Foreign Policy Determinism?

Tibor R. Machan
The two Iraqi wars have put the issue of American foreign policy on the agendas of many pundits, writers, intellectuals, and politicians. Why this did not happen when Granada, Panama, Kosovo, and other places were at center stage of actual foreign and military affairs is unclear to me. But somehow the military targeting of Iraq managed to turn a lot of people’s attention to American foreign policy--both the motives for it and its consequences.

In his book, published between the two Iraqi wars, From Wealth to Power (Princeton UP, 1998), current Newsweek International editor--and host of CNN-TV’s very good news magazine program, GPS (Global Public Square)--Fareed Zakaria argued that America has always had an impulse toward expanding its sphere of influence, often through coercive force, rarely only because of the need to defend the country against foreign aggression. And most recently Robert Kagan makes the case, in the new publication World Affairs, A Journal of Ideas and Debate (Spring 2008), that the policy of spreading American influence by aggressive means is by no means an invention of neo-conservatism but some a nearly innate impulse evident throughout the history of the foreign policies of many American administrations.

Both Zakaria and Kagan seem to embrace a form of determinism, Zakaria more directly than Kagan. The fact that America is a prosperous society impels the nation and its governments to be expansionist, even imperialist, in foreign affairs. This is not a matter of choice, nothing that could be otherwise. It is simply the way the world works--big, prosperous countries just aim to grow bigger, even if they do not always succeed with this ambition. Kagan simply claims that contrary to what too many commentators and critics of the George W. Bush administration have argued, the desire to spread democracy by force is a well established tradition evident throughout American history, from the beginning to the present. He believes that the fact that the American Founders believed that the principles sketched in the Declaration of Independence are universal, apply to human community life everywhere, makes the expansionist foreign and military stance unavoidable.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with showing that certain policies, foreign or domestic, are closely linked to a country’s history in view of the principles embraced by its constitution and the convictions of its citizenry (especially its leadership). But does this support the suggestion that these policies are somehow unavoidable?

Certainly the Founders’ choice of first principles wasn’t something they couldn’t help making. Quite the contrary--they chose very deliberately and rejected alternative regimes as they reached their conclusion about what kind of community the United States of America ought to be. Now with that choice came a long series of institutions and policies. At each stage some changes could be made and many have been--throughout America’s political and legal history the big government versus limited government positions have kept battling it out, and this continues to our day. (Initial commitments have considerable but not inevitable influence--one need but think of marriage where “I do” does but need not determine how things will turn out!)

Many foreign--as well as domestic--policy theorists embrace a certain positivist methodology as they “explain” the world. That is, they often have a firm conviction that they need to identify certain natural causes that produce states of affairs and shy away from dwelling about normative matters, namely, what policies ought to be carried. The idea of free human choices that may be judged right and wrong is not deemed scientific enough. So there is a kind of self-fulfilling real political bias in their analysis. Because of this stance, evaluations and proposals are shunted since they involve value judgments, something that too many such thinkers consider mere biases, nothing rationally defensible.

But, in fact, a good deal of foreign and military policy rests on what public policy makers believe should be done, how the country ought to behave abroad (as well as at home). The sooner the leading thinkers in these areas recognize that values are what matter most and need to be rationally explored, the more sensible will the country’s policies become, both abroad and at home.

The Rights of The Rich

Tibor R. Machan

No, the rich have no special rights, none at all. But since so many people insist on trying to violate the human rights they do have, it is worthwhile mentioning that no one has any moral authority to violate, abrogate, restrict the rights of the rich. Even when they spend their money on what some people believe are trivial pursuits.

This all comes to mind because The New York Times carried an Op Ed column on Thursday, July 10, 2008, written by a professor, Professor Ray D. Madoff of Boston College School of Law attacking the late Leona Helmsley for giving billions of dollars to a charity that cares for dogs. Her argument is that "The charitable deduction constitutes a subsidy from the federal government. The government, in effect, makes itself a partner in every charitable bequest. In Mrs. Helmsley’s case, given that her fortune warranted an estate tax rate of 45 percent, her $8 billion donation for dogs is really a gift of $4.4 billion from her and $3.6 billion from you and me."

This is nonsense, of course. The estate tax is sheer extortion and, in any case, if one gives one's fortune to charity, it doesn't apply. No subsidies were made to the dogs! By recognizing the right of the rich to bequeath their wealth as they see fit, including for some arguably ridiculous causes, nothing is lost to anyone. If Mrs. Helmsley got her money fair and square, in the free market place, it's hers to do with as she sees fit. In no way did her decision to help out dogs hurt us? How, for example, was her decision different from millions of people's decision to keep and care for their dogs and other animals, money that might well be spent by them on something the professor believes is more important? Since it is their money, they get to spend it as they want, no? It's a free country and just as with having to tolerate the silly things other people say and write--e.g., Professor Madoff's Op Ed--so we will just have to tolerate how others choose to peacefully spend their resources, however much we don't like it.

Professor Madoff's idea is similar to that of many politicians, such as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, that the money other people earn, inherit, or happen to come by some other legitimate way doesn't really belong to them but to the government. This is sheer socialism, whereby no right to private property exists and needs to be secured by the government in its capacity of the protector of the rights of the citizenry. And we should remember that those rights are equally held by all persons, not excepting the wealthy. Just think, would killing a wealthy person be any less of a violation of the right to life than killing someone poor? Certainly not. Nor would robbing a poor person amount to any more of a rights violation than robbing someone who is rich. These are rights we all have as human beings, not as members of an economic class!

Then there is the bizarre notion, advanced in Professor Madoff's column, that making a charitable contribution to an organization that cares for dogs is something petty, inconsequential. I say this as someone who has for years dispute the idea that animals have rights and finds the recent decision by the Spanish government to "recognize" the rights of great apes absurd. But the fact that animals have no rights does not mean at all that animals do not experience hardship, hunger, pain, even torture and thus do not ever deserve to be provided with care by human beings, especially those who have the wealth to spend on them. In fact, instead of talk about animal rights we should continue with the much more sensible moral position that it is decent to be caring toward animals. From childhood on most of us are taught that cruelty to animals is morally wrong. Any decent human being will refuse to inflict unnecessary pain and hardship on other animals even if it makes sense to use animals in certain situations for various human purposes, such as medical research, transportation, nourishment and so forth. Such use does not amount to wanton cruelty.

The late Mrs. Helmsley, who amassed a large fortune, may well have done something quite admirable by leaving a large amount of her wealth to be used to care for dogs. At any rate, it was her money and she had every right giving it away for this purpose. And so are all of us perfectly within our rights to spend our honestly come by resources for similar purposes. It is scandalous that Professor Madoff would propose otherwise. Nonetheless, the fact that she does advocate such nonsense is just another example of how human rights work--they may be exercised wisely and not so wisely. She accuses the late Mrs. Helmsley of having exercised her rights unwisely and I am accusing her of having done the same when she chose to write her Op Ed piece. In both cases, that is the price of having basic rights and living in a country where they are protected.

Property Rights Pluses

Tibor R. Machan

A most controversial feature of the free society is its strict adherence to the principle of private property rights. Indeed, such a society would have few public places, apart from its court houses, police, and military stations. So valued items, including land, water, and even the air mass, would be privately owned, at least to the extent that this is practically possible.

Private property rights, in turn, imply that different individuals and groups would have no authority to make use of property that doesn’t belong to them. Trespass would be forbidden. Any invasive behavior on the part of one’s neighbors would be legally impermissible. Should it occur, that kind of conduct would be subject to severe sanctions.

Apart from the many great benefits of this kind of system--mainly to secure for members of human communities their own, inviolate space or spheres and, thus, their liberty--there would also be the overall benefit of greater care bestowed upon valued resources. No project could be undertaken without the full consent of those whose spheres are needed for it. A dam, for example, could only be built with the consent of all the property owners whose land would be flooded.

This result of the regime of private property rights would be of immense benefit to the environment. No massive projects that make use of forests, lakes, prairies and the like could be undertaken unless all owners agree and make sure that there are no harmful, injurious side effects from them. Thus no one would be authorized to dump waste into the atmosphere--it would amount to the invasion of private property or, if that is not fully feasible, personal assault or property damage. Development would be more measured and reasonable than when it comes from central planners.

Such a system--which can be outlined but the details of which would be evolving within a private property rights legal regime--would most likely contain the greater portion of likely environmental mismanagement and spoilage since the owners would very probably guard what belongs to them against any misuse and squander.

No, there is never any guarantee that all property owners will be prudent and cautious. But this kind of system is more likely to follow what environmentalists call precautionary principles throughout the society. They would have a strong incentive to make sure their property remains valuable, usable, safe, and productive. There could, of course, be some who are negligent and take little care of what belongs to them but the consequences of such lack of care would very quickly boomerang and make itself felt by the negligent property owner, not by the public at large, which is what happens when public authorities mismanage valuable resources.

As Aristotle remarked nearly 3000 years ago, "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few" (Politics, 1262a30-37). This pretty much explains why environmental problems arose in the first place: the tragedy of the commons.

Unfortunately there is too much bellyaching about the anticipated inequality that can arise from the regime of private property rights, so it is being compromised everywhere and instead of owners being left to deal with what belongs to them, mostly like quite responsibly, public authorities, bureaucrats, are counted upon to manage the realm. And that cannot but lead to widespread neglect. Both the problems of the commons and of public choice--authorities pursuing their own agendas in the name of the public--stand in the way of a sustained concern for conservation, preservation, and sensible use. All because of the envious resentment of many against those who might well parley their own private property into serious wealth.

The naïve idealism of egalitarianism, thus, stands in the way of the best prospects for the environment. Another case of the imaginary perfect being the enemy of the practically good!

Regulatory Irony

Tibor R. Machan

Government interference in our lives is most often defended on grounds that the weak, vulnerable, and unprepared in society just cannot be expected to cope with the strong and clever. This is but a code for class warfare talk, of course. Some of us must be assisted in their lives, even if we don't know nor ask for it. The latest rationale being offered for all the meddling is dubbed libertarian paternalism or nudging. It means that even if outright regimentation by government is undesirable, if bureaucrats just gently push us around, provide incentives to do the right thing, that's definitely defensible against objections that invoke the menace of government oppression.

Now all this is pretty bad reasoning since, as I recently argued, one has no assurance that the people doing the nudging will be nudging us the right way and not taking advantage of their position as official, certified nudgers. In short, who will nudge the nudgers, who will do paternalistic duty for the paternalists who are, let us remember, not only not immune to the foibles against which they are meant to guard us but, because of their increased power over people, are more tempted to misbehave?

But there are some other problems with the idea that government regulations do any good. John Stossel showed some of it in his wonderful ABC-TV special, "Are we scaring ourselves to death?" Government regulation shortens people's lives because of its enormous cost from which the poor suffer especially since they can least afford paying for it via taxes (income, property, sales, and the more hidden ones). Furthermore, a consequence of government regulation is, of course, the enormous bureaucracy and red tape that people face in their lives as a result of the various safety and security measures the innumerable federal, state, county and municipal agencies demand from everyone in the market place. Consumer protection is what they call it but it is anything but that.

All this is perhaps a bit easier for me than for many others to grasp because in my early years I lived in the most bureaucratized society conceived by the human mind, in a communist country. Everything our family tried to do needed to be approved, authorized, overseen, permitted, and such by some tentacle of some level or branch of government. And one thing is for sure. Not everyone is equally adept at coping with, let alone resisting, those obstacles to living one life.

Even apart from government--but often because of it--an ordinary person needs to deal with innumerable bureaucratic impediments. I have always been a bit more prepared for this then others because of that nasty training I got back living under the communist regime in Budapest. For the rest of my life I have cultivated a tenacity that has managed to do wonders with the surrounding bureaucracy. Whether it be getting a passport at the post office, reversing some idiotic fee at the bank, obtaining my child's drivers license, or figuring out what went wrong with a payment my employer was supposed to make but went astray en route, I have worked relentlessly not to permit these hurdles to set me back too much.

But can one expect that we are all so well trained in handling these pitfalls? Millions of people are probably tripped up, more or less frequently, by much of the red tape they confront, coming at them under the banner: "We are the government and we are here to help you." These are, of course, the very citizens in whose name the government sold us on their regulatory measures. The powerful, rich, savvy folks, in contrast, are better equipped to deal with all of this. They hire lawyers, human resource experts, and various teams of specialists who help them deal with government regulators, inspectors, planners, and the rest.

It's ironic that it is Ralph Nader who is called a consumer advocate when his own advocacy of all that government meddling helps make millions of ordinary consumers pay through the nose and falter in other ways as they try to deal with the umpteen levels of government that's nudging us about, naturally, all for our own good.

Building Paradoxes

Tibor R. Machan

Never have I resided in or visited a locale in America where there hasn’t been an active historical preservation society. These are the organizations that impose all sorts of restrictions on property owners about what may or may not be build, renovated, restituted within the borders of what the activist consider to be “their community.” Now and then I even attend planning commission meetings where I live, just to witness the utter, unabashed arrogance of these preservers of architectural history. Members of such committees are invariably convinced that they own everyone’s property and may dictate to all concerned what may be done with what is, after all, supposed to be private property. (Not that these are the only such organizations surrounding communities across the land and, indeed, the globe. The sense of entitlement to butt in where folks ought to have no authority to decide is sadly almost universal.)

Now this is something one can lament forever and it is quite clear, at least to many decent folks, that the tyranny of such groups is intolerable, however much various quirks in the legal system manage to make them legitimate. That’s not what I want to consider here. An aspect of this situation, however, is worth taking not of because it points up just how convoluted is the thinking of advocates of such intrusiveness.

All the while that the preservationists are hell bent on leaving things as they used to be, thus retarding development, some of those very same people insist that all buildings conform to up to date technical standards when it comes to safety, health, and security. Thus the standards laid down by such governmental bodies as the federal agency OSHA--Occupational Safety and Health Administration--and various local bodies that determine the building codes--are also vigorously promoted and imposed on property owners everywhere.

Just exactly how these two equally widely embraced objectives of people who love to meddle in others’ lives can be reconciled has always puzzled me. If you want to preserve what’s old because of its historical significance, how can you insist that it be updated to conform to the latest technological standards? And if that’s not possible, which is going to take precedence? Is it more important for us all--because, after all, these goals are all supposed to serve the public interest, the common good, as opposed to serving private profit, which is what builder of new structures are supposedly committed to--to be as safe as possible or is it more important to enjoy authentic historical structures in our neighborhoods?

Of course, there is no answer to this question because for different people and groups, different objectives could easily be more vital. Some folks ought to live and work in places fully equipped with the most affordable up to date gadgetry, while others may be much better of--pursue their happiness for more effectively--if they embrace the architectural and construction treasures of history. Some like their abode to be a historical exhibition, some a model of the latest and highest options of building technology. And there are, I am sure, all kinds of valid combination of objectives that no group of meddling bureaucrats can even imagine yet have no hesitation about imposing on everyone.

Of course, this is not the only paradox that is inherent in the policy of meddlers. Another one of my favorites is that these folks actually manage to convince themselves of the utterly conceited notion that they alone know what is right and good for all when it comes to planning buildings, neighborhoods, and communities. Does it not occur to them, to quote Abraham Lincoln, that “No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent”?

I guess not. Instead they probably live in the reactionary past when kings and dukes and barons thought they had it all over the rest of humanity when it came to giving direction to human lives. I say bunk to that and hope you will in time agree with me!

Ideas Have Consequences

Tibor R. Machan

My discipline, philosophy, is often lambasted for being too abstract, for not dealing with concrete matters, for not being practical. Socrates took a lot of flack for devoting much of his time to searching for fundamental principles and definitions of prominent ideas, such as justice, truth, and virtue. I’d be very rich if I had a buck for each time someone has told me over the decades that philosophy is useless.

Perhaps this is simply the fallout of a common attitude. That is for people to favor the significance of their line of work over and above all others. A great many economists, I can personally testify, are good at this--nothing is as relevant and pertinent to our lives as economics! Some have even written for a book unabashedly titled “economic imperialism.” But many sociologists, psychologists, biologists, and the rest exhibit such chauvinism as well.

In recent weeks there has been evidence of the practical impact, mostly for the worse, of certain philosophical ideas and the prestigious position of those who propound them. I am talking about animal “rights” or liberation champions, like the now world famous Princeton University philosopher Peter Singer.

First, in Spain the government has declared that great apes have the rights to life and liberty, rights that had been understood to belong only to human beings. It isn’t immediately obvious how this legal declaration is going to be implemented--do they have a lot of great apes in Spain? But it probably will have an impact at zoos and circuses, as well as, and more importantly, at medical research centers. And that, in turn, will very likely pose impediments to certain activities, some vital to human well being, others less so.

On this side of the Atlantic the animal rights/liberation doctrine has had dire consequences and continues to be deadly for human beings. The New York Times recently editorialized against making DDT available for fighting malaria around the world, in part because some penguins in Antarctica were found to have a little of it in their bodies. No, they didn’t die of this, nor seem to have had any serious illness associated with it but merely because there is that possibility, based on Rachel Carson's terribly influential 1964 book, Silent Spring! And admittedly there is evidence that DDT has done harm to the eggs of some birds.

So what? Why shouldn’t some birds suffer, even die, in the effort to improve the chances of human beings to survive certain deadly diseases? Well, because, as animal rights/liberation advocates like Singer (and another philosopher, Tom Regan), maintain, it would be to unjustly harm these animals to permit DDT to be used to help human beings.

This misanthropic doctrine is widely promulgated in various publications, including the most recent issue of Philosophy Now which has devoted most of its pages to making the case for animal rights/liberation. Sadly, no opponents to the doctrine were given space, although in fairness that's partly due to the simple fact that very few philosophers are on record defending the use of animals for purposes of helping human beings even with fatal medical problems such as malaria. It is estimated that millions of Africans have died because of the influence of Rachel Carson and other opponents of the medical use of DDT.

In much of moral philosophy or ethics it is taken as an article of faith, though not much defended, that human beings ought to live lives of self-sacrifice. As Singer put it, several years ago, “Animal Liberation will require greater altruism on the part of mankind than any other liberation movement, since animals are incapable of demanding it for themselves, or of protesting against their exploitation by votes, demonstration, or bombs.” So even though animals routinely kill and maim fellow animals for their own benefit--albeit, as a matter of their hard wired instincts, not from free choice--there is something lowly about human beings making use of other animals for their own good. Why so?

Nothing much of an answer is given to that question--indeed, in Singer’s case, it rests, ultimately, on his intuitions or, as I would call them, sentiments. What is needed is a vigorous philosophical and related defense of human life and flourishing, including human rights, and rejection of a sadly widespread misanthropic outlook that goes nearly unopposed now in the community of moral philosophers.

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Tibor Machan is the author of Putting Humans First (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

The Common Good Sense of Liberty

Tibor R. Machan

In the sciences a great many initially controversial ideas have reached the status of common sense. Yes, the earth revolves around the sun. No, leaches do not cure all the diseases they had been used to try to cure. The earth is really quite old, unlike what the literal reading of the good book suggests. And, no, women aren’t inferior to men because somehow their emotions render them stupid.

Now as far as I see matters, freedom is superior to any and all forms of servitude, now and ever, however little this had been acknowledged in the past and still is in other parts of the globe. That is now common sense to me. Just as rape is plainly immoral and sexual unions must be voluntary, so all human conduct that’s peaceful must also be undertaken as a matter of choice. Subjugating anyone to another’s will is not much different, no matter what area of human life it involves, from subjugating an unwilling woman to the will of a forceful man.

But for some odd reason that escapes me, really, a great many quite prominent and intellectually prestigious people disagree with me. It seems to all of them quite OK to coerce others to do various things that these others do not agree to doing. Like paying into the social security fund, or following the orders of the Food and Drug Administration or the Drug Enforcement Authority. Thousands of such institutional arrangements, whereby some more or less large group of people get the legal authority to order others around, are approved of by prominent people. The excuse is usually that unless this authority is granted to these folks, some very good things will not get accomplished.

But that is simply a lousy excuse for running roughshod over other people, to limit their liberty and hand over to others the power to run their lives. It is again common sense to me that if you aim to enlist some fellow human beings in a project that is important, valuable, noble or such, you must confine your means to convincing, never to coercing them. How could it be otherwise? I stick with Abraham Lincoln here, who said, famously, that “No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.” Just seems so obviously true that I find objections to the idea bordering on insanity. I can only have some measure of patience with such objections based on my realization that for centuries and centuries human beings have lived under the yoke of a bunch of pretenders to higher authority and this has warped their good sense.

No, I am not naïve. I realize well enough that dozens and dozens of fancy arguments, theories, motivations and such back the case for subjecting some people who want to go their own way--who want to follow their own choices--to the will of others. In the history of political philosophy and theory hundreds of brilliant figures have advanced interesting, often very sophisticated, arguments defending the divine right of kings, the absolute authority of majorities, and the like. Thousands and thousands of pages have been written to promote the fiction that some men are good enough to coerce others, in the name of various goals, desires, dreams, ideals, or notions of the common good. But none of these, I have come fairly early in my reading to realize, carries the day. Freedom simply--as well as in all its complicated renditions--triumphs over all the more or less oppressive alternatives.

Why then so much resistance to the idea? Well, the governmental habit is one explanation I have discussed often and find still to be a powerful notion. But there is also the fear of liberty--some just believe that unless powerful hands take over the running of human affairs, vital matters will be neglected. Why those powerful hands should manage to escape the same obstacle, namely human folly, to running matters properly that seem to such folks to prevent free man and women doing it beats me. The evidently blind confidence in some magic selection process that will put only wise and virtuous people into the positions of the coercers is baffling.

It is time that the superior regime of freedom becomes an article of common sense, not in constant need of having to be defended, intellectually, politically and physically!

America Was Special

Tibor R. Machan

Despite its awful flaw, slavery, at the start, America had begun as a country founded on very special, radical principles. More importantly, these principles are true--they aren’t merely myths or superstitions men and women held for a period of time. That we all have basic rights to our lives, liberty, etc., is true and not just some fiction (as the late George Carlin liked to maintain in his curmudgeonly fashion). After all, nearly all of the criminal law across the globe recognizes it, at least implicitly. But few countries incorporated these truths into the daily fabric of their citizens’ economic lives.

Of course not even in America was the economy fully free. Nor did freedom of speech or even religion rule the realm completely, without some serious exceptions. But compared to other regimes around the globe, the ideals and ideas of a free society took greater hold here than elsewhere. That is what made the place exceptional, that’s why millions fled to it, that’s what made it a sanctuary to so many and still does.

The differences between countries are not like those between geometrical shapes. They are more gradual, so that while North Korea is a radically different place from America, Germany or New Zealand is not. And today more and more countries are adopting legal principles, institutions, and public policies that resemble those favored by the American Founders and Framers.

In some regions of the globe, such as India and China, some of these principles, especially those bearing on economic matters, have been embraced quite adamantly. That wouldn’t yet make them fully free countries; not even the US can be so called, given its oppressive drug laws and some other public policies. But in certain vital areas of human affairs, such as commerce, science, technology, and the like, embracing even less than fully the principles of liberty will mean a great deal. And one thing it will mean is that the people of these countries will become far more productive --and they will also be consuming a lot more--than they used to. So America is gradually having to face people from elsewhere who are competing in the global economy. And they are enjoying the fruits of this competition and making matters more difficult for those in the USA.

Just as when America fielded the famous basketball “dream team” but eventually faced teams from other countries that learned to play equally well, so America has been enjoying considerable advantage in many areas which it no longer does, if only because the obstacles to being part of the competition are being removed in other places. That would mean, among other things, that Americans will have to work harder and smarter in all areas of production than they did previously in order to keep up their standard of living.

In addition to these geopolitical changes, there is also all the technological developments that face people in many industries. No one can sit on his or her laurels and expect to just coast to easy success. As with a marathon race that is being run now by millions more than earlier, so with the global economy the contestants are facing a great deal of pressure now. (A good book about this is Fareed Zakaria’s recent Post-American World.)

All of this would of course be welcome news to those who find it thrilling to face new challenges in life. But if statis is one’s habit or preference, if one wants to be settled into a job, business, or profession without making adjustments, without having to be alert to the new opportunities that keep coming up, one will not be enjoying the current market place.

In fairness, of course, one needs to acknowledge that quite apart from the global economic changes facing us, there are also all the obstacles we face that bureaucrats, meddling politicians, and their cheerleaders in the media and the intellectual arena place before us and that make matters doubly difficult as we come to terms with challenges in the market place. Free men and women are more likely to meet these than are those whose minds and bodies are in partial bondage to mal-practicing governments.

So beside learning to deal with new peaceful developments around the globe, it is also vital to work on removing the artificial, indeed criminal, intrusions that make it difficult to adjust to novel situations. This is why politics is no luxury but a realm where vigilance in making improvements is as necessary as anywhere else in our lives.

What kind of Equality?

Tibor R. Machan

So called progressives--who wish to sell us on the idea that their rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence amounts to moving forward whereas it is, in fact, blatantly reactionary--like to make fun of the American Founders’ and Framers’ ideas. One of those ideas that has come in for some drubbing is where we are told that “All men are created equal.” In fact, several elements of this statement have received much ridicule. One is that it talks of “men,” another that even if it is taken more honestly as referring to adult human beings, it is plainly false. There is, of course, yet another part of it that is often derided, namely, that human beings were created by God, even though by “create” one can mean both something religious and secular.

What about the idea that human beings are created equal? Aldous Huxley is reported to have dismissed this as follows: “That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.” Yet, Huxley and all whose who gleefully join him in his attempt to debunk the Founders seem not to have been paying sufficient attention to the actual words of the Declaration. Immediately following “That all men are created equal” is the sentence “that they are endowed, by their creator, with certain unalienable rights.” Which pretty much implies that this is where all of us are equal, namely, in our possession of the unalienable rights--among others--to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What is clear from this is that the Founders didn’t believe something ridiculous like Huxley suggests they did, namely, that “all men are equal.” Just look at any group of human beings and it is patently absurd that they are equal. We are all individuals, with a great variety of unique, distinct, different, and even special attributes that make up who we are. Despite this, however, we are also equally in possession of our rights.

Just consider this: all marathon runners differ from one another yet they are also equal in having to start from a certain spot and having to finish at another. But this equality is very limited and contributes just minimally to their status as marathon runners. The students in my university classes are clearly unequal on many fronts yet they are equal in having to pass certain tests, write certain papers, take part in class discussions.

So the equality that the American Founders identified about human beings makes perfectly good sense: however much they all differ--however unequal they may be in their talents, opportunities, physical prowess, wealth, health, and beauty--they are equal in having fundamental, unalienable individual human rights to their lives, liberty, pursuit of happiness and many others not possible to list.

Yes, the Founders proposed that human beings have many more than just those basic rights. That is why when the Bill of Rights was crafted, it included the Ninth Amendment which states that “the enumeration in this Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Framers worried that listing some of the most basic rights may mislead folks into thinking that they meant human beings have only those, whereas in fact human beings have many, many more rights than what the Declaration or the Bill of Rights could possibly list.

This is not difficult to grasp. Neither the Declaration nor the Bill of Rights states that human beings have the right to, say, laugh, sing, play billiards, or to get on their knees and say prayers yet, of course, every adult human being has the right to do these things. And how do we tell that the Founders and Framers thought so? Because they listed very broad principles only, such as the rights to life and to liberty. If one has the right to one’s life, it clearly means that one has the right to a whole bunch of peaceful, non rights-violating undertakings, given that life consists of innumerable such undertakings. Similarly, to have the right to liberty means to have the right to act in innumerable ways that do not violate anyone else’s rights. But a brief, succinct declaration, or a brief list, cannot possibly mention all the rights human beings have. The terms used are abstract ones, indicating a great many more concrete elements--just as when one uses the term “furniture” to indicate all those chairs, tables, beds, sofas, drawers, etc., that is meant by it.

My suspicion is that in the battles for people’s minds and hearts a lot of people who find it inconvenient that others would have the rights the Founders and Framers indicated wish to make it appear the American Founders and Framers were confused and what they proposed can be simply dismissed. Well, they are very wrong about this.

My Uninvited Speech at KOCE-TV’s 35 Anniversary Bash

Tibor R. Machan

A colleague asked me to come and sit with him and his pals at the table to celebrate KOCE-TV’s 35th anniversary celebration. I went, though with some trepidation, given that KOCE-TV is a “public” television station in Orange County, CA. It is mostly funded from contributions but does receive about 10% of its operating expenses from the government, via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I was informed by one official at the organization.

Compared to many other subsidized undertakings, the amount isn’t huge but, still, it does involve robbing Peter a bit so as to support Paul with the latter’s preferred projects.

As I was driving to the bash, I was toying with the fantasy of giving a little talk at the event, just in case I had the chance to make clear to some folks what I have against such “public” funding. No one asked! I just sat at the table with some familiar people and listened to glowing reports about KOCE-TV’s contribution to Orange County’s cultural scenery. But I figure it might be of some use if I did jot down what I would have said to the assembled celebrators. Here it goes:

“Ladies and Gentlemen. Thanks for the opportunity to be at this celebration. I am very much in favor of what KOCE-TV has done and is doing here in OC, excepting perhaps a few programs that tend toward statist propaganda instead of bona fide education or entertainment. This mirrors my support for numerous other similar projects and programs partially funded from taxation, including AIDS research, the jazz and blues offerings at KKJZ-FM, Long Beach, CA, as well as numerous scientific, medical, artistic, and even some environmental undertakings.

“What I find morally unacceptable, however, is how some of the funds for these and other worthy projects are obtained, namely, by confiscatory taxation. Taxation is a relic of feudal times when the monarch and his minions extorted funds from those who lived ‘within the realm.’ In those systems it was governments--the king, for example--that owned nearly everything (other than one’s soul). So one had to pay for the privilege of making use of the monarch’s property. But numerous revolutions, in American and France, for instance, finally corrected this idea, namely, that governments own the resources in a society. Instead, the Lockean idea of individual private property rights was identified as the proper principle of ownership. Locke also defended the idea that human individuals own their own lives--ergo, the unalienable right to one’s life and liberty--and thereby undermined the feudal doctrine of serfdom and indentured servitude.

“So, ultimately the funds being used at KOCE-TV and innumerable other public undertakings must be obtained from people by voluntary means, something that KOCE-TV and many other ‘public’ radio and television stations seem to accept since they, too, tend to prefer obtaining support from voluntary contributions. I am simply making note of the fact that this is what should happen with all the funds, not just the bulk of them. Thanks for your attention.”

Of course, no one asked me to say anything like this. Nor did anyone ask some others in the audience who shared these ideas, even though several people from KOCE-TV did stop by our table and smiled about how we were critical of some of their funding methods. (In Orange County, CA., there is at least some general awareness of these ideas, even if only in a somewhat condescending fashion, as if those who hold them hailed from some bizarre region of the globe!)

On a more general note, this issue raises the question, also, of what it means when a country is called “free.” For some, like the famous Venetian political thinker Machiavelli, it meant that the country isn’t being ruled by another one in the neighborhood; it means, in other words, political independence. For the American Founders, however, being free was spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. A country is free if it established, maintained, and secured all of its citizens’ unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Accordingly, then, if governments deprive citizens of their resources, some of which they would devote to pursuing their happiness as they judge fit, the freedom of the country they are supposed to govern is compromised.

So, the larger issue for me when I was sitting through KOCE-TV’s 35th anniversary bash was one of human individual freedom. Maybe this wasn’t a major assault on that freedom but wherever I notice such an assault, major or minor, I choose to make some hay about it.

Politicizing Science

Tibor R. Machan

As many who read my columns would know, I am an avid reader of Science News, the magazine of the Society for Science and the Public located in Washington, D. C. It's now been a few decades that I have been kept abreast of developments in a great variety of sciences, natural and social, by reading this publication.

Recently the editors have made some changes, some of them quite desirable but others objectionable. For example, the size and format has changed. The magazine now is no longer a little thin "book" but is, like so many others, a formidable size and the writing is more developed than it has been in the past. Some new features have also been added but one of these is not a welcome one, at least not by anyone who would insist on keeping government and science separated other than where military readiness requires it. The feature I am referring to is called "Comment" wherein various luminaries opine about science and public affairs.

In the issue before me, for example, Steven Hyman, provost at Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, offers his opinion about how attitudes toward governmental support of science education fare in America versus elsewhere around the globe. Hyman is, of course, doing what all special interest advocates do, namely, asking for more money for what concerns them, in this case the growth of research, development, and science education. Like other special interest representatives, Hyman makes his wishes clear now that there is likely to be regime change in Washington: "[I]t is much to be hoped that the next president of the United States will recognize the benefits of a healthy scientific enterprise. Ideally the new administration will craft policies to produce steady growth in federal research budgets, more welcoming immigration policies for foreign scientists and respect for science...."

Actually, ideally, if that is not too fanciful a term to use in this context, the federal government--indeed, any government--of a free society ought to refrain from backing any science that does not directly bear on its job of securing the rights of its citizens. That is what government is for in free countries and any other kind of support for science is no different from supporting special groups of citizens rather than the public as a whole.

In a free society the support of the public as a whole consists of providing everyone with the liberty to pursue his or her own ends in voluntary cooperation with like-minded and willing fellow citizens. It is wrong--political malpractice--to take funds away from some and transfer it, without their consent, to others for however worthy a purpose. Whether other countries breach this principle of free government is irrelevant. Just as in the United States the freedom of the press and of religious worship is protected and a proper separation between government and these elements of society is legally upheld to a substantial degree, so there should be no involvement in the funding of science.

One example Hyman mentions of what he believes needs more support than it receives is stem cell research and it is a good one because it illustrates just how similar government funding of and involvement in science is to government funding of and involvement in religion. Many citizens believe it is wrong to do stem cell research, mostly on religious grounds. Whatever one may think of the merits of this belief, in a free country citizens have the right to live by their convictions provided they respect others' equal rights. But taking funds from some of them to support work they believe is immoral violates this principle. And stem cell research isn't the only kind that involves such a violation.

Now my ideas on this topic are, of course, radical and will not even get a fair hearing in the mainstream media (which, being so fond of the First Amendment, really ought to get on the same page with me here). Nonetheless the point needs to be made, especially when someone who is as prominent as Steven Hyman chimes in on the opposite side.

My more immediate concern, however, is that Science News is drifting away from its mission of giving good coverage to scientific work toward becoming a platform for what is clearly an insidious political agenda. I guess the temptation to steal from Peter to fund the work of Paul, if you like Paul's work a lot, is too powerful to resist.
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Machan is the editor of Liberty and R&D (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002).

Doubting One’s Mind

Tibor R. Machan

A central topic of philosophy throughout the ages has been whether human beings can trust their minds, including their sensory awareness and thinking. Skepticism about this has been a major challenge and many from Socrates to such recent and current thinkers as Ayn Rand and John Searle have responded with more or less elaborate arguments defending our capacity to get things right about the world.

Just now a new source of skepticism has surfaced, from within the field of neuroscience. In a recent review essay of several books on the topic, “How the Mind Works: Revelations,” published in The New York Review of Books (6/26/08), Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff write, “In fact ‘external reality’ is a construction of the brain.” Several of the authors they discuss argue this point. As the review notes, “In general, every recollection refers not only to the remembered event or person or object but to the person who is remembering,” meaning that memory is not about an objective reality but of some mishmash of subjective experience and external influence.

In essence, then, what one understands about the world and oneself is really not what actually exists but what is constructed by one’s mind with the use of other cognitive tools. The problem with this is that it makes no sense in the end because what the researchers are telling us would also be covered by their claim and so it is also just some mental construction, which then is also some further mental construction, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. But that cannot be. At some point the researchers would have to accept that what they are telling us about the human mind is actually so, not also just a construct or invention.

In any case, why would there be so much interest in discrediting the human mind, of writing elaborate tomes that argue that our understanding of the world and ourselves is fabrication, not objectively true?

Some folks say that to a question like that one needs to answer by following the money--that is to say, checking who is gaining from these so called findings. I am not such a cynic. As far as I can tell, some of these scientists and the reporters who seem to be so gleeful about what this work produces may well be sincere. Yet I also suspect there is something fishy afoot here and my suspicion is that there is a tendency on the part of many of these experts to come up with findings that assign to them a special role in the world. They are, in effect, the only people who have a clear handle on how things go with human beings. They are the only reliable source of facts--as Rosenfield and Zinn say, “In fact. ‘external reality’ is a construction of the brain.” You and I are not up to snuff about the matter, we are deluded and misguidedly think that when we see a red coffee cup on the kitchen table, there really is such a cup there. But Rosenfield and Ziff and the scientists they are reviewing will inform us that “there are no colors in the world, only electromagnetic waves of many frequencies.”

But if you just think for a moment, this is nonsense. It is like saying there is no furniture in my living room, only chairs and tables and sofas. Well, but it is those chairs, tables, and sofas that are the furniture. It is, then, the electromagnetic waves doing certain work that are the colors, so colors do indeed exist in the world. Thus telling someone that there is a red cup on the kitchen table is exactly right! It may not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what is there but few people need to have that in order to cope quite well with the world around them.

The same problem faced some physicists who claimed that there is nothing that’s solid in the world because everything is composed of atoms and atoms, in turn, are mostly empty space with only very tiny bits of material substance swirling within them at enormous speeds. Ergo, solidity is an illusion. But this is to drop the context of discussions where the distinction between, say, solidity and liquidity comes up. It is misguided to make the leap from one context to another where the focus is quite different.

When we ordinary humans notice the world around us, learn to identify what it contains, begin to understand the forces at work in it, if we pay attention we can get it right for the purposes that we need this understanding. To try to undermine this confidence based on highly specialized research is misguided and perhaps ill conceived. It appears to assign to some people some special status even though, by their own accounts, no one ultimately can figure anything out.

Liberty and Hard Cases

Tibor R. Machan

One book I edited has the same title as this column and focuses mainly on how a free society would cope with disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. When the nature of a just society is discussed, those who defend big government solutions to problems tend to start with orphaned children and catastrophes, claiming that only by means of massive government intervention can a society cope. But then, of course, it becomes evident that big government advocates—actually, advocates of governments with extensive scope, way beyond the task of securing the rights of the citizenry—don’t stop with the dire cases. Instead they move on to advocate government intervention into every nook and cranny of people’s lives. The tendency is toward totalitarianism, with just a few exceptions such as freedom for the press and for people religious choices. Everything else, however, seems to require government meddling, just as was believed in the thousands of years when monarchies ruled virtually everywhere because the king was thought to be God’s representative on earth.

Starting with disasters has considerable emotional advantage for statists. People are rarely as frightened as when they contemplate the prospect of facing natural calamities. (The fire that came close to destroying the canyon in which I have my small house punctuated this for me.) Only diseases like cancer or sudden heart attacks scare most folks as much. And in a state of panic one is less likely to be rational, to assess things calmly, carefully, in a principled way. It was William Pitt who warned—in 1783—that “Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.”

So, even dire emergencies are no excuses for forcing people into service to one another. Their lives belong to them and no one may conscript them to provide involuntary service! Especially when the proper course to take so as to reduce the damage from natural calamities is so near at hand. This is private insurance and the related industries that would develop in the absence of the state’s promise of bailing people out. Yes, getting used to not depending on government, the Nanny State, Uncle Sam, and monarchs of all kinds may be difficult and even difficult to imagine for those who lack confidence in the capacity of human beings to abide by the rules of civilized society. Yet, as with all great goals that are difficult to achieve, it is worth aiming for.

Just as in time people learned to do without serfdom and slavery, they could similarly learn to do without subjugating their fellows in times of dire need, even severe emergencies. It may not be an idea whose time has been fully apprehended, gleaned, but it is one that is, nonetheless, imperative to aspire to for all human beings.

In most areas of human life we find people subverting principles of morality and justice but this is no excuse for giving up on those principles. In whenever those principles are subverted, excuses bubble up readily—from bank robbers and adulterers to child molesters and rapists. The strong urge to violate those principles is simply not excuse for failing to try to purge their violation from our lives.

All this needs to be considered when one approaches the issue of how people ought to cope with disasters, calamities, emergencies and other occasions that appear to necessitate the violation of unalienable human, individual rights. The idea of justice that requires respect for and protection of those rights may at times seem impossible to put into practice but that is merely a function of most people’s centuries old reliance on using other people against their will, without their consent.

A dedication to refusing to yield to such habits could very well bring to the fore a different era, one in which governments will be confined to their proper job, securing our rights, and we take up the various more or less trying tasks of coping with our lives, including in emergencies.

Property Rights and the Very Badly Off

Tibor R. Machan

Is it reasonable to always demand respect for property rights? This is the question raised by some critics of the (Lockean) idea that human beings have the unalienable right to their lives, liberty and property which may never be subject to violation within the legal system of a free society. Some claim that it is unreasonable to demand this of those in dire straits, the extremely poor, who would only manage to survive and flourish by violating these rights of the well off. Thus, the argue, the welfare state in which laws are passed that permit taxing the well to do so as to provide for those in dire straits is just.

Of course, most of the welfare obtained via taxation doesn’t serve to benefit people in dire straits but owners of sizable business firms that seek support in times of economic downturns. The welfare state tends to support those afraid of competition from foreign industry and farmers, not unwed mothers who cannot find work by which to support their children. But some of the recipients of welfare are in dire straits, through no evident fault of their own. And, the argument goes, it would be unreasonable to demand of such people to refrain from taking from the well to do what they need.

As I have argued, since some of what those in dire need require would be the result of the labors of other people, this implies that it is unreasonable to demand of those in dire straits to abstain from coercing productive people to labor for them, to part with what they have produced, to even give up parts of their bodies if they can do without those parts. But that cannot be right—how could it be unreasonable to demand that people not be forced to labor for others? Does not forced labor violate the rights of those who are its victim? If one also adds that those in dire straits may very well have ample opportunity to obtain what they need by offering to work for the well off, to engage in innovation, enterprise and other efforts that can peacefully secure for them what they need to survive and flourish, the case that they may coerce others to work for them loses even the emotional appeal that at first inspection it possesses.

The most that this kind of reasoning advanced in support of the welfare state establishes, then, is that those who are well off ought to be generous toward the very needy, that in emergencies those who can should lend a hand to those who are genuinely helpless. Indeed, that is what the virtue of generosity amounts to: it inclines decent persons, ones of good character, to come to the aid of deserving but badly off people. That would be the civilized solution rather than one that resorts of coercive means and treats those well off as unwilling tools or instruments of the badly off, not as people who are ends in themselves and must give their consent whenever they are utilized by others, even the very hard up among us.

There can, of course, be circumstances so unruly, so desperate and catastrophic that reasonable conduct is impossible, something that Locke himself realized, referring to them as ones where “politics in not possible.” In such cases the world is so topsy-turvy that the principles of civilized behavior cannot reasonably be expected to be followed.

What does not follow from this is that the legal system of a society must be adjusted so as to accommodate emergencies, to require of well enough off citizens to be constant Good Samaritans. As the saying goes, “Hard cases make bad law.” One does not demand that a system of law change because of certain dire circumstances, especially since it would imply that some people get to place the rest under legal obligation to perform service that should come from good will, not at the point of a gun.

In a recent issue of Science News, the magazines that reports much of the path breaking scientific research around the globe, one short item noted that the degree of charity and philanthropy in societies with substantial free, unregimented markets is much greater than in top down planned societies. So not only it coercive welfare unjust but it seems to discourage good will among citizens. And it is mostly such good will that takes the best care of the truly needy among us!

Is traveling a human right?

Tibor R. Machan

Liberty first had to do with the freedom to travel. In time it came to amount to a condition in which no one forces one to submit to another’s will, a condition of not being prevented by others from doing what one chooses to do. So, for example, free enterprise means no one is authorized to stop others from producing and trading; free press means there may be no bans on one’s decision to write and publish what one decides to. Of course, one may not be able to do much that one is free to do—I am free to sing operas but I am not able to do so. No one is stopping me from betting big bucks in Las Vegas but, alas, I have no big bucks to bet. It is one thing to be free to act, another to be capable of doing so, a point lost on many political thinkers and public policy proponents.

The matter I wish to explore here, very briefly, is whether a person has a right to the freedom travel. In one sense, of course, yes—everyone has the right to be free to travel because normally no one is authorized to prohibit it for others. But travel involves the use of resources and it isn’t true that everyone has the right to the resources that are required for travel. If one does, others may not interfere but if one doesn’t, one will not be able to travel. And what kind of resources are at issue?

For one, to travel, one needs some area where a trip can take place. A trip from Los Angeles to Japan, for example, usually requires fuel, a vehicle, some open route that connects the two places, etc. None of these is a free good. So although one has the right to undertake the trip, one may not have the ability to do so. And even the right to undertake the trip is something akin to the right to the pursuit of happiness—the result is not a right. No one has the right to be happy! That is something one needs to achieve. But all have the right to pursue it.

Most people travel by car and plane, though many still use a bike, motorized or not, or even a horse. But most importantly, in order to travel, one must have some sphere wherein the trip takes place—a road, a railway, a waterway, or airway. And these are not free goods by any means. Moreover, in a fully free society, in which there are but very minimal public spheres—those needed to administer the legal system (meaning where a court house, military base and police station may be located)—no one could simply enter some sphere and use it to travel from one place to another. In such a society roads would be privately built and owned, as would homes or apartment houses. And just as one may only enter and make use of these latter if those who own them give one permission—or have reached mutually agreeable terms of exchange—the same would hold for all the spheres where travel can take place.

Now for quite a while no need for buying or renting spheres of travel may have appeared necessary—like air, they appeared to be free goods. Yet what had been a free good once may not remain so as more and more people make use of it and it becomes scarce. The air mass, for example, is barely a free good, as are water masses. Land hasn’t been a free good for centuries, at least not where most people would want to live and work. The upkeep of these valuable spheres isn’t cheap. Nor do they benefit everyone equally—some people can do without much use of land or water while others wish to make a great deal of use of them (e. g., folks who like boating want a lot of water available for them, while golfer would prefer large parcels of land).

The belief that travel and its major tool, roads, is something that must be available to everyone in equal proportions is folly. Clearly not everyone wants to travel a great deal but, also, not all who do are willing to take care of what they make use of or pay others do it for them. Which is of course exactly what we learn from the doctrine of the tragedy of the commons: public realms tend to get neglected, overused, and depleted, whereas private realms get reasonably well cared for.

Perhaps the concern that’s most directly addressed by these considerations is environmentalism. If the principle of private property rights had been respected and protected for all the time that spheres or travel became scarce, there would arguably have not developed as much environmental abuse as many who concern themselves with these matters contend. What appear to be free goods simply do not get well taken care of and by treating travel as some kind of God given right of everyone—so most people believe they may go anywhere anytime the mood strakes them—a great deal of trouble comes to face us all.

The Liberty We Must Have

Tibor R. Machan

It is becoming more and more fashionable among political thinkers and even politicians to disparage the kind of individual liberty championed in the American political tradition. Several scholars—e. g., Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago—have argued that what really matters most is something called positive liberty. This is the notion that people have liberty only when others provide them with the resources that enable them to do what they would like to or should do. And there is a use of the idea “liberty” or “freedom” along these lines—you are free to fly to Paris only if you get funds to pay for the trip. But it used to be understood, maybe still is normally, that to get this kind of freedom or liberty one needs to earn the funds to pay instead of take it from other people by way, of say, taxation. But that is now challenged by the idea that what we lack but need or want is something we are entitled to from others and governments exist to serve us by obtaining it all from these others and they have no say in the matter.

This is the thinking of collectivists, people who believe we all belong to one large group and everyone must pull together to make everyone get what he or she needs or wants. Never mind consent! Individuals are a fiction, anyway, the story continues. Individual rights are nothing but periodic grants of the group to some members if there is public benefit from it. Even freedom of the press is defended this way by many political thinkers—people have it only because it advances the public interest! Indeed, by this view one’s rights come from the government instead of, as the American Founders held, the government serves us by securing the rights we have by virtue of our human nature.

Some thing is seriously amiss here. Notice, for example, that when people are convicted of a crime and are then incarcerated, it is not positive liberty that they lose but the (negative) liberty of not having others interfere with their lives. Why? Because such negative liberty is most important. It is only if one’s negative liberty—freedom from interference—is intact that one can embark upon survival and flourishing, including by means of free interaction with others (in, say, commerce, education, and other social affairs).

Now and then people may be in dire straits and come to rely on help from others and this is usually forthcoming from motives of generosity, compassion, kindness but not from some idea that they are entitled to support. That would place us all into involuntary servitude to the needy. And, normally, when such help of the needy is forthcoming, those who extend it are given thanks. But when others do not interfere with us, do not murder, assault or steal from us, no thinks are due! That’s because we have the right to live and be free and this freedom is not some gift from other people we need to be grateful for.

With the replacement of the American sense of individual liberty by the one imported from a very different (and, by the way, reactionary) tradition—namely, socialism and, now, communitarianism—there is, of course, more and more talk of forced public service. Politicians are advocating required community works and even the military draft is being mentioned as in need of reestablishment. That is the result of the idea that as individuals we do not exist and we are all just part of some larger entity—the state, nation, community, humanity—and must be made to pull together as such.

Of course, all this is proposed by, you guessed it, individuals, ones who take themselves to be special, not like the rest of us! Such ambitious folks would gladly take over the governance of the lives of other people and send everyone to do the job they believe must be done, never mind our puny individual agendas.

I can only hope that this ruse is in time grasped by more and more folks and the idea of the genuine freedom of the individual recovers its prominence in political thought.

Blue Laws: Unjust and Unequal

Tibor R. Machan

Sometimes I will go out of my way to visit one of those outlet malls. Not only do they have some pretty good deals but often I can find clothing that actually fits me—a bit oversized sweaters or short sleeved shirts seem to get dumped there to be available for the likes of me.

I was driving up on I 85, all the way from the Florida panhandle to Gastonia, North Carolina, midday one recent Sunday, when I spotted what looked like a promising strip mall in South Carolina, with a bunch of these outlet shops visible from the road. I got off, gassed up my rental and headed to the stores—only to find that South Carolina blue laws coerce the stores not to open before 1:30 PM. Now this is just the kind of small but not inconsequential restraint of trade I really detest—politicians forcing people to stay away from stores so they will more likely attend church (or some such noble motivation driving them to intrude on other people, just as politicians are won’t to do, be it for the sake of religion, the environment, social justice, or whatever). Not that these measures are so onerous—they are more a nuisance than anything except, of course, for the merchants (who are losing portions of their livelihood in consequence of this paternalism) and certain customers (who may want something pronto). So while perhaps no great harm to most of us, these blue laws do amount to a potentially damaging intrusion for quite a few people.

This is the kind of measure people who defend them write off as a central feature of democracy but it just won’t wash. Why does a majority of some community get away with doing something that no individual citizen would, namely, forcibly come between a merchant and customers? Who are these people anyway that when they come together and form a group that’s larger than those who don’t share their agenda they get to impose on others their will, make them into subjects? What they prohibit is, of course, all peaceful stuff, nothing violent against any innocent third party. The arrogance, nay, viciousness of it!

But there is more. Of course, some folks manage to be exempt from these so called public policies—policies that turn out to bear only on some members of the public. The food court was open and doing fine business! And so were the adjacent gas stations as well as the several motels in the surrounding area. Why? How come these people may do brisk business all day Sunday, while those trying to do the very same thing—namely, make a living from commerce—are forbidden to do so?

It is clear enough from this relatively innocuous example that the bulk of such paternalistic, nanny state measures is deployed totally unfairly, completely in opposition to the spirit, even letter, of the idea—embodied in the 14th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution—that everyone must be treated by the authorities as “equal under the law.” Not however those making money off of gasoline sales or renting rooms in their establishments, for some bizarre reason.

Now for my money the more folks in South Carolina—or anywhere else, for that matter—can beat these insane “public” blue law measures, the better. I look upon it as I did draft dodging and still view tax dodging. I defend them as ways of escaping from various degrees of tyranny!

But aside from that, it should be an embarrassment for the policy makers in these regions to realize just how they violate the principle of impartiality. For that is what they do as they so cavalierly intrude upon the lives of citizens when what they ought to be doing is securing their unalienable individual rights to, among other things, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

It all goes to show you how far America is from having fully appreciated the meaning of the revolution that created the country. This revolution was about demoting government, removing it from the position as the sole sovereign in the land and assigning to individuals that sovereignty that had for centuries been accepted as belonging to the state. In some broad respects the revolution did have its impact and made things more just across the land, even the globe! But in many respects matters haven’t changed much. The insidious governmental habit is live and kicking and producing the messes it has always produced where it has been and continues to be in evidence.

South Carolina’s blue laws are just a tiny tip of the iceberg. What’s worse, of course, is that hardly any of America’s eager-beaver politicians running for office address these intrusive measures. Of course not—they are all eager to get in on the game and impose on us their own agenda as soon as they get into office.

Is it Progress?

Tibor R. Machan

One of the very first novels, read in Hungarian translation back in Budapest when I was about 10 years old, was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer followed and then quite a few of Zane Grey’s, Max Brand’s and Earl Stanley Gardner’s works, all of which I read for entertainment as well as to get a whiff of American culture. This was shortly after WW II ended and there was a chance, and lots of hope, that the Americans, not the Soviets, would come to Hungary to run the post-war show. Alas, Yalta killed that.

Though Huck Finn was indeed a very entertaining novel, it also left a lasting impression about some of America’s troubles in its first century. But there was, also, much hope expressed in the book and by the time I managed to be smuggled out of the communist hell whole Hungary had become after 1948, my mistaken understanding was that there was no racial divide in the country. Once I arrived here, midyear 1956, just before Budapest exploded and the Soviet grip began to loosen a bit—only to harden soon again—I was quite surprised to learn that the country had still suffered from a racial crisis. The few months I spend going to American high school in Germany gave little hint of this because the school, including the track team and band I had joined, gave l no evidence of segregation and racism, quite the contrary. My best friend at the school was black and the band, too, was fully integrated so I didn’t have much of a clue how backward race relations were stateside.

My first American school was West Philly high where whites were in a small minority and my claim to fame was that I was asked to try out for the virtually completely black football team as the kicker! (I didn’t make it since I kicked like a soccer player.) And later, when I enlisted country in the US Air Force and lived with a very tall and intellectual black airman named, of all things, Ivan, the race issue once gain didn’t surface for me—Ivan was a great room mate.

In time, however, I became aware that no all was quiet in race relations in America but it mostly baffled me, as did much of the injustice I have witnessed in my personal life as well as in my new country. It was always a mixed bag, though, since most of what I encountered personally seemed quite peaceful and friendly between members of the two races and bad news came from the public sector, mostly. Still, it was sad, given the potential I saw in the country for the elimination of such acrimonious human relations. As I became more and more involved in political theory and focused more and more on social and economic affairs, I also grew restless about this and in time I learned that the whole issue of racism was an immense but unnecessary flaw in America. More and more I was looking for signs of improvement everywhere, especially on the personal front. So whenever I witnessed an interracial friendship, romance or marriage, I felt a strong pang of pleasure. So nice to notice sins that the cancer was abating! I often choked up from a feeling of hope and relief, brought on by the realization that people were breaking through the barriers, that it wasn’t all whites and blacks in America who took part in the acrimony that gave the free society its main low grade.

So you might think that I would be joining all those who are hailing Senator Barack Obama’s ascendance to the Democratic candidacy in this presidential election year. And, yes, to some extend it does bring a measure of satisfaction.

Unfortunately this satisfaction is overshadowed by the fact that Senator Obama is one of the major American politicians who stands against America’s founding principles of individualism, of everyone’s right to his or her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Indeed, the leftist political economic public policies the Senator is hoping to press upon us all in this country nearly totally undermine the mostly symbolic victory his candidacy achieved on the racial front. If anything, what would have been true progress is had a black individual with full commitment to those principled risen to prominence on the political front. If someone, who embraced the principles of limited government, one devoted to securing our rights, made it to the front of the line that would have been progress and worth real celebration.

But what Senator Obama shows is that black or white, American political culture is in a thoroughly reactionary mood. It is embarking on embracing servitude, dependence not on private but public, official masters who promise to deliver to millions the impossible dream of full security from life by means of an ever expanding welfare state. Being so associated with the ancient regime, whereby government—be it king, emperor, tsar or the representatives of a majority of voters—takes over the realms and engages in widespread paternalistic care taking, Senator Obama does not represent progress, never mind what his race is.

No Foreign Music In America?

Tibor R. Machan

Since some people want to make Americans buy only American farm or other products, the question is why they don’t advocate keeping out of the country all those foreign musicians, opera singers, orchestras, bands, conductors, actors, directors, and all kinds of other non-natives who peddle their trade and wares on our shores. I recall that, for a while at least, Canadian universities had a policy of not hiring teachers from America because, well, there are far more American teachers qualified for the positions in that country and the graduates there would have had to compete in a demanding market. But that is just what is the case with many artists, as well as doctors and scientists--they are taking jobs that might be taken by Americans.

Of course the idea is obscene. Yet that is just what protectionism relating to farming or car making or any other profession or industry amounts to. Globalization means no trade restrictions between countries, none! The labor or professional market place as well as any other should be completely free of government interference except when it comes to explicit, avowed, declared enemies of the country. But don’t even suggest this to Senators Obama and Clinton!

Anyone who whines about cultural dilution is, of course, way too late--for centuries on end such dilution has been going on big time. Professor Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has made this abundantly evident in his great book, Creative Destruction (Princeton University Press, 2004). He showed that in no area does purity prevail, none, not in folk music, not in folk dance, not in cuisine, not anywhere. Indeed, the bulk of artistic creativity--or, indeed, fashion and style--consists of mixing traditions and then remixing them and on and on with the process so pervasive that no one can trace the result to any specific region of the globe, to any “people”.

Very sadly often the call for purity is but a disguised form of hateful prejudice. One of my close relatives who still lives in the country from which I hail used to whine about how foreign elements are destroying the country’s artistic and related heritage. Of course, this was but a disguise because what was really so offensive to this individual was that there were a good many Jewish professionals, artists, intellectuals, and educators in the country that some wished belonged to them alone!

Mind you, there is no harm in wanting to be within familiar surroundings now and then. I recall once my family took a brief trip to the German city of Augsburg while I was working in Lugano, Switzerland, and as we arrived in midtown we noticed how tall, like we were, people there are as compared with folks in Ticino, which is the Italian sector of Switzerland where Lugano is located. And one of us exclaimed that this was a welcome feeling, being among people who were tall like us. And why not? Unless one makes this into some kind of crusade against the not-so-tall, unless one punishes one’s children for falling in love or wishing to marry such a not-so-tall individual, there is no harm in the feeling of comfort among those similar to oneself.

Indeed, in personal relations people quite freely, unapologetically show preferences like this, based on features in people with which they are more comfortable than with others. So long as one’s reason and intelligence kick in and one refuses to extend such mere preferences into some kind of doctrine of specialness or purity, no harm, no foul.

People who come from Germany may well prefer German music, literature, or poetry, whereas ones from Poland or Italy or Syria may be drawn, at least quite often, toward what makes them feel at home. Doing this as a matter of principle is, of course, nuts--one shuts out a great deal of human creativity when one sticks one’s head in the sand along these lines. But settling into familiar surroundings can be a very pleasant experience for most of us.

And for some of us a more cosmopolitan taste feels better since we come from various places that are huge cultural, artistic, and architectural melting pots. Fact is, the world has room for all these varieties of preferences and likes and so long as they are pursued in a civilized, peaceful fashion and nothing deep is made of them so that hostilities strike root, that’s just as things should be.

Harry Reid’s "Voluntary" Taxation

Tibor R. Machan

On the Web Site, FreeLiberal.com, to which someone guided me, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada defended the idea that taxation in America, especially the federal income tax, is voluntary. His basic argument was, believe it or not, that elsewhere in the world people lack the many loopholes we enjoy here. (These, by the way, are the loopholes Senator Reid and his fellows in the Senate are constantly promising to close!) So while the Senator’s case that taxation is voluntary rests on there being loopholes in the system, he is vehemently opposed to those loopholes. Which means that even in his own twisted terms, the Senator does not really believe in the voluntariness of taxation only in that it isn’t so bad here as elsewhere.

But let’s rewind a bit. Does the fact that taxation in American includes many loopholes make it voluntary? This is like claiming that when one is put in jail and there happen to be several escape routes from it through which a few prisoners can break out, the prisoners are there of their own free will! Well, Senator Reid & Co., a dysfunctional prison is still a prison and a tax system that isn’t as harsh as the worst is still a coercive system.

Some people used to defend slavery on the grounds that slaves were often treated well by their masters and that if they were not slaves, their lives would face many obstacles they do not face as slaves. But this does not justify slavery one bit. Life is often harsh for free men and women but this is no excuse for enslaving them even by relatively nice masters.

Voluntary payments are available only when not making them does not land one in trouble with the law. Maybe the trouble in which not paying taxes lands people in America isn’t as severe as in some other regions of the world. But that doesn’t make taxation voluntary. Voluntary means no adverse consequences are imposed by government on those who refuse or fail to pay, period.

What taxation resembles most closely is organized criminal extortion. And this is because that is exactly what taxation amounts to in its customary home, namely, a feudal system. In such a system the monarch or some minions of the monarch, who are all in fact criminals by civilized standards, collect payments from the people because they live and work in the realm that is deemed to belong to the monarch. Even in such systems the power of the monarch can be restricted somewhat and the extracted payment need not be onerous. Just as in our country people aren’t entirely incapacitated because of taxation, in feudal systems many people were and are willing to put up with what the monarch extorts from them, either in forced payment or in forced labor.

Furthermore most of us would rather live in America, with its extortionist tax policies, rather than on some desert island where no one is bothering to take away one’s resources. That’s because despite the vicious nature of taxation, clearly things could be worse. Just as in personal matters of violence there are degrees of severity, so with the violence done by governments. Where I used to live as a child, in communist Hungary, matters were far worse and for some far worse than for me even there. The place was still a tyranny!

None of this makes taxation a proper public policy, any more than some type of relatively mild slavery, such as serfdom, is morally acceptable. Human beings ought to be completely free from each other’s intrusiveness, even when that isn’t very likely to happen. Just as with fitness, the fitter the better, so with liberty, the freer the better.

What a truly free country ought to have is a system for funding law enforcement, maintenance, and administration paid for by way of voluntary fees, just as everything else in a free society is paid for. Of course, the fees one would pay could be imperative for most because law and order are so valuable. And as with, say, long term health or auto insurance, nearly everyone would very likely pay up! A contract fee, for example, a bit like a sales tax, could do the job, especially when one figures that we are here discussing funding the legal system of a genuinely free country, one the strictly limited government of which sticks to its task of securing the rights of the citizenry. But one could still opt out and just rely on a hand shake an so avoid the fee!

In any case, taxation is anything but voluntary, even if in different places it can be more or less unjustly intrusive. But, of course, Senator Harry Reid would not admit this and chooses, instead, to concoct an incoherent story to live with his complicity in the injustice of the institution.