A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Column on Is The U.S. Self-Interested?
Mar 18th
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.
Essay on The Democratic Ideal
Mar 17th
The Democratic Ideal
Tibor R. Machan
Democracy is a process by which some decisions are made and in the context of politics it means the kind of system that depends upon the participation of the citizenry for certain purposes. What grounds democracy as a just mode of political decision-making is that citizens have the ultimate authority concerning certain matters in the polis. And the reason they do have this ultimate authority is that they are, as adults, equal in their status vis-à-vis the stake they have in their political institutions, their laws, public policies, foreign relations, etc. That they have this equal status hinges on certain extra or pre-political matters, to be discerned by way of reflection upon human nature and proper human relations. For now I’ll simply note that as I understand political matters, they arise from the moral fact that each individual adult human being has as his or her task in life to live it rationally, to flourish as a rational animal. Since this task for adults can only be achieved if they are not subject to another’s will―in which case it is that other’s rational choice that would be the ruling principle of one’s life—in communities human beings must be sovereign. From this it follows that they must have a say in their own political fate, ergo, democracy.
In any case, democracy is derivative of what human beings are taken to be as they find themselves within a community that aims at justice, a polity. From the Hobbesian framework, democracy is recommended because all of us are nothing but bits of matter- in-motion and thus lack any significant, fundamental differentiating attributes. Even our human nature is but nominal, a status in the world established by means of the human intellect’s response to the motions that affect the brain, a response itself motivated by the drive for self-preservation or keeping in continued motion in part by naming groups of impulses affecting the brain. We make the categories, create them by naming our sensory input as we will.1 So the reason for democracy a la the Hobbesian view is that nothing justifies differentiating some people from others (indeed, if one were to be fully consistent, anything from anything else, at the metaphysical, fundamental level of being.) A somewhat different reason for democracy arises from the Lockean view, one closer to what I sketched above as my own. For Locke, at least when we turn to his political treatise, we are all equal and independent in the state of nature, i.e., prior to the formation or apart from civil society or the polis. Adult human beings begin, never mind the precise point of reaching adulthood, as equally embarking on a human life, one that is to be governed by the laws of nature, which is reason, if one but consult it. In other words, we are all moral agents having to live up to our moral responsibilities or duties, and in this we are all alike. So we are all endowed with natural rights, which spell out for each of us a sphere of sovereignty or personal authority or jurisdiction. There are no natural masters or natural slaves (although there may be borderline cases of defective or crucially incapacitated persons). If this is kept in clear focus, one will realize that a human community starts with no one superior or inferior regarding the issue of the authority to make law and to govern. Thus, democracy.
But democracy is a process, morally required by the right to take part in deciding or to give consent. It is in fact our natural right to person and estate that lies behind the right to be part of the decision-making process involved in politics. It is not a process that is applicable to everything one might want to influence, however. There is a proper sphere of democracy.
Clearly there are those who propose that democracy is unlimited-only the fact that people will things to be one way or another matters. Some interpreters of Locke have claimed this—e. g., Wilmore Kendall and his followers—as well as some conservatives, e. g., Robert Bork. Thus they argue that once human beings are no longer in a state of nature, they have in effect adopted democracy as a decision-making process regarding whatever comes up for public discussion, whatever a sizable number of them want to subject to this process.
Yet this seems to me to be wrong, whatever the proper interpretation of Locke might be and I would dispute that Locke can be coherently interpreted this way. For in Locke the justification for government lies in the need for the protection of natural rights, a protection not easily obtained (except by the strong) in the state of nature. (And the state of nature need not be a source of much intellectual consternation—it refers to a circumstance not governed by due process or the rule of law, one that we may even encounter in a back alley or away from civilization where we can be easy prey for thugs. In the classic movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it was the situation prior to when John Wayne enabled Jimmy Stuart to establish law and order. In actual life it is the situation one may face in the middle of the Mojave Desert or in any inner city park where law enforcement is nearly nothing.)
So Locke sees the protection of everyone’s natural rights as the proper purpose of government. Since establishing, maintaining and protecting government is itself a form of human activity that can be done well or badly, it must be guided by the principles of natural rights-its creation, development and operations may not encroach upon those rights, lest its proper purpose is undermined. Perhaps the best way to understand this is by recalling the common sense notion that even the securing of highly valued goals does not justify the employment of immoral means.
Quite a part from Locke, in any case, unless democracy is itself guided by norms-unless the people express and implement their will as they should and not as they should not-it becomes self-defeating. Not only is there the problem that such a process is in violation of the rights of innocents who would be made victims of the use of arbitrary force. Unlimited democracy, furthermore, can undo democracy itself. If democracy, for example, is applied too broadly, it is bent upon defeating its very purpose, the goal that justifies its employment. To provide a hint via a possible result of the democratic process, suppose that we democratically vote to exclude some people from the voting process. This is a legacy of some state governments in the United States of America, as well as the efforts of the federal government. When the possibility of voting is linked to property ownership or some other condition, the democratic process is weakened. It also occurs when the federal government focuses on what has come to be called inclusiveness so that, for the sake of including into the governing process members of some minority groups, it is decided that other members should be given lower representation. Such group inclusiveness undermines the natural rights of individuals to take part in the political process, a right that derives from their right to liberty of association. Yet the underlying justification for democracy is that individuals have the right to consent to their government. In other words, if the democratic process can justifiably produce governmental measures that violate the natural rights of individuals, this undermines the capacity of these individuals to be full, equally free participants in the democratic process.
Other kinds of cases abound. If by the democratic process the rights to life, liberty or property could justifiably be abrogated or violated, those taking part in the process no longer can act freely and independently. The majority can threaten their free judgments. It can enact measures that will authorize vindictive official actions against the minority, something that inevitably leads to the undermining of democracy. That is just why the “democracies” of Eastern Europe were a complete farce despite the great numbers of participants in the actual electoral process. Thus parties, however, had no liberty to vote as they wanted, for whom they wanted.
If when I vote I know that voting my conscience will result in having my sovereignty undermined, leading to my partial enslavement or involuntary servitude, I will not likely vote my conscience. I will act like the victim of the mugger who is told, “You r money or your life!” When I hand over my money I do it under compulsion not by choice. (It is a myth that we always have a choice, for a choice that is set out by others regarding one’s life, that robs one of one’s life and takes away the prospects of a self-governed future, is no choice.) If a democratic process allows the similar act on the part of the majority, the members of the minority will vote-voice their judgment, indicate their preferences-under severe constraint. No true majority will can emerge under the circumstances.
We can extend this analysis now to the realm of contemporary politics in Western democracies. Let’s focus on the general situation in the United States of America today.
Whenever public programs are being cut, those who have their benefits reduced offer cries of need and those who feel for them cries of compassion. Yet whenever public programs are proposed, which also cuts out the benefits of those who need to pay for i t from higher taxes, it is contended that this is just the result of social life. After all, “we” have decided to fund social security, unemployment compensation, the national parks, public broadcasting, or whatnot, haven’t we? So it is no objection to this that some of us suffer losses, that some of us now have to forego benefits, experience reduced income which can lead to reduced quality of education, recreation, home life, dental care, transportation safety, cultural enrichment, and so forth. None of this is supposed to matter because “we” have decided to tax ourselves higher to fund all those public programs.2 Why is it that it is OK to violate the individual rights to liberty and property of millions of people when the lot of us decide to do this but not OK to reduce the benefits of people when a somewhat differently configured lot of us decided to do that? Why may the choices of some individuals be ignored and thwarted by democratic decision making but not that of others trumped by the same process? The fact is that most people who talk of and like democracy in the context of the currently bloated understanding, they do so only when it supports their agenda. It is fine to use democracy to rob the rich-it makes it valid public policy instead of theft. But if the poor are the targets than suddenly democracy is invalid.
Indeed, the reason is, as suggested earlier, that democracy is never enough. There must always be some specification of the goals for which democracy is appropriate. It isn’t enough to have a democratic process-it can lead to results of widely different quality. Sometimes the majority does right, sometimes wrong. And the task of political theory is, in part, to identify those areas of public life that should be subject to democratic decision making.
What are those areas? And why are they the ones?
Whether alone, or with one’s fellows, a human being may not do some things to other human beings. Especially no one may take over another’s life. This is so whether that other’s life is fortunate, well to do, talented, accomplished, and beautiful, accepted by others and freely granted benefits. In short, neither those who are fortunate—let alone those who are accomplished—nor those lacking in good fortune, are available for others to be used when permission hasn’t been granted, when consent is not given. In either kind of ca se, no one or group may take over another’s life-it amounts to the kind of crime classified, variously, as theft, robbery, assault, kidnapping, murder, battery, rape, and other forms of aggression. And the fact that the numbers of those who do such thing s is increased and even constitute a majority of those concerned makes no difference. Nor does the fact that some procedure has been followed as these policies are instituted, for lacking the consent, tacit or at least implicit, of those who are to be deprived, makes any such process invalid, unjust, undue.
It is wrong to steal on one’s own as well as with the support of millions. It is wrong to enslave, to place others into servitude when they refuse, etc., no matter whether one is in the minority or the majority.
Nor can majorities authorize certain people, such as their political representatives, to carry out such deeds, even if they do it indirectly, by threatening those whom they would rob, steal from, kidnap, assault or whatever with aggressive enforcement at the hands of the police. It is wrong, then, even for the government of a representative democracy or republic to carry out such deeds. Having done it with democratic “authorization” makes it no more right than if no such authorization had taken place. There i s simply no moral authority for anyone to delegate to another such powers since one hasn’t got them in the first place. If my friends and I enact an elaborate process, surrounded with pomp and circumstances, ritual and ornamentation, to commence kidnapping your children or confiscating your wealth, all this is morally and politically trumped by the fact that your consent to the process has been lacking. Unless you are a criminal, who has by his or her crime in effect tacitly agreed to accept our forcible (self-protective) response, you may not be intruded upon.3 Most of this is admitted by all the parties to the debate. This is why even when the people elect certain political representatives (for example, conservative Republicans), others (for example, liberal Democrats), often claim that what results, in terms of legislation, is wrong and should not have been done. They maintain this in various political forums that are supposedly the spheres of democratic decision making. So they evidently think t hat what the democratic process produces is not decisive as to what ought to be done. Even if a law passes, critics will call it wrong-heartless, unkind, lacking in compassion. Even supporters of legal positivism, who discount any moral dimension of the legislative process, such as the obligation to be guided by natural or divine law, will protest democratic attacks upon values other than democracy.4 Because no one simply accepts the answer to a challenge of a democratically arrived at result which the y find morally abhorrent that, well, it was brought about by way of the democratic process-”we” did it, so it’s OK, a matter of society’s collective will. (Even in criminal trials, the mini-democracy of jury verdict is governed by firm provisions of due process and with opportunities of appeal.)
It is, then, no valid answer to those who protest the taking of their life-time, income, good fortune or whatever by way of majority vote that, well, this is OK since it is done democratically. The violation of the rights of individuals is no less justified by democracy than is collective callousness. This raises the problem of how to be kind, compassionate, generous, and helpful to those in genuine need without violating the rights of individuals to their life, liberty and property? The answer is actually quite simple: Do it, promote it, and exhibit it by your own conduct! When members of a society learn that moral principles cannot justly be violated by the democratic process, so they may not violate anyone’s rights with the excuse that “we” did it so it’s OK, they learn, also, that when the right thing must be done, it has to be done by choice, free of coercion. So the help that the poor and needy should be given must be given at the initiative of the free citizen—via charity, generosity, philanthropy, and, yes, the facilitation of productive opportunity.
Column on Democracy and Liberty
Mar 16th
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.
Column on The Free Market of Ideas
Mar 14th
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.
Column on Texas Textbook Troubles
Mar 9th
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.
