral as they report on various aspects of American society, on the lives of citizens, leaving viewers to come to their own assessments, if that’s at all possible from the information they dig up. But all too many of these media celebs have decided that they must make their lop-sided moral views evident, mostly of the “Oh, so you are yet another victim of the nasty forces that rule American society” variety. So it is not as if they refused to inject their evaluations into their reports—they do it good and hard most of the time.

If so, then, why not inject a little of the spirit of personal responsibility? Why not note, now and then, that individuals have the responsibility to heed their own situations and act accordingly? Why not a few shakes of the head when people act with evident lack of care and prudence and thus create circumstances for themselves they could clearly have avoided?

Journalists often claim they are independent of any moral position as they present the news to us in their well-trained non-partisan mode. This is rarely the case. Most often journalists—especially the celebrities among them—have anointed themselves as moral watchdogs, spouting the message of modern liberals that people are all victims of various insidious forces that oppress them and have no say about how their lives turn out. Frankly, I don’t buy it.

I am watching the current showing of Robin Hood, with Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydon, et al., and find that the show's depiction of taxation is about as historically accurate as such a vehicle permits. I only wish most people would realize that the upcoming April 15th extortion perpetrated on us all is a moral crime through and through.

Tibor R. Machan

Scheduled Book World Appearance

It may be of some interest here that I have been asked to host C-Span’s *Book World/In Depth*, a three hour call-in program on Sunday, May 1, 2011, focusing on my 40+books, starting with *The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner* (1973) and the latest, *Rebellion
in Print* (2011). I have been, since December, 1997, and still am, a
resident of Silverado Canyon, a professor at Chapman University (holding the
R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise), and a regular
columnist for the *OC Register* and a free lance writer over the years for
many other publications (e.g., *Free Inquiry* magazine, *Barron’s*, *The
Boston Globe*,*The New York Times,* *The LA Times,* *The Houston Chronicle*). I was one of the founders of *Reason* Magazine back in 1970 and have appeared on PBS, NPR, ABC-TV, Fox Business News and the late Bill Buckley’s *Firing Line*. I was smuggled out of communist Hungary in 1953 and have lived in America since 1956. My recent writings are stored at http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com/ & http://szatyor2693.wordpress.com/

Tibor R. Machan
TMachan@gmail.com

Krugman, Academic Freedom & Phony Whining

Tibor R. Machan

In his column of March 28, 2011, Paul Krugman whines a good deal about how Republicans in Wisconsin are targeting scholars who may not like their opposition to public service union profligacy. No doubt, in these battles all sides can go overboard but let’s just face it, the Left has been dominant in higher education for decades on end, which is why, perhaps, I am not a professor at Princeton University while Dr. Krugman is, and why my columns and blogs are mostly marginalized and his appear on the pages of The New York Times. (But enough of sour grapes!)

First, opposing public service unions does not amount to opposing organized labor, certainly not of the kind that would take place in a free market where competition affords the opportunity to seek out firms not hit by union action. Public union members work for monopolies and there is no option but to do business with them all. That’s a major difference and cause of most of the problems faced in Wisconsin and elsewhere vis-a-vis public employees.

Another point to keep in mind is that Wisconsin’s and other states’ universities are tax funded and citizens who have to foot their cost cannot walk away and go elsewhere to buy their higher education from an alternative institution, not unless they are willing to be charged twice. Furthermore, college professors, like college students, enjoy academic freedom, not the full protection of the rights secured via the Fist Amendment to the US Constitution. University policy, in part dictated by public officials at the state level, trumps academic freedom (which is mainly a tradition or custom, not a legal guarantee). Politicians, who take themselves to be in charge of--or, euphemistically put, “responsible for”--higher education policy, have the legal authority to butt in anytime they can convince themselves that it is a matter of the public interest to do so. And that task is a very easy one for politicians and bureaucrats, don’t kind yourself. So when Wisconsin’s politicians scrutinize public university employees, including professors, in the public interest, there is no legal argument that can be made against this. They are ultimately in charge, something they would not be if they dealt with private educational institutions (which, more like churches, largely enjoy constitutional protection from such meddlers).

None of this should come as a surprise to Paul Krugman, an old hand in the education industry. (His professed shock with Wisconsin’s politicians is just about as authentic as was the shock of the police captain at the end of the movie Casablanca with the illegal gambling that had been going at Ricks!) Once you are near the centers of power, such as state and federal capitols, you will use whatever legal or near legal means you can deploy to hang on to your clout and to gain more and more of it. Your opponents will, of course, always holler “foul” as you make your moves but this is certainly just a ruse. No one should be fooled that Republicans and Democrats or any other mainstream political bunch do not try every trick in the book to undermine those on the other side.

Dr. Krugman himself is simply playing the game--charge your opponents with ill will and corruption even while you are guilty of these as well. Maybe he thinks no one can figure this out, him being such a well positioned public intellectual. Fact is, however, that Krugman is simply trying to keep and gain power for his team. It has nothing to do with overarching principles, not, especially, when you recall, also, that Dr, Krugman is a fierce defender of pragmatism and opposes all ideologies, including the ideology of remaining true to the principles of proper public conduct. Only amateurs would be bother with that!

We live in a dog-eat-dog political arena and very few people have the backbone to remain above the fray. By now anyone who reads his stuff should know that Dr. Krugman isn’t one of them.

The Taxer (Extortionist) is Coming

Tibor R. Machan

For most people taxation is a burden that’s accepted in large part because they know the alternative is worse. As a friend pointed out, it is like dealing with someone who holds you up in a back alley: “Your money or your life!” To put up a fight can be fatal and up to a point almost everyone can tolerate the loss. But as the economist Arthur Laffer observed, everyone has a point at which no further taxation can be lived with. Kind of like pain--we can all put up with some of it and will not succumb until the level is just too high. But it is never a good thing.

Now there are sadly some prominent folks who claim that this is all as it should be. As Justice Felix Frankfurter reported about Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "He did not have a curmudgeon's feelings about his own taxes. A secretary who exclaimed, 'Don't you hate to pay taxes!' was rebuked with the hot response, 'No, young feller. I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.'" (Felix Frankfurter, Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court [New York: Atheneum, 1965; originally published by Harvard University Press, 1938, 1961, page 71]) But this is not right at all, despite Holmes’ gravitas.

Taxation was the charge the ruler levied on his subjects for being privileged to live and work within the realm that belonged to him (or her). Yes, kings and czars and pharaohs were thought of as the owners of the countries they ruled. So they extorted funds from everyone at the point of the gun or bayonet. It wasn’t a free exchange, as between, say, a dentist and a patient. Or even a client and a body guard. No, the king ruled--indeed by some accounts owned--the subjects and confiscated what he chose from them in property and labor, leaving them just enough to survive.

This is what Robin Hood was protesting, by the way, not great wealth. His rebellion was to take back what the taxer took and return it to those who were the victims of taxation. The process of taxation is no peaceful interaction whereby citizens are offered services by their government and pay for it voluntarily, the picture Holmes painted of it. No. Rulers extorted the funds and didn’t obtain them in peaceful ways.

Taxation, then, was on par with slavery and serfdom, not with free trade. Once the American idea--learned from the English philosopher John Locke and some predecessors--of natural individual rights to one’s life caught on, both serfdom and slavery started to crumble. They lost their moral foundation. And once it was demonstrated that everyone has the right to private property as well, the notion that the monarch owns the country also took a major hit. Sadly, however, all this wasn’t taken far enough. It was all a bit too revolutionary, to make it clear that no one owns anyone else, only ones own life and property. Probably in part because that’s the only way political thinkers could see their way through to funding the legal services governments were providing--the civilization that Homes was talking about. But that is a bad way to have handled the situation.

As it was realized a bit later, one has no right or isn't entitled to another’s life even if one needs that life very much, as, for example, in fighting a war in defense of a country or for harvesting one’s crop. For a long time folks put up with conscription in the USA even though it violates the right to one’s life. So they also put up with taxation, even though it violates the right to one’s labor and property. But it need not be like that in either of those cases: one can pay people to fight or give them other benefits, and an army will arise quickly enough, especially provided the purpose is a just one, not imperialistic adventurism. And one can finance essential legal services without confiscating anyone’s private property, mainly by charging a fee for all economic transactions that need the protection of the law. Both these methods avoid coercion. One can avoid service in the military by paying others who are willing to take up arms for a just cause. And one can avoid paying the contract fee by simply relying on a handshake. But in the latter case, few would make that choice since they would be left very insecure in their commercial exchanges. It is best to enter into a binding contract and paying the fee to have it well protected in the law. Moreover, there is plain old human generosity which is far better than extortion any day!

Of course, the details would be very involved. Sadly no one is studying this since public finance is so intimately tied to the system of taxation. But just as the switch from conscription to a volunteer military wasn’t impossible, so is the switch from taxation to the contract fee system.

So taxation is by no means the best way to obtain funding for the legal system, quite the contrary, just as any other involuntary service isn’t the way to obtain the work of others. It is high time that this is realized and the extortionists sent on their way.

A Sample of Government-at-Work

Tibor R. Machan

Where I live there’s no mail delivery. All USPS mail has to be picked up at the post office. And at the post office the address is, well, a P.O. Box with its number.

If one sends a piece of mail to the house address, the zip code must contain the post office box number at the end of the regular five digit number. And it is usually no problem to do this! Except, of course, with some government bureaus.

In particular, the Department of Motor Vehicles in California refuses to accept the additional numbers for the zip code. No matter how often one calls them about this, no matter how often one sends them messages from their web site, they refuse to add the extra numbers, so when they send citizens their license plates or any other official government mail, these often get returned “undeliverable.”

Now one would think there is no big problem with adding those extra numbers but for the 12 years I have lived where I do, I have tried and tried to get this accomplished with the DMV but to no avail. And when I explain this to the people at the post office, they say this is happening to everyone where I live and they cannot get things changed either. Multiply this by all those who live where mail needs to be fetched from post office boxes and you can fathom the situation.

Fortunately, when such mail is sent to homes in my canyon community, they often get rerouted to the post office anyway, as a matter of courtesy. But not always--especially when a new person or temp takes over handing of the mail. Then such materials, often pretty important, get sent back to the DMV. (This can include drivers licenses, fee notifications, tags and such, so it can be quite disruptive to people who experiences this bureaucratic snafu.)

I realize that this is hardly a major obstacle to the functioning of our republic. Nonetheless it is somewhat indicative of just the sort of malfeasance that governments often perpetrate. Since the management of more and more issues is being taken over by government--e.g., health insurance--one need not be a rocket scientist to imagine that these kinds of foibles will probably increase several fold in the future. And it all seems to be impervious to being remedied by even the most vigilant citizenship action. The DMV will not budge, the post office seems helpless and there seems to be nothing citizens can do to fix it.

Even apart from the general matter of the political flaw of government’s taking over so much of our social life, trying to manage everything for us--the hallmark of welfare statism--why is such elementary stuff not being dealt with competently? It should give supporters of the greater and greater involvement of the public authorities in our lives some pause when simple things will not be handled with even the most elementary competence.

The Proper Promotion of Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

The policy of imposing liberal regimes around the globe has proven to be a disaster and no wonder. It is simply not feasible to coerce people to be free--the idea is an oxymoron.

It doesn’t follow, however, that countries that are largely committed, even if only rhetorically, to a regime of human liberty--one that follows the political principles of the Declaration of Independence--can do nothing to advance freedom outside their borders. Sure, this is nearly impossible if they are themselves only so-so committed to a free system, if their own legal order is a mixture between tyranny and liberty.

Those abroad who have a strong interest in maintaining their unjustified rule over a population--e.g., the likes of leaders in China, Libya, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.--can then point out whenever they are being criticized for their oppressive policies that there are similar ones where the criticism comes from. The hypocrisy of it all will be glaring and will tend to discredit the critic’s position even if, to the extent it stresses the values of human liberty, it contains merit. Indeed, in some cases such hypocritical criticism may undermine the very position in favor of liberty, having shown up the critic as inconsistent, wobbly about the ideals on which the criticism is based.

But still those in government responsible for forging foreign policy could, if they had their wits about them, stress that what they are promoting is a system of liberty, never mind the lapses within their own domestic policies. Even an occasional liar can advocate telling the truth if he admits to his failings at the same time.

Of course, those outside the government, who have no direct hand in embracing a mixed up political philosophy--like the one we find in most Western countries and which are often being shown up for the confusing idea they are by critics both at home and abroad--are not hampered by this problem of sounding hypocritical when they champion liberty. When members of the Atlas Foundation or the Cato Institute travel across the world teaching about human liberty to thousands who attend their seminars, they do not have to embrace any inconsistencies. They can make it abundantly clear that they oppose their own system’s ill advised attempts to combine free and tyrannical policies. Anyone who is in favor of liberty across the globe and realizes how self-defeating it is to try to advance this cause by means of force of arms can give their support to those private groups that are consistent advocates of the free system.

It is, of course, necessary to be well educated about the nature of such mixed systems and to learn how to identify the impact of the policies that reflect the principles of liberty versus those that violate it. When, for example, loose talk blames the free market for the recent financial fiasco, it is necessary to be able to rebut such nonsense, to show that (a) the financial mess had nothing to do with genuine libertarian policies and that (b) prolonged interventionism has produced the mess (e.g., the machinations of the Federal Reserve and the innumerable government regulatory agencies that have distorted the principles of liberty throughout the economy and produced perverse incentives). There are now many fine books and papers, by excellent scholars, making this case in both technical and lay language and some command of these will help make the case.

Even the government--or those in it who do favor liberty in consistent ways--can use some of the tools of diplomacy to advance the case for liberty abroad. Government officials need not blindly comply with the wishes of foreign officials as they honor their own corrupt systems and can, instead, make their contempt evident by various subtle means.

The cause of liberty merits the sustained exercise of the human capacity for ingenuity in teaching important lessons to those who need to learn them. None of this guarantees success, of course, but success is far more likely if the promotion of the free system is itself unmarred by inconsistency and hypocrisy.

Genuine Military Defense Anyone?

Tibor R. Machan

Why, again, is America getting involved in a war abroad, indeed, thousands of miles from its borders? Is the answer nothing more complicated than “It’s oil, stupid”? If so, this is very wrong.

As much as one may object to the Libyan government’s ownership claims to oil within that country--why on earth would a government own anything when its proper function is to protect the rights of its citizens, including to what they own--America isn’t supposed to be some kind of meta-police! Certainly spending American taxpayers’ funds on conducting military actions against Libya is going way beyond the proper military role of the American government, which is to protect its citizen’s freedom from domestic and foreign criminals.

It bears remembering here that however off course the American government has gone in its role in the country, the real role it has is to be a government strictly limited to the functions laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, which is to stand ready to defend the country when it is attacked or when there is a demonstrably clear and present danger that it will be attacked. So the criteria by which one must judge its conduct, both domestic and international, is whether it amounts to such defense.

Sadly, of course, most politicians and bureaucrats, as well as their cheerleaders in the academy and media, don’t give a hoot about restraining the power of government. After all, the same rationale that serves to justify its relentless intervention in our lives at home is what is used to rationalize it abroad. (Does it occur to folks that despite some of the rhetoric of restraint associated with the political thought of President Obama, it is modern liberalism’s interventionism that removes all principled restraint and leads to the imperialist policies of which this Libyan expedition is a case in point?)

I am talking, of course, from the position of someone who has always agreed with President George Washington’s warnings about foreign entanglements, made in his farewell address and one implicit in the basic thrust of the American political tradition of limited government. The limitation is not all that tough to grasp: it is self-defense, just as in the case of when people are justified to use force against each other, namely, when they have been attacked, when they encounter an aggressor. This does not include being deprived of someone else’s productive work or resources, including Lybia’s oil. If my neighbor refuses to sell me his produce or labor, I have no right to attack him and try to force him to hand these to me because I want them very badly, even need them desperately.

Such is the proper standard of international military policy for a bona fide free society and whether that goes contrary to domestics intellectuals, the community of nations, the UN or whoever else sounds off about it, it makes no difference. None of that is going to make it right and, furthermore, one rotten consequence of it is that all the rhetorical opposition to international banditry is certainly going to sound mighty hallow!

Once a country’s government abandons the stance by which its use of force is kept to national defense and nothing else (however tempting it is to breach it), it has lost its moral authority as it criticizes other aggressors around the globe, including that of the Lybian government against “its own people”. Rogue regimes everywhere, with their rulers aspiring to impose their will upon everyone, will be able to point to the USA and declare, correctly: “Look at the leaders of the free world, see how they butt into all manner of misconduct by their fellow governments, so clearly it must be permissible for us to act likewise when we disapprove of what others do!”

Just as the philosophy that demands restraining government domestically is the most radical and sound political idea--just compare it to all the imperialism throughout human history embarked upon by hundreds of regimes--so this insistence that governments keep to their oath of protecting the rights of their citizens is radical, sound and sadly neglected.

A Crucial Constitutional Fact

Tibor R. Machan

In my efforts to defend the free society and its basic principles, the idea of natural individual human rights, I run across the objection--advance by both conservatives and “liberals”--that once a constitution has been accepted, it overrides those principles. Putting it differently, while perhaps human beings do have the basic rights to life, liberty, property and so forth in, as it is called, the state of nature--that is, prior to the formation of a community with a legal foundation--once that state is given up and a community is formed, they no longer have those basic rights. Instead, they have delegated to government or the legal system the authority to limit the previous freedoms they enjoyed. So instead of the constitution limiting the legal authorities or government, it supposedly limits the rights and liberties of the citizenry.

There is some plausibility in this since in the case of contracts when people enter into them they often bind themselves to obligations and responsibilities they didn’t previously have--e.g., when they marry or lease an apartment. So perhaps the constitution is that kind of a document, through which people commit themselves to abide by rules, even serve rulers, they would be free to ignore prior to entering civil society. This certainly is one rationale being advanced in opposition to libertarians who hold that what the constitution achieves, if properly conceived and instituted, is to establish the protection and elaboration of the rights of the citizenry, something they arguably lacked outside civil society.

Yet even in the admittedly murky case of the U. S. Constitution and the founding of the republic, there is evidence any lay person, let alone legal expert, can detect pointing to the libertarian interpretation that a proper constitution does not give away but attempts to secure individual rights. First of all the Declaration of Independence makes it clear what the American founders set out to do with their efforts to institute a government via the U. S. Constitution. The precise road to the establishment of free government may well be complicated but once one realizes that at heart government is supposed to be institute so as to secure the rights laid out in the body of the Declaration, there is little reasonable doubt that the ensuring setting up of a constitutional government wasn’t meat to abolish individual rights, quite the contrary. Government was meant to give security to those rights in light of the plain fact that without a legal system and its competent administration the rights individual have would be at the mercy of anyone bent upon violating them. Yes, people do have those rights in the state of nature or prior to entering civil society but their security would be dependent entirely on how well individuals are able to defend themselves, without the benefit of a specialized body of men and women who could be counted upon to provide the expertise needed to make those right as secure as humanly possible.

If one then looks at the U. S. Constitution itself, there are other clues to reading it along libertarian lines. The Bill of Rights not only mentions several of the rights that are to be safeguarded by the legal system but makes explicit reference to non-enumerated rights, ones the citizenry retains even if they are not mentioned in the document. This, it would appear, makes it clear, unambiguous, that leaving the state of nature does not imply at all giving up the basic, natural, individual human rights all human beings have.

The point of joining civil society as far as the American system is concerned isn’t, then, to give up but to secure the basic and all the derivative rights human beings have. Those who argue otherwise aren’t on solid grounds. That much is pretty clear, so they must reinterpret the American founding to shore up their case for American statism. Yet some of the most influential legal scholars advance this untenable position--namely that the law in the American tradition aims to limit the liberty and rights of the citizenry--and numerous prominent law schools teach it as well.

Let me make a final point about rights. Much communitarian thinking from both Left and Rights laments that Americans are too fond of rights but not of responsibilities or obligations. Yet if one realizes that having rights also implies having obligations, this lament is quite misguided. Everyone has the legal obligation or responsibility to respect the rights to everyone else. And that is just as it should be, with other obligations and responsibilities left to be worked out in the private sector, mainly via morality and contract law.

Self-Debasement is Wrong

Tibor R. Machan

As a child and teen I had been very seriously abused, especially while in my father’s “care”. He had in mind to make me into a clone, forced me to do athletics relentlessly and when he detected any resistance on my part, beat me mercilessly. None of this resulted in major damage, fortunately, but his constant ranting at me about how worthless I am because I do not live up to his idiosyncratic expectations did have an impact, at least up to a point. I never quite bought into this view but did often feel uneasy for being rebellious, for insisting to follow my own lights. As if this may be a flaw, even as I insisted in carrying on in my contrary ways even when facing the menacing communists back in Hungary. But luckily I did have the wherewithal to run from my father’s home as soon as I reached the right age. And he only had me to tyrannize for a few years anyway. Still, when I began to read a good deal of classical philosophy and literature, what stood out for me most is the material that affirmed my own importance or value as a human individual.


This came to my mind recently when I ran across a review of a book about the sixteenth century French essayist, Michel de Montaigne because his essays were one of those books I devoured when I was about 19 and served in the US Air Force. At that time I discovered this library of Classic Books and bought them and among those was Montaigne’s Essays, as well as works by Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Locke, and a host of others, books I found fascinating as I did my rather mundane chores for the Air Force at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, DC. (It all got less boring when some friends and I on the base established a theater group, Andrews Players, with its regular slate of plays and even its Andy celebrations!)

In the review of the book about Montaigne I ran across a quoted passage that brought back to mind one of the reasons the Essays left such a strong impression on me. Not that all of Montaigne’s ideas appealed to me but his way of putting them certainly did. But this particular passage, which I am about to quote, showed why what Montaigne wrote helped me come to terms with some personal issues and laid the foundation for subsequent thinking and writing in my life. So here is the passage that brought back to me why I was attracted to Montaigne:

“It is against nature that we despise ourselves and care nothing about ourselves. It is a malady peculiar to man, and not seen in any other creature....It is by a similar vanity that we wish to be something other than we are.”

So my rebellion against my dad’s relentless belittling--supported sadly by much of the moralizing I have encountered in my youth from politicians, the pulpit and writings by theologians and ethicists--had some critics after all! That was a very welcome discovery. It inspired me to examine in more detail why so much of moral philosophy and ethics aims at besmirching human beings, why there is so much misanthropy in the air. After all, judging by the evidence surrounding us, people certainly don’t demonstrate some kind of uniform malfeasance. In fact, all in all--when all the science, technology, literature, poetry, entertainment, art and personal matters are taken into account--people come off to be quite respectable, accomplished, and at least decent. Sure there is much viciousness about, too, but it’s perverse to focus only on that.

Maybe worst of all is when some people, especially those in powerful positions over others--e.g., their children--insist on declaring it evil that others do not follow them in their chosen line of work, politics, economics, entertainment, athletics, and such and try to make the dissidents feel guilty for wanting to go it their own way.

I must tip my hat to Montaigne for setting me on a course that rejected what my father tried to inculcate in me, a hatred of myself.

What Western Elites?

Tibor R. Machan

Some avid supporters of the free market write a great deal about Western Elites who, among other things, want to impose democracy on the Middle East and are bent on controlling the world’s financial institutions and doings. Since no person or institution is named, at least so far as I am aware, where these Western Elites are mentioned, I am unable to figure out who are these people, what their broader philosophy or ideology amounts to, why they are doing the things they are doing, including attempting to impose democracy on the people of the Middle East and to control the world's financial affairs.

Nor, come to think of it, am I provided with enough information to learn what the people who make these points about Western Elites actually believe other than their broad commitment to the free market (of which, of course, there is no example anywhere on the globe).

The place where the missives making these references to Western Elites are made is a Web Site where some of my columns supportive of the fully free, libertarian polity are featured. These columns appear on my own websites and on some others, including in some newspapers and magazines. And those who edit the web site where the talk of Western Elites is so prominent have been very kind to me and have always published the columns they have chosen to feature without asking for revisions. (I have also been interviewed by them and all my answers to their questions have been faithfully included in the published interviews.)

I am not interested in getting involved in some kind of cat fight with anyone, especially not with folks who publish many valuable essays about financial issues, specifically about the U. S. Federal Reserve Bank and the banking system of many Western countries. But I am concerned about the fact that these references to Western Elites are so frequent and yet so vague. I am unable to check out for myself what these Western Elites say or think or write. Where are their works published, in what newspapers, blogs, magazines, and books can one find their positions laid out? From reading the discussions where the Western Elites are mentioned--just as “Western Elites”--I cannot go an research the positions of these folks, see if they ever answer the criticism leveled at them, etc.

This disturbs me somewhat because even in short discussions of other people’s views it would be appropriate to indicate what exactly those views are, how they are put by the very people who hold them (instead of by their critics). When some people’s ideas are discussed, it is always helpful to have at least a few direct quotes from the horse’s mouth--some primary as opposed to secondary references. This is why in scholarly treatments one offers footnotes or end notes or other indicators so that readers are able to follow up on the discussion and make sure they are grasping the positions being examined. It also enhances trust.

Of course, columns cannot produces all this--few would want to read a usual column with a bunch of notes at the end--yet even there a name or two could steer the reader in the right direction for purposes of more detailed study. So, I am hoping that the sentiments expressed in this brief missive will reach those who discuss the Western Elites--people who are evidently not friends of liberty, nor of ordinary and unsuspecting folks around the globe--and that they will help out readers of their essays with a few specifics that can be used by them to do one’s own research. I think this isn’t too much to ask for.

One may point out here that I, too, am failing to mention names here but I am not accusing anyone of being bent on imposing anything on anyone or belonging to some elite and, moreover, the folks who are making reference to Western Elites will probably know who they are if they read this missive and could help me out without at this point being named.

Revisiting Public Service Labor Unions

Tibor R. Machan

When one criticizes public service unions this doesn’t imply at all that one is critical of labor unions per se. Because public service is mostly monopolistic--only one first class postal service, only one Medicaid, only one DMV and road system, only one school system--and funded from taxes which are not voluntary, public service labor unions are themselves basically legally protected monopolies. If the teachers at the local elementary school demand something and the parents do not want to meet those demands, the parents have nowhere else to go to get their children educated unless they accept having to pay double--the taxes that go to the elementary school and the tuition that pays for a private alternative.

In contrast, if Toyota’s auto workers demand something from the company and costumers don’t believe they should receive it (for whatever reason), they can go to Ford or VW and not have to keep buying cars from Toyota. This is a huge difference. This is what permits public service labor unions to hold their costumers over a barrel--public school teachers will continue to be paid even if the parents of their pupils no longer want to deal with them. This is why some citizens are complaining about public service unions in particular, not about unionized labor in the private sector. And this is also why public service laborers are able to pull down such hefty pensions--there is no one else offering their service so their terms have to be met.

But from all appearances the members of the public service unions throughout the country, most visibly now in Wisconsin, speak as if they were members of plain old labor unions, comparable to unionized workers in the private, competitive market place (e.g., auto workers). This is an understandable tactic. Most Americans who give the matter any thought at all see unionization as a right all working people have. Not too many may exercise this right these days, admittedly, but they have it, just as you and I have the right to sing in our showers or travel to France even if we do not choose to do so.

So if the controversy were about whether Wisconsin’s and other states’ public union workers should have their right to be members of a labor union legally protected, they would be supported by most Americans. The fact is, however, that public service union members aren’t at all like private sector union members. They enjoy a legally protected monopoly. And that is a violation of the rights of their customers who have nowhere else to go to obtain the service that the public service unions provide.

Maybe a comparison will help to grasp the point. Imagine that those who work at the Department of Motor Vehicles in some state decide they want longer vacations or more pay or better retirement benefits. If they do not receive these, they threaten to walk of their jobs. (In many places throughout the country they are legally forbidden from doing this, precisely because they are so different from private sector union workers.) Drivers in those states have no alternative but to deal with the DMV so the workers there will receive what they demand. There is no other option. The option of banning strikes is for most people in the country a pretty harsh, out and out un-American measure!

Clearly the relationship between public service union members and those for whom they provide their service and the relationship between private sector union members and their costumers is entirely different. But if this is acknowledged, citizens may come to view the position of the public service union members, as well as the benefits they have managed to obtain in their collective bargaining with their public agencies, very differently from how they view it while thinking the two are alike.

Not even the news agencies that report on the current conflicts in Wisconsin (and very possibly in neighboring states) appear to appreciate the difference between public service and private sector unionization. Yet this is a vital fact and understanding it would change dramatically how the vast majority of citizens are perceiving the current controversy.

Censorship or Editorial Judgment?

Tibor R. Machan

The term “censorship” has apparently been quite corrupted. Watching a recent prime time broadcast of a number of recent Saturday Night Live shows I noticed now often those who discuss the program kept referring to the NBC quality control folks as "censors." As I see it, that's like calling a parent a censor for insisting that no pornography is watched on the home TV set. As a metaphor it might do but literally it is wrong.

Censorship is, strictly speaking, when a government (or some agent of it) bans the private showing of some program, like SNL. But when the producers of the show refuse to go along with the writers on what is to be broadcast, that’s not censorship.

I write a lot of columns and now and then--very rarely I admit--an editor of a blog or newspaper who uses these will ask me to revise a sentence or change a word or two in my initial draft, which I then either do or substitute another column.

The editor isn’t censoring me or my column but applying a standard to the material being published in the forum, one the editor is responsible to make as good as it can be (within all kinds of limitations).

So, if the producers or owners of SNL refuse to allow some skit to get on the air, claiming that it is too vulgar or offensive, this too amounts to nothing more than what editors and publishers have the full authority to do.

Now all this should be crystal clear except it is become obscured by the gradual invasion of the private realm by public authorities. Television, especially, is the victim of this because of the official fiction that the broadcast airwaves are public property. Indeed, in 1927 the US Senate, by an act of declaration, nationalized the airwaves. (This was done allegedly so as to help solve a problem faced by the Navy which didn’t like what it regarded the anarchy that prevailed in the electromagnetic spectrum and asked Congress to accommodate it, which Congress did by nationalizing the electromagnetic spectrum, something various experts have called the lazy way.)

Once something is public, in a democracy it is exposed to the dictatorship of the voting and represented majority, never mind any individual rights to liberty or property. So who really can tell who in the last analysis has the proper authority to apply quality control on “public” television?

Of course, these days there are politicians who have no compunction contemplating genuine censorship. Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia recently chimed in about this. And he was directing his censorial inclinations not at some iffy entertainment show but at two cable news networks, Fox-TV and MSNBC-TV. As the Senator put it, “I’m tired of the right and the left.... There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, ‘Out. Off. End. Goodbye.’” And he added, “It would be a big favor to political discourse; to our ability to do our work here in Congress; and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future.” So the Senator's being tired of something justifies such censorial impulses?

Just observe how those in charge of public facilities like parks, forests, beaches, roads, sidewalks, and so forth eagerly intrude on the activities of citizens making use of these. Merchants whose shops open onto the sidewalk, for example, are forbidden to have a smoking section even on the premises that aren’t public because, as the legalese has it, they are “affected with the public interest.” Never mind that by this line of reasoning all those newspapers sold at kiosks and in boxes on street corners could be subject to censorship. (I assume there is some kind of loophole that makes it possible to escape this--for the time being!)

It used to be conservatives who were willing to refuse to conserve the principles of the Founders when it came to pornography or other things of which they disapproved but you can see that this is not so any longer--Senator Jay Rockefeller is a liberal of high standing!

The statist impulse needs constant resistance and opposition, from anyone eager to impose his or her standards on us all. And the recent US Supreme Court ruling protecting the free speech rights of that church that demonstrated at the funerals of American soldiers was a good example of such resistance and opposition. Those people are a despicable bunch, yes, but their rights need protection.

Free Speech is a Basic Human Right

Tibor R. Machan

The New York Times reported recently that "John Galliano, the talented and troubled designer who was fired by the fashion house Christian Dior for making anti-Semitic remarks in a drunken rant at a bar, will be put on trial for the offenses, the Paris prosecutors office said Wednesday." This is of interest to all those who realize that the right to freedom of speech isn’t merely some odd American idea, as some multiculturalists might maintain, but a basic individual human right. It is a basic right that is always under assault from dictators and also, sadly, from earnest but misguided champions of various causes.

For example, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said a while back, in a meeting with intellectuals and writers at [a] book fair’s opening: “There are freedoms, but they can’t contradict our traditions … We must guarantee that freedom of expression agrees with our values.” [From the Christian Science Monitor] Unfortunately such sentiments aren’t confined to dictators but are embraced by many who feel strongly about their values in a country, such as the United States of America, that provides the right to freedom of speech with strong legal protection.

Those who believe that American soldiers who fell in wars fighting for the country’s various objectives need to be honored have found the recent ruling of the U. S. Supreme Court upholding the rights of protesters near the funerals of such soldiers quite outrageous. But instead of directing their outrage at the perverse views of the protesters, they have targeted the Supreme Court for its correct interpretation of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution (which aims to secure everyone’s right to freedom of speech).

It is in fact baffling that the the champions of the fallen soldiers would be so upset about the ruling protecting freedom of speech when what the soldiers supposedly fought and died for is the political system that includes as one of its central ideas that everyone has that right and may exercise it even if such exercise displeases or offends many people. The complaint with the ruling betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles of the American system as laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

Having the right to speak freely has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of what is being said. Indeed, if speech has obvious merits, it hardly needs protection. Only when it prompts some people--who fail to grasp what it is to have such a right--to move to legally silence those whose views they find objectionable does the protection of the right achieve its central objective.

It is interesting to compare how American constitutional law deals with seriously objectionable speech and demonstration with how French law does. It seems that Mr. Galliano's human right to hold whatever despicable views he choose to hold, just like the views of those protesters who agitate at funerals of American soldiers--making the ridiculous claim that the deaths are God's punishment for the support American law gives to gays--are going to be ignored by French prosecutors. Surely if the maniacs here in America have rights--and I do believe they do (while I hold my nose)--so does Mr. Galliano.

Furthermore, if the French government doesn't recognize Mr. Galliano’s right to hold his opinions and express them, it may be time for The New York Times itself to criticize France's legal system, as it often criticizes the legal systems and practices of other countries--e.g., the former South Africa, Chile when it was ruled by General Pinochet, and others. It shows a lack of integrity when editorial writers at The Times stand up only for some people’s basic rights instead of for everyone’s.

But then, of course, The Times and others who share its political philosophy have been doing this for ages: loudly protesting rights violations of some citizens and ignoring such violations when others are the targets (such as those citizens whom the Obama Administration is attempting to compel to purchase health insurance and thus whose right to liberty is being attacked).

Tunisia’s Free Trade Revolt

Tibor R. Machan

In many circles it is a prominent mantra that property rights are not human rights. The rights to private property and to trade it are treated by many political thinkers and jurists as far from binding on us. So, for example, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2005, City of New London, CT, v. Kelo, that taking a person’s land for development by another private party--who might pay higher taxes on it--is just fine. In the current controversy about whether the government is authorized by the US Constitution to force citizens to purchase health insurance, the right to trade freely--or refrain from doing so--is at issue and defenders of President Obama’s position insist that the commerce clause--Article 1, Sec. 8--of the US Constitution should be so interpreted as to authorize such state coercion.

Then, of course, thousands of regulatory edicts, rules and commands from governments at all levels, are defended by many prominent academics as quite OK. This despite the fact that government regulations are tantamount to the unjust practice of prior restraint--interfering with people’s conduct not because it is illegal but because it might be.

The legal history of rationalizing such regulation--what should, in fact, be called regimentation--to authorize such unrelenting intrusiveness and interference in people’s lives is quite tortured. Initially “regulate” was taken to mean “regularize,” and sensibly so since the point was to eliminate tariffs and duties between states that had been colonies and as such used to engage in economic warfare. Once united into one country, all this made no sense and also undermined the free flow of commerce and its contribution to prosperity, so it was wise to regularize all peaceful trade.

In time, however, once interventionism became popular and the US Supreme Court started to back this up--in part because it was thought that such intervention was needed to abolish slavery and segregation--the term “regulate” was interpreted to mean “regiment” instead of “regularize.” And that is the dominant current reading of the clause, with only a few justices, legal scholars, and jurists critical of it. The recent rulings by a few federal judges invalidating President Obama’s health care policy because it orders people to engage in trade with insurance companies has made some use of the older rendition of “to regulate” but opposition to it has been frantic. (The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait referred to it as “laughable”!)

How ill conceived it is that government is thought to be authorized to regiment people’s economic activities and affairs should be plain to anyone who understands a thing or two about human liberty. But what happened in Tunisia to set off the recent rebellion might illuminate the point a bit. Here is what we find in the pages of THE WEEK (February 19, 2011, p. 48), originally published in The Times/N.I. Syndication:

“[Mohamed Bouazizi, the] young [street] trader had been in trouble with the authorities before....Under the dictatorship of President Ben Ali, permits were required for every form of business activity, often accompanied by a bribe. Bouazizi’s family would later claim that he had refused to pay the bribe demanded by the officials....According to other fruit and vegetable pedlars, vendors have a choice when faced with a municipal inspector: they can flee, and leave behind both borrow and merchandise; pay a fine equivalent to several days’ earnings, or fork out a bribe. Bouazizi, it seems, was not inclined to do any of these. When [a 45 year old female inspector] Hamdi began seizing his applies, he tried to grab them back, and she slapped him in the face....”

After this event all hell broke loose and escalated and ended, eventually, in the ouster of President Ben Ali’s government. So, by any reasonable account what brought about the Tunisian upheaval is the government’s intervention with freedom of trade, exactly the kind of conduct by government officials that a good many American jurists, political thinkers and politicians claim is constitutional and certainly not dictatorial. So then all those who try to rationalize such intervention based on a distorted fascistic or socialist ideological reading of the commerce clause, should by all rights defend President Ben Ali’s government, just as they are so willing to defend government’s commercial regimentation throughout America or, indeed, anywhere else where governments embark upon such policies. And it makes no difference whether the policies have the support of the majority, for the same reason that lynching is not justified even if the whole town supports it.

Multiple Universes Anyone?

Tibor R. Machan

An issue that has puzzled many philosophers and cosmologists is whether there is just one universe or might there be many. On first inspection the puzzle appears to be bogus. After all, by “universe” is meant “everything that is.” Other terms used for this are “existence,” “reality,” “the world,” and so forth. But leave it to the very bright men and women in some of the least accessible disciplines to come up with notions that are very odd, at least to those who like to be grounded on Terra firma in their thinking.

However, without some of these apparent flights of fancy certain valuable discoveries of the past would have been overlooked. So the question is, does the idea of multiple universes qualify as one of these apparent flights of fancy or is it per chance a bona fide and promising flight of fancy?

One way that some people come to believe in multiple universes is by considering whether there is anything contradictory in postulating it. Thus, for example, married bachelors or square circles would not qualify since these are outright self-contradictory. Nothing married can also be a bachelor, nothing that’s square can also be a circle. Impossible. So is the idea of multiple universes like these, out and out self-contradictory?

Arguably it is not but then perhaps it is almost. If the meaning of “universe” is “all that exists,” then multiple universes would be a self-contradictory idea since if some other thing existed that’s like a universe, it would just be part of the universe, not an additional universe. After all, “everything” means just that, everything without exception. But if “universe” means something specifiable, with borders or limits, like a playground or sphere, then it would not be out and out self-contradictory to suppose that there are others beside this one we are familiar with.

Yet, this latter approach relies on changing the meaning of “universe.” It no longer is used to mean “everything that exists” but, rather, whatever exists in a certain way and then, quite possibly, other things might exists that way too. Not that there is any reason to think they do only that there could be no objection to the possibility of their existence. As many cosmologists and philosophers would put it, multiple universes are logically possible--there is no formal contradiction in thinking they exist.

Yet, of course, that alone doesn’t establish that multiple universes exist, actually, in reality, as it were. They would be, instead, conceivable, thinkable, perhaps. Like three legged ducks on Mars are--thinkable but with no reason to believe they exist.


But some think that anytime one comes up with some idea that might--just barely might--be realized, it should be treated as in fact existent for in the long run, through eternity, everything possible would in fact be (at some time). Eternity is, after all, a very long time and that gives anything that’s even remotely possible some chance of being actual, at some time at least. Who could rule it out--no one could traps around the whole shebang to establish the matter once and for all.

Yet, are we supposed to form our beliefs based on such flimsy possibilities, ones that are deemed possible only because they cannot be ruled out entirely? It seems that the more reasonable thing to do is to regard such logical possibilities--of what might just be possible but no one knows if they are--as mere fancies instead of something worthy of belief. After all, by such reasoning the mere fact that someone might be guilty of a crime of which he or she is accused would justify regarding the person as possibly guilty. This could then lead to their being treated as suspects who should be investigated. Would that be justified? Would it not, instead, amount to harassment?

So the real challenge is what is reasonable to believe in. Many things that do not qualify might possibly be, at some point, somewhere, but unless solid evidence of their reality is at hand, we should most likely postpone any decision about whether they exist. Which, seems to me, goes for multiple universes.

“The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”*

Tibor R. Machan

In basic reasoning courses one learns that certain ways of thinking are fallacious, others are sound. Sadly, most students don’t actually remember much of what they learn here because these courses are taught too early in their college years, just at the time they are still celebrating no longer being in high school. (Yes, for nearly two years many students pay hardly any attention to their studies, having been incarcerated in school for 12 years prior to entering college!)

Had they been educated about reasoning well versus badly, they might catch some of the howlers committed by members of the media (or anyone else). As a case in point, I had the distinct displeasure of watching Bill O’Reilly during the 2000 presidential election, when the mess in Florida with those hanging chads was going down. In his ponderous and pompous manner, which apparently many people welcome for some reason, O’Reilly announced in the middle of his coverage of the events that journalistic objectivity is a total myth, that everyone is biased, including him. And not just when they are voicing their particular viewpoint. Also, when they report on facts.

Now here is a good case of muddled and fallacious reasoning. It is inconsistent for a journalist to both make a report about journalism--e.g., that it is always biased--while also claiming that all such reports are biased, which is to say unreliable, distorted, one-sided, partisan or subjective. If the latter were true, than the former could not be treated as also true since it would also fall victim to distortion or bias. And why would anyone trust a journalist who distorts the facts he is supposed to be reporting to us? We could find something far more productive to do.

More generally, any kind of corruption in a profession, such as journalism, cannot be inherent. If it were, no distinction between distorted and dependable reporting could be identified. At least the possibility of credible reporting must exist. It’s like food--not all of it could be poisonous; nor could we all be sick all the time. These pairs of concepts, like poisonous versus healthy, corrupt versus honest, biased versus objective, etc., and so forth are meaningful only if both were possible. Just one of them on its own makes no sense. Like beginning versus end, or up versus down--they make sense only when paired.

Anyway, quite a few people get tripped up by forgetting these and many other elementary points of human reasoning. They will accept the idea, for example, that all human thought is fallacious; that everyone is always lying; that our minds are innately defective, etc. None of this could be so, in part because then these reports about us would themselves be unreliable since we made them with our human minds (and our human minds, remember, always distort everything, etc., etc.).

Why is there so much of this sort of babbling about when it is so flawed? (Another infamous case in point is “All property is theft” since theft presupposes the existence of untainted property.) One reason is that a great many people are misanthropes. They are very eager to demean humanity, to put it down as something worthless or inherently flawed. So they attack our most vital faculty, the human mind. (Maybe in fact they are projecting!)

The most prominent example of this is a certain version of the idea of original sin, in the form that states that human beings are basically and thoroughly sinful from the git-go. (If all it means is that human beings are capable of being wicked, well that’s no news!) Another source is the famous and famously misunderstood idea the comes to us from Socrates, the main character of all those great Platonic dialogues. Socrates is supposed to have said, if Plato is to be believed, that the only thing he knows is that he knows nothing (and that no one who thinks he is wise is really wise, including he).

These are very paradoxical claims to make and, most probably, their point is ironic not literal. They could be one approach to keeping hubris in check, making sure no one takes himself too seriously, no one gets carried away with his or her cleverness. This is also where the idea “sophistry” comes from, of cleverness masquerading as wisdom. Sophists in Plato’s time where those who pretended to be wise but in fact merely exhibited technical skill in argumentation, a bit like attorneys are reputed to do.

It would be nice if all those hours of sitting in basic reasoning classes actually left their mark on all students. But since you can become a famous anchor on TV while committing lacunae galore, I suppose many fail to see the benefit from it.

*Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes.

Democrats Against Democracy?

Tibor R. Machan

Am I alone in finding the Wisconsin Democrats who have been AWOL anything but democratic? Sure, they weren’t doing anything illegal like soldiers who go absent without leave. But that’s a legalism that makes little difference here. What counts is that these Democrats refuse to join their Republican colleagues in an effort to sort out how the state might be brought to its economic senses.

Just think of it like a household where enormous debts have accumulated because some members have spent and committed for future payment way more than the family resources and now something needs to be done so as to put the family back on some kind of manageable budget, which will entail reducing allowances and restricting what can be spent on food, household goods, entertainment, education and the rest. So some of the family call a meeting to discuss just how this should be accomplished but, alas, half of them refuse to show.

Except in Wisconsin it’s worse. In a household the few members who do stay to try to deal with the situation are usually authorized to make decisions without those who refuse to take part but in Wisconsin the rules of the process make this approach impossible--a quorum is required to do anything at all.

Now I believe those who take advantage of this and block the work by going AWOL are not serving their constituents properly at all. Because, remember, you cannot get blood out of a turnip. The coffers are empty. The only alternatives are to default or to impose such high taxes that it will kill Wisconsin’s economy--unemployment will increase, investments will vanish, shops and firms will close by the droves. And who wins? It is the Democrats who seem to have only one objective, namely, not to be legally associated with making cuts that will impact public workers. Why? Because by their lights the constituents are too stupid to realize that, well, you cannot get blood from a turnip! So these citizens will not see the effort to make cuts as a means to save at least some elements of the system, to make substantial retirement payments still possible. No. If you just reduce these retiree’s payments, they will certainly retaliate by voting you out of office.

It is at this point that one can raise the question, where is there some leadership around here? Why don’t the Democrats come back and teach their constituency some elementary accounting, like that one needs to makes cuts when one has no funds with which to keep paying the hefty pensions. Indeed, this is one of the more reasonable roles of politicians, to explain public finance to voters instead of to keep promising to deliver what cannot be delivered!

But the Democrats have chosen another path, at least for a long period until finally the Republican colleagues managed to come up with a few adjustments. As reported in The Washington Post,

“In Ohio, Republican lawmakers agreed to modify a bill that would have banned collective bargaining, allowing state workers to negotiate on wages. Michigan's GOP governor offered to negotiate with public employees rather than create political gridlock. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) called on GOP lawmakers to abandon their "right to work" bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for an employer to require workers to become or remain members of a labor union.

“Even in Wisconsin--where more than 60,000 demonstrators have camped out at the Capitol for the past week to protest a budget plan by Gov. Scott Walker (R) to end collective-bargaining rights for public employees--Republicans and Democrats took a small but significant step toward resolving their clash....”

It was about time. What is still a mystery is just how all these phony obligations to public workers, obligations that were known as impossible to fulfill from the git-go, seem acceptable to make in the first place. If you work for me and my budget goes to a certain level but you demand I pay you a lot me, is it not fraud for me to promise that I will pay you way beyond it? How come something like that isn’t the focus of the debate? Why is it even permissible to make such promises? It would seem to me even illegal to do so, no?

But it looks like politicians are held to a far lower standard of negotiation than we ordinary citizens are when we deal with one another. And the Democrats in many states would appear to be willing to corrupt their precious democracy itself so as to try to avoid the problems with their evidently reckless public finance policies. But then they have corrupted the idea of limited government all along, so this isn’t a stretch for them.

Are Public Unions Unjust?

Tibor R. Machan

Bona fide Labor unions work within a free market system where firms compete for customers who are normally able to switch from sellers of wares and services if they want to. Public works are noncompetitive, however. Workers who belong to public unions conduct their labor negotiations without their employers facing any competitors. The USPS, for example, has a monopoly over first class mail delivery; teachers at public schools are working for monopolistic employers--students must attend school and the funds are confiscated through taxation and not obtained through voluntary exchange. So, as the saying goes, public workers have the taxpayers over a barrel--there are no alternatives and in most cases one cannot refuse to deal with these workers.

So public workers unions are not genuine free market agents. As such they are able to have their terms met by the taxpaying public basically at the point of a gun. The public must deal with these workers otherwise they face legal sanctions. There is nowhere else to go apart from moving out of the state to another where the same situation obtains, where once again public unions possess monopoly powers and costumers have nowhere else they can turn to get a different deal or to avoid dealing altogether.

In a genuine free market place unionization would involve organizing workers in a firm that competes with others for costumers and with which costumers are free not to enter into trade. So the unions would not be able to engage in extortionist practices, making demands that must by law be met. If one’s child attends a public--or, as some prefer calling them, government--school, and teachers decide they want a higher salary or other benefits, the option of leaving the school doesn’t exist because one will be taxed to pay for it anyway. The same basic setup exists when it comes to any public work and unions. So for these folks to unionize is quite unjust.

Indeed, the rationale behind public works is not the same as behind private works. In the latter all the parties are involved so as to get the best deal they can find and bargaining occurs to bring this about. Public works, however, are supposed to amount to public service, something done not for profit but as a commitment to the public good or interest. Anyone who views public work as if it were the same as private work is suffering from a misconception or perpetrating a hoax.

Accordingly, all the people who work for governments, which are all supported through confiscatory payments--that is, taxation--are strictly speaking ineligible for unionization.

Public work in contrast to private business is something legally required and paid for involuntarily. So unlike going to the grocery store, of which there can be several in one’s neighborhood and which one can actually avoid if one decides to do with little food and household supplies, in the case of public services citizens are not free to deal with others or walk away from the providers.

Clearly, then, the original idea of labor organization into unions does not fit the public service situation. Unfortunately, this is rarely kept in mind. Thus when in Wisconsin or anywhere else for that matter public service employees are insisting on retaining the benefits they have obtained through bargaining with the government they were getting a very special deal. Public policy imposed their services on the citizenry and now the citizenry is no longer able to come up with the loot previously extracted from them via what comes to extortionist means. Yet, because much of the population--egged on by people who would very likely just as soon impose public services on everyone in every line of work (just check out Paul Kurgman’s column in The New York Times last Monday [2/21/11])--has sympathy for the usual laborer or worker when these are often dealing with powerful firms in a free market, the unions are getting a free pass in their current conflict with their employers.

This situation needs to be seriously reexamined. It may indeed imply that the entire idea of public service, let alone public service unionization, is misguided.

Making versus Owning

Tibor R. Machan

Now it is obvious to most of us that one need not make something so as to own it, fair and square. No one made one’s eyes, kidneys, and other organs and limbs yet they belong rightfully to the person who has them, no one else.

Beyond this of course one way to come to own something is by creating it, like a table or musical composition. So often making something makes it one’s own. But that’s not the only way one can come to own something. One can receive something as a gift! It then belong to one, no one else. One can find something that’s been abandoned or that’s just out there in the wilds. Unless someone else has come upon it and laid claim to it, one can come to own it this way, as well. Certainly if I find a gold nugget on an unowned desert or mountain, I can come to own this and no one may thereafter take it from me with impunity.

While all this would seem to be plain common sense, it needs often to be reiterated because the failure to keep it in mind provides would be confiscators of private property the warped idea that they may get stuff from us if only we didn’t make it. This notion of the public ownership of unearned or unmade holdings has tyrannical consequences.

Those who spread the ruse that we cannot own what we haven’t produced hope to persuade us that they, on the other hand, can. This is, of course, fallacious thinking, the fallacy of the non sequitor--it doesn’t follow! But because ownership and production or creation are so closely associated in our minds, it sounds like there may be something to the idea. There isn’t! And it is vital to remember it because otherwise the notion can unleash tyranny, Draconian and petty, all over the place. The promoters of the notion that you must have made it so as to own it would like nothing more than have you hand over to them whatever you didn’t come by via earning or making it. But it is clear, once considered carefully, that nothing like that follows. They have no right to any of it, you do.

There is, of course, no reasonable doubt that when one makes something one is very likely its owner, although there are quite a few exceptions. If I hire you to be my scout for valuable resources and you come up with such, it is very like that these will belong to me, not to you. What belongs to you is the salary I promised you for your scouting services. But what you discovered will rightfully be mine. (I might also have lost all my investment in you had you come up empty handed!) Also, if you came across some valuable item in my backyard while attending one of my festivities, what you found would not be yours but mine, although you need not call to my attention that you did find it.

Let’s just conclude from these minimal reflections that ownership--the right to private property--can be a fairly complicated matter. While its foundation is simple enough in most cases, its elaboration in a complicated society required a nuanced legal system, with a solid tradition of property law. This is why it is vital that no legislature or court be tolerated when it distorts private property rights (e.g., via misapplied doctrines like eminent domain). And in order to prevent the corruption of the principle of private property rights in a complex society, the citizenry--via research and scholarly centers, schools, punditry, think tanks and so forth--needs to be vigilant. Otherwise the sophistic enemies of freedom will triumph.

And those sophists are not resting, believe me. All one needs to do is read some of the publications--journals, magazines, newsletters, blogs, etc.--produced by these sophists to learn just how diligent they are in their efforts to unravel the private property rights system that had been developed over time under the influence of the classical liberals.

Krugman and Bias

Tibor R. Machan

In a recent column Princeton economist a regular New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claims that the economics profession--including the editors of scholarly journals and the staff at econ departments--is fraught with bias. This is a serious charge, impugning the integrity of those involved. Any scientist in any discipline who engages in biased thinking is disloyal to his oath of office, one might say.

Now if the bulk of those in a given scientific or scholarly discipline have reached conclusions in favor of certain systems or policies, this could be the result of bias but it need not be. Accordingly, the term "bias" may be severely misused by Krugman.

Suppose engineers favor lighter versus heavier materials in building skyscrapers. Would this be a bias? Only if they did so without a sound reasons. Taking a certain stance in economics need not be a bias by any means. It can be well grounded, supported by research and analysis.

All of the practical disciplines involve selectivity--e.g., in medicine safer and more effective drugs are selected over other ones. Again, only if the reason for this is unjustified would that amount to a bias. So when Kgurman advocates the injection of more stimuli into the economy this, too, need not amount to a Keynesian bias unless it is done thoughtlessly. And what other economists are doing when they defend public policies that are based on free market economic theories might but need not be a bias. It could derive from honest and competent investigation in their field of study.

But there is a difficulty about all this. Throughout the history of the social sciences there has been a problem with reaching policy conclusions, with making claims about what bureaucrats, politicians, and others who are responsible to propose what should be done ought to say and do. This is because of the powerful influence of value-free thinking in the epistemological foundations of these sciences.

The very influential 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume and later the positivist school of the philosophy of science that followed his lead insisted that no one can establish any solid foundations for what ought to or ought not to be done. As the point is often put, no “ought” can be derived from “is.” (Actually, Hume argued that none can be deduced but this has been widely misunderstood to mean that no argument can be given for normative conclusions based on observations and descriptions of facts. But that view, if true, would abolish all of the practical sciences.)

Because of the widespread acceptance of this epistemological stance, the overwhelming majority of social scientists took it as an article of proper science that all statements favoring how one ought to proceed, be this in private conduct or public policy, amounted to something unsupportable--a bias or prejudice--instead of something defensible by human reason and research.

Whether this outlook is sound is a very long story and cannot be explored in a brief discussion but it can be said that there is much debate about it. One very big problem with it is that it is self-defeating since it issues a conclusion about how scientists ought to do their work, the very thing that the position says no one can reasonably do. But, in any case, this idea that all value judgments, recommendations as to how people out to act, must amount to biases has been quite prominent.

Accordingly whether it is the free market or statism that is being defended by an economist, by the the tenets of the prominent underlying philosophy of science it will always amount to a bias. In short, no one can rationally defend some policy of action since these all involve saying what should or ought to be done.

What then is left for policy studies? Only the determination of whether a policy has widespread support. In a largely democratic society that means whether the voting public favors or opposes it. But that doesn’t do away with the theoretical problem--the majority’s choice of policy is still no more than a bias according to this view.

By now, of course, the philosophical case in favor of construing all policy proposals as expressing no more than a bias has been widely disputed but, sadly, this hasn’t had a major impact on how many social scientists think. Some tend to sense that there is something amiss with the idea but that doesn’t mean they have come up with a cogent alternative.

In any case, what Krugman is doing in labeling the free market stance a bias is either saying something that is obvious since all policy positions are biases from his perspective; or he is begging the question, which is a serious logical fallacy. He would need to show that the free market stance is unjustified, flawed, and advocated only as a matter of a personal prejudice, which of course he has not done.

So what Krugman has done instead is distort the meaning of “bias” to serve his own ideological opposition to--we could call it his own “bias” against--the free market.

Where Multiculturalism is OK

Tibor R. Machan

It is reported that France’s, England’s and Germany’s leaders have issued an announcement claiming that multiculturalism is a failure. But are they right? Or perhaps it is more likely that implementing multiculturalism the way it has been tried in these and many other countries cannot work? Multiculturalism requires a particular kind of legal system. Not any will do.

What is multiculturalism? For political purposes it is the idea that members of different cultures can co-exists within a given legal order. But what order might that be? (There is an untenable philosophical idea of multiculturalism which holds that every culture is equally sound, equally well suited to human community life, which is clearly bunk.)

Now if members of different cultures are expected to co-exists as in the same family or fraternity or church, there will be serious problems, irresolvable conflicts afoot. Take those who believe in polygamy or who think women must not show any skin in public. Surely close coexistence between such folks and others who don’t share these practices is going to be difficult. But impossible?

In a society that strictly upholds the principle of private property rights the potential for conflict among members of even radically different cultures and religions is drastically curtailed. This is fairly obvious--if you stick to your own place as you practice your culture’s edicts and principles, you are not going to run into much opposition. Frank can do his bull fighting in his arena but you need not join him and can ban it where you are in charge. I can marry as many women as will have me where I am the owner of the realm while you can insist on the practice of monogamy where you are.

Crisscrossing the various cultures in such a society would be by mutual consent. No one would be required to admit into his or her realm those of whose cultural practices one disapproves. Catholics would not need to accept the practices of Jews or Muslims or atheists where they are the proprietors. And the examples can multiply endlessly.

Now it has to be admitted that there are limits to what a regime of private property can make room for as far as diverse practices are concerned. It would not be permitted to intrude upon other people who don’t consent to such intrusion. One could not trespass on to other people’s land and various spheres either. So if one’s culture demands that one invade the spaces of others, that would not be permissible. But that is a restriction that everyone should be able to live with since if one’s practices are important, they would be important mainly to oneself and one’s fellow faithful or cultural mates. To impose these on non-believers could not be necessary so as to be loyal to the creed.

It was the late Harvard political philosopher Robert Nozick who called attention to this feature of a genuine free society. He called it “experiments in utopia”--innumerable different approaches to community life carried out side by side with the only common requirement that everyone’s basic rights, especially private property rights, are respected and protected. In his powerful book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), he argued that while other systems demand a one size fits all policy for everyone to follow, in a free society there is room for a great variety of ways to live.

America in a way approximates this and has done so all along. Maybe more of that is what we need to create peace among people. And maybe that is one reason why some Americans hope that their ways are going to spread around the globe.

In contrast, consider the religious conflicts in Jerusalem where three different faiths are all laying claim to one realm instead of dividing it and living peacefully together. The public square can never be truly multicultural while a group of private ones definitely can.

Holding One's Nose for Principles

Tibor R. Machan

One of the difficulties with standing on principle is that often one is defending them when they are practiced by bad people. Or when bad conduct is involved. In both kinds of cases one may have no sympathy at all for the specific but still finds it important to defend the principle, as when one defends sleazy journalists or artists against those who would want to censor them.

In England recently a couple of homosexuals won a court case that forces bread and breakfast places to rent to them even when the owners disapprove of homosexuality. And, of course, the argument advanced was all about public accommodations, as if opening one’s establishment for rent somehow committed one to accept every prospective renter. Why is that supposed to be a knock down argument for forcing renters to rent to anyone? Presumably because commerce is a public action.

Now by this line of reasoning censorship, too, should be allowed since most material that’s the target of it is sold or viewed in public places or places that are adjacent to public places. This is how imposing government smoking regulations and bans on restaurants and bars is legally justified--these places all open on to public roads or sidewalks, so they are "affected with a public interest," a phrase first used in the USA by the Supreme Court in Munn v. Illinois (1877). Never mind that newspapers are often sold in kiosks and on street corners. But because of the explicit protection provided in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, they are immune to government regulation. (This may not hold as statute in the UK but is more of a tradition there, while it is indeed a constitutional principle in the USA.)

Whatever the law is, the moral fact of the matter is that one’s sayings and writings may not be banned or regulated by anyone. Nor should one’s decisions as to one’s trading partners be subject to government regulation, however odious the terms are by which one accepts or rejects a trading partner.

Of course, in innumerable cases even if the government wants to regulate terms or trade it just cannot do so. One may decide not to purchase goods or services someplace because one knows that the owners are of a faith or political position that one opposes. Or they are of a race against which one is irrationally hostile. Millions of shoppers are free to engage in such unjust discrimination, while, of course, vendors are not (which, by the way, violates a cardinal feature of the rule of law, namely, that every one is equal under the law--shoppers and vendors alike).

Conceivably, however, having announced in an advertisement that one’s bed and breakfast place is available for rent does commit one to rent to any civilized person who comes up with the proper funds. Yes, that is a pretty good argument but in a free society it can be circumvented by making it clear, up front, that one does not accept certain people as prospective renters. So if you place a notice to that affect in the advertisement or by the entrance, there ought to be no objection to excluding those whom you don’t chose to deal with even if what you are doing is morally insidious.

The mere fact that one trades may not be used to subject parties to the trade to public micromanagement. After all, marriages are usually public--one must get a license--and so are many other noncommercial interactions with people. In a free society one must tolerate those who would deploy deplorable criteria for these as well as for doing business.

As much as it is a contemptible practice to reject homosexuals or blacks or whoever as prospective trading partners, it is even more contemptible to rob people of the liberty to determine whether they will do business with certain others. Yes, they need to be up front, otherwise by the standard of the reasonable person it is understood that anyone is welcome; yet if that is not one’s choice, however insidious that may be, one who openly opts out ought not to be made to embrace it. Let neighbors, colleagues, family, friends and others exert peer pressure or boycotts so as to change such people’s ways. But do not coerce them to do the right thing--it must be their free choice.

Unjustly discriminating against people isn’t assault or battery or some other kind of aggression, so the law must not interfere with it.

Besmirching Libertarianism

Tibor R. Machan

Now that libertarianism has gotten some publicity in mainstream forums, those who are convinced of its merit have much work to do. This is because of the well publicized distortions of the position in prominent forums, especially by well credentialed academics in law, political economy, ethics, philosophy, and other disciplines bearing a public policy. You see, the idea that no one ought to coerce another even for noble purposes is pretty much common sense in America. Sure, some folks disagree, among them many highfalutin academics with great skills at sophistry. But the bulk of those who vote pretty much agree that when you want something from your fellows, you need to ask them instead of robbing them. So when this is being denied, lots of fancy footwork needs to be deployed, which is just what’s being done by numerous pundits at The New York Times and other outfits that champion all kinds of coerced wealth redistribution. (Of course, wealth redistribution goes on peacefully all the time, but that’s not under these statists’ control, so they don’t like it!)

What you can expect from these people is fancy discussions about how, in fact, the American system gives the legal authority to Congress and others in government to take, take, and take anything they want from you and me, as well as to force you to do what they want you to, “for the public interest.” And to make their case more palatable, they need to make it appear that the libertarian reading of the US political tradition--that reading that made it exceptional instead of just a watered down version of feudalism--is callous, heartless, and bent on undermining the public good at every turn. By besmirching the position this way, the unsophisticated citizenry, whose members are libertarian at the gut or second nature level, might then get turned around and give the statists the power they clamor for.

But here is an important piece of information that one can use to rebut this underhanded effort to discredit human liberty and to empower the statists: the American political system has a very clear doctrine of the public good (or interest). It is stated in the Declaration of Independence and it consists of a system of laws that secure the natural rights of the citizenry. That’s the American version of the public interest, namely, protecting everyone’s liberty to live his or her life by his or her own judgment. That is why a legal system is instituted, not to serve other ends, the bulk of which are, of course, on the agendas of the statists. What the Founders did so brilliantly is discern the public good or interest correctly, based on what in fact all members of the public will benefit from. And this is their being free from aggression by other people even when such aggression would be deployed for high sounding objectives.

Now it is very tempting to designate everything someone badly desires as being in the public interest. Just listen to all those lobbyists who march to centers of power peddle their special interests as in need of being pursued for the public good. But this is a ruse and it is precisely in the proper public interest to unmask and resist it, which is everyone’s basic right to life, liberty and property. That is what everyone benefits from without any cost to anyone else. That is a bona fide public good, not some trumped up version which always amounts to ripping some people off so that the goals of some others get served.

All this is vital to remember as one witnesses the desperate efforts of sophisticated statists to discredit human liberty, to label it “fundamentalism” and other ad hominems. Sadly the prominent, prestigious forums are mostly in the hands of statists so there will not be much of a chance to do intellectual battle with these sophists on the turfs them dominate. Have you ever read anyone in The New York Review of Books who had a nice thing to say about individual liberty or free markets? Just like Karl Marx did with the right to property--which he dubbed a right of selfishness that makes all sorts of mischief possible (omitting all the wonderful things this right serves as well and depending on the nasty version of "selfishness" so popular since Hobbes rendered the self something nasty and brutish)--these statists only stress the relatively rare misconduct that men and women engage in when they are free. So they will not permit anyone to say otherwise in those forums they dominate (which, by the ways, they could not do without the right to private property being well protected).

Libertarianism is a sound political idea but it faces an uphill fight given how its embrace means the demotion of all sorts of tyrants, Draconian or petty, who are very reluctant to give up their well entrenched power.