The Olympics and Politics

The Olympics and Politics

Tibor R. Machan

Strictly speaking sports and politics should be separate, just as should be religion and politics.  Of course folks with strong religious convictions will often be guided by them as they make political choices.  So people who hold to the pro-life or pro-choice position on abortion will choose candidates and policies accordingly, although they could just as easily be guided by their convictions apart from their link to their faith.  In other words, whatever is one’s source of values will make a difference to how one aligns oneself in public policies. But the best option is to keep one’s personal values at home.  And rooting for people on political grounds pretty much corrupts athletics.

The substance of athletics is performance, never mind why one wants to perform well in some event.  Yet there are some political lessons to be learned from competitive athletics.  One is just how irrational is egalitarianism, the view that the best social arrangement is where everyone enjoys equal advantages and disadvantages in life--the same income, the same health insurance, the same emotional state, etc.--with no one better or worse off than anyone else.  This is the egalitarian doctrine that motivates a great many political theorists.  

The most extreme version of this idea was advocated by Jean Jacques Rousseau who thought it is a natural and proper state of human society, one toward which every actual society should strive.  In our time President Obama has been a vocal advocate of egalitarianism, so much so that he thinks public policy should be guided by it, at least when it comes to what he considers important matters like securing health insurance for everyone, at least in the country of which he is president, or “distributing” income.

The best fictional criticism of egalitarianism occurs in George Orwell’s short novel, Animal Farm.  Another fictional scrutiny of the system may be found in Kurt Vonnegut's story, Harrison Bergeron which treats the two sides of the debate quite evenhandedly but ultimately reveals just how egalitarianism distorts human affairs.

The Olympic Games come in very handy for those of us who find egalitarianism morally and politically intolerable.  The Games show how little appeal there is to forcing everyone into the same mold, how much violence and coercion it would--and where attempted does--take to even toy with bringing about an egalitarian society.

The only place where equality has a decisive role in human social affairs is when it comes to protecting everyone’s basic rights.  This is the way the Declaration of Independence finds room for equality.  Once everyone’s basic rights are secure, from that point on no room exists for equalization in a just human community.

Sure, there can be special areas where equality can be of value, for example in the application of standards and rules, as shown in athletics.  But even there equality will apply in highly diverse ways--one way in the classroom, another in the legal system, and yet another at a beauty contest.  General equality belongs only in the protection of individual rights, period.

Elsewhere it is just as it’s illustrated by the Olympic Games, with variety and differences breaking out all over.  As long as these are peacefully obtained, as long as ranking comes about without corruption, there is nothing objectionable about inequalities in human affairs.  Furthermore, attempting to make things equal achieves the exact opposite since those doing the attempting will enjoy the worst kind of inequality, namely, power over their fellows as they try to manipulate everyone to be equal.

Just as elsewhere in most of nature, in human affairs, too, inequality is the norm.  But since human beings are free to establish various rules in their societies, they have the option, which they ought to exercise, to preclude all coercion from human interactions.  Beyond that, it is futile to try to exclude inequalities in human affairs.  

It is not inequality that needs to be abolished but coercive force.  With that achieved, at least substantially, let diversity and difference be the norm.  As that old saying goes, “Vive la difference.”  Any serious examination of the prospects of an egalitarians polity should reveal just how insidious the idea is.  Just consider requiring that all outcomes of the Olympic Games be equal!

A note on "positive rights" (entitlements)

http://www.dailymotion.com/

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Machan's Archives: Essay on Government v. State

Machan Archives: Essay on “Government” v. “State”


‘Government’ vs. ‘State’



Concepts such as that of “government,” like those of “democracy,” “law,” “justice,” “freedom” and “love,” to cite just a few, is what W. B. Gallie, called “essentially contestable” (see his “Essentially Contested Concepts”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 56 [1955-56]). I heard the characterization from Alasdair McIntyre back in the mid-70s at the Creighton Club, the New York State philosophical society, although not applied to “government” but to a slew of other concepts that are constantly being debated.



Of course, from within specific philosophical positions these concepts are pretty firmly defined, so that, say, in classical liberalism “freedom” is usually defined to mean “absence of coercive force” or “not being subject to initiated force” while from within Marxism it’s taken to mean “absence of necessity.”



Within libertarianism, though, the concept “government” is still unstable. Anarcho-libertarians, who argue for something they dub “competing legal systems” “or competing defense organizations,” claim that the concept “government” means, essentially, “a monopoly of legal services over a given territory.” This isn’t as clear cut as one might wish. Are they talking about legally protected monopolies or monopolies plain and simple, which could mean very competitive organizations, indeed—for example, a department store sitting on a large piece of private property that has no competitor right then and there but is amply competed with by stores in the nearby vicinity? Yet where it stands, it’s a monopoly, in a sense. Or an apartment house—it too stands alone and to rent a competitor’s dwellings, one needs to move.



There are libertarians called minarchists, with whom I am usually linked—along with Ayn Rand, John Hospers, the late Robert Nozick and during the last few years of his life, Roy A. Childs, Jr. (although he also penned a famous piece, “The Contradiction in Objectivism,” back in 1968, for Rampart Journal, in which he announced his dissent from Rand’s minarchist position). I disagree that governments may not compete and may coerce anyone. To be fair, neither did Ayn Rand agree that governments may coerce anyone—she, for example, denied that taxation is permissible while also claiming government is, thus disowning the characterization of government by perhaps the most famous anarcho-libertarian, Murray N. Rothbard.



But as Gallie’s point makes clear, this debate as to what is the most sensible, reasonable definition of “government” is likely to continue for a long time, if not indefinitely. In my own view, for example, the institutions anarcho-libertarians support are governments in every important respect—they are administrators, maintainers, and protectors of bona fide law within human communities. What critics claim is that such administration, maintenance and protection do not require contiguous spheres of jurisdiction but could work as a sort of crisscross system.



From a few historical cases, in which such a system had been in place—in ancient Iceland, for example—these disputants conclude that as a general rule governments could operate quite happily, smoothly, with no judicial failures—such as inability to arrest prosecute criminals or to render effective service when citizens (or clients) seek police protection—serving crisscross localities. OK, so this is an interesting debate and worthy of pursuit. Either way we could get to government, however.



My one beef with many who reject this idea is that they refuse to admit that “government” need not involve coercion at all. They could just as easily dispute that the crisscross system involves law, properly understood, only, perhaps, various rules or edicts or policies. And even more problematic is their all to frequent use of the concept “state” as a substitute for government.



For example, in a recent letter to Liberty magazine, Professor Roderick Long of Auburn University sets out to take issue with Bruce Ramsey’s claim that Hernando “de Soto’s work . . . shows that a healthy economy crucially depends on property titles, identity records, and other institutions of formal law” and is thus “a standing refutation of libertarian anarchism.”



As Long proceeds in his letter, however, an interesting switch takes place. He contends that “as the research of scholars like Bruce Benson, Tom Bell, and others has shown, history is filled with examples of legal systems that were perfectly formal—complete with official procedures, court records, and the rest—and yet private, competitive, and non-governmental.” He states that “in late medieval Europe . . . the commercial law known as the Law Merchant outcompeted the government legal system . . . .” And then, from this, he jumps to the following conclusion: “Hence the state is not necessary for formal law.”



I don’t know about Bruce Ramsay, but I certainly would not conclude from de Soto’s work that the state is necessary for anything, although I would agree that governments may well be. Because what Long and all those other scholars show, as far as I am able to discern, is that in medieval Europe there were different kinds of governments, some of them coercive and others not.



OK, so what’s wrong with this conclusion? I assume critics would now claim that I am twisting the concept “government” to suit my goals, namely, to defend governments as quite possibly a just institution administering, maintaining and protecting bona fide law. I dispute this—I claim that they are wrongly claiming that governments must be unjust and so the concept ought to be abandoned by all right thinking folks. But one way they support this is by equivocating between “government” and “state.”



It is well known that the concept “state,” especially as it figured in the writings of Hegel and Marx, is not the same as “government.” It is, instead, the entire organized community, akin to what Aristotle meant by “polis.” The state does, then, call to mind, quite sensibly, a fully coercive leviathan, a pyramid-shaped, top down system of coercive regimentation of nearly all facets of human community life (apart from those deemed not essential, although even those would be subject to regimentation if the agents of the state so chose).



Now I am not going to resolve any of the main disputes here but I wish to make just one little final point. To equivocate between “government” and “state” is wrong and even dirty pool. It would be similar dirty pool if those critical of anarcho-libertarians referred to what the latter advocate as “chaos,” recalling not the arguably esoteric conception of anarchy individualist and libertarian anarchists have been developing but the position of those old fashioned, classical anarchist who meant by the term “lawless society.”



Of course, when emotions run high—as they tend to be in discussions among people who are nearly in full agreement and know that they are more likely to be able to land a blow at those in close range than at those who don’t even pay attention to their views—it’s tempting to engage in hyperbole.



Labeling an allegedly “near pure” libertarian opponent a “supporter of the state” or “a statist” does carry a painful sting. One would hope, however, that just this temptation is resisted by serious scholars.



March 15, 2004

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Is Utilitarianism and Sound Ethics?

Is Utilitarianism a Sound Ethics?

Tibor R. Machan

Recently some who failed to disclose that Penn State University's assistant football coach molested several youngsters tried to excuse themselves saying they remained silent in the hope of preserving the university’s good name.  In effect they argued that the greater good of the school’s reputation excused their silence despite the fact that such silence may have shielded the culprits from having to answer for their misconduct. 

Those who study ethics arguably face, in this case, utilitarianism in action. For the sake of a "greater good," namely, the reputation of an admittedly vital educational institution, was it proper to try to hide the molestation?

Is this an accurate general assessment of what transpired?  Did those who defended their silence act like proper utilitarians?  Did the pursuit of the university’s good name justify suppressing the information about the molestation? And does this undermine utilitarianism's credibility?

Even people outside of academic philosophical ethics often reason that the greater good may require engaging in what ordinarily amounts to malpractice.  Inflicting the pain of, e.g., spanking or harsh military training may be justified so as to achieve a greater good.  Confiscating the property of citizens, as is done via taxation, is at times justified or excused since taxation collects resources that are spent on worthwhile public projects. As Oliver Wendell Holmes is reputed to have said, with taxation--the pain--we buy civilization--the greater good.  And so on and so forth.

There are, of course, cases that appear to fit the utilitarian idea that the “pursuit of the greater good justifies some evils” though they aren’t normally found acceptable. Pursuing a sexual liaison with a highly desired potential partner doesn’t normally justify coercion such as rape, stalking or harassment! The immense pleasure some child molesters may gain from their mistreatment of children doesn’t come close to justifying their conduct.  But perhaps it should do so, at least if utilitarianism is a sound ethical position.  Why not sacrifice the child’s well being when in other instances such a price is deemed to be worth the reward?

Probably because no one is really a consistent, unrelenting utilitarian.  No ends appear to justify certain means, however important or desirable those ends may be. Utilitarianism is thus usually moderated by the doctrine of individual rights, especially the right not to be used by others against one’s will. But is such coercive use of unwilling others ever acceptable and why?  How is it that President Obama’s health care policy--which mandates that those who don’t want to purchase insurance be forced to do so anyway--is widely approved of but torture, in the service of gaining vital information from unwilling victims, is not? Why is the confiscation of people’s resources and labor accepted on utilitarian grounds--the public interest is served by it all, no?

It would appear that there is a standard of value that exists--or is, at least, accepted by many--in terms of which the trade-offs between various ways of treating other people is supposed to be calculated or determined.  If my child were being held captive and threatened with severe harm by two people one of whom, who can provide information has been captured, torture would not appear highly objectionable.  Why not?  Maybe because it’s been established that the individual is guilty of kidnapping.  So torturing someone who is known to be guilty of such viciousness would appear to be OK. Righteous indignation at such torture would appear to be seriously misplaced. (Indeed, some of the complaints about torturing terrorists seem therefore to be disingenuous.)

These matters aren’t academic by a long shot.  Those involved in operations on the field of battle need to decide about them and can be held accountable for what they have decided.  

Does utilitarianism avail us of a convincing rationale to deal with these kind of issues?  Or does a rights based public policy do a better job? To explore such issues is why a proper education must include a solid dosage of moral philosophy or ethics. 

The New York Times Meets Property Rights

The New York Times meets Property Rights

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last several years I have subscribed to The Sunday New York Times, mainly because it came with accessibility to its daily online editions.  I like to read the Op Ed pieces and editorials and chime in here and there with some sanity where the paper lays out its loony leftists ideology.  For example, I found it valuable to oppose the doctrine that people are entitled to a great variety of free goods and services, i.e., goods and services others must pay for.

When President Obama’s health insurance scheme became the subject of widespread public discussion, I was committed to pointing out how this was going to be yet another case of trying to rob Peter so as to benefit Paul, by whatever obscure criterion of eligibility.  I was targeting my points at Paul Krugman and others who served as Mr. Obama’s ideological cheerleaders.  But not just at Professor Krugman but at all those who promoted policies that would chip away at human liberty, in more or less Draconian ways.

Well, suddenly The New York Times no longer makes it possible for online readers to offer comments easily--to do so one must climb over several walls, email letters to the editor, etc., etc.  And reading the comments of other readers is no longer possible (or if it is then it is by no means as simple as it used to be).  In other words, The New York Times is making changes, most likely to save money or to avoid having to deal with contrarians among its online readers.  I don’t actually know what lies behind the changes but I do not like them.  

However, and this is a notion that the editors and publishers at The Times probably do not appreciate at all, the paper belongs to them and they have the authority--based on the right to private property--to institute the changes however much I and very probably a bunch of other readers do not like them.  We are not entitled to the provision of various services from The Times, such as accepting comments from readers, notifying us that the comments have appeared online, etc., and so forth.  The paper belongs to them not me and others whose desires are no longer being fulfilled as they used to be.  Something has changed at The Times and the publishers and editors there have the right to make the needed adjustments just as they see fit.  They do not owe me and others like me a platform for expressing our dismay with what appears in the pages of the paper.  Yes, we may wish for this very much.  We may even have become habituated to offering up our ideas for the editors and readers to ponder.  But that doesn’t entitle us one whit to being given room in the pages of The Times.

Only, the publishers and editors and most Op Ed contributors to the paper just don’t get it--they are exercising a right that they do not recognize for other people, such as those who do not want to contribute funds the Mr. Obama’s health care budget or who do not want to follow mandates to which they gave no consent! These editors and publishers just decided, unilaterally, to close me and thousands of others out from the forums they could continue to keep open to us all.  And they probably don’t even realize that this right, this authority they have to do so, is entirely inconsistent with their welfare statist public philosophy. 

No, I and others like me do not have a right to gain entrance to the pages of The New York Times, in print or online.  And the folks at The Times know this well and good and act accordingly.  They didn’t need my permission to shut me out.  It was their right to make that decision.  

Which is central to human freedom, based on the right to private property, a right The Times doesn’t much like and certainly doesn’t defend in its editorials.

What's the Fuss About those Uniforms?

What’s the Fuss About those Uniforms?

Tibor R. Machan

        Senate majority leader Reid expressed outrage about the fact that the uniforms American athletes were going to wear at the opening ceremonies for this summer’s Olympics in London, UK, were manufactured in China. No, he wasn’t complaining because the places where they were made employ minors or violate other standards of proper business.  No, he was fussing about the fact that making the uniforms was outsources.  And now it appears commitments have come forth from Ralph Lauren, who has the contract to produce the uniforms, that outsourcing the task of making the uniforms will be stopped.

        What insanity. Who makes such uniforms competently and least expensively?  That is the question, not where they are made.  Commerce isn’t about nationalism but about cutting good deals.  How many of us wear garments, use gadgets and devices, rely on various articles of clothing such as buttons and fabrics, accessories such as watches, glasses, and so forth, made who knows where by who knows whom? Why is this important if it doesn’t involve any kind of forced labor?

         Dissing Mr. Lauren for finding a manufacturer of the requisite uniforms in China or anywhere else where a good deal could be struck is vile.  That is just what he is supposed to do when he is contracted for a job like this one.  When domestic politics focuses on such perverse issues, how far are we from instigating trade warfare?  Senator Reid was sounding like the United States of America is at war with any nation in which there are firms that produce commodities that fulfill the needs of companies producing goods and services for American consumers?  Next Senator Reid will call for declaring war on any country that doesn’t fall in line with his standards of acceptable trading partnership. The Majority Leader went so far as to declare that the Olympic committee should "put [the uniforms] in a big pile and burn them." (And, by the way, this isn’t a partisan issue--several Republicans joined Senator Reid in expressing hostility to freedom of trade which made Mr. Lauren’s decision possible.)

         What kind of neanderthals are these people who want to take this “buy only American” to such extremes?  Not only is the idea absurd in the 21st century but it amounts to out and out bigotry.  What is wrong with foreign working people who can produce perfectly acceptable uniforms for American Olympic athletes?

          America is supposed to be a culture in which persons from every other culture are welcome to make contributions to science, athletics, fashion, etc., regardless of race or national origin.  So what’s with the Senate majority leader and other politicians who attempt to stir up bad blood based on an elementary cosmopolitan feature of commerce?  Lay off the bigotry already!  It is the source of the sentiments that used to lead to wars between countries.

The Open Secret to Affordability

The Open Secret to Affordability

Tibor R. Machan

For a little while I was mystified about what would make the health insurance scheme that’s at the heart of Obamacare affordable.  I was reading about the measure all around the Web and couldn’t find much information about this.  Why would this be affordable, compared to unaffordable alternatives?  

And then it hit me--and I felt ashamed for failing to grasp it right away.  Of course!  Anything you can get other people to pay for can easily become affordable!  If my kid wants me to buy her a new car, I would normally say “Sorry, I cannot afford it.”  For our family such a purchase is unaffordable, at least now.  And that’s the story with innumerable commodities and services available on the market--most of these are just unaffordable to a great many folks.  Why? Because they haven’t got the funds to buy them at the price sellers are willing to accept.  Ergo, all of this is unaffordable.

But suppose I manage to sell a manuscript to a publisher who is willing to pay me big bucks for it--yes, I am dreaming--or imagine any other good deal I can nail down; suddenly much of what my family would like to purchase turns out to have become affordable.  That would be the kosher way to come to afford what we want, namely, by increasing our resources through making good deals, being more productive, earning more funds than we did before, etc.

          But I was forgetting for a while an entirely different way stuff we want can become affordable.  We could steal or rob others of their funds and use these to increase our resources.  Much of what we want could become easily affordable by this means.  

          You can easily imagine some bank robber coming home after a heist and announcing at the dinner table that what his family couldn’t afford before has suddenly become affordable.  Maybe it would include health insurance, vacations, better furniture for the home, a new automobile, etc., etc.  Pronto--all this stuff has become affordable.

          And that is really the clue to what makes health insurance affordable under President Obama’s measure!  He has put together a system whereby a great many people who do not wish to purchase health insurance will be mandated to do so anyway.  This will bring down the price of health insurance, make it affordable to millions seeing that they no longer have to increase their own resources in order to come to afford it.  Instead, they can now legally dip into the pockets of others, perfect strangers whose generosity they cannot count on but who have some funds that can be taken from them, making the service affordable to those who would have to either do without or improve their economic situation in order to pay for it on their own.

          Not that this is anything new in the field of public finance--indeed, it is the routine.  But in most instance some kind of excuse, admittedly spurious, is offered why that approach is necessary.  

           I don’t know what one calls this approach to purchasing stuff in the field of public administration but I do have the words for it in ordinary English.  It is called robbing Peter for the benefit of Paul.  And that is at the heart of Mr. Obama’s health care program.  That is what the individual mandate is mostly about, namely, forcing those who don’t choose to purchase health insurance to part with the funds that it would take to pay for it.  Thus has something that was unaffordable for many people become affordable.  Easy as pie!

Socialism American Style

Socialism American Style

Tibor R. Machan

Mr. Milos Foreman is a renowned film director but not a good political economist. This is evident in his recent New York Times op-ed defense of Barack Obama from those who charge the president with being a socialist. (See his essay, “Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close” in the July 10th issue of the paper.)

When someone on the American political landscape is accused of being a socialist, the claim has little directly to do with Stalinism, a lot more with the kind of system they had in Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and other Soviet colonies, namely the phony promise of cradle to grave security and relentless government meddling in people's lives (goulash communism). Call it Norman Thomas style socialism, the kind that so many academic socialist in the West champion.

The brutality known as Soviet style socialism comes later. It is not the first step. But we get a good clue about its approach in America when one understands the meaning of a term like "mandate." It means coerce, plain and simple!

In socialism mandates are everywhere--all must be forced to live the same way, pay for the same health care and insurance, fall in line with state policy in matters of nutrition, conservation, energy usage, environmental ethics, climate change, etc., etc. Clamping down on free speech is never the first step, nor is shutting down the free press and nationalizing media. Or even collectivizing, banks, factories and farms.  (But check out Caesar Chavez of Venezuela and how he is imposing a near Stalinist variety of socialism.)

When governments start believing and imposing their idea of how everyone ought to live, how and when people's resources ought to be utilized, it's a clear move toward the harsh version of socialism but not yet the same thing; first you get the Swedish and Norwegian varieties, “socialism with a human face.” North Korea’s kind is a good ways down the road, which has a lot to do with the culture and history of the particular country involved. But socialism it is, Mr. Foreman's sophistry to the contrary notwithstanding (this coming from a refugee from Hungarian communism/socialism, not unlike the sort Mr. Foreman left behind in Czechoslovakia).

There is variety in the different types of socialism proposed and implemented but there is a recognizable unifying central theme in every version of it that Mr. Obama and his ideological cohorts share: people are viewed as belonging to society, as part of a hive or herd that needs to be driven in one proper direction.  One size fits all!

The major obstacle to it all being individualism and the free market that is its economic corollary.  If you are bent on moving the country toward any kind of bona fide socialism, start with chipping away at its individualist elements, like the liberty of a citizen to purchase the health insurance he or she deems suitable! Or not to purchase any at all. (The fact that in many countries such measures are already present means only that moving away from the governmental habit is difficult, with innumerable specialist interests resisting it.)

Sure, the idea can be driven home more or less forcefully--in America it is government nudging and the oxymoronically named libertarian paternalism, that’s embraced by Mr Obama and his lieutenants, e.g., professors Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes.  Theirs are the prudent, gentle approaches to socialism preferred by the likes of American socialists such as the late Norma Thomas and Michael Harrington, not the gulags or concentration camps of Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism (e.g., national socialism).

The Allure of Mandates

The Allure of Mandates


Tibor R. Machan

Peter Coy of Bloomberg/Businessweek is an avid fan of mandates (see his “The Case for Way More Mandates” 7/9-7/15, 2012, p. 24).  Which is to say he prefers forcing people to do what he thinks they should do rather than persuading them, kind of like what the USSR’s rulers practiced routinely.  (To mandate presupposes the capacity to impose one’s will!  And governments are usually powerful enough to accomplish that. It amounts to coercing others, nothing nicer!)

The major argument given for mandates such as Mr. Obama’s preferred way to get people to insure their health care is that, well, by getting a lot of people to be part of the system, the cost of it all will not be as high as otherwise.  And this is true for a while.  If a lot of people are forced to eat at the restaurant I prefer, prices will be lower there.  Higher demand for any goods or services leads to lower prices, indeed.

But this applies mainly to demand that is forthcoming voluntarily, not from having been mandated.  Conscripting customers and clients may appear to be economical but only for a bit.  In time people start finding ways to dodge conscription, like the military draft or the policies of dictatorships or tyrannies.  All the energy devoted to such draft--i.e., mandate--dodging and its prevention goes to waste and that itself will turn out to be very costly.
  

What is really disturbing is that some justices of the US Supreme Court buy into this obscene way of thinking.  Justice Ginsburg did recently when she wrote: “People who don’t participate in this market are making it much more expensive for the people who do; that is, they will get, a good number of them will get services that they can’t afford at the point where they need them, and the result is that everybody else’s premiums get raised? It’s not your free choice just to do something for yourself. What you do is going to affect others, affect them in a major way.” In other words, if one doesn’t purchase health insurance, others who want to buy some will have to pay more than they would if one did so!  And this applies to everything, so we may then assume that Justice Ginsburg prefers a market in which people are forced to make purchases of goods and services she would like to be cheaper than if people made them voluntarily.

Conscripting customers is what she is proposing and what cheerleaders of mandates, like Peter Coy of Bloomberg/Businessweek, advocate.  At bottom this means that the choices of recalcitrant citizens will be sacrificed to Justice Ginsburg’s choices.  Which is tyranny, plain and simple--some folks in society get to lord it over other folks.  For a justice of the US Supreme Court to advocate such public policies is out and out treasonous, given that the USA is supposed to have a government devoted to securing the protection of the rights of its citizens even from mobs that would wish to violate those rights.

Respecting the rights of others can always be construed as something costly.  Your private property rights in your home require me to walk around when I want to get to the other side of it!  If you refused to clean my front yard, I will need to hire someone to do it.  If an airline company doesn’t provide me with free air travel, I will need to purchase the service.  If farm workers refuse to work without pay, those wanting their services will have fork out wages.  And on and on it goes. 

So the allure of mandating services from others has to be resisted in the process of respecting their rights.  This is supposed to be elementary in a free society.  And the laws of such a society must not yield to such allure, lest it violates, betrays the principles of liberty on which it is supposedly founded and the securing of which is its government’s central task!

It is true enough that mandating that citizens--who used to be “subjects” when their rights were ignored--serve others and the goals that others consider important (indeed, may even be important) has been the norm throughout human history.  The ideas of individual rights, to one’s life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc., have only recently become prominent in considering how public policies are to be forged.  Kings, pharaohs, czars, and others who insist that it’s their way or the highway never found the regime of individual rights appealing and still do not--just check the news from around the globe, including the country in which you live. 

But as the saying goes, the price of liberty, that most precious feature of a just community, is eternal vigilance.

Another Plea for More Statism

Another Plea For More Statism!

Tibor R. Machan

I recently read Zadie Smith’s essay, “North West London Blues,” in The New York Review of Books, and found it an insulting, devious, and roundabout way of trying to justify statism. The quote from the late Tony Judt tells it all. Here is what he said:

“We have freed ourselves of the mid-20th century assumption--never universal but certainly widespread--that the state is likely to be the best solution to any given problem. We now need to liberate ourselves from the opposite notion: that the state is--by definition and always--the worst available option.”

Yes, finally humanity has made some spotty progress away from statism, from relying on government coercion to try to solve problems but of course those who love power--always for the greater good, naturally--are unhappy with this. Ms. Smith knows that respecting and protecting individual rights would be major obstacles to the statist ambition to do "for us" what she and her hero in this essay (Helen, the owner of a bookstore that seems to rely on state funding) believe “we really want but don't know we do.”

By implication, since we don't know it, we must be made--forced--to accept it from those like her and all the supposedly well intentioned petty tyrants who would dish it out with the aid of the power of government. OK, so at times some of us don't know what is best for us; in that case, if it is important enough, we need to be convinced, not coerced. Anything more is a non-sequitur! Exactly why some group is privileged not just to know some of what is best for us but also to coerce us to follow their guidance is quite unclear (unless we are children or invalids and they are our parents or guardians).

Just because now and then some others among us know better how we should proceed it doesn’t follow at all that they may assume the role of our parents and disregard our own choices, be they wise or not. So long as what we choose to do doesn’t encroach upon anyone’s rights, we must not be intruded upon. We may be advised, implored, urged, nudged, and so forth but only when we consent will our compliance be justified, an instance of having seen the light and taken the proper course of action because of it. Statism is vicious paternalism, the treatment of the citizen as an infant. None of this means that everything the petty tyrants propose is silly or vile, only that they must leave it at proposing what they deem wise and just instead of imposing it.

Who are these folks anyway to take themselves as humanity’s drill sergeants? Yes, there might now and then be an emergency that justifies pushing others around a bit but it must never be allowed to become routine, the way of the world! That is the reactionary politics of feudalism, mercantilism, monarchism, and so forth, not the politics of free men and women.

The idea that Ms. Smith and her bookstore manager Helen are authorized somehow to compel us all to do what we should--be it reading books or promoting various left-liberal causes--is out and out misanthropic. What they may provide is education, advocacy, some imploring, but never any coercion however much they are convinced that we need their forceful direction. It never follows from the fact that someone knows what’s best for another that this other may be regimented in line with that knowledge. At most what follows is that advice may be given or a peaceful movement be initiated!

The best evidence of civilization is that people treat each other as in possession of the capacity to reason and then to take advantage of that capacity, rejecting all the temptation of the barbarians to compel one’s fellows to do as one deems right. Only defending against those who use coercion upon us justifies resorting to force, not even the superior knowledge of how we all ought to act.

Acceptable Selfishness?

Acceptable Selfishness? Tibor R. Machan A big debate among business ethics professionals--teachers, consultants, etc.--concerns who should be the beneficiary of business management, share (or stock) holders or so called stakeholders. Ordinarily it is the former who are owed service from managers since they were hired to provide service to them. It’s a matter of delivering on a promise, plain and simple, no different from when one hires other professionals, such as those providing health care or car repair. But in the academic world of business ethics there has been a major influence from all sorts of people who want business to become public service professionals. It is called the corporate social responsibility or stakeholder movement and the pitch is for business professionals to become public servants like bureaucrats are supposed to be. (But a bit of reading in public choice theory will clear up this matter!) Somehow if people in the business world strive for profit, for prosperity, they are supposed to be failing to do the right thing. Not that they are not supposed to help make the firm prosper but that’s not supposed to be their primary professional purpose. That is what many in the business ethics academic community advocate. But contrast this with how many look upon the task of other professionals, especially artists or performers. A comment by the millionaire pop artists Paul McCartney bears on this issue directly. Here is what he is reported to have said: “A lot of critics go: ‘Why is he doing an orchestral thing, or a children’s song, what’s gone wrong with him?’ But this is my life, so I’m doing these things for me. If other people like them, I am really happy, that is the ultimate. And if they don’t, well, you can’t please everyone. As an artist, you just keep plugging on.” (THE WEEK, June 23, 2012, page 10) McCartney’s reasoning is generally not deemed to be objectionable, not just regarding what pop artists do but regarding artists as such. The most humble as well as the most ambitious artists are widely appreciated for doing their own thing, following their muse, etc. No one is talking about social responsibility when it comes to their work, although some of them do, of course, engage in charitable and philanthropic projects. But as far as their artistic works are concerned, it is taken to be a very selfish undertaking, done to fulfill a personal, private agenda and not to serve anyone else. It is mostly in totalitarian countries that artists are drafted into public service, like the Third Reich, North Korea or the former Soviet Union. Why so when those in the business community are always hounded about serving society, humanity, the community, etc.? Why are the personal, private objectives of artists deserving of respect but if people in business pursue their own goals, they are accused of being selfish in that sneering way--how dare they serve their own interest? Is all this just a kind of careless hypocrisy or does it indicate some sort of bifurcation in how we are supposed to live our lives? When we select a profession that pursues the creation of beauty, then it is just peachy to ignore the interest of others, but when we pursue our prosperity we are not doing the right thing. But why? What is wrong with serving our economic muse? After all, wealth creation--what I like to call wealth care--is quite as worthy a pursuit as, say, health care/creation, as in medicine (or education or in science), is it not? When a dedicated composer or painter or novelist spends years on his or her artistic projects it is surely time that might have been spent on serving one’s fellows. Isn’t that so. Why is this not some kind of insidious selfishness? Why is it OK to be devoted to one’s artistic vision, never mind how much time and effort it may take--and thus take away from public service--whereas when one engages in economic improvements one is widely denounced? One is a profiteer and people organize huge marches--Occupy Wall Street, for example--to protest this. Why not descend upon Soho, museums, galleries and other centers of artistic pursuits and complain that these people are being selfish and cruel to their fellow human beings, the poor, the sick, the unfortunately who could benefit from work done for them instead of in service to the muse? Go figure!

My Fourth of July Reflections

My Fourth of July Reflections Tibor R. Machan For some people the Fourth of July is the most important holiday in America. Sadly, not for all, especially not just now when most of the leadership of the country has made it clear that principles do not matter. What matters is what is expedient or practical, which is something very unstable. Sadly there is an element to the Fourth that has always been a liability. It is that principles of politics, economics, ethics or any other practical field have been championed as if they were like principles of geometry, logic or mathematics, namely, timelessly true, certain beyond a shadow of a doubt. Like timeless laws of nature! And no practical principles can be like that since the future can always bring to light facts that could require modifying them. This was something the framers of the American system were well aware of, which is why they included the amendment provision in the constitution. This doesn’t mean principles do not exist only that they are always to be understood within the most up to date context of their subject matter. Because the basic principles that are to be celebrated on the Fourth of July are derived from human nature, which remains stable over centuries on end, they are good guides to the way a human community should be framed or constituted. Human nature hasn’t changed for a very long time and so it can serve as a stable basis for how human communities are to be conceived and governed. Many aspects of human life change but human nature has remained stable, unchanging for centuries and so it can serve as the basis of a legal order, just as the American founders believed, based on their study of some of the great moral and political thinkers in human history. If, however, the possibility of having to make some changes, amendments, alterations, or modifications on those principle is denied, their credibility suffers. No one can reasonably guarantee that those principles will never need some alteration and by promising that they won’t, they become vulnerable to valid skeptical doubts. And those who have not liked the principles of the Declaration and the Bill of Rights, all the statists who live in the country, can take advantage of this and even ridicule the idea of our finding such stable basic principles. By making the mistake of claiming that the principles are everlasting, they are put into jeopardy at the hands of their detractors and enemies. Nor are the principles of the Declaration self-evident! It is made clear in the document itself that they are only held to be such, for purposes of making the declaration. Since they require demonstration and proof, they can only be held to be but are not in fact self-evident! Very few truths are self-evident and the Founders were aware of this--for example, the first principles of logic that Aristotle identified (since they are required to prove anything in need of being proven). Misunderstanding this has also been used by detractors for purposes of discrediting the principles involved in the founding of the country. This despite the fact that the Declaration is quite clear about the matter: “We hold these truths to be self-evident” instead of “These truths are self-evident.” Unfortunately, throughout the educational system of the country, from the elementary to the graduate levels, making this clear is difficult since strictly speaking the principles of the Declaration do not support government run educational institutions. Limited government is what those principles support and permitting government to run the bulk of the educational system expands the scope of government way beyond what it is limited to in the philosophy of the Declaration, the founding document of the country that states clearly that government is instituted so as to secure our individual rights! It would be paradoxical for most educators to take seriously the idea of limited government since they are all complicit in expanding government’s reach into the lives of the citizenry. So the proper study of the meaning of the Declaration and thus the type of country this is supposed to be would invalidate the public or governmental educational system. Which is one reason why there is no general understanding within the population of just what kind of political system the American founders produced. Most of these educators are, in fact statists, through and through, and within that framework they cannot make clear sense of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and, therefore, of what is really to be celebrated on the Fourth of July.

Anticipated Reasoning by the Court

Anticipated Reasoning by the Court Tibor R. Machan A few weeks ago I wrote in one of my columns as follows: “...[T]he discussion of President Obama’s federal policy requiring that everyone obtain health insurance has frequently focused on the fact that either an employer or individual would be forced to obtain private health insurance instead of, as Wikipedia points it out, ‘or in addition to the institution of a national health service of insurance’. And many have suggested that this is a very unusual measure since it mandates specific performance from citizens, contrary to the legal tradition of the country. One may be forced to give up property but never to carry out a task, something that is reminiscent of slavery or involuntary servitude and thus directly in conflict with the idea of a free society....” The court ruled in favor of Mr. Obama’s individual mandate on June 28, 2012, by rejecting the idea that it amounted to forcing citizens to purchase something they don’t choose to purchase and held, instead, that it is indeed a federal requirement “to give up property” (or to tax the citizens) which the federal government may impose to its heart’s content. It is just this power by government that needs now to be challenged since it extend the feudal legacy of extorting people’s resources. The extortion goes as follows: “You get to live in this supposedly free country only if you pay government--previously the monarch--funds demanded from you!” This amounts to the constitutional power to tax! It should not be, of course, since it is a betrayal of the valid, universal principle of the Declaration of Independence and even the Bill of Rights, the right to private property, the right to pursue one’s happiness with one’s work and wealth. But then remember the constitution also made slavery legal and it remained so until it was finally amended. The 13th Amendment did this when it stated “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2 says: Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” But this came later! So originally American law tolerated slavery, involuntary servitude. Well, we now see that it still does. If your resources, property, may be confiscated by politicians then one’s life is not one’s own. The first natural right, namely, to life, is still contradicted in American federal law as it has been from the start. The schizophrenia between the Declaration, which stated the most fundamental principles on which the country was supposed to have been founded, and the U. S. Constitution, the legal order by which the country was supposed to be governed, remains fully intact. This is the part of the revolution that needs to be completed, namely, the abolition of taxation. The 13th Amendment abolished serfdom, another central element of the old regime; now another needs to be, one that will abolish the forcible taking of one’s property via the feudal power of taxation. So here is a wonderful opportunity for the current crop of Republicans, with Mitt Romney leading them in the next few months, to mount a bona fide, no holds barred revolution that will complete the first one. Ron Paul might have been counted upon to lead it but one may doubt that Mitt Romney is going to go there. Too many leaders of and people within the Republican Party remain statists who believe that the government rules the people instead of serving them. I have argued for decades that what is now required is a truly just approach to funding law maintenance and enforcement. Some way other than taxing citizens must be found and implemented to fund the system that protects individual rights, a way that doesn’t also violate those rights. The contract fee approach would work, I am sure, provided it is firmly combined with a policy of strictly limited government, one that sticks to the task assigned it in the Declaration of Independence where we learn that government is instituted to protect our rights, not to run our lives.

Pragmatism's Problems

Pragmatism’s Problems* Tibor R. Machan It has now become something of a badge of honor to be a pragmatist, especially in public policy matters. Being pragmatic means promoting policies that work, being practical or even expedient. President Obama has often made mention of his own pragmatism. So have some of his most avid supporters, such as Paul Krugman and Cass Sunstein. But not only those favoring the substantially Keynesian approach to macroeconomic policies swear allegiance to pragmatism. The very prominent jurist Richard Posner, of the University of Chicago School of Law, one of the most prolific and widely respected public philosophers in our time, has been unabashed about his championing of pragmatism. So what makes someone a pragmatist? In these contexts, pragmatic suggests mainly an attitude of realism and flexibility, lack of firm principles or foundations--i.e., eschewing dogmatism or ideology--on which one’s policy recommendations are based. Here is a good sample of the pragmatic approach: “Defenders of Chicago-style law and economics want to be seen not as ideologues, but as realists. [Richard] Posner [put it this way]: ‘We ask not whether the economic approach to law is adequately grounded’ in any particular ethical system, ‘but whether it is the best approach for the contemporary American legal system to follow.’” Peter Coy, “Opening Remarks,” Bloomberg Businessweek, 6/11-6/17, 2012, p. 10. ("And how can one tell what's "the best approach" if it's all purely subjective or relative?) Even more extremely put, Posner has written as follows: "It was right to try the Nazi leaders [at Nuremburg] rather than to shoot them out of hand in a paroxysm of disgust.... But it was not right because a trial could produce proof that the Nazis really were immoralists; they were, but according to our lights, not theirs." “Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory,” 111, Harvard Law Review, 1998, 1644-45. In what is commonly taken as the pragmatic turn, Posner illustrates that when it comes to morals and politics, no truth is available to us. Objectively speaking, neither the Nazis nor those who condemned them could be said to have had it right (nor indeed those proposing that it's all subjective)! According to our lights they were vicious but according to theirs they were not--and there is simply no way to adjudicate between them and us. There is then no truth of the matter. This approach has the fatal problem of being hoisted on its own petard. For it follows from it that saying it is subjective or relative is, well, also subjective or relative; in other words, no truth of the matter in any respect is possible. (It recalls the ancient Greek sophist, Cratylus, who ended up indicating what he meant by wagging his fingers and even that couldn’t do the trick.) Why is any of this significant? For one, pragmatism of this sort gives carte blanche to those who select which policies a government should follow: whichever they prefer, since none is any better than any other, not objectively speaking. It also concedes virtual absolute authority to those who happen to hold power. They need not justify what they want. Just wanting it is enough. No one can do better, so what is the fuss? That is just how fascists view public affairs since the authority of the ruler is decisive and incontestable. See how one day Mr. Obama claims to follow the US Constitution, the next he maintains he may circumvent it, that his judgment rules! In the end all intelligent discussion of how people ought to carry on, in or out of government or public life, is pointless. The only thing that counts is who has the power, a very convenient point of view for those who like to lord it over others without having to be accountable for what they do. Pragmatism has numerous versions and not every version is so outlandish as what we see here, coming from one of the most influential jurists in contemporary America. Just for one example, Professor Susan Haack has been very critical of this kind of pragmatism, which in philosophy is associated with the late Professor Richard Rorty. But sadly in our day it is the most extreme of the pragmatists who wield influence throughout our culture. *You may have received an earlier version of this piece!

Why Are Theore Theories

Why Are there Theories? Tibor R. Machan Over the years, especially since the Internet became prominent and widely used, my own ideas have received a lot of challenges. Some of these come from people with different positions on this or that but quite a few actually come from people who find advancing theories to be mistaken. They often just wish to pick and choose from among the innumerable ideas circulating and find fault with formulating a system or general position. They champion adopting the smorgasbord as the model for how one ought to think about the world. Rhyme or reason are shunned as somehow obsolete, old fashioned and instead a hodgepodge of ideas is favored, never mind internal contradictions, inconsistencies, etc. This disposition is not all that surprising. After all, among the hundreds and hundreds of “isms” that have been advanced throughout the history of ideas, there has rarely emerged one that received universal or even widespread ascent among those who work to get it right. One reason is pretty clear--the standards of adequacy for theories in all sorts of disciplines or regions of human interests were initially impossible to satisfy. Platonism contributed to this by insisting that the right viewpoint or theory had to be complete, final and timeless, something that is impossible to achieve since human beings, who concoct the theories are mortals and cannot show that the views they hold will forever be adequate. But even once this is granted and a less demanding criteria of success is invoked, a lot of people wish to cast the idea of a coherent, consistent even if provisional viewpoint aside and just stick to this idea of a hodgepodge. But that just cannot work at all. As mindful beings, humans are in need for ideas about the world in which they carry on so as to navigate it with some measure of success. Like the maps we use to travel around--they may never be completely accurate, final, incorrigible or such but they have to be workable, help us get about. In time the less successful get identified as such and get updated, properly modified but, of course, never finished forever. For those who find this inadequate there really is no relief. The world is no static geometrical plane, no formal system that is complete. Some of the best theorists have made note of this--I think Kurt Godel's incompleteness proof is really about this, a critique of the Platonist idealism that demands of a good theory that it be perfect, finished. But, as that wise saying has it, the perfect is the enemy of the good! If this idea were properly deployed, I believe there would be fewer skeptics, pessimists, cynics, most-modernists, and such among us and many more of us would be doing work on the provisionally successful ideas that can be identified (if the impossible isn’t being demanded) instead of taking up arms, intellectually, against those who are hard at work trying to figure things out. One sign of misguided thinking along the lines I have in mind is when someone keeps putting up obstacles against a set of pretty good ideas with the preface, “But isn’t it possible that such and such could happen and require you to give up your ideas?” Up to a point there is nothing wrong with this tact but if it continues on and on, without some indication of what will suffice for the skeptic, the exercise is basically pointless. Most theorists put up with these sorts of objections because they realize that they may have missed something their theories needed to address. But that approach can become pathological. I like what Professor Gilbert Harman once wrote about this matter. He warned that we must “take care not to adopt a very skeptical attitude nor become too lenient about what is to count as knowledge” (Gilbert Harman, Thought [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976], 145). Following this advice would, I am confident, help repel those who want to give up on reason and good sense in the approach to understanding the world and one’s place in it.

The Left and Reproductive Rights

The Left and Women's Reproductive Rights Tibor R. Machan At the outset I will declare my commitment to the right of women to terminate pregnancies prior to the time a human being has developed in their bodies (roughly the 25th week*) But then I am also someone who holds that every adult individual has a full, unalienable right to his or her life. (Who else would?) But one of the contemporary Left’s favorite doctrines, communitarianism doesn’t agree. By their standards we belong to the community. Check out what Charles Taylor says about this in his book Sources of the Self or, even better, read the famous American Leftist, Cora Weiss, who was a prominent American anti war advocate during the Vietnam era, and claimed that refugees who have fled Vietnam were traitors, because, she argued, “Every country is entitled to its people [who are] the basic resource that belongs to the country.” (Washington Post, May 29, 1978) Weiss was by no means alone in her views. The East Germans argued they had full moral authority to shoot those trying to scale the Berlin Wall because such people were stealing themselves from East Germany, from the country. Then there is the famous Marxist doctrine of the labor theory of property according to which the source of all value is human labor which, however, is public property since it is the major means of production that under socialism is collectively owned. Softer Leftists, such as communitarian Michael Sandel, also contend that our lives are from birth beholden to the community and we do not have the full right to it. This reiterates the views of the father of sociology, Auguste Comte who wrote this about the topic: "Everything we have belongs then to Humanity…[Comte’s] Positivism never admits anything but duties, of all to all. For its social point of view cannot tolerate the notion of right, constantly based on individualism. We are born loaded with obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. Later they only grow or accumulate before we can return any service. On what human foundation then could rest the idea of right, which in reason should imply some previous efficiency? Whatever may be our efforts, the longest life well employed will never enable us to pay back but an imperceptible part of what we have received. And yet it would only be after a complete return that we should be justly authorized to require reciprocity for the new services. All human rights then are as absurd as they are immoral. This ["to live for others"], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] Humanity, whose we are entirely." Auguste Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley Publ., 1973), pp. 212-30. OK, so what of this? Well, it is entirely inconsistent with the stance on abortion of most of those on the political Left in American. They are pro choice. But pro choice means having the right to do with one’s life as one wants, provided it is peaceful. And so long as abortion isn’t homicide, it is peaceful and every woman has a right to get one if she so chooses. However, if one’s life belongs to humanity or society or the community or the state, this pro choice position on abortion--and on innumerable other matters--makes no sense. In general, the Left rejects the idea that choices is a vital element of human life. Instead what matters is obligation (or duty) to others (or to humanity or society)! This idea is the ancient one, whereby everyone belongs to the country, the king, the tzar and so certainly it is utterly selfish to insist that one’s life is one’s own and that from this certain rights follow, even the right to terminate a pregnancy at an early stage. The left simply has no basis for insisting on this. (Not that the Right is much better. But I leave that for another time.) *This isn’t geometry but biology so the exactitude is appropriately fuzzy!