Column on what "biologically important" means

Empty Environmentalism?

Tibor R. Machan

In the community where I live, as in many others but a bit more so,
environmentalist are hard at work to put a stop to all developments,
meaning all efforts to increase the available housing and other human
amenities that come from people wanting to live there. Orange County, CA,
is a highly prized area?the weather is very desirable, there is nowadays
an abundance of jobs, and schools are passable, the entertainment and
amusement being offered up better than in most places around the globe and
so forth. So it?s no wonder people want to live there and those with land
find a demand to fill for homes and other amenities?developments, as they
have been dubbed, probably because the designation tends to remove from it
the human element and suggests raw greed.

Just now the biggest land owner in the region, the Irvine Company, has
proposed what is referred to the ?East Orange scheme? which is the nemesis
of the local and other branches of the Sierra Club. The Club and all its
allies are hard at work to try to bring the project to a halt. Their first
line of attack is based on the contention that the new development is
likely to grind the local traffic to a halt. But, in fact, this is only
the first of their salvos. The far more important sounding reason they
offer?when you check out their web site at www.Eastorange.org?is that
?These lands are part of one of the most biologically important open space
areas in the entire state.?

I admit to not being very eager to go to the defense of the Irvine
Company, mainly because it is one of those huge corporations that has no
compunction about getting into bed with the government so as to enhance
its economic fortunes. (For more on the company, see [
http://www.irvinecompany.com/aboutus/in_the_news/Bucking_a_trend/page_3.asp
]http://www.irvinecompany.com/aboutus/in_the_news/Bucking_a_trend/page_3.asp.)
It began in 1864, when James Irvine made a killing in the California Gold
Rush and later bought up 120,000 +/- acres of ranchland in what became
Orange County, Southern California. The land the company owns covers the
region several miles inland from the Pacific Ocean all the way north to
the Cleveland National Forest where I live, in Silverado Canyon.

Anyway, what struck me about the crucial reference to how ?biologically
important? is the land to be used for development is that while it sounds
significant, if one thinks about it a bit that phrase carries very little
meaning. Suppose it said that the land is botanically important? Or
zoologically important? Or residentially important? All these might convey
some nearly clear meaning because they point to an area of life that the
land may benefit. It may help plants, or animals, or people looking for
someplace to live. ?Biologically? is too broad a category and, since the
company?s plans to develop it for human habitation implies that human
beings will be living there, that, too, may well be part of what makes it
important. We are, after all, biological entities and when land is used to
provide us with living space, that could be construed as being
biologically important.

Surely, however, this is not what the Sierra Club & Co., want to convey
by that phrase. But then what? Something, one may assume, that is left
deliberately unspecified in the text on the Web Site.

For something to be important, it must be important to something else.
Water is important for most life, as is oxygen and inhabitable land.
Because, however, there is probably more demand for such land in certain
regions of the world than is available, priorities need to be set.

In a free society the priorities are set by way of the pricing system
because how much things cost shows just how badly people want it. This
amounts to a reasonably sensible rationing process, with how much, and how
good, people get to have dependent on how well off they are, how hard they
have worked to be so well off, how lucky they have been, etc., and so
forth. All this works out without some group of central planners of the
kind they had in the old Soviet Union, groups that are in the end clueless
about how to allocate resources rationally.

My bet is that the Sierra Club people are just as clueless about that as
were those in the Kremlin, although I am sure they fancy themselves very
wise. And this they evidence by using such ambiguous and thus useless
language as exemplified by the phrase ?biologically important.?

Don?t get me wrong?gridlock on Orange County roads can be hellish, in
part because they are build by government which tends to plan much like
those guys did in the Kremlin, without a clear idea what actually is in
demand and how much will it cost. Still, one can appreciate worries about
crowded roads and other infrastructure challenges. What is a mystery,
however, is what on earth ?biologically important? should be understood to
mean.

Column on Police Malpractice

Corruption of the Police

Tibor R. Machan

My youngest daughter and I were driving about when she told me her theory
about contemporary police officers. Her idea was that police departments
in our time attract bullies, people who have always liked to flex their
mussels, show who is boss. She said, ?Look what these people are required
to do?hassle us who are doing no one any harm, just because they smoke
some stuff that?s been banned, or sell sexual favors, or break some rule
that?s almost surely arbitrary.?

She was about 20 when she said this mouthful but I was impressed. I have
never pushed my kids in the direction of my own thinking, mainly because
my thinking is that people need to come to their own conclusions, not be
told what to think. Sure, some elementary guidance is vital but not their
politics, religion, and other convictions. I will give them help with
examples, mostly with how I live, but that?s it.

So this insight on my daughter?s part impressed me. I thought about it
more and concluded that it at least made good sense. Who would join a
police force that required officers to go about busting people for
victimless crimes? Mainly someone who liked pushing people around. Yes, of
course, it is their job to enforce the law?but when police officers must
enforce bad laws, this is likely to attract bad people into the force.

What is the right job for the police? To defend citizens against
aggressors, that?s what. They are to serve us in the capacity of
protectors against violence. When murder, assault, rape, robbery, burglary
and such are perpetrated, that?s when a just police force goes out to do
its job. As our Declaration of Independence says, ?governments are
instituted to secure [our] rights.? And the most directly force-yielding
element of our government is the police and the military. They are to
protect our rights. That idea of the American Founders is the most
civilized, the most enlightened, concerning the proper function of
government and its armed forces.

Some among those who love and champion freedom everywhere say government
is always a bad thing?they are anarchist libertarians. But they, too, want
law enforcement, with some differences from the limited government
faction. Bottom line is, however, that what those who enforce the law must
do is to also stick by the law that needs to be enforced. There is really
just one such law, namely, protect everyone?s individual right to liberty,
to be free of the aggression of other people.

In that capacity, as protectors of our rights to life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness, the police would be doing something noble. They
would be warriors in a good cause, namely, our freedom. With such a job
they may even gain the respect of the citizenry, including young people
who don?t mind it when cops fight genuine crime. They just mind it when
they are being hassled for what they chose to do without hurting anyone
else. But when the cops start hassling them, they lose all respect. They
dub them corrupt cops. They are the equivalent, only far more dangerous,
of a medical malpractice culprit or quack.

If you pay any attention to the news, you know that in all corners of the
country cops are getting rougher and rougher. It is perfectly natural?they
see themselves not as protectors of the citizenry but as rulers, ones who
enforce the way of life preferred by the administrators of our government.
This makes cops enemies of the people. And that is too bad. They are the
Dr. Frankensteins of our world, people who pretend to be helpers but in
fact are monsters.

Oh, there are exceptions but it is difficult to be such a cop since one?s
duties as an officer of the law now include out and out violence,
something that?s only by degrees different from the duties of Nazi or
Soviet police officers. This way a perfectly honorable profession, that of
the police officer, is fundamentally corrupted.

Column on What Ailed the USSR

USSR Didn?t Fail Because of USA

Tibor R. Machan

I took part in a panel discussion recently, following the screening of
the movie Crash where I teach. After much talk about who should be blamed
for racism, sexism, poverty and the rest of the ills of the world?pop
answer: ?the class system??we touched on how different political economic
systems compare concerning solving socio-economic problems.

At my turn I said that although there is much that can be improved about
the USA, in the main its semi-capitalist, mixed economic system tends to
solve problems better than such alternatives as socialism, Fascism,
theocracies, monarchies and others found in recent history and around the
globe. I argued that in the main in the USA people are still required to
look out for themselves via voluntary institutions and this approach to
problem-solving is more effective than top-down government management.

One panelist responded to this claiming that while Cuba, which is
ostensibly a socialist dictatorship, and other centralized systems are
cruel and mean?to, say, gays and journalists?their main problem is the
USA; this country just will not allow them to flourish. Then he added that
this was the problem with the Soviet Union?countries of the West would not
permit its socialist dictatorship to succeed as it would have, had it been
left to its own resources.

I took a bit of umbrage at this, having myself lived under the Soviet
system in Hungary?which was its satellite country back in the late 40s and
early 50s until the late 1980s?and having witnessed the economic
devastation their system wrought. We had no decent food, no appliances, no
housing, dilapidated apartments everywhere, collective farms that didn?t
produce nearly enough for the population, and, of course, near marshal law
day and night. People were being deported to Siberia for voicing criticism
or dissenting views, many of them committing suicide before they were
picked up to be sent there, and there was no free press, religion was
nearly squashed; the place was basically a prison.

Back then the USA had virtually nothing to do with Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union. In fact, if anything, because the USA and USSR were allies
against Nazi Germany for the latter part of the Second World War, the USSR
had US economic support back then. It even lasted for a lot of years
thereafter.

In the ensuing time, until its collapse, the Soviet Union was not impeded
economically by the USA but mostly left to its own resources. True, they
spent an inordinate amount of money on building up their military during
these times; the rulers told the people this was because of imminent
dangers from the West. But, in fact, it was all a ruse. The West mostly
took precautionary measures, mounting what was a defensive military
posture and doing nothing much to threaten the Soviet bloc. Even when a
huge majority of the people in some of the satellite countries rebelled,
as in Hungary in October 1956, there was no military support offered from
the West.

In fact, what happened was predicted by the eminent chief of the Austrian
School of Economics, Ludwig von Mises, back in his 1920 book, Socialism.
That is that a country with a socialist, top down managed economy will
sooner or later come a cropper. This is because one cannot plan what
people want and what people can produce?it requires the free market
system, in which freely chosen buying and selling, via the price system,
send signals to all concerned parties and manage most effectively to
coordinate economic activities. Once the top down socialist system of the
USSR went bust, even famous American socialists like John Kenneth
Galbraith and the late Robert Heilbroner publicly admitted that von
Mises?s analysis was correct. As he put it, in The New Yorker, September
10, 1990, ??Ludwig von Mises...had written of the ?impossibility? of
socialism, arguing that no Central Planning Board could ever gather the
enormous amount of information needed to create a workable economic
system....It turns out, of course, that Mises was right....?

Despite the historical evidence showing and the theoretical analysis
predicting that socialism is an economic dead end, various dreamers
continue to yearn for the system right here in the USA. And their efforts
are paying off in failed federal programs, to which they respond by asking
for more. This is the result of thinking magically?some stuff will be made
and some saints will distribute it just right, without letting free men
and women do so.

It is very sad that this sort of thinking promotes the very measures that
my fellow panelist laments and blames on the foresighted critics of
socialism.

Column on Animals vs. Artifacats

Animals versus Artifacts

Tibor R. Machan

So I am reading my latest copy of Science News, the magazine that keeps
me reasonably up to date about what?s going on in all the sciences. I have
been reading this publication for over twenty years?it gives you a pretty
good run down on what?s new in a great variety of disciplines and always
tells you where to go for details.

OK, so I am munching on my dinner and reading through all these summary
presentations of new stuff when I run across one of the magazine?s more
extensive reports, this time on how, to quote the subtitle, ?Cultural
artifacts are crawling with damaging microbes.?

The gist of the story is that a great many ancient paintings, sculptures,
and ruins are being threatened by various micro-organisms that have
festered within them for centuries and are now beginning to cause major
damage. In several decades or at least centuries, some of these paintings,
sculptures and historical artifacts will simply fall apart, so virulent is
the assault on them by all kinds of tiny critters. The report also makes
no bones about the fact that scientists are hard at work trying to fend of
the damage, thinking of ways to destroy?albeit in environmentally friendly
ways?what is doing the damage.

No, this time there is no intimation at all that some human agency is the
ultimate cause, although I am sure some folks were eager to link it all to
exactly such agency, just as some have been so eager to find human agency
behind Katrina, Rita, last year?s tsunami and perhaps even the recent
devastating Pakistani earthquake. Sadly, misanthropy is all around us, yet
in this case there was no sign of it at all?the culprits are indeed
microorganisms, tiny animals, and scientists are making no secret of their
hope and intentions of destroying them so they cannot devastate, for
example, the Maya temples at Ek? Balam in Yucatán, Mexico.

But as I read through the report I suddenly stopped. What about the
alleged rights of these microbes? According to some animal liberation
theorists and activists, these little critters have every right to go
about their business of devouring the human artifacts as we do when we
devour the food stuff we find about us in the world. Indeed, by some
accounts laid out in the animal liberation, animal rights movement, we
have no right to feed off what other animals find nourishing for them. It
amounts to violating the rights of such animals or, put in a different
terminology of certain theorists and activists, interfering with their
liberty to thrive.

Oh, some might way, when animal liberation or animal rights are being
talked about, the issue isn?t about microbes and bacteria, like those that
are doing damage to the historical artifacts. It?s all about great apes
and other animals that are nearly as mentally developed as are human
beings.

No, that retort will not work. Actually, both the animal rights and the
animal libertarian movement go much farther down on the evolutionary
ladder, all the way to laboratory mice, for example, used in testing
medicines or other stuff, such as cosmetics, people use for their
purposes.

The crucial point is that some of the reasoning offered in support of
this is that as long a living being has certain identifiable interests, it
is fully entitled to carry on to its heart?s content and we must stay out
of its way. But by this reasoning, of course, the microbes and other tiny
critters that are the targets of these scientists? diligent efforts to
impeded the animals? assault upon the historic artifacts must also be left
alone. They have interests big time?namely to eat up those paintings and
ruins and whatever. Given that the argument that for many animal
liberationists clinches the case for prohibiting interference with any
beast that it has interests, that it can do well or badly at living
depending on various activities it embarks upon, we must abstain from
intruding on the activities of the bacteria that do damage to the
artifacts.

Alas, there was no mention of this potential conflict between the
scientists or the historical preservationists, and the animal liberation
movement. And I am a little worried that my calling attention to the issue
could, actually, alert some members of PETA to take some drastic action
against the scientists. (So keep this under raps, please, if you are
reading.)

My point is simply that the scientists bent on protecting historical
artifacts have, at least so far, their priorities intact. But they do so
mainly from habit. One wonders if they are prepared to deal with animal
liberationists, should they hear about their murderous plans.
-----------------
Machan teaches business ethics at Chapman University, Orange, CA, He
authored Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature?s Favorite (Rowman &
Littlefield, 2004).

Column on Dissing Only Past Europeans

Silence About the Incas

Tibor R. Machan

October 10th, Columbus Day, has for the last several decades been a time
when the Europeans who came to the Americas have been roundly condemned in
the spirit of political correctness. There is little doubt that some of
them, maybe even a great number, did some awful things to the natives on
this continent. And so did many people everywhere do awful things to
others?as they still do, sadly enough.

However there is a tendency in our time to focus only on the misdeeds of
those who hailed from Europe. This form of what amounts to a type of
self-flagellation is, of course, part and parcel of political correctness.
Just as environmentalists often denounce human beings and wallow in
misanthropic sentiments, so others?some of them multiculturalists who hold
to a doctrine of moral equivalence about all cultures except what is
usually lumped together as Western type?cannot say anything nice about
Columbus and his pals.

I was recently watching an installment of the program Globe Trekker, this
one reporting on Peru, and there was a good deal of talk about how
terrible the Spanish were to the Incas, who were, in the end, pretty much
displaced by them in that region of the world. Of course, there are many
people who trace their heritage back to the Incas or Mayas in that part of
the globe and they often hold celebrations in memory of their ancestors.

What was quite interesting about the program, aside from all the natural
and cultural lessons it contained, is that the narrator said absolutely
nothing about the human sacrifices that used to be standard fare under the
reign of the Incas. As many as 200 children used to be killed so as to
please some god or another. And sometimes the sacrifice would involve
cutting out the heart of a living individuals so as to please some deity.

None of this is noted here so as to whitewash what the Conquistadors and
their predecessors perpetrated in the efforts to get in on some of the
riches in the Americas. But while the program made plenty of mention of
that sorry part of history in the region, nothing was said to besmirch the
innocence of the Incas.

Sad. History should not fall prey to such distortions simply because some
people are eager to paint certain men and women of the past in an
unfavorable light. Indeed, doing this betrays a nasty habit of
condescension?it treats certain people of the past as not entirely human,
unable to do what other humans do routinely, namely act badly, violently,
brutally toward their fellows.

By acknowledging that all kinds of peoples around the globe and
throughout history have been capable of malfeasance, one acknowledges
these people?s fundamental humanity. No doubt, at different times and in
different places more or less malfeasance has occurred, just as is
occurring in our own time. But it is rank racism and ethnic prejudice to
make it appear that only Europeans had the inclination and capacity to do
bad things to others. By all reasonable accounts of the history of
humanity, there is no group of humans who have managed to rid themselves
of the capacity for evil. But when one picks on just one group as having
such an inclination or capacity, when in fact there is plenty of evidence
their sharing it with the rest of the human race, a gross injustice is
being perpetrated and seeds of continued prejudice are planted that all of
us can do without.

Sure, in the past it was non-Europeans who bore the much of such
prejudice. But nothing good comes of a kind of payback attitude, as if
unleashing injustice now on the Europeans of the past would remedy
matters. There is no remedy of past injustices?the victims cannot be
compensated, no apologies can be delivered to them.

The only thing that can be done that will make a difference is to stop
all this collective praise and blame and to recognize that justice
requires looking at and judging all human beings individually, based on
their own choices to act well or badly.

Column on why non-commercial seems virtuous

Commercial Free, Babble Full

Tibor R. Machan

My favorite radio station is a local so called public radio FM
broadcaster with only jazz and blues for its programming fare. It raises
support by way of two or three week (or so) long appeals to listeners and
from some government grants. Each time some announcement pitches the
virtues of the station to listener, he or she makes a big deal about how
it doesn?t broadcast any commercials. This, it seems, the managers
consider a great plus since the amount of babble on the station is
apparently no less than on one with commercials.

Yes, there is endless talk, mostly about the talent being showcased, jazz
and blues events around town, interviews with musicians, etc., etc. For
those of us who would just as soon simply listen, all this chatter is no
better than a lot of ads that do not interest us. Once you add the
righteousness, however, about how the station eschews advertising, all
this comes off as quite offensive. Why on earth would not having ads on
make the station so much better when the percentage of non-commercial?well
not really quite non-commercial?chatter consumes as much time as
commercials do on other stations?

I suppose the culprit is the general hostility toward commerce among
those who are attracted to ?public? broadcasting. But why are they so
convinced that there is something underhanded, lowly, and suspect about
commerce whereas ?public? undertakings, including broadcasting, are all
virtuous? The facts do not support this. After all, within the public
realm?i.e., government affairs?there is ample vice. Every day some local,
state or federal politician or bureaucrat gets arrested and convicted for
some kind of malpractice. Non-commercial outfits like universities and
hospitals reek of malfeasance such as plagiarism, trading in body parts,
to name only two rather prominent examples in my region. (And these never
prompt any of the pundits to advocate massive government regulation, as
comparable malpractice at Enron tends to!)

So, the evidence doesn?t support the position implicit in the
self-promotion of the non-commercial radio station either in my region or
anywhere else. (And there is much of this going on elsewhere, as when PBS
advocates air their pleas to keep that institution on the air via
government support.) Instead, the anti-commercialism theme goes back
centuries, at least to Plato, who in his most famous dialogue, The
Republic, consigned merchants to the lowest rung in his ideal society,
declaring them incapable of even a shred of nobility. Then, also, many
religions and secular philosophies, Christianity and Marxism among them,
took a dim view of profit seeking.

The main reason striving for prosperity is at least tolerated in much of
the Western world is that economists have succeeded in making it appear
that the profit motive is something inbred, innate, or instinctual; so
being motivated to seek profit cannot be something for which someone can
be blamed. As the late George Stigler, a Nobel Laureate in the discipline,
put it, "man is eternally a utility-maximizer?in his home, in his office
(be it public or private), in his church, in his scientific work?in short,
everywhere." If so, then we cannot help ourselves and all must be forgiven
when we seek utility, wealth, or prosperity.

Since, however, many do not buy into this view, an since in morality
seeking riches is still mostly considered a sign of the unforgivable sin
of greed, commerce just cannot gain respect. The views of such rebels as
Ayn Rand?who maintain that self-dealing is perfectly OK, even admirable,
since if one understands what it means, it simply counsels us all to do
well in our lives on all fronts, including the economical?have too great
an obstacle to overcome to be received with understanding and support.

Thus we have the spectacle of non-commercial radio and TV broadcasters
running fund raising promotional sessions, two or three a year, all of
which seek money, denouncing money-seeking via commerce where both sides
are getting what they want and no charity is involved.

Too bad. Because how on earth do all those listeners get the funds they
will send to these non-commercial stations unless they themselves carry
out some successful commercial undertakings? As Rand used to say, ?Blank
out!?

Column on Whether Markets Will Do It

Will the Market Do It?

Tibor R. Machan

I am a bit concerned about this expression, ?the market will do
it??there?s even a joke in which a libertarian is asked how many people
will it take to screw in a light bulb and answers, ?None, the market will
do it??because it treats markets as if they were persons. But most of us
know that the idea is that the task, whatever it is, will get done without
government needing to stick in its fingers because free men and women are
enterprising enough to get it done and make a living from it.

Recently, as I was running out to get some groceries, I listened to KFI
AM Radio, the Los Angeles all talk and news ABC affiliate, and heard an ad
for a company that provides other companies with the service of handling
their human resources tasks. This reminded me of yet another local
company, called Government Solutions, Inc., which specializes in providing
private firms with the needed expertise to obtain various government
permits to carry on their business. For example, a private developer has
been trying hard to get a project involving 12 large homes built near
Silverado Canyon, where I live, and this company has been leading the
various battles with the several layers of government, including planning
groups and courts, to get the deal done.

Now what caught my attention is the fact, easily noted around the country
once you think about it, how readily such companies are started by various
entrepreneurs simply because there is a demand for their type of service.
Frankly, I am not always very happy with how eager some of these
entrepreneurs are to go into business as a sort of liaison between private
firms and public agencies. That relationship seems to me altogether too
cozy for comfort for those of us who are convinced that government and
business alliance tends to perpetrate more harm than good. But let?s leave
that aside for the moment.

What is important is how responsive people are to the weirdest types of
demands that spring up in a community. Does this not suggest that if the
government itself got out of trying to solve every other problem people
face, there would be a great many entrepreneurs who would step in to
handle them? In short, the market is very likely, indeed, to do it and all
the complaints that we need the government to get things done tend to stem
from a bad?the governmental?habit, not from serious reflection and
historical evidence.

Of course, it is difficult if not impossible to fully anticipate just how
in particular the market will respond. If there is a need for old age
security provisions, product quality control, workplace safety measures,
and all the rest, precisely how markets will meet the need may be
impossible to predict. Just as sometimes when a person is asked the
question, ?Well, what are you going to do (in some novel situation)?? the
best answer could be, ?I?ll think of something,? so with how people in a
market system will address various needs?they will most likely think of
something.

What this suggests to me is that folks who insist that governments must
address most problems in human communities?big ones, small, medium,
immediate, or long range ones?really show a distrust of human nature. Why
they, then, trust governments is beyond me, since all governments are is a
bunch of human beings equipped with the most dangerous of all tools, raw,
aggressive power. So these folks appear to believe that men and women in
the market place, since they are forbidden to use aggression to make
things happen, simply are useless, whereas governments that wield such
power are just the ticket for solving problems.

The truth, however, is precisely the other way around. Governments and
their tool, aggressive power (exhibited by the police and the military)
are at most useful in defending against criminals and invaders from
abroad. They are, however, not much use for anything else?to get anything
done, they actually need to conscript labor and talent from the market.

So, yes, the answer is, the market will do it. Far better than government.

Column on whether rights are created

Are Our Rights Created by the Framers?

Tibor R. Machan

One of the world?s most influential and honored legal theorists,
Professor Ronald Dworkin of Oxford and New York Universities, has recently
expressed a view that has been gaining more and more support in
intellectual circles. This despite the fact that it is quite reactionary,
returning to a time when its was understood that it is the monarch who
grants rights to the people of a country and these subjects have no rights
apart from what the monarch grants.

In a fascinating essay, ?Judge [John G.] Roberts on Trial,? discussing
the judicial philosophy?or rather, lack thereof?of the recently confirmed
Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Professor Dworkin makes the
following revealing aside:

...A constitution shapes democracy by assigning powers to different
institutions?by specifying the composition and responsibilities of the
legislative, executive, and judicial branches?and its regulates democracy
by creating individual rights that act as constraints on what those
different branches of government may do.... (The New York Review of Books,
October 20, 2005, p. 15)

There is a great deal in the piece that could be discussed but for those
who are convinced that human beings have basic rights?e.g., to life,
liberty and property?by virtue of their nature and not because someone
grants them their rights, this comment deserves special attention. It is
just one, but a rather clear cut, statement of the growing political
viewpoint that what is basic to human community life is that it must be
democratic, not that individuals have certain rights. Rights are created,
according to Dworkin?and many others, such as Professor Cass R. Sunstein,
of the University of Chicago?and not identified as a feature of human
reality. So, democracies come first; rights then are created to guide it
in one or another direction?e.g., it can be a nearly unlimited democracy
or one with some limits, in virtue of whatever rights have been created by
the constitution.

A central issue here is that the shape of a democracy is entirely
optional; it depends on what rights a constitution?that is, those who
frame it?has created. Which is to say, any insistence that a democracy
itself must be constrained in specific ways is thus sidestepped.
Democracies are the given, the rights are an afterthought!

Yet this is quite disputable. Democracy, after all, rests on the idea
that those in a society?all of them?possess the equal right to take part
in the political process. So the individual rights of those who make up a
democracy must precede, not follow, democracy. Without individual rights,
in another words, democracies as such are groundless.

Another famous public philosopher, Professor Richard Rorty, shares the
view that democracies come before rights. For him, writing in the first
volume of his collected essays, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
(Cambridge University Press, 1991), human rights are impossible to
identify because the idea of human nature is too unstable. More
importantly, Rorty also holds that democracy comes before everything, even
philosophy and objective knowledge. He too fails to contend with the
objection, noted above, that democracy is groundless without individual
human rights.

If, however, one admits that conceptually?and in fact?individual rights
come before democracy, then democracy cannot be of just any scope someone
happens to prefer. Democracy itself would be strictly limited by the fact
that individuals have other rights besides the right to take part in the
political process. And these other rights would be a firm constraint on
what can be done via the democratic process. (We all understand this when
we see, clearly, that a lynch mob, though democratic, is morally and
legally intolerable!)

When famous legal theorists relegate individual rights to a status of an
invention or creation by framers of a constitution, they sanction anything
those framers, just like monarchs, might get into their head to do. If,
however, such influential thinkers acknowledge the priority of individual
rights, they sanction the principle that governments, democratic or
otherwise, must be limited in their powers. But this is just the idea of
which Professor Dworkin, Sunstein, Rorty, and all too many others may not
want to remind us. It would undermine their embrace of almighty government!

Column on impartial government

Myths of Neutrality?Governmental or Otherwise

Tibor R. Machan

Driving to school yesterday I listened to a talk program on KNX AM Radio,
the Los Angeles all news CBS affiliate. It was a consumer help-out show,
with the host taking calls about various beefs people have with their
banks, barbers, department stores and the like. In this case the focus was
on how easy it is to steal people?s credit and debit card numbers and what
banks are doing about it. (It?s interesting that the perks banks offer
seem almost like entitlements to customers now, probably because of
getting used to this from government.)

In the course of giving some advice to one of the callers the host of the
program made a comment that brought me up short. ?With this matter you
probably be best of going to the State of California since they will be
unbiased.? Oh? Why should that be so? But no one asked that question of
the host and the matter was simply dropped.

Now this idea that government is an unbiased, nonpartisan agency has wide
currency in certain circles, including the academy. Whereas scholars who
do research for some business corporation are immediately suspected of
bias, those who get their work funded by the government never get so
accused. There is a famous case in which the animal liberation activist
philosopher, Peter Singer, now at Princeton but earlier at some Australian
government university, refused to go to a conference sponsored by Shell
Oil and made a big deal of announcing to the world that he will not take
part in something funded by a profit making company since it is
undoubtedly biased, the agenda loaded. Yet he and thousands of other
scholars go to hundreds of university sponsored and government funded
conferences all around the globe without ever giving it a thought that
these, too, have their biases.

What would such a bias be? Well, just as the KNX radio host assumed that
if you bring in the State of California, you will get impartial treatment
and matters will be looked at objectively, so, too, many, many folks think
that universities funded by governments are impartial forums of discussion
and research. But they are not. For instance, very few people at
universities, even private ones, ever challenge the idea that government
ought to be involved in higher education?they are entirely blind to that
notion and, of course, that is precisely where their bias lies. In
government funded or heavily subsidized universities and, indeed, all
schools, the idea that such subsidies are wrongheaded, even unjust, isn?t
likely to be explored. Many other topics also tend not to be explored with
care and openness at such institutions of learning?whether affirmative
action policies are proper, whether special sensitivity seminars dealing
with sexual harassment might not be themselves quite insensitive. (Why not
other types of harassment or student exploitation, why focus only on sex?)

A great many professors in higher education are unabashed champions of
extensive government involvement in, you guessed it, higher education and
nearly every other aspect of society. I recall one minor star at Auburn
University who even went about the state of Alabama urging politicians to
increase funding of higher education, giving it no thought that this
qualified as gross self-dealing, something professional ethics classes
teach professionals to shun as a matter of their ethics!

Indeed, there is a great deal of nonsense going around about
impartiality. A great many journalists actually believe that because they
do not deliberately slant their stories, their values and those of their
editors play no role in what is selected for coverage, what is ignored. It
would be far more honest, in fact, if they did peddle some of their values
so readers could tell immediately where they stand?because stand they do,
someplace, no matter how much they protest, and it?s going to have its
influence on their work.

Still, my first concern here is to disabuse people of the myth that when
they bring in government, they will get fairness and impartiality. That?s
bunk. Government is now so vast, so much involved in promoting various
projects for special interests groups that to think of it as one thinks of
an impartial judge or referee is quite naïve.

Column on Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law

[Please proof read before using!]

Oregon?s Right to Suicide Law

Tibor R. Machan

If the Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution were heeded by our
courts
and legislatures, there wouldn?t be public controversies about whether a
person has the right to commit suicide. This would be understood as one of
the many un-enumerated rights reserved to the people, just as saying a
prayer, worshiping Satan or playing bridge are. We have the right to do
all this and nobody has the just power or authority to interfere (beyond
certain measure that make sure this is really what we want to do).

Unfortunately the United States of America has become a country
just like
the country from which it gained its independence back in the late 1700s.
It is now managed by government and nearly everything people want to do
that doesn?t please some other people needs to gain public permission.
Thus we have the US Supreme Court hearing arguments about whether Oregon?s
law permitting doctors to dispense drugs that can be used to commit
suicide is constitutional. Of course it is. The big idea about the US
Constitution, as argued so astutely by Professor Randy E. Barnett in his
Restoring the Lost Constitution, the Presumption of Liberty (Princeton,
2004),
is that citizens are free to do everything apart from just a few matters
that are the purview of their governments. Like fight wars with foreign
nations or establishing the final court system. These are matters that
governments
were empowered to do but everything else is--or should be--none of the
government?s
business.

Now they are. So, the issue is not our liberty but who gets to
control
us?states, municipalities, counties, or the feds. That is a disaster in the
development of a country that the world still considers to be largely
free. And
our public officials still pretend that they represent a free people and
are promoting freedom abroad. But heaven help Iraq if it gets the kind of
legal system under which Americans live today. The only reason the
tyrannical implications of this system are not prominently displayed in
the lives of Americans is that the earlier understanding?itself merely
partial?of the meaning of the US Constitution had been that individuals
have rights that are indeed unalienable. The momentum that such an
understanding
created is still evident, from which we get our relatively free society?a
mostly free market, due process of law, civil liberties, freedom or
religion and
the press, and some semblance of respect and protection of the right to
property and drafting of contracts.

This momentum, however, is slowly petering out and the courts and
legislatures
are doing nothing to abate that trend. No, instead they are hastening the
demise of those aspects of the country that had earned it the designation
of "a free society." (Of course, it
never was fully free?consider, among other things, slavery and
conscription as just two major contradictions to that ideal.)

Think about it for a moment: What business is it of the voters of
Oregon,
the federal government, the US Supreme Court or anyone else if someone in
the city of Eugene elects to obtain some help from a doctor in his or her
efforts to end his or her life, especially a life that is unbearable to
live for that person? Who are these meddlers anyway to burst in on such a
person and order him or her to desist?

May I remind you that we are talking about adult US citizens, not
children, ones who have in the course of making their decision to seek
such
help passed a bunch of tests to show they are of sound mind when they made
their decision? May I remind you that these adult human beings have an
unalienable right to their lives, which means they may not be intruded
upon
as they decide whether to live or to die? (Having a right means one must
be left free
by all others, including the government, to decide about what one has a
right to!)

But no. These free citizens of a supposedly free country are
required
first to ask permission of Oregon?s voters. Then they need to fend off the
United States Federal Government that wants to override the voters?
decision. And then they need to submit all of this to the US Supreme
Court, which should long ago have stated very simply: ?Leave these folks
around, it is their life, so let them decide about it!?

Instead, we have the ugly spectacle of free adult men and women
going
around in circles, begging for permission from all kinds of strangers, to
do
what is clearly their unalienable right to do.

And you wonder why the rest of the world may be a bit confused as
to just
what the government of the United States of America is promoting around
the globe?

Column on why many accept "Public" Crimes

Why They Keep Doing it?

Tibor R. Machan

Few people we know approve of break-ins, bank robberies, forced labor,
trespassing and other crimes. Sure, there are the criminals but even among
them most do not generally approve of their crimes; they tend to
rationalize them in various ingenious ways. But among the rest of us such
deeds are not tolerated, even from desperate folks. These latter should,
most will contend, find some alternative way to manage their emergencies.

On the other hand, there are millions who fully approve of voting in
various ?public? policies that amount pretty much to break- robberies,
forced labor, trespassing and other deeds. Or they vote for people who go
to various centers of political power and cast votes in favor of such
policies. And then there are all those who give support to these by
working in various government bureaus that administer the ?public?
programs that basically involve the commission of the crimes that very few
of us tolerate when they are committed without the cover of being ?public.?

Now, one answer defenders of such ?public? policies will give is that
after all, the measures had democratic support. So they couldn?t amount to
crimes (in the sense of violating basic principles of community life),
could they? However, this doesn?t clear things up fully since few among us
approve of lynch mobs whereby the majority of a community perpetrates,
say, a hanging. Even though the majority backs it, the hanging is widely
understood to be unpardonable.

There may be no ?one-size-fits-all? answer available to my question. Why
certain people accept criminal conduct dubbed ?public? policies may be
different from why others do. And most would not accept that these
?public? policies are akin to the crimes they uniformly condemn. But why?
Why don?t they appreciate that getting a great many people together and
thus empowering various ?officials? or ?authorities? to commit the crimes
amounts, well, simply to magnified criminal conduct?

One widely voiced reason given in academic circles for why the two things
aren?t at all the same is the democratic one but another is that there is
some kind of tacit agreement people in societies enter into that
authorizes the ?public? measures that are, in fact, criminal in other
contexts. Such a belief in a mythical social compact or contract has
recently surfaced in the popular press when Professor Michael Ignatieff of
Harvard?s JFK School of Government advanced it in The New York Times
Magazine. He claimed that citizens who were hurt by hurricane Katrina had
a valid complaint about lack of government help since governments exist to
protect people against disasters and other adversities.

It is true enough that in the old era of monarchies, government was seen
to be the ?keeper of the realm.? In return for this it had nearly full
authority to tell the people what they must do with their lives. The
divine right of kings doctrine helped shore up this idea. But in most
instances such government ?authority? came about by default?after some
realm had been conquered, whoever?s army did the conquering simply assumed
full powers over the conquered and their territories. There was no
question about right and wrong, about whether this was justified, only
about who had the power to carry off the deed of conquest.

In the wake of this ancient?and not so ancient?attitude about who is
authorized to control society, many people tend toward a kind of realism
in political matters. While at the personal level they disapprove of
theft, break-ins, forced labor, trespassing, and so forth, they also
embrace the notion that when it comes to the interaction of large groups,
insisting on moral standards is sort of naïve. Instead, we need to accept
that if some group is powerful enough, it will be impossible to protest
effectively against its policies once it?s been labeled ?public.? (It
doesn?t extend to the Mafia, of course.) Those who protest are seen as
idealists?including the American Founders.

Another way some defend crimes masked as ?public? policy is to claim that
as the outcome of public debate, they are legitimate. It?s a bit like
justifying a heist on the grounds that, after all, those perpetrating it
had a long and intense discussion about whether to do it. This lends the
deed a semblance of civility.

None of this passes muster. Such criminal public policies are just that,
criminal. It does, however, suggest why it?s so difficult to sell this to
millions?and to all those among them who own and manage the media. No
matter how many people approve of and back it, crime by any other name is
still a crime. The government deeds amounting to such crimes are every bit
as objectionable as when individuals carry them out. This isn?t easy to
sell, especially when so many hold out hope that they, too, will sometimes
benefit from these crimes.

Column on Pitfalls of Diversity

Pitfalls of Diversity

Tibor R. Machan

Diversity is a goal of many organizations, including private
businesses?especially those wishing to gain work from governments.
Universities across the country are holding formal sessions in which staff
and faculty are instructed about how to stop being insensitive to
minorities and anyone who might feel offended by certain language and
demeanor.

In the wake of this the burden has fallen mainly on employers to shield
vulnerable personnel from unpleasant experiences, so that, for example,
they are prohibited from asking certain questions when they hire or
promote people. Even those who have habits that can impede their assigned
work have been known to get a pass so as not to violate some provision of,
say, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Someone who is an alcoholic or
dyslexic may not be refused work or reassigned lest that be construed as
singling out the person and thus violating his or her civil rights.

It has come to light, however, that all this protectiveness toward
certain minorities may actually do them some serious harm. It turns out,
for example, that medical doctors have been reluctant to call attention to
their patients? obesity of the last several decades. ?The likelihood that
a health professional had mentioned a weight problem varied with a child?s
age and ethnicity,? reports Science News in its September 24th issue.
Researchers Cynthia L. Ogden and Carolyn J. Tabak, had written about this
matter for the September 2nd issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report. The younger the obese children, the less likely would health
professionals call attention to this to their parents and recommend any
sort of remedy.

Of course, such statistics do not say very much but it is not unlikely
that one reason for the reluctance of health professionals to alert
parents is that they find doing so awkward, potentially offensive. In my
own case when a few years ago I suggested to some of my students that they
speak up in class instead of merely sit passively as I presented the
material and discussed it with others, several of them reported me as
being insensitive to their cultural background which encourages students
to remain silent instead of raising questions and offering observations or
opinions in class. Of course, not taking part in the discussion robs
students of the opportunity to hone their skills, and I am responsible, in
part, to help them to avoid this. So what?s more important, guarding them
against possible offense or helping them gain a handle on class materials?

The more these areas of sensitivity bear on behavior that is actually a
matter of choice, not merely on attributes over which no one has any
control, the more teachers, health professionals, and others in the
service professions may find themselves hampered in the effort to
conscientiously serve their clients. A tax attorney may have to tell a
client that his or her way of preparing a report is inadequate but that
client might well take offense, construing this an insult instead of
assistance. A hair dresser might suggest a different cut for a client only
to be rebuked for insensitivity. There is, in fact, no end to the possible
ways human communication could be undermined by all this worry about
hurting people?s feelings. It isn?t just that employers must put up with
habits they consider objectionable. But they and others could well be
impeded in providing valuable information to those who can benefit from it
because such information could upset those to whom it is communicated.

There used to be a pretty sensible distinction between lashing out at
someone for something he or she had no control over?one?s race, sex,
height, national origin, etc.?and matters over which the person had or
could gain ample control?e. g., how well one speaks a language, how one
dresses, one?s hygiene, and so forth. But when government got into the
business of regulating how people interacted, some began to see an
opportunity to exploit it all. The first instance that came to my
attention was when some San Francisco taxi drivers decided it went against
their culture for their employers to require them to cut their hair or
stop wearing certain kind of garments.

Now it seems anything about anyone is coming to constitute an essential
part of his or her identity and may not be criticized, even for practical
purposes. But, as is the case with those young children whose obesity can
be a serious medical hazard, the failure to discuss some of these personal
attributes could itself be not just something uncomfortable but out and
out hazardous. For the sake of not offending someone?s sensibilities,
their well being itself could be placed at risk.

Column on Prestigious Media Ignorance

Uneducated Interviewer

Tibor R. Machan

It may be gross folly but I have had this notion that contemporary
journalists working at major media outlets had to have received a good
education. Alas, I could be very wrong.

Evidence for this comes from the Sunday, October 2, 2005, issue of The
New York Times Magazine. In it interviewer Deborah Solomon was sparring
with former Massachusetts governor William Weld, who expressed his support
for privatizing a good deal of what governments do around the country. One
of his targets was zoos.

Alas, when he gave voice to this idea, Ms. Solomon responded by saying,
?But surely I don?t have to remind you that the private sector cannot be
trusted to act in the interests of society as a whole, which is why
government exists....?

Not only does this retort fly in the face of centuries of history and
even plain common sense but it counters one of the most important insights
of contemporary economic understanding of the public sector. I have in
mind the famous "public choice theory," as laid out in detail in James
Buchanan?s and Gordon Tullock?s seminal book, The Calculus of Consent
(University of Michigan Press, 1962). (Buchanan received the Nobel Prize
in economic science for advancing the theory; Tullock didn?t because, I am
told, his degree isn?t in economics but biology or law).

The gist of the theory is that people in the public sector and the
private sector are motivated very similarly, that is, so as to advance
their own agendas. And why not? Why would someone enter ?public? service
if not to promote some cherished purpose, in this case by means of
politics rather than enterprise? Indeed, most folks who go into politics
do not devote themselves to promote the interest of some illusory ?society
as a whole.? There is no such thing??society? is a term applied to the
interlocking network of all the private and social endeavors and
achievements of individuals, nothing more. There is no entity the term
refers to the interest of which public servants can advance. There are
only the innumerable private interests, all of them with more or less
support within society, and people entering politics and working in
government are pursuing these interests, not the interest of society as a
whole. (The only common interest governments can possibly protect is the
equal individual rights of all citizens.)

Whenever people do pursue their various private interests within
government, they have one advantage over those who do this in the private
sector. This is that they can obtain resources from taxation instead of
voluntary contributions, via trade. So the pursuit of the ?interest of
society as a whole? routinely gets reckless and unrestrained. We have, as
a result, massive, uncontrolled spending on projects that have become the
purview of governments because they can legally extort?and, if that
doesn?t work, print?money with hardly any obstacles standing in their way.

Former governor Weld is right to complain and to seek some remedy from
privatization. Indeed, throughout the globe desperately broke governments
have begun doing this whenever they aren?t prevented by citizens who have
come to depend on them for handouts. (Germany is a good example where some
in government is seeking to reign in spending but free riders fiercely
object.)

In any case, one would have thought that Ms. Solomon, being as she is a
journalist in the employ of a very prestigious media giant, The New York
Times, would have some inkling about public choice theory and its
successes in understanding how politicians and bureaucrats behave. Yet,
she asserts, as if it were a self-evident axiom, that government can be
trusted ?to act in the interest of society as a whole.? Is she whistling
in the dark or is she really so ignorant as to buy into this widely
exposed old myth?

One would have hoped she is aware that governments mostly serve various
special private interests and care not a whit about society as a whole but
use the idea as a ruse. And, contrary to another myth to which she
subscribes, the only reason government exists is to secure our
rights?which is something Ms. Solomon could easily have gleaned from
reading not some obscure technical treatise but the Declaration of
Independence.

Column on Bannig Phoning While Driving

Banning Driving While Phoning

Tibor R. Machan

Richard Roy, a state representative of Connecticut, is quoted in The New
York Times, Saturday, October 1, 2005, saying "There's nothing worse than
seeing someone driving down the road, on the phone or shaving or putting
on make-up, and there's a child in the back seat." With this hyperbole he
was defending the new law in the state banning the use of cell phones
while driving a car.

Actually, cell phone use by drivers can be just as safe or unsafe as
combing one?s hair, fiddling with the CD or cassette player, searching for
house keys in one?s pocket or purse or doing innumerable other things that
may distract one. To pick on cell phone use is unjustified.

This is not to say that some people aren?t quite reckless as they drive
and use their cell phones. But, that?s not unique to cell phone use, as
already noted. Indeed, a good policy is to get away from drivers who are
talking to and looking at their passengers. It?s scary?they could get so
involved as to miss umpteen hazards. But is it sensible to ban this?

I am not disputing the authority of the managers?the government?to set
rules for the use of the roads. Clearly this is what underlies all these
rules of the road, even when they are an overreach. Anyone who owns or
manages a realm may establish rules within that realm?prohibit people from
smoking in one?s home or restaurant or offices, require them to take their
shoes off before coming in; you name it and ownership confers such a
right. Other people, of course, have the right to stay clear of such
realms when they disagree with such rules.

Unfortunately, when it comes to roads, there is no alternative to using
the ones the state administers, so unlike in the case of homes and
restaurants, there?s no choice??You want to drive, you got to deal with
the man.? That?s how it is, unless you can find some private road system
someplace, and even then the government will probably have intruded big
time. (Perhaps an exception is raceways, where the owners set the rules;
however, these are only available to qualified racers.)

So the issue of whether to ban hand held cell phones by automobile
drivers isn?t about who has the power to impose such a ban?clearly, in the
way our society is managed, the government does, although we can dicker
about whether local, county, state or federal politicians and/or
bureaucrats have that legal authority. It seems, however, that whether a
general ban ought to be imposed is very difficult to know?some drivers may
well be using cell phones and while doing so driving even more safely than
when they do not; while using them, they may well be especially focused on
their driving, whereas when they are not, they could become complacent.
This can apply to the use of any other implement?I, for example, often
shave as I drive and increase my focus on the road as I do this. Shaving,
of course, doesn?t run the risk of getting too involved with something
that can take one?s mind off the road. Selecting a CD from one?s
collection, however, can be much more distracting than using a cell phone.

When politicians and bureaucrats get involved in micromanaging how people
ought to drive, they can very easily become pointlessly intrusive. They
can be like those parents who meddle in everything their teen children are
doing and thereby drive a serious wedge between them and the kids, even
encourage rebelliousness instead of prudence. This would likely be even
worse with those who manage the roads?they are, after all, dealing mostly
with adults who pretty much hold on to the notion that they, not some
official, ought to decided how they ought to drive a car. Evasion of or
resistance to rules can become routine and this may work against the
purpose a cell phone or similar ban is meant to serve.

It seems to me that the answer is to focus not on what people do in their
cars while driving but on the actual driving they do, which is what those
who enforce the rules of the road can deal with most effectively. It
shouldn?t be an issue whether one is using this or that implement that may
for some but not for others serve to impede their driving. It should be an
issue of whether the driving is competent, which is something quite
independent of why it may or may not be.

In a free society it isn?t the state of mind of citizens that should be
the concern of law enforcement, but primarily their actual conduct.

Column on Exploiting Disasters

Exploiting Disasters

Tibor R. Machan

In the beginning of the American republic there was a debate between the
Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Neither side was advancing a fully
consistent, coherent vision of politics for America but, in the main,
Hamiltonians defended the idea of a strong federal, while Jefferson?s
supporters argued for limited and mainly local government. The debate has
never completely ended, although Hamiltonians triumphed when it comes to
how America evolved.

In our day there is little mainstream opposition to the Hamiltonian big
government vision. Both parties champion it, differing only on what
aspects of society each would like to have government control more fully,
more aggressively. Conservatives focus mainly on shaping our souls?they
want to bring church and state closer together, they demand that religious
teaching be spread across the land, while liberals are primarily
interested in having government control the economy, raise minimum wages,
regulate corporations, and tax and spend to their heart?s content. Don?t
kid yourself?each side embraces aggressive moralizing to the core.

In times of emergencies the fact that both the liberals and the
conservatives have embraced big government?not only in terms of its size
and cost but even more importantly regarding its scope of power?comes
across most clearly. The only minor dispute between these two factions
concerns which level of government should be most involved, state or
federal. Conservatives prefer that state governments wield the greater
power and carry the greater burden, while liberals champion unrestrained
federal involvement.

The fact that neither alternative is working well, no matter what the
crisis happens to be?natural, like Katrina and Rita, or man made such as
terrorism?does not bother either side too much. Sure, there are some who
sound alarms about too much government power, say, when it comes to
sacrificing civil liberties in the war on terror or, on the other side,
when massive and reckless federal spending is contemplated as a remedy for
whatever ails the country. But aside from such details, the consensus
tends to be that when people face big trouble, the way to go is with big
government.

The disaster by the Gulf of Mexico and the visual imagery that millions
of us experienced from the region, has given the Hamiltonians a
considerable opportunity to bolster their case. As an example, one need
but read Michael Ignatieff, Carr professor of human rights at Harvard
University?s Kennedy School of Government, in the September 25th issue of
The New York Times Magazine. To bolster his ongoing support for big,
unlimited federal government, Ignatieff penned ?The Broken Contract,? a
piece in which he propounds the notion that the American people have
entered into a contract which requires that they be protected by
government from all hazards and dangers and crisis. As he puts the point,

[The contract?s] basic term is protection: helping citizens to protect
their families and possessions from forces beyond their control. Let's not
suppose this contract is uncontroversial. American politics is a furious
argument about what should be in the contract and what shouldn't be. But
there is enough agreement, most of the time, about what the contract
contains for America to hold together as a political community. When
disasters strike, they test whether the contract is respected in a
citizen's hour of need. When the levees broke, the contract of American
citizenship failed.

Actually, of course, no such contract was ever entered into. In the
American political tradition if any kind of contract between the citizens
and their government exists, it involves the very limited terms of getting
protection of one?s basic rights. As stated in the Declaration of
Independence, where this political vision is sketched, it is ?to secure
these rights [that] governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the government.?

This is unambiguously put?governments exist so as to protect our rights,
not to protect us ?from forces beyond our control.? In other words,
American government wasn?t conceived as our doctor, dentist, tree surgeon,
hurricane fighter, flood preventer, and all the various professionals whom
we hire when ?forces beyond our control? threaten or invade our lives.
American government exists to fight criminals, not nature.

It should be simple to understand this. Government is made up of
politicians and bureaucrats, not professionals who know how to handle all
the varieties of disasters that we can encounter in life. Whenever
government extends itself to attempt to cope with these adversities, all
that really happens is that it grows by leaps and bounds. (The best
scholarly work on this is Robert Higgs? Crisis and Leviathan [Oxford
University Press, 1987].)

Yet, of course, even as academic cheerleaders of big government like
Michael Ignatieff admit outright that government failed in this latest, as
it has in innumerable other, disaster management, they also use the
disaster to call for more and more government.

Instead, they ought to call for taking government out of the picture and
acclimating all of us to the simple and vital fact that disasters are best
managed with paid professionals, ones who would be prepared and step up to
the plate if only government didn?t pretend to be there for us, feigning
?to protect [our] families and possessions from forces beyond our control.?

Column on Ripples of Kelo

[Please proof read before using]

Ripples of Kelo?

Tibor R. Machan

It seems like Kelo v. City of New London, CT.?the infamous case in which
the US Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that private property may be taken so as
to transfer it to others who might do with something conducive to the
likes of local politicians?has energized the enemies of private property
rights. Now they are arguing that whenever the government takes property
from someone, it need not even be compensated. Why? Because it never
belonged to anyone but the government in the first place.

This appears to be the rallying cry of people from around the country
lobbying against a Congressional measure (H. R. 3824) that would require
governments to pay for taking property from citizens so that this property
could serve some public purpose. Various members of Congress?e.g., Raul M.
Grijalva and John Conyers, Jr.?are claiming that any measure that would
compensate property owners when such takings occur amounts to ?a massive
new entitlement program.? Letting folks keep what they own?or requiring
government to pay for it when they confiscate it?is now to be construed as
an entitlement, a kind of gift from the state.

Suppose a government regulatory agency declares that your backyard or
farmland must be preserved so as to provide a habitat for some endangered
species. The lobbyists are claiming that when your property is confiscated
for this purpose nothing is actually taken from you because the property
in fact belongs to the endangered species, not you, in the first place.
The Endangered Species Act supposedly implies this. The reduction ad
absurdum
of such an idea is that if some bug or virus infests your body, you may not
expunge it because they and not you have a right to be there. As if bugs,
viruses, and endangered species had the right to private property, instead
of human beings.

Here is where all the talk about animal rights has its insidious,
misanthropic results. If one holds to the myth that animals have rights,
including property rights, then these lobbyists?who will surely be
standing in line to administer any system honoring such animal rights?have
a point. (Yet even then the fact that people took possessions of the land
in question first would support the idea that if property is taken from
them, it should be compensated. By whom, you might ask. Well, by those who
want to provide the animals with a habitat, namely, the
environmentalists.)

In fact, as my book Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature?s Favorite
(2004) argued, animals have no rights and any law that is enacted under
the assumption that they do is a farce. The only reason for these laws is
that there is a large enough active constituency that wants them and wants
to be in the position to administer whatever regulations emerge in the
wake of having them enacted.

OK, some of these lobbyists may in fact be animal lovers and may be
motivated by this love to run roughshod over private property rights. And
instead of collecting the money needed to make room for their beloved
animals, they prefer going to the government and having it force human
beings off their property without even compensating them for their losses.

Of course, this procedure is nothing new. Indeed, even the US Supreme
Court?s Kelo ruling wasn?t entirely novel. People have been going to
government for many years to get their way against other people. As one
sage warned, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always
votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public
treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose
fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." (Attributed to Sir Alex
Fraser Tytler [1742-1813].)

We are witnessing this evolution now, with environmental lobbyists
basically urging that the government confiscate all private property if it
can be useful to living beings other than ourselves. This is exactly the
kind of altruism that one leader of the animal liberation movement called
for back in the 1970s, in a book titled Animal Liberation (Random House,
1975).

And it is very likely that these lobbyists will prevail, sadly, since the
courts have neglected to stand firmly in defense of the right to private
property when other objectives were advanced as reason to violate them.

Column on doing things on our own

Science versus Society?

Tibor R. Machan

One would assume science is on society?s side, which is to say that what
scientists learn can make things better for many of us. And this is
certainly generally true. But there appear to be some exceptions or,
rather, puzzles. Here what the scientists produce often leads to more
confusion than understanding.

In his book Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior (2005), Mark
Blumberg, a psychologist at the University of Iowa, argues that our
behavior is prompted by our DNA and by the environment and explores how
much of it is due to which. He is, in other words, chiming in with his own
reflections on the old nature versus nurture debate. What is so puzzling
is that there is no room left for Blumberg?and, admittedly, to most of
those who discuss the topic?for what most people outside of the scientific
community think is the main explanation for how we act, namely, ourselves.
(For that we would need to turn to the late Edward Pols, whose Acts of Our
Being [1983] explores that possibility thoroughly.)

Yes, indeed, Blumberg spends some 200 pages without ever considering that
beside how our genes and environment influence what we do, there may well
be just a bit of room for personal responsibility. That option is
apparently so absurd for him that he will not even mention it.

Yet, of course, much of society?its institutions, policies,
problems?assumes that although DNA has a serious impact on us, and the
environment matters, too, the main force in producing our behavior is the
individual, by means of the exercise of what has traditionally been called
one?s free will. This is why criminals are convicted of crimes. This is
why those in charge are blamed when various organizations, firms or
governments foul up?just think of FEMA or Enron or the Iraqi war. Even in
the scientific community, where Blumberg conducts his discussions, people
hold one another responsible for mistakes and sometimes even charge that
out and out malpractice is taking place.

So then how can a scientist write an entire book about human behavior but
omit from consideration whether and how individual agents decide to act?
How are this scientist?s readers and students going to come to grips with
all those aspects of human life that are attributed to such decisions and
actions of individual human beings and not to DNA or the environment?

Blumberg?s discussion is fascinating as it delves into many interesting
topics anyone who ponders human life would find relevant. I was especially
taken by the ruminations about language and its basis in our make-up. But
to fail to even mention that perhaps some of what people do is up to them,
that they are the ones bringing about this behavior and not their genes or
the environment, is certainly puzzling if not out and out irresponsible.

The failure may be to, in part, to the fact that a simple picture of how
the world works had for a few centuries gripped the imagination of many
students of human conduct. This picture would have it that everything
operates more or less as do the balls on a pool table?by way of nothing
more than mechanical causation. One thing moves and then makes another
move and so and so forth, endlessly. This simple?even simplistic?view of
causality leaves no room for initiated behavior. It requires that
everything be part of a daisy chain of endless causal links.

But immediately a difficulty arises: What of the claims the scientists
themselves make? Are these claims simply a product of this endless causal
chain? Must the scientist?is he or she compelled to?make those statements
and must those who disagree with the scientist make their dissenting
statements as well? And if someone were to presume to adjudicate between
the two sides, would that individual too be simply uttering statements
because, well, of an inner or environmentally induced compulsion?

If so, how is anyone ever going to gain an independent stance from which
the dispute could be adjudged objectively, without prejudice and bias?
Anything that makes utterances that cannot but be made?say a parrot or a
tape recorder?isn?t in a position to figure whether those utterances are
true. It is like anything that?s said in a drunken stupor or under the
heavy influence of drugs?practically meaningless.

What is needed is a reconsideration of what kinds of causes take place in
the world. Some are, of course, like what takes place on a pool table and
elsewhere, mechanical. But there are other possibilities, such as when
something, such as a Beethoven or Tolstoy or, indeed, Mark S. Blumberg,
the author of Basic Instinct, set out to do something original, something
creative. That is their undertaking and it isn?t going to be explainable
fully either our DNA or environment or the two of these alone.

The very idea of responsible scientific conduct rests on having to make
room for the individual person whose actions we are considering.

Column on Back to the Toads?

[Please proof read my column before using it.]

Back to the Toads?

Tibor R. Machan

Is it the toads? Maybe this time around it is hazards to some other
critter that prompts the rangers on California?s Silverado Canyon Road,
near where I live, to bar entry to the forest, by the gate. They have the
sign up, no apologies thank you, saying ?Gate Closed 5 miles Ahead.?

Each time I drive by the sign I am inclined to stop and ask the rangers
by whose moral authority they bar us from the forest, given that it is
maintained at taxpayers? expense, which also pays for their services. (I
know, of course, they have some laws backing them, but laws, as history
teaches us, can be very unjust.) Who are these people who believe so
firmly that they have the moral?and should keep the legal?authority to bar
us all from the wilds of Orange County?

At one time, as I recall, it was because some specie of toad which now
and then?actually very rarely?crossed the dirt road up there, and this
supposedly authorized those in charge to keep all human beings away. Why?
So the toad didn?t have to face the hazard of a hiker?s boots or, heaven
help us, a Jeep?s tires. So what? After all, these critters face hazards
from other critters and from the elements all the time?indeed, this has
been their lot from time immemorial. It is how nature is?some living
things live at the expense of some others.

No one seems to mind when one animal feeds off another, or off the
vegetation, thereby destroying these. It is understood to be how the world
works thereabouts, so why when people get into the picture is it supposed
to be forbidden?

My suspicion is that there?s just altogether too much misanthropy afoot
among people attracted to environmentalism. They don?t like, maybe even
hate, human beings?perhaps starting with themselves?so much so that some
of them are calling for humanity?s outright destruction. As David M.
Graber said, in his review of Bill McKibben?s The End of Nature, ?Until
such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can
only hope for the right virus to come along? (from The Los Angeles Times
Book Review, October 22, 1989, p. 9).

Notice how this remark assumes that people aren?t part of nature. But
that is entirely off the wall. People and their developments, bridges,
parking lots, museums, concert halls, SUVs and all the rest are every bit
as much part of nature as are the tunnels built by termites, dams by
beavers, or nests by birds.

What may be true, but entirely irrelevant, is that human beings are not
normally part of the wilds, that what they bring into nature is a very
creative capacity. But there is some of that within the rest of the animal
world as well?some birds, it appears now, sing just for the hell of it,
not because it serves some utilitarian function. And there is word from
research on great apes that they, too, develop various cultural artifacts,
such as games.

Now it is also true that human beings have the unique, so far unmatched
capacity, to mess things up. They are, unlike other animals, not hard
wired to carry on properly, on the whole. So they need to be criticized
and sometimes set right, including in how they comport themselves toward
the wilds.

Yet, to tell just what they do wrong and how to do things right,
standards are required and what environmentalists offer along these lines
is mostly incoherent. They seem to want for us all to ignore what benefits
human beings and only concern ourselves with non-human life. Why? What
could be the reason if not a deep seated misanthropy?

As to the toad or any other critters, let them fend for themselves, just
as they have done for millions of years before people showed up on earth.
And we, in turn, should focus on what truly enhances our lives. If that
includes caring more about other animals than we now do, so be it. But
here there is at least a source of some workable standards?our own lives
and flourishing can be our priority, just as, by the way, the lives and
flourishing of other animals is theirs, only in a hardwired way, not by
conscious choice.

What is really ironic is that in their enthusiasm for the wilds, many
environmentalists betray their own human nature by turning against
themselves, namely, people. Given that no other animals follow suit, they
ought to revise their attitude and become more pro human.

From Tibor Re: Proof reading of my columns

Tom Whom It May Concern:
I at times ask, at the top of my columns, to please proof read what you
plan to use. This is because I have noticed that almost no matter how
often I read over my columns, I do not manage to catch all the
typographical errors (and, of course, spell checks do not manage this
either, for a variety of reasons).
I have heard back only from one person who receives--although in fact
never has used--my columns, admonishing me that it is my responsibility to
do such proof reading and my asking for this help is unprofessional, etc.,
etc. I am not a prominent enough columnists to have the kind of experience
that would give me full confidence about this matter but it does appear to
me that proof reading and even copy editing are received by many writers
from editors. Certainly publishers of my books have nearly always done
this, with the exception of cases when camera ready copies were used to
print the book (yet even then the publisher often provides a penultimate
proof reading). Newspapers often employ proof readers. Most people I have
had experience with along these lines seem to appreciate that writers who
try to proof read often get sidetracked by focusing yet again on the
content and meaning of what they write, thus risking missing the typos
that others can find more readily. Indeed, as a reader of much fiction and
non-fiction from some of the most prestigious publishers, I often catch
typos in the finally published works.
So, all I can say is that if you find it unprofessional of me to request
help with proof reading, just drop me from your list. Otherwise, thank you
very much for putting up with the inconvenience of needing to do a final
read through.

Sincerely,

Tibor R. Machan

Machan teaches at Chapman University, Orange, CA, and is a research fellow
at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA. He advises Freedom
Communications, Inc., on libertarian issues.

Column on Germany's Election

Why The Germans Blinked
Tibor R. Machan
Jana Henselis, who is herself from the former Easter Germany, wrote about
the winner by only the slightest margin of the German election for
chancellor, held Sunday, September 18, Angela Merkel, that she is ?a woman
almost without qualities.? She noted that Merkel ?thought that she could
represent the whole of society by the strength of her reformer's will and
her neoliberal conception of the state.?
Merkel ran on a platform that came to the following: "I want to serve
Germany." As Henselis put it, Merkel ?described the communist system as a
sort of prison in which she learned to love freedom more than people who
were already used to it.? She didn?t approach the election from the usual
special interest perspective but argued, in general terms, again quoting
Henselis, that ?it was necessary to reduce the role and responsibility of
the state in almost all sectors of society.?
According to Henselis, this ?was too radical for most West German
voters.? And that is a very good point to make, not just of German voters
but of most people around the world, when it comes to their attitude and
understanding of the principles of the free society.
Ayn Rand, the Russian American novelist and philosopher who has been a
lifelong defender, on complex philosophical ground, of the fully free
society, told The New York Times, on February 20, 1966,
It is earlier than you think. The status quo of today is a mixed economy
with a fascist, rather than socialist, trend....Today, the advocates of
laissez-faire capitalism...are and have to be radical innovators....

This comment was made with reference to the 1964 US presidential contest
between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater and it pointed up the problem
of trying to attain a free society without an electorate that has a clear
idea of why such a society is best.

In today?s Germany, too, there are many people who have a vague notion
that a country that?s free is better than ?the communist system [which is]
a sort of prison.? Indeed, the bulk of the European?and even
world?population has a vague notion to this effect. What they lack is the
firm conviction and understanding that freedom is indeed better for people
than even the slightest measure of oppression, even for the most appealing
of reasons (e.g., various types of security or safety).

In other words, if one only feels good about freedom, has a vague notion
of its value in human community life, one will not very likely be able to
answer those who have umpteen reasons for compromising it. The passion
with which millions of people want to compromise liberty is considerable,
since this passion is directed toward various immediate personal and
vested interests, not the long range or general interest. The general
interest is about basic and purportedly lasting ideas?for example, the
essentially free infrastructure of a country and the resulting long term
public policies sustaining free institutions?while personal and vested
interests have to do with what concerns folks in the here and now. Unless
they have a solid grounding in why their general interest, namely, the
regime of individual liberty, is ultimately to their own personal
benefit?a grounding that can overcome the more emotionally immediate
desire to serve narrow personal and vested interests?they will not be able
to sustain a movement toward a genuine free society.

What was true back in 1964 in the United States of America is far more
true around the globe, including in Europe and the former Soviet bloc.
Following the fall of the USSR, what most of the citizens heard from their
leaders was a call for some kind of compromise between socialism and
capitalism. They were taught, in the main, to place their hopes in and
champion the welfare state (despite being warned by some that this is
ruinous, especially with poor economies).

Germany is still in the grips of this ambivalence that comes from a
failure to understand that a regime of freedom is indeed best suited to
human community life. Most people there, as elsewhere, including even the
United States of America, live by the ?principle? of ?trying to eat one?s
cake and having it, as well.? And this principle can only be unseated, as
it should be, by learning the lesson of why any compromise of liberty is
ultimately hazardous both the personal and public welfare.