Column on Misusing Liberty (Check if it's a duplicate)

What if people used liberty badly?

Tibor R. Machan

If people are free to choose how to live, how to conduct themselves and
what goals to pursue, they will do commendable as well as contemptible
things. That is what liberty means--there is no justification for
regimenting any adult's life, none. The right to liberty, an unalienable
right to quote the American founders, can be used well or badly.

Why would anyone endorse this? It's risky, of course, since folks often
choose badly. But if they aren't going to choose for themselves, then
others will choose for them and, of course, others, too, can choose well
or badly. And when others don't know about someone they order about, they
will most often judge badly. Even more importantly, the most central fact
about people will be suppressed, namely, their decisive role in living
their own lives. This is crucial about human beings--self-responsibility.
Without it we do not live genuine human lives at all but the ?lives? of
circus or barnyard animals, even puppets.

For those who wish to bring in government to save us from these risks it
needs to be pointed out that there is absolutely no reason to think that
those in governments will do better than those out of government at
managing lives. Indeed, power corrupts, so those who attempt to take over
the lives of others in the hope of making these others live right will
quickly forget that goal and manage others for perverse purposes. They
will rule others to seek their own goals, to gain and keep power to
themselves. The initial helpful intentions will quickly give way to
incompetent bungling and, in time, to nothing more noble than hanging on
to power over others. This is because rulers rarely know enough about
what is best for those they rule and instead of admitting this, they will
keep trying to get it right and fail at it worse and worse.

Defenders of liberty know that free men and women will often go astray.
But that is no justification for trying to take away anyone's liberty, not
unless they try to invade the lives of others who should also be free.
Just think, if you and I and neighbor Jones isn't up to doing reasonably
well at living our lives, why would neighbor Smith be good, on the whole,
at ordering us about successfully? Neighbor Smith isn't some God but yet
another bloke, a bureaucrat or politician, who is no better equipped to do
things right than you and I are.

Government is, in short, not qualified to guide us to do what's right, as
a general rule, so it should stick to its business of keeping the peace.
The police are best employed as peace officers and not as members of the
vice squad. That would just tempt them to become corrupt, to oppress
people, since they really aren't qualified to set us all aright.

The task to straighten out people about right and wrong should not be
left to government but to family, friends, neighbors, fellow parishioners,
teachers, experts who must earn our trust and others who must deal with us
not by means of coercion but by means of persuasion. That is the
foundation of civilization, peaceful interaction among people, not the
deployment of violence to try to make us good.

Sadly, the temptation to resort of coercion is intense. People often get
impatient and think they should take shortcuts and slap us around,
figuratively or literally, rather than reach us through reason. So they
call upon government, the wielder of force in society, to hurry things up.
But that way they undermine not just the humanity of those from whom they
take the power of self-government but also themselves whose ways they have
rendered brutal and uncivilized.

Yes, free men and women can do wild and crazy, even perverse, things but
their lives are their own--that is what having the unalienable right to
life means. And these lives are for their owners to run, however
successfully or ineptly. To help, others can urge, implore, suggest,
advise, propose, even pressure in friendly ways. But no one gets to take
over the direction of these lives, not with any justice on their side, no
matter how perversely those lives may be lived.

Column on de Tocqueville and Public Spiritedness

De Tocqueville?s America

Tibor R. Machan

Alexis de Tocqueville, born 200 years ago in Paris, traveled in America
and wrote about the country in his famous book, Democracy in America. He
is widely recognized as a most astute observer of American democracy. It
is worth considering one of his points at this particular time because it
seems to have been overly pessimistic. He wrote that,

... As each class gradually approaches others and mingles with them [in a
free, democratic society], its members become undifferentiated and lose
their class identity for each other. Aristocracy had made a chain of all
the members of the community, from the peasant to the king; democracy
breaks that chain and severs every link of it.

As social conditions become more equal, the number of persons increases
who, although they are neither rich nor powerful enough to exercise any
great influence over their fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained
sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their own wants. They owe
nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the
habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt
to imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands.

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it
hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws
him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine
him entirely within the solitude of his own heart. (Democracy in America,
vol. 2 [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945], pages 98-99.)

Was de Tocqueville right? Do citizens of a democracy?by which he meant a
free society in which individualism is much prized?fail to develop public
spiritedness? Do they see themselves as lacking any responsibility toward
others in their community?

It seems this is not so and de Tocqueville was mistaken. His mistake can
be seen in just how readily so many Americans rose to help out those who
were the causalities, way on the other side of the globe, of last year?s
tsunami; he is once again proven wrong by how eagerly Americans seem to
wish to help those left in ruin by Katrina.

But why did de Tocqueville make his mistake?

Many like him, who came from an ?aristocratic? background?actually, a
background of en entrenched, not earned, aristocracy?held a pessimistic
view of human nature, especially when it comes to those who aren?t members
of their class. This has to do with their widely held belief that at the
core human beings are sinful and anti-social, so much so that they need to
be nudged along by the wellborn to cultivate any public concerns.

If one identifies ?public life? with government, then, yes, many people
in a free and democratic country do not show public spiritedness. But is
that identification correct? Can one express one?s interest in one?s
fellows in a society only via politics?

Americans have proven over and over again that they are generous,
sometimes to a fault, especially in times of crises when most of those who
suffer evidently do not deserve it. In the main, Americans do not take
kindly to indiscriminate welfare-statism but there is evidence from way
back in the country?s history that natural disasters are met with
alertness and kindness, not xenophobia, as de Tocqueville had feared.

This is probably because in a largely free society it is clear to many
people that whether others will be helped in their need is not something
to be left to their government?whose job, after all, is ?to secure our
rights??but is, instead, a task to be taken up voluntarily, of one?s own
initiative. Such ?public? spiritedness is, in fact, a more hopeful
approach to coping in times of crisis then is marshaling the coercive
forces of the state. It comes from the widespread realization among
largely self-reliant people that human beings share many risks in life and
in a civilized society they must abstain from resorting to the force of
law to cope with such risks. Instead, they need to lend their hand at such
times, from their knowledge that that is indeed the most promising way to
recover from disasters.

---------------
Machan teaches business ethics at Chapman University as is editor of,
among other works, Liberty & Hard Cases (Hoover Institution Press, 2002).

Column on Self Deprecation

The Mystery of Human Self-deprecation

Tibor R. Machan

When parents notice their children feeling low and suspect this
may persist, signaling lack of self-respect, they naturally worry. Why?
Well, without a solid measure of confidence in oneself, one is not likely
to set off on difficult journeys, take up tasks that require skill and
perseverance. Friendship and romantic love, just to mention two vital
areas of our lives, also call upon us to do well and if we see ourselves
as inept, they are unlikely to flourish.

Yet, although children are widely understood to require the
development of self-confidence, when we become adults and do, finally,
feel up to things, this is often considered hubris. Indeed, there is now a
general movement afoot, led by the likes of Bernd Heinrich, Emeritus
Professor at the University of Vermont, to denigrate us all, to show that
we aren?t anything very special in the living world. Writing for the
International Herald Tribune on August 30, 2005, Heinrich goes to great
lengths to use the very popular recent movie, March of the Penguins, to
suggest this theme. The gist of the argument is that human beings share
98% of their DNA with some of the big apes and other animals, so there
mustn?t be much difference between them and the rest of the animal world.

Alas, this is a bad argument. A little bit can mean a lot and in
the case of the impact of that little bit on what human beings are it does
indeed mean a lot. For one, human beings are the ones who make these kinds
of discoveries about the animal world, not big apes. They are the
scientists?zoologists, biologists, physiologists and others?who bring to
light these intriguing findings, whereas chimps, orangutans, and other
apes, let alone the rest of the animals, have nothing at all to say on
these matters, nothing to show because, well, they haven?t got the
faculties with which to discover all the relevant information.

The percentage of DNA we share with other animals must be
understood in context. DNA by itself doesn?t account for a whole lot. It
is the configuration of all the biological components that make up an
organism that counts. That is what enables people to forge sciences such
as biology, to produce works of art, to build cities and write books and
all the rest that is utterly absent from the rest of the animal world.

But even more importantly, only people have the capacity to
discuss these very issues of whether they and animals do or do not share
important attributes. They are the only ones, for example, who can be
implored to act in certain ways that come from paying attention to just
what animals can and cannot do, versus what people can and cannot do.
Human beings are the only animals capable of exhibit moral concerns about,
for example, other animals or the environment or anything else for that
matter.

Now if that isn?t a vital difference between us and other animals
I don?t know what is. Clearly, having moral responsibilities makes us very
different animals from even the great apes. And all those who try to tell
us that we aren?t all that different contradict themselves in the very act
of making such a claim to us about the matter rather than addressing the
great apes about it all. They show that we are very different indeed, even
as they deny that difference.

Aristotle, 25 centuries ago, already knew well enough that anyone
who refuses to study animals fails to learn enough about human beings to
be well informed. As he said, "If there is anyone who holds that the study
of the animal is an unworthy pursuit, he ought to go further and hold the
same opinion about the study of himself." This is no news. What is new is
this incessant urgency with which some folks go about trying to belittle
human beings, trying to make us feel like we don?t amount to much. Yet,
all the while they do this they demonstrate, also, that we do amount to a
lot more than other animals since they have no interest in addressing
those other animals about these issues.

Being something special in nature doesn?t give us much credit
individually, of course. Yes, we can use animals for scientific research,
even for entertainment, if this will help us flourish in our lives--all
animals do this. But that doesn?t mean we are drastically different from
the rest of the animal world, only that we do have traits and faculties
that enable us to do very different things from other animals, including
being responsible as we chose how we conduct ourselves, something other
animals cannot do.

Column on Who Owns Society

Are Societies Owned?

Tibor R. Machan

Say you wish to sell antiques, so you rent space in a building owned by
someone and agree that whenever you make a sale, some of what you fetch
goes to the owner. Professor Craig Duncan, my co-author of Libertarianism,
For and Against (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), claims this is analogous to
the nature of taxation. The country is like the building. ?The building?s
owner ? charges vendors a percentage of their sales intake?say, 20
percent?as payment for the opportunity to sell from one of the building?s
stalls?. The owner is not stealing [the vendor?s] money when he demands
this sum from [the vendor].?

According to Professor Duncan this is how we ought to
understand taxation,
not, as I argue, as extortion by some members of society (the government)
of the rest who live and work there.

But the analogy is a bad one. No one owns a free society. No one who
lives in a free society is provided with the opportunity to strike up a
deal with some owner of that society or to choose from among different
owners of societies in which he or she might live and work.

Instead, people would be born into a free society
where others, including
their parents, relatives, or guardians, own homes, places of work and so
on. Other people?the government?would not have the authority to coerce
them into paying them ?taxes? and to put them in jail if they refuse to
pay up, with no chance of bargaining about the percentage, of whether to
pay a flat fee (whether they win or lose in their various commercial
endeavors), a percentage of some possible take and so forth.

All of these latter options are, however, possible when
an antique seller
rents a stall from someone who owns a building where customers may seek
out vendors. But free societies, unlike the place where an antique vendor
may or may not rent a stall, are not anyone?s property.

Professor Duncan does, however, correctly describe societies that are not
free. In a feudal system, for example, the king or tsar or other monarch
owns the society. In a dictatorship the dictator is the owner. In fascist
societies the leader in effect owns the society. And in democracies that
aren?t governed by a constitution that protects individual rights the
majority owns the society. These owners then charge a rent from those they
permit to live and work on their property.

That kind of system is, indeed, the natural home of
the institution of
taxation. Such societies are also the natural home of serfdom, where
others than those who own it live and work only when permitted to do so.
They have no rights other than those granted at the discretion of the
owners. Both serfdom and taxation arise naturally in societies that are
owned by someone.

In free societies, however, no one owns the society.
Individual citizens
may or may not own all kinds of things in such free societies?land,
apartments, family homes, farms, factories, and innumerable other items
that may be found before human beings have expropriated them from the
wilds or what has been produced by or traded back and forth among the free
citizenry.

Of course, in complex, developed free societies the citizenry will most
likely have instituted a legal order or government, based on the
principles of freedom?individual rights to life, liberty and property, for
example. And they will probably have instituted some means by which those
administering such a system will be paid for their work?user fees, shares
of wealth owned, a flat sum, or something more novel and unheard of (e.g.,
contract fees). Citizens can come together, roughly along lines of how the
original American colonists came together, and establish a legal order or
government that will be empowered, without violating anyone?s rights, to
provide for a clear definition, elaboration, and defense of everyone?s
rights. Then, once such a group of citizens has come together and
instituted a government with just powers?powers that do not violate but
protect individual rights?the proper funding of the work of such a
government can be spelled out.

What is crucial here is that such funding must occur voluntarily, namely,
as the kind of funding that does not violate anyone?s rights. Unlike the
case Professor Duncan gives us, where someone has prior ownership over the
various items in society that can be owned, in a free society ownership is
achieved through various types of free action. This includes coming upon
something unowned and appropriating it?land, trees, lakes, whatever?or
being given in trade various things by others or, again, being born into
the world with various assets or attributes that may well be used to
create wealth through production, use or exchange.

A truly free society, then, does not belong to anyone but is a region
or sphere wherein individuals are free to come to own things. It is one
within which
those who live there are free to embark on actions that involve, among
other things, the acquisition of property. That is part of being free, not
being coerced by others to give up what one has peacefully acquired, not
be prohibited by others from embarking on various actions, including
peaceful acquisition (including production and trade).

In short, a free society is based on principles of
individual rights, not
on having gained permission from prior owners of the society on analogy
with how a renter of a stall in an antique mall comes into possession of
that stall. In free societies ownership is a right everyone has by his or
her nature as a human being and it isn?t granted as a privilege by a prior
owner.

Column on Ayn Rand & Philosophy (sans typo)

Ayn Rand and Philosophy

Tibor R. Machan

Over the years I have endured a lot of shunning and derision from
colleagues because I have admired Ayn Rand?s philosophical contributions.
Rand, who was widely know for her novels, mainly The Fountainhead and
Atlas Shrugged, sketched an ambitious philosophical system, Objectivism,
but she has never presented her ideas in the customary forums of academic
philosophy, namely, the peer reviewed journals and in books published by
prestigious publishers of books in the field. Rand was also way ahead of
everyone else in American culture in identifying the Soviet system as
vicious and vile, so she alienated nearly everyone on the Left, while
because of her lack of religious faith most on the Right also have given
her the back of their hands.

Yet she is a very popular novelist and has in time inspired a good many
scholars to explore her ideas in the various branches of philosophy and
political economy. And she has also made some novel and radical
contributions to the discipline the practitioners of which have mostly
shown disdain toward her. One, especially, is extremely vital. This is
Rand?s novel understanding of the nature of human knowledge.

A fatal flaw of much of philosophical reflection about what it is to know
has been, from Plato to our own time, that knowledge requires timeless
certainty. If you know, the story has gone, then it must be impossible to
even conceive that you are wrong. Knowledge must be absolute, perfect,
incorrigible, finished, and, as it is sometimes put, "in the final
analysis."

But this view of knowledge is an impossible ideal. Given, however, its
prevalence, the result has been a great deal of skepticism. Mostly the
prominent view is that we cannot really know, actually, or if we can,
perhaps, it?s just an approximation; maybe all we can have is probable
knowledge; and so the story goes.

And this has been especially influential with regard to knowledge about
right and wrong, good and evil. Most erudite thinkers shy from claiming
any such thing?what we think of right and wrong, good and evil, is mostly
bias, prejudice, the viewpoint of our gang, no better or worse than the
viewpoint of some other gang.

What Rand has proposed is that human beings, if they do the hard work,
can obtain knowledge just fine and dandy. And there is, of course, ample
evidence of this throughout the sciences, in technology and, let?s not
forget it, ordinary life. But what is this human knowledge?

As the name of her system makes evident, the key to knowledge is
objectivity. As Rand herself puts the point, in her book Introduction to
Objectivist Epistemology,

Objective validity is determined by reference to the facts of reality. But
it is man who has to identify the facts; objectivity requires discovery by
man?and cannot precede man's knowledge, i.e., cannot require omniscience.
Man cannot know more than he has discovered?and he may not know less than
the evidence indicates, if his concepts and definitions are to be
objectively valid.

No, I cannot establish my claim here that Rand did make a major
contribution to philosophy, specifically to the theory of knowledge. But I
can testify that this contention is very plausibly arguable, in light of
what I know of her work in this area of the discipline. And Rand herself
knew quite well that she was making such a contribution.

Ayn Rand was and is mostly known for her championing of capitalism, of
ethical egoism, of a naturalist understanding of the world, and her
romantic realism in literature. But she has always insisted that the most
vital contribution to the field of ideas has been her understanding of the
relationship between the human mind and reality, namely, of human
knowledge. What she has achieved is to establish, firmly?to quote another
philosopher, Gilbert Harman, on this topic, one who, I believe, expressed
well the spirit of Rand?s notion?that we must ?take care not to adopt a
very skeptical attitude nor become too lenient about what is to count as
knowledge.?

Only one other contemporary philosophers I know of has advance this
understanding of human knowledge, namely, J. L. Austin, in his essay
?Other Minds.? And it is an extremely vital point to make, indeed, for
without a clear grasp of what it is to know, human beings are vulnerable
to all kinds of charlatanism.

Column on Karl May & Arab Strife

Karl May and the History of Arab Strife

Tibor R. Machan

When as a kid in Europe I devoured that peculiar German author?s, Karl
May?s, novels?about American Indians (Winnetou is his most famous) and the
Near East (In the Desert toping the list here)?I had no idea that much
later in my life May?s research and the information conveyed in his books
would come in very handy. But I remembered enough from back then to take
another look recently at some of May?s work because, as I recalled, he
seemed to have a very detailed understanding of what he wrote about. Turns
out, he did, in fact, do the research so diligently that many came to
admire him for his historical accuracy. Among these were Albert Einstein,
Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Asimov, and, embarrassingly, Adolph Hitler. All
in all May appears to have been obsessed with getting it right about a
culture if he was to write about it, even in a fictional work.

What in our current geopolitical climate brought Karl May?s writings
about the Near East to my mind? I think one particular passage will help
one appreciate this. In the novel, In The Desert, published in an English
translation in 1977, by Seabury Press, and also, in 1980, by Bantam Books,
May has his hero, Kara Ben Nemsi (which I believe means Karl from
Germany), roam around the Middle East in the 1870s, taking his readers
throughout the Ottoman Empire, sampling the customs, laws, religions, and
ideologies of all the various peoples as he embarks upon his innumerable
adventures (which make his books so appealing to kids).

The following longish passage will probably explain why I think May?s
work has relevance and serves as something of a cautionary tale for
current events.

Quite apart from the ruins of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, so
visible at every step, there now rose before my eyes the mountains along
whose slopes and valleys people had lived whose racial and religious ties
can only be disentangled with the greatest difficulty. Light
extinguishers, fire worshipers, devil worshipers, Nestorians, Chaldeans,
Sunnites, Shiites, Mutazilites, Wahabes, Arabs, Jews, Turks, Armenians,
Syrians, Druzes, Kurds, Persians, Turkomans. At almost any moment, one may
encounter a member of these tribes, peoples, and sects, and who can guard
against the mistakes, lapses, and even transgressions a stranger may
commit on such an occasion! Even today these mountains stream with the
blood of the victims of national hatred, religious zeal, lust for
conquest, breach of faith, predatory instincts, and blood feuds. Human
habitations cluster along the rocks and in the ravines like vultures?
nests, a bird always ready to pounce on its unsuspecting prey. Here,
suppression and remorseless exploitation have created that bitterness that
can barely distinguish any longer between friends and foe, and the words
of reconciliation and love proclaimed by the apostles have been utterly
lost. And if American missionaries talk of their successes here, that can
only have been superficial. The ground is not ready to receive the seed.
Whatever other men of God may do, the most hostile currents combine in
wild rapids in the mountains of Kurdistan, and the waters will only calm
again when a powerful fist succeeds in smashing the cliffs that cause the
whirlpools, when the hatred has been eradicated and the ugly feuding
stamped out. Then the path will be open to those who preach peace and
proclaim salvation. Then no inhabitant of these mountains will any longer
be able to say: ?I became a Christian because otherwise I would have been
bastinadoed by an aga.? And this aga was a strict Moslem.?

Not being a specialist in the history and sociology of Middle Eastern
cultures, I couldn?t on my own attest to whether May had it right. Nor do
I share May?s idea of how things might calm down in the region. However,
when one reads a work such as The Arab Mind, by the widely admired middle
eastern scholar Ralph Patai (Hatherleigh Press, 2002), one cannot but come
away convinced that May was onto something here.

Now I am not a cultural or, indeed, any other kind of determinist and so
I do not believe in the currently fashionable ?clashes of cultures?
approach to understanding the strife that?s been unleashed recently by
terrorists from that region of the world. Nor do I hold to the notion that
in this strife only one side has perpetrated injustice galore. It would be
foolish, though, to dismiss the strong influence that the type of
education and upbringing in certain societies have on the population. It
is even reasonable to assume that entire generations of children would
become traumatized with the cruelties involved in how they are guided
toward their adulthood.

At one time in the past, perhaps, the scenario and cultural climate Karl
May describes could be confined to that region of the globe but now, with
oil having made these folks extremely wealthy, their form of life cannot
but become ripe for exportation. It is this, I think, that needs to be
kept in mind, among many other matters, in order to appreciate what we are
witnessing and experiencing in our time and are likely to have hovering
about for a long time to come.

Column on Religion, Ideology & Terrorism

Religion, Ideology, and Terrorism

Tibor R. Machan

General Robert L. Caslen, Jr., one of Secretary of State Donald
Rumsfeld?s policy crafters, told US News & World Report (August 1, 2005)
that ?It?s important that we point out that it?s not a religious or
cultural clash?It is a war to preserve ordinary people?s ability to live
as they choose.?

A more confusing statement than this is not easy to imagine from someone
who is entrusted with America?s military strategy vis-à-vis those who
would just as soon bring the country to its knees. Imagine if someone said
that the cold war had nothing to do with ideology or cultural clash but
only with whether people may choose to live as they want. Surely every
intelligent, educated person would have considered this rank ignorance. In
fact, there is no international, geopolitical strife that isn?t grounded
in some kind of religious, ideological, political, philosophical or
similar system of thought.

The very idea that people ought to have the ?ability to live as they
choose? comes from a variety of religious, philosophical, ideological, and
similar sources. It rests, in other words, on a set of ideas. Religions
are sets of ideas, as are political theories, ideologies and so forth, all
resulting from more or less careful human effort to conceptualize how they
ought to live, especially in their communities. Contrasting religion or
culture with an idea of wanting to live in peace as one chooses is utter
nonsense since that itself is one among numerous competing religious and
cultural ideas people have come to embrace and use to guide their lives.
Institutions such as laws, practices, customs, and the rest all stem from
such ideas. Religion and culture have everything to do with how we
understand we ought to live, whether by choosing our own way or getting
pushed around by others.

What is it that could lead a presumably intelligent man such as General
Robert L. Caslen, Jr., to utter such balderdash? I suggest it is yet
another religious, cultural or ideological notion, nothing less. General
Caslen is probably guided by the ideology of multicultural tolerance and
so he would like to discourage people from considering any religion,
ideology or similar systematic worldview as unacceptable, as constituting
a threat to Americans. But this is wrong.

There are religions, ideologies, and cultural viewpoints that preach
peace and mutual respect because they embrace the idea that one must
choose to embrace a creed and not have it shoved down one?s throat. And
there are religions, ideologies, and cultural viewpoints that preach the
opposite. The former can be supported, the latter cannot be, plain and
simple, by anyone who wants ?to preserve ordinary people?s ability to live
as they choose.? The idea that all religions are equally decent, that any
belief is as worthy of respect as any other is bunk?that very idea has its
opposite, namely, ?Don?t tolerate any idea that conflicts with your own,?
and then that, too, would be just fine. Unless we embrace the nonsense of
post-modernist anti-logic, this simply cannot be. (And if we embrace that
anti-logic, then anything goes anyway and nothing makes any sense at all.)

There are, in fact, vicious people around the globe, many of them
terrorists, who will use any form of destruction to vent their
dissatisfaction with whatever displeases them, and some of these people
are part of a very sizable faction of Islam. They are often called
Islamists and follow a religiously based ideology of massive violence and
disregard for individual rights and due process of law. To deny this with
the nonsense about how it has nothing at all to do with religion and
culture is to pluck out one?s eyes as one is supposedly poised to try ?to
preserve ordinary people?s ability to live as they choose.? It is to
disarm oneself in the war against such vile sorts around the world.

Instead, it is vital to know what religions and ideologies encourage,
indeed even insist upon, conformity with a program of indiscriminate
global violence. That shouldn?t be a novel project since, after all,
throughout human history several different religions and ideologies?just
think of the Holy Inquisition, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism?have spawned
exactly that kind of program. It?s shameful to deny this just as the same
kind of thing is engulfing us today. (To check whether I am on solid
ground here, please read at [
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/LondonLessonsLost1.pdf
]http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/LondonLessonsLost1.pdf.)

Column on Social Security Risk

Is State Funded Social Security Risk Free?

Tibor R. Machan

Over the last several years the idea of including some private accounts
within the social security system has gained a bit of ground in the
political arena. Not that it?s been a piece of cake. For one, most people
are used to this government confiscatory program, as they are to
government schooling or the minimum wage law. The governmental habit is
rife throughout the world, including in America.

There is, also, the way promoters of the government?s confiscatory
program distort what privatization comes to. Even this tiny bit of
option?no one actually would need to go private with the 4% that could be
put into personal accounts, it?s just an option?is mischaracterized as
uniquely risky. And that assumes there is no risk with the government?s
coercive system.

Why do folks accept this canard? Why do they buy into the story as told
by Paul Krugman & Co.? Surely governments have defaulted on many of their
promises and have left people without support as they have played
political football with various projects.

Indeed, the entire social security program is in a way a hoax?no one can
really obtain bona fide security in old age from what this program
provides. Even if you have worked like a dog all your life and the
government has extorted portions of your earnings for your own good,
getting back roughly $1500.00 a month when you reach age 65 is hardly
going to make you secure economically, socially or any other way. The
money confiscated from you by the feds is barely enough to feed your pets.

So where do the champions of this utterly failed program come off with
their ruse about how the miniscule privatized portion will be oh so risky,
while the government?s scam is brimming with certainty?

The idea, I think, stems from the belief that coercive force is something
that can always be relied upon. And there is something to this, but only a
little bit.

Whenever people reach a point of exasperation, they are tempted to deploy
force?against their children, spouses, even friends, not to mention
strangers who aren?t in a position to strike back (as it happens with all
the redistribution of wealth legislation and public service conscription).
If you cannot get anywhere with some by reasoning with them, by trying to
persuade them or by imploring them to do what you want, at last resort
smack them around a bit, just as those loan sharks do with their clients
who will not pay up.

Yet, a policy of deploying coercive force against recalcitrants is at
most a very short term, temporary solution to solving any kind of human
problem. This is true, of course, with social security as well. The
collection of this part of what the government extorts from us falls way
short indeed from solving the problem of old age economic insecurity. It?s
a pittance. Without personal savings or some other support system to
supplement it, social security will get you virtually nothing. So,
clearly, it is no solution to the problem it is supposedly designed to
solve.

And that is just what the fate of all coercive measures tends to be.
Force against other people only works well as a policy of self-defense or
retaliation. But never as the first step. The horrendous risk of deploying
coercive force is to create a citizenry that?s complacent about its
security and misguidedly relies on the government to take care of it in
old age. That is a far greater and more destructive risk than anything one
may face with the stock market or other investment options where the money
left in one?s own hands to manage for one?s own good. If people realized
there is no mythical risk-free government social security, that it is
indeed the ruse the critics must always have known it is, most of them
would likely start thinking early in their lives about their old age
security, get competent advice about it, and reap the fruit of this policy
of prudence so they really do have something to fall back upon when the
need arises late in their lives.

There is no bona fide guarantee with government?s coercive policies, only
the illusion of it, as with all reliance on a policy of coercive force in
human relationships.

Column on Free Will (sans Typo)

Is Free Will Real?

Tibor R. Machan

Here we have one of the all time favorite philosophical topics, one
rarely omitted from any thinker?s agenda, yet one, also, that?s constantly
revisited, by thinkers of every generation. And that?s for good reason.

If what I am doing when I write these lines of thought is
something I must
do, just as the rain has to fall when it does, though involving more
complicated processes, the issue of whether it is true that there is free
will cannot even be established. For establishing anything at all would be
no more than behaving as one must?there could be no right or wrong about
the matter. One cannot sensibly consider whether it is right or wrong that
a river flows as it does, or a virus kills as id does. What must be isn?t
subject to right versus wrong. At most one can ask whether it is
beneficial or harmful to some life form. (This is why scientists need to
be objective, think independently, as do juries or indeed anyone who seeks
understanding.)

What hangs up the case for free will so persistently seems to me
to be
the idea of causation. Ever since the beginning of recorded human thought
there has been a dispute about what kind of stuff exists and there have
been very influential thinkers who have answered that there is just one
kind of stuff, namely, bits of matter (specifically, the candidates have
been atoms, strings, monads, you name it). If this is so, then there could
only be one kind of causation in the world, since a cause is dependent on
the identity of whatever is involved in a causal relationship. If there is
just one kind of thing, then, there is just one kind of causation. So
since bits of matter exhibit the causal relationship of mechanical or
similar interaction?a movement here causes a movement there?any novel
movement, initiative or free action is out of the question.

But there is the contrary view that there are innumerable types
and kinds
of things in the world. As the world evolves, new types and kinds of
beings emerge and, so, different causes, too, emerge. Once a human being
has emerged in nature, given its unique nature?especially that of its type
of consciousness?a new kind of causation also emerged, which involves, by
all accounts, being a first cause, an agent. This is what makes sense of
personal responsibility for what someone does or fails to do; it also
makes sense of being able to be right or wrong not just in ethics or law
but, also, in science or philosophy; it is also the basis for the vast
measure of human creativity and destructiveness in evidence throughout
history.

Some who object to this kind of free will claim we can have it
both ways,
namely, personal responsibility along with unavoidability or determinism.
Yes, they say, we are responsible, but only in the sense that, say, a
rainstorm is responsible for a mudslide. Such an event was unavoidable, in
the sense that if the circumstances lined up in a certain way, it had to
happen, no choice about it could exist. Applying this to people, it means
they do have an intermediary role in how some things happen in the world.
But they couldn?t have acted other than how they did?only if some of those
circumstances or factors had been different could they possibly have done
something else. Que sera, sera, is the real situation for us all?what will
be, will be. That kind of ?responsibility? isn?t what free will, morality,
law and creativity are about?these all assume people could act
differently, all things being equal apart from their self-produced choices.

The ?couldn?t have done otherwise? position, I take it, rests on
the
notion that everything is the same kind of thing, ultimately, so is
governed by the same kind of causation which leave no room for initiative
or agency. But that everything is the same kind of thing goes against what
we have in evidence around us throughout the world. Is a pebble the same
kind of thing as a human heart? Is a reflexive movement of the eyelids the
same kind of thing as the creative movement of Mozart?s composition of his
music? Is a mathematical equation the same kind of thing as a volcano?

It is patently obvious that there are major differences between
such
things or processes and to contend otherwise is very odd. Robert Laughlin,
the Stanford University physicist argues against the idea of just one kind
of
being making up everything even in the field of physics, which is a
favorite
place where it is advanced. See his A Different Universe (Basic Books,
2005).

OK, we will not resolve the matter here and probably never reach
any
consensus on it, being as it is one of the most ancient debates. But
consensus isn?t a requirement for truth. For my money there is no
reasonable doubt about it, human beings, unless crucially incapacitated,
have the capacity to initiate some of their conduct. Which is what
morality, law, art and even simple inquiry into the nature of things
requires.

Column on Liberty not being Easy

Liberty Isn?t Easy

Tibor R. Machan

Sometimes I find myself enchanted with what I should reject. That?s true
both in my personal and public concerns.

For example, I am a fan of rail travel?just finished several legs of it
in England and Europe. When I can afford first class, reserved tickets, I
am especially delighted. I settle into my comfortable state subsidized
seat, look out the window all the time, enjoy as we rush by scene after
scene, some familiar and some new to me. I am fond of all those little
villages in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but I also enjoy watching
the great variety of vehicles racing up and down the Autobahns or
Autostradas next to the tracks. And then there are all those lakes and the
beaches and whatnot?I can never get enough, except when I begin to have to
deal with the bureaucracy that seems to be present everywhere, with its
endless dilly-dallying and inefficiency that taxes my patience.

But I feel conflicted, too, because, after all, nearly all of these
trains run at the expense of the population that no longer really wants to
ride trains a lot. Not only trains, either. Buses are running about
throughout the continent with hardly a soul using them other than at some
peak hours. And all those ?public? realms throughout the continent bother
me because I realize how used people become to them, how they tend to
induce complacency about privatizing it all, as it should be.

Even in the USA, of course, this attachment to what statism has and had
to offer someone is difficult to overcome. People are often so fond of
their public education, public TV and radio, public parks, forests and
beaches, and a whole lot else, that the idea of possibly changing these
into private sector provisions sets them virtually permanently against the
idea of a truly free society.

I recall many occasions when, while defending the privatization of
education, the emotional response, aside from how this would affect the
poor?yes, it usually beings with the poor and their children and ends with
subsidies for massive inefficient industries and professions?involved,
mainly, how everyone in the audience went to public schools and how
unlovely it would be to abandon them all.

Most of us have lived in the shadows of major and petty tyrannies and
have become quite used to how things are done in such regimes. Few of us
knows anything else, really. In Europe the suggestion that broadcasting,
for example, should all be private is met with near total disbelief on the
part of a great many folks, so much so that someone who thinks this is a
good idea can be shaken and will tend toward cynicism about the prospects
of full liberty.

Yet, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has succeeded recently in
persuading Japan's lower house of Parliament to narrowly approve
legislation to transform the state-run postal savings and insurance system
into a private enterprise over the next 12 years. So, it?s not really
impossible, only difficult, to make headway toward greater freedom. When I
consider that I, who am fully committed to the radical transformation of
the world?s legal systems toward the limited function of the protection of
individual rights, find this transformation difficult to fathom, at least
emotionally, how can all those who don?t give a hoot about such principled
reforms get on board with the program?

It is here that education, persuasion, argument, advocacy and the other
peaceful roads to reform must be carried out with the utmost vigilance and
on innumerable fronts, with all the talents and specialization available
for the task. It is a bit like when one must quit some destructive habit,
even though one likes it a lot but the greater importance of a longer and
healthier life make the change imperative. It?s not easy, no, but a
sensible, reasonable person will usually take up the challenge,
nonetheless. Pick any such habit that?s turned against you and you will
grasp the problem immediately.

It is necessary, then, for revolutionaries to understand that millions of
people are not likely to be eager to part with their habits, even once
they found them to be bad ones. Statism is a very ancient bad habit
indeed, the ?governmental habit? (as Jonathan R. T. Hughes called it in
his book by that name). Vigilance is of the utmost importance in the face
of this realization.

Column on Peter Jennings RIP

Peter Jennings, Not A Champ Journalist
Tibor R. Machan
It is always sad when a fairly young and well liked celebrity dies and
that?s true even with Peter Jennings, the long time ABC-TV News anchor who
succumbed to lung cancer at 67 the other day. Major media editors and
reporters tended to like him, as they have liked Dan Rather, in part
because of his very appealing demeanor, in part because he tended to share
their left of center values. You couldn?t miss it, although it was rarely
put into words. Mostly, Mr. Jennings indicated his partisanship by means
of body language?his frowns, head shaking, condescending smiles, and
similar gestures?so viewers and listeners could hardly miss where he stood
when he reported on some politically or socially hot topic.
As The New York Times reported in its Monday, August 8th, edition, ?Mr.
Jennings was not without his detractors. Some critics contended he was too
soft on the air when describing the Palestinian cause or the regime of the
Cuban leader Fidel Castro?charges he disputed. Similarly, a July 2004
article in the National Review portrayed him as a thinly veiled opponent
of the American war in Iraq.?
Despite his denials, there is little doubt of what National Review
reported. But never mind, it?s not really malpractice for major or minor
reporters to be partisan. They are human beings with values, whether they
admit this or not, and holding values cannot but be in evidence,
especially in the role Mr. Jennings held.
There is, however, something to be noted about a statement Jennings is
quoted to have made in the National Review piece, as well as The New York
Times article. He, in denying his on air partisanship, claimed: "That is
simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question
the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public." Is this
really so? Was Peter Jennings conception of his own journalistic duty
correct?
First of all, no one designed the role he held?it emerged as a fluke and
side effect of the distorted network news phenomenon, one that was
sustained for decades by the FCC?s perverse policy of making the three
networks into a broadcast oligopoly. No free, competitive press in
broadcasting would have sustained this institution.
Second, and more importantly, no one has designated Mr. Jennings & Co. as
the inquisitors of government officials ?on behalf of the public.? No one
could, and it is gross presumption to think that somehow one has such a
role, no matter how hefty one?s paycheck and popular one?s face before
viewing audiences.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with questioning government officials,
but that questioning is not on behalf of some fictitious public but on
behalf of one?s producers, oneself, one?s idea of what is important and so
forth. Certainly millions and millions who are members of the public did
not share Mr. Jennings? framework within which his questions were the ones
he kept asking.
I, for one, would have wanted him to ask something of all government
officials which he never did, namely, ?How come you believe it is
justified to rob Peter and hand the loot over to Paul, as you do routinely
in your role as a government official?? No, this question, a question not
just one member of the public would have liked to be asked over and over
again, wasn?t asked by Mr. Jennings or, indeed, by most of his colleagues
in network TV News. (The one exception is John Stossell, and reportedly
Mr. Jennings wasn?t fond of his colleague at ABC TV News.)
It?s time these celebrity journalists recognize they aren?t messengers of
God or the public but professionals who are supposed to do competent
reporting. We might get better coverage then. We might also get a frank
admission from them that, yes, they, like other people, have values that
guide their actions, namely, their reporting, and viewers better watch out
for this.

Column on Those TSA Folks

Those Eager TSA Folks

Tibor R. Machan

Maybe I am seeing things but my impression from going through hundreds of
airports since 9/11/05 is that too many TSA folks are plainly gung ho.
Yes, they perform their jobs eagerly, often seeming to relish that bit of
power it gives them to order people around. (One of my daughters
speculated, recently, that these have personalties attracted to such work!)

I am not one of the most cooperative folks at these security checks,
mainly because I believe most of it fits the motto, ?Closing the barn
doors after the horses have fled.? All this might have made sense before
9/11/05 but afterwards it doesn?t, as far as I can understand it. But
that?s by no means all.

The inconsistency with which these security checks are carried out
suggests to me that these folks are rather lost about what they should be
doing in the first place. Take sneakers, for example. In one airport they
must come off, in another they can stay on. And when you point this out to
a TSA officer, you risk getting barred from the airport because they are
so convinced that they are God?s little helpers. If you say anything, you
are definitely a bad guy who is just about to undermine world peace and
good will to all.

Not all these people are the same way, of course. Some have good days and
will show it. But too many seem to have this attitude that questioning
anything about what they do amounts to enthusiastically serving Osama bin
Laden, which is just BS. After all, the bulk of us haven?t done a thing
wrong, didn?t act suspiciously, are indeed not guilty of anything
pertaining to national security, yet we are being treated by these TSA
folks as if we had been tried and convicted of treason. Why? Because the
federal government is trying to show that it?s doing something, anything,
to cope with terrorism.

No, I haven?t got some great alternative but do I need to in order to
notice that there?s something amiss with the way the matter is dealt with?
Here a coat must come off, there it doesn?t matter; here you should remove
your glasses, there it?s unnecessary. Here the wrist watch needs to be put
into that little tray, there it can stay on your wrist. And it goes on
like that, from one airport to the next. And if you assume you have a clue
what the next one will demand of you, you are in for a surprise. And for
threatening looks, even words, should you make mention of the fact.

Yes, words. Several times, after I make polite mention of the
inconsistency of their procedures, a gruff TSA official has told me to
?shut up.? Other times I have been told that if I say another word, I will
be arrested. And I do not mean a word like, ?I am about to carry some
bombs on this plane,? but, rather, ?Why is there no consistency in how
this procedure is being administered??

But then I am not really surprised. I recall when I was a cop in the US
Air Force and manned the main gate at Andrews AFB night after night, I,
too, had (though resisted) the temptation to lord it over some poor bloke
who came on base at 3 AM. I recall wanting to stop the car, look into it,
check for IDs, etc., all out of sheer boredom, certainly not necessity,
and just a little sense of superiority. Even at the gate of some hospital
or similar facility, the guards routinely exhibit this tendency to indulge
their tiny power, never mind that there?s no reason for it at all.

But then it is not for nothing that we recall Lord Acton?s saying, ?Power
tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.? Here, then, is
the full context of this wonderful bit of understanding: "Liberty is not a
means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political
end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no
sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to
govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern...Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Column on Employment at Will

Free Employment Relations and its Benefits

Tibor R. Machan

In the discipline in which I do much of my teaching, business ethics,
there is a heated debate about whether employment ought to be a matter of
free exchange between the parties involved or whether government ought to
set the terms of the employment relationship. The latter position is now
widely embraced by some of the most prominent business ethics teachers and
promoted in some of the most prestigiously published business ethics text
books and scholarly papers.

The label for the free exchange position is ?the employment at will
doctrine.? The idea is that when one is hired, unless otherwise agreed
upon, one may be fired and laid off without any reason having to be
given?at will?just exactly as one is free to walk away from the job once
it is completed. (Actually, one may even walk away before then, although
one may not be able to collect payment for the work done.)

This is indeed the norm in most private employment situations. If someone
is hired to mow another person?s lawn or clean another?s home, whenever
either party wishes to discontinue the employment relationship, there is
no requirement to justify the decision. The person hired or the person who
did the hiring is free to walk away from the deal.

Those who reject this for employment in larger industries will, of course,
argue that much more is at stake therein, so it shouldn?t be left to the
discretion of the employers, although I am aware of no one who defends the
idea that employers ought to be prevented from walking off the job if they
choose to do so, which of course millions do all the time. The reason for
this is, in the main, that in the 19th century many political economists
regarded workers as lacking bargaining power. Karl Marx, who relied
heavily on Thomas Malthus?s theory of population explosion within the
working classes, laid the basis of the case for special treatment for
employees. He believed, wrongly, that they were subject to easy
exploitation unless provided with special protection.

In the United States of America the case for employment at will has had
some success because of the widespread belief in a free market in the
labor market, although even here there are many laws regulating the
employment relationship. Still, it is much, much easier to fire or lay off
people in American than in Germany, France or Spain where socialist ideas
tend to be very influential. In these countries those in the labor force
as well as others pay a very heavy price for this protectionism. That
price is the far greater level of unemployment there than in a more free
market oriented USA. The reason is quite simple: When employers are
coerced to provide employees with job security and other benefits, the
level of economic entrepreneurship suffers. People just do not start up
businesses as willingly when they may not respond to market forces in
their hiring and firing policies as they do when they are free to do so.

It is one of the myths about free markets that firms just hire and fire
people at their arbitrary will. Even if there is complete freedom to hire
and fire, it is rarely done simply ?at will.? Sure, firing at will is not
prohibited in a free market but it is generally a dumb idea. One usually
fires those who fail to advance the enterprise or whose services are not
in sufficient demand by the customers of a firm. The pink slip is, as it
were, something sent to an employee by a shrinking market, not by one?s
employer.

In any case, in recent months the French government has finally gotten the
message about the employment at will doctrine and the recently appointed
prime minister, Dominique de Villepin has helped to enact several measures
easing France?s rules on hiring and firing. Predictably, opposition party
politicians and the trade unions are all up in arms about this. On the
other hand, surprisingly, President Jacques Chirac?s popularity has
climbed since these new measures, initiated by his new prime minister,
have gone into effect.

The general lesson from this is that not only is the employment at will
doctrine just but, quite unsurprisingly, it is also beneficial to workers.
A free market in employment encourages entrepreneurship and economic
development. Perhaps this lesson should be learned by the US Supreme Court
so next time the issue of private property rights comes up, another
bulwark against government economic regimentation, they will recognize
that freedom is the best path to economic development, not the abuse of
the eminent domain law.

Column on They should all be in Jail [please proof]

They should all be in Jail

Tibor R. Machan

This is what happens when you treat a bunch of crooks with kindness: they
ruin nearly everything. That is what?s happened with a good many former
Soviet bloc countries, where instead of jailing all the communists who
destroyed people and everything else for over 40 years, these same people
and their friends are treated as equal partners in the effort to recover
from the socialist nightmare.

It is bad enough that too many Western politicians and intellectuals hold
on to some idiotic hope about ?a third way? for Europe, some hybrid of
capitalism and socialism, as if mixing slavery with liberty ever amounted
to a happy compromise. But the slow go process in Eastern European
countries, such as the eastern portion of Germany, Bulgaria, Romania,
Poland, and Hungary, is wreaking havoc all over the place.

The Hungarian economist Janos Kornai, who also taught at Harvard
University at times, made the point clearly shortly after the fall of the
Berlin Wall: Don?t even try to establish a welfare state throughout the
former Soviet bloc since for it to have a chance, there have to be rich
people to steal from and none of these countries have enough of those
among their citizens. Kornai was mostly ignored and matters proceeded
toward a full scale policy of attempting to extract blood from a turnip.
So most of these places are broke, have slow growth, still cling to
impossible infrastructural features, and systematically mislead the
citizenry with nostalgic nonsense about job security and guaranteed social
welfare. Instead of clear leadership from intellectuals and politicians
that would level with everyone about how free enterprise is the best
economic hope for the people, even if it takes some time, the folks from
these sad parts are being cuddled with political economic nonsense.

In discussions with some sensible Germans from the former East Germany I
learned that the attitude that?s prominent in that region is represented
in this supposedly cute and funny movie, Good Bye Lenin, in which East
Germany?s socialist hell is treated as a desirable, albeit slightly flaky,
political economic fantasy. No one makes it clear?because most of the
political and intellectual leaders are old line commies who yearn for the
former days when they were in power and could suck out the life blood of
the sadly compliant citizenry?that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
People are encouraged in their preposterous nostalgic mode, one that looks
back to a time when a feeble job security with zero prospect for
prosperity ruled, with the typical malady of nostalgic vision?the most
important element of the past is omitted, namely, that the future back
then was totally bleak and everyone worried about it. (That, by the way,
is the fallacy of nostalgia?dropping from recollections worries about the
future!)

The hope for leadership?some inspired presentation of the hard but
necessary truths about how a country can recover from decades of political
economic malpractice?is also in vein since out of a confused conception of
how economies work there can be no coherent vision with which a population
might be educated as to how to act right. Nearly everyone in these
countries is wishing to square the economic circle, wanting to eat the
cake while having it too, looking for some Peter to rob so as to supply
Paul with resources.

The particular are not all the same, and some of the countries in Eastern
Europe are making some progress toward economic sanity, but, all in all,
reports are discouraging. At the recent Summer Seminars conducted by the
French based Institute for Economic Studies the reports from the various
countries, East and West actually, were depressing, even though the young
men and women who did the reporting were a rare collection of enlightened
classical liberals. The conclusion with which their reports left the
listener is that a fine opportunity was last back there in the early 1990s
when all those crooks who governed for over forty miserable years were
allowed to stay out of jail and continue to play as equal partners in
forging public policies for their countries.

What else can one expect, though, when the criminals
are invited to be on the same footing with those who were the victims?

Column on Sources of Anti-Americanism [please proof]

A Source of European Anti-Americanism

Tibor R. Machan

Hamburg, Germany. I learned last night something about
why there?s dislike
for America in Europe. It?s worth considering.

No, it?s not the war in Iraq, not at least for quite a lot of people in
Germany and elsewhere. In fact, I noticed more support for Bush?s policy
on the continent than I would have expected. Prominent party people and
journalists with whom I spoke do not consider this issue all that vital in
European-American relations.

It is Kyoto that came up as a source of contention far more often than
Iraq. And oddly it isn?t even the substance of the Kyoto treaty that those
folks I spoke with found to be the problem?they admit that on that score
there is much disagreement and uncertainty that can be respected. What
seems to upset many Germans and, judging by what I heard, many Europeans
is that the American government isn?t being ?cooperative? within the
international community concerning resolutions such as the Kyoto treaty on
the environment.

A point that?s worth considering is that some of these critics believe
that the American government ought to deal with environmental topics
exactly as it is dealing with North Korea or Iran on nuclear arms. In this
latter matter the Americans appear to them to be following the path of
international cooperation. So why will they not do the same vis-à-vis
Kyoto? For many of those I spoke with Kyoto is just as crucial an
international issue as nuclear weapons in the hands of rouge rulers. But
is this correct?

If you are a European, it will indeed appear to you that the two matters
are similar. That?s because you will take it as natural that national
leaders should forge policies for the international community in both of
these matters, nuclear proliferation and environmental policy. The general
idea that guides the thinking for many Europeans is that national leaders
are the legitimate representatives of a country?s citizens in any issue of
public concern and it is up to them to make decisions in such matters. The
notion that the issues involved in nuclear proliferation are likely to be
more appropriately dealt with by governments, including by international
commissions and via international treaties, while problems vis-à-vis the
environment may well best be dealt with in a more decentralized fashion
leaves most of these folks cold. It is distinction without a difference.

The reason seems to be plain: Whenever a concern is such that many people
share it, it automatically takes on a political character to most
Europeans. In the USA, of course, there is at least some differentiation,
at least for many people and even for many politicians, between what is
properly the province of public policy and what isn?t. Environmental
matters are, of course, treated by many in the USA as a matter of public
policy but there is considerable sceptical thinking afoot that sees things
differently. Instead of dealing with environmental issues in a top-down,
centrally planned sort of fashion, pollution, for example, could be
addressed mainly at the local levels and via tort law. How much air
pollution is acceptable is something that needs to be determined on the
basis of local information, not by way of broad governmental goals and
plans.

This idea may not be universally embraced in the USA
but it is much more
conducive to how at least a sizable and influential group of Americans
view social and economic problems, namely, in a substantially
decentralized fashion. One region of the country may require certain
measures, while another quite different ones, and indeed no
one-size-fits-all approach is likely to work.

Accordingly, Kyoto type ?solutions? would not come so naturally to many
Americans, who distrust bureaucrats and politicians far more than do
people around the rest of the world. It was quite evident in the
discussions with the Germans and other Europeans that they consider it as
a given that social and economic matters are all susceptible to the kind
of top-down policies that even they admit, once they are reminded of it,
brought down the USSR?s centrally planned economy. The good will and
effectiveness of those who would administer Kyoto type treaties are simply
undisputed. There appeared to be no concerns at all with the kind of
issues that public choice theorists, who worry about the incentives of
bureaucrats and politicians, have identified in America and a few other
places with strong enough classical liberal political economy traditions.

This utter naiveté about what may be expected from national leaders when
it comes to most social and economic matters is very likely a source of
much of the current animosity toward the USA. Of course, some classical
liberals would not even entrust the nuclear proliferation problem to
public officials, but at least there is a wide consensus that this being a
matter of national defense, the government may well have a role its should
not have when it comes to Kyoto type issues and that public choice type
problems do not routinely beset the area.

Mainly, however, the fact that in America there is
considerable genuine
distrust of international agreements pertaining to what ought to be dealt
with in a bottom-up fashion, including environmental problems, seems to
account for why America is unpopular with many in Europe. The great
majority of folks still believe that there is a superior class of
individuals who know better how social and economic issues must be dealt
with from above, period. The individualist, decentralized approach is
entirely unpalatable to nearly all of them.

Column on Comparative Justice [proof please]

On More or Less Just Societies

Tibor R. Machan

When I first became familiar with some aspects of American society, I
considered the country to be vastly superior to the one in which I was
living at the time, namely Hungary during its communist era in the early
1950s. I was no expert, nor a student of history, so my impressions were
just that, impressions. And my confidence in them was appropriately
hesitant, although by certain common sense criteria I was sure
enough. For example, the government simply didn?t oppress people as
flagrantly in the USA as it did throughout the Soviet bloc. Also, in the
USA there had been a reasonably consistent and principled adherence to the
policy that everyone has the right to air his or her ideas with no
censorship of them from the government. Commerce, too, was widespread and
nowhere nearly so impeded by bureaucrats and politicians as in Hungary.
This much was evident to any reasonably aware human being during those
times.

Even after I arrived in America and witnessed its general political and
social situation directly?e.g., its insidious and widespread racism, the
silly ways in which communism was combated by its Congress, the immoral
victimless crimes spawned by the voters and their
representatives?comparatively
the country was far more just, as countries go, than where I came from and
many others I knew of from my studies of history, recent and ancient. As
with
people on many measures, such as their moral character or their health, so
with
their large and small communities, there has always been a continuum
between
the grossly deficient ones, those that are more or less mediocre, and
those that verge
on being quite excellent.

Once my ideas on what constitutes a just human community began to
crystallize, and as I was attempting to apply these ideas to the world
around me, I continued to find justification for ranking communities as
more or less just, although the ranking had to be done with great care
since on some fronts a community can be quite outstanding while on another
it can be a disaster. All in all, though, I kept to my conviction that as
big countries go, the USA is still comparatively superior when it comes to
matters of justice. Yet I also modified some of my earlier impressions,
especially in light of becoming aware of just how vicious and widely
embraced the institution of slavery had been in this country and how, even
after its abolition, how racial segregation undermined the principles of
the American founders on so many fronts. I also realized that in other
spheres American law and public policy fell far short of the kind of
community that would be loyal to the principles of the American founders
whose ideas I have concluded really did capture accurately, albeit in mere
outline, what
a just society should be.

All this comes to my mind now as I continue to try to make sense of both
domestic and international politics, including the discussions about
America?s recent role in world affairs. For instance, it intrigues me how
often the ?moral equivalence? theme is still confidently embraced
vis-à-vis international terrorism, with folks suggesting that what the
terrorists in London, Madrid, New York, Cairo, and elsewhere perpetrate is
pretty much comparable to what the American government has wrought across
the globe via its foreign and military policies.

This is by no means the place to hash all this out but it is very
disturbing to notice now many people are unwilling to do any kind of
comparative ranking, involving the kind of wrongs done by different
people, including governments, in terms of a sensible broad standard of
justice. Often the very same people who embrace value-subjectivism or
multiculturalism or cultural relativism?in short, people who reject the
very idea of an objective morality?advance judgements about the conduct of
different people and governments that are oblivious to any nuances, to
distinctions of severity, of intentionality, of complicity and so forth.

It seems to me that unless one has a reasonably well worked out idea of
what is more or less just?an objective measure of right and wrong in
matters of how communities should be organized and governed?issuing
approvals or indictments of various international agents as they make
their moves is impossible and amounts to little more than venting of ones
feelings. And that can do nothing at all to help set anything right.

Column on Relativism v. Terrorism

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

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Column on Service & Citizenship

Service and Citizenship

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Column: In The Shadows of Terrorism

In the Shadows of Terrorism

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What?s it with ?The American People??

Tibor R. Machan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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