Defending Ideology

Defending Ideology

Tibor R. Machan

It is very common among intellectuals in our time to demean ideology.  Thus if one supports, say, free trade with foreign firms, one is belittled for doing so on grounds of one’s conviction that free trade is generally better than trade that is regimented by government.  A “free market ideologue” is what one is snidely called in such circumstances.

What is the alternative?  How is one supposed to defend a policy one thinks is a good idea for a country to follow?

The first candidate that jumps to mind is pragmatism.  If it is pragmatically warranted, then it is OK to support it, or so do many vocal and well positioned public figures claim.  And what does that come to?

Pragmatic justifications usually focus on whether a policy works, whether it is practical.  But how is that ascertained?  How do we know whether a policy works?  Well, is there sufficient evidence that it achieves the goal or purpose for which it is proposed.  

In the case of international free trade that goal or purpose would be mutual wealth creation.  If through such trade the parties gain more wealth than by some other means, like government planning--setting quotas, protectionism, etc.--then free trade will have been pragmatically justified or vindicated; it will have been found the practical, workable policy to follow.

Of course, wealth creation could be achieved by way of a policy of invasion, of confiscating the wealth of some country.  It used to be the most prominent approach countries deployed so as to gain wealth in the international arena.  That is one reason wars had been started.  It had been the reason for imperialism in many instances.  

Yet, such approaches are often deemed to be unjustified because they involve the aggression by one country’s government against another.  One might even compare this to sex where if it is uninvited and involves assault or rape, it is understood to be unjustified.  Peacefully pursued, however, it would be quite acceptable but when it involves aggression it is wrong and may be forcibly resisted.

But why?  Well, here is where pragmatism doesn’t help very much.  That’s because whether one ought to attempt to obtain wealth (or sexual satisfaction) peacefully isn’t just a practical matter.  Certainly attempting to do so before one has learned of the consequences would contradict pragmatism (which is based on practice and history, not on moral theory or ideology).  Even if aggression turned out to be effective--so that raping someone gave the rapist great satisfaction--it would be unjustified yet not on pragmatic grounds but on moral or ideological ones.

Granted, most immoral, unethical conduct is also impractical.  It rarely achieves goals the best possible way, most efficiently.  But that’s irrelevant. Moreover, certain objectives or goals are also vile and thus impermissible.  Pursuing them is wrong and may often be banned whether they are practical.

Then, of course, pragmatism is itself an ideology or theory of action wherein what is workable, practical is preferred as against what isn’t.  Why should people proceed only when their objectives are feasible?  Pursuing the impossible dream could well be a good policy for purposes of gaining stamina, for honing one’s tenacity and grit.  

          There is really no hope in resting proper public or even private policies on nothing more than that they are practical.  Human beings need also to be sure that their choices, including those pertaining to public or political policies, are worthy, have overall merit, square with a proper moral outlook.  Belittling that goal by labeling it ideology is a cheap shot.  The issue should be which ideology makes the best sense not whether something is ideological.

It's All About Choices, Stupid

It’s All About Choices, Stupid

Tibor R. Machan

There is a phony conflict afoot that statists are fond of bringing up when they try to discredit the free society.  It is about the individual versus the community.  Champions of human liberty are often mischaracterized as denying the significance of human community life.  As if individualists advocated that people live like hermits, apart from their fellows, in solitude.

Of course, individualists do not advocate anything of the kind. What they insist upon is that human beings be understood as choosing their associations instead of being simply herded into groups that some of them prefer to be part of.  

Nearly everyone is better off living in the company of others.  Hardly any human activity is carried out isolated from others and even when it appears like it, others are usually surrounding it, supporting it, helping it along, and so forth.  Solitary existence isn’t the objective which individualists are promoting.

What individualists are seeking is a kind of society in which people can make a choice as to what groups they will join, for how long, where, etc. And, yes, they also want to be left in peace for a good bit instead of being dragged into the company of others when they’d rather carry forth on their own.  Writers, composers, painters, and the like are among these. Again, the bottom line is that one size doesn’t fit all!  

There are animals that naturally exists linked to others of their species, like ants or termites or many varieties of fish.  But with humans what makes them distinctive is that they make choices about these matters--will one be part of a choir of sing in a trio or alone? Will one be a hiker by oneself or with a bunch of friends?  You get the point.

What the communitarians types want is for them to dictate the kind of groups everyone must be part of.  They detest the possibility of people making up their own minds about such matters since free choice runs the risk of noncompliance and to bring others on board for their journey of their own free will requires successful persuasion, something that cannot be guaranteed.  

The communitarians want to be in charge of everyone’s destiny. Their imperialism is contrary to human nature and whenever they try it, all hell breaks loose and we get gulags and concentration camps instead of peaceful communities and companionships.  Here is a good outline of their social political philosophy:

"We need to see society as an extension of ourselves , an invisible part of our anatomy that assists us every day without dominating us and that, like our own arms and legs, we tend when injured, and whose welfare reconsider at all times.  The relation resembles that of a violinist to his instrument--useful but more than something useful, cared for like an esteemed friend.  If such a part of us fails, we do not discard it for a peg leg, nor are we fired from our job because we cannot play hopscotch.  We may be a disposable member of the symphony, but our violin is us to us.  The relation is somethings--oh dear--called love." (See, William H. Gass, "Double Vision," Harper's Magazine, Oct. 2012, p. 78.)

This passage comes from a prominent contemporary public philosopher who I have heard has been close to some Democratic presidents in recent years. In any case, his ideas are close to Mr. Obama’s famous quip that we are all in it together and his repeated blather about how no one achieves success on his own--remember “You didn’t build that.”

The important point is not to argue about how much people draw from each other as they make their way through life.  What is crucial is that in a genuinely free country what they draw from each other they do this of their own free will; they are not lumped together by some philosopher king, like it or not.

American Statism

American Statism

Tibor R. Machan

William H. Gass is one of the cheerleaders of American statism and he has done his fair share of work in support of the near total state (having done stints at the White House, if memory serves me right).  His latest efforts are in the November 2012 issue of Harpers Magazine, in a pretty hostile article about George Orwell who is perhaps most famous for his book 1984 and short story Animal Farm, both warnings about the love many intellectuals have for powerful government engineering.  Here is how he concludes his piece:

"We need to see society as an extension of ourselves, an invisible part of our anatomy that assists us every day without dominating us and that, like our own arms and legs, we tend when injured, and whose welfare reconsider at all times.  The relation resembles that of a violinist to his instrument--useful but more than something useful, cared for like an esteemed friend.  If such a part of us fails, we do not discard it for a peg leg, nor are we fired from our job because we cannot play hopscotch.  We may be a disposable member of the symphony, but our violin is us to us.  The relation is somethings--oh dear--called love."  William H. Gass, "Double Vision," Harper's Magazine, Oct. 2012, p. 78.

This theme of collectivism spells out Karl Marx’s claim, made in his posthumously published book, Grundrisse (Penguin, 1973) that humanity is an organic whole (or body), a total negation of American individualism wherein you and I and the rest of human beings are understood to be sovereign, independent agents with unalienable rights to their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  Instead, we get the vision of human beings as cells in the body of society or humanity.  (The best little book in modern times laying out the case for this is Lewis Thomas’ Lives of a Cell [New York, Viking Press, 1974].)

The individualist idea rest on the recognition of the fact that human beings have the capacity to govern themselves, to think for themselves and act from their thinking.  Of course, individualism doesn’t contradict the plain fact that we all draw on advice and information we receive from other people, starting with members of our family.  But individualist have learned that such learning must itself be initiated by human agents who will draw on it as fuel for their living. Individualism also affirms the capacity we have for free choice.  (I fine little book defending this is Theodosius Dobzhansky’s The Biological Basis of Human Freedom [Columbia University Press, 1956].)

In point of fact the collectivist position is, just as Gass notes, the reactionary kind, going all the way back to Socrates and before when people found it of great advantage to unite into groups so as to have a better chance at survival and flourishing.  Indeed, uniting into groups has always been a prudent move for people unless the group in question, e.g., Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, happens to be the enemy of the members of the group.

Individualist have always had to fight off the distortions evident in positions such as the one laid out by Mr. Gass.  These views are dangerous because in the name of the collective it is usually a number of “leaders” who offer their own agendas as the state’s business, agendas that are coercively imposed on society.  Such leaders are not willing to use peaceful means by which to recruit support for their visions and thus they mostly champion what amounts to a police state.  Everyone must be made to conform to the collective vision they insist is the one size that fits us all.

The right approach is, of course, one that acknowledges that human beings are a species and have a common nature up to a point.  But it also acknowledges that a distinctive aspect of the human being is its individuality!  It is confirmed every minute within human communities, of course, as millions present ideas of their own by which to carry on their living.  (Even Mr. Gass testifies to this by presenting his own particular take on the collectivist idea!)

Sadly Mr. Gass’s position is widely shared among intellectuals at some of the most prominent educational institutions.  (It animates the thought of Mr. Obama, for example, who is very weak in his endorsement of individual initiative, entrepreneurship, on the economic front and enthusiastic about mandates.)

Another try at voiding our basic rights

Another Effort to Void Our Basic Rights

Tibor R. Machan*

      In this short essay I address an argument concerning welfare rights made against the late Robert Nozick by Adrian Bardon a while back.[i]

 

Bardon brings up an issue that’s central concerning the nature of basic individual rights that the American founders proposed as the foundations of a constitutional government (and were, in fact, partly incorporated and elaborated in the Bill of Rights).

      Bardon argues that he has successfully “cast doubt on that approach to rights” that holds that “there are negative rights that cannot be outweighed.”[ii] Interestingly there is no need to go much further since Bardon’s way of putting his point already shows how wide off the mark he is concerning an essential feature or nature of rights. Specifically, individual rights, the unalienable sort the Declaration lists, aren’t like other good things—such as ice skating, volleyball, dinner at home or at a restaurant, a vacation in Hawaii or one in Italy—which may be weighed and compared. It’s a category mistake to think they are, not unlike thinking that one can weigh seconds or that fingers can think about something.

        Consider a very widely accepted right, that of a woman to be free of rape. What would it mean to have such a right outweighed?  Bardon’s conception of such a basic right raises the possibility that someone might weigh it against, say, a desperate male’s desire to gain sexual satisfaction by using her against her will.  But this is quite out of the question—the two are incomparable, incommensurate. The right to be free is a principle—a firm limit or a basic standard of just conduct if you will—which identifies the fact that women are free to do as they choose involving their own bodies, that they are sovereign authorities concerning how to live their sex lives, regarding to whom they will give their consent to engage in sex, etc.[iii]

       Of course, Bardon is concerned with property rights but he forgets that these, too, are rights to action, not rights to objects. As Ayn Rand makes clear, “the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.”[iv]

        Put another way, the right to private property is a right to acquire and to hold—which are both actions—various items no one has previously acquired and is holding—or ones others who have acquired them and are holding are willing, freely, to part with (another action).

       So, in fact, private property rights are akin to rights to act freely—as when one acts to engage in consensual sex or work or recreation. In the case of property rights, one acts to engage in, as it were, consensual acquisition or holding of some items. (Notice, no one may impose ownership on another against his or her consent because of this right to freedom of actions such as acquisition and holding.)

       Thus, property rights identify someone’s sphere or range of freedom of action vis-à-vis items in the world, not unlike the manner in which the right to freedom of speech spells out spheres of freedom of action vis-à-vis verbal or written expression of ideas. Indeed, these latter presuppose the right to private property, for speeches need to be given someplace to which one has a right or gained permission from those who do, and writing takes places on materials (paper, blackboards, sand, computers, etc.)

        Now it is true that others could well desperately need the items someone has come to own by exercising the right to acquisition and holding but since that exercise may not be interfered with and interference with it would place others in the position of violating the agent’s basic rights—that is, sovereignty—consent needs to be secured in order to obtain even such desperately needed items. A need cannot be weighed against a right, anymore than a wish or desire or urgent want can be weighed against a right.

        There can be no weighing involved, not between rights, nor between rights and needs, etc., although a rights holder could very well weigh whether to hang on to what he or she owns, contribute it to the person in dire need, to some cause or project, or otherwise dispose of it in light of his or her weighing of the importance of these alternative possibilities. The weighing is not of different rights or different people’s rights but of the importance or value of the goals to which one may contribute what one has the right to freely acquire.

        Here is what would happen if the weighing were about rights. Someone would have to do the weighing. By what right would such a person weigh other people’s rights? Would that person’s right to weigh also be open to being weighed? By whom? The whole process would amount to a conceptual and public policy mess.

        In fact, the role—or conceptual point—of basic individual rights is to remove from public policy, based on constitutional laws that rest on rights, the element of arbitrariness by basing decisions on self-consistent, compossible principles—that is, on the rule of law—instead. The very conceptual point of rights within the sphere of social, political and legal policy is lost if they are subject to being weighed since they are supposed to be the rock bottom of public policy decision making—if I have a right to do X, this is the end of the story—none may act against me as I do X.

        There is no such thing as “weighing rights”—the idea is what philosophers call a category mistake, akin to talk about weighing, say, time or concepts. Indeed, to even consider weighing rights is to suggest that the importance of human beings, vis-à-vis their place in the citizenry, may be weighed against each other within the realm of politics, something that had been abandoned once the idea of inherent status was jettisoned, finally, so no one could justly claim to be more important than someone else as far as the law of the land is concerned.

---

* Tibor Machan is the R. C. Hoiles Professor of Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, Orange, CA  92866.

Socialism as Elitism

Machan’s Archives: A Note on Socialism as Elitism*

Tibor R. Machan

Since ancient times some people have considered the market place an unruly forum in which to determine whose work and what commodities are worth how much. With Marxism this view acquired a pseudo-scientific status. The complaint that when free individuals and groups exchange goods and services some will get more for their contributions than they deserve reaches the level of a total ideology.

Before this complaint and its ideological expression are dismissed, it is important to understand their appeal. It isn’t very difficult to empathize with the complaint when we restrict it to individual instances. Most people have experienced a feeling of dismay with what certain producers in the market receive for their work. The pop music groups make millions of dollars for grinding out a few pleasant but clearly not phenomenal songs. A boxer gets millions of dollars for going eight or so rounds before knocking out his opponent. A television commentator collects some $200,000 a year for uttering two minutes worth of banalities twice or three times a week for about half the season. A New York Times columnist makes a bundle from writing flawed economic commentaries!  Surely these folks are not worth all that money – or so the thought occurs to some of us. Especially when others, who make far more worthy contributions, receive far more modest remunerations for their efforts.

These sorts of considerations are natural, even if not fully justified in the total context. We cannot deny that monetarily speaking the worth of many a product and producer is in some sense over or under estimated. Out of this impression, natural enough in individual instances, grows a very dangerous ideological perspective. But one must appreciate that some of the individual instances make sense.

Now really—what foolishness prompts people to pay that kind of money for such frivolous results or charge so little for the same? And it is not unreasonable, now and then, to question the wisdom of various people when they do shell out enormous sums of money for goods or services while other, quite objectively more worthwhile products (even to them individually) could have been purchased for a more sensible price and some sell something quite worthwhile for but a nominal price.

From these impressions the jump is made, by Marxists and other statists that something must be done to stop such alleged miscalculations. And then, very quickly, the suggestion is made that if only some wise folks could make sure that the objective value of work and products is identified, matters could be remedied in a jiffy.

Since, however, persuasion does not guarantee results—people can ignore the advice of the wisest of men – the appeal to coercion is readily welcome. The conclusion to this effect is highly questionable—indeed, an out and out non-sequitor—admittedly. But as with all questionable hypotheses, the ground from which they stem is usually firm enough. Otherwise generally sensible human beings would never pick up on the broader theory advanced. It helps to recall this when we want to understand why so many people are sympathetic toward socialist/egalitarian political measures and doctrine.

Yet understanding the ground for the sympathy does not lead a rational person to accepting the broader inferences drawn. There is one particularly odious implication that follows from what is inferred from these understandable impressions. Others may be found as well, but this one will pinpoint a clear-cut inconsistency in the broader picture advanced by socialists.

The complaint begins by noting that free people tend at times to overrate the work and products of their fellows. True enough, they do. (There are advocates of the free market who would deny this on grounds that no objective values exist. But this is self-defeating, since they also hold that the free market is of objective value to us.) The suggestion advanced in turn is that we should have a central governing body of people who will make certain that such mistakes do not happen—even if it takes the use of firing squads to accomplish this noble result. Yet if the premise is true—that people make mistakes by over and underrating others’ work and products—then the conclusion cannot follow—that people will make certain that such mistakes do not happen.  This is because what people will do is tied to what they can do. The body of select people is no less a body of people than the body of people that makes up the free market place!

Here is where the odious implications of the broader picture emerge. We are asked to believe that some people are inherently different from the rest of us.  We are told that the select group—the leaders of socialist/egalitarian governments via their schemes of distribution and equalization—is immune from the errors of the rest of us. That the likes of Ralph Nader, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, et al., are really inherently better and wiser folk than are we all is what the citizenry is supposed to accept!

The conclusion is interesting. Because starting from a desire for equality—fair pricing, lessening the frequency of over- and underestimation of work, etc. – we are led to the establishment of public policies that grant some people the legalized position of institutionalizing their (elitist) errors. It is this conclusion that is never justified. It is the view that this select group of individuals can and will do better than free people in voluntary association at determining what is good or bad within the realm of production and exchange.

The simple fact is—known since the time of Thomas Aquinas—that we are best off taking the risk with the free market. The “utopian vision” of perfect judgments needs to be abandoned. We should all try to implement the best judgments we can make, at least within our own market activities, and maybe even in cases where our help is asked for or freely accepted.

It is futile to argue that market decisions could not be better than they are. But it is far sillier to hold that institutionalizing the will of some of us can produce a guaranteed utopia. In that path lies disaster—and we are now tasting its beginnings in our own land.

*Published in The Intercollegiate Review, Fall, 1975, pp. 33-34.

Capitalism, Socialism & Human Dignity

Capitalism, Socialism & Human Dignity*

Tibor R. Machan

        Capitalism means human individual freedom, especially in the sphere of striving to become prosperous. To defend the system is a challenge because of its ties to individualism, even ethical egoism. For centuries the ethical and moral guidelines people have been urged to live by have been some kind of communitarianism, such as altruism, utilitarianism, socialism, communism, etc. The individualism associated with capitalism had been thought as atomistic, seeing people as isolated from and indeed hostile toward one another.

        Socialism is the political economic order that sees human beings as part of a larger entity, society, to which they are all beholden and which they must serve not of their own free will but as a matter of coerced duty.

        The common sense appeal of communal systems as guiding human action comes from the historical need for collective conduct in the face of threats from groups that would overpower those who are vulnerable. (F. A. Hayek makes this point well in his works.) Once it turned out that individuals who unite of their free will provide better protection to the group, individualism began to gain support.  It is better suited to human life, with individuals being the source of solutions to most problems.

        In time individualism surpassed other schools of ethical thought, especially once it became evident that voluntarily choosing to be part of a group--tribe, clan, nation--ensured greater loyalty than is possible via coercive unisons.

        It also became evident that all the talk about the need to unite and sacrifice for the group has served largely to secure power for a few over the rest.  Thus individualism became more civilized, less primitive. As public choice theory suggests, efforts to serve the public interest usually come to no more than serving the interest of influential, powerful people at the expense of others.

        Protesting about having to serve the public or community is difficult because the alternative, of serving oneself, the individual, seems to be arbitrary and self-indulgent. But today a sophisticated ethical (as opposed to psychological) egoism, such as what we find in David L. Norton’s Personal Destinies, A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (Princeton UP, 1976), can overcome all known objections to individualism. (See, also, Tibor Machan’s, Classical Individualism [Routledge, 1998].) This, however, hasn’t reached popular consciousness--instead, most people are schizophrenic and preach collectivism while practice individualism.

        The individualism or egoism forged most fully by Norton, as well as by Ayn Rand in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, A New Concept of Egoism (1967), and others, stresses an Aristotelian idea of the human individual, not a Hobbesian one (which is found mostly in economics). An implication of this is that virtues such as generosity, kindness, gregariousness, etc., are entirely compatible with seeking to flourish as the human individual one is and self-interest is understood by reference to what is proper for a rational animal, not a beast driven to seek power over others.

        This development, though not yet widely acknowledged, puts an end to the charge that egoism or individualism, as a central element of free market capitalism, must be a crass, anti-social viewpoint and must generate a social climate of mutual hostility and alienation.

        When it comes to competition in the free market, for example, the model isn’t the boxing ring, as widely assumed in caricatures of capitalism, but the marathon race! Thus, for instance, friendship would easily be seen as fully compatible with individualism, indeed, implicit in it. (See also the work of the philosopher Neera Badhwar for this.)

        The dignity of the human individual is far more elevated than that of the human social animal as seen in socialism and other collectivist political regimes. The hallmark of this social-political outlook is that individuals come together voluntarily and aren’t herded into communities by rulers or dictators.

*Based on a lecture given at the Summer Leadership Academy, in Bercel, Hungary, Summer 2012.

Machan's Archives: PBS & NPR, America's Pravda & Izvestia

Machan’s Archives: PBS & NPR, America's Pravda and Izvestia

Tibor R. Machan

        It is a feature of American culture that's most upsetting though hardly anyone makes much of it at all. Indeed, I know several avid defenders of the free society who make regularly and eager appearances on National Public Radio and I have to confess that I myself have appeared on one or two Public Broadcast Service programs when allowed to make a pitch for a society that would have no such things, namely partly government funded TV or radio programming.

        When I first left Hungary, in 1953, and came to live in the West, I settled for a while in Munich where my father and stepmother worked for Radio Free Europe.  This outfit was partly American government--CIA--funded, beaming programs into Eastern European, Soviet bloc countries and supposedly countering communists propaganda.  But at heart the idea of the American government doing this turned out to be a paradox since what is wrong with communist countries is precisely that they place everything in society under state control, including broadcasting the news, educating the young, science, entertainment and athletics.

                    That is just what is supposed to be so different between communism and capitalism: the state and the society are supposed to be separate in the latter.  Yet here was RFE doing just what the communists were doing, entrusting government with broadcasting. (I recall how eager I was at one point shortly after I came West to have the American government give massive funding to Olympic hopefuls so they would defeat Soviet athletes and show how much better American athletes can be than Soviet ones, not realizing for a good while how paradoxical this was--sports should not be the purview of government in a genuine free country.)

        Yet, what we have had in America and many Western countries for decades on end is, you guessed it, virtually the same thing as they had in the Soviet Union and its colonies, namely, government run radio and TV, just like the two government published and managed "newspapers" in the USSR, Pravda and Izvestia, not to mention all their other media. Instead of showing a confidence in the institutions that emerge spontaneously in a free country, from the initiative of free men and women, Americans abandoned the principles of their system to mount a counter-offensive. Let's defeat communism by becoming, well, partly communist! What a self-defeating policy that is.

        These days a good example is PBS's broadcast of Professor Michael Sandel's lectures on justice from Harvard University.  Sandel is smart and erudite but at heart a propagandist for a planned society, only in degrees different from what the most earnest of the Soviets had hoped for (but, of course, couldn't bring off because of how it contradicts human  nature).  There is, of course, nothing objectionable about Harvard broadcasting Sandel's lectures at its own expense but there is decidedly something wrong with Sandel getting even partial government funding for his partisan lectures.  He is not a teacher who gives an fair and accurate representation of different ideas of justice but someone who subtly nudges his students and audience in a particular ideological direction. 

        Am I exaggerating in considering Sandel a propagandist, albeit a subtle one? Well, here is how he handled Aristotle's political philosophy.  

        The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defended a fairly intrusive type of political system in which the government or state--although some dispute this interpretation--aimed at making people good.  OK, this is a pretty standard rendition of Aristotle but in laying it out one needs to make note of the fact that it may well miss something vital about justice.  This is that very likely no one can really make people good--that task needs to be everyone's own (other than those crucial impeded).  

                   Human goodness is arguably something every individual has to bring about for himself or herself.  Otherwise it is nothing but regimentation and what we get is perhaps good behavior but clearly not morally virtuous conduct.  Aristotle, probably somewhat influenced by the experience of the extreme tyranny of the city state of Sparta, accepted the idea that people can be forced to be good.  This is what the classical liberal ethos has corrected about ancient political philosophy--human beings need to choose and cannot be forced to be good!

        Now Sandel gave no mention of this problem with Aristotle.  He made it appear (by failing to discuss the point) that whereas Aristotle had a noble concern with human goodness, the more recent tendency in (especially American libertarian) political philosophy to restrict the power of government and leave citizens to their own resources when it comes to living a morally good life was inferior to it.  But it isn't.  Classical liberals pay plenty of attention to human goodness but they realize it cannot be engineered!  Communitarians and welfare state liberals to the contrary notwithstanding, people cannot be forced to be good!  It is a distinctive element of human life that people's goodness must be their own doing not that of behavior modifiers, brain-washers or the bureaucrats.

        To make it appear that this approach to politics fails to promote human goodness is a distortion.  That is why I call Sandel's lectures propaganda.  If they were fair-minded, by presenting this kind of critique of Aristotle and others who want to force us to be good, it would be educational.  And by being put on PBS, a partly government funded TV network, the lectures come very close to resembling what the citizens of the Soviet Union and its colonies received from Pravda and Izvestia.

                   When recently Mitt Romney said he would shut down PBS and Big Bird, there was a lot of bellyaching about it but Romney, who isn’t even a libertarian, was correct.  It isn’t the task of government in a free country to do entertainment, not even education.  It is supposed to keep the peace, protect individual rights, period.

A Note on Biden and Abortion

Note on Joe Biden and Abortion   

Tibor R. Machan

His pro-life abortion stance should be much more of a problem for Vice President Joe Biden then the media has made it thus far.  And his Left Wing base is giving him a pass, quite unjustly. Here is why:  

If, as the Veep claims, a conceptus or zygote has the rights of a human infant--especially the right to life, so that no one may end its life, including the pregnant woman who is carrying it--then the issue cannot, pace Mr. Biden, be a private decision.  Analogously, if I have an infant in my home I have no right to end its life, not unless it is a direct, unambiguous threat to my own (like a violent intruder would be).  

Self-defense would be the only justification to a pro-lifer for having an abortion.  Otherwise for pro-lifers terminating a pregnancy with the result of the death of the zygote would amount to homicide, possibly out and out murder.  And anything along those lines opens the matter to a criminal inquiry, which is certainly not a private matter.  

So it is clear that the pro-life position has problems with the stance that a government or a law enforcement agency must stay out of a pregnant woman’s “private” life.  The pro-choice stance doesn’t have this problem since it doesn’t recognize a zygote as in possession of the right to life.  Zygotes are potential but not actual human beings (although they are, of course, human zygotes).  But being that they do not have the rights of, say, babies or infants, just as a human toe or finger doesn’t have the rights of a person.

Accordingly, a pro-life position, such as Joe Biden’s, has altogether too much intrusive statism about it.  Government or law enforcement would be authorized to defend the zygote from anyone who would choose to destroy it; even its accidental death, as in a miscarriage, would arguably be subject to legal scrutiny, as would that of any human infant.

         While Joe Biden is relatively silent about his stance on these matters, the surrounding issues should not be overlooked by the media. His current position is duplicitous!  I do not believe Joe Biden or anyone on his team has fully addressed these matters. And the Republicans are probably going to avoid it since they are no less likely to be confused about it.

Society as an Organic Body

Society as an Organic Body

Tibor R. Machan

Karl Marx, in his posthumously published work Grundrisse identified his view of humanity very clearly.  Humanity is an organic whole (or body).  People aren’t individuals but the cells of this organic entity whose development and maturation Marx tried to chronicle in his works.

When you have an organic body you are looking out for, if some part of this body is faltering, another part may need to be called upon or sacrificed so as to help mend it.  Just as with human beings sometime a part of their bodies are utilized to fix another part, so with humanity--or society, if that is all you have available to manipulate.  

Mr. Obama was educated and raised as at least a crypto communist, someone who holds this Marxian view.  As he expresses it now, “We are all in it together.”  We are like a hive or colony of tiny critters and so none of us can have any rights that give us the sphere of independence that an individualist view of society aims to establish and protect for each citizen.

This is a serious position, not something frivolous.  Mr. Obama is not perhaps a card carrying member of the communist movement but shares its central tenets.  The idea that individuals matter as individuals is very far from his worldview.  At most it is classes that count but not individuals.  If some segment or part of society--or the country--is in need of support, another may be imposed upon to supply it.  

I recall when Welsh actor Richard Harris injured his nose doctors took bones from his hip so as to repair it.  It all went swimmingly.

Political leaders--rulers--in collectivist regimes see themselves as assigned the job of keeping the body politic intact.  So if some element of society needs to be contracted or even cut out so as to remedy or mend another part, they see themselves as obligated to carry out the job.  They cannot be bothered by what they regard as the fiction of individual rights!

A matter like this needs to be kept in mind when politicians are evaluated.  It needs to be kept in mind in the current presidential election, too.