Why all that Cursing?

by Tibor R. Machan

Is everyone getting more and more mad, angry with the world? Judging by the popularity of HBO's Deadwood and Lucky Louie, I would have to conclude that that's just right.

How could such offerings otherwise be so well received? On those few occasions when I have watched these shows, mostly at friends' homes, the volume of swearing -- in particular the uttering of every variety of the word "f**k" -- has been immense. Sentence after sentence produced by the writers for their characters on Deadwood, for instance, contained the term, so much so that when my friends were watching with subtitles, so as to comprehend the dialog better, these didn't even manage to reproduce all the uses of "f**k." I assume it was too much even for them!

I looked at the Lucky Louie pilot and it had great promise. An exchange between a little girl and her father was hilarious. Yet the next scene featured two adult males who simply wouldn't stop cursing. Not just once or twice during an exchange but each time one opened his mouth.

What is it with these folks? I am certainly no prude and curse now and then freely, with no inhibitions. But that's now and then when I feel upset or angry or disgusted, not always! And that is my experience with nearly everyone I know well, where talk flows freely, no holds are barred.

Do I not realize that these HBO programs are fiction? Of course, I know. But I dispute that the aim of fiction is to present humanity in a disgusting light. For clearly all these people -- and they are nearly all of them on Deadwood and Lucky Louie except for small kids -- are a pathetic lot, what with their relentless profanity, their unstoppable cursing. At least they seem very angry with their lives, with nearly everything surrounding them. Why else would they be made to produced all this foul language?

I don't normally lament the state of our culture. In my estimation there has always been a mixture of good and bad in most cultures -- the arts, manners, fashion and such usually mixed it up so that no era is exempt from its share of the ugly and nasty, nor the beautiful and swell. Yes, there are vacillations and in some years the muck is in greater supply than in others. Thus, all that grunge stuff of the 80s (or whatever decade it was) pretty much consigned those years to the pits for me, along with the "music" of the likes of Nirvana. But if one digs hard enough one will unearth plenty of disgusting stuff in any era and it is only because of the therapeutic properties of nostalgia that most people overlook this fact. (Those good old days look so much better in retrospect than they actually were, mainly because we manage to forget about all the worries we had about our future back then, worries that injected a goodly dose of misery in what now looks so good!)

So, please don't get me wrong. I am not arguing the case for how awful things are today as opposed to what they were back then! No. (I suspect certain old people incline to think that way because they project their own impending doom on to the rest of the world!) My only point is that these shows are peculiar, as far as I can tell -- and I have been a cultural detective for a long time, so I have some qualifications for saying this -- for containing an inordinate amount of swearing. Somehow by this means they also manage to preclude anyone who is genuinely likable in their cast of characters, at least if what I have seen is representative of what they usually offer up to viewers.

Quite coincidentally, just as I checked out these shows, I was also resuming my reading of Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons and on page 35 Wolfe produces some insightful observations on the use of "f**k," mostly, however, by college undergraduates. (It is worth checking out what he says if only for the variety of modalities in which the term can be deployed.) But in Wolfe's fiction "f**k" is a term mostly used by the immature who wish to fake some measure of maturity yet only have this pathetic device whereby to do so, namely, cursing. In Deadwood and Lucky Louie, however, everyone but infants indulges. I am clueless, I admit, why the writers and HBO think all this is so precious.

Environmental What Ifs

by Tibor R. Machan

One of the most dangerous trends today, as far as our right to liberty is concerned, is the environmental movement. I am not talking about their worries, of which some are surely justified. But like so many zealous people, environmentalists tend, in the main, to urge greater government powers and invasion of individual rights, especially the right to private property, in support of dealing with their concerns.

But if we think about this a bit, it becomes clear that the greatest friend of the environment, including endangered species, is the principle of private property rights. One way to appreciate this fact is by considering what would have happened if in the past the principle had been firmly adhered to.

For one, road building would have been curtailed. Indeed, all transportation that had expanded by leaps and bounds relied on the taking of private property, something that the U.S. Constitution permits if it concerns some public use. Had it been strictly implemented, the takings clause of the Constitution would never have permitted the violation of the right to private property since "public use," properly understood in a free country, means only whatever is required for the administration of the legal system, such as a court house or police -- or military -- station. Every other purpose would have had to be achieved without violating anyone's property rights.

This constraint would have required virtually all road and rail building, as well as all building of dams, sports stadiums and similar massive projects, to be carried out on a relatively smaller scale than what government sponsored projects that violate private property rights involve. Sure, some of them could have been carried out by the benign means of purchasing land from those who owned them. But the cost in many cases would have been prohibitive and would probably have induced those embarking on these projects to pursue alternatives.

Take, for example, the expansion of the use of the automobile and of airplanes. Without the government's power to take land so as to build, for example, the Interstate Highway system and huge airports, some alternative modes of transportation might have developed because entrepreneurs would have sought out less expensive ways to proceed with their projects.

Counterfactual history is always highly speculative but not impossible. It is often the stuff of science fiction, as when an author imagines what would have happened had Hitler won World War II or had we had to go without penicillin. In one's personal life, too, one can speculate, often enough, about what might have happened had one driven more carefully when one had an accident or stayed in school instead of rushed into family life.

The exercise I am recommending shouldn't be all that different from such "rational reconstruction." In other words, had the political system that held sway in a country been more strictly consistent with the principles of justice, including the principle of private property rights, we would probably not face many of the environmental problems we do face now.

Consider, as another case in point, pollution. One of the main causes of it is dumping -- manufacturing firms or even individuals disposing of their waste without respecting private property rights and legal authorities failing to step in when this happens. Those "negative externalities" that so many refer to as they badmouth capitalism would be, in fact, systematically prohibited in a fully free, capitalist economic system because they involve the violation of private property rights. Instead of reasoning on the basis of some pseudo-utilitarian calculation, according to which it is OK to violate our rights if only some great project is helped by it, a strict adherence to a system of individual rights would have served as a powerful restraint against irrational development, namely, development that encroached upon the rights of people who did not want the kind of development in question.

So what's the lesson here? I suggest that it is "better late than never." If one wishes to organize human communities sensibly and justly, respecting and protecting individual, including private property, rights is still the right approach.

Wishful Thinking From Mr. Lind

Tibor R. Machan

In the August 16th issue of the Financial Times Michael Lind, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of The American Way of Strategy (OUP, October 2006), penned a piece titled “The Unmourned End of Libertarian Politics.” Immediately you could tell something fishy is going to be presented to you here because it is one of the most obvious facts of recent American politics that the libertarians have had hardly any role in it.

Certainly the Libertarian Party’s role in American politics has been minimal. At most the LP has managed, quite valuably in my view, to place the libertarian agenda on the front burner of various radio programs and community meetings. But as far as having an impact on legislative and judicial offerings around the country, the LP hasn’t done much.

So what might Lind be yapping about? Possibly that there have been some politicians around the country who have signed on to a few libertarian ideas and have mixed these in with various conservative or modern liberal ones as they fashioned laws and public policies. But here, too, the influence has been sporadic, rarely principled, mostly of the catch-as-catch-can or pragmatic variety. Lind tells us that “The libertarians launched a massive intellectual and rhetorical assault on modern government from the 1970s onward. Their formidable forces included influential economists such as Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winner, and Martin Feldstein, who chaired Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers; think-tanks such as the Cato Institute; and affluent pressure groups such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform, whose leader, Grover Norquist, famously said that government should be shrunk until it can be drowned in a bathtub.” Yet the story he tells is completely out of proportion.

The bulk of the 20th century has been dominated by welfare statism and neither libertarians nor socialists have had a decisive role in turning things their way. Both in the circles of academic political theory, where John Rawls and his epigone rule and still exert the major influence, and as far as public policies are concerned, the welfare state has been the norm. Yes, the libertarians have had more representation in the academy, they have managed to publish more books and magazines, contribute more than before to mainstream scholarly forums. But little of this has managed to influence laws and public policies.

On the other hand, as far as the dominant ideas being discussed at conferences, in books and journals addressing political economy and theory, including prospective public policies, libertarianism has been making headway. Not enough to satisfy most libertarians—although many share the late Ayn Rand’s view that “It’s earlier than you think,” meaning the time hasn’t yet come for these radical ideas to take root. After all, they have only been placed on the agenda of philosophical and related exploration within the last 300 years—that is, indeed, what made it the American Revolution, namely, that the ideas of the American Founders turned over many centuries of statist thinking, for the first time as an official public statement by leaders of a powerful country. But following that statement, in the Declaration of Independence, those ideas had to struggle, experience much opposition, and the reactionaries on both the Left and the Right have made serious gains recovering their dominance. It is not easy for human beings to follow through with even the best of ideas when they have been used to living under the influence of bad ones for centuries on end.

One thing, however, that suggests that libertarianism has been making gains is precisely the sort of piece penned by Michael Lind. Hoping that he will be able to burry libertarianism before it really gets going, he declares it dead in the water. But, of course, this is his wishful thinking. Around the globe, in China, India, the former Soviet colonies, Africa and elsewhere, classical liberal/libertarian ideas are in ascendance. In Georgia, for example, the former head of state of Estonia, who is an avid libertarian, is advising the new government. In the sphere of environmentalism there are experiments with free market solutions in India and China. Privatization is being seriously considered throughout the globe.

This must be disturbing to serious reactionaries like Mr. Lind, who would just as soon return us all to an era where everything had been under government supervision, regulation, prohibition and initiative, with individuals having to fall in line with the thinking of the elite. (On this score, of course, Left and Right are on the same page!)

Of course, if what Lind is trying to say is that libertarianism is struggling, that is advances two steps only to be taken a step and a half back soon afterwards, he is right. And what exactly is going to develop is not something he or anyone else can know—it is really up to us. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance and, of course, there is no guarantee that such vigilance will be forthcoming. Yet neither is the pessimism Lind urges upon libertarians warranted. Their ideas, after all, are really the best around.

Gunter Grass and Collective Guilt

Tibor R. Machan

The famous Nobel Laureate in literature, Gunter Grass, whose book The Tin Drum made him world renown as Germany’s most prominent postwar novelist, had one major obsession: How all of Germany must be held guilty for the Holocaust. The Tin Drum itself harps on that theme and he has continued to focus his attention on morally castigating all Germans, not only those
who had a hand in the atrocities and murder of millions of Jews and others during the brief history of The Third Reich.

The other day, however it came to light, from the horses mouth itself, that Grass was actually somewhat complicit in sustaining The Third Reich. In his late teens he joined the Waffen SS, the combat wing of Hitler’s elite force. He had hidden this fact and indeed had lied about it, claiming that he had done something far less menacing during this time of his life. But in his forthcoming autobiography he fesses up to his past and admits his guilt.

Several European intellectuals and political figures
have come down hard on Grass, including demanding that he return some of the honors he had received over the year, even the Nobel Prize, but others have come to his defense. Among those are Salmon Rushdie and John Irving, both novelists. Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses had prompted a contract on his life by some Islamic leaders, claming that it contained blasphemous materials, said that Grass’s work was “not undone” by the new revelation and what he had done was but a “youthful mistake.” Rushdie told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that while he was disappointed in Grass, “We don’t not read the work of Ezra Pound, a Nazi sympathizer as an adult,” suggesting that Gunter Grass case is even less morally objectionable that Pound’s given his age at the time he joined the Waffen SS.

This incidence brings to mind Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian politician, whose past also included, in his very early 20s, cooperation with the Nazis. But there is, I submit, a difference in Grass’s case, mainly because of his insistence through most of his life in the collective guilt of Germans as far as the Holocaust is concerned. Grass has put himself forth all along as a severe moralizer concerning Germany and the Third Reich. And
given that he has been insisting on this theme of collective guilt, questions can naturally be raised about the role that theme has had in his way of dealing with his own complicity.

One thing that the thesis of collective guilt can help with is to obscure individual responsibility. If we were all guilty, it makes no difference how involved one has been in the crime, how much of a role one has had in perpetrating wrongs. The wrong is “our fault,” not anyone’s in particular.

Of course, in fact if one has been complicit, one will have to bear an appropriate measure of guilt and this will likely seep through all the muddled notions of collective guilt despite one’s efforts to submerge oneself within the collective and thereby escape personal responsibility. Arguably—although one would have to know the case more intimately than most of us will ever know this one—Grass’s decades long harping on the guilt of the German people served, in part, to lighten his own feeling of
guilt.

Rushdie may be right that an artist’s work can continue to have merit despite that artist’s moral flaws. It does, of course, depend upon the nature of the art itself. A novelist who dwells mainly on moral topics could lose his or her moral authority by being a hypocrite and the works may have to be read with this in mind. So what applies to Pound, a poet, may not apply equally to Grass, the novelist.

In any case, there is something morally amiss about someone who has been denying individual guilt and stressing the collective variety who then turns out to be morally responsible and admits it to boot, thus testifying against his own previous theory that it was all a matter of the blameworthiness of the German people, not of the individual Germans and others who brought about the mass murders and genocide.

It would be instructive for Grass to enter into this
discussion in some detail, to work through just what role his focus on collective guilt may have had in hiding his own.

It Begins with the Poor and Sick

Tibor R. Machan

Philosopher types, indeed intellectuals, are often accused of dealing too much in abstractions. As if anyone could escape dealing in abstractions—that is how we think, abstractly, after all. But the idea is really that some of us dwell too much on principles, theories and don’t get down to real, actual facts. If we did get down to the nitty-gritty we would realize that these abstractions aren’t all that valuable. So in the spirit of getting down to particular and hard facts, here is a little bitsy of a story that will show that those theorists are often well anchored in reality. But the story first needs a bit of history, told by the on line encyclopedia, Wikepedia:

“The Grafton saxophone was a plastic saxophone manufactured by the Grafton company from the late-1940s until the mid-1950s. Graftons are now collectors' items. Its most notable player was Charlie Parker. The Grafton saxophone that Parker couldn't pawn to support his heroin addiction was sold at the Christie's auction house in London in September 1994 for £93,500 sterling. The buyer was the mayor of Parker's home town, Kansas City, Kansas.”

How quaint, no? Only in this little story lies a big point. This is that governments simply cannot be counted on to stick to what is mentioned when their wide powers are defended by their intellectual cheerleaders, the thousands of statist intellectuals around the world.

Those folks, you will recall, always ask for more than minimal government, the kind the American founders designated to “secure our rights,” on the grounds that the poor, the sick, and the children surely need it. Who would help these unfortunates other than the benevolent state?
And, yes, that is one gripping story—some neglected kid or other infirm individual is left helpless by free men and women and then the government steps in with all its compassion and generosity and bails out the poor ones. Never mind that in fact the poor ones have been bailed out aplenty by those free men and women throughout the history of the relatively limited government prior to the emergence of what in time became FDR’s expanded state. There have always been ample numbers of voluntary agencies stepping up where genuine support was justified—I noted this in my book, Generosity (1998).
But that historical fact doesn’t seem to impress the cheerleaders of expanded state power. They keep bringing up the poor, sick, and orphaned so as to induce in the rest of us support for their dream society, the all powerful welfare state.
The story about the plastic saxophone illustrates very nicely, though, just how readily those in government abandon a commitment to confining their activism to helping those in dire straits. There is no way to justify the Mayor of Kansas City’s extravagance of using £93,500 sterling of taxpayers funds to buy a piece of nostalgia many in Kansas City were not interested in spending their resources on.
The fact is that no sooner does government get the power to take from Peter and do favors for Paul, those favors will far exceed stepping in as the last, badly needed provider of bona fide help. No, those abstract principles of the public choice theorists—Nobel Laureate James Buchanan and his partner Gordon Tullock—kick in immediately and the politicians, like the mayor of Kansas City, start spending tax funds for a personal agenda of their own. Yes, some of this could arise from generosity, from aesthetics, or some other benevolent motive. But it is mostly a matter of the politician’s preferences and tastes and has nothing at all to do with fulfilling any desperate need or some supposed public interest.
So, yes philosophers and other theorists seem not to be talking directly about actual cases but those principles they work out, like the folks who came up with public choice theory, apply in the real world good and hard. And the plastic saxophone case is just one of millions in which the principle is clearly, unambiguously demonstrated and confirmed.

Paternalism, Is it Here to Stay?

Tibor R. Machan

Or maternalism, if you wish, for what billions of people across the globe appear to want from government is being treated like children, taken care of by some elders. Yet this is an old story, indeed.

Throughout the ancient world, including in much of its political literature, the idea has been dominant that government is our care taker. All the kings had been credited with the role of “keepers of the realm,” as if they were the legitimate owners of the regions they ruled and had the virtue and wisdom—not to mention authority—to rule the rest of us.

It is only gradually, beginning with Magna Carte in the 13th century, that the myth of monarchical superiority came under serious and widespread enough criticism. At first it was only that perhaps some of the nobles in the country ought to curb the king’s absolute sovereignty; in time, especially with the emergence of the classical liberal social-political idea, the very notion of the special status of those in government started to be questioned.

With the American Founders, of course, the view that government held sovereignty over us all lost some credibility. We all are equal in having unalienable rights, to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and any other thing that doesn’t violate the rights of others. This truth took a while to surface but it finally got on the agenda within the forums of political disputation. And when Abraham Lincoln said that "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent," the point was beginning to catch on, especially in light of the Draconian paternalism of chattel slavery.

Yet, after its brief emergence, the idea of a free society began to get lost in the shuffle. The paternalists started to regain their appeal, what with all the promises they offered to save people from having to fend for themselves and only with the voluntary cooperation of their fellows. No, the temptation of taking shortcuts by way of coercion, which is the prime motivation of criminal conduct, was beginning, once again, to be yielded to and the old governmental habit reasserted itself.

By the time Americans encountered some serious difficulties in their country (due to compromises on their commitment to full liberty), via for example, the Great Depression, they started to cave in to the notion that some great savior is needed to take care of us. FDR came charging in, claiming to have the magic formula that none of the old monarchs could deliver on, namely, to provide us all with guarantees against life’s uncertainties and complications. Instead of keeping loyal to the spirit of the American Founder’s idea of individual rights, FDR invented the so called “Second Bill of Rights,” with all of its promises to guard us against adversities of any kind by way of wealth redistribution and the conscription of all for the benefit of all. It is from this attitude that millions of Americans began to look to government for protection against disease, ignorance, natural disaster and anything else they were worried about in their lives.

Which brings up, a year after it happened, the disaster that was hurricane Katrina. Nearly everyone knows by now that the disaster wouldn’t have been nearly so severe had those levies been properly cared for, just to mention one task the nanny state assumed for us. But instead of learning from this that government isn’t the answer but the problem, in ninety-nine percent of cases where it asserts its powers for our good, the cheerleaders of the paternalistic state continue to drum up support for getting it further involved in our lives.

What Katrina taught these champions of the all mighty government isn’t that the solving of our problems in virtually all cases—apart from abating of violent crimes and foreign aggressions, perhaps—should be decoupled from government. No, like the proverbial gambling addict, millions of Americans and their academic leaders want, instead, to go back to Uncle Sam for its useless "help." As if government really were the source of help for people. Never mind Hitler, never mind Mussolini, never mind Stalin, never mind Mao, and never mind all the lesser tyrants and dictators and pretenders to serving the public interest, these dreamers will not give up. So even while some around the globe are experimenting, sometimes only as a last resort, with privatization, others are clamoring for more statism.

It is time, really, to give up the myth of paternalism, of the nanny state, of the superiority of those who have a monopoly on the use of coercive force in society.

[ http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060731/20060731005103.html?.v=1 ]Hoover Institution Press: Liberty and Justice, Edited by Hoover Fellow Tibor Machan (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance)
STANFORD, Calif.—-July 31, 2006–Liberty and Justice marks the final volume in a ten-volume series titled Philosophic Reflections on a Free Society, edited by Hoover fellow Tibor Machan. Contributors are:
Anthony de Jasay is an economist and political philosopher . His published work includes The State (Oxford 1985), Social Contract, Free Ride (Oxford 1989) and Justice and Its Surroundings (Indianapolis 2002).
Jonathan Jacobs is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Division of the Humanities at Colgate University. He is the author of Choosing Character (Cornell, 2001) Aristotle’s Virtues (Peter Lang, 2004), Dimensions of Moral Theory (Blackwell, 2002), and other books.
Jennifer McKitrick is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Tibor R. Machan is the R. C. Hoiles Professor at Chapman University, Orange, CA, Hoover Institution research fellow. His books include Individuals and Their Rights (Open Court, 1989), Classical Individualism (Routledge, 1998), and Objectivity (Ashgate, 2004).
Table of Contents
Preface Tibor R. Machan
Chapter 1 Justice, Luck, Liberty Anthony de Jasay
Chapter 2 The Exercise of Liberty and the Moral Psychology of Justice Jonathan Jacobs
Chapter 3 Liberty, Gender, and the Family Jennifer McKitrick
Chapter 4 Libertarian Justice: a Natural Rights Approach Tibor R. Machan

The Mid East Crisis

Tibor R. Machan

When the Hizbullah initially kidnapped the Israeli soldiers, the event that seems to have sparked the current crisis, I was traveling in Europe with only the International Herald Tribune, CNN, BBC and some German newscasts available to keep me up to snuff. I also had a chance to talk with several people from the region itself.

These days there is hardly a conflict in the world that one can afford to ignore, if only because the price of something or other is bound to be affected, even if one can live with all the misery these events spawn for thousands of people. Of course, in all armed conflicts there is the immediate question of who is responsible. And while it would be very helpful to have a dependable historian tagging along so as to keep one informed about how various crises were precipitated, few of us have that luxury. (I actually did have just that luxury for a week since at one of the seminars where I was lecturing, near Cologne, Germany, a superb historian was one of my colleagues. Unfortunately, even he wasn’t in full command of the necessary details to get a decisive handle on what was going on just then in the Mid East.)

So I continued to check into my highly suspect news sources—suspect because even an amateur could tell how slipshod and often mainly sensational the coverage was—so as to keep abreast of unfolding events. I was beginning to get a sense of at least how the mainstream media was covering the unfolding conflict but not until I visited my mother in Southern Germany did something come together for me about this coverage.

My mother has always had a tinge of the anti-Semite about her, especially back when she was married to my father in the late 1930s, a man who was the epitome of the virulent Central European anti-Semite. Till the day he died, in 1970, he continued with this attitude, so much so that he alienated both his children as a result, not to mention innumerable acquaintances who knew him mainly professionally. My mother was never quite like my father in this regard but she clearly shared the widespread prejudice against Jews shown by millions throughout Europe, east and west.

We had managed during my previous visits to skirt this topic—there was no way that I could make any headway with her during a day’s worth of chit chat, although in her mid 80s she is entirely lucid. This time, however, she initiated a discussion on the topic of the Jews by turning to me and saying, “You know, Richard (she calls me by my middle name), I have never liked the Jews, but recently I have begun to wonder why it is that so many people around the world begrudge them that tiny plot of land they got back in the 1940s.” I was taken aback by this and my shock increased as she continued: “I have been watching television news throughout the recent upheaval (indeed, she can do little else but that and read, given that she is physically quite frail), and have noticed that nearly all the commentators, including reporters, seem to favor the Hizbullah even though they were the ones who started all of this.”

By my own fragmented information, too, I came to this conclusion but having my anti-Semitic mother in agreement with me on the matter was quite a surprise. Because she seemed to me to be right. Everything I read and listened to about the conflict kept emphasizing the collateral victims in Lebanon, produced from Israeli shellings, with hardly any reminders that (a) the Hizbullah initiated the conflict and (b) the Hizbullah routinely locate themselves—their artillery and inventory of weapons—within the Lebanese civilian population so that efforts at placating them and any retaliation could not but do damage to these civilians.

During one of the few presentations on CNN of the Israeli side of the dispute, the ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, did manage to make what to me appeared to be the decisive point, namely, that “there is a huge moral disequivalence between the two sides. While our enemies—who only today have launched more than 100 missiles at Israeli towns and villages—specifically target women and children in order to kill them, we are defending ourselves in this brutal war. And sometimes, tragically, as happened today, women and children get hurt, because they are used as human shields by Hizbullah. Hizbullah has homes in Lebanon that house missiles—in which the family sleeps with a missile. When you sleep with a missile, sometimes you do not wake up in the morning. In Israel, we have homes that are equipped with air raid shelters to save people from bombs; in Lebanon, they have homes that they equip to launch missiles, taking into account that those people could be killed.”

So, for the time being, this amateur will hold to the belief that there is indeed some kind of irrational anti-Israeli sentiment afoot around the globe and that it is Israel that holds the moral high ground in at least this current conflict.

Development and Freedom

Tibor R. Machan

The late Peter ("Lord") Bauer devoted much of his life to championing the political economy of classical liberalism for developing societies. This is what would bring them out of their wretched states, not a bunch of foreign aid and intervention by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the United Nations. His friend and sometime critic, Amartya Sen, a
Nobel Laureate who now teaches at Harvard University, had a serious disagreement with Bauer. Sen had been defending what he has dubbed the capabilities approach whereby the people in underdeveloped, Third World countries, must be helped not only by removing all the terrible obstacles placed before them by politicians and bureaucrats but also be [by] providing
them with some initial aid and with making it possible for them to
influence their governments. Such influence, of course, would direct public policies to garner resources via taxation and then hand out subsidies and other forms of support to special interest groups that had helped vote in these measures. Sen's basic idea is that once this opportunity for making an impact on politics has been exploited, development would commence and most
often private individuals and firms would start embarking on various productive enterprises. But, argues Sen, first they need a little help from government and various international groups.

Bauer's and Sen's conflicting approaches may best be accounted for by reference to what seems to be their respective views of human nature as well as of governments. Bauer would seem to have been confident that free men and women will do well by themselves, provided the legal authorities uphold the regime of private property rights and the integrity of contracts. This is the limited government idea, once favoured by the American Founders in the Declaration of Independence. This is the idea
that comes from John Locke who held that government is but a way to secure our rights and there is no other serious business for it to carry out for us. And this view rests on the idea that human beings are able to fend for themselves, in voluntary cooperation, because they are inventive and creative and productive once the threat of criminal and foreign invasion
is dealt with in their societies. Sure, there will be some who are lagging behind, maybe because there are suffering from certain maladies or unusual natural impediments but to help them it's enough for their neighbours and relatives and philanthropist to give them support. Governments should stay the course and secure individual rights, period.

Another matter Sen appears to overlook is what public choice theorists have taught us, namely, that when government gets involved in helping various groups in need, those in government pretty much manage to divert this help to projects they themselves prefer. Bureaucrats and politicians have their own agenda and when they gain power so as to help out, it is
their idea of what needs to be helped out they will follow, not that of those who reached out to them. Given that politicians and bureaucrats lack budgetary constrains like normal businesses and families do, they are also likely to overspend and deplete the resources of their treasuries.

Of course, those who are eager for the unfortunate and those left behind to get on their feet must also accept an uncomfortable fact—not everyone is eager to go along with this objective even among those who are in the worst shape. It is utopian to believe that any kind of method for development will be universally effective. When one does hold that view, one is only likely to throw good money after bad and perpetrate serious wastefulness. Some measure of poverty, for example, as well as devastation
from natural disasters will have to be accepted. Human beings aren't perfect and to fail to realize this leads to what Voltaire called the perfect being the enemy of the good. This applies to efforts to facilitate development across the globe.

It seems to me that Bauer had it right, even though from his perspective one must also accept that some underdevelopment will remain in place here and there across the globe. But the kind of efforts urged on us by Sen and, especially, by the likes of Jeffrey Sachs and Bono—massive transfers of wealth from developing to underdeveloped countries—will only lead to
disappointment and frustration.

Troubles of Transition

Tibor R. Machan

If you haven’t had the chance of visiting former Soviet bloc countries you will find it difficult to appreciate just how devastating an impact socialism has on human community life. Judging by the continued popularity of socialism among academic political philosophers, economists, and theorists, it is not likely that many of these folks have ever travelled to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, the Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, or Albania.

Of course, even among these people the form of socialism championed has changed from the massively planned, top-down economy to what are labelled “market socialism,” “democratic socialism,” “communitarianism,” or “the third way”. Although the ultimate authority for economic decision-making in all of these would still rests with the government, in these systems governments graciously permit activities in many areas, including in commerce and business, that they do not directly oversee.

To get a good sense of the practical consequences of socialist economies, whatever the new label they have been given, it would be valuable for proponents to get a close look at what has happened in the former Soviet bloc countries. Even though nearly two decades have passed since the Soviet system has collapsed, the signs of socialism are everywhere. That’s
in part because these societies have not yet managed to generate the wealth that would be required so as to replace all the horrible leftovers of the socialist system with what a free and prosperous country can produce. Rows of dilapidated apartment houses, factory buildings, government offices, schools and the like are strewn across these countries with little evidence that purging them soon is very likely. After all, even though the Draconian type socialist planned economy is now part of the
miserable past in most of these places, a robust recovery has not yet taken place, so that people, companies, and communities could afford to get rid of the remains of the socialist era.

After all, even under miserable socialism people had to live someplace, tried to get some work done, approximated some measure of education of their children, farmed, manufactured and so forth, however poorly and inefficiently. And having invested in building their places of residence and work and play with the little wealth they had available, it is not practical to simply destroy it all and start from scratch.

But this is only one obstacle to a serious recovery from the grand Soviet socialist experiment, one that a great many of the academics in the West eagerly supported. There is also the fact that in most of these countries the old communists and socialists are still very active in the political arena. Unlike the Nazis, the communists were not deactivated after their
system came a cropper. And given how unprepared the non-communists and non-socialists in those countries were for guiding their countries toward a substantially free society, these old-liners are still often in leadership positions.

Indeed, in Hungary, Bulgaria and elsewhere they have managed to get elected to lead the government, mainly by frustrated citizens. Some of these are nostalgic for the “good old days” of socialist security the devastating consequences of which they still haven’t fully grasped. Some of them were, of course, part of the old system and still actually wish for it to come back. (When I recently visited Gori, the town in Georgia
where Joseph Stalin was born, I saw the huge statue of him still fully intact, alongside a museum in his honour that I was told has a steady stream of admiring visitors, mostly from Russia!)

If you add to all this the fact that a great many Western advisors to these former Soviet bloc countries preach not the virtues of a fully free society but a variety of reconstituted versions of socialism, it becomes pretty clear why there is such slow progress evident throughout the region. Rent seeking—which is to say, using the government for purposes of obtaining benefits for which other people must pay with their labour and
other resources—is of course the norm in many Western countries, including the United States of America (which is actually quite popular with most of the citizens of these former Soviet bloc countries). So what the West's leaders preach to the leadership in these former Soviet bloc countries is itself more of an impediment rather than assistance in the direction of full
development and liberation.

Just imagine if someone who has been felled by some devastating illness tried to recover by getting small dosages of both good and bad medicine. Such a person’s recovery would take a long time, if indeed it would be likely at all. That is just the situation with many of the countries of the former Soviet empire. Which is a sad prospect, indeed.

An Important Reason for Freedom

Tibor R. Machan

In a seminar I took part in a few weeks ago in Yundola, Bulgaria, I was asked about the best reason for supporting a fully free society. There are many reasons, of course, and the most popular one tends to focus on the economic benefits of freedom. When people are free, they tend to produce much better than if someone holds a gun to their heads, or even just bullies them, like bureaucrats tend to do in welfare states. Also, there is more creativity and innovation in a free society than in one that’s
planned or even just heavily regulated. The arts, too, tend to benefit since there is a far greater dissemination of what artists create in a free country than in one that’s run by some elite group.

But in the end the most important benefit of freedom is really something quite distinct. This is that it is the precondition of living a morally good life. Of course, what such a life is needs to be discussed and certainly has been the focus of debate from some of the best mind throughout human history. Yet, whatever is the full story on just what is the morally right way to live, one thing is for sure. If one isn’t free to make choices in one’s life, if one has no sphere of personal authority to decide on how one is going to conduct oneself, such a life is going to be outside of one’s reach. Morality requires liberty for one--when someone isn't free to choose to act as one will, is it even possible to think of whether the person has acted rightly or wrongly? People ruled and regulated by others aren’t their own masters but involuntary servants, subjects and not sovereign citizens. So what they do isn’t up to them, at least not to the degree that others control their behaviour.

It is also clear enough that what is most important for everyone is whether he or she is a morally good person. Whatever the specifics, it is not much in dispute that whether someone is good at some profession, sport, hobby, or any special activity, what counts for most is whether one is being a morally good human being. This is easily confirmed—nearly everyone can testify that above everything else, it is whether someone is
morally decent that counts in the end. Sure, we like it when folks are handsome or beautiful or rich or talented or skilled—all of this matters to us a great deal. But if one has met all these standards swimmingly but is, in the end, a scoundrel, that pretty much as a deal breaker.

There are some apparent exceptions to this—say if someone who is basically a cad does, nonetheless, contribute something vital to the world, in science, medicine, athletics, the arts or scholarship. And there are a few such people who seem to get a pass as far as their rotten character is concerned. Still, they aren’t fully embraced as worthy human souls, that’s also for sure.

So, if it is true that human liberty is a prerequisite of human morality, it is difficult to dispute that a free country is better than various more or less coercive alternatives to it. In a free country the rights everyone has--to be respected by others and protected in the legal system--are supposed to secure for one what the late Robert Nozick called one’s moral space, a sphere of exclusive jurisdiction that’s inviolate, wherein one is in full control. With everyone in possession of such a sphere, regardless
of its exact size or range, everyone is then in charge of how one will comport oneself within this sphere and will carry full responsibility for his or her conduct.

Those who will freely join with others and cooperatively carry out various projects, for better or for worse, will also have the chance to prove their moral worth. In a free country dumping one’s ill doings on other people is prohibited and cannot be done with impunity, which is likely to encourage more decent behavior than will be done in societies in which one can lose oneself in the crowd and routinely dodge personal responsibility.

Of course, freedom has many other benefits besides encouraging ethically or morally responsible conduct and the possibility of giving credit as well as blame where these are properly due. Freedom does encourage more prosperity and the growth of knowledge and expansion of culture, encouraging the purging of the useless and unwanted from our midst. Still, what is most important about freedom is that free men and women can more
fully than in other types of societies aspire to live morally good lives, to flourish as human individuals, however exactly that’s to be understood.

Can Eminent Domain be Justified?

Tibor R. Machan

Among those of us who prize the protection of inidividual liberty as the primary public good, never to be sacrificed, the issue of eminent domain is troublesome. The reason is the same as with subpoenas. They both seem, on first sight, to be violations of our unalienable rights--to property, to liberty. So what gives?

Arguably, however, when one chooses to be a citizen of a country, remains their voluntarily, one willingly signs up for some provisions, as a matter of one's own free choice. For example, when in the course of the pursuit of justice--say, a criminal trial--one's special, unique testimony is required, something that cannot be obtained without one's services, one owes that testimony. It's part and parcel of being a citizen of a
functioning free legal order without which the system breaks down and justice cannot be pursued.

Similarly, if there is absolutely no other way to obtain facilities, for example, land for conducting trials, police services, imprisonment of criminals, etc.--no places are for sale, there is no unowned space and so forth--then "taking"
private property for the minimal public use or functions is justified because this, too, is indispensable in the pursuit of justice, which is what citizenship is about.

But doesn't this give away the ball game? Aren't there thousands of other needs that can only be satisfied by taking stuff from people, from conscripting their labor?

No. The millions of things people want and even need in society can be bought. They are obtainable through voluntary exchange, even if at times for a high price. But one's unique testimony in the pursuit of justice--say, because one is the only person who witnessed a crime or has expertise about some relevant subject--cannot be obtained that way. Also, if there simply is no place to build a court house without requisitioning someone's private
property, obtaining this is part and parcel of having consented to be governed.

Yes, matters are complicated sometimes for those of us who prize liberty above all. Yet what at times appear to be coercive measures, such as subpoenas and eminent domain, are in fact a feature of prizing liberty. Without them liberty would die. That is what some conservatives mean when they talk of ordered liberty, a free country that is civilized rather than
barbaric.

Some champions of liberty dispute this, claiming that unless providing a place for public facilities is voluntary at the time they are needed, they amount to coercion. But this is a mistake--it is akin to thinking that when someone collects on a debt
one has freely assumed that amounts to expropriation of property. A taking for a bona fide, very limited, public use is something one volunteers to accept, if all other ways of obtaining
the property fail, just in beinjg a citizen of a free society in which government--or indeed any legal order--is instituted to secure our rights. (Even the so called anarchist libertarian
will require such taking in order to deal with court proceedings and defensive police or military policies, should no one at the time volunteer to part with property required for this purpose.)

When John Locke spelled out why government is required to protect individual rights, it was clear to him and to all those who followed his reasoning that certain means are necessary to achieve the goal of such protection. That's why he and classical liberals henceforth advocated strictly limited government. Yes, it is government, but it is strictly limited, something those who prize individual rigthts and their protection cannot do without however much they may wish to pretend it is possible.

Being of Two (or More) Minds

Tibor R. Machan

My one time professor Robert J. Fogelin recently wrote a book, Walking the Tightrope of Reason (London: Oxford University Press, 2003), which argued that the bulk of us are pretty satisfied holding inconsistent beliefs. We think that the world can be understood and dealt with rationally but also hold out for some miracles. We think our fellow human beings are mostly trustworthy and nice but also believe that many people are rotten through and through. And even in more technical areas, we think that the world is but a huge machine that moves ineluctably wherever it is headed yet think we have free will and can change the course of events in various areas of our lives.

Professor Fogelin’s is a very challenging thesis. One problem with it is that in our criticism of how people behave or how institutions are run, our standard is consistency. Even in reading the book we must use reason to tell if it is sound. If we find things inconsistent, we regard it to be a flaw. So when certain politicians propose public policies, others and the pundits insist they be consistent. When witnesses testify in court, they are held to standards of full consistency, otherwise their testimony is discredited. Scientists, too, are supposed to advance ideas that are coherent and do not contain inconsistencies. Those who solve crimes, too, are held to such standards.

So, even about the very issue of whether inconsistencies are permissible, many of us are inconsistent. We can accept a bit of hypocrisy here, some two-facedness there, and so forth, but not too much.

If you generalize Professor Fogelin’s idea to, say, an entire country and the views of the citizenry—let alone to the whole world—what comes out is rather messy, if not out and out chaotic. Laws would turn out to favor both one thing and its opposite—for example, personal responsibility as well as everything bad one does being excusable, pro-life as well as pro-choice, and freedom as well as subjugation. Or when it comes to foreign affairs, great numbers of us believe in restraint and a policy whereby only when it is in our interest should we meddle in the affairs of foreign countries; yet there are millions who believe that humanitarian goals justify various interventions. And maybe the very same citizens think both of these ideas and make their mixed thinking evident to their political representatives. So those representatives, too, are of two or more minds when in comes to public policy—e. g., let’s cut but let’s also increase government spending.

At the personal level, too, we find that people prize integrity—keeping one’s values consistent and standing up for them as such. But they also claim that, well, one just cannot be so logical about it all, one needs to make allowances for divided loyalties and conflicting goals in people’s lives. (This was the theme of the late Sidney Hook’s book, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life [Basic Books, 1975].) The admonition that we should all “get it together” and not run wild with mutually exclusive agendas in our lives is popular, but so, too, is the come-back that this is too difficult, too demanding, too unrealistic and even rigid and dogmatic. We need, some will insist, more of a flexible approach, one that doesn’t look for logic and reason in everything.

My take on this is not the main issue here. I am just reporting on how many influential and intelligent folks line up on the issue of how consistent people should be as they conduct their personal or public affairs. Given that Professor Fogelin’s idea is quite popular, it may require of us that we assess how things go within different areas of our lives, private or public, quite differently from how we are used to. We do tend to insist on consistency where other people’s ideas and conduct are concerned; even with ourselves we often feel guilty when we do not think and live consistently. Yet at other times we make much allowance for inconsistencies. Perhaps we need to appreciate this a bit as we look at the world.

For my money the effort to live rationally, with integrity, consistently, is a supremely worthy one. But let’s face it, lots of people aren’t very interested in such an approach to life. And some very bright ones even contend it is pretty much a hopeless undertaking. Should we hold up reason as the ideal and keep judging private and public affairs accordingly? Is it, in short, better to stick to reason and leave fancy to the imagination, as Socrates once suggested?

Al Gore’s Unconcern for People

Tibor R. Machan

Only a few sentences of Larry King’s recent interview with former Vice President Al Gore caught my eyes and ears but they were enough to confirm what I had been suspecting all along. Asked about his view of the famous Cambridge University astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s idea that human beings need to prepare to eventually move into outer space, Gore flatly dismissed it.

Anyone who is seriously concerned about how human beings might cope with ecological problems here on earth would need to consider as at least one possibility the emigration of people from earth to some new frontiers. These would surely be possibilities worth considering by those who believe, honestly, that in some centuries or even decades to come, earth will no longer be capable of supporting human life.

In principle, the idea Hawking has floated, by no means original with him, is merely a logical extension of what has been happening on earth for as long as living things have been inhabiting it. The more there is of them, the further away they need to move from where they were initially hatched, as it were. Birds, fish, and humans—you name them. When they increase in numbers, they slowly extend the territory they can successfully inhabit. Not that this always happens smoothly or that it can happen rapidly. Living beings that are unable to change their environment on their own initiative have needed to slowly adjust to some of the new areas to which they had to migrate. But just consider one clear case in point: in time some fish move on to shore and managed to live there as land based animals.

But when it comes to human beings, the possibility of migration from earth to some other planets can be seen to be more promising that what the slow process of evolution illustrates with most living beings. That’s because human beings need not await the workings of natural selection in how they adjust to new regions where they can successfully survive and flourish. People are unique in large measure because they can choose to transform their environments, not merely evolve to be able to live in them. The evidence for this is overwhelming.

One of the flaws in the panicky kind of environmentalism Al Gore & Co., promote is that they ignore the human capacity for creativity and innovation. That flaw, of course, includes failing to seriously entertain the possibility that in time people will migrate away from earth, changing their new habitat to accommodate their needs and wants.

Not that such expansion of human habitation beyond earth may not involve missteps of various kinds. Just consider the problems already evident with the (largely government run) space program. But what I am talking about and what Professor Hawking referred to wasn’t some infallible process of changing how people live on earth to some other part of the universe. The point is that such a change is a clear possibility for which evidence is already accumulating.

The suggestion of this possibility, even if quite rational, would not impress someone like Al Gore, of course. If he took it seriously, it would remove from his propaganda arsenal the element of fundamental fear. No longer would it make much sense to hand over all our decisions to the environmentalists with Al Gore as the leader—or should I say “Fuhrer”? No, the idea that in good time people will recognize what they need to do to cope with the possibility of having used up the resources available to them here on earth strongly suggests that an unregimented approach to coping with the environment is preferable to one imposed on us from above.

What Gore & Co., clearly lack is the confidence that human beings, in the main, are fit to handle the problems that arise in their lives. Or might it be that they fear that confidence because it robs them of the chance to grab power over the rest of us? Seems to me that this is not such a remote possibility at all.

When Gore so quickly dismissed that people could well migrate from earth elsewhere to solve some of the problems he claims he is concerned about, this possibility suggested itself quite readily, at least to me.

Journalistic Malpractice?

Tibor R. Machan

Now and then I peruse newspapers from around the country and on one such occasion I ran across the article "Hundreds rally to place crime fighting tax on ballot" in The Palo Alto Daily News. The title was itself of interest to me because “hundreds” just doesn’t strike me as an imposing figure.

As I read into the piece, however, something more important came to light. It read exactly like a press release from those who support the measure. These folks want to have an additional property tax imposed on residents of East Palo Alto so as to raise funds basically to help ex-cons to get jobs, to facilitate their reintegration into the community.~

For the moment never mind about the propriety of a public policy measure that spends other people’s money on helping out convicted criminals. (One may even consider this double jeopardy against the local citizens!) What struck me as curious is that even though in a previous effort a similar measure lost at the polls, there was not one quotation from skeptics provided in the news report. Instead quotations followed quotations from supporters of the idea.

What kind of journalism is this? Could the reporter, Luke Stangel, find no one who objects to this idea? I cannot believe that.~The article thus ends up to be little more than propaganda for those who want to tax property owners to fund yet another welfare measure in East Palo Alto.

And Mr. Stangel wasn’t the only one who got on board with this mission. After a bit of research I discovered that Neil Gonzales, of the San Mateo County Times, in his piece, “East Palo Alto Coalition Seeks Tax to Fight Youth Crime,” did virtually the same thing—turned a supposed news report into virtual propaganda as well.

I am somewhat familiar with small papers and how some of those writing for them are community activists, so their “reports” are actually advocacy pieces. We have a monthly newspaper in my own community that engages in this kind of “journalism.”

Yet this is not at all unavoidable. Publishers and editors could easily insist that when an activist switches hats and becomes a journalist, his or her behavior change and instead of engaging in what in informal logic is called the fallacy of pleading one’s case, a balanced report be produced that reflects what is actually going on in the community. And if there are serious opponents of a measure being proposed for a vote in a community, someone who takes on the job of telling about it in a newspaper—instead of a political pamphlet—has the responsibility to include different views on the issue being debated.

But no. Both of these journalists have produced “reports” with no mention of the opponents’ viewpoints, let alone providing any quotations from them or reasons why some oppose the measure. These pieces, in fact, read very much like the kind of “reports” I used to encounter in the newspapers back in communist Hungary, where no one but the government had the legal power to produce them.

Maybe, however, when a paper is the sole provider of news in a small community, there is a temptation to get lazy and some, like the two journalists whose reports I read, cave into this instead of upholding professional standards. Readers, in turn, need to be vigilant in such circumstances because the ordinary forces of media competition are missing. Yes, some small competition might exist from bloggers and the like. Still, it is probably best to make sure whether a story has some other angle to it than what is presented in lopsided reports like those I ran across.

It is one of the widespread myths propagated by many journalists and their teachers that when it comes to news reporting, journalists can be independent, non-partisan, and fully relied upon to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. However, in fact no journalist is without some, perhaps well hidden (even from oneself), point of view that guides who will be interviewed, what stories will be covered and followed up on, etc. So what may start out as a report intended to be informative of how things are in a community turns out to be, well, a piece of propaganda.

Both of the reporters filing stories on the proposed East Palo Alto ballot measure managed to become advocates for the measure and thus undermine their journalistic integrity. Or that is, at least, what comes through from reading their “reports.”

Varieties of Globalization

Tibor R. Machan

Most years I do a lot of international traveling and make some observations in light of topics of current interest. So on recent trips, for example to Argentina, Chile, and South Africa, I have noticed how in most airports and establishments of various kinds smoking tends to be banned, either by law or because proprietors prefer it. One might even say that there is a global trend toward eliminating smoking as an acceptable pastime.

Although there are some who protests such “imperialism,” they are not your usual critics of globalization. Indeed, if anything, the very people who find economic globalization objectionable tend to be the ones who have no problem with spreading smoking bans across the globe. In this instance, it seems, they see nothing wrong with imposing on members of different cultures, ethnic groups, religious faiths a one-size-fits-all way of life, namely, a life without tobacco smoke.

But why is it perfectly OK to spread this life style across the world? Those who support this globalization—the likes of Rob Reiner the Hollywood bully (“Meathead” from All in the Family) who is behind so much of the anti-smoking fascism in the U. S. A.—would most likely claim that, well, in such a case something universal is at issue, something that applies to people as such, having to do with their health and fitness. In this area people are significantly alike so considerations of multiculturalism, ethnic and religious diversity do not apply, such folks would insist. And while this is open to question—is it really true that everyone ought to quit smoking, that there aren’t some people who are actually better off lighting up, given their personality and even physical state—at least one can appreciate the reasoning behind the idea.

Yet when it comes to the more familiar type of globalization, namely, that of the principles of a free market economy, the critics wish to insist that nothing universal is at issue. But this is just where they are wrong.

The globalization that involves spreading the policies of free, unimpeded trade—which involves removing protectionist measures, high tariffs, government regulations, and so forth—is based on a view about human life whereby liberty is regarded as a universal principle. If there is anything that every human being requires in his or her life, it is the respect and protection of his or her right to liberty.

The late Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom and numerous other political economic works, made a very poignant point that bears on this:

"That freedom is the matrix required for the growth of moral values—indeed not merely one value among many but the source of all values—is almost self-evident. It is only where the individual has choice, and its inherent responsibility, that he has occasion to affirm existing values, to contribute to their further growth, and the earn moral merit."

In other words, human beings need to be free to embark upon any creative, productive projects, especially ones that are of moral significance. There can be many differences in how they live—for some even smoking may not be such a terrible thing—but normally none is better off from being regimented about by others. No one is better off being a slave or serf or in a state of involuntary servitude. It is unjust to impose on other people what they should choose to do in the market place apart from keeping their conduct peaceful.

Globalization is an impulse that is evidently widespread—in matters of health care, fitness, nutrition, entertainment and, of course, sports (just consider all the international athletic and other competitions and races that we witness year after year). Some of it is over the top—a good many people can do without tennis or soccer in their lives, or without daily workouts at a gym or even smoking bans. So skepticism about the one-size-fits-all mentality makes good sense when it comes to most ways of life.

When it comes to the principles of individual liberty, however, including their application to commerce and business, it is very plausible that without exception all human beings require them in their lives. That is the one kind of globalization that ought to be given universal support.

Yes, Bill Gates Misspoke Himself

Tibor R. Machan

The letters section of the morning paper was filled with complaints about my Monday column critical of Bill Gates’ terminology of “giving back to the community.” Folks took off after me for being a libertarian, for sounding like Ayn Rand, for being confused or for saying nothing at all useful.

It’s nice to generate lots of letters for the paper with one’s column, so on that score I am pleased. As to the content, I am afraid readers had a problem with grasping my point, which is, trade isn’t unfair rip-off. Perhaps I didn’t make myself fully clear but more likely most just disliked what I said, namely, that Gates, if he made his wealth honestly, already gave back when he provided his customers with the goods and services he produced. The rest is generosity, charity, philanthropy, kindness, compassion but not “giving back” anything.

Sure, all this may be something unimportant to make mention of to many people but here is my take on it: the world of commerce and business is in desperate need of being better understood. The kind of thinking that produces such language as Bill Gates used is contributing to the widespread hostility toward capitalism and freedom of trade. It is that kind of thinking that spreads the myth that globalization is exploiting poor countries by rich ones. It is the kind of thinking that spreads resentment toward professionals who make a profit off providing their clients and customers with valued services. (Incidentally, that is just the kind of thinking that was on exhibit in the same paper that carried the critical letters, on the front page, featuring a “dissident” doctor who finds fault with his colleagues who make a profit from tending to the sick! As if the media, shoe makers, teachers or basketball players all were doing something wrong for charging people for what they provide for them!)

Despite all the complaints about how I mistreated Bill Gates’ remarks, the shoe is really on the other foot. Too many folks hold very warped ideas about commerce. They believe that it is producers who owe gratitude to society, the community, or customers for their wealth, whereas in fact it is clients and customers who owe gratitude to producers, creative geniuses, and the lot for making their talents and efforts available to the rest of us.

Just think—should it be the likes of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Picasso, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Rembrandt, Albert Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright who owe thanks to us all? Are we not the beneficiaries of their brilliant work? According to all those who think Bill Gates owes gratitude to the community, that he needs to give back something to us all, these kinds of innovators and creators should be grateful for the favor we do them when we enjoy the benefits of their work. That is perverse!

Sadly, too many of us go about our lives taking for granted thousands of benefits we would not enjoy if these people didn’t put their minds to work and make available the results to us in the market place, by means of free trade. To then insist that, yes, they must “give back to the community,” even after having made all of this available to the community in the first place (in return for mostly modest prices), is terribly misguided and, I suggest, ungrateful to boot.

But I guess we live in a culture in which the entitlement mindset is running rampant, in which the bulk of the population holds that what creative, productive people make available to us is something they should have by some natural right! It is these creative, productive people who must bow their heads in shame for making a buck from their work, while the rest of us can demand their work and have them thank us for letting them do it.

It is, I am pretty sure, this kind of thinking that’s gradually undermining the original American dream, the one that attracted millions to these shores: Work hard, make your work available to the market, and you shall be rewarded!

It didn’t take libertarians or even Ayn Rand to put this idea in circulation—it was in the air from the beginning of the American experiment. But it is certainly having a hard time being taken seriously now, having been eroded by the welfare state mentality that is so widespread in our time.

True Liberal Democracy

Tibor R. Machan

When one objects to government’s meddling in people’s lives, often one gets the response that, after all, so long as government’s decisions are reached democratically, there’s nothing wrong with such meddling. This assumes that democracy is a benign way to arrive at policies that go contrary to what individuals want, even violate their unalienable rights. Why would such an assumption be accepted with little resistance?

One reason is that many people focus just on those democracies that occur in various voluntary associations—clubs, unions, corporations, and so forth. In such groups democracy functions well and is in fact unobjectionable because those taking part in the decision-making joined up voluntarily and have what economists call “the exit option.” You can leave the Rotary or Kiwanis Club, or an apartment house or gated community, if you really don’t like what the majority does. Your participation is up to you. So when this kind of group reaches decisions democratically, the decisions are accepted from the start—the rule is, “Anyone who joins us must accept how we reach decisions.”

Being a citizen of a country is both something similar and quite different. Most citizens do not join a country but are born into it, although quite a few do. So it is only just that the most minimal requirements are imposed on them. The American Founders spelled these out—respect the unalienable rights of all and that’s all you need to be a bona fide citizen of a free country. The only obligations you have are negative—do not violate other people’s rights.

Now this principle applies to everyone and so it also blocks democratic means for meddling with people who refuse to comply with the wishes of majorities. Freedom from coercion means also freedom from the coercion of the majority, not just a king or tsar or emperor. And this makes very good moral sense—why would it be OK for the majority to intrude on some when it is not OK for just one or a few to do so?

In recent mainstream public policy discussions these points have been raised in connection with the work of the journalist Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek, who wrote The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003). While Zakaria’s thesis isn’t so radical as that of the American Founders, he does make a very good case against bloated, unrestrained democracies. After all, Hitler’s reign came about democratically and look at Hamas, the extremist group which won the Palestinian Authority's general elections in January. Both of these are cases illustrating that mere democracy isn’t enough for a country to be governed justly.

But then how exactly should democracy function in a free country? As noted already, in voluntary groups, where members can join or leave of their own free will, democratic means can be nearly unlimited. (I recall once when I gave a talk at a Kiwanis Club, there was a ritual of the master of ceremonies arbitrarily fining people various sums of money. He was authorized to do this in the bylaws, of course, and no one objected.) But in a country which most people do not join but are born into, democracy must be limited to decisions about policies that do not involve the violation of our unalienable individual rights. Would this not make democracy completely ineffectual and moot?

No, because there are decisions to be reached democratically that have to do with the administration of a system of laws aimed to secure our basic rights—e.g., who will sit as a judge, who will build the court house, who will appoint the generals, etc., etc. These are decisions that intrude on no one’s rights—and there are many others. In general terms, selection of the administrators of a just system can occur democratically without the violation of anyone’s rights.

But this is a properly limited scope for democracy. This is the proper understanding of liberal democracy, as well. Such a regime operates without depriving people of their liberties, unlike the democratic procedures with which most of us are familiar these days. It is but a defensive system, never an aggressive one.

The revolutionary idea of the American Founders and those political theorist who taught them wasn’t just that monarchs may not violate our rights. It also applied to majorities. They, too, must respect our basic rights. That is what limited government means—limited to applying measures that are just and peaceful.

True Liberal Democracy

Tibor R. Machan

When one objects to government’s meddling in people’s lives, often one gets the response that, after all, so long as government’s decisions are reached democratically, there’s nothing wrong with such meddling. This assumes that democracy is a benign way to arrive at policies that go contrary to what individuals want, even violate their unalienable rights. Why would such an assumption be accepted with little resistance?

One reason is that many people focus just on those democracies that occur in various voluntary associations—clubs, unions, corporations, and so forth. In such groups democracy functions well and is in fact unobjectionable because those taking part in the decision-making joined up voluntarily and have what economists call “the exit option.” You can leave the Rotary or Kiwanis Club, or an apartment house or gated community, if you really don’t like what the majority does. Your participation is up to you. So when this kind of group reaches decisions democratically, the decisions are accepted from the start—the rule is, “Anyone who joins us must accept how we reach decisions.”

Being a citizen of a country is both something similar and quite different. Most citizens do not join a country but are born into it, although quite a few do. So it is only just that the most minimal requirements are imposed on them. The American Founders spelled these out—respect the unalienable rights of all and that’s all you need to be a bona fide citizen of a free country. The only obligations you have are negative—do not violate other people’s rights.

Now this principle applies to everyone and so it also blocks democratic means for meddling with people who refuse to comply with the wishes of majorities. Freedom from coercion means also freedom from the coercion of the majority, not just a king or tsar or emperor. And this makes very good moral sense—why would it be OK for the majority to intrude on some when it is not OK for just one or a few to do so?

In recent mainstream public policy discussions these points have been raised in connection with the work of the journalist Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek, who wrote The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003). While Zakaria’s thesis isn’t so radical as that of the American Founders, he does make a very good case against bloated, unrestrained democracies. After all, Hitler’s reign came about democratically and look at Hamas, the extremist group which won the Palestinian Authority's general elections in January. Both of these are cases illustrating that mere democracy isn’t enough for a country to be governed justly.

But then how exactly should democracy function in a free country? As noted already, in voluntary groups, where members can join or leave of their own free will, democratic means can be nearly unlimited. (I recall once when I gave a talk at a Kiwanis Club, there was a ritual of the master of ceremonies arbitrarily fining people various sums of money. He was authorized to do this in the bylaws, of course, and no one objected.) But in a country which most people do not join but are born into, democracy must be limited to decisions about policies that do not involve the violation of our unalienable individual rights. Would this not make democracy completely ineffectual and moot?

No, because there are decisions to be reached democratically that have to do with the administration of a system of laws aimed to secure our basic rights—e.g., who will sit as a judge, who will build the court house, who will appoint the generals, etc., etc. These are decisions that intrude on no one’s rights—and there are many others. In general terms, selection of the administrators of a just system can occur democratically without the violation of anyone’s rights.

But this is a properly limited scope for democracy. This is the proper understanding of liberal democracy, as well. Such a regime operates without depriving people of their liberties, unlike the democratic procedures with which most of us are familiar these days. It is but a defensive system, never an aggressive one.

The revolutionary idea of the American Founders and those political theorist who taught them wasn’t just that monarchs may not violate our rights. It also applied to majorities. They, too, must respect our basic rights. That is what limited government means—limited to applying measures that are just and peaceful.

Another Blunder at “Public” Schools

Tibor R. Machan

The Miami Herald reported the other day that “A parent's challenge to a book about Cuba resulted in the Miami-Dade School Board voting to ban it—along with 23 other books in the series, even though no one objected to them.” This action then prompted the ACLU to sue, demanding that the books be put back on the shelves.

This is another wonderful—or, actually, horrible—case where the true culprit is not being identified in the major media or even by the interested parties. The most prominent conservative commentator on the air, Rush Limbaugh, also managed to miss the point completely, offering, instead, his rant against the book in question that depicted Cuba glowingly.

Yes, one can appreciate it when a parent is outraged who grew up in a Communist or Nazi country and sees his or her child exposed to “education” that ignores the vile aspects of those systems. It’s like putting books in children’s hands that show only the wonderful German Autobahn as Hitler’s legacy. Yet, in a free country there is nothing a government should do about such misuses of the right to free expression. The protestations must be left to private parties.

Trouble is, of course, that when it comes to elementary, secondary, and even much of higher education, the United States of America is not a free country. The bulk of these institutions are run by—and paid out of taxes extorted from us—by governments. As such, education in the U. S. A. is effectively nationalized, a part of the public sector.

And here then comes to ACLU! They know that when it comes to the public sector, playing favorite with those who hate Cuba is technically illegal. (Let’s face it, the ACLU also defended the Nazis when they wanted to march on public roads in Skokie, Illinois, some decades ago!) So, what’s the solution?

Abolish government education, that’s what. Education ought to be approached the very same way religion is in this country, in any free country, in fact. There should be a powerful wall of separation between state and education. Once education is fully privatized, whether one school or another will have favorable or critical books about Cuba or the Third Reich or North Korea in its libraries will be up to those who own the school and those who are considering sending their children there. The ACLU will have no role in the matter whatsoever. Nor will some politicized bureaucracy, such as the state, county, or city school board.

Until this state of affairs is realized, there will forever be protracted squabbles about whether to have this or that kind of fiction, poetry, or non-fiction in the libraries and curricula of public schools. Citizens with different political ideas and ideals, different commitments, dreams, hopes and such, will fight others about what books children should be reading.

A privatized system avoids this kind of ugly mess. There is no public education to control, for any faction of the citizenry which members of other factions can then resist since they, too, are made to pay for it all.

Unfortunately, as with so many other matters in most societies, at this stage of the discussion defenders of government control of education bring up the supposedly sad state of the poor who, they alleged, will be left uneducated in a fully free country. This is bunk, no different from a claim that without government shoe stores, the poor will have no shoes—or any other goods and services traded in the mostly free market place in many societies.

But never mind that for now. The main point here is that if the likes of Rush Limbaugh or the ACLU have problem with what kinds of readings children must do in schools, they ought to consider, very seriously indeed, the privatization of all of education. There is no better solution to their problem.