Misunderstanding the Fiasco
Tibor R. Machan
My concern here isn't with identifying who or what produced the recent financial fiasco but with whether and how one might produce such an identification.
It is my contention that in a thoroughly mixed economic system such as that of the U.S.A., untangling the macroeconomic or general cause and effect process is nearly impossible. It is not possible, in any case, without a comprehensive theory of how an economy works in terms of which one could then determine, despite the mass of confusing data, what could have gone amiss. Unless one has a good theory about such matters, the mere listing of events and factors just will not suffice. All that gives is hints, at most.
In the Sunday New York Times of April 11, 2010, Frank Rich tries again, as have many others, to assign responsibility of what happened as is still happening to such people as former Fed Chief Greenspan and treasury secretary Rubin. But once one appreciates the difficulty involved in sorting out what did and did not contribute to what went down, which public policies, the decisions of which public officials, the practices of which market institutions or the actions of which market agents--of whom there were, of course, millions--it can been conjectures with considerable confidence that Rubin and, especially, Greenspan are mere stand-ins in a philosophical and macroeconomic conflict between those who trust everything to government and those who have confidence in free institutions.
Because Greenspan was once associated with radical capitalist thinking, such as Ayn Rand's Objectivism, he is constantly being derided. But it's pure politics or ideology; no one really knows what or who in this country's terribly mixed economy brought about the recent financial fiasco. Most who seek to blame are scapegoating, nothing more, using the occasion to score points against what they disapprove of. (Greenspan was generally approved of by most as the Fed's chief even though he himself never made much of the job--just read his 1997 lecture about central banking to the Association of Private Enterprise Education at http://www.bis.org/review/r970502b.pdf) Frank Rich himself is but a latecomer here. It is Paul Krugman, his colleague at The Times, who puts forth the most dogmatically stated blame, namely, that what is responsible is the legacy of Reaganomics and so called market fundamentalism, a phony whipping boy if there ever was one.
When wide ranging events of very serious harmful impact occur in a mixed economy, to be able to figure out which portion of the mixture was most responsible is very tough. One needs, oddly enough, a general framework, just the sort that the likes of Krugman and Mr. Obama disparage constantly. These people are avowed pragmatists and for them any theoretical analysis of such events amounts to nothing more than cheap ideology.
By "ideology" they mean something unspecified--I have never read anything by either Krugman or Obama that explains their use of the term, as if it were a simple concept, which it isn't. One can only infer their meaning indirectly, from the fact that they tend to contrast it with pragmatism and "pragmatism" does have a pretty specific, commonly understood meaning. It refers to an intellectual disposition that rejects systematic analysis of events and things in the world. "Unprincipled" may capture it correctly and the reason for this is that a serious, traditional pragmatist claims there simply are no fundamental principles in such disciplines as economics, political economy, or even philosophy. All that's possible is a kind of catch-as-catch-can approach, a focus on what happens to bring about what one likes to bring about.
The general framework approach would start with the development of certain theories of human economic life that produce such systems of analysis as laissez-faire capitalism, socialism, fascism, communism, communitarianism, the welfare state and the like (with the ultimate goal of applying the best to actual public policy). From extensive historical study and sorting out of data, thinkers arrive at such broad systems and use these to analyze the very messy world in which economic events occur.
There simply is no way to escape theorizing, contrary to pragmatism. And so the only approach to figuring out what happened is by deploying the best of these general accounts of human economic life and see what it tells us. Yes, in this case theory comes before adequate understanding (but the theory has to be a sound one, which is no easy requirement to meet).
Until such an approach is recognized as the sort needed to figure things out, all that will be in evidence is a nearly random but emphatic finger pointing, with the hope to clinching the case for one's partisan analysis through intimidation.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Friday, April 09, 2010
Defending Liberty the Best Way
Tibor R. Machan
When liberty is attacked by its critics and enemies, often defenders pull out the skeptical ploy: "No one can know right from wrong, so no one may force others to comply with any standards of right versus wrong. Who can tell how we ought to act? And if no one can, as surely no one can, then no one may force anyone to do the right thing. It would be shooting in the dark."
The famous American classical liberal/libertarian, the late Milton Friedman, put it this way in an interview he gave in 1975 in Reason Magazine: "I think that the crucial question that anybody who believes in freedom has to ask himself is whether to let another man be free to sin. If you really know what sin is, if you could be absolutely certain that you had the revealed truth, then you could not let another man sin. You have to stop him." He also wrote, in his famous book, Capitalism and Freedom: “The liberal conceives of men as imperfect beings. He regards the problem of social organization to be as much a negative problem of preventing ‘bad’ people from doing harm as of enabling ‘good’ people to do good; and, of course, ‘bad’ and ‘good’ people may be the same people, depending on who is judging them.”
It is well known that Friedman was a great champion of human liberty. He supported his position, however, by claiming that no one can “really know what sin is.” And he argued that “if you could be absolutely certain that you had the revealed truth, [then] you could not let another man sin.”
This is a pivotal matter and doesn't really help support human liberty very much, although it has some notable champions, such as Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago. In his book Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism Epstein lays out in great detail this line of support for the free society. Don't interfere with people so as to promote some valuable goal because, well, you cannot know what is valuable.
There is something seriously amiss with this way of defending human liberty and the free society. It can be made evident without too much difficulty. The bottom line is that very few people actually believe that one cannot know what is right versus wrong. Our criminal law certainly assumes the opposite, so many defendants are sent to prison for doing the criminally wrong thing (which is often supported by our supposedly knowledge of what is morally wrong). Parents, surely, profess to know right versus wrong when they rear their children. And as far as our conduct is concerned, it is totally unrealistic to hold that when we try to do what is right and refrain from doing what is wrong, we could accept that are always in the dark.
But not only is moral skepticism not widely accepted by people throughout the world, it is illogical to maintain the position. To start with a very plain case, even to say that "one should not interfere with others" is to commit oneself to a position on what is right versus wrong. This is the moral imperative requiring respect for others' liberty. You are saying, clearly, that people ought to refrain from intrusive conduct toward their fellows, which is a moral or normative judgment if anything is.
But what about Milton Friedman's claim that if one knows what sin is--what doing wrong is--one must stop it? Well, it is wrong. When people are required to do the right thing or avoid doing what is wrong, they must do this of their own free will. Otherwise their conduct has no moral significance. Forcing others to be good is an oxymoron. Doing what is right or not doing what is wrong has to be a matter of choice to be morally worthwhile. The only time one may intrude on others who do the wrong thing is if what they do amounts to intruding on their fellows, as in murder, theft, assault, rape, etc. When their wrongdoing is peaceful, no interference is justified.
That is what lies at the heart of human freedom: it is absolutely necessary for the morally significant life (although it is also very useful). That is why the nanny state, authoritarianism, paternalism, and totalitarianism are all very bad ideas--they promote treating people without regard to their moral agency, their responsibility to lead a moral life of their own free choices.
Knowing someone else is doing wrong, sinning or being vicious, doesn't justify interference. One may advocate that such people improve themselves but not force them to do so, not unless self-defense of the defense of innocent victims is involved. Everything else that is right needs to be done voluntarily. Otherwise the very humanity of people is being denied.
Tibor R. Machan
When liberty is attacked by its critics and enemies, often defenders pull out the skeptical ploy: "No one can know right from wrong, so no one may force others to comply with any standards of right versus wrong. Who can tell how we ought to act? And if no one can, as surely no one can, then no one may force anyone to do the right thing. It would be shooting in the dark."
The famous American classical liberal/libertarian, the late Milton Friedman, put it this way in an interview he gave in 1975 in Reason Magazine: "I think that the crucial question that anybody who believes in freedom has to ask himself is whether to let another man be free to sin. If you really know what sin is, if you could be absolutely certain that you had the revealed truth, then you could not let another man sin. You have to stop him." He also wrote, in his famous book, Capitalism and Freedom: “The liberal conceives of men as imperfect beings. He regards the problem of social organization to be as much a negative problem of preventing ‘bad’ people from doing harm as of enabling ‘good’ people to do good; and, of course, ‘bad’ and ‘good’ people may be the same people, depending on who is judging them.”
It is well known that Friedman was a great champion of human liberty. He supported his position, however, by claiming that no one can “really know what sin is.” And he argued that “if you could be absolutely certain that you had the revealed truth, [then] you could not let another man sin.”
This is a pivotal matter and doesn't really help support human liberty very much, although it has some notable champions, such as Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago. In his book Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism Epstein lays out in great detail this line of support for the free society. Don't interfere with people so as to promote some valuable goal because, well, you cannot know what is valuable.
There is something seriously amiss with this way of defending human liberty and the free society. It can be made evident without too much difficulty. The bottom line is that very few people actually believe that one cannot know what is right versus wrong. Our criminal law certainly assumes the opposite, so many defendants are sent to prison for doing the criminally wrong thing (which is often supported by our supposedly knowledge of what is morally wrong). Parents, surely, profess to know right versus wrong when they rear their children. And as far as our conduct is concerned, it is totally unrealistic to hold that when we try to do what is right and refrain from doing what is wrong, we could accept that are always in the dark.
But not only is moral skepticism not widely accepted by people throughout the world, it is illogical to maintain the position. To start with a very plain case, even to say that "one should not interfere with others" is to commit oneself to a position on what is right versus wrong. This is the moral imperative requiring respect for others' liberty. You are saying, clearly, that people ought to refrain from intrusive conduct toward their fellows, which is a moral or normative judgment if anything is.
But what about Milton Friedman's claim that if one knows what sin is--what doing wrong is--one must stop it? Well, it is wrong. When people are required to do the right thing or avoid doing what is wrong, they must do this of their own free will. Otherwise their conduct has no moral significance. Forcing others to be good is an oxymoron. Doing what is right or not doing what is wrong has to be a matter of choice to be morally worthwhile. The only time one may intrude on others who do the wrong thing is if what they do amounts to intruding on their fellows, as in murder, theft, assault, rape, etc. When their wrongdoing is peaceful, no interference is justified.
That is what lies at the heart of human freedom: it is absolutely necessary for the morally significant life (although it is also very useful). That is why the nanny state, authoritarianism, paternalism, and totalitarianism are all very bad ideas--they promote treating people without regard to their moral agency, their responsibility to lead a moral life of their own free choices.
Knowing someone else is doing wrong, sinning or being vicious, doesn't justify interference. One may advocate that such people improve themselves but not force them to do so, not unless self-defense of the defense of innocent victims is involved. Everything else that is right needs to be done voluntarily. Otherwise the very humanity of people is being denied.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Ralph Nader's Turn About?
Tibor R. Machan
So we have it on the good authority of The London Times that all is well with the Obama Administration's latest interference with the market place. Here is how The Times reported on this long-desired development, admittedly desired by but fraction of those concerned:
"In a coup that achieves something President Clinton promised but never delivered, President Obama has forced the big three US carmakers, and their unions, to accept tough mileage rules for cars and SUVs. The rules will cut emissions from vehicles by more than a third over the next four years. Whether the new rules end America's love affair with huge cars remains to be seen. But they are being introduced at a time when SUV sales are at a fraction of their peak level five years ago. Their demise coincides with the country's first mass-produced 'plug-in' electric car, which finally rolled off a Michigan production line this week. From 2016, new cars and SUVs will have to deliver an average of 35.5 miles per gallon (42.6 miles per British gallon), comparable for the first time with European and Japanese requirements. ... The rules were welcomed yesterday by the industry and environmentalists. The US Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which had little choice but to accept the standards after the $25 billion bailout of Chrysler and General Motors, said they gave the industry 'a clear road map' instead of a patchwork of differing state rules. The Natural Resources Defense Council said they were 'good for consumers, companies, the country and the planet'. Ray LaHood, Mr. Obama's Transportation Secretary, called them 'historic', claiming they would save consumers $3,000 per new vehicle and cut emissions by 1 billion tons." (Times of London)
Maybe I am just a tad too gleeful here, about the noticeable absence in this discussion of famed consumer defender and frequent American presidential candidate Ralph Nader who back in the mid-1960s penned his path breaking book, Unsafe at Any Speed (Grossman, 1965). Doesn't anyone else recall how vividly Nader condemned small cars back then claiming they are the source of traffic fatalities everywhere? Corvair, I believe, was one of his major targets and there was a huge court case involving that rare vehicle, a small car out of Detroit. (In an ironic twist, though, as recounted by author Bob Helt, "The 1960-63 Corvair compares favorably with contemporary vehicles used in the tests...the handling and stability performance of the 1960-63 Corvair does not result in an abnormal potential for loss of control or rollover, and it is at least as good as the performance of some contemporary vehicles both foreign and domestic.")
I am no expert on the history of this famous episode of one of Nader's influential roles as a consumer activist, one that both made him rich and helped him become a major player in public policy matters. What prompts me to bring up Nader, however, is that by all rights it seems to me that he ought to be a big, vocal defender of Detroit's switch to the production of SUVs, which are by all counts mostly very safe vehicles--the bigger, the safer--ones one would certainly want to be driving if one is going to be in a car crash, which is to say if one is primarily concerned with the safety of the occupants of a vehicle as Ralph Nader made out he was.
But I certainly haven't heard from Nader on this topic. Is it because he changed his mind? Has he come to the conclusion that small cars are, after all, better for us all than the gas guzzling SUVs?
It appears to me that some journalists ought to be curious about this and interview Mr. Nader now that SUVs (what I can only consider his dream cars from the perspective of highway safety for vehicle occupants) are under global assault. Maybe he has changed his views but if I recall correctly he wasn't all that concerned about the cost of safety back then. Maybe, in an interesting twist, he would not be today either.
But hasn't Mr. Nader become a big fan of "green"? If so, then by his current ideological commitments would naturally deride SUVs, after all. In any case, it seems to me that he owes us an explanation of where he stands in this debate--for "green" or for safety.
Tibor R. Machan
So we have it on the good authority of The London Times that all is well with the Obama Administration's latest interference with the market place. Here is how The Times reported on this long-desired development, admittedly desired by but fraction of those concerned:
"In a coup that achieves something President Clinton promised but never delivered, President Obama has forced the big three US carmakers, and their unions, to accept tough mileage rules for cars and SUVs. The rules will cut emissions from vehicles by more than a third over the next four years. Whether the new rules end America's love affair with huge cars remains to be seen. But they are being introduced at a time when SUV sales are at a fraction of their peak level five years ago. Their demise coincides with the country's first mass-produced 'plug-in' electric car, which finally rolled off a Michigan production line this week. From 2016, new cars and SUVs will have to deliver an average of 35.5 miles per gallon (42.6 miles per British gallon), comparable for the first time with European and Japanese requirements. ... The rules were welcomed yesterday by the industry and environmentalists. The US Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which had little choice but to accept the standards after the $25 billion bailout of Chrysler and General Motors, said they gave the industry 'a clear road map' instead of a patchwork of differing state rules. The Natural Resources Defense Council said they were 'good for consumers, companies, the country and the planet'. Ray LaHood, Mr. Obama's Transportation Secretary, called them 'historic', claiming they would save consumers $3,000 per new vehicle and cut emissions by 1 billion tons." (Times of London)
Maybe I am just a tad too gleeful here, about the noticeable absence in this discussion of famed consumer defender and frequent American presidential candidate Ralph Nader who back in the mid-1960s penned his path breaking book, Unsafe at Any Speed (Grossman, 1965). Doesn't anyone else recall how vividly Nader condemned small cars back then claiming they are the source of traffic fatalities everywhere? Corvair, I believe, was one of his major targets and there was a huge court case involving that rare vehicle, a small car out of Detroit. (In an ironic twist, though, as recounted by author Bob Helt, "The 1960-63 Corvair compares favorably with contemporary vehicles used in the tests...the handling and stability performance of the 1960-63 Corvair does not result in an abnormal potential for loss of control or rollover, and it is at least as good as the performance of some contemporary vehicles both foreign and domestic.")
I am no expert on the history of this famous episode of one of Nader's influential roles as a consumer activist, one that both made him rich and helped him become a major player in public policy matters. What prompts me to bring up Nader, however, is that by all rights it seems to me that he ought to be a big, vocal defender of Detroit's switch to the production of SUVs, which are by all counts mostly very safe vehicles--the bigger, the safer--ones one would certainly want to be driving if one is going to be in a car crash, which is to say if one is primarily concerned with the safety of the occupants of a vehicle as Ralph Nader made out he was.
But I certainly haven't heard from Nader on this topic. Is it because he changed his mind? Has he come to the conclusion that small cars are, after all, better for us all than the gas guzzling SUVs?
It appears to me that some journalists ought to be curious about this and interview Mr. Nader now that SUVs (what I can only consider his dream cars from the perspective of highway safety for vehicle occupants) are under global assault. Maybe he has changed his views but if I recall correctly he wasn't all that concerned about the cost of safety back then. Maybe, in an interesting twist, he would not be today either.
But hasn't Mr. Nader become a big fan of "green"? If so, then by his current ideological commitments would naturally deride SUVs, after all. In any case, it seems to me that he owes us an explanation of where he stands in this debate--for "green" or for safety.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Democracy Leads to Lies & Worse
Tibor R. Machan
Democracy is not all bad, don't misunderstand me. It is only bad when it becomes the central political principle.
In a free society some democracy is necessary because it amounts to everyone having a say in political matters, something that's their right. To refuse to acknowledge this right is to deny an important freedom to some, those left out.
The real issue about democracy is what is the scope of politics. If it is, as it should be, minimal, the scope that it must have in a free country, there is no problem with democracy. Let us do vote on who gets to be the sheriff, the presiding officer, or on the city council, provided these folks aren't permitted to meddle in matters that are not their proper job.
But once democracy expands its reach beyond this limited realm of minimal politics, it leads to all kinds of corruption. Like facilitating larceny and oppression. If the many vote themselves the belongings of the few, this is corruption. If the many impose their life style, religion, priorities, and other matters on the rest, that is corruption by democracy.
We can see this everywhere when politicians of all kinds keep talking about how "the American people" want this, or don't want that, etc. Take the recent health care measures Obama & Co. pushed through oh so democratically. The Democrats kept saying this is what "the American people want," while the Republicans kept saying "the American people don't want this." How could they both make such claims with even a modicum of credibility?
Well, because once a pretty large number of Americans want something, in a bloated democracy it sounds ok to say that "the American people" want it. Even if it is clearly, unambiguously evident that they do not and that only some of them do.
Maybe it is just laziness. It may simply be too exhausting to have to say "a portion of the American citizenry wants X," while "another portion of the American citizenry does not want X." But is it really so hard? I doubt it but maybe for some it is. Or maybe the fact that the truth is a bit nuanced provides politicians and their cheerleaders an excuse for lying. Because to say "the American people want Obamacare" and "the American people do not want Obamacare" amounts to plain old lying. It is, however, so common, so much a part of the lingo of democracy that the lies come very easy and have become habitual.
Yet, there is no doubt, they are lies. Unless the doctrine that the majority does in fact speak for all of us is true. In that case whatever does gain majority support must be treated as something we all want. But is that for real? Only if this kind of collectivist thinking is sound.
Unfortunately, it is deemed to be sound by many who discuss and teach political science in high schools, colleges and universities. A great many of such folks are seriously convinced that individuals do not actually exists, only groups do. So if you are a dissident, if you reject what the majority wants, you simply do not count for anything. You are this dreaded political virus, an individualist.
Yet democracy itself is, of course, founded on individualism. The demos, the public, cannot exists without its individual components. And it is because these individual have the right to give direction to their lives that they have the right to take part in politics. Ergo, democracy.
And, as already noted, there would be nothing wrong with that provided the scope of politics--where democratic decision making matters--is properly limited. As someone has recently pointed out, what we need is liberal democracies, not illiberal ones. And the former means, strictly speaking, democracies that are contained and constrained by the individual rights of every citizen in the country.
One other problem is that for so many centuries hardly anyone could take part in politics apart from some thugs (at times very well dressed, admittedly). So for millions across the globe just being asked to pitch in a little is quite a lot. It should not be enough but in contrast to the past, it is at least something.
Now if only they realized that it isn't enough, that one would be enough would be if they were all free individuals and protected even from majorities, not just thugs.
Tibor R. Machan
Democracy is not all bad, don't misunderstand me. It is only bad when it becomes the central political principle.
In a free society some democracy is necessary because it amounts to everyone having a say in political matters, something that's their right. To refuse to acknowledge this right is to deny an important freedom to some, those left out.
The real issue about democracy is what is the scope of politics. If it is, as it should be, minimal, the scope that it must have in a free country, there is no problem with democracy. Let us do vote on who gets to be the sheriff, the presiding officer, or on the city council, provided these folks aren't permitted to meddle in matters that are not their proper job.
But once democracy expands its reach beyond this limited realm of minimal politics, it leads to all kinds of corruption. Like facilitating larceny and oppression. If the many vote themselves the belongings of the few, this is corruption. If the many impose their life style, religion, priorities, and other matters on the rest, that is corruption by democracy.
We can see this everywhere when politicians of all kinds keep talking about how "the American people" want this, or don't want that, etc. Take the recent health care measures Obama & Co. pushed through oh so democratically. The Democrats kept saying this is what "the American people want," while the Republicans kept saying "the American people don't want this." How could they both make such claims with even a modicum of credibility?
Well, because once a pretty large number of Americans want something, in a bloated democracy it sounds ok to say that "the American people" want it. Even if it is clearly, unambiguously evident that they do not and that only some of them do.
Maybe it is just laziness. It may simply be too exhausting to have to say "a portion of the American citizenry wants X," while "another portion of the American citizenry does not want X." But is it really so hard? I doubt it but maybe for some it is. Or maybe the fact that the truth is a bit nuanced provides politicians and their cheerleaders an excuse for lying. Because to say "the American people want Obamacare" and "the American people do not want Obamacare" amounts to plain old lying. It is, however, so common, so much a part of the lingo of democracy that the lies come very easy and have become habitual.
Yet, there is no doubt, they are lies. Unless the doctrine that the majority does in fact speak for all of us is true. In that case whatever does gain majority support must be treated as something we all want. But is that for real? Only if this kind of collectivist thinking is sound.
Unfortunately, it is deemed to be sound by many who discuss and teach political science in high schools, colleges and universities. A great many of such folks are seriously convinced that individuals do not actually exists, only groups do. So if you are a dissident, if you reject what the majority wants, you simply do not count for anything. You are this dreaded political virus, an individualist.
Yet democracy itself is, of course, founded on individualism. The demos, the public, cannot exists without its individual components. And it is because these individual have the right to give direction to their lives that they have the right to take part in politics. Ergo, democracy.
And, as already noted, there would be nothing wrong with that provided the scope of politics--where democratic decision making matters--is properly limited. As someone has recently pointed out, what we need is liberal democracies, not illiberal ones. And the former means, strictly speaking, democracies that are contained and constrained by the individual rights of every citizen in the country.
One other problem is that for so many centuries hardly anyone could take part in politics apart from some thugs (at times very well dressed, admittedly). So for millions across the globe just being asked to pitch in a little is quite a lot. It should not be enough but in contrast to the past, it is at least something.
Now if only they realized that it isn't enough, that one would be enough would be if they were all free individuals and protected even from majorities, not just thugs.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
So then Be A Proud Socialist!
Tibor R. Machan
It is disgusting to witness all the dishonesty surrounding the current administration's public policy efforts. Even the new language columnist of The New York Times Magazine is in denial and pretends to consider it some kind of smear--even conspiracy--for those not among Mr. Obama's fan base to refer Obama & Co. as socialists. Why?
Socialism is a well respected political economic alternative for which some of the best minds and hearts of human history have done fierce battle. No, it is not a good political economic system but those who are socialists believe it is. So why don't they and their cheerleaders in the media admit it, even proudly announce it at every turn, that they support socialism? I am not ashamed of being a champion of laissez-faire capitalism, so why do they pretend to be less than enthusiastic about their democratic socialism?
In American history there have been proud socialists aplenty--Normal Thomas being perhaps the most public of them. But there was, also, Michael Harrington who, historians claim, was personally responsible for Lyndon Baines Johnson's "war on poverty" and some other, for my money futile and even hazardous, efforts to drive American more and more toward socialism. Why dishonor these folks with, for example, a bunch of phony denials about what the recently passed Obamacare legislation was about. Of course it was a step toward socialism and Mr. Obama, if he had an ounce of genuine candor and courage, would not keep dodging the issue. (Maybe he wants some kind of goulash socialism, like Janos Kadar of Hungary wanted to goulash communism. But Kadar never denied that what he was aiming for had in it a large dose of communism--actually, socialism, for communism for communists is but a far off goal [dream?].)
In this respect I find European politics more honest than what we have here with the Democrats and Republicans engaging in endless double talk about what they are after. Of course, the Republicans can never figure out what they want because of their internal conflicts as to whether men and women should have their liberty properly protected or be ordered around to serve God or tradition or whatever. Democrats, however, should have no difficulty in coming clean: They want a robust, democratic socialist, welfare state which has to be largely socialist. If men and women do have their basic right to liberty well secured by the legal system, they just might not serve the objectives that are the meat and potatoes of socialism, of having a country be treated like a huge beehive in need of the care and regimentation of its queen bee, the government. This is so evident that invoking a bunch of euphemisms just will not serve long to hide it.
President Obama is aiming for socialism--maybe not the Soviet or North Korean or even Cuban type but at least the sort found in many European countries, associated mainly with the current economic systems of Norway, Sweden, and France. True, even in those countries the champions of socialism are trying to square the circle, to have a substantial measure of individual liberty in the midst of their vigorous Nanny state. But they are not pretending to be in favor of a free market system as Mr. Obama keeps stating he is.
If Obama & Co. were honest about their support of a substantially socialist economic system, they could provide the American citizenry with arguments for this, with reasons why they believe it is a good thing to head in that direction. And then a debate could ensue instead of the dishonest gobbledegook that passes of political dialogue now. Indeed, one reason there can be no serious discussion between Democrats and Republicans is that neither side will level about where it stands on public policy matters, let alone on the fundamental, constitutional principles by which it wants the country to be guided.
I say, let's have it all out, in plain and honest terms, and then have a national debate about it all and see where that leads. I hope the free, capitalist society wins out over welfare statist socialism--with its bizarre form of liberty that is in fact servitude for us all--but at least we would know what the issues are all about.
Tibor R. Machan
It is disgusting to witness all the dishonesty surrounding the current administration's public policy efforts. Even the new language columnist of The New York Times Magazine is in denial and pretends to consider it some kind of smear--even conspiracy--for those not among Mr. Obama's fan base to refer Obama & Co. as socialists. Why?
Socialism is a well respected political economic alternative for which some of the best minds and hearts of human history have done fierce battle. No, it is not a good political economic system but those who are socialists believe it is. So why don't they and their cheerleaders in the media admit it, even proudly announce it at every turn, that they support socialism? I am not ashamed of being a champion of laissez-faire capitalism, so why do they pretend to be less than enthusiastic about their democratic socialism?
In American history there have been proud socialists aplenty--Normal Thomas being perhaps the most public of them. But there was, also, Michael Harrington who, historians claim, was personally responsible for Lyndon Baines Johnson's "war on poverty" and some other, for my money futile and even hazardous, efforts to drive American more and more toward socialism. Why dishonor these folks with, for example, a bunch of phony denials about what the recently passed Obamacare legislation was about. Of course it was a step toward socialism and Mr. Obama, if he had an ounce of genuine candor and courage, would not keep dodging the issue. (Maybe he wants some kind of goulash socialism, like Janos Kadar of Hungary wanted to goulash communism. But Kadar never denied that what he was aiming for had in it a large dose of communism--actually, socialism, for communism for communists is but a far off goal [dream?].)
In this respect I find European politics more honest than what we have here with the Democrats and Republicans engaging in endless double talk about what they are after. Of course, the Republicans can never figure out what they want because of their internal conflicts as to whether men and women should have their liberty properly protected or be ordered around to serve God or tradition or whatever. Democrats, however, should have no difficulty in coming clean: They want a robust, democratic socialist, welfare state which has to be largely socialist. If men and women do have their basic right to liberty well secured by the legal system, they just might not serve the objectives that are the meat and potatoes of socialism, of having a country be treated like a huge beehive in need of the care and regimentation of its queen bee, the government. This is so evident that invoking a bunch of euphemisms just will not serve long to hide it.
President Obama is aiming for socialism--maybe not the Soviet or North Korean or even Cuban type but at least the sort found in many European countries, associated mainly with the current economic systems of Norway, Sweden, and France. True, even in those countries the champions of socialism are trying to square the circle, to have a substantial measure of individual liberty in the midst of their vigorous Nanny state. But they are not pretending to be in favor of a free market system as Mr. Obama keeps stating he is.
If Obama & Co. were honest about their support of a substantially socialist economic system, they could provide the American citizenry with arguments for this, with reasons why they believe it is a good thing to head in that direction. And then a debate could ensue instead of the dishonest gobbledegook that passes of political dialogue now. Indeed, one reason there can be no serious discussion between Democrats and Republicans is that neither side will level about where it stands on public policy matters, let alone on the fundamental, constitutional principles by which it wants the country to be guided.
I say, let's have it all out, in plain and honest terms, and then have a national debate about it all and see where that leads. I hope the free, capitalist society wins out over welfare statist socialism--with its bizarre form of liberty that is in fact servitude for us all--but at least we would know what the issues are all about.
Friday, April 02, 2010
The Ethics of Tax Resistance*
Tibor R. Machan
Governments hate it when you succeed at escaping their tyrannical reach and so we have been witnessing extensive efforts by the feds to curtail tax dodging and avoidance. This has led to some considerable pressure exerted on banks in Switzerland, Lichtenstein and other places with serious bank secrecy laws, to release the names of those who bank there hoping to escape the IRS. (The U. S. government wields not only military might!) Extorting money from the citizenry is the bread and butter of governments. No serious effort has ever been made even in America to find and implement ways of funding the legal system without using extortionist methods. Yet, how could one have an unalienable right to one's life and liberty and such while government puts a gun to one's head saying, "Your money or you go to jail"?
Tax resistance may be morally defended on grounds nearly identical to resisting any kind of aggression against oneself. If one is accosted on some city street and threatened, one has the right to defend oneself. The right of self-defense is derivable from the basic right one has to one’s life, one that rests on one's nature as a human being as a moral agent. If one carries on in one’s life peacefully and is nonetheless attacked, one is justified―has the right to―resist. This also holds if the attack is aimed at confiscating one’s resources, even if one misuse these--wastefulness may not be criminalized in a free society unless it involves dumping, imposing it on others, as in pollution.
Government sanction of conscription may, even ought to be resisted. Draconian cases could be cited here, involving slaves or concentration camp victims taking measures to escape. There is no moral doubt about whether resisting being subjected to these is ethically justified (although in nearly all such cases government apologists defend themselves via either the doctrine of implied collective consent or invoking some "greater good")! The gist of the errors of such systems can be seen in the Declaration of Independence where instead of governments, it's individuals who have sovereignty. Or, in other words, instead of divine rights for monarchs, it's individual human beings who have basic, unalienable rights, including to their lives, liberty and property (the term Thomas Jefferson used in an early draft based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which referred to “property and pursuing happiness.”).
Taxation, which is extortion, has no place, any more than serfdom, in a just legal order so whether it's ethically justified to dodge or avoid it should not pose an insurmountably difficult moral problem. (There are, of course, considerations as to the proper means by which tax laws, as others that are unjust within a substantially just system of laws, would need to be resisted.)
What we face here is akin to what confronted abolitionists in the era of chattel slavery who were often urged to refrain from using radical means by which to resist. Arguably, one size does not fit all in how oppression of any kind ought to be resisted, opposed, combated, and so forth. Different victims could be justified in taking very different steps to counter oppression, including taxation. For some it would be most appropriate to make use of the available political processes, for some other means could be best. Taxation could, for some, be a minor although impermissible imposition, especially if they are wealthy enough so it makes little difference to the way they choose to live their lives. The context is relevant to how one is justified in addressing oppression. (For a simple example, if one is a large, powerful individual then being assaulted could be nearly inconsequential and not worth spending the time and resources to resist.)
Although there could be variations in how one ought to resist (dodge, avoid, legally contest, etc.) taxation, the answer to whether those subject to the institution are ethically justified in making the effort to resist it is in the affirmative. Yet, as with all matters of conduct involving other people, a sort of moral due process is required. One may not resist a trespasser by killing him and that kind of consideration would apply in how one goes about resisting an evil such as taxation.
In any case, the often voiced objections to tax dodging and tax avoidance are without merit.
-------------------
*Several longer discussions of this topic are forthcoming in a special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics.
Tibor R. Machan
Governments hate it when you succeed at escaping their tyrannical reach and so we have been witnessing extensive efforts by the feds to curtail tax dodging and avoidance. This has led to some considerable pressure exerted on banks in Switzerland, Lichtenstein and other places with serious bank secrecy laws, to release the names of those who bank there hoping to escape the IRS. (The U. S. government wields not only military might!) Extorting money from the citizenry is the bread and butter of governments. No serious effort has ever been made even in America to find and implement ways of funding the legal system without using extortionist methods. Yet, how could one have an unalienable right to one's life and liberty and such while government puts a gun to one's head saying, "Your money or you go to jail"?
Tax resistance may be morally defended on grounds nearly identical to resisting any kind of aggression against oneself. If one is accosted on some city street and threatened, one has the right to defend oneself. The right of self-defense is derivable from the basic right one has to one’s life, one that rests on one's nature as a human being as a moral agent. If one carries on in one’s life peacefully and is nonetheless attacked, one is justified―has the right to―resist. This also holds if the attack is aimed at confiscating one’s resources, even if one misuse these--wastefulness may not be criminalized in a free society unless it involves dumping, imposing it on others, as in pollution.
Government sanction of conscription may, even ought to be resisted. Draconian cases could be cited here, involving slaves or concentration camp victims taking measures to escape. There is no moral doubt about whether resisting being subjected to these is ethically justified (although in nearly all such cases government apologists defend themselves via either the doctrine of implied collective consent or invoking some "greater good")! The gist of the errors of such systems can be seen in the Declaration of Independence where instead of governments, it's individuals who have sovereignty. Or, in other words, instead of divine rights for monarchs, it's individual human beings who have basic, unalienable rights, including to their lives, liberty and property (the term Thomas Jefferson used in an early draft based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which referred to “property and pursuing happiness.”).
Taxation, which is extortion, has no place, any more than serfdom, in a just legal order so whether it's ethically justified to dodge or avoid it should not pose an insurmountably difficult moral problem. (There are, of course, considerations as to the proper means by which tax laws, as others that are unjust within a substantially just system of laws, would need to be resisted.)
What we face here is akin to what confronted abolitionists in the era of chattel slavery who were often urged to refrain from using radical means by which to resist. Arguably, one size does not fit all in how oppression of any kind ought to be resisted, opposed, combated, and so forth. Different victims could be justified in taking very different steps to counter oppression, including taxation. For some it would be most appropriate to make use of the available political processes, for some other means could be best. Taxation could, for some, be a minor although impermissible imposition, especially if they are wealthy enough so it makes little difference to the way they choose to live their lives. The context is relevant to how one is justified in addressing oppression. (For a simple example, if one is a large, powerful individual then being assaulted could be nearly inconsequential and not worth spending the time and resources to resist.)
Although there could be variations in how one ought to resist (dodge, avoid, legally contest, etc.) taxation, the answer to whether those subject to the institution are ethically justified in making the effort to resist it is in the affirmative. Yet, as with all matters of conduct involving other people, a sort of moral due process is required. One may not resist a trespasser by killing him and that kind of consideration would apply in how one goes about resisting an evil such as taxation.
In any case, the often voiced objections to tax dodging and tax avoidance are without merit.
-------------------
*Several longer discussions of this topic are forthcoming in a special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Due Process versus Desired Results
Tibor R. Machan
Human justice is directly concerned with process, indirectly with results. This appears to have escaped President Barack Obama, especially during the recent political battle over whether Obamacare may be implemented or is it perhaps in violation of the U. S. Constitution. And was it perhaps enacted without regard to justice, to due process?
I am no constitutional scholar but it seems to me that in America it is perfectly proper to inquire about whether a piece of legislation has been enacted in a way that does violence to due process, the method of making law that free men and women are due. So when during the final hours of the debate about Obamacare Mr. Obama himself derisively dismissed the concern of many about the process by which it was being made into law--for example in his 11th hour interview on Fox TV--the American citizenry gained an important insight into just how his administration plans to govern. What the president was insisting upon is that what matters to him and his team are results, not process. He wanted the bill to succeed, whatever process would bring this about and it is quite likely that this is how he plans to pursue the rest of his agenda.
Now life, of course, is itself a process. Human life in society manifests itself in innumerable processes, aiming at innumerable results. There is only one common result all human life ought to aim for but it comes in a great variety of forms, which is human happiness. This is supposed to be the reward of the morally good life of the individual human being. For this reason a good society has a system of legal justice that protects the processes whereby men and women will not have anyone around them obstruct their pursuit of happiness. It is the protection of that pursuit that is crucial to the law, not the result itself which is the citizenry's own business, their own task to achieve.
A parallel situation obtains concerning attempts to adjudicate dispute among members of the citizenry. A criminal trial is such an adjudicative process. And here again the result is only indirectly the concern of the legal system, the process is the crucial factor. And this is clear from the fact that the system often leaves the result in the hands of a jury, private citizens with no political and legal office. The system is supposed to ensure that every trial follows sound procedures--due processes of law!
But the tenor as well as the aims of our legal system have been changing. Politicians, including their legal appointees, are focused not on process but on results. The country is in danger of becoming a semi-civilized lynch mob. This could be appreciated from watching the news reports of all the fuss associated with the how dismissive President Obama was toward concerns expressed about the process that finally produced Obamacare.
And all this should not surprise us too much. Although the United States of America was conceived in terms of a legal system focused on due process, in time the government began establishing too many specific goals for us all to pursue. If the proper processes of the law do not produce an educated public, relief for the poor, environmental purity, total racial harmony, decent speech, or health insurance for all, then let's just drop them and charge ahead anyway.
When such a role is conceived for our government, is it surprising that the people are willing to throw out due process as they protest the ensuing results? What many wanted from the recent debate about Obamacare is to make sure that bringing about the result does not do violence to individual rights (as, for example, coercing people to buy insurance certainly would). Did the American political process manage to abide by the principles to which all political maneuvers must conform? Or did those who wanted Obamacare proceed without regard for the principles on which the government is supposed to rest?
In the eyes of most protesters, for example members of the Tea Party, it could very well look as if due process was tossed to the side. Supporters of Obamacare made it clear they couldn't care less about how the legislation made it into law so long as it did so somehow, with some semblance of legitimacy. This is a very ominous sign of where the country is headed. Hugo Chavez would find it promising.
Tibor R. Machan
Human justice is directly concerned with process, indirectly with results. This appears to have escaped President Barack Obama, especially during the recent political battle over whether Obamacare may be implemented or is it perhaps in violation of the U. S. Constitution. And was it perhaps enacted without regard to justice, to due process?
I am no constitutional scholar but it seems to me that in America it is perfectly proper to inquire about whether a piece of legislation has been enacted in a way that does violence to due process, the method of making law that free men and women are due. So when during the final hours of the debate about Obamacare Mr. Obama himself derisively dismissed the concern of many about the process by which it was being made into law--for example in his 11th hour interview on Fox TV--the American citizenry gained an important insight into just how his administration plans to govern. What the president was insisting upon is that what matters to him and his team are results, not process. He wanted the bill to succeed, whatever process would bring this about and it is quite likely that this is how he plans to pursue the rest of his agenda.
Now life, of course, is itself a process. Human life in society manifests itself in innumerable processes, aiming at innumerable results. There is only one common result all human life ought to aim for but it comes in a great variety of forms, which is human happiness. This is supposed to be the reward of the morally good life of the individual human being. For this reason a good society has a system of legal justice that protects the processes whereby men and women will not have anyone around them obstruct their pursuit of happiness. It is the protection of that pursuit that is crucial to the law, not the result itself which is the citizenry's own business, their own task to achieve.
A parallel situation obtains concerning attempts to adjudicate dispute among members of the citizenry. A criminal trial is such an adjudicative process. And here again the result is only indirectly the concern of the legal system, the process is the crucial factor. And this is clear from the fact that the system often leaves the result in the hands of a jury, private citizens with no political and legal office. The system is supposed to ensure that every trial follows sound procedures--due processes of law!
But the tenor as well as the aims of our legal system have been changing. Politicians, including their legal appointees, are focused not on process but on results. The country is in danger of becoming a semi-civilized lynch mob. This could be appreciated from watching the news reports of all the fuss associated with the how dismissive President Obama was toward concerns expressed about the process that finally produced Obamacare.
And all this should not surprise us too much. Although the United States of America was conceived in terms of a legal system focused on due process, in time the government began establishing too many specific goals for us all to pursue. If the proper processes of the law do not produce an educated public, relief for the poor, environmental purity, total racial harmony, decent speech, or health insurance for all, then let's just drop them and charge ahead anyway.
When such a role is conceived for our government, is it surprising that the people are willing to throw out due process as they protest the ensuing results? What many wanted from the recent debate about Obamacare is to make sure that bringing about the result does not do violence to individual rights (as, for example, coercing people to buy insurance certainly would). Did the American political process manage to abide by the principles to which all political maneuvers must conform? Or did those who wanted Obamacare proceed without regard for the principles on which the government is supposed to rest?
In the eyes of most protesters, for example members of the Tea Party, it could very well look as if due process was tossed to the side. Supporters of Obamacare made it clear they couldn't care less about how the legislation made it into law so long as it did so somehow, with some semblance of legitimacy. This is a very ominous sign of where the country is headed. Hugo Chavez would find it promising.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
What Of Pre-exiting Conditions?
Tibor R. Machan
Here is what some would consider a hard case: Someone very ill is attempting to purchase insurance but companies refuse to provide it because they have a pretty good idea that covering the illness will cost very big bucks, way above what the insured and others with similar conditions can help cover. The policy costs far less than what they expect to have to spend on the sizable number of patients in this situation, so they don't want to take on this expense.
This is a picture that may seem to tell just one story, namely, how greedy, uncaring, narrowly self-interested are those who own and run insurance companies. But it could also tell the story that the applicant did not think to buy insurance early enough in life when the malady hadn't occurred yet. Another story therein could be that the malady came about through risky or outright self-destructive activities on the part of the applicant--excessive drinking, excessive smoking, dangerous sports, a hazardous lifestyle in general. Or plain bad luck could also be involved--even the most careful among us can meet with unforeseen mishaps and unless we prepared for them early enough in life, they will cost a bundle to deal with and one might be on one's own to do this now.
No one else but a loved one is morally--let alone legally--obligated to help out in such cases, if even he or she! In certain fields what the prospective patient is doing is called dumping--as when a manufacturing plant dumps its waste into the air mass or water ways for others to have to deal with it. In the area of environmental ethics and law, this is harshly condemned, by the way. But why not say, instead, "How selfish of us to want firms to take care of their own waste"? Yes, the waste comes with the task the company is involved in, producing cars or steel or whatever, but that is where pricing comes in. Charge customers enough to cover cost and then some, to make a profit, too. Or don't take on tasks you cannot handle economically. And this is just the attitude of many insurance company managers and owners!
Individuals who grow up in relatively advanced societies can usually come to be aware of life's risks early enough to take precautionary measures, such as purchasing insurance before maladies come around. Indeed, that's the point of insurance. The companies make big bucks because although the possibility of maladies exists, the probability of them is not that great. Many more people buy insurance than need to draw on the funds available to them from it in their lifetime.
But even quite apart from all this, which is but common sense, however unfortunate a situation one may be in, it is morally obscene to demand that others fix it at their expense. Again, think of pollution--we expect the polluters to handle it, not their neighbors even if the pollution came about through doing very worthwhile things! These others have their own problems to attend to and apart from intimates for whom they care and for whom they may actually be directly responsible, all contributions to the well being of strangers has to be a matter of charity or philanthropy. And these may not be coerced out of anyone--it stops being charity and giving then and becomes straightforward larceny.
Sure, once all this is grasped maybe drastic changes in how one goes about taking care of oneself need to be adopted. But others are not one's involuntary servants, slaves or serfs. They are supposedly free and sovereign persons and may make decisions about how to live their lives without others intrusions. Even the totally accidental mishap of others cannot amount to a source of legally enforceable obligations for them!
Well, yes, that used to be the idea of the American way of life but sadly not with the bulk of the current crop of politicians running things and their cheerleaders urging them on.
Tibor R. Machan
Here is what some would consider a hard case: Someone very ill is attempting to purchase insurance but companies refuse to provide it because they have a pretty good idea that covering the illness will cost very big bucks, way above what the insured and others with similar conditions can help cover. The policy costs far less than what they expect to have to spend on the sizable number of patients in this situation, so they don't want to take on this expense.
This is a picture that may seem to tell just one story, namely, how greedy, uncaring, narrowly self-interested are those who own and run insurance companies. But it could also tell the story that the applicant did not think to buy insurance early enough in life when the malady hadn't occurred yet. Another story therein could be that the malady came about through risky or outright self-destructive activities on the part of the applicant--excessive drinking, excessive smoking, dangerous sports, a hazardous lifestyle in general. Or plain bad luck could also be involved--even the most careful among us can meet with unforeseen mishaps and unless we prepared for them early enough in life, they will cost a bundle to deal with and one might be on one's own to do this now.
No one else but a loved one is morally--let alone legally--obligated to help out in such cases, if even he or she! In certain fields what the prospective patient is doing is called dumping--as when a manufacturing plant dumps its waste into the air mass or water ways for others to have to deal with it. In the area of environmental ethics and law, this is harshly condemned, by the way. But why not say, instead, "How selfish of us to want firms to take care of their own waste"? Yes, the waste comes with the task the company is involved in, producing cars or steel or whatever, but that is where pricing comes in. Charge customers enough to cover cost and then some, to make a profit, too. Or don't take on tasks you cannot handle economically. And this is just the attitude of many insurance company managers and owners!
Individuals who grow up in relatively advanced societies can usually come to be aware of life's risks early enough to take precautionary measures, such as purchasing insurance before maladies come around. Indeed, that's the point of insurance. The companies make big bucks because although the possibility of maladies exists, the probability of them is not that great. Many more people buy insurance than need to draw on the funds available to them from it in their lifetime.
But even quite apart from all this, which is but common sense, however unfortunate a situation one may be in, it is morally obscene to demand that others fix it at their expense. Again, think of pollution--we expect the polluters to handle it, not their neighbors even if the pollution came about through doing very worthwhile things! These others have their own problems to attend to and apart from intimates for whom they care and for whom they may actually be directly responsible, all contributions to the well being of strangers has to be a matter of charity or philanthropy. And these may not be coerced out of anyone--it stops being charity and giving then and becomes straightforward larceny.
Sure, once all this is grasped maybe drastic changes in how one goes about taking care of oneself need to be adopted. But others are not one's involuntary servants, slaves or serfs. They are supposedly free and sovereign persons and may make decisions about how to live their lives without others intrusions. Even the totally accidental mishap of others cannot amount to a source of legally enforceable obligations for them!
Well, yes, that used to be the idea of the American way of life but sadly not with the bulk of the current crop of politicians running things and their cheerleaders urging them on.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Mandated Insurance
Tibor R. Machan
Is the just signed federal health care legislation constitutional? Is it consistent with the principles of a free society? Is it what President Obama claims, consistent with the principles of this country? No. The bill is a straightforward advance--progress???--toward socialism, akin to that familiar to us in the former Soviet colonies and some other societies that believe in the top down regimentation of everyones' life.
The central claim of socialists is that only society exists, not individuals who make it up. They are like cells in the body of the collective whole. We as individuals do not exist and claiming that we have the right to run our own lives is akin to one's finger or foot claiming it needs to be left free to do its own thing. Seriously--this is the real meat of socialism.
But there is less Draconian socialist measures being proposed, including in the recently signed bill. A favorite retort to criticism of the mandate for us to purchase health insurance is that, "What's the problem, we already have this with auto insurance in many states of the union." Indeed, there may well be some serious legal challenges forthcoming to the just signed health care legislation arguing that it is outright unconstitutional to force citizens to purchase insurance. It is as if there were a law require one to by apples to sandals or cars. That would really be a drastic violation of our right to liberty.
But don't states already do this when they require vehicle drivers to purchase insurance before they get on the road? So is there not a precedence to the new mandate?
In plain language, no. The reason is relatively simple. Most of the roads throughout the USA are government owned and administered. The government, in other words, owns the roads--or the citizens do with governments doing the managing, kind of like apartments are managed by other than the owners but with the latter's authorization. So, then, presumably the roads around the country belong to the citizenry and are managed, with their authorization, by the government (e.g., the Department of Motor Vehicles and such).
But as with apartments, so with roads: only the renters (drivers) are under the jurisdiction of management, not everyone. Only those who choose to drive on public roads are subject to the government's mandate that they carry car insurance (and whatever else, such as having their cars equipped with mirrors and bumpers). In short, only those using the roads must have the requisite insurance, not those who ride bicycles or walk or ride a horse on private property.
But that's not what's in store for Americans with the new socialist health care legislation. It forces them all to have insurance approved by the federal government, even if they would rather take different measures to deal with the prospects of ill health. Some may want to stash away some of their earnings and rely on this when they get sick. Some may choose to make sure they don't get sick too often, at least not very sick, by taking exceptionally good care of themselves. Some may not mind getting sick and dying from it, given how much they prefer their hazardous life style (rightly or wrongly, as free men and women should be able to). Some may even believe that relying on physicians violates their religions liberty and is immoral--some Christian Scientists, I am told, hold this view--so they ought not to buy, let alone made to buy, health insurance as a matter of the religious freedom.
Bottom line is that the idea of coercing people to insure themselves is anything but compassionate, anything but humane, anything but constitutional in a free country. It amounts, plainly said, to involuntary servitude to some other people's vision of how one ought to live. That is not what a free society is all about.
Not that most Americans aren't already being coerced into supporting various measures of which they morally disapprove--like wars, like abortion for some, like funding other people's welfare and education. So the outrage with the current advance toward socialism is phony in a great many instances. But there is no justification for believing that requiring drivers to carry insurance serves as a precedence for forcing them to buy health insurance. Apples versus oranges.
Tibor R. Machan
Is the just signed federal health care legislation constitutional? Is it consistent with the principles of a free society? Is it what President Obama claims, consistent with the principles of this country? No. The bill is a straightforward advance--progress???--toward socialism, akin to that familiar to us in the former Soviet colonies and some other societies that believe in the top down regimentation of everyones' life.
The central claim of socialists is that only society exists, not individuals who make it up. They are like cells in the body of the collective whole. We as individuals do not exist and claiming that we have the right to run our own lives is akin to one's finger or foot claiming it needs to be left free to do its own thing. Seriously--this is the real meat of socialism.
But there is less Draconian socialist measures being proposed, including in the recently signed bill. A favorite retort to criticism of the mandate for us to purchase health insurance is that, "What's the problem, we already have this with auto insurance in many states of the union." Indeed, there may well be some serious legal challenges forthcoming to the just signed health care legislation arguing that it is outright unconstitutional to force citizens to purchase insurance. It is as if there were a law require one to by apples to sandals or cars. That would really be a drastic violation of our right to liberty.
But don't states already do this when they require vehicle drivers to purchase insurance before they get on the road? So is there not a precedence to the new mandate?
In plain language, no. The reason is relatively simple. Most of the roads throughout the USA are government owned and administered. The government, in other words, owns the roads--or the citizens do with governments doing the managing, kind of like apartments are managed by other than the owners but with the latter's authorization. So, then, presumably the roads around the country belong to the citizenry and are managed, with their authorization, by the government (e.g., the Department of Motor Vehicles and such).
But as with apartments, so with roads: only the renters (drivers) are under the jurisdiction of management, not everyone. Only those who choose to drive on public roads are subject to the government's mandate that they carry car insurance (and whatever else, such as having their cars equipped with mirrors and bumpers). In short, only those using the roads must have the requisite insurance, not those who ride bicycles or walk or ride a horse on private property.
But that's not what's in store for Americans with the new socialist health care legislation. It forces them all to have insurance approved by the federal government, even if they would rather take different measures to deal with the prospects of ill health. Some may want to stash away some of their earnings and rely on this when they get sick. Some may choose to make sure they don't get sick too often, at least not very sick, by taking exceptionally good care of themselves. Some may not mind getting sick and dying from it, given how much they prefer their hazardous life style (rightly or wrongly, as free men and women should be able to). Some may even believe that relying on physicians violates their religions liberty and is immoral--some Christian Scientists, I am told, hold this view--so they ought not to buy, let alone made to buy, health insurance as a matter of the religious freedom.
Bottom line is that the idea of coercing people to insure themselves is anything but compassionate, anything but humane, anything but constitutional in a free country. It amounts, plainly said, to involuntary servitude to some other people's vision of how one ought to live. That is not what a free society is all about.
Not that most Americans aren't already being coerced into supporting various measures of which they morally disapprove--like wars, like abortion for some, like funding other people's welfare and education. So the outrage with the current advance toward socialism is phony in a great many instances. But there is no justification for believing that requiring drivers to carry insurance serves as a precedence for forcing them to buy health insurance. Apples versus oranges.
Political Crime
Tibor R. Machan
Despite all efforts to deny it, by philosophers, natural scientists, and psychologists, there is little doubt that human beings have free will. That is one way they are so different from the rest of the world.
The impetus to deny free will is not difficult to appreciate. For many people nothing would be more convenient than to reduce everything in the world to just one kind of stuff. It used to be atoms; then it was matter-in-motion; later some more complicated subatomic stuff took front and center; today the candidate that is getting some traction is strings. But the basic message is always the same: the world is made of just one kind of stuff (like we are all made up of dust).
This idea has its advantages. If it is true, then one need but learn just one science, that of the stuff of which the world is made. No need for different disciplines like chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, ethics and such. Just one principle of motion will do the trick since everything is the same. Differences among things are an illusion. And the same causal principle drives it all, so no need to figure what makes different things tick in, say, chemistry or biology, as if there were different kinds of things making up reality.
The evidence doesn't support this view. Just check around and see if everything is the same. Major differences are observable between, say, rocks and fish, birds and lions, people and donkeys and so on and so forth. Lumping them all together seems to me the lazy way to study them.
Now if there are genuine, bona fide differences among things in the world, it would not be odd at all that human beings are different in the important respect that they can exercise a unique capacity of free will, to direct their own conduct by their own initiative. Apart from the fact that this is very difficult to deny even as we discuss the issue--how would one explain all the different ways people behave, believe, hope, wish, etc?--it also makes sense of how differently we see the free will issue. What other plant or animal has such a wide variety of opinions, religions, politics, and so on, on some topic? This is best explained by the postulation of human freedom of thought.
Now why is this important just now? Because our free will also makes it understandable that people are able to be good and bad and move along the continuum between those two opposites. And this applies to their politics, not only ethics. We are witnessing it every day as we learn of crimes being committed all around the globe, throughout human history, with no progress in stemming it in any significant measure. Both immorality and illegality testify to the basic human capacity to choose between doing what is right versus what is wrong, whatever the details.
Not only that but this capacity needs to be kept in mind as we understand political ups and downs in various societies.
As a case in point, take socialism. It is a vile political system, a grand one-side-fits all regime, with a few "leaders"--would be tyrants--running the show for all the great variety of individuals who really need to be free to direct their own lives for better or worse. But now, socialists, one group of political criminals, keep attempting to ride rough shod over everyone. (They aren't the only ones but one of the most active current crop, ruining Greece, France, as well as much of Latin and North America.) They will make some headway, just as often criminals will succeed in violating victims and getting away with it with impunity. In Eastern Europe these criminals lorded it over millions, with catastrophic results, for the better part of the 20th century--both the national and international socialist varieties. Today we have some of them still in full power, in North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela, but elsewhere their failure at doing any good at all has become evident. Still, as with criminals, they keep trying again and again.
In the U.S.A. they have not had much success nor, however, have they disappeared, no more so than have ordinary criminals vanished. For now the socialists are back with a vengeance, taking over a larger and larger portion of American culture. And one needs to remember that even criminals are not uniformly evil--some love dogs, some may even be decent parents or fine bowlers, you name it. But in essence they are corrupt human beings and so are socialists, when it comes to political ideas and ideals.
The only remedy is that old standby of eternal vigilance. The human spirit isn't going to permanently conquer political crime, any more than the other kind. But it may make progress toward justice and liberty in a sort of roller coaster fashion. I am ready for the next upward swing, big time.
Tibor R. Machan
Despite all efforts to deny it, by philosophers, natural scientists, and psychologists, there is little doubt that human beings have free will. That is one way they are so different from the rest of the world.
The impetus to deny free will is not difficult to appreciate. For many people nothing would be more convenient than to reduce everything in the world to just one kind of stuff. It used to be atoms; then it was matter-in-motion; later some more complicated subatomic stuff took front and center; today the candidate that is getting some traction is strings. But the basic message is always the same: the world is made of just one kind of stuff (like we are all made up of dust).
This idea has its advantages. If it is true, then one need but learn just one science, that of the stuff of which the world is made. No need for different disciplines like chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, ethics and such. Just one principle of motion will do the trick since everything is the same. Differences among things are an illusion. And the same causal principle drives it all, so no need to figure what makes different things tick in, say, chemistry or biology, as if there were different kinds of things making up reality.
The evidence doesn't support this view. Just check around and see if everything is the same. Major differences are observable between, say, rocks and fish, birds and lions, people and donkeys and so on and so forth. Lumping them all together seems to me the lazy way to study them.
Now if there are genuine, bona fide differences among things in the world, it would not be odd at all that human beings are different in the important respect that they can exercise a unique capacity of free will, to direct their own conduct by their own initiative. Apart from the fact that this is very difficult to deny even as we discuss the issue--how would one explain all the different ways people behave, believe, hope, wish, etc?--it also makes sense of how differently we see the free will issue. What other plant or animal has such a wide variety of opinions, religions, politics, and so on, on some topic? This is best explained by the postulation of human freedom of thought.
Now why is this important just now? Because our free will also makes it understandable that people are able to be good and bad and move along the continuum between those two opposites. And this applies to their politics, not only ethics. We are witnessing it every day as we learn of crimes being committed all around the globe, throughout human history, with no progress in stemming it in any significant measure. Both immorality and illegality testify to the basic human capacity to choose between doing what is right versus what is wrong, whatever the details.
Not only that but this capacity needs to be kept in mind as we understand political ups and downs in various societies.
As a case in point, take socialism. It is a vile political system, a grand one-side-fits all regime, with a few "leaders"--would be tyrants--running the show for all the great variety of individuals who really need to be free to direct their own lives for better or worse. But now, socialists, one group of political criminals, keep attempting to ride rough shod over everyone. (They aren't the only ones but one of the most active current crop, ruining Greece, France, as well as much of Latin and North America.) They will make some headway, just as often criminals will succeed in violating victims and getting away with it with impunity. In Eastern Europe these criminals lorded it over millions, with catastrophic results, for the better part of the 20th century--both the national and international socialist varieties. Today we have some of them still in full power, in North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela, but elsewhere their failure at doing any good at all has become evident. Still, as with criminals, they keep trying again and again.
In the U.S.A. they have not had much success nor, however, have they disappeared, no more so than have ordinary criminals vanished. For now the socialists are back with a vengeance, taking over a larger and larger portion of American culture. And one needs to remember that even criminals are not uniformly evil--some love dogs, some may even be decent parents or fine bowlers, you name it. But in essence they are corrupt human beings and so are socialists, when it comes to political ideas and ideals.
The only remedy is that old standby of eternal vigilance. The human spirit isn't going to permanently conquer political crime, any more than the other kind. But it may make progress toward justice and liberty in a sort of roller coaster fashion. I am ready for the next upward swing, big time.
Sad Times in America
Tibor R. Machan
Graig Furgeson, the late late-night host on CBS-TV, makes a little remark each weekday night to the effect, "It's a great day for America." I don't really get it, I confess, since if it were a great day for America each day, regardless of the details, it would be pretty meaningless to say so. But these days it is especially ridiculous to make such a claim. (I have taken the show off my automatic record instructions on my TiVo because of this, actually, and because I really don't much like TV these days other than for a few shows and movies.)
As someone who immigrated here from a communist country where health care was deemed a free good, and a free entitlement and where the system went bankrupt eventually so no one had anything to show for all the promises made, I find it scandalous that this myth of health care as a right--as if health care professionals could all be drafted harmlessly into involuntary servitude to us all--has managed to survive and even grow. Yes, it might be a swell thing if what we want in life could be obtained free of charge, if everyone could work to produce all the goods and services wanted from them at no cost to anyone, if dreams and fantasies were reality but, come to think of it, I am not sure this is even a desirable fantasy. It has certainly been a horrible reality wherever it has been attempted since it means, in practice, that both goods and services promised at no charge to the vast numbers who apparently actually believe it could happen will in time run out for everyone except the most clever of us, the ones who can game the system for a little while.
Many moons ago, when I was going to graduate school in California, a new welfare measure was instituted with the announced intention of wanting to help out the poor and disadvantaged who wish to get a graduate degree. No sooner was the program announced and set into motion, it became evident that only the smart and already reasonably well healed will gain from it--means testing had been declared illegal, so there was no way to tell who really might need the help and could make good use of it versus all those who would just try to cash in on a new entitlement that they could obtain at other people's expense. It was a clear case of socialism at work--promise to benefit all who had a need but put up with the fact that the resources will be squandered in a classic instance of the tragedy of the commons.
Of course, complaining about the forthcoming health care-health insurance entitlement system as if it were the first step on the way to socialism--which is how Utah's Republican Senator Orin Hatch characterized it--is absurd. From its beginning America had various welfare measures which, however, hadn't done immediate damage other than establish the precedence so objections to such measures could not be made on principle any longer. But the trend has been on the rise all along.
The realistic promise that America initially offered, in the terms sketched in the Declaration of Independence--namely, that everyone would be free to work hard for the values that make life possible and flourish--seems to be dying and along with it the optimistic outlook on the world's future, which is slowly disappearing except in some spots where the principles America was founded upon are beginning to be taken seriously. Frankly, it won't matter much to me directly now--I am getting a tad old--but my children and grandchildren will have to cope with the misery of it all.
What I am hoping is that they will be clever and prudent enough to deal with the mess that's coming down the pike until things turn around again sometime but certainly many will not be able to do so and that's going to be what all this phony socialist, "progressive" politicking will have wrought.
Tibor R. Machan
Graig Furgeson, the late late-night host on CBS-TV, makes a little remark each weekday night to the effect, "It's a great day for America." I don't really get it, I confess, since if it were a great day for America each day, regardless of the details, it would be pretty meaningless to say so. But these days it is especially ridiculous to make such a claim. (I have taken the show off my automatic record instructions on my TiVo because of this, actually, and because I really don't much like TV these days other than for a few shows and movies.)
As someone who immigrated here from a communist country where health care was deemed a free good, and a free entitlement and where the system went bankrupt eventually so no one had anything to show for all the promises made, I find it scandalous that this myth of health care as a right--as if health care professionals could all be drafted harmlessly into involuntary servitude to us all--has managed to survive and even grow. Yes, it might be a swell thing if what we want in life could be obtained free of charge, if everyone could work to produce all the goods and services wanted from them at no cost to anyone, if dreams and fantasies were reality but, come to think of it, I am not sure this is even a desirable fantasy. It has certainly been a horrible reality wherever it has been attempted since it means, in practice, that both goods and services promised at no charge to the vast numbers who apparently actually believe it could happen will in time run out for everyone except the most clever of us, the ones who can game the system for a little while.
Many moons ago, when I was going to graduate school in California, a new welfare measure was instituted with the announced intention of wanting to help out the poor and disadvantaged who wish to get a graduate degree. No sooner was the program announced and set into motion, it became evident that only the smart and already reasonably well healed will gain from it--means testing had been declared illegal, so there was no way to tell who really might need the help and could make good use of it versus all those who would just try to cash in on a new entitlement that they could obtain at other people's expense. It was a clear case of socialism at work--promise to benefit all who had a need but put up with the fact that the resources will be squandered in a classic instance of the tragedy of the commons.
Of course, complaining about the forthcoming health care-health insurance entitlement system as if it were the first step on the way to socialism--which is how Utah's Republican Senator Orin Hatch characterized it--is absurd. From its beginning America had various welfare measures which, however, hadn't done immediate damage other than establish the precedence so objections to such measures could not be made on principle any longer. But the trend has been on the rise all along.
The realistic promise that America initially offered, in the terms sketched in the Declaration of Independence--namely, that everyone would be free to work hard for the values that make life possible and flourish--seems to be dying and along with it the optimistic outlook on the world's future, which is slowly disappearing except in some spots where the principles America was founded upon are beginning to be taken seriously. Frankly, it won't matter much to me directly now--I am getting a tad old--but my children and grandchildren will have to cope with the misery of it all.
What I am hoping is that they will be clever and prudent enough to deal with the mess that's coming down the pike until things turn around again sometime but certainly many will not be able to do so and that's going to be what all this phony socialist, "progressive" politicking will have wrought.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Is the U. S. Self-Interested?
Tibor R. Machan
It baffles me why so many people are apologetic about the U. S. having a self-interested foreign policy. When President Obama recently declared that the U. S. "is not a self-interested empire," the part about being self-interested, pace Obama, sounded just right to me. (It is the "empire" portion that would be disturbing since an empire is a country that aims needlessly to lord it over other countries.) Being self-interested could mean no more than being vigilant in the defense of one's country, making sure it is safe from invasion or attack.
Who can dispute that self-defense is self-interested? Of course, with the prominence of altruism among intellectuals and public figures, it is probably no great surprise that Mr. Obama would reject characterizing American foreign policy as self-interested. "Selfish" has this bad odor about it and has had that since when philosophers, theologians and psychologists have decided that the human self is something malign.
At one time, of course, it used to be a good thing for one to be self-interested. I am thinking of ancient Greece where both Socrates, as presented by his pupil Plato, and later Aristotle defended self-interest and self-love, respectively. That's because the ancient Greeks tended to view human nature favorably, not as innately tending toward evil, something that became more in vogue later in the history of Western thought. Both religious and secular thinking veered off in this misanthropic direction in part through the doctrine of original sin and then with Thomas Hobbes' idea that everyone is basically motivated by a fierce passion for power, including, especially, power over other persons. If that is indeed what the human self aims for, then no wonder it doesn't have a sterling reputation and selfishness or being self-interested no longer amounts to something honorable as Socrates thought it was.
Yet even in our time something of the ancient Greek attitude remains in play. Just notice how often people say "You take care now" or "Take care of yourself" as their parting words to each other. I have been noticing this for many years and just a few days ago it was in evidence again as I watched some saying farewell. No hesitation at all: Go and make sure you do well for yourself! So self-interest, prudence, taking care of oneself cannot be taken to be all that bad by most of us, even though the sentiment isn't given much support among those who write on morality and public policy, including American foreign affairs.
For some it is just a matter of cynical realism to accept that a country's foreign policy will be dictated by its international interests. But is this something one must apologize for or even deny, as Mr. Obama apparently feels necessary to do?
Only if self-interested conduct, including in matters of diplomacy and military policy, must be reckless. But must it be? Does one's country really benefit from a reckless, loose cannon foreign or military policy? No. Properly conceived and undertaken self-interested foreign and military policy, just as personal conduct, needs to be decent, guided by virtues or moral principles. Indeed, as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others have maintained--but recently with only a few such as Ayn Rand and quite a few psychotherapists joining them--the virtues are necessary to advance one's proper self-interest. Morality for these thinkers is about making it possible to succeed in one's human life, doing well at living as a human individual. It includes the virtues of prudence, honesty, moderation, temperance, courage, and such but also generosity, compassion, and even charity when it is needed. Only with these virtues in full display in one's life will someone accomplish that most vital task in of being morally good, being a good person.
The same, it can be argued, applies to foreign and, especially, military affairs. A country's foreign policy must not aim for martyrdom, for self-sacrifice. Thus, putting this into practice, General George C. Patton Jr. is supposed to have told his troop, "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.
Tibor R. Machan
It baffles me why so many people are apologetic about the U. S. having a self-interested foreign policy. When President Obama recently declared that the U. S. "is not a self-interested empire," the part about being self-interested, pace Obama, sounded just right to me. (It is the "empire" portion that would be disturbing since an empire is a country that aims needlessly to lord it over other countries.) Being self-interested could mean no more than being vigilant in the defense of one's country, making sure it is safe from invasion or attack.
Who can dispute that self-defense is self-interested? Of course, with the prominence of altruism among intellectuals and public figures, it is probably no great surprise that Mr. Obama would reject characterizing American foreign policy as self-interested. "Selfish" has this bad odor about it and has had that since when philosophers, theologians and psychologists have decided that the human self is something malign.
At one time, of course, it used to be a good thing for one to be self-interested. I am thinking of ancient Greece where both Socrates, as presented by his pupil Plato, and later Aristotle defended self-interest and self-love, respectively. That's because the ancient Greeks tended to view human nature favorably, not as innately tending toward evil, something that became more in vogue later in the history of Western thought. Both religious and secular thinking veered off in this misanthropic direction in part through the doctrine of original sin and then with Thomas Hobbes' idea that everyone is basically motivated by a fierce passion for power, including, especially, power over other persons. If that is indeed what the human self aims for, then no wonder it doesn't have a sterling reputation and selfishness or being self-interested no longer amounts to something honorable as Socrates thought it was.
Yet even in our time something of the ancient Greek attitude remains in play. Just notice how often people say "You take care now" or "Take care of yourself" as their parting words to each other. I have been noticing this for many years and just a few days ago it was in evidence again as I watched some saying farewell. No hesitation at all: Go and make sure you do well for yourself! So self-interest, prudence, taking care of oneself cannot be taken to be all that bad by most of us, even though the sentiment isn't given much support among those who write on morality and public policy, including American foreign affairs.
For some it is just a matter of cynical realism to accept that a country's foreign policy will be dictated by its international interests. But is this something one must apologize for or even deny, as Mr. Obama apparently feels necessary to do?
Only if self-interested conduct, including in matters of diplomacy and military policy, must be reckless. But must it be? Does one's country really benefit from a reckless, loose cannon foreign or military policy? No. Properly conceived and undertaken self-interested foreign and military policy, just as personal conduct, needs to be decent, guided by virtues or moral principles. Indeed, as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others have maintained--but recently with only a few such as Ayn Rand and quite a few psychotherapists joining them--the virtues are necessary to advance one's proper self-interest. Morality for these thinkers is about making it possible to succeed in one's human life, doing well at living as a human individual. It includes the virtues of prudence, honesty, moderation, temperance, courage, and such but also generosity, compassion, and even charity when it is needed. Only with these virtues in full display in one's life will someone accomplish that most vital task in of being morally good, being a good person.
The same, it can be argued, applies to foreign and, especially, military affairs. A country's foreign policy must not aim for martyrdom, for self-sacrifice. Thus, putting this into practice, General George C. Patton Jr. is supposed to have told his troop, "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Democracy and Liberty
Tibor R. Machan
The point deserves to be made over and over: majorities have no just authority to trump individual rights! That old dependable standby of the lynch mob is a perfect illustration of this. Just because the whole town wants to hang the suspect, it doesn't follow that it would be right to do so. The sheriff will defend the process due the accused because justice demands it. Why? Because no one may be punished or indeed imposed upon without it first having been demonstrated that the punishment or imposition is justified, deserved, or warranted.
Of course, this line of thinking takes it as a fact that individuals and their basic rights matter most than the popular will. Yet that should not be very difficult to grasp. So another old saying has it wrong--50 millions frenchmen can indeed be wrong! Millions of Nazis and communists and people around the globe with all kinds of superstitions can be and are wrong.
However, if one is wrong within one's own sphere of authority, on one's own property for example, or in one's own religious or philosophical convictions, that's no one else's business to fix except perhaps one's best friend or a family member who cares and would nudge one in the right direction. But being wrong is an individual right! The US Constitution attests to this with its First Amendment which certainly protects everyone who may be wrong about religion or other matters of belief.
Individual rights apply to all, including, especially, to those in the minority. In a bona fide free country one is free to be and do what one choses provided this doesn't impose on others something they do not deserve coming to them. So when someone doesn't want to carry health insurance, that is something he or she has a perfect right to do. (The example of car insurance is a bad one since the roads are government run, so the government may make the rules for who may or may not use them. One's body and health doesn't belong to the government!)
A few years ago the journalist and Newsweek International's editor Fareed Zakaria published a book, The Future of Freedom in which he worked out a pretty good set of criteria for which countries are liberal and which are illiberal democracies. I think he was too easy on some topics so he allowed for a lot more democratic meddling in people's lives than is justified, morally or politically. Nonetheless, the distinction Zakaria worked with is a very instructive one. When democracy intrudes on individual liberty, it is wrong--it amounts to mob rule, period, however civilized it may appear to be. But when democracy operates without such intrusiveness, it is a permissible method (though not always the soundest) for making decisions in small or large groups.
The American Founders identified every human being as equal in respect of having certain unalienable rights, among them to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This pretty much amounts to the best guide as to what may not be done to the citizens of a country--their lives, liberty and their choice of what is important to them may not be voted on. It is for them to decide and no one else, other than as advisors or consultants or teachers. Certainly not as daddies or nannies, even if they are in the majority. As the US Supreme Court once ruled, "One’s right to life, liberty, and property . . . and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." (U. S. Supreme Court 319 U. S. 62, 638)
It is in fact a quintessential feature of the American political tradition, this insistence on individual rights, something that irks so many rulers and their apologists across the globe and even here in the U.S.A. The fact that everyone has these rights is clearly the greatest bulwark against tyranny. Sadly, this element of the American political tradition has never been fully accepted even in America, let alone elsewhere, so one must constantly be vigilant in opposition to those who would ignore it, from the Right or the Left or indeed any circle of enthusiasts who want to ride roughshod over us.
Tibor R. Machan
The point deserves to be made over and over: majorities have no just authority to trump individual rights! That old dependable standby of the lynch mob is a perfect illustration of this. Just because the whole town wants to hang the suspect, it doesn't follow that it would be right to do so. The sheriff will defend the process due the accused because justice demands it. Why? Because no one may be punished or indeed imposed upon without it first having been demonstrated that the punishment or imposition is justified, deserved, or warranted.
Of course, this line of thinking takes it as a fact that individuals and their basic rights matter most than the popular will. Yet that should not be very difficult to grasp. So another old saying has it wrong--50 millions frenchmen can indeed be wrong! Millions of Nazis and communists and people around the globe with all kinds of superstitions can be and are wrong.
However, if one is wrong within one's own sphere of authority, on one's own property for example, or in one's own religious or philosophical convictions, that's no one else's business to fix except perhaps one's best friend or a family member who cares and would nudge one in the right direction. But being wrong is an individual right! The US Constitution attests to this with its First Amendment which certainly protects everyone who may be wrong about religion or other matters of belief.
Individual rights apply to all, including, especially, to those in the minority. In a bona fide free country one is free to be and do what one choses provided this doesn't impose on others something they do not deserve coming to them. So when someone doesn't want to carry health insurance, that is something he or she has a perfect right to do. (The example of car insurance is a bad one since the roads are government run, so the government may make the rules for who may or may not use them. One's body and health doesn't belong to the government!)
A few years ago the journalist and Newsweek International's editor Fareed Zakaria published a book, The Future of Freedom in which he worked out a pretty good set of criteria for which countries are liberal and which are illiberal democracies. I think he was too easy on some topics so he allowed for a lot more democratic meddling in people's lives than is justified, morally or politically. Nonetheless, the distinction Zakaria worked with is a very instructive one. When democracy intrudes on individual liberty, it is wrong--it amounts to mob rule, period, however civilized it may appear to be. But when democracy operates without such intrusiveness, it is a permissible method (though not always the soundest) for making decisions in small or large groups.
The American Founders identified every human being as equal in respect of having certain unalienable rights, among them to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This pretty much amounts to the best guide as to what may not be done to the citizens of a country--their lives, liberty and their choice of what is important to them may not be voted on. It is for them to decide and no one else, other than as advisors or consultants or teachers. Certainly not as daddies or nannies, even if they are in the majority. As the US Supreme Court once ruled, "One’s right to life, liberty, and property . . . and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." (U. S. Supreme Court 319 U. S. 62, 638)
It is in fact a quintessential feature of the American political tradition, this insistence on individual rights, something that irks so many rulers and their apologists across the globe and even here in the U.S.A. The fact that everyone has these rights is clearly the greatest bulwark against tyranny. Sadly, this element of the American political tradition has never been fully accepted even in America, let alone elsewhere, so one must constantly be vigilant in opposition to those who would ignore it, from the Right or the Left or indeed any circle of enthusiasts who want to ride roughshod over us.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
The Free Market of Ideas
Tibor R. Machan
As my career in academia winds down, hopefully not too rapidly, I reflect on just how odd it is that in the United States of America, the leaders of which often boast of being the freest country in human political history, most of education is the province of government. It is like it is in too many other countries across the globe which, however, do not claim to be leaders of the free world. And certainly it is a shame that in the U. S. A. such a vital element of culture as education is mostly directed, ultimately, by politicians and their appointees. Thus we have the scandalous spectacle of the textbook fights in Texas, the various battles about creationism or ID versus the theory or theories of natural selection, prayers versus secularism in the public schools, etc., and so forth.
Consider, in contrast, a sphere of culture in the country that is mostly free of government interference, magazine (or book and newspaper) publishing. (There are some others, such as religion and the production of various, though by no means all, consumer goods.) When one walks by a magazine rack in a book or drug store or a kiosk, one witnesses genuine freedom on display. Hundreds of different, often competing, publications in innumerable areas such as science, art, politics, culture and the rest are available to us. One can select from these what one finds most appealing, most instructive, most sound, most entertaining and no one from the government is authorized to force one to pay for or subscribe to any of them. Nor, and this is most important, are there any government bodies debating what should be the content in these publications, what editorial policies they ought to have, what writers they must feature or exclude. It is all--or mostly all, except when it concerns public libraries--a matter of how it comes out from the free market process. Unlike it was in the Soviet Union and its colonies, in the United States and many other countries when it comes to ideas, the free market is where decisions are made, independent of what the government might prefer.
A few weeks ago, as an example of how this works, I decided not to renew my subscription to a magazine I have been reading regularly for several decades. It is concerned with reporting the latest developments in the hard sciences and written accessibly to lay readers like me. However, over time I have noticed that the editors have included more and more political commentary, pushing a certain agenda for the government to pursue in science-funding and even in which theory is the best on in some fields of science. I found this unwelcome, so I stopped getting the magazine and subscribed, instead, to a different one that has a similar mission, namely, of informing readers about developments in the natural sciences. There are several such publications on the market and others are free to select ones for themselves different from what I have.
This is also what is possible in the realm of religious worship--one may join a church or leave one with no one from government telling one what one must do. But not so with education, not at the primary, secondary or higher education levels, although with somewhat different types of interference in place. But in all cases, citizens are legally required to support the government run institutions, be they elementary schools, high schools, colleges or universities administered by the various governments across the land. Even the federal government is involved, what with various military schools it runs and the huge sums of monies it hands out in research grants and scholarships, all paid for by citizens who have no choice but to fund what the government decides should be funded.
It may be pretty early in America's experiment with a reasonably free country, given that throughout human history in most regions of the globe governments have run nearly everything, extorting the funds needed for this from citizens (subjects!) who have only very limited powers to give them direction. It would seem, however, that part of that experiment should by now extend to education, just as it is so clearly manifest in the publishing sphere. Here is a part of culture that addresses the human mind and if there is anywhere that government ought to have zero influence it is precisely here. Coercion and thought to do mix at all. A free mind is essential to a flourishing, humane society and government run and administered education is anathema to this, just as would be government run and administered magazine, newspaper or book publishing, or religious worship.
Tibor R. Machan
As my career in academia winds down, hopefully not too rapidly, I reflect on just how odd it is that in the United States of America, the leaders of which often boast of being the freest country in human political history, most of education is the province of government. It is like it is in too many other countries across the globe which, however, do not claim to be leaders of the free world. And certainly it is a shame that in the U. S. A. such a vital element of culture as education is mostly directed, ultimately, by politicians and their appointees. Thus we have the scandalous spectacle of the textbook fights in Texas, the various battles about creationism or ID versus the theory or theories of natural selection, prayers versus secularism in the public schools, etc., and so forth.
Consider, in contrast, a sphere of culture in the country that is mostly free of government interference, magazine (or book and newspaper) publishing. (There are some others, such as religion and the production of various, though by no means all, consumer goods.) When one walks by a magazine rack in a book or drug store or a kiosk, one witnesses genuine freedom on display. Hundreds of different, often competing, publications in innumerable areas such as science, art, politics, culture and the rest are available to us. One can select from these what one finds most appealing, most instructive, most sound, most entertaining and no one from the government is authorized to force one to pay for or subscribe to any of them. Nor, and this is most important, are there any government bodies debating what should be the content in these publications, what editorial policies they ought to have, what writers they must feature or exclude. It is all--or mostly all, except when it concerns public libraries--a matter of how it comes out from the free market process. Unlike it was in the Soviet Union and its colonies, in the United States and many other countries when it comes to ideas, the free market is where decisions are made, independent of what the government might prefer.
A few weeks ago, as an example of how this works, I decided not to renew my subscription to a magazine I have been reading regularly for several decades. It is concerned with reporting the latest developments in the hard sciences and written accessibly to lay readers like me. However, over time I have noticed that the editors have included more and more political commentary, pushing a certain agenda for the government to pursue in science-funding and even in which theory is the best on in some fields of science. I found this unwelcome, so I stopped getting the magazine and subscribed, instead, to a different one that has a similar mission, namely, of informing readers about developments in the natural sciences. There are several such publications on the market and others are free to select ones for themselves different from what I have.
This is also what is possible in the realm of religious worship--one may join a church or leave one with no one from government telling one what one must do. But not so with education, not at the primary, secondary or higher education levels, although with somewhat different types of interference in place. But in all cases, citizens are legally required to support the government run institutions, be they elementary schools, high schools, colleges or universities administered by the various governments across the land. Even the federal government is involved, what with various military schools it runs and the huge sums of monies it hands out in research grants and scholarships, all paid for by citizens who have no choice but to fund what the government decides should be funded.
It may be pretty early in America's experiment with a reasonably free country, given that throughout human history in most regions of the globe governments have run nearly everything, extorting the funds needed for this from citizens (subjects!) who have only very limited powers to give them direction. It would seem, however, that part of that experiment should by now extend to education, just as it is so clearly manifest in the publishing sphere. Here is a part of culture that addresses the human mind and if there is anywhere that government ought to have zero influence it is precisely here. Coercion and thought to do mix at all. A free mind is essential to a flourishing, humane society and government run and administered education is anathema to this, just as would be government run and administered magazine, newspaper or book publishing, or religious worship.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Texas Textbook Troubles
Tibor R. Machan
In my own field of work, university education, there are a great many who scoff at the idea of privatization, something that is exactly how a free society should handle all education from primary to post graduate schools. There is no excuse for government to be responsible for educating young people or anyone else for that matter. Not only is it destructive of educational impartiality to entrust schools to governments--only if there is variety can impartiality be at least approximated--but the threat of out and out indoctrination is most real when one monolithic agency, with the power to coercively collect funds for its operations and conscript its students, runs "education."
Yes, thousands of professor and teachers want the government to be in charge but after this has been accomplished, as it has for a couple of centuries throughout America and elsewhere, there is no escaping the turf fight that takes over educational policy, especially when it comes to such courses as history, civics, and even biology and the textbooks teachers are required to use in them.
In a free and open society there will be a great variety of ways that people, even the most highly educated ones, will see the country's history, especially when it comes to politics and economics, as well as whatever other disciplines study. Few Americans could miss the current fracas about whether, for example, the New Deal was a valuable or destructive policy of the federal government. Yes, even Prohibition, with its bloody history, has its defenders. A good many scholars and citizens in general find themselves in different camps about the civil war, so much so that there is much controversy even about whether it should have as its name "Civil War" or "The War between the States." Innumerable other topics covered in various elementary, high school and college courses are fraught with controversies among sincere minded citizens and scholars--no one could miss the battles fought over the nature of biological evolution.
The idea that one can simply override all this with some kind of governmental policy--as it is being tried right now in Texas where there is a fight brewing among those who have their agendas concerning what should be taught to students in all sorts of subjects--is absurd. One need not be a subscriber to post-modernism--with its claim that there is no objective reality at all and the world as all in the eye of the beholder (be this in history, English literature, philosophy, or government studies)--in order to admit that there are many seriously divergent educated opinions and beliefs in what is the truth of the matter in a discipline. And in a free society the way this is supposed to be dealt with and acknowledged is by making it possible for all of them to compete in the marketplace of ideas without even a whiff of government intrusion (i.e., censorship).
No such marketplace can exist, however, if government education dominates, as it does everywhere in the country. The United States of America is practically not much different from the old Soviet Union or the current North Korea when it comes to how young people are being educated--they basically get some politically palatable stories, some banal compromises reached within the halls of government, instead of the outcome of scholarly and academic conferences where the different sides of the various controversies are presented and from which scholars return to their classrooms throughout the academic landscape and proceed to teach what they earnestly believe students should learn. What some of them will teach will dismay, even outrage, certain others; although often teachers know well and good how to give different sides a fair presentation and thus make it possible for their pupils to arrive at answers of their own.
But this cannot go on with government ordering what is to be taught and what the textbooks must contain. The wielding of political power in the field of education is no less insidious than it would be for government to run the profession of journalism, the publication of books and magazines, and so forth. None of that is acceptable in a genuine free country. Nor should government-run schools be.
Tibor R. Machan
In my own field of work, university education, there are a great many who scoff at the idea of privatization, something that is exactly how a free society should handle all education from primary to post graduate schools. There is no excuse for government to be responsible for educating young people or anyone else for that matter. Not only is it destructive of educational impartiality to entrust schools to governments--only if there is variety can impartiality be at least approximated--but the threat of out and out indoctrination is most real when one monolithic agency, with the power to coercively collect funds for its operations and conscript its students, runs "education."
Yes, thousands of professor and teachers want the government to be in charge but after this has been accomplished, as it has for a couple of centuries throughout America and elsewhere, there is no escaping the turf fight that takes over educational policy, especially when it comes to such courses as history, civics, and even biology and the textbooks teachers are required to use in them.
In a free and open society there will be a great variety of ways that people, even the most highly educated ones, will see the country's history, especially when it comes to politics and economics, as well as whatever other disciplines study. Few Americans could miss the current fracas about whether, for example, the New Deal was a valuable or destructive policy of the federal government. Yes, even Prohibition, with its bloody history, has its defenders. A good many scholars and citizens in general find themselves in different camps about the civil war, so much so that there is much controversy even about whether it should have as its name "Civil War" or "The War between the States." Innumerable other topics covered in various elementary, high school and college courses are fraught with controversies among sincere minded citizens and scholars--no one could miss the battles fought over the nature of biological evolution.
The idea that one can simply override all this with some kind of governmental policy--as it is being tried right now in Texas where there is a fight brewing among those who have their agendas concerning what should be taught to students in all sorts of subjects--is absurd. One need not be a subscriber to post-modernism--with its claim that there is no objective reality at all and the world as all in the eye of the beholder (be this in history, English literature, philosophy, or government studies)--in order to admit that there are many seriously divergent educated opinions and beliefs in what is the truth of the matter in a discipline. And in a free society the way this is supposed to be dealt with and acknowledged is by making it possible for all of them to compete in the marketplace of ideas without even a whiff of government intrusion (i.e., censorship).
No such marketplace can exist, however, if government education dominates, as it does everywhere in the country. The United States of America is practically not much different from the old Soviet Union or the current North Korea when it comes to how young people are being educated--they basically get some politically palatable stories, some banal compromises reached within the halls of government, instead of the outcome of scholarly and academic conferences where the different sides of the various controversies are presented and from which scholars return to their classrooms throughout the academic landscape and proceed to teach what they earnestly believe students should learn. What some of them will teach will dismay, even outrage, certain others; although often teachers know well and good how to give different sides a fair presentation and thus make it possible for their pupils to arrive at answers of their own.
But this cannot go on with government ordering what is to be taught and what the textbooks must contain. The wielding of political power in the field of education is no less insidious than it would be for government to run the profession of journalism, the publication of books and magazines, and so forth. None of that is acceptable in a genuine free country. Nor should government-run schools be.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Is Quality Health Care a Fundamental Right?
Tibor R. Machan
In a famous essay, published in the July 27 2009, issue of Newsweek magazine, the late Senator Ted Kennedy reiterated a message with which he has come to be very closely associated. As he wrote in that essay, "This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, 'that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American…will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege.' For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it's always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years."
The idea that health care and other welfare measures are fundamental rights everyone has goes back a couple of centuries. I believe it was the English philosopher T. H. Green who first articulated it (in his "Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract"):
"We shall probably all agree that freedom, rightly understood, is the greatest of blessings; that its attainment is the true end of all our efforts as citizens. But when we thus speak of freedom, we should consider carefully what we mean by it. We do not mean merely freedom from restraint or compulsion. We do not mean merely freedom to do as we like irrespective of what it is that we like. We do not mean a freedom that can be enjoyed by one man or one set of men at the cost of a loss of freedom to others. When we speak of freedom as something to be so highly prized, we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something that we do or enjoy in common with others. We mean by it a power which each man exercises through the help or security given him by his fellow-men, and which he in turn helps to secure for them. When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise on the whole of those powers of contributing to social good with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed; in short, by the greater power on the part of the citizens as a body to make the most and best of themselves."
The position Green lays out in this passage is the foundation underlying the late senator's view on health care as a fundamental right. Green himself was what came to be referred to as a right wing Hegelian, although this particular passage is actually more aligned with left wing political theory. In that theory human beings are viewed as prisoners of their circumstances. The poor are unable to rise from poverty unless they are liberated by the government or state, unless they are supplied with the tools by which they can escape their poverty, and the supplier of those tools are seen as governments because they are in possession of the power to make things happen. Certainly civilians, too, can help with this but unless they are forced to make the required provisions, the freedom to which the poor are entitled will be a matter merely of privilege based on generosity or philanthropy.
The crucial premise in all this is that unless people are moved by powerful agents out of their unfavorable circumstances, they will remain there, period. The poor, disadvantaged, sick, underprivileged, and so forth have no power of their own. Protecting their right to liberty as envisioned in classical liberal or libertarian political theory, as laid out by John Locke and the American founders, just won't help them at all. They need provisions, support, from other people. Since that is their only means of escape, they must receive it from the only source capable of securing it for them, namely, the government.
When the American founders spoke of government's task to secure the rights of the citizens, they had in mind the negative rights, rights not to be interfered with, the rights Green finds inadequate to the task at hand. As Green put it, by the right to freedom or liberty "We [meaning he and his allies] do not mean merely freedom from restraint or compulsion." No, "We mean by it a power which each man exercises through the help or security given him by his fellow-men, and which he in turn helps to secure for them."
Yet not even this tells the full story because it suggests that such power may be given to those who require it, as a matter of the free choice of those who can give it. No, if it is a proper fundamental right, it must be secured from those who can secure it as a matter of a legal mandate, just as the right to negative liberty must be. It isn't a matter of other people's generosity or kindness that they must respect one's right to one's life, liberty and property and neither is this so concerning their right to such provisions as health care, not at least in Green's political thought. So, then, it isn't optional but mandatory that positive rights be protected; so governments or whatever agency is responsible for upholding the laws of the land may use force to make sure that these rights are secure. And for Green and his followers, including the late Senator Ted Kennedy and President Barrack Obama the same thing holds true about positive rights such as the supposed right to health care.
Now the big problem with this is that while respect for another's right to life or liberty requires nothing more from someone than to abstain from killing (or assaulting or kidnapping) that individual while respecting the right to, say, health care requires actual work from health care professionals or those who will be required to pay their salaries. And that amounts to placing these providers into involuntary servitude.
However valuable it is for those who need it to receive health care or insurance, it is impermissible to treat those who can provide such care and insurance to be coerced into doing so. The protection of positive rights, so called, amounts to nothing less than a policy of forced labor--not different from slavery, actually--something that is completely wrong, entirely impermissible, regardless of how much others may benefit from it, how urgent their need is for it. And it also misunderstands human nature since it denies that the poor can escape poverty on their own initiative. That is plainly false.
Tibor R. Machan
In a famous essay, published in the July 27 2009, issue of Newsweek magazine, the late Senator Ted Kennedy reiterated a message with which he has come to be very closely associated. As he wrote in that essay, "This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, 'that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American…will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege.' For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it's always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years."
The idea that health care and other welfare measures are fundamental rights everyone has goes back a couple of centuries. I believe it was the English philosopher T. H. Green who first articulated it (in his "Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract"):
"We shall probably all agree that freedom, rightly understood, is the greatest of blessings; that its attainment is the true end of all our efforts as citizens. But when we thus speak of freedom, we should consider carefully what we mean by it. We do not mean merely freedom from restraint or compulsion. We do not mean merely freedom to do as we like irrespective of what it is that we like. We do not mean a freedom that can be enjoyed by one man or one set of men at the cost of a loss of freedom to others. When we speak of freedom as something to be so highly prized, we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something that we do or enjoy in common with others. We mean by it a power which each man exercises through the help or security given him by his fellow-men, and which he in turn helps to secure for them. When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise on the whole of those powers of contributing to social good with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed; in short, by the greater power on the part of the citizens as a body to make the most and best of themselves."
The position Green lays out in this passage is the foundation underlying the late senator's view on health care as a fundamental right. Green himself was what came to be referred to as a right wing Hegelian, although this particular passage is actually more aligned with left wing political theory. In that theory human beings are viewed as prisoners of their circumstances. The poor are unable to rise from poverty unless they are liberated by the government or state, unless they are supplied with the tools by which they can escape their poverty, and the supplier of those tools are seen as governments because they are in possession of the power to make things happen. Certainly civilians, too, can help with this but unless they are forced to make the required provisions, the freedom to which the poor are entitled will be a matter merely of privilege based on generosity or philanthropy.
The crucial premise in all this is that unless people are moved by powerful agents out of their unfavorable circumstances, they will remain there, period. The poor, disadvantaged, sick, underprivileged, and so forth have no power of their own. Protecting their right to liberty as envisioned in classical liberal or libertarian political theory, as laid out by John Locke and the American founders, just won't help them at all. They need provisions, support, from other people. Since that is their only means of escape, they must receive it from the only source capable of securing it for them, namely, the government.
When the American founders spoke of government's task to secure the rights of the citizens, they had in mind the negative rights, rights not to be interfered with, the rights Green finds inadequate to the task at hand. As Green put it, by the right to freedom or liberty "We [meaning he and his allies] do not mean merely freedom from restraint or compulsion." No, "We mean by it a power which each man exercises through the help or security given him by his fellow-men, and which he in turn helps to secure for them."
Yet not even this tells the full story because it suggests that such power may be given to those who require it, as a matter of the free choice of those who can give it. No, if it is a proper fundamental right, it must be secured from those who can secure it as a matter of a legal mandate, just as the right to negative liberty must be. It isn't a matter of other people's generosity or kindness that they must respect one's right to one's life, liberty and property and neither is this so concerning their right to such provisions as health care, not at least in Green's political thought. So, then, it isn't optional but mandatory that positive rights be protected; so governments or whatever agency is responsible for upholding the laws of the land may use force to make sure that these rights are secure. And for Green and his followers, including the late Senator Ted Kennedy and President Barrack Obama the same thing holds true about positive rights such as the supposed right to health care.
Now the big problem with this is that while respect for another's right to life or liberty requires nothing more from someone than to abstain from killing (or assaulting or kidnapping) that individual while respecting the right to, say, health care requires actual work from health care professionals or those who will be required to pay their salaries. And that amounts to placing these providers into involuntary servitude.
However valuable it is for those who need it to receive health care or insurance, it is impermissible to treat those who can provide such care and insurance to be coerced into doing so. The protection of positive rights, so called, amounts to nothing less than a policy of forced labor--not different from slavery, actually--something that is completely wrong, entirely impermissible, regardless of how much others may benefit from it, how urgent their need is for it. And it also misunderstands human nature since it denies that the poor can escape poverty on their own initiative. That is plainly false.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Big Lie Theory Flourishes
Tibor R. Machan
The theory of the big (but good) lie goes back to a certain reading of Plato's most famous dialogue, the Republic. There are more or less crude versions of it but the gist of the theory is that for reasons of state--that is, so as to secure the chance of the ruler to rule smoothly--telling lies can be justified and may even be necessary. Indeed, the big lie could well have been the very idea of the perfect political system itself that Socrates sketched in that dialogue, one that really amounts to a utopia, an impossible blueprint for a human community and its basic principles. Some have concluded from this that Plato (Socrates) never meant to advocate what the dialogue depicts as the perfect regime but merely presented it as a kind of model, the way that the gorgeous women on the covers of Vogue or other fashion magazines function, just reminders of what to pay attention to as women dress up.
But ever since Plato appeared to make the big lie respectable in politics, quite a few regimes have made use of it. And in our era no less seems to be the tactic, at least for the cheerleaders of more government planning who routinely appear on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times. As a case in point, check out the article by Alan Tonelson and Kevin L. Kearns "Trading Away Productivity" (March 6, 2010). The gist of the piece is nothing less than the defense of international economic protectionism, a policy thoroughly discredited by now except for diehards desperate to keep their establishment and industry intact at the expense of domestic consumers and foreign competitors. Nothing new here--every politician is tempted to offer to square the circle; just watch how in Washington nearly everyone believes that one can indeed get blood out of a turnip and pay for goodies with, well, nothing.
What is far more egregious than the advocacy of defunct theories, defunct at least since the time of Adam Smith, is the premise with which these authors begin their discussion. What they say is, well, a big lie, although for The Times it is routine by now, what with the leadership of hyper-Keynesian Paul Krugman on their pages when it comes to political economy. They state, clearly without any hesitation, that "For a quarter-century, American economic policy has assumed that the keys to durable national prosperity are deregulation, free trade and a swift transition to a post-industrial, services-dominated future." There is no truth to this claim at all.
American economic policy--and it pains me to even refer to such a thing, since a government isn't supposed to mess with its citizen's economic (any more than their religious) lives, not to mention make policy for them all--has been protectionist in nearly every age. Indeed, such protectionism is often held to explain some of the anger of the Japanese at America that precipitated the invasion at Pearl Harbor and the ensuing bloody war in the Pacific. Administration after administration has tried to boost the fortunes of American businesses and labor by way of imposing duties on foreign imports, be this is steel, cars, shoes, textiles, and innumerable other goods. The means by which obstacles to honest trade were implemented are various--sometimes outright tariffs or duties, sometimes phony requirements that manufacturers needed to meet before their product would qualify for importation, thus making it very expensive to import and to buy the products.
I recall that back in the 1980s I was teaching for a while in Switzerland and I ran across the nifty used vehicle I naively considered purchasing and bringing back with me to drive in the US. When I inquired about how to do this, it was made clear to me that no such deal was possible since cars built for European roads by European manufacturers lack the kind of "safety" features the US government insists cars built in the US must include. Why? No reason except that this makes it simple to kept those European cars out of the American market and gave Detroit a leg up in the effort to stay in business, never mind the demand for its products by American consumers. (You can see now how well this worked in the long run!)
This same story could be repeated several thousand times. They all put the lie to the claim made by Tonalson and Kearns about American economic policy having favored free trade. But there is more.
As to government regulations, the increase of these for American businesses over the years as been stupendous. This and many of the claims of these authors can be seen as big lies in a very informative essay written a while back by David Boaz of the Cato Institute, titled "The Truth of Milton Friedman" (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/04/21/the-truth-about-milton-friedman/). The essay exposes Tonalson and Kearns' lies and the many others circulating these days about how America has been in the grips of market fundamentalism, of an economic policy of laissez-faire and free trade, successfully promoted by the late Dr. Friedman. What bunk.
America has always, from its beginning, been a mixed economy and the mixture is now markedly lopsided toward government interference, including thousands and thousands of pages of government regulations which keep increasing year by year. (And, no, Ronald Reagan didn't reverse this trend!) But the big lie and the big liars will not hear of any of this and keep cheering on as the American government moves farther and farther away from even a semblance of a free market system.
Tibor R. Machan
The theory of the big (but good) lie goes back to a certain reading of Plato's most famous dialogue, the Republic. There are more or less crude versions of it but the gist of the theory is that for reasons of state--that is, so as to secure the chance of the ruler to rule smoothly--telling lies can be justified and may even be necessary. Indeed, the big lie could well have been the very idea of the perfect political system itself that Socrates sketched in that dialogue, one that really amounts to a utopia, an impossible blueprint for a human community and its basic principles. Some have concluded from this that Plato (Socrates) never meant to advocate what the dialogue depicts as the perfect regime but merely presented it as a kind of model, the way that the gorgeous women on the covers of Vogue or other fashion magazines function, just reminders of what to pay attention to as women dress up.
But ever since Plato appeared to make the big lie respectable in politics, quite a few regimes have made use of it. And in our era no less seems to be the tactic, at least for the cheerleaders of more government planning who routinely appear on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times. As a case in point, check out the article by Alan Tonelson and Kevin L. Kearns "Trading Away Productivity" (March 6, 2010). The gist of the piece is nothing less than the defense of international economic protectionism, a policy thoroughly discredited by now except for diehards desperate to keep their establishment and industry intact at the expense of domestic consumers and foreign competitors. Nothing new here--every politician is tempted to offer to square the circle; just watch how in Washington nearly everyone believes that one can indeed get blood out of a turnip and pay for goodies with, well, nothing.
What is far more egregious than the advocacy of defunct theories, defunct at least since the time of Adam Smith, is the premise with which these authors begin their discussion. What they say is, well, a big lie, although for The Times it is routine by now, what with the leadership of hyper-Keynesian Paul Krugman on their pages when it comes to political economy. They state, clearly without any hesitation, that "For a quarter-century, American economic policy has assumed that the keys to durable national prosperity are deregulation, free trade and a swift transition to a post-industrial, services-dominated future." There is no truth to this claim at all.
American economic policy--and it pains me to even refer to such a thing, since a government isn't supposed to mess with its citizen's economic (any more than their religious) lives, not to mention make policy for them all--has been protectionist in nearly every age. Indeed, such protectionism is often held to explain some of the anger of the Japanese at America that precipitated the invasion at Pearl Harbor and the ensuing bloody war in the Pacific. Administration after administration has tried to boost the fortunes of American businesses and labor by way of imposing duties on foreign imports, be this is steel, cars, shoes, textiles, and innumerable other goods. The means by which obstacles to honest trade were implemented are various--sometimes outright tariffs or duties, sometimes phony requirements that manufacturers needed to meet before their product would qualify for importation, thus making it very expensive to import and to buy the products.
I recall that back in the 1980s I was teaching for a while in Switzerland and I ran across the nifty used vehicle I naively considered purchasing and bringing back with me to drive in the US. When I inquired about how to do this, it was made clear to me that no such deal was possible since cars built for European roads by European manufacturers lack the kind of "safety" features the US government insists cars built in the US must include. Why? No reason except that this makes it simple to kept those European cars out of the American market and gave Detroit a leg up in the effort to stay in business, never mind the demand for its products by American consumers. (You can see now how well this worked in the long run!)
This same story could be repeated several thousand times. They all put the lie to the claim made by Tonalson and Kearns about American economic policy having favored free trade. But there is more.
As to government regulations, the increase of these for American businesses over the years as been stupendous. This and many of the claims of these authors can be seen as big lies in a very informative essay written a while back by David Boaz of the Cato Institute, titled "The Truth of Milton Friedman" (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/04/21/the-truth-about-milton-friedman/). The essay exposes Tonalson and Kearns' lies and the many others circulating these days about how America has been in the grips of market fundamentalism, of an economic policy of laissez-faire and free trade, successfully promoted by the late Dr. Friedman. What bunk.
America has always, from its beginning, been a mixed economy and the mixture is now markedly lopsided toward government interference, including thousands and thousands of pages of government regulations which keep increasing year by year. (And, no, Ronald Reagan didn't reverse this trend!) But the big lie and the big liars will not hear of any of this and keep cheering on as the American government moves farther and farther away from even a semblance of a free market system.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Property Rights and Gun Rights
Tibor R. Machan
Over the years the distinction between public and private spaces has become obscured. Which is why Starbucks is finding it so difficult to insist that customers do not carry weapons while in their establishment. It is because over the last several decades a doctrine of public accommodation has developed in the law such that when some area is adjacent to a public sphere—a street or road or park—it no longer enjoys private property rights, the authority to determine what happens there.
It all came about because of the impatience with racially discriminatory merchants and costumers. If they were understood as having firm private property rights, they would have to have their racist practices protected by law, which the courts were unwilling to sanction (unlike the protection of porn!). In particular, in a decision by the United States Supreme Court, handed down invalidating a law enacted by referendum in California pertaining to the right of people to sell their property to whomever they choose, Justice Byron White explained that the California law (Art. I, Sec. 26) enacted via Proposition 14 (in 1964) "authorized private discrimination," even though, he added dubiously, only "encouraging, rather than commanding" it. (Actually it only tolerated it!) He added:
The right to discriminate, including the right to discriminate on racial grounds, was now embodied in the state's basic charter, immune from legislative, executive, or judicial regulation at any level of the state government.
And for him, a loyal modern liberal justice, that was unacceptable! Yet that is exactly what is entailed in the notion of a right—its exercise, wisely or unwisely, is shielded from others' interference. Justice White himself made this evident, albeit disapprovingly, when he observed: “Those practicing racial discrimination need no longer rely solely on their personal choice. They could now invoke express constitutional authority, free from censure or interference of any kind from official source". And what's wrong with that? Its the same with everything else objectionable the constitution protects, such a flag burning.
Notice that by prohibiting racial discrimination as a matter of legal mandate, the court removed the issue from the realm of morality or ethics. How could one freely make a personal choice to discriminate (or not) if government has the legitimate power to stop one from discriminating not as a government official but as a private citizen, within one's private domain? If I want to restrict the potential buyers of my home to only Mormons or White Protestants or Hungarian refugees, that ought to be my business, no one else's. But no, the Supreme Court of the supposedly freest country of the world chose to prohibit bad choices by its citizens. That is exactly like censorship by the government, plain and simple. And recall how so many American commentators were appalled at how Muslims reacted to the Danish cartoons that made fun of Islam! For Muslims what the cartoonists and the papers that published them did was every bit as awful as racial discrimination was to Justice White and his colleagues on the Supreme Court.
Now back to Starbucks and gun rights. Turns out that because the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects individual Americans who want to own and carry firearms, this now means Starbucks isn't free to decided about whether its costumers may do so in its coffee shops. Why? Because these shops are "affected with the public interest," because they are located on streets which are public spheres and because government regulates them. Here are proprietors who want to apply their own, possibly sound standards of safety within the establishment they own and aren't permitted to do so because, well, the property is no longer deemed to be really theirs at all but part of the public sphere (square).
Slowly and surely everything in the country will come under public—that is, government—jurisdiction, treated as if it were a courthouse or some other sphere where public administration goes on. The logic of the slippery slope is inescapable here. Moreover, if public officials make bad decisions, they will drag the entire country down since there will not be any private sphere left where those like the owners of Starbucks could institute practices that could well make better sense than what the public officials insist everyone must adopt.
One of the ways a free society deals with dubious practices by private citizens is to protect the liberty of those who find fault with such practices to protest, including by refusing to allow them in their own private spheres such as their places of business. But because this principled approach does not immediately do away with some of the despicable practices of the citizenry, such as racism in commerce, the eager beavers have now thrown the baby out with the bathwater, sacrificed individual liberty for the sake of coerced decency. This is exactly like when others abandon liberty for the sake of security. Plague on them both
Tibor R. Machan
Over the years the distinction between public and private spaces has become obscured. Which is why Starbucks is finding it so difficult to insist that customers do not carry weapons while in their establishment. It is because over the last several decades a doctrine of public accommodation has developed in the law such that when some area is adjacent to a public sphere—a street or road or park—it no longer enjoys private property rights, the authority to determine what happens there.
It all came about because of the impatience with racially discriminatory merchants and costumers. If they were understood as having firm private property rights, they would have to have their racist practices protected by law, which the courts were unwilling to sanction (unlike the protection of porn!). In particular, in a decision by the United States Supreme Court, handed down invalidating a law enacted by referendum in California pertaining to the right of people to sell their property to whomever they choose, Justice Byron White explained that the California law (Art. I, Sec. 26) enacted via Proposition 14 (in 1964) "authorized private discrimination," even though, he added dubiously, only "encouraging, rather than commanding" it. (Actually it only tolerated it!) He added:
The right to discriminate, including the right to discriminate on racial grounds, was now embodied in the state's basic charter, immune from legislative, executive, or judicial regulation at any level of the state government.
And for him, a loyal modern liberal justice, that was unacceptable! Yet that is exactly what is entailed in the notion of a right—its exercise, wisely or unwisely, is shielded from others' interference. Justice White himself made this evident, albeit disapprovingly, when he observed: “Those practicing racial discrimination need no longer rely solely on their personal choice. They could now invoke express constitutional authority, free from censure or interference of any kind from official source". And what's wrong with that? Its the same with everything else objectionable the constitution protects, such a flag burning.
Notice that by prohibiting racial discrimination as a matter of legal mandate, the court removed the issue from the realm of morality or ethics. How could one freely make a personal choice to discriminate (or not) if government has the legitimate power to stop one from discriminating not as a government official but as a private citizen, within one's private domain? If I want to restrict the potential buyers of my home to only Mormons or White Protestants or Hungarian refugees, that ought to be my business, no one else's. But no, the Supreme Court of the supposedly freest country of the world chose to prohibit bad choices by its citizens. That is exactly like censorship by the government, plain and simple. And recall how so many American commentators were appalled at how Muslims reacted to the Danish cartoons that made fun of Islam! For Muslims what the cartoonists and the papers that published them did was every bit as awful as racial discrimination was to Justice White and his colleagues on the Supreme Court.
Now back to Starbucks and gun rights. Turns out that because the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects individual Americans who want to own and carry firearms, this now means Starbucks isn't free to decided about whether its costumers may do so in its coffee shops. Why? Because these shops are "affected with the public interest," because they are located on streets which are public spheres and because government regulates them. Here are proprietors who want to apply their own, possibly sound standards of safety within the establishment they own and aren't permitted to do so because, well, the property is no longer deemed to be really theirs at all but part of the public sphere (square).
Slowly and surely everything in the country will come under public—that is, government—jurisdiction, treated as if it were a courthouse or some other sphere where public administration goes on. The logic of the slippery slope is inescapable here. Moreover, if public officials make bad decisions, they will drag the entire country down since there will not be any private sphere left where those like the owners of Starbucks could institute practices that could well make better sense than what the public officials insist everyone must adopt.
One of the ways a free society deals with dubious practices by private citizens is to protect the liberty of those who find fault with such practices to protest, including by refusing to allow them in their own private spheres such as their places of business. But because this principled approach does not immediately do away with some of the despicable practices of the citizenry, such as racism in commerce, the eager beavers have now thrown the baby out with the bathwater, sacrificed individual liberty for the sake of coerced decency. This is exactly like when others abandon liberty for the sake of security. Plague on them both
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
AGW Science and due process
Tibor R. Machan
A powerful and vital aspect of the fully free society would be that only those burdens may be imposed on citizens that they have been convincingly shown, via due process of law, to deserve. This is roughly how the criminal law works. This is why the prosecution carries the onus of proof and not the defense--all the defense (the skeptic!) needs to do is point out serious holes in the case being mounted by the prosecution and the jury will acquit.
In contrast, when in the old Soviet Union a police officer suspected someone of criminal activity, this would pretty much close the case and the accused would have to try to do something awfully difficult, namely, prove a negative: "I am not guilty."
The New York Times reports in a recent issue that AGW--anthropogenic global warming--scientists are beginning to mount a defense of their work in light of the growing skepticism that follows some of the recent (more or less serious) malpractice by some of them. As The Times presents the story, some of the scientists are pretty much baffled by the persistent skepticism. They appear to believe that their education, research, and academic credentials should suffice to make the case for what they earnestly believe.
This suggests that the protesting scientists share the attitude with the police officers of the former Soviet Union--a suspect is guilty until proven innocent. These--though by no means all--scientists appear to want the skeptics to conclusively disprove AGW.
But in a debate about the AGW hypothesis it isn't the doubters who owe the proof, just as in a court of criminal law (as noted above) it is not the defense that owes the proof but the prosecution. And this is quite sensible: the assertion that someone has done the crime is provable if true since there is a reality corresponding to it; the assertion that someone hasn't done the crime is not except for showing that the case in support of guilt is weak, not true beyond a reasonable doubt. (Proving negatives is only possible once the argument for the positive is in place, otherwise on is shooting in the dark!)
What the scientists need to realize is that a sizable portion of the public holds to the idea: the onus of proof is on those asserting the AGW theory. And it needs to be a solid proof at that since the consequences of accepting it imply Draconian burdens to be imposed on the public, burdens no one ought to suffer unless there is powerful proof that it is deserved.
Al Gore & Co. are very enthusiastic about imposing these burdens not just on Americans and other citizens of developed countries but on virtually everyone across the globe, even those whose chances to finally emerging out of poverty will be severely undermined by them. Given the prospect of such public policy consequence, the pro-AGW scientists simply must realize that many of us don't want a plausible theory, not even a probably true one. What we want is something that nails the case firmly, without any reasonable doubt left. But this of course the scientists haven't managed to produce and there is evidence that among them there are quite a few skeptics--e.g., reportedly among physicists. In other words the pro-AGW scientists need to realize that they don't run the show and cannot expect to lord it over the rest of us merely because they have a strong suspicion about AGW. That will not suffice for free men and women, not by a long shot.
Perhaps it is a sign of the waning influence of the classical liberal political and legal tradition that we are witnessing with these scientists insisting that their current case alone should suffice and we need all comply, never mind reasonable doubt. That would be a devastating development for it could establish a precedent that is completely antithetical to how a government in a free country must treat the citizenry. It would, in short, begin to usher in dictatorship. I doubt even scientists confident of their belief in AGW want something like that to happen.
Tibor R. Machan
A powerful and vital aspect of the fully free society would be that only those burdens may be imposed on citizens that they have been convincingly shown, via due process of law, to deserve. This is roughly how the criminal law works. This is why the prosecution carries the onus of proof and not the defense--all the defense (the skeptic!) needs to do is point out serious holes in the case being mounted by the prosecution and the jury will acquit.
In contrast, when in the old Soviet Union a police officer suspected someone of criminal activity, this would pretty much close the case and the accused would have to try to do something awfully difficult, namely, prove a negative: "I am not guilty."
The New York Times reports in a recent issue that AGW--anthropogenic global warming--scientists are beginning to mount a defense of their work in light of the growing skepticism that follows some of the recent (more or less serious) malpractice by some of them. As The Times presents the story, some of the scientists are pretty much baffled by the persistent skepticism. They appear to believe that their education, research, and academic credentials should suffice to make the case for what they earnestly believe.
This suggests that the protesting scientists share the attitude with the police officers of the former Soviet Union--a suspect is guilty until proven innocent. These--though by no means all--scientists appear to want the skeptics to conclusively disprove AGW.
But in a debate about the AGW hypothesis it isn't the doubters who owe the proof, just as in a court of criminal law (as noted above) it is not the defense that owes the proof but the prosecution. And this is quite sensible: the assertion that someone has done the crime is provable if true since there is a reality corresponding to it; the assertion that someone hasn't done the crime is not except for showing that the case in support of guilt is weak, not true beyond a reasonable doubt. (Proving negatives is only possible once the argument for the positive is in place, otherwise on is shooting in the dark!)
What the scientists need to realize is that a sizable portion of the public holds to the idea: the onus of proof is on those asserting the AGW theory. And it needs to be a solid proof at that since the consequences of accepting it imply Draconian burdens to be imposed on the public, burdens no one ought to suffer unless there is powerful proof that it is deserved.
Al Gore & Co. are very enthusiastic about imposing these burdens not just on Americans and other citizens of developed countries but on virtually everyone across the globe, even those whose chances to finally emerging out of poverty will be severely undermined by them. Given the prospect of such public policy consequence, the pro-AGW scientists simply must realize that many of us don't want a plausible theory, not even a probably true one. What we want is something that nails the case firmly, without any reasonable doubt left. But this of course the scientists haven't managed to produce and there is evidence that among them there are quite a few skeptics--e.g., reportedly among physicists. In other words the pro-AGW scientists need to realize that they don't run the show and cannot expect to lord it over the rest of us merely because they have a strong suspicion about AGW. That will not suffice for free men and women, not by a long shot.
Perhaps it is a sign of the waning influence of the classical liberal political and legal tradition that we are witnessing with these scientists insisting that their current case alone should suffice and we need all comply, never mind reasonable doubt. That would be a devastating development for it could establish a precedent that is completely antithetical to how a government in a free country must treat the citizenry. It would, in short, begin to usher in dictatorship. I doubt even scientists confident of their belief in AGW want something like that to happen.
Monday, March 01, 2010
What is the Public Interest?
Tibor R. Machan
In the midst of the current orgy of capitalism-bashing, unleashed by those who earnestly believe that they should be directing the buying and selling activities of the public, there is once again a good deal of talk about how we must all serve the public interest and forget about our own selfish goals. Just a few days ago Al Gore went on a demagogical frenzy, denouncing "market triumphalism" and lamenting the perfectly sensible concern that "Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carr[y] a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated" (i.e., Soviet socialism). He even asserted, without a scintilla of proof, that the Cold War victory of democratic capitalism--which means, the mixed economy over a dictatorially planned one--"led, in the United States, to a hubristic 'bubble' of market fundamentalism that encouraged opponents of regulatory constraints to mount an aggressive effort to shift the internal boundary between the democracy sphere and the market sphere."
Of course, no such thing happened at all. Ever since its inception the United States has been a mixed system. One need but remember that even among the Founders there was a vehement debate about how centralized the U. S. government should be, with Alexander Hamilton leading the statist faction and Thomas Jefferson those who favored less concentration of power.
In other words, to quote Ronald Reagan, "Here we go again." The cheerleaders of statism try to gain advantage by distorting history. In the last fifty or more years there has not been any effective move away from the "democratic sphere." (Just consider as a case in point, the U. S. Supreme Court's 2005 ruling that eminent domain law can be used to transfer ownership from less to more taxable private use, a distortion of the market friendly Fifth Amendment if there ever was one.) The Congress has moved steadily toward populism, away from a system restrained by the Bill of Rights, by principles of classical liberal justice. Al Gore simply wants to move faster with all this, more power to his crowd, period.
The moral system these avid fans of statism are peddling is the doctrine of service to the public interest. You know, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" and similar calls to have us all abandon the Declaration's ideals in favor of those of communitarianism, even out and out socialism. The public interest is back with a vengeance. But what exactly is it?
In the history of political thought the public interest or common good has been identified in a variety of ways but perhaps the most provocative and influential has been Jean Jacques Rousseau's idea of the general will--in more recent lingo, "the will of the people." No, this is not some democratic consensus of a majority of the citizenry. It is, instead, a belief in some overarching universal purpose that the citizenry of a country must serve. But then what is that purpose? Yes, that is indeed the rub.
That purpose is exactly what those who peddle the idea say it is. It is in fact the purpose of the likes of Al Gore or anyone else who invokes the idea. The public interest or general will is nothing definite apart from what those who make reference to it want it to be. It is the promoters of the idea that all of us must serve the public interest who, frankly, establish what it is. It is their own agenda, what they take to be important, never mind the rest of the public!
It was in fact the American Founders, who learned a good deal from John Locke, who advanced a pretty sensible and workable idea of the public interest, even while they had some disagreements about it. They believed, and laid this out in the Declaration of Independence, that government promotes the public interest when it secures the individual human rights of all citizens. All of them, not some special group's with its subjective agenda. Their brilliant solution to the problem of just what is the public interest is that it is the protection of everyone's liberty to live as he or she chooses, provided it doesn't thwart the same liberty of others.
Such a minimalist conception of the public interest does full justice to our human nature! We are all in need of liberty and we are also very different from one another which this liberty then fully accommodates. One size does not fit all except for one thing--everyone must be free. And that is the only sensible, morally sound idea of the public interest. Trouble is that this idea doesn't accommodate the goals of those who want to impose their agenda on the rest of us. It is those folks who give rise to the scandalous special interest politics of Mr. Gore's democratic sphere. (And he isn't being up front about that either since if the democratic sphere fails to include the agenda of the AGW crowd, it loses legitimacy for him.)
Al Gore & Co. don't like market fundamentalism because what that amounts to is individual liberty for everyone and functions as a bulwark against regimenting us all to fall in line behind Mr. Gore. For my money, I take market fundamentalism any day over the kind of fundamentalism that gives Mr. Gore & Co. power over all of us.
Tibor R. Machan
In the midst of the current orgy of capitalism-bashing, unleashed by those who earnestly believe that they should be directing the buying and selling activities of the public, there is once again a good deal of talk about how we must all serve the public interest and forget about our own selfish goals. Just a few days ago Al Gore went on a demagogical frenzy, denouncing "market triumphalism" and lamenting the perfectly sensible concern that "Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carr[y] a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated" (i.e., Soviet socialism). He even asserted, without a scintilla of proof, that the Cold War victory of democratic capitalism--which means, the mixed economy over a dictatorially planned one--"led, in the United States, to a hubristic 'bubble' of market fundamentalism that encouraged opponents of regulatory constraints to mount an aggressive effort to shift the internal boundary between the democracy sphere and the market sphere."
Of course, no such thing happened at all. Ever since its inception the United States has been a mixed system. One need but remember that even among the Founders there was a vehement debate about how centralized the U. S. government should be, with Alexander Hamilton leading the statist faction and Thomas Jefferson those who favored less concentration of power.
In other words, to quote Ronald Reagan, "Here we go again." The cheerleaders of statism try to gain advantage by distorting history. In the last fifty or more years there has not been any effective move away from the "democratic sphere." (Just consider as a case in point, the U. S. Supreme Court's 2005 ruling that eminent domain law can be used to transfer ownership from less to more taxable private use, a distortion of the market friendly Fifth Amendment if there ever was one.) The Congress has moved steadily toward populism, away from a system restrained by the Bill of Rights, by principles of classical liberal justice. Al Gore simply wants to move faster with all this, more power to his crowd, period.
The moral system these avid fans of statism are peddling is the doctrine of service to the public interest. You know, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" and similar calls to have us all abandon the Declaration's ideals in favor of those of communitarianism, even out and out socialism. The public interest is back with a vengeance. But what exactly is it?
In the history of political thought the public interest or common good has been identified in a variety of ways but perhaps the most provocative and influential has been Jean Jacques Rousseau's idea of the general will--in more recent lingo, "the will of the people." No, this is not some democratic consensus of a majority of the citizenry. It is, instead, a belief in some overarching universal purpose that the citizenry of a country must serve. But then what is that purpose? Yes, that is indeed the rub.
That purpose is exactly what those who peddle the idea say it is. It is in fact the purpose of the likes of Al Gore or anyone else who invokes the idea. The public interest or general will is nothing definite apart from what those who make reference to it want it to be. It is the promoters of the idea that all of us must serve the public interest who, frankly, establish what it is. It is their own agenda, what they take to be important, never mind the rest of the public!
It was in fact the American Founders, who learned a good deal from John Locke, who advanced a pretty sensible and workable idea of the public interest, even while they had some disagreements about it. They believed, and laid this out in the Declaration of Independence, that government promotes the public interest when it secures the individual human rights of all citizens. All of them, not some special group's with its subjective agenda. Their brilliant solution to the problem of just what is the public interest is that it is the protection of everyone's liberty to live as he or she chooses, provided it doesn't thwart the same liberty of others.
Such a minimalist conception of the public interest does full justice to our human nature! We are all in need of liberty and we are also very different from one another which this liberty then fully accommodates. One size does not fit all except for one thing--everyone must be free. And that is the only sensible, morally sound idea of the public interest. Trouble is that this idea doesn't accommodate the goals of those who want to impose their agenda on the rest of us. It is those folks who give rise to the scandalous special interest politics of Mr. Gore's democratic sphere. (And he isn't being up front about that either since if the democratic sphere fails to include the agenda of the AGW crowd, it loses legitimacy for him.)
Al Gore & Co. don't like market fundamentalism because what that amounts to is individual liberty for everyone and functions as a bulwark against regimenting us all to fall in line behind Mr. Gore. For my money, I take market fundamentalism any day over the kind of fundamentalism that gives Mr. Gore & Co. power over all of us.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
How about them Philosophical Differences?
Tibor R. Machan
President Obama and others at the summit Thursday (2/25/10) kept talking about philosophical difference between his team and the Republicans but what did they have in mind?
By "philosophical" most mean "basic," or "fundamental." Possibly "systemic" could also be meant. Bottom line is that believing in an extensive role of the federal government in determining the health care requirements of American citizens differs from believing in an extensive role by individuals and their providers doing so. The president is right, however, to point out that it is now too late for any Republican to beef about heavy federal involvement in medical care and insurance, given that the Food and Drug Administration has been around for many decades and Medicare is also a near fixture on the American scene, not to mention the vast amount of government regulations, federal, state, municipal, we have in our mixed economy. So any Republican who complains about extensive federal involvement is way too late--we already have it in place, now it is just about how much more of such involvement should be accepted.
There is another philosophical issue that's hovering around the debates and that is about whether everyone in American must have nearly equal coverage and care. Republicans keep trying to resist this objective for a variety of reasons, including the enormous expense it is projected to involve; the huge differences between different (groups of) American citizens for whom no one-size-fits-all health care and insurance approach will work; the differential burdens such a system will create for Americans, with the young carrying the bulk of it and the old the benefits, and so forth. So it doesn't look like Obama's full egalitarian agenda has a chance, not if practical considerations matter in the decisions that will be reached.
On the other hand, the rhetoric of equal provisions for everyone--whether with or without pre-existing conditions, whether prudent or imprudent in their health management, whether fortunate or not as to vulnerability to ailments--is difficult if not impossible for Republicans to rebut. They have no philosophical equipment with which to respond to this egalitarian pitch, so they just have to swallow when the president's team brings up how unacceptable it is when an insurance company considers pre-existing conditions as disqualifying someone for insurance. Of course any responsible insurance company management would take that into consideration! It may be lamentable but there is nothing unjust or morally objectionable about this. To maintain otherwise is to deny the insurers their basic right to choose with whom they want to do business and to pursue a profitable enterprise rather than a losing one, etc.
But in order to present this kind of point, one must drop all the hand wringing about what is admittedly lamentable but cannot be helped. People who have been sick, especially with chronic ailments, are not a good risk to insure and those who want to make a living by selling insurance will tend to avoid doing business with them. And that is, really, their basic right in a free society unless they present themselves in the market place as not concerned with the issue, as open for anyone's business regardless of pre-existing conditions. But to force the insurers to do business with anyone, never mind their own terms of prudence, is wrong and should not be proposed in a free country however nice it would be to help everyone.
But Republicans are philosophically disarmed from making this point, especially from making it insistently, emphatically, because the Obama team is ready to pounce on them as being mean and nasty if they do. And Republicans are ill equipped, philosophically--that is to way, when it comes to their basic principles--to keep insisting. For them to do so they would have to return to the founding principles of the American republic, to mentioning individual rights and so forth. But then, of course, Obama and his team could point fingers at them for being inconsistent, for lacking integrity, seeing how they have accepted a great many egalitarian government edicts, regulations, policies over the the decades.
The little commitment to individual liberty and free market transactions left within the ranks of Republicans just isn't going to give them intellectual--philosophical--leverage against a clever bunch of egalitarians.
Tibor R. Machan
President Obama and others at the summit Thursday (2/25/10) kept talking about philosophical difference between his team and the Republicans but what did they have in mind?
By "philosophical" most mean "basic," or "fundamental." Possibly "systemic" could also be meant. Bottom line is that believing in an extensive role of the federal government in determining the health care requirements of American citizens differs from believing in an extensive role by individuals and their providers doing so. The president is right, however, to point out that it is now too late for any Republican to beef about heavy federal involvement in medical care and insurance, given that the Food and Drug Administration has been around for many decades and Medicare is also a near fixture on the American scene, not to mention the vast amount of government regulations, federal, state, municipal, we have in our mixed economy. So any Republican who complains about extensive federal involvement is way too late--we already have it in place, now it is just about how much more of such involvement should be accepted.
There is another philosophical issue that's hovering around the debates and that is about whether everyone in American must have nearly equal coverage and care. Republicans keep trying to resist this objective for a variety of reasons, including the enormous expense it is projected to involve; the huge differences between different (groups of) American citizens for whom no one-size-fits-all health care and insurance approach will work; the differential burdens such a system will create for Americans, with the young carrying the bulk of it and the old the benefits, and so forth. So it doesn't look like Obama's full egalitarian agenda has a chance, not if practical considerations matter in the decisions that will be reached.
On the other hand, the rhetoric of equal provisions for everyone--whether with or without pre-existing conditions, whether prudent or imprudent in their health management, whether fortunate or not as to vulnerability to ailments--is difficult if not impossible for Republicans to rebut. They have no philosophical equipment with which to respond to this egalitarian pitch, so they just have to swallow when the president's team brings up how unacceptable it is when an insurance company considers pre-existing conditions as disqualifying someone for insurance. Of course any responsible insurance company management would take that into consideration! It may be lamentable but there is nothing unjust or morally objectionable about this. To maintain otherwise is to deny the insurers their basic right to choose with whom they want to do business and to pursue a profitable enterprise rather than a losing one, etc.
But in order to present this kind of point, one must drop all the hand wringing about what is admittedly lamentable but cannot be helped. People who have been sick, especially with chronic ailments, are not a good risk to insure and those who want to make a living by selling insurance will tend to avoid doing business with them. And that is, really, their basic right in a free society unless they present themselves in the market place as not concerned with the issue, as open for anyone's business regardless of pre-existing conditions. But to force the insurers to do business with anyone, never mind their own terms of prudence, is wrong and should not be proposed in a free country however nice it would be to help everyone.
But Republicans are philosophically disarmed from making this point, especially from making it insistently, emphatically, because the Obama team is ready to pounce on them as being mean and nasty if they do. And Republicans are ill equipped, philosophically--that is to way, when it comes to their basic principles--to keep insisting. For them to do so they would have to return to the founding principles of the American republic, to mentioning individual rights and so forth. But then, of course, Obama and his team could point fingers at them for being inconsistent, for lacking integrity, seeing how they have accepted a great many egalitarian government edicts, regulations, policies over the the decades.
The little commitment to individual liberty and free market transactions left within the ranks of Republicans just isn't going to give them intellectual--philosophical--leverage against a clever bunch of egalitarians.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Peddling the Corruption of Liberty
Tibor R. Machan
Ever since the idea of individual liberty has achieved some measure of credibility over the world, those who would be unseated by its limited triumph had to find some way to discredit it or trump it somehow. One way was to re-christen servitude, to make it appear like an even more important kind of liberty than what individual liberty, properly understood, amounts to.
When a human being is free in the most important, political sense, he or she is sovereign. This means that one governs one’s own life—others must refrain from intruding on this life, plain and simple. That life may be fortunate or not, rich or not, beautiful or not, and many other things or not, but what matters is that that life is no one else’s to mess with. One gets to run it, no one else does.
Now this is a very uncomfortable idea for all those folks who see all kinds of benefits from running other people’s lives. But they cannot champion this now in so many words, what with individual liberty having gained solid enough standing, so the only way to remedy matters for them is to claim that their oppression brings even greater freedom to people than the respect and protection of individual liberty.
So, we have the kind of “freedoms” propounded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the freedoms now dubbed “positive.” These freedoms do not get rid of those who would use you, interfere with you, invade your life, rob, kill, or assault you but promise, to the contrary, to take good care of you without your having to do much by invading others, by violating their individual liberties. These are the entitlement rights offered up by proponents of the welfare state, all those who claim that government is best when it is generous, when it becomes the Nanny State—meaning, when it enslaves Peter to serve Paul.
I am not sure about what exactly motivates this ruse—some of it is surely the thirst for power. When you want to enslave people, promise them a special kind of liberty. Castro managed to win over millions of Cubans this way, as did other Marxists in Eastern Europe and in Latin America.
Maybe a few folks actually honestly believed that this kind of political alternative is best for us all, but it is difficult to imagine what would persuade them of such a fraudulent notion. Giving people this positive freedom must always involve depriving other people of their individual liberty, their “negative” freedom, which is to say, their sovereignty and their freedom from having others interfere with their lives, from depriving them of their resources and labor and regulating them to the hilt.
Now, there is little that can be done about this in the short run—when people put their minds to such deceptions, the only ultimate defense is clear thinking and vigilance, which is unfortunately always in short supply and needs to be slowly cultivated. Too many people are tempted by the promise of effortless living, of getting all their problems solved at the point of a gun turned on others who will be coerced to come up with the solutions. This is such a sweet notion to those who are lazy, who feel left out, or who believe that they are entitled to everything all those who are better off already have going for them, so the power-hungry have a good marketing ploy here. Envy, maybe, or the bogus political ideologies promoted by those who just must step in to govern the world as they see fit—as I say, I am not sure what kind of mental acrobatics manages to allow people to live with themselves in peace who perpetrate such fraud.
I do know of one prominent one, namely, that those who want to wield control over others believe they are on the side of goodness, virtue and justice. Making people “good” is their goal, they proclaim. Yet this just cannot be since people are only good, morally and ethically, if they choose to be. Otherwise they at most simply behave well, like robots or puppets.
Despite the fact that there is little one can do in response, other than to keep spelling out just how misguided it all is, perhaps now and then institutional barriers can also be built. Yet, since they too depend upon ideas, ideas that are so easily corrupted, the only real answer is the old one about eternal vigilance. I say, it’s worth it, so let’s go for it.
Tibor R. Machan
Ever since the idea of individual liberty has achieved some measure of credibility over the world, those who would be unseated by its limited triumph had to find some way to discredit it or trump it somehow. One way was to re-christen servitude, to make it appear like an even more important kind of liberty than what individual liberty, properly understood, amounts to.
When a human being is free in the most important, political sense, he or she is sovereign. This means that one governs one’s own life—others must refrain from intruding on this life, plain and simple. That life may be fortunate or not, rich or not, beautiful or not, and many other things or not, but what matters is that that life is no one else’s to mess with. One gets to run it, no one else does.
Now this is a very uncomfortable idea for all those folks who see all kinds of benefits from running other people’s lives. But they cannot champion this now in so many words, what with individual liberty having gained solid enough standing, so the only way to remedy matters for them is to claim that their oppression brings even greater freedom to people than the respect and protection of individual liberty.
So, we have the kind of “freedoms” propounded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the freedoms now dubbed “positive.” These freedoms do not get rid of those who would use you, interfere with you, invade your life, rob, kill, or assault you but promise, to the contrary, to take good care of you without your having to do much by invading others, by violating their individual liberties. These are the entitlement rights offered up by proponents of the welfare state, all those who claim that government is best when it is generous, when it becomes the Nanny State—meaning, when it enslaves Peter to serve Paul.
I am not sure about what exactly motivates this ruse—some of it is surely the thirst for power. When you want to enslave people, promise them a special kind of liberty. Castro managed to win over millions of Cubans this way, as did other Marxists in Eastern Europe and in Latin America.
Maybe a few folks actually honestly believed that this kind of political alternative is best for us all, but it is difficult to imagine what would persuade them of such a fraudulent notion. Giving people this positive freedom must always involve depriving other people of their individual liberty, their “negative” freedom, which is to say, their sovereignty and their freedom from having others interfere with their lives, from depriving them of their resources and labor and regulating them to the hilt.
Now, there is little that can be done about this in the short run—when people put their minds to such deceptions, the only ultimate defense is clear thinking and vigilance, which is unfortunately always in short supply and needs to be slowly cultivated. Too many people are tempted by the promise of effortless living, of getting all their problems solved at the point of a gun turned on others who will be coerced to come up with the solutions. This is such a sweet notion to those who are lazy, who feel left out, or who believe that they are entitled to everything all those who are better off already have going for them, so the power-hungry have a good marketing ploy here. Envy, maybe, or the bogus political ideologies promoted by those who just must step in to govern the world as they see fit—as I say, I am not sure what kind of mental acrobatics manages to allow people to live with themselves in peace who perpetrate such fraud.
I do know of one prominent one, namely, that those who want to wield control over others believe they are on the side of goodness, virtue and justice. Making people “good” is their goal, they proclaim. Yet this just cannot be since people are only good, morally and ethically, if they choose to be. Otherwise they at most simply behave well, like robots or puppets.
Despite the fact that there is little one can do in response, other than to keep spelling out just how misguided it all is, perhaps now and then institutional barriers can also be built. Yet, since they too depend upon ideas, ideas that are so easily corrupted, the only real answer is the old one about eternal vigilance. I say, it’s worth it, so let’s go for it.
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