Jon Stewart is Correect

Tibor R. Machan

One day last week I decided to check out The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, given that it is a popular left of center offering totally devoted to Barack Obama and virulently contemptuous of the American Right. Sure enough one segment feature a stream of clips and stills of various Right wing luminaries, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller. At the clip with O'Railly Stewart stopped and embarked on a fairly length lecture about values. This is because O'Reilly was depicted saying that yes, now and then, our security requires the sacrifice of our values. This sentiment is naturally quite controversial and is its refutation is nicely suggested in that famous quote from Benjamin Franklin, to wit, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Franklin's idea actually hedges the issue by talking about "an essential liberty for temporary security" since it doesn't address the case of an essential liberty for long term security but never mind. I am on the same page with those who take Franklin to have suggested that violating our right to liberty for the purpose of gaining security is going to backfire, so we ought not do it.

Jon Stewart's little lecture focused on a similar them, namely, that if something is a bona fide value, a fundamental principles of ethics or politics, there is no excuse for breaching it. And I pretty much agree, although there may be certain very exception cases when such a breach could be proper. Still, it isn't a fundamental value, a basic principle, if one may discard it in the face of difficulties. The whole point of ethical and political, including valid legal, principles is that they must be the guide to conduct under all circumstances. Its like principles of good health or nutrition--these aren't to be tossed aside for any reason but ought to be loyally followed.

The curious thing about Jon Stewart's lecture about values is that the side he has been supporting in our political confrontations in this country doesn't believe at all what he was telling his audience. Indeed, a prominent virtue of Barack Obama, for example, is supposed to be his pragmatism and lack of ideology. This latter is simply a derogatory term for principled thinking--those who have an ideology and follow it loyally are people who believe in certain principles no matter what. They think such principles are the right guidelines to coping with the challenges of ethical and political life and to sacrifice them means caving in the the temptation to become unprincipled, disloyal to the right ways to act.

Of course, many people who champion pragmatism are also inconsistent in this and go on to announce their loyalty to certain select principles. And on such occasions they wish to cash in on the general notion that being principled in matters of ethics and politics is a good thing. This is what America's modern liberals do when they stand up and righteously denounce torture, for instance, pretending for the time being that they care about a principled opposition to such policies. Of course, when it comes to basic individual rights, such as the right to private property, they have no problem with being unprincipled--just consider how readily they back eminent domain policies that violate our property rights if such violation aims to cleaning up blight or promoting a higher tax base for government.

No Jon Stewart may not be a source of serious political and ethical thought but he does seem to have a sizable following among Americans and it may be useful to point out that integrity isn't one of the virtues and his side of the political debate cherish much.

The Liberal Hawk

Tibor R. Machan

Professor Alan Wolfe, the well known and widely published political scientists from Boston College, has written an interesting essay on liberal interventionism in the journal World Affairs (Winter 2009), arguing that this "species" is now endangered. In the course of his discussion he makes a point that is worth pondering, namely, that "Liberals believe--I believe--that we are under a moral obligation to help people who are oppressed." An apparently very straightforward if troublesome statement, this is.

Moral obligations attend to individuals, in answer to how they ought to live their lives. Mostly they vary a lot since individuals are not all alike, face different options and are differently constituted--a father has different moral obligations from someone who has no children, for example. The claim laid out by Professor Wolfe is full of ambiguity, despite its apparent directness and clarity, although it does smack of altruism, the moral doctrine that our lives must be devoted to helping others. It modifies this sentiment somewhat by imploring us the help only those who are oppressed.

Of course, just because liberals--or some of them--believe something it doesn't follow that it's right. On this score, as on others, liberals may well be wrong. (And Wolfe is here speaking not of classical liberals, today's libertarians, but of welfare state, domestically interventionist liberals who are on record with their belief in the "buttinsky" state!) Altruism itself is full of problems as an ethical doctrine. Why should the well being of others be our priority when others are in essential respects like us and we surely know better our own situations--needs, wants, abilities, options--than that of other people? It calls to mind that famous quip from W. H. Auden, "We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

Now if one is serious about following altruism, one is almost necessarily going to embrace the liberal view on military policy. This, however, is still a thesis about what individuals should do, not what we should do collectively or what the role of government ought to be. In a civilized society, force is supposed to be a last resort to solving problems and mostly to be avoided. Indeed, in the older, classical liberal tradition good behavior was supposed to be encouraged but not mandated, with government providing the protection of everyone's right to choose how to live, or everyone right to be free.

While it is quite right that when government becomes oppressive it has abrogated its duty to protect the rights of the citizens, it doesn't follow from this that other governments are now authorized or obligated to intervene. This is not because the oppressive governments enjoy sovereignty, so they may oppress their populations or do other violent things. Once they are oppressive, they have lost their legitimacy and may be opposed, even forcefully. The reason other governments may not interfere unless the oppressors have attacked them is that governments must serve the people who have established and maintain them. Just like body guards serve their clients, governments serve their citizens. Going off to serve the oppressed in other countries would in effect amount to going AWOL, leaving their proper posts.

There can be situations, of course, when governments ought to attend to oppressive foreign governments, namely, when those governments pose a clear and present danger to the citizens whom they must serve. (This, by the way, is why it was so vital to the Bush administration to find weapons of mass destruction--such weapons do pose a clear and present danger when possessed by a hostile foreign country, one that's on record aiming to do damage.) Also, if one government, in a peaceful country, has entered into agreements with others to share one another's defense, this, too, would serve to justify taking action against another government if it has attacked or poses a clear and present danger against the friendly country with whom such an agreement is in place. Mutual defense alliances are all about such circumstances.

None of this, however, amounts to becoming the guardian angel of the world. Just as ordinary citizens have no moral obligation to seek out oppressive neighbors and involve themselves--except perhaps in some very dire cases and when this is something they are capable of doing without neglecting their own families--so governments are bound to defend their own citizens, first and foremost. But while governments are duty bound to stand by to defend their own citizens, the citizens themselves may embark on measures that will help oppressed people abroad. Still, they, too, do not have a general moral obligation or duty to do so. What could possibly motivate their lending a hand is generosity, compassion, empathy, and other virtues of civilized people. Self-sacrifice or the unqualified moral obligation to help people who are oppressed, however, isn't such a virtue. Any help would have to come from a sense of fellow feeling, of camaraderie, not a sense of duty!

The Genesis of Tyranny

Tibor R. Machan

One of my neighbors has built a small shed next to her home, maybe 8x8X8, if that much. Its not connected to her house. Indeed, it is nearly invisible from the outside--you must actually be snooping in order to get a decent look at it. The purpose of it, I have been told, is to store a stroller and some other objects associated with her young children. It couldn't possible be a hazard to anyone near or far.

Nonetheless a neighbor of hers down the street, roughly 120 yards from her on the other side, snitched on her, calling the local county authorities and reporting that not everything about the shed is in full compliance with what the planners like. By doing this our nasty neighbor will have imposed several thousand dollars worth of totally useless expense on the family that built the shed.

When I found out about this I asked what on earth might have motivated the snitch and was told that it was politics--the folks who built the shed are conservative-libertarians and the snitch is a statist through and through (which I could confirm from the bumper stickers on her vehicles, including a nifty BMW SUV). I believe, though do not know it for sure, that this snitch works at a local community college whihc is why one of her bumper stickers lamented that education doesn't receive enough funding form the government (a self-dealing complaint for sure).

This episode in my little community goes to illustrate several aspects of political philosophy. One is the utter utopianism of that currently prominent doctrine called communitarianism. It is this doctrine today that has replaced the utopianism of communism--indeed it amounts to small scale communism. It worships at the altar of community harmony, fraternity, promoting the notion that unlike in capitalist markets, under communitarianism people will share and support one another without rivalry, without hostility. Give me a break.

Another element of this episode is just how in the absence of strictly protected individual--especially private property--rights, citizens lack protection against the prejudices and ill will of their fellows. I recall back in communist Hungary--as well as in Nazi Germany--wherein the idea of social solidarity ruled, all kinds of assaults on people were carried out by folks who didn't like their politics or religions or just their style of life, all in the name of community solidarity, of having to follow some kind of pseudo-common good that the powerful members of society laid down for everyone. The suspicions this reaped within the population of various communities was felt by everyone--is my next move going to provoke someone to turn me into the government? Will someone report my private actions, even thoughts, to the authorities who will then intrude on my and my intimates' lives good and hard?

So much for communitarianism, so much for the false ideal of harmony within all neighborhoods! This is just what a system within which privacy--individual rights to life, liberty and property--is respected and protected is meant to avoid. No one can do away with nosy neighbors, with their gossip and ill thoughts but their attempt to impose their ideas on others will have no legal standing in a society wherein such rights are respected and protected. This false ideal of community is based on a misunderstanding or at least total lack of appreciation of human individuality. It fails to recognize and respect genuine human diversity, so that, for example, my or my neighbor's small shed in our front or back yards may be built even if others frown upon its style or purpose.

Another lesson from this episode in my neck of the woods is that it's not always politicians or bureaucrats who champion coercion--many citizens do, as well, so long as it serves their hostile purposes, so long as it serve to impose on others what they prefer, even if only to express their prejudices and dislikes of whatever kind, including political. This is, after all, one way that one can retaliate against those in one's community who refuse to bend to one's will!

The Celebrated vs. The Obscure

Tibor R. Machan

It bothered me a bit when President Obama said, in his inaugural address, that “it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things—some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom” because, well, I am not sure how broad his categories are. After all, I am a doer of sorts, as I produce books, teach my students, write my columns, organize my conferences and so forth. But perhaps these don’t qualify as “doing” something. Do they involve taking risks? Sure—in the career of most writers, both fiction and non-fiction, much time is spent on crafting sentences, paragraphs, and chapters with no assurance that anyone will read these, that they will see the light of day in a publication, that reviewers—assuming there will be any—will have the slightest appreciation for what one has labored to produce. The teaching people like me do is also rather risky since all that work, albeit usually paid for, may simply be ignored by one’s students, the subjects covered merely skimmed if even that. Once again, one risks wasting one’s energy, intelligence, learning on doing what will not be appreciated very much at all.

And what about those conferences we produce? Sure, they will be attended by some people but then what? Who knows if the talent we bring together reaches anyone in the meager audiences that attend.

But this is not all. What about all those managers who deal with task in organizations, people whose work consists of making arrangements, who think mostly rather than “do”? Are these folks included by Mr. Obama? Are they worthy?

My impression is that the passage I have quoted above from our new president continues the misimpression that the worthy kind of work must be physical labor. No doubt, such work is worthwhile. Nonetheless the work done by entrepreneurs and inventors and architects, work that’s largely intellectual and not so physical must not be overlooked.

Of course, very few of us have their work celebrated other than by a few family members, friends and perhaps some colleagues. Which is one reason that most parents wish for their children to find work that is satisfying quite apart from being celebrated, even well paid. When they day is done, such work will probably escape the attention of most people, certainly those in the media who might make it prominent, who could promote it to a celebratory status, as that happens with movie actors, famous painters, musicians, and others who manage to catch the public’s attention.

Most of us are indeed hardly celebrated but surely that’s not very significant because if we do work that is compensated, worthwhile, productive, creative, inventive and shows a bit of flare, that’s reward enough unless we suffer from an obsessive need to be appreciated by other people. No doubt there are such people and sometimes their need can lead them to be crowd pleasers, which can involve doing some valuable things. But there isn’t all that much room “at the top.” If we all had to get to such a position before we could gain self-respect, most societies would suffer from much malaise. Instead we are best off having the conviction that what we do is a good thing whether it is widely hailed, whether it is announced to the world. And fortunately many of us are able to gain such self-esteem independently of pleasing too many others apart from some intimates.

President Obama’s efforts to curry favor with the unappreciated, uncelebrated masses does not, for me, ring true. In any case, I would hope that it is not much needed by Americans who work at significant jobs, be these mostly physical or, instead, intellectual. One can only hope that quite without what the likes of President Obama wish to do for them they are happy with their lot. Indeed, for the President of the United States of America it is really somewhat out of line to make it appear that what most of us need is for him to show us his care. It is far more important, I would suggest, to gain the care and love and appreciation of those who know us well, not only as anonymous members of the working masses.


Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in business ethics and free enterprise at Chapman University, Orange, CA. His collection of columns (unproofed) may be found at http://tiborrmachan.blogspot.com/

“Our” ambitions?

Tibor R. Machan

In his inaugural address our new president averred that “Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions—who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.”

I take some exception to Mr. Obama’s implicit assertion that what matters in a good society is that there be some kind of large scale ambition afoot, some sort of big plan. Frankly, it smacks to me of those famous Five Year Plans that the Soviet Union was constantly rolling out and conscripting everyone to serve. Usually these “big plans” are not of our making at all but only those of some of us, a few who take it upon themselves to speak for everyone, who imagine that they can forge such collective endeavors without really consulting us at all.

The uniqueness of the American system of government includes not making plans for us all but making it possible for us to pursue our own plans. This recognizes the diversity of the citizenry, with all of its varied big and small plans that can be pursued in mutually harmonious ways without an attitude of “one size fits all.”

When the Declaration of Independence lists as one of the basic human individual rights all of us have the “pursuit of happiness,” it acknowledges, at least implicitly, that in a big country very different ways to attain happiness are possible. What the public good amounts to in such a free society is that everyone’s rights are secured so they may all go about their big or small plans without being driven by some leader, king, tsar or “Fuhrer.”

The American political tradition rejects the idea that for our lives to be meaningful we must get on board a train that goes to just one common place. It recognizes, instead, that human beings have some common purposes, yes, but mostly pursue their happiness in many different ways with ends that are themselves quite varied.

So if President Obama understood well this tradition—including his role in it—he would stop talking about big plans as if they were the only worthwhile ones and focus, instead, on the plain and at once glorious fact that in a free country there will be millions and millions of small plans and no big one at all apart from making the pursuit of those small plans possible.

Not that this idea is simple to grasp and appreciate. For too many people what is worthwhile has to be big, large, massive, colossal, like the pyramids, Hoover Dam, the Eiffel Tower. The illusions created by these large projects tend to be that they aren’t just big but very important, more important than the “puny plans” of individuals.

The American political tradition rejects this and does not prejudge what kind of plan is meaningful and worthwhile for you and me and millions and millions of others. It serves, rather, to provide a setting in which all of us have the right to pursue our plans, provided they are peaceful and meet certain standards appropriate for those whose tasks they are--artists, scientists, educators, managers, foremen, home makers, and the lot.

Please let’s stop being condescending toward all these folks because they aren’t part of some big plan. Their varied individual plans are quite worthwhile, thank you, Mr. President.

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Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in business ethics and free enterprise at Chapman University, Orange, CA. His collection of columns (unproofed) may be found at http://tiborrmachan.blogspot.com/

Up To No Good (and Knowing It)

Tibor R. Machan

In my efforts to explain that taxation is extortion and a relic of the feudal age when it was the rent landowners--mostly monarchs and lords--collected from people, I have met with much resistance. It is mostly based on the widespread belief that without taxation the functions of government could not be paid for. Now this is wrong. If governments did just what they are supposed to--"secure our rights"--there would be no problem paying for their services by contract fees, for example. That enormous amount would fund the judicial, police and military branches, all that a free country ought to have from its government.

Sounds a bit incredible but then so did abolishing serfdom and slavery at one time! Or the draft! But all these are imperatives of a free society, however difficult it is to imagine them for those with the governmental habit. And curiously enough, some of the best minds defending taxation know this very well--they know that there is something amiss with taking from people their honest belongings, their resources, earnings, etc. That is why quite a few of them have taken a different approach to crafting their apologetics!

They now argue that no one owns anything, after all, and everything belongs to the government. Professors Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel of New York University did just this in their book, The Myth of Ownership (Oxford University Press, 2004), maintaining that the country owns the wealth in it, not individuals, and since the country is represented by the government, it gets to allocate the wealth, not you or I. We only get a bit of it that's left over once the government takes what supposedly belong to it.

This is like in the days before the American revolution, when government owned the country and even the people in it or at least treated them all as subjects instead of citizens. Such a reactionary view is now being advocated, including by the likely first nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court, Professor Cass Sunstein of the Harvard Law School (formerly a colleague of President Obama at the University of Chicago). In the book he co-authored with Stephen Holmes, Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (W.W. Norton, 2006), they also argue that our rights are granted to us by the all mighty government and can be revoked by that some government whenever its officials deem it necessary. (They don't put it in such stark terms but it all mounts to this!) I myself have done a bit of work on the issue, in my books Individuals and Their Rights (Open Court, 1989) and The Right to Private Property (Hoover Institution Pres, 2002) which, of course, these fine scholars manage to completely ignore as they proceeded to try to demolish the most powerful idea that stands in the way of tyranny.

But whatever their scholarly ethics, one thing is for sure: these folks know well and goo--just as did Karl Marx and Frederich Engels in their book, The Communist Manifesto--that they must abolish the concept of private property in order to secure government's legitimacy as it extorts our resources. Otherwise, if it's ours, if we do have the right to private property, by what authority does a government--a bunch of human beings with a limited job to do--take from people what belongs to them?

Of course it takes many decades, even centuries, for a revolution to gain its full impact where it has occured and so even in the United States of America the old notion that government is sovereign, not you and I, retains a hold on people's thinking. It is, however, wrong, just as wrong as the belief that governments own us, or that some people own some others.

Unromantic Politics

Tibor R. Machan

Many of us are pretty much convinced that politics must be corrupt. So we are cynics and will never accept that politicians really mean what they say when they describe their goals in glowing terms, when they offer themselves and their colleagues up as saviors. I didn't accept that line back when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated--I was then in the US Air Force stationed at Andrews AFB, the "president's airport"--and I don't accept this rose colored view of politics today, coming from Barrack Obama and his supporters.

Yet, I am no cynic. The sort of view of politics we get from, for example, the famous American

essayist H. L. Mencken is over the top. As a cautionary perspective it is useful but as a true characterization of the vocation it is an exaggeration. It's comparable to considering all of medicine quackery and all doctors quacks. Wrong.

So what is a more modest, sensible way of looking at politics, one that's neither blindly romantic nor cynical?

Well, once politics is understood as a specific, limited kind of task that doesn't easily go astray and thus doesn't attract manipulators--the equivalent of quacks in that field--there is a decent chance for politics without corruption. The term "politics" comes from the ancient Greek word "polis," which was used by the likes of Aristotle to designate an organized, well structured human community, one neither tyrannical nor anarchistic. Something remains of this meaning as the term "police officer" is also rendered "peace officer." In other words, properly understood, politics is supposed to be about securing peace within human communities which, in turn, requires an understanding of how that could be done.

Throughout most of the history of human community life the belief dominated that communities could be organized by being ruled by strong, wise, and virtuous people or those who laid claim to these attributes. Sadly, this led to tyrannies, dictatorships, mob rule, and other forms of brutally run community affairs wherein peace was achieved by means of oppression--like the peace we find in prisons and jails, totally unsuited to human life. And this pretty much meant that nearly all politics was put into the service of corrupt rulers. Thus the cynicism about politics.

The revolutionary insight of the American Founders--by no means original since it had been proposed in ancient times by Lao Tzu and Alcibiades, just to mention two of its advocates--was that viable, uncorrupted politics comes from delimiting the scope of the task of keeping the peace to containing aggressive human conduct but not regulating, regimenting all of it. John Locke, the English political philosopher, identified the standards of such limited politics as the natural rights of human individuals. If those rights are respected and protected, the power required to keep the peace would be contained and not allowed to spill over into improper use. Such politics would not be corrupt because the force needed to keep the peace would only be used for its designated purpose--as the Founders put it, "to secure these rights," defensively.

Where politics goes astray is by being allowed to infest much of human relations in our communities. Science, health care, sports, the arts, education, and so forth are thus run and regulated by governments--by kings, tsars, majorities, politburos, and others who embark on taking over the managing of all our lives. This is what was wrong with the monarchy the American Founders unseated and it is the trouble with contemporary politics, as well. Not until it is learned that politics must be limited in its scope, and applied accordingly to law and public policy, will politics escape nearly universal corruption.

As with all legitimate tasks and occupations, politics can be thoroughly corrupt and the likelihood that it would be is considerable, seeing that it amounts to deploying coercive force in virtually all human affairs, something easily abused (just think of all the rouge cops). But unlike the cynic believes, it need not be so. Politics isn't necessarily corrupt, only largely so because of how easily it lends itself to abuse.

Very Mixed Feelings

Tibor R. Machan

Clearly I am not euphoric about the inauguration of Barack Obama, certainly not the way that millions appear to be across America. In fact some of this euphoria is very disappointing to me because, well, it is too tribal, too much a matter of “one of us got elected.” Never mind his political vision, his prospective policies, his way of conceiving of his job.

Then, too, the fact that Mr. Obama is talking about a “new Declaration of Independence” is frightening--what on earth would he want to change about the old one? Don’t human beings have basic, unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness? Aren’t governments supposed to exist so as to secure these rights? Are they not supposed to derive their just powers from the consent of the governed? So, you can see I am very suspicious about the wisdom of this upcoming presidency.

On the other hand it is something welcome that a member of a minority group that had had it very bad over most of the history of the United States of America managed to become the presiding officer of the government of this country. It’s about time, I agree. The de facto and de jure disenfranchisement of African Americans in America’s political history has been a shameful thing and it is high time to give it up. So the symbolism of Mr. Obama’s presidency is worth celebration, even by those who find most--though not everything--of what he is likely to champion in his high office questionable.

But then I reflect again on some of the negatives of these developments, such as how much Mr. Obama appears still to rely not on any substance but mere style. The man looks like he walked off the cover of GQ but, as with many who adorn the covers of that and other magazines featuring beautiful people, there is no evidence of any in depth political wisdom coming from him. All that talk about change was bunk--no change of any importance is likely to come from the Obama administration apart from what is expected from any liberal democratic presidency. And that kind of change I find nothing but repugnant--a nostalgic throwback to the New Deal, for example, and an open embrace of the idea of wealth redistribution.

And while mentioning the New Deal, let’s make it clear that there is nothing in the policies of that era that promises to solve any of this country’s economic problems. As Alan Brinkley wrote recently in, of all places, The New Republic, “....Roosevelt’s initiatives did not, in the end, left the country out of the Great Depression. At no time in the first eight years of the New Deal did unemployment drop below 15 percent. At no time did economic activity reach levels comparable to those of a decade earlier; and, while there were periods when the economy seemed to be recovering, none of them lasted very long. And so this bold, active, and creative moment in our history proved to be a failure at its central task. Understanding what went wrong could help us avoid making the same mistakes today....” (December 31, 2008), p. 12.

Yet most of the economists surrounding Mr. Obama are proud Keynesians, economists who believe one can work out of economic downturns by artificial, government spending, spending that ultimately amounts to stealing from the American taxpayer and handing the funds to politicians and bureaucrats who claim, for reasons that are totally mysterious, to have a good idea how to spend it (after they have skimmed a good deal of it off for themselves).

What would be a good thing, and make the Obama presidency something truly promising, is if he listened to economists who do not fantasize about producing prosperity by means of wealth redistribution. These economists teach that entrusting our resources to politicians and bureaucrats is futile because these men and women have no clue what Americans want and thus will necessarily, even if they don’t always intend to, serve a special and very narrow agenda, usually that of their own most influential constituents.

In short, these economists argue that the public interest is pursued best by, guess what, the public! And Mr. Obama appears thus far to reject this idea and that means economic malaise, not any kind of recovery.

Can Welfare Rights be Rescued?

Tibor R. Machan

In this short essay I address an argument concerning welfare rights made against the late Robert Nozick by one Adrian Bardon and by some others who dispute the usefulness of resting law on basic rights (like the famous judge and law professor Richard Posner does). Bardon brings up an issue that’s central concerning the nature of basic individual rights that the American founders proposed as the foundations of a constitutional government (and were, in fact, partly incorporated and elaborate in the Bill of Rights).

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

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

Of course, Bardon is concerned with property rights but he forgets that these, too, are rights to action, not rights to objects. As Ayn Rand makes clear, “the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.” Put another way, the right to private property is a right to acquire and to hold—which are both actions—various items no one has previously acquired and is holding—or ones others who have acquired and are holding them are willing, freely, to part with (another action).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trashing of Property Rights Again

Tibor R. Machan


The Oakland Worldwide apartments in California do not ban smoking around the pool frequented by renters. John Birke thinks that the smoke his child is inhaling there is hurting her. But instead of taking the trouble of moving to a place where no smoking is permitted by the pool, of which there are plenty, he has decided to sue the owner(s). At first a lower court tossed the lawsuit but then an appeals court gave it a go ahead. No word yet how it will fare but just to get a chance at a win is a travesty of justice in a free country. Nor did news reports disclose whether Melinda Burke moved to the apartment complex after the policy of permitting smoking around the pool was in place--a vital issue in determining if she has a valid complaint.

When you own something it is for you to decided what is done with it provided no one's rights are being violated. When you rent someone an apartment, if they know there is something done by fellow renters or you that they do not like--something that even could injure them--they have to put up with it or go elsewhere. They don't get to move into the place and then deny others the right to be free to smoke or whatever that's not an imposition. And it is no imposition when the lack of a smoking ban is fully disclosed.

Now the radical position, the right one, is not widely embraced and practiced, mainly because the government makes rules for private parties which these parties may not break even if these rules are onerous. So if my apartment house were to make it OK for renters to run around nude at the pool and everyone knew about this before renting there, anti-nudists would have no justification for throwing a hissy-fit about it all although the government would probably ban it. And the same with smoking or anything else one doesn't approve of. As they used to say, without flinching or irony, "It's a free country, go live elsewhere if you don't like it here."

The reactionary trend toward making government determine what rights we all have rather than human nature, which is how the Founders did it, is now rampant. Rent control, for example, is a perfect example of government violating the rights of the apartment owners who should have no one telling them what rents to charge. It's supposed to be a free country. And, yes, this extends even to racial discrimination--if it is my place, I get to be a racist about it however vicious racism is. (I am free, so far, to be a racist when I pick my friends and lovers, which again is arguably irrational.)

In a genuine free country a great many ways of life are possible, many of them objectionable, even morally odious for some but not others--one size does not fit all. But in the nanny state that America is becoming, the ruling opinion is imposed on everyone, be this opinion sound or unsound. The only exception so far is with what someone has a right to say or whom someone may worship. The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution still gives legal protection to everyone's right to freedom of expression and religion but it's hard to say for how long. There are some trends suggesting that even these rights may come under assault. People who dispute man made global warming, for example, have been threatened with being barred from all government contracts even though the spirit and letter of the 14th Amendment clearly makes this unconstitutional.

When one finds oneself in the minority with one's life style, one's choices, tastes and preferences--even with what may well be one's better judgment--one makes one's way in life without coercing others to fall in line. A free country is also supposed to be a pluralist, multicultural country and the fact is that what some people would enjoy in life may annoy others to no end.

"Public" Abuse

Tibor R. Machan

Run, don't walk, for the exit whenever someone begins to carry on about the public interest, the public good, the public welfare and similar allusions to deed and policies that supposedly advance us all. There are very, very few such matters. It was one of the most insightful aspects of the American founding to have realized this fact--the sole public interest is the securing of our individual rights.

This makes very good sense. First, it is honest--no other candidate really helps everyone much but, instead, various special interests, special agendas. The public--you, I and everyone else in the country--cannot be benefited much together, only as members of special groups, as individuals, and so on. The sole respect in which we can all be benefited politically is to have our basic rights strictly respected and protected. That is because we are first and foremost individuals and then members of more or less sizable groups--clubs, corporations, universities, unions, professions, families, churches, and so forth. We are, of course, all human and by virtue of our humanity we possess certain unalienable rights. Forget that this is disputed vigorously by people who want to have the license of abridge, abrogate or violate our rights. That we have these rights is indisputable on any rational grounds. But after that we have only few things in common. Even our health is best served in highly varied ways--some will gain from this, others from that program of nutrition, exercise, diet, and so forth.

But if a politicians said openly that what he or she is after is to benefit just this person or group, not the rest, there would be no plausible basis for being funded from the U. S. Treasury. All that would be recognized for what it is, a matter of private or special interest to be served apart from public policy, policy pertaining to what benefits everyone.

A great case in point is that fraudulently named outfit, public broadcasting, PBS, as well as national public radio, NPR. Neither of these is even close to being a project that serves the public, all of us. Yes, I do sometimes check out PBS and when in a particularly masochistic frame of mind, even listen to NPR. But I am always appalled at these outfits claim to have anything to do with the public. What public? PBS is watched by just a fraction of television viewers, and NPR is similarly ignored by the bulk of the American public. What about all those public beaches and public forests and public parks? All fraudulently labeled! Not a one is a bona fide public service. But, of course, it serve those who are providing it to pretend that they are since that appears to justify raiding the public treasure in small and large ways.

Sadly, I am pretty much shouting about this against the wind, which blows, sadly, along the fraudulent ideas of collectivism, something that is a plain disguise of some people's interests at the expense of all. Hardly any editorials point out that most of the political talk about "we" and "us" is completely deceptive since the policies promoted for us, from which we supposedly benefit really serve just some of us. And so the rest of us are being hoodwinked by rhetoric that relentlessly and dishonestly invokes the idea of the public. Editorial writers and pundits and commentators of all sorts should point out, over and over again, that political talk about "us," making use of "we," is most of the time either very sloppy or out and out disingenuous, wrong.

Fortunately there is still the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution that does not permit the extension of the policies of the welfare state, the nanny state, to how we think and talk, although even this isn't quite true, what with all the political correctness at schools and government related endeavors. If there were anything like a regulatory agency keeping watch over how people talk, the first item on their agenda, assuming there were not yet captured by some special interest group, would be to censor nearly all uses of "public," "we," and "us" in our language.

Rights as Basic Principles

Tibor R. Machan

The point of having a written constitution to which the administration of a country's legal system is firmly committed is to provide a framework of viable, just social life to all members of society who renounce violations of its principles. The American framers believed, in large measure, that the principles laid out in the Declaration should be fully represented in the country's constitution. These principles are referred to collectively as individual human rights. The Founders declared that these need to be held as self-evident, not something provisional, incidentally, temporary or otherwise less than fundamental in a legal system. In the U. S. Constitution these principles are mostly laid out in the Bill of Rights. As the grandfather of those principles, the philosopher John Locke, understood them, these rights are not grants of the government but based on an understanding of human nature, of what is most fundamental, basic, about being a human being. People are highly varied, multifaceted, diverse. But they also share some attributes by virtue of which they are indeed human, not other kinds of, beings.

Today a great many intellectuals are dedicated, sadly, to the demolition of this American legacy. They are very critical of the one political philosophy that fully affirms the ideas of the American Declaration and the Bill of Rights. They want to re-institute the idea that our rights are made up by governments and merely granted by them. They believe that our basic human rights may be revoked by some people, those in government, just exactly as monarchs used to believe that their preferred ideas are the principles by which a country should be governed. As, for example, one such advocate, Paul Fairfield insists--in his book Public/Private (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)--over the last century our rights have come to be recognized as "thoroughly social in nature." As Fairfield put it, "Whereas classical liberalism had often conceived of [our] rights as presocial natural endowments of the individual, a less metaphysical conception of rights in general as social constructions emerged" more recently, one that "appropriately subordinates [these rights] to popular conceptions of social welfare..."

First, of course, the more recent conception Fairfield mentions is actually the older conception whereby monarchs, for example, granted rights. These heads of state were said to represent the popular conception of social welfare. Later, in democracies, the majority was often deemed, by various anti-Lockean political thinkers--such as Rousseau and Marx--as the source of human rights. And it is clear that such an idea is very far from what Locke argued and the American Founders insisted upon, in large part because they wanted to make the basic laws of society independent of the will of government administrators. (This is what is referred to by "the rule of law.") In short, Fairfield's idea is a reactionary one, by no means progressive.

The idea of basic human individual rights is meant to solve the problem of people being governed by principles, not by their fellows who have no authority to dictate to others how they ought to act, what is to be legal and what isn't. And that holds for property rights, too. Consider the idea of eminent domain which was to apply only to government's taking of private property for a bona fide public purposes, not for any special or private project, and with full compensation. Watering down the strict application of the eminent domain provision may well be something many in society desire--ones who believe they could do better things with other people's property then the owners are doing--but in a society governed by the rule of law that is impermissible.

Second, Fairfield makes much of the fact that Lockean individual rights may be said, somewhat contentiously, to be metaphysically conceived, all they were meant to have is a firm, stable foundation in something that is itself understood to be firm and stable, namely, human nature. That is, indeed, why slavery and serfdom are deemed to be morally objectionable and forbidden in a just society, not because of popular will! If that were all, any time advocates of slavery became a majority slavery would have to be judged OK. But that is absurd--such principles are not to be subject to the whim of anyone, kings of majorities.

The attack on basic rights is wrongheaded. It expresses an impatience of some citizens with the fact that they are blocked from conscripting others and the private property of others to purposes for which they could not obtain consent from them. Anyone aware of the New Deal should know this, given how President Roosevelt want to remove principled obstacles to his political program by stacking the U. S. Supreme Court the members of which adhered to principles with which he was very impatient.

Disputing Wittgenstein on Objectivity

Tibor R. Machan

Ludwig Wittgenstein is reported to have said, by O. K. Bouwsma, that "No one can write objectively about himself and this is because there will always be some motive for doing so. And the motives will change as you write. And this becomes complicated, for the more one is intent on being 'objective' the more one will notice the varying motives that enter in." (Wittgenstein, Conversations 1949-51, Hackett, 1986)

I believe the following would support a refutation of Wittgenstein’s skeptical thesis. Wittgenstein conflates ‘objective’ with ‘neutral’ or ‘impartial.’

Objectivity is something different. It means being honest, sticking to facts and reasonable inferences and theories, and distinguishing, rationally rather then with prejudice or bias, what is more from what is less important. It does not mean, as Wittgenstein implies, lacking motives or not caring. (Wittgenstein seems here to follow the famous German philosopher, Immanuel Kant who held that if one has motives or inclinations for doing what one does, then one is failing to be rational, impartial. But that is an esoteric, idiosyncratic conception of rationality. One can have sound motives for actions, or unsound ones.)

So, then, are there pitfalls in writing a memoir or about oneself and one’s beliefs? Why shouldn't there be when there are pitfalls in every kind of human activity? But pitfalls do not render the project impossible.

Just as Wittgenstein himself seems to suggest in his posthumously published book, On Certainty, we need not doubt if there are no reasons for doubting and unless one has good grounds for suspecting oneself of bias or prejudice, there need be no deep concern about one’s capacity to be objective in a memoir or autobiography.

Just consider in this regard that a medical doctor must be thoroughly objective as he or she approaches the patient’s malady and devises an appropriate cure; such a doctor is not impartial, not indifferent, not disinterested at all. Indeed, to satisfy his or her interests what is most needed is strict objectivity; otherwise the doctor will not be of help. (Same, by the way, with engineers or farmers.)

Now a lot of folks believe that philosophical ideas are kind of abstract, out of this world and not really relevant but in this case, as indeed in many others, philosophy matters. The idea Wittgenstein and Kant have propounded has been very influential. It is partly responsible for an insidious public perception, namely, that when it comes to anything in which one has some interest, anything that concerns one even just a little, never mind deeply, one’s views will be subjective, strictly personal, not based on facts but on how one feels about things. This is where the popular notion comes from that people’s reports on historical facts or events in the news must all be “from their point of view.”

After this is accepted, the only issue that remains is what accounts for one’s point of view. Is it one’s parentage, nationality, race, gender, age, or some such aspect of oneself. That this is the kind of stuff that many believe makes people think the way they do is evident from how they quite often explain away what someone is thinking by saying things like, “Well, you know she is a woman,” or “He comes from Europe,” or “It is he cultural background, of course, why she says what she does.” So when it comes to very important issues, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, everyone is supposed to be biased, no one can be objective.

But notice immediately that this also undermines these accounts--whoever gives it as an explanation of someone else’s position on some topic will also lack objectivity if he or she has any interest in the matter! And then can it be relied upon, trusted?

I am actually something of a fan of Ludwig Wittgenstein but in this instance I believe he was quite wrong.

Inexcusable: Terrorism

Tibor R. Machan

In discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict one often comes across disturbing defenses of anti-Israeli policies by such organizations as Hamas and Hezbollah. One such line of defense I have encountered, for which even some of my colleagues in philosophy have shown sympathy, is that given the desperate situation of Arabs, say in the Gaza strip, one must accept their resort of terrorism, including, of course, the indiscriminate murder of people, many of them children and thus indisputably innocent of anything that might plausible justify killing them. And often this line of defense is put in terms of what Israel has done to Arab citizens in Gaza, placed them into desperate situations by cutting off the flow of supplies, starving them, etc.

Without going into the whether the claims against Israel are true or accurate, of who is ultimately responsible for the conditions in Gaza, it is crucial to realize that even if those claims were all true, they would fail to justify terrorism, the murder of innocent people for political purposes and the like. Say I am starving and say I believe that this has been caused by various adults around my neighborhood. Would my situation justify my recklessly lobbing bombs around the homes in this neighborhood, never mind who is being killed by what I am doing? Am I justified in my state of desperation to inflict violence on those who have had nothing to do with what I am experiencing? No, not at all. All one might say is that I have completely lost control over myself and am now simply flaying about madly, caring nothing about the consequences, about whether any remnant of justice attends to my conduct. And in that case I need to be pacified!

It is one thing to show some understanding of the dastardly conduct of certain people in dire straits. It is something else entirely to claim that this conduct is just or justified. And over the last decades it is difficult to deny that on the whole, apart from the early terrorist actions of certain Israelis, the overwhelming majority of indiscriminate, often suicide, killings have been done by anti-Israeli partisans.

For some reason that escapes me, quite a few people who would ordinarily be appalled at deeds of cruelty toward the innocent seem to find what these anti-Israeli parties are doing acceptable. I cannot see that the fact that Israeli policies are imperfect, disputable, sometimes over the top, serve in the slightest to give these anti-Israeli policies unobjectionable or even OK on balance.

Again, I hasten to say that a full grasp of what is happening between Arabs and Israelis escapes me, albeit I seriously doubt that anyone has that grasp, given how it is tied up with a very long history, many religious convictions based on faith, and, most of all, collectivist or tribal thinking. Some of the arguments that are propounded by many who contribute to the debate, especially on the anti-Israeli side seem, also, to be linked to manufactured historical events and religious claims that are wholly unprovable.

At times simply abstaining from forming any conclusions about these matters is acceptable. But that is nearly impossible to do in a democracy where one is called upon to approve or disapprove policies of one’s government vis-à-vis foreign governments. Even if the entire situation in, for example, the Middle East is basically irrational and beyond hope of sorting out fully, one is simply left with a need to have some attitude so as to be able to assess with some measure of competence what one’s government is doing (even in circumstances that are tainted with confusion and a history of mistakes).

I am certainly only in the process of coming to grips with the issues, not by any stretch of the imagination at the point of having formed a fixed, stable position on them all. But just as Socrates, who confessed not to know very much at all, continued to search, along with all of his pupils, for what is true, perhaps some attentive if incomplete reflections on the Arab-Israeli situation can help advance not only one’s understanding but the eventual resolution of the troubles.

Keynes' Problem


Tibor R. Machan

From the frying pan into the fire, the saying goes, and it applies well to the way John Maynard Keynes suggested we deal with economic uncertainty and to the advice his followers are now foisting upon Barrack Obama.

An assumption of some prominent economic theorists involves that we can pretty much calculate how the future will turn out and, therefore, tell the difference between very risky and not so risky investments. This, however, does not hold true when arbitrary forces enter the market place. And the most important such force is government action. This is because governments act by way of mandates, or outright force, not voluntary agreements.

Sure, even with a system of voluntary agreements as the foundation of the economy nothing is completely certain--after all, who can tell what the weather will be, or if there will be an earthquake or something else that has serious economic consequences quite apart from human decisions which are, themselves, often unreasonable and, thus, unpredictable. But only government can try to go against widespread human choices that mainly determine the economy since only government can impose its decisions by force, without the consent of the governed. And when it does so, the reasonable, albeit not absolute, certainty of how the future is going to turn out is completely undermined.

In the face of economic upheavals it is widely believed that most people will reduce their spending, including their risk-taking. While this is not a bad assumption, it doesn't tell the full story. After all, those who specialize in wealth management will be aware of the assumption and will often go counter to it so as to gain a bit from the widespread caution. Second guessing human behavior is one skill in which wealth managers specialize. And they will often figure out just what the government is likely to do, too. But then governments will impose their might to counter the effect of the managers' manauverings. And so it goes.

Keynes wanted to put a stop to all the guesswork that goes into economic thinking by advising that government spend when ordinary folks would act cautiously and save. Since Keynes believed that economic prosperity is mainly a function of spending money, of an aggressive consumerism, he found it disturbing that "the possession of actual money lulls our disquietude," so people refuse to do the spending that would keep the economy healthy and instead put their money away for later use (which, by the way, still doesn't mean it will be idle).

One of Keynes's contemporary followers, Robert Skidelsky, wrote that "There was only one sure way to get an increase in spending in the face of an extreme private-sector reluctance to spend, and that was for the government to spend the money itself. Spend on pyramids, spend on hospitals, but spend it must." As Skidelsky noted, "This, in a nutshell, was Keynes's economics." And he added, "His purpose, as he say it, was not to destroy capitalism but to save it from itself."

Capitalism, of course, is not saved by Keynesian economics but contradicted by it. The reason is that capitalism requires full respect for the voluntary exchanges in a free market place. When government prevents this from happening, capitalism is sacrificed. And how might Keynes' proposal prevent the voluntary exchanges of the free market place? By taxing and borrowing--without proper collateral--and similar policies that counter what people would do of their own free choices. The people want to save, so expropriate their money and use it to fund projects the people don't choose to fund. Build pyramids no one wants, spend on hospitals even if most people are healthy, spend like mad even if most people are pleased enough with what they have and therefore choose not to spend so much for the time being.

So the Keynesan remedy to occasional dips in economic activity is to put a gun to people's heads and force them to spend. And it sounds plausible, when you remove from it the criminal factor and one other thing: government stupidity. Even if it were not a blatant violation of peoples' basic rights to expropriate their money, the assumption that governments will know how to spend it so as to boost economic activity is completely off. This is the fallacy of thinking of government as some kind of God, some Supreme Being who knows better than ordinary mortals what to do, how to spend resources, when to save and when not to do so. This monumental--what F. A. Hayek, Keynes's friend and critic called "the fatal"--conceit is the age old idea that the state is supreme. And this is the theory that is now being championed by Barack Obama & Co.

Israel, Hamas, and I

Tibor R. Machan

When one is bombarded with information about events the history of which is ancient and so complex that hardly anyone commenting makes sense of them, it is very tough to judge. That’s how it is with me and the current upheaval between Israel and Hamas.

The news reports at the beginning said Israel took military action after hundreds of missiles were being launched at it from Gaza. So to rid the Gaza strip of the missile launchers, Israel began to target various areas from which the missiles were being launched, presumably centers where Hamas had most of its personnel and equipment located. Further reports, especially on CNN International, observed that Israel’s response to the initiation of aggression by Hamas was disproportionate to what Hamas did to Israel. Still, as with most fights, this one had to start with someone throwing the first punch, as it were, and that seems to have been Hamas this last time. (Last time Hamas supposedly kidnapped some Israeli soldiers, another situation that was bizarre from the start.)

The Israelis claim that all they want is for the missile launching to stop and Hamas spokesmen on CNN say they will only stop of Israel stops its aggression! But this is confused since Hamas clearly started the launching of missiles out of the Gaza strip and isn’t even disputing this. So how could Israel be the aggressor? To aggress is to begin a fight, not to respond to one being initiated.

As I was watching report after report on CNN, while attending a conference—and getting no sleep--in Mexico, I noticed that the reporters of this news network kept repeating the claim, made by Hamas leaders and others who support Hamas and oppose Israel, that Israel is targeting innocent civilians. Yet it is nearly impossible to tell who is a civilian in the Gaza conflict, judging by the footage showing various groups of young people and adults shooting whatever weapons they have at hand and throwing rocks in the direction of the border between Israel and the strip.

Unfortunately the reports fail to include any discussion of how one is to tell the difference between Hamas civilians and Hamas militia. I have never seen any footage showing Hamas soldiers, if they exist; Israel, however, does distinguish between its civilians and its army by way of their garb.

After about five days of the hostilities CNN’s reporters had some Gaza government officials on the air and posed some pointed questions about who is the victim and who the aggressor. It was immediately clear that the official wanted at all cost to dodge the issue of who had started the current hostilities. When the CNN reporter asked about Israel officials’ claim about the missiles that had been launched at Israel and to which Israel was supposedly responding, the spokesman was so obviously evasive that I couldn’t believe it. Who sent this person to speak for Hamas? He replied to the CNN reporter by saying “I have always been known as an opponent of violence.” So what? Why is that an answer to “Israelis say they are responding to your aggression, so what is your answer to them?”

When one is bombarded with selective, nearly haphazard information about events around the globe, events that are one’s only source of understanding who is doing what to whom and how is it all justified, there is not much one can do but listen very carefully and determine who is making logical mistakes--who is equivocating, who is being evasive and vague, who is being clear and answers relevant questions directly, without obfuscation.

By that criterion I have to say that my provisional assessment of what is reported from the Middle East leaves me with the impression that Israel is less responsible for the recent mess than Hamas. That’s as well as I can do with the immediate information at hand. Maybe more detail, more history will lead me to alter what I think about the matter but for now I am pretty sure that Hamas is the bad guy here, while Israel, as so often in history, is the victim.

As my mother, who lives in Europe and went through the mid-century disasters there, said to me a while ago, “Why don’t they leave those people live in peace?” Frankly, I am mystified myself. And it is also puzzling why so many Western academics seem to get on board with the anti-Israel stance. No, I don’t call it anti-Semitism because I don’t know the motivation behind their position. I do know that they nearly always favor Israel’s enemies and consider America’s official pro-Israel stance something wrongheaded, based not on considerations of justice but on the so called influence of the Jewish Lobby.

I don’t care about any lobby. I am only concerned that when fights break out, those who start them be identified, and that their reasons and motives be objectively evaluated. That is the only way I personally can make some bit of sense of these kinds of situations of which I receive such spotty information unless I become a specialist and for that I would need to return to school and get a graduate degree in Middle Eastern studies.

A revolutionary Struggle

Tibor R. Machan

Be it welcome or not, there are a revolutionary struggle afoot in the world. It started when certain thinkers began to dispute the claims made by defenders of various rulers--monarchs, dictators, tsars and the like--that some people have a divine or natural right to run the lives of other people. In modern philosophy it was John Locke who mounted the most sustained and influential challenge to this statist idea. His insights and arguments made a big impression on the likes of America's founders--the Declaration of Independence is filled with points most fully developed to that date by Locke.


Just think--for centuries on end it was the common notion that certain folks are superior to others, not because of their achievements or skills but by blood or even just their names. Just as we accept that parents have authority over children--at least parents who carry out their role properly--in much of human history it was widely advocated and believed that government or the state had full or at least a great deal of authority to manage the lives of people within the realm they supposedly cared for. Nearly everything that happened in society had to be a project of the state--commerce, science, religion, the arts, education and so forth.

There are a great many people, even in countries like the USA, who still embrace and even vigorously defend this position. For them the government owns the country, practically, and distributes and redistributes some of the wealth to citizens for limited private use. Fierce taxation is defended by prominent legal scholars at America's most prestigious educational institutions, on the grounds that government actually owns the wealth and taxes are merely a way of recapturing it from the people who produce but do not own it. Whenever something goes amiss in society, such people and those who give elaborate intellectual support to them insist on turning to government for help, accepting it as the ruler of the realm. These people always ask for government regulation, which assumes that governments are, as kings had been thought to be, superior in wisdom and virtue to the citizens. The very idea of a citizen is revolutionary--elsewhere "subject" is used more regularly to identify the people who live within the realm that's being governed by a select few of them.

This whole notion that governments--people who worked at centers of power--are superior to us all is what the American Revolution was challenging--it had begun to be challenged before but America's input was immense and made the biggest difference. It was not, however, to last very long and the revolution is in retreat now, not so much intellectually but as a choice of the bulk of the citizenry. After all, the thrust of the revolution is that citizens need to govern themselves, need to take on the responsibility that others pretended to possess over them. That's a scary idea to millions!

Both ideas, statism and individualism, are still very much topics of discussion and argument but judging by which of them has more support at famous academic institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, and other prominent universities, statism is reasserting itself.

Of course there is also the counter movement which shows itself in world wide commerce and more or less liberal democratic developments, which are clearly signs of advances in human freedom. The revolutionary vision of the American Founders is, in fact, more eagerly embraced abroad these days than in the USA, with some exceptions, such as gay and women's rights, the expansion of first amendment ideas, etc. (As someone who does a lot of lecturing around the world I can testify from my own experiences that a great many people in, say, former Soviet colonies are enthusiastic about human liberty and not so much about the power of the state.)

Revolutions have some pivotal periods but they move slower than their supporters would want. This is also true with the American revolution and its central ideas. Nonetheless, the revolution is under way. How it will fare is quite indeterminate.

Without Free Will

Tibor R. Machan

Lots of important people, in the sciences and in philosophy, are saying that free will is a myth, a delusion. Some go so far as to embark on revamping the legal system and our ideas of ethics or morality so concepts of guilt, innocence, responsibility and so forth are dropped. No one is guilty of anything, they hold, since no one could have done anything other than what he or she did. This is just one notion that follows from the absence of free will in human life. What are some others?

Regret is out; so is pride. Apologies are pointless since no one could have done better than she or he did. Certainly no one can be blamed for anything. Or praised. Just as it makes no sense to blame the weather for being unpleasant or even horrible, or praise it for being great, so none of the awful stuff that people do can be blamed on them and none can receive praise either, since it all just happens as it must. That means, also, that editorials that congratulate some while those that chide others are all nonsense, gobbledygook, if there's no free will. Forget about admiration, too, for no deed is a function of individual good judgment and effort. It's like nice flowers, which simply grow as they, too, must. Artists must do their art, murderers must do their murders, no alternative to any of it is possible, just as the way a river runs is how it must run.

Most difficult to swallow, though, is that what I am saying or writing here or anyone else has said or written or is saying or writing or will say or write is no more true or false than is the noise made by ocean waves since the idea of truth--the independent, objective identification of reality by an unprejudiced mind--is also dead without free will. You affirm free will? Well, you just had to do it, just as if you were to deny it, that to just had to happen. The issue of which is right cannot arise, either, since when it is claimed that one is while the other isn't, that too just has to happen as it does.

Juries, too, simply have to come up with the verdict they do--they have no freedom to consider evidence, or to evade it (when supposedly perpetrating malpractice). Scientists, too, just must believe as they do, as do their detractors--Creationists cannot help but believe as they do, as do the Darwinians. Everyone just has the beliefs he or she must have, as the unstoppable chain of causal connections has made it necessary. Que Sera, Sera!

But this, of course, means that believing in or disbelieving in free will or determinism amounts to just something that happens to people. Arguing is pointless--it is just helpless prattle, no more productive of truth (or falsehood) that the yapping of a parrot or the noise of a tape recorder. It's no more related to truth or falsehood than are thunder and the roar from a lion.

Of course, all of this could be as I say but none could know it since knowledge itself requires freedom of judgment, of a capacity to research and think about issues without prejudice, without being driven to reach some given conclusion!

As far as I can figure, being without free will makes no sense since giving up everything one must to be without free will is nonsense. But that may not be a decisive enough argument for free will. What would be? Among other things that would have to be dealt with is how come so many serious folks can so easily come to believe that tossing free will can make sense, despite all of what follows from it. What might be amiss with their framework, with how they go about considering this matter? These folks are bright--in fact, one of them has proposed that there should be a name for them, at least the ones who also deny God, and it should be "Brights"! (A label that's a bit vain, if you ask me, but not necessarily wrong.)

To help get to the bottom of this topic, much besides listing what all we would have to do without free will is necessary. Still, considering what it would be like without free will should be a good beginning for seriously considering the matter.

Year End Pet Peeves

Tibor R. Machan

Mostly I write on topics I suspect concern a wide enough audience. Columnists don’t just write on anything that pops into their minds but need to do a bit of service to reader-clients. But, if one has a regular venue for one’s columns, it maybe fine, now and then, to indulge oneself with a topic or two that’s more personal. Even these will, of course, aim to please, if only by inviting reader-clients to know a bit of the writer.

In that spirit I am going to take the risky step of laying out some of my pet peeves. These are not the most serious complaints I have about culture, politics, religion, and other human institutions. Instead, they are matters that tend to irritate me personally even as they may pose nothing much objectionable to others and might not even need to, either. Individualists like me will fully accept that some stuff is strictly personal, amounts to likes or dislikes and implies nothing about what others ought to feel, do, or pursue.

Take my favorite color, for an example. I am nuts about red-orange, the color of the California poppy and the old Mustang and the setting sun over the Pacific. This is, yes, the opposite of a pet peeve, more of a pet love. It is, however, exactly personal and idiosyncratic.

What about a genuine pet peeve, then? Well, heavy bangs would serve as a good case in point. Cannot stand them even if the face is gorgeous in all other respects. Somehow these bangs even suggest something more generally puzzling--why would someone wish to hide a forehead? Is there some message afoot in that, like, “I don’t like my brain?” No, need not be, but it’s somewhat intimated, at least for me.

Bad dancers get to me, those who go out there and gyrate without a bit of rhythm. Sure, they could be having fun, though I cannot see how, given how bad they are at what they are doing. I just cannot abide by it, maybe because I am such a great fan of the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelley. And while I am at it, I should mention singing off key. Totally puts me off, especially in some popular singers--for example, the late Dinah Shore!

There is also that genre of painting, the very poorly executed abstract work! I didn’t used to take to any abstract paintings but then changed and began to like some of them as a form of design--shapes and colors and intensity, all well coordinated. But when it is without the slightest sense of balance it really sucks, as far as I am concerned. I even fancy that I can spot one of these awful efforts at a distance. But I am not confident enough to say I know they amount to bad works of art. Maybe some individuals are really sent by just such stuff!

Pointless Jargon, the sort that reeks of having been manufactured despite there being no need for it at all! I am nearly paranoid about this--some folks write, it seems, to prevent their being understood. Again, I could be wrong but I am awfully suspicious. (I guess one reason is that escaping into jargon is a temptation of writers when their ideas aren’t clear enough to them but admitting this isn’t cool.) At times it appears evident that some of the most erudite folks, highly praised scientists from prestigious institutions, will succumb to this temptation, at least in regions of their discipline they are still confused about.

Cops who swagger really put me off, and this includes nearly all those out there enforcing the rules of the road. Frankly I don’t even regard these people as police officers or officers of the law because rules of the road, however necessary, are just that, rules of the road, just a step or several above rules of attire at some private school. Yes, yes, the rules sort of aim at orderliness and even safety but more often they appear to aim solely at revenue generation. So one is stopped for making an “illegal” U-turn by a person wearing really scary outfits and prominently carrying a menacing weapon! Tends to demean the very idea of law, which is a general system of principles that is supposed to serve to secure civilized conduct, protect the rights of individuals, not bother about the specific details of various forms of life. But I suppose this pet peeve stems in part from my near-anarchism, my fierce resentment of all those who lord it over other people who are carrying on in mostly peaceful ways.

I won't go into the types of driving that I despise. It would fill a book. But here is at least a small sample of what I just happen to like and dislike. It may say a bit about me, for better or for worse.

Left Liberals and Right Conservatives

Tibor R. Machan

It is not always taken note of that conservatism refers to a procedure for dealing with life, ethics, politics, or public policy, not with a position on these. What the conservative urges is that as one considers matters related to any of the above, one ought to pay heed, first and foremost, to what has been found acceptable, useful, sensible in the past, by the dominant and persistent traditions in human history. It is these that ought to be conserved. There is, for conservatives, no other road to reliable truth. Just as the pragmatist rejects the possibility of firm, lasting principles in any area of inquiry, so the conservative rejects the possibility of gaining understanding apart from following dominant traditions.

As such, conservatives oppose something that’s central to the American political system, namely, individualism. Just consider what Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, said: “...Men have no right to risk the very existence of their nation and their civilization upon experiments in morals and politics; for each man's private capital of intelligence is petty; it is only when a man draws upon the bank and capital of the ages, the wisdom of our ancestors, that he can act wisely,” adding that “We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank of nations and of ages.”

And it is in this that conservatives share something essential with the Left, with socialists, communists, communitarians, and many modern liberals as well. All these regard individualism fatally flawed because it entrusts human individuals with the capacity to know the world on their own (a rare case but still not unfamiliar when we consider innovators, discoverers, scientists who are often way ahead of their colleagues, etc.). For socialists human beings are innately socially bound. Karl Marx put it best when he coined the term “species being,” meaning that everyone’s basic identity is intimately tied to the whole of humanity (or in less grandiose versions, society, the tribe, the race, the ethnic group, or the nation).

This is why neither those on the Right nor those on the Left favor individual rights, those social-legal provisions that make room for the independence, sovereignty of the human individual. For these Leftists everyone belongs to society and the right to individual freedom, as per Locke and the American Founders, does violence to this idea, undermines it. At nearly every turn of the debate between defenders of the American political system, with the tenets of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, in the end this issue becomes central, pivotal both vis-à-vis Right and Left.

American individualism, following Locke and advanced mainly by Objectivists and Libertarians, holds that although human beings flourish best among their fellows, this must be under conditions where everyone’s individuality is fully respected and protected. In the last analysis a citizen must have the option to withdraw from society, say when its policies have turned against individuals, just as the Declaration makes clear. This “exit option” testifies to the prominence of individualism in this system of social-political thought. This isn’t about living like a hermit or not being closely related to others--those charges are disingenuous or misconceived. Individualism is about an adult human being having the ultimate authority over his or her life, exactly what the great and small tyrannies of human history have denied.

If you want to know why the central American viewpoint has it so hard with not just the rest of the world but its very own crop of intellectuals, it is because both Right and Left are essentially against its basic tenet, individualism.