Perils of Originality

Perils of Originality

Tibor R. Machan

At the outset I should confess that this may be something of a self-justification.  I am not one whose ideas have been or have been meant to be original.  At first this was just a plain matter of circumstance.  Too many of the thoughts that I had were clearly unoriginal yet had a lot of merit.  So why aim for originality, then?  On its own, it occurred to me in time, being original is no virtue.

As I went through my several stages of formal education I noticed that there was a lot of praise issued for anything original yet apart from that the ideas in question didn’t appear to be very worthwhile.  They were on the order of trivial novelty items instead of important insights, findings, discoveries or such.  In graduate school, especially, where we all had to come up with reasonably interesting topics for our doctoral dissertations, I noticed that while original enough, most of the topics were pretty pointless.  Comparing Wittgenstein with Heidegger or Sartre with Feyerabend?  So what?  

In time I figured that this kind of graduate school work had more to do with habit than merit.  Somehow there were simply too many people trying to come up with something no one has discussed, so originality served as a substitute for value.  But maybe it was just that I wasn’t coming up with anything that was original, especially since I wasn’t trying.  It was more important and interesting to me to be right, to land on an idea that made good sense, fit the facts and solved a problem. Get it right was my motto, more than find something novel.

I did think I came up with one novel thing in my first book, the one taking apart the ideas of the Harvard behaviorist psychologists B. F. Skinner (The Pseudoscience of B. F. Skinner, 1973).  I called it “the blow-up fallacy.”  It involved finding something true about a small thing and then elevating it into a major thing but sacrificing the truth in the process.  Even this wasn’t quite original since it just amounted to the old fallacy of invalid extrapolation or hasty generalization.

Later on I did think of something that seemed to be novel enough, though not all that important, truth be told.  I figured out that nostalgia held out appeal mainly because when people remember past situations in their lives, they rarely if ever include the anxiety they experienced about the future.  After all, by the time they were recalling those past situations, the future had passed by and the anxieties went away.  So why bother recalling them?  It would merely be a fly in the ointment, ruining the memory.  But it ran the risk, of course, of not recalling the past correctly, accurately, of committing “the good old days fallacy.”  And it lead to the tendency, nicely pointed out by Woody Allen in his recent movie, Midnight in Paris, of believing that the past had been so very nice.

There is only one other matter I thought of that may be original with me, though I cannot be sure. This has to do with trying to provide an explanation of economic problems when one is examining a mixed economy like most of those in Western countries.  During the recent financial fiasco a lot of people were arguing that their favorite scapegoat is responsible for it all, namely, free market capitalism (even while such a system wasn’t anywhere in evidence during the period in question).  

It occurred to me that providing a proper explanation for the fiasco was a bit like trying to find the cause of food poisoning after one has eaten a bunch of items on one of those Scandinavian ferry boats with a smorgasbord for each meal.  Too many possible causes!  It will take a long time to trace the culprit, especially with all that seafood one is likely to have consumed. Mixed economies contain elements of a great variety of economic systems and which of these or which combination lead to problems isn’t simple to figure out.

          OK, no big deal.  But perhaps original.  And perhaps my own idea about originality also qualifies as such.  But again, probably no big deal.

Atlas Shrugged (the movie) Part II

Atlas Shrugged (the movie) Part II

Tibor R. Machan

This could have been a movie review but I am not quite qualified to write one given that we are talking here about a craft, namely, movie making, which I am not sufficiently familiar with.  What I am writing, instead, is a simple thank you note to the producer John Aglialoro and his crew, technicians, writers, actors, director, et al., who against all odds brought the movie to screen.  After all, given the Hollywood elites’ hostility to Ayn Rand’s ideas--especially the ideas of rational individualism and free market capitalism that are both on very stark display in the movie--the project should be a bit of relief to anyone who champions the human individual and a bona fide free society. It is out and out heroic to have become the producer if this movie.

I saw Part 2 last evening (10/04/2012) in Hollywood--courtesy an invite from David Nott, president of the Reason Foundation, an outfit I helped launch back in 1969--and it was very entertaining and stimulating.  (I saw Part I over a year ago, courtesy the Cato Institute at a donor’s bash in Southern California.)

Since I have been close to AS since 1961 when I first read it, even wrote a little book (Ayn Rand, Peter Lang, 2001) on its author, it might have been tough to make the movie exciting for me but, very honestly, it was surprisingly riveting, especially the second part.

My one wish while watching the movie was that all those allegedly independent voters could see it before November 6.  They might be inspired to think twice before they jump on board with those who want to sell America down the river, lead by Obama & Co.  Sadly the opposition offers very little hope for providing the free society a needed defense, given its conservative, traditionalist bent of mind. Rand’s unabashed, unapologetic humanism, her rejection of the prevailing misanthropy among the bulk of the country’s intellectuals, is a badly needed antidote to what mainstream thinkers and artists peddle.  Her ideas still are the freshest, in line with the revolutionary ideas of the American founders and all those who appreciate what it is to stand up for the proper life of human beings.

           If you get the chance, go out and see the movie, all of it eventually (once it is available), and at least get a respite from what is promoted by the New York Times editors and columnists and the MSNBC--now renamed NBCNEWS.com--crowd. Celebrate what all is possible if we only wake up to the great potential within us.

Government in America

Government in America!

Tibor R. Machan

The central achievement of the American revolution was to demote government to a role of cop on the beat.  The monarch stopped being the sovereign, the citizen became sovereign instead.  Self-government became an aspiration for all people not just rulers.

The idea became prominent, at least for a while, that government’s proper role is to secure the natural rights of the citizenry.  There was nothing there about a nanny or a regulatory state.  John Locke, who identified the most principled version of the classical liberal conception of government, argued that since in “the state of nature”--i.e., prior to civilized society--some people may pose a serious threat others, a system of laws is needed so as to mark everyone’s sphere of authority, a region within which one is in full charge and which others must respect instead of trespass upon.  

One’s life is the beginning of this sphere, one’s liberty follows as does one’s private property.  What a government is needed for is to keep these safe, to secure the rights to life, liberty, property and whatever derives from these.  That is the point of government, nothing else.  It is a vital function since without it criminal conduct would very likely go unchecked.  But like referees at a sports event, government isn’t meant to get involved in the game, only to make sure it goes on peacefully, with everyone’s sovereignty secured.

This view of government was, of course, radical to the core.  Instead of the century’s old top-down rule, by some king or tzar or gang, everyone is supposed to rule oneself and his or her dominion.  All interactions among people would in time be voluntary and peaceful.  And from this arrangement would emerge a productive, creative, free community and not a hive or colony as with bees or termites.  

That is what is individualist about the American system, namely, that a country is to serve the objectives of a great variety of unique citizens and that one particular way of living was not to be imposed on all by a ruler.  Government is to serve the citizenry, not the other way around.  And contrary to some thinking on the topic, we are not all in it together as in North Korea and other collectivist political communities.  Instead of being a sphere for just one kind of life dictated to by a ruler, America was to be a sphere for an immense variety of different lives coexisting peacefully, competing and cooperating, not marching to the same tune.  

The details of the American idea course would of course be complicated and diverse but one idea was at the center of it all: None may violate the basic principles on which such a system rests, the basic rights of every individual.  The only role for force was to be defensive and retaliatory.  No one may initiate it with impunity, not even for noble goals a leader might wish to force upon the rest.

That is the American political alternative, the American political tradition, not the collectivist ideal pursued by some political thinkers and “leaders.” 

Unlimited Democracy

Unlimited Democracy

Tibor R. Machan

The Magna Carta was an early attempt to rein in government, reduce the scope of monarchical rule.  Constitutional monarchy was the result in many countries.

When democracies replaced monarchies, the urgency to limit their scope of power waned even though there are many political theorists who warned that democracies can turn out to be quite tyrannical.  The tyrannies of majorities are well known.  Most recently there was plenty of talk about that in connection with developments in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.  The election of Hamas, for example, bode ill for limited democracy!

Even in countries such as the United States of America the form of government that emerged was labeled “illiberal democracy.”  Fareed Zakaria’s book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad discussed the difference between liberal and illiberal democracies in the context of geopolitics but the idea had been the focus of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America over a century ago.

Of course there is something very wrong with unlimited democracies.  There is simply no justification for the majority of the population in a country imposing its will on everyone.  The idea is completely misguided.  Why on earth should a great number of people have the authority to force a small number to obey them?  There is no argument anywhere in the history of political philosophy and theory that would make out the case for this?  If it were a valid point, it would imply that a large number of thugs somehow have the right to subdue other people to serve them.  The famous example of the lynch mob that hangs an accused person make the point without difficulty.  Expanding the will of vicious people doesn’t make it virtuous. And even if what the larger group wants is actually virtuous, forcing it on others is still not justified since they would have to make the free choice to be virtuous.  Human virtue must be a matter of free choice.  Only in self-defense may force be applied to others!

The election process in so called democratic countries is anything but justified or moral.  Even when it hides behind the term “we” as it tries to do in too many instances--just listen to politicians anywhere around the globe and notice how often they pretend to be speaking for and acting in behalf of everyone--the will of the majority simply has no moral authority, none!  Anyone who can dodge it successfully is perfectly justified to do so!

Asking versus forcing folks to pay a little bit more

Asking versus forcing folks to pay a little bit more!

Tibor R. Machan

President Obama raised the issue of why anyone would object to asking the very rich “to give some more.”  As he put the matter, "What is wrong with ‘asking’ those who make more to pay a little more?"

As it has been pointed out by all too few people, of course what Obama & Co. advocate isn’t to ask anyone to give.  It is about confiscating from them what Mr. Obama & Co. want to have available for the redistribution of wealth just as they see fit.  (For, of course, you and I and other citizens are all doing some serious redistribution of our wealth already, with no need for help with this from Obama & Co.)  Yet hardly anyone in the mainstream media raises this objection.

Millions of Americans, including wealthy ones like Mitt Romney, are asked to give, mostly by organizations like the American Red Cross, and they come forth with generous contributions in response to the request.  I know I often do, though I am hardly what one would consider wealthy.  But millions and millions send contributions to victims of tsunamis or hurricanes or other disasters.  

The media is giving Obama & Co. a pass on so many fronts one wonders if they are sound asleep at the wheel. A point like the one about "asking them versus coercing them” is never raised even on the Fox TV talk programs. As if there were a kind of code of silence in place!

But maybe it is because so many folks, even those opposed to Obama's massive forced redistributions, support some such policies and know that if they raise the issue, then the case for taxing us all for their own pet projects--e.g., the war on drugs, aggressive wars fought abroad, etc.--paid for from such redistribution would get undermined.  

The slippery slope may account for this silence.  Talk of asking people gets mixed up with talk of coercing people and no one in the public forums objects. But competent journalists are supposed discern the difference between asking and making people pay!  (One can only speculate what sorts of questions are being rehearsed in schools of journalism.  It doesn’t seem like the students are enlightened about the difference between forcing and asking people for support.)

I am by no means being original in pointing out these matters but few if any prominent journalists, pundits, commentators, et al., make it a point to raise the issue.  Why?

American Exceptionalism Revisited

American Exceptionalism Revisited

Tibor R. Machan

A fairly prominent perception across the globe is that America has had certain exceptional features.  While these are mixed in with various traditional ones, they still manage -- or have managed -- to make the country unusual in human history.  The American revolution, for example, is widely taken to have undermined a central element of the ancient regime, namely, top down government.  Instead of the government being sovereign -- in charge of the realm -- it was to be individual citizens who assumed the right of self-government.  Indeed, that is what marks the difference between subjects and citizens.

As with other elements of public affairs, the switch from the ancient to the modern regime had not been complete.  America became a mixed system, economically and otherwise.  For example, while serfdom was pretty much abolished, so that no involuntary servitude was legally permitted in the country, taxation, the confiscation or extortion of resources from the citizenry, persisted throughout the country.  So, to a significant extent citizens remained subjects, at least as far as their work and resources are concerned.  If one works, one’s earnings aren’t deemed to be one’s private property to belong, in large measure, to society (to be used by the government as it sees fit).  Changes as radical as what the American Revolution involved, at least as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, are easier to announce than to implement.   The country, accordingly, is still a mixed system in which top down government persists, never mind that the revolutionary rhetoric flatly contradicts that idea.

With America’s relatively open borders and immigration policies, and with the minimal requirement that new citizens swear allegiance to the Constitution (something very easily faked and betrayed), the citizenry never was sufficiently loyal to the original revolutionary ideas. Many became Americans only nominally, “in name” only.  (For example, the bulk of the academy where I have done most of my work for the last forty five years is outright hostile to the spirit and letter of America’s exceptional political philosophy!  Indeed, it tends to make use of both First Amendment rights and academic freedom primarily to undermine, even ridicule what makes the country exceptional!)

The only way that the exceptional tradition could be preserved and enhanced is by means of popular loyalty.  Yet because education is conducted mainly by intellectuals who aren’t fond of the exceptional elements of the country and are, in fact, part of a system that is alien to them -- forced education, forced funding of education, tenure at taxpayers’ expense, monopolistic decisions about textbooks, etc., etc. -- there is hardly any resistance to the efforts of educators/intellectuals to return the country to the ideas of the ancient regime.  So statism is now the status quote in America.

Unless this is changed, unless the original ideas so well summarized in the Declaration of Independence are revived and expanded, America will lose its distinctiveness and embrace the idea that government is the ruler of the realm, not the citizenry.  It would have to end that way but the likelihood is considerable.  Nor need it be a permanent regression but if permitted, it will take centuries to resume the developments of which American exceptionalism is a central feature.  Indeed, the one thing that is a silver lining to all this is that many people across the globe have actually learned quite well the lesson taught by America’s recent history.  Unless eternal vigilance is indeed maintained in support of human liberty, it will be lost.

What is the major obstacle to advancing the American political tradition?  It is the idea that “we are all in it together.”  Communalism or tribalism or modern socialism are put in juxtaposition to the idea of a fully free, individualist, capitalist or libertarian society.  Individuals are seen in these as cell in the larger body of society, entirely subservient to the whole.  Society or humanity is seen, as Karl Marx put it, “an organic whole (or body).”  Individuals must be made to fall in line with the society, which means with the often self-anointed leaders of a country who make use of the collectivist vision for the sake of realizing their personal vision, something they find very appealing even while the citizenry is ambivalent about it.

Frankness About Wealth Redistribution

Frankness About Wealth Redistribution

Tibor R. Machan

When taxation is part of government, wealth redistribution goes hand in hand with it.  Taxation was what feudal systems used so as to pay rent to the monarchy.  The monarch, after all, used to own the realm.  All of it.  So just as owners of apartment houses, monarch’s collect rent from those living in there.

The meaning of this is that members of the population got to live in the country by permission of the government, be that a tzar, king, pharaoh, caesar or some other ruler who had nearly absolute power to run the place. It is still so in many regions of the globe. The people aren’t deemed to have rights, including private property rights.  That emerged late in the history of Western politics, mainly within the philosophy of the Englishman John Locke and his followers. They defended the idea of natural rights against those who championed the divine right of monarchs.  

With the American revolution the Lockean system started to be implemented, though by no means fully.  This abolished serfdom or involuntary servitude but didn’t quite manage to abolish taxation, namely, the confiscation of people’s resources, although in principle that should have followed the revolutionary turn of events. If citizens own their lives--have an unalienable right to life--they also own the fruits of their labor.  (And such fruits did not need to be created by them from scratch as Mr. Obama suggested with his misguided remark that “You did not build that.”)

In any case, when governments confiscate resources from the people via taxation, the sort of wealth redistribution that Mr. Obama and other statists are avidly defending cannot be avoided.  Taking their wealth and handing it out to some citizens for various purposes simply involves redistributing that wealth, period, be it justified or not.

Government’s redistribution of the citizens’ wealth is unavoidable unless taxation is abolished.  Even the most minimal of taxation brings about such redistribution.  

But in systems of limited government such as what the United States of America was supposed to become, the wealth redistribution was supposed to be minimal!  That is where Mitt Romney is basically correct while Mr. Obama is wrong.  It is under collectivist kinds of statism, in which the wealth of a country is deemed to be owned by the government exactly as Mr. Obama and those who support his political philosophy see it, that citizens do not have the right to private property but merely get to dispose of some property that the government allows them to retain from their earnings and findings.  (Yes, Virginia, some private property is found, meaning it isn’t built from scratch but arises from good fortune, like the wealth one gains from one’s talents or good looks!)  But just because one doesn’t build one’s wealth it doesn’t follow that government owns it.  That is rank non-sequitur. (After all, one doesn’t build one’s pretty face or good health either, yet it doesn’t belong to Mr. Obama!)  

The real issue is whether the wealth one owns is to be distributed by oneself or others!  Extensive taxation assumes that it may be distributed and redistributed by others, specifically by the government--politicians and bureaucrats. Not only that, but that these latter actually own one’s wealth, including one’s labor just as is believed under socialism wherein all the major means of production, including human labor, is collectively owned and administered--distributed and redistributed--by government officials. (Several major American political theorists, like Thomas Nagel and Cass Sunstein, argue for exactly that idea.)

This is the issue that could be debated in the current presidential campaign. Who is to do the distribution and redistribution, the citizenry or the state?  In a free society it is the former that gets to do the bulk of the distribution and redistribution as it spends funds in the marketplace, gives some away, etc.  In a welfare state and especially in the full blown socialist society, it is government, with the people left “permitted” to make some decisions about the allocation of resources.

Which is it to be in America?  Why and how?  That is what could be fruitfully debated now! But instead the campaign is bogged down in moronic trivia and detail. It should be dealing with the fundamentals of the nature of free government--at least a substantially free government!  

            No.  The Democrats refuse to admit that they really favor the socialist alternative, basically; and the Republicans lack the philosophical savvy to stand up for a truly free system of government, wherein the latter is seriously limited in its powers.

Some Past Reflections on America

Some Past Reflections on America

Tibor R. Machan

Mitt Romney might have made reference to some of the ideas of Alexis de Tocqueville and shamed his critics into attempting to ridicule or denounce these.  I am surprised no one prominent in public life has recently called attention to some of them, so well articulated by de Tocqueville, perhaps the most astute European (French) observer of America.  Here is a sample:

“In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it....”

“What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.....”

“It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.....”

Why So Thin Skinned?

Why So Thin Skinned?

Tibor R. Machan

I really don’t get why so many Muslims are so thin skinned.  Nearly everyone has experienced ridicule, verbal abuse, what have you, yet in my experience hardly anyone who has strikes out at the abusive people with violence and brutality.  

My own viewpoints on innumerable topics have been put down both verbally, to my face, and in print--as a columnist in several newspapers, magazines and on numerous Websites I have received insults galore--yet it would never occur to me to burn down the critics’ homes or automobiles or such.  I have lived all around the Western World and in hardly any country is it deemed right and proper to react to verbal or written criticism, or even abuse and ridicule, in any other way but peacefully!  

Ordinarily I uphold the idea that people are people, first and foremost--capable of rationality and civility--and are due, in turn, civilized treatment but with all this barbarian conduct in the Middle East and elsewhere I am beginning to suspect that some of these people are seriously afflicted with mental aberrations. Maybe entire cultures suffer from such afflictions.  I don’t know but it makes sense to me.   

Comment on Benghazi Murders

A Very Brief Comment on the Benghazi Murders

TIbor R. Machan

The fact that objectionable material published on the web is invoked to justify murder shows the sad state of affairs in Benghazi and elsewhere in the region.  An expression of an opinion, however offensive or blasphemous, is just no justification for murder.  In most of the West people are free to insult the head of the Roman Catholic or any other church, presidents of countries, CEOs, entertainers, etc.  It is a mark of civilization that insults are not acceptable grounds for violence.  The old adage "Sticks and stones, but not words!" applies here perfectly.  That is indeed one reason for the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  

These perpetrators are barbarians, one has to conclude, and they should be dealt with accordingly, not diplomatically! They should be arrested and charged and due process should be employed in prosecuting them for their acts.

Also, why is there so little discussion about the right of free expression in connection with this story?  When American flags used to be burned, liberals all stood up defending the rights of the perpetrators, as they should have.  In Skokie, Illinois, the rights of Nazis were defended even though they marched provocatively in Jewish neighborhoods.  

            But there is very little about the rights of the film makers to make their point with their movie.  In a civilized society citizens are free to express even vile opinions and civil libertarians such as the ACLU usually defend their right to do so.  Suddenly no word from these civil libertarians.  Why?

Dworkin's Plain Statism

Dworkin’s Plain Statism

Tibor R. Machan

      As is usually the case, The New York Review of Books gives ample room to some Leftist jurists, like Professors David Cole or Ronald Dworkin, to provide the politically correct commentary on a major ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court.  And, so unsurprisingly, Professor Dworkin penned such a piece in the magazine’s August 16, 2012, issue.  It is a beauty of statist jurisprudence arguing that all in all the Roberts Court’s recent decision to give President Obama’s signature health care program a pass was a welcome thing from the Left’s perspective. (Others, like Professor Randy Barnett, have made arguments from the libertarian side, holding that the ruling isn't so bad for those who want to advance the cause of human liberty. See the interview with Professor Barnett in Reason, October 2012.)

      I leave others to deal with the legal technicalities of Professor Dworkin’s argument and wish to focus on what is actually a sort of sidebar remark he makes about the court’s earlier ruling, in the 2010 Citizens United case, which Dworkin, of course, detests.  By his account business corporations--companies of people coming together voluntarily so as to embark upon various commercial projects--are not to be treated as people who can offer political opinions and give support to politicians or to public policies.  It is the following passage that jumped out at me:

“The conservative majority’s opinion in that case insisted that such corporate expenditures [in support of championing some public policies or opposing others] would not create even the appearance of corruption.  This year the state of Montana pleaded with the Court to rethink that judgment: the state said that the amount and evident political impact of corporate electioneering in the past two years has conclusively demonstrated a risk of corruption...” (NYRB, 8/2012:6).

What stood out to me in this remark is how readily Professor Dworkin refers to the state of Montana, and by implication any other state or country, as if it were a person who can make statements, issues pleas, etc.  He has no problem with writing “the state of Montana pleaded,” and “the state said.”  Yet the entire point of his piece is that corporations are not persons who can have opinions, views, make statements, etc.

What is important is how readily Professor Dworkin personalizes the state of Montana, and by implication other political bodies, even though such references fly in the face of the plain fact that states, unlike corporations, are comprised of highly diverse citizens and to see them as having one mind and one voice is simply wrong.  It reveals the ideology of a statist of treats governments are personas even while refusing to admit that voluntarily assembled business corporations and labor unions can express opinions and champion political causes.

In short, for Professor Dworkin states or governments that are collections of extremely diverse populations, can but companies of human beings who decided to embark upon common projects cannot be regarded as persons.  That is the height of collectivism.

In the case of Justice Roberts himself, Professor Dworkin refuses to accept the justice’s argument at face value and contend with it as such; instead he proceeds to speculate on Justice Roberts’ motives—he “must feel threatened” by various elements of the political landscape, etc., etc., and made his ruling because of such facts, not because he judged the case as meriting his ruling. 

Such psychological speculations do not belong in disputations about whether a given ruling by a court has or lacks validity and is usually indulged in by people who want to avoid real arguments.  But, never mind that.  What is more important is how easily Professor Dworkin slips into his statist parlance, endorsing the idea that states, unlike voluntarily assembled companies of people, are persons! It is not surprising, considering that the good professor is a leading opponent of all traces of individualism and voluntarism from our legal system.

Phony Intimacy

Phony Intimacy

Tibor R. Machan

Mrs. Obama was praised for reporting in her speech at the Democratic National Convention that President Obama takes his mission to be a personal one, that he treats the citizenry intimately, attending to the private problems of citizens.

Actually it is a bad thing that Mr. Obama treats his role as president of the USA as a personal one. It is not. He is supposed to be guarding the basic public ideas and ideals of the country and not attend to people's personal affairs.

Personalizing politics is the road to totalitarianism--it tends to make one into a micro-manager of everyone's life in the country. Not only is that a futile effort but it is utterly insulting to the citizenry, as if we couldn't deal with our challenges without the president's meddling in our affairs. It leads to the strong arm policies of a Stalin, the practices of police states in which the government takes the role of micro-managing the country’s population. That is the way of the police as bully, not as peacekeeper.

The American Founders understood that a free country isn't the laboratory of master politicians--czars, monarchs, Caesars, etc.

Obama doesn't get, or more likely doesn't like, it!

The Logic of Entitlement

The Logic of Entitlement

Tibor R. Machan

So the other morning I woke up to the disturbing news from the Big Apple that some disgruntled ex-employee of the Empire State Building went on a shooting spree and killed someone, after which he was himself shot to death by police.  No, I don’t know the details but even the sketchy story points up something about the logic of entitlement.

Remember that according to the proposed “second bill of rights,” one proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and championed by many very prominent people in the legal profession, such as President and former law professor Barack Obama and his favorite legal theorists, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein (who wrote a book trying to justify the basic right to employment, among other things), everyone has the right to a job.  The United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights states this too, in Article 23: “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment....”  This according to its supporters, is a basic right, comparable to the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the U. S. Constitution, such as the right to one’s life and liberty.

One implication of having a basic right is that anytime it is being threatened and no law enforcement officer is present to resist the threat, one is at least morally but often legally justified in resisting such a threat.  So, for example, if one’s right to life is threatened, one may defend oneself and such defense can involve killing the perpetrator of the threat.  The right to self defense arises from the right to one’s life and liberty.

If, now, one has the right to work and to protection against unemployment, one may be understood to take it that one is justified in defending oneself against the threat to take from one one’s job.  If then one is fired from a job without proper cause, such as having committed a crime, one may be forgiven for taking it that one is justified in resisting this, in putting up self-defense when one’s job has been taken from one.

Indeed, being entitled to something--having proper title to something--confers upon one the right to defend against anyone who would deprive one of what one is entitled to.  Usually the legal authorities take care of this but in the case of the perpetrator of the shooting at the Empire State Building on August 24th, 2012, it can be argued that he was entitled to the job that was taken from him and lacking police protection against having one’s job taken from one could reasonably understand that he could resist this, if need be violently.

Indeed, entitlements may be defended, logically speaking, with whatever force is needed to prevent being deprived of them. One may violently resist trespassers, burglars, robbers, kidnappers, etc.  So in the understanding that follows the doctrine of basic entitlements, a doctrine widely preached by political theorists who hold that one is owed service from others, including being provided with employment, someone whose job is taken from him is justified to resisting this, including by means of force. QED

A more sensible and civilized understanding sees jobs as the result of employment agreements between two willing parties and no one is entitle to have another give one a job.  Yes, jobs are important and valuable but can only be had once both parties, employer and employee agree to work with each other.

The Era of Procrustes

The Era of Procrustes

Tibor R. Machan

It used to be an ugly trait to be envious.  Envy is when one holds that it would be best if everyone were equally badly off.  If you are better off than I am, envy will incline me to want you to give up whatever it is that is advantageous and accept burdens up to the point where you are no better off than is anyone else.  Makes little sense but there you go.

When I came to the USA I managed to get admitted to a college that mostly well to do students attended. For example, during the Christmas break a good many of them went off to St. Moritz and Veil to do some skiing, something I couldn’t do as a first generation immigrant.  I took some job during the break while my mates were off doing all kinds of fun stuff.

Although I noticed this, I never felt even a smidgen of envy.  Indeed, my feeling tended toward delight, knowing that in time I may well take similar vacations or, at least, my own offspring will be able to do so.  And while I lived in a room in a house owned by a lady near the college, most of my classmates had far more impressive accommodations.  And I thought, “Good for them--there is where I want to be in the future!”  Not, “What horrors, they are doing better than I am,” at least in some basic respects.

Later in my education I ran across the myth of Procrustes.  He was the fellow who invited guests to his abode only to cut them all down to one size so they could fit his bed.  Over the years I found that Procrustes’ solution to differences among his guests was the same as that of a great many political theorists, including many who are now in charge of public policies in America and across the globe.  One size needs to fit all!  Anytime someone is a bit better off than others, this must be remedied by eliminating the difference.  Equality is the operative ideal these days. Just watch all the fuss about Mitt Romney’s wealth.

Not everyone falls in line with this and here and there are some very formidable dissidents, among them George Orwell whose story Animal Farm teaches very valuable lessons about this destructive social philosophy.  Making everyone equal, in economic or other matters, is mostly a failed mission and invites the worst of all inequalities, namely, inequality of political power.  Those imposing the ideal of equality will be anything but equal to those on whom they impose their misconceived idealistic policies.  Just think of the old Soviet Union.

Yet, despite his education, President Obama and his pals tend to be an avid egalitarians.  They don’t even allow that some people may have worked hard enough to get ahead of others in wealth creation.  For him no one could have achieved the advantages he or she enjoys.

Luckily we have reminders aplenty that this fanaticism about equality is totally misguided and dangerous to boot.  The recent Olympic Games helps to see just how crazy egalitarianism is.  And anyone who teaches in the various schools where young people are attempting to gain knowledge and are tested for how well their efforts have paid off cannot miss the fact that those who study hard tend to get farther than those who just hang out at school.

Sadly egalitarianism gains support from some pseudo science in our day, especially the kind that insists that no one has any power over his or her life, that our actions are all driven by impersonal forces.  Despite the paradox involved in this kind of thinking--which, if true, would allow for no remedies of anything at all--a lot of people jump on the bandwagon and it gains enormous institutional support around the educational, psychological community.

But a good dosage of common sense alone should serve to repel that kind of support for egalitarianism. After all, the egalitarians who want to make changes in our institutions are clearly not buying it.  They think they can certainly make a big difference.  But if they can, so can we all.

Another Attempt to Bluff Us All

Another Attempt to Bluff Us All

Tibor R. Machan

Those aspiring to manage our lives, to take it over and run it according to their vision, never tire of trying to bluff us into letting down our guards.  Now come Robert and Edward Skidelsky, in a book titled How Much is Enough? (Allen Lane, 2012), claiming that there’s just too much capitalism afoot and this must be contained.  I assume by them and their pals.  They urge us to re-examine economic growth “as an end in itself,” without any connection to “what a good life might look like.”

Who are these blokes kidding? First, most ordinary folks with solid academic jobs and are not writing widely promoted, prestigious books, could really use a solid dosage of economic growth these days.  If they got that, they would know readily enough what a good life might look like--we do not need Skidelsky & Son to instruct everyone about such matters.  Who are these philosopher king types to presume they have an answer for us all about something that is very closely tied to who and what we are as individuals and members of various families and communities of which this father and son team have very little of the necessary knowledge?  

But of course beating up on an imaginary dominant consumerism and capitalism has a clear, not so hidden agenda motivating it.  Supporters of the two have chimed in with even more nonsense than they produced in their book.  Thus Larry Elliott in the UK newspaper The Guardian opined that we would all be so much better off if the stranglehold of “Anglo-Saxon capitalism” didn’t have us in its grip!  What these people advise is that our lives be modified as follows: “Sprinkle in a bit of Keynesian liberalism and a pinch of social democracy, and the good society is within reach.”

Balderdash!  Our lives are already fully ruled according to their vision.  We have a bunch of Keynesian liberalism on both sides of the Atlantic--just recall the endless stimulus packages we’ve seen recently, following the Keynesian policies promoted by Professor Paul Krugman and his fellow statist tinkerers; consider the social democracy that’s been flooding Europe and the rest of the Western world (Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Australia, etc., etc.).  

The last thing we have around the globe is the boogie man of global capitalism.  At most we have some cronyism running amuck everywhere, but certainly no capitalism, with its strict adherence to private property rights, freedom of contract, personal responsibility for one’s winnings and losses and no politicians determining who are the winners and losers.  

As to the malarkey of having “too much” and the need to have this curtailed by yet another team of elitists eggheads, the idea has been around since Plato’s Republic (who didn’t really mean it anyway), and by now we should know better than to place our trust in these meddlers who would eagerly rule whatever realm they can dominate with their crackpot opinions.

Consider, finally, just who the the most widely respected “thinkers” of our area and of the past two centuries.  It is not the champions of capitalism and economic growth but the social democrats and their ilk who have been governing most countries around the world since at least FDR’s New Deal but more likely since onset of swishy-washy welfare statism foisted upon us by the likes of Otto von Bismarck. While not himself a socialist, Bismarck certainly gave the idea of statism in matters of economic security, education, and the like a powerful boost.  More to the point, there hasn’t been much of a bona fide capitalist culture or economy since Bismarck’s rule in Germany and even America came more under his influence than that of Adam Smith, not to mention Ludwig von Mises or Milton Friedman, as intimated by the Skidelsky father-son team.

Honest intellectual and political economic history is vital to an understanding of society but the sort being peddled by the social democratic left is a distortion of the truth for unabashed ideological purposes.