A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Column from Machan’s Archives on Promoting Liberty
Feb 6th
Promoting Freedom Close to Home
Tibor R. Machan
Over the several decades that I have championed the fully free society,
one that basically conforms to the principles of the Declaration of
Independence, I have had the good fortune to be able to address many
people about this topic. Much of this consists of writing books, articles,
letters to editors, scholarly papers and columns, of course. But aside
from writing, I have also been privileged to be invited to talk to a great
many and highly varied groups of people, with such organizations as the
Rotary Club, Kiwanis, and the like all over America and indeed the globe.
Quite recently, for example, I gave a series of lectures in the Republic
of Georgia as well as in Santiago, Chile.
One persistent question I have faced all these years is what an
individual person can do to promote advances toward a free society. And,
naturally, there are nearly as many answers to this as there are
individuals asking the question. So, quite often I have to remind people
that while I can give some general ideas, based on my work and experience,
they are the ones who are in the best position to answer the question
about what to do to advance liberty. Yet, there are a few specific ideas
that will help nearly anyone concerned with promoting liberty in their own
communities. One, in particular, is very worthwhile to keep in mind. It
can guide one to do things that may really bear fruit.
I have in mind advocating the decoupling of government from the
innumerable projects that it’s now involved with everywhere. Governments
are now supporting, through public funds acquired by way of taxation,
innumerable projects in every community across the world and if one is
dedicated to advancing liberty an important step in that direction is to
promote removing government from all these “community” endeavors.
If some convention center is widely desired, or a baseball park or
football stadium, or some other recreation or athletic facility, it is
imperative that these be supported voluntarily and those who want these
facilities go about soliciting the support instead of relying on the
extortionist approach of taxation. Champions of liberty should vigorously
advocate that!
After all, it is not difficult for most people to appreciate that those
uninterested in football should be free to devote their own resources to
some purpose of their own choosing instead of having these resources taken
from them against their will and put to use for what they do not want, a
football stadium. This is very simple to convey in letters, conversations,
on talk programs, etc. One can always make mention of the fact that this
is supposed to be a free country where people have the right to pursue
their own happiness and not to be conscripted to help in the pursuit of
others’.
Also, this is a country with a reasonably strong individualist tradition,
which can also be deployed in defense of having those who want something
go about securing support for their projects, leaving others to do so in
support of what they want. We all have ideals, goals, dreams, purposes of
our own, often not unlike those of some others but rarely those of all
others.
And that’s an excellent reason why the various community projects people
now tend habitually to expect governments to support should actually be
supported privately, voluntarily. Sure, there are some projects where this
idea would be too radical to promote—airports, roads, and schools should
be funded voluntarily but the governmental habit is too powerful here and
it will take a while before advances toward privatization can be made
about those. But swimming pools? Ice skating rinks? Volley ball and tennis
courts? Even football stadiums, while quite large projects, have no
business being built with funds extorted from people who care not a whit
about football.
I believe that this particular idea, so closely related to what a free
society is about—namely, people being free to pursue their own objectives
so long as they do not violated anyone’s rights—holds out considerable
promise of gaining ascent from one’s neighbors. Even if it will not fly
immediately, it can become a focus of discussion, of editorializing, of
local talk programs and so forth.
So what can you do to promote liberty? One thing among others is to
advocate getting government—the governing right in your own back yard,
your city or county—out of the task of supporting special interest
projects pretending to serve everyone’s interest. Let those who want these
often very worthy goals (to some) get up the support from them and let the
rest support what they value.
Column on Avatar’s (and Sandel’s) Misanthropy
Feb 6th
Avatar’s (and Sandel’s) Misanthropy
Tibor R. Machan
Perhaps it isn’t all people but only Americans that Avatar presents in an unfavorable light but the movie clearly suggests that human beings are largely no good, except for just a few of them and they only barely. In contrast, the natives are all the sweetest, nicest, most loving type one can imagine. Kind of like those who inhabited Paradise before the Fall. Evil is unknown to these creatures, so that even their silliest superstitions are depicted as worthy, benign. It is an ancient myth, of course, that the ideal human being would be one who melds in seamlessly with the rest and humanity is really just this beehive type of huge community, with some benevolent dictators in the leadership driving it toward some glorious end. Every dictator, tsar, king, and the like has tried to sell us on this vision.
Even as Avatar is seducing the critics–if one can call a bunch of swooning admirers in the media “critics”–PBS, the government funded television service, is showing a program on justice that broadcasts the Harvard University lectures of Professor Michael Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor there, who unhesitatingly takes advantage of his captive audience of adolescents by preaching to them the virtues of his version of communitarianism and never misses the opportunity to put down the idea of free consent. (Yes, here we are, taxpayers, funding what is quite a clever bit of indoctrination since no one else but Sandel is featured and he is unabashedly partisan, insisting over and over again that what he considers justice is the real McCoy. And why, when he doesn’t believe in free consent, should he be concerned that other people are coerced into funding his PBS lectures? That would be granting some credence to the idea that the consent of the citizenry is important, a notion that would undermine Professor Sandel’s political philosophy of coercive communitarianism.)
The central message Sandel is preaching is that we all have obligations to society–or government or the state–that we have never chosen, that can be enforced on us without asking for our consent. This is the beehive or the anthill notion of community, wherein you belong wether you want to or not, and those who are the leaders can make us do what they deem is in the public interest, pursue the common good, never mind pursuing our own happiness.
And the ideal community, as depicted in Avatar by how the natives live (whose land is being raped and pillaged by the terrible American looking humans) is just like that. Everyone submits, everyone is a part, everyone belongs, no one stands for his or her own agenda, no one is unique, no one has an individual, personal vision for that would distract from the common purpose everyone must pursue. The idea doesn’t even come up.
Both the most prominent Hollywood fiction and the most prominent public philosophy today are messages about how the American notion of individualism–whereby you and I and everyone has a right to his or her life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness–is misguided and in need of being purged from our midst. Yes, that is the message of both. Your consent, which is such a highly valued ingredient of justice according the Declaration of Independence, the American founding, is an obstacle to justice!
It isn’t even considered that perhaps real justice is not really like what Professor Sandel is promoting, that real justice involves everyone’s liberty to strive to realize his or her individual human good, some of which unites us all but a good deal of it includes a very large dosage of one’s purely personal agenda.
While not endorsing it outright, Professor Sandel gleefully quotes the political philosopher Montesquieu who observed that in an ideal world no one would have any friends since friendship involves a prejudice in favor of some people and in justice we owe loyalty to everyone, intimate or stranger alike. He didn’t mention how exhausting life would be with everyone on intimate terms, how we would no sooner celebrate someone’s good fortune then we would have to rush off to lament another’s loss.
Human beings aren’t fit to be close associates of everyone! It is quite right that they would have but few close friends and render to others respect for their rights or liberties, period. Neither Sandel nor Avatar gave a nod to this quintessentially American notion, the most liberating idea of human political history. Not a good omen, I’d say
Column on Are Corporations Persons?
Feb 3rd
Are Corporations Persons?
Tibor R. Machan
Actually, no one thinks corporations are persons but some do believe they are groups of persons. No one thinks orchestras, or football teams or universities are persons but many do think they are variously configured people. If this is so, then they, as groups of persons, have rights, including the right to private property and freedom of speech.
When people come together for some common purpose, they do not lose their basic human rights. So all the hollering about how the recent Supreme Court ruling about whether corporations have the right to engage in political advocacy, based on the allegation that corporations aren’t persons, is off base.
Even those who oppose the ruling implicitly acknowledge the above. Thus Justice Stevens, the major dissenter on the Court, wrote, that “[T]he distinctive potential of corporations to corrupt the electoral process [has] long been recognized.” But only persons can corrupt something! Theodore Roosevelt advocated prohibiting “all contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose.” And this, too, implies that corporations are made up of people, people who have rights! There is no other way corporations can make contributions–buildings, trees, land, the sea, none of these can make contributions, only people can. Ergo, corporations are people!
In any case, I have no idea what else corporations would be. Yes, they have some kind of legal identity but that is completely derivative of their being made up of people. Usually, it is a bunch of people who get together and incorporate–now that monarchs no longer create such associations–which is to say they form a specific type of organization, usually involving pooling some resources and hiring specialists to administer these resources either for profitable or non-profitable purposes. But whichever it is, it is persons who are doing this and nothing else. You may not like those types of persons but in a democracy they have the right to obtain and wield political power.
Now it is true that when people unite with one another, they tend to gain in influence, even power, if power is at issue. Sadly, given how much politics is not a matter of upholding principles, as the American Founders envisioned it, but of confiscating funds and then distributing them–that whole redistribution thing that candidate Obama had out with Joe “the Plumber”–having united powers can go a long way to gaining political clout. But this has nothing to do with corporations as such, which are perfectly benign outfits unless they commit crimes, just as this is so with individual citizens.
So then what is up with all the corporate bashing? Mostly that if you aren’t a part of the corporation but a lot of others are, it is they and not you who will wield more political power. And if one believes in democratic politics, why complain about this? If a huge company, owned by thousands of stockholders and other investors, exerts power, such is democracy. You cannot cherry pick which group of citizens should get democratic power and which should be ignored.
The remedy for out of control corporate political influence and power is to limit democracy to very few tasks in the country, such as the selection of public officials. They will then represent those who elected them but not by doing them special favors but by helping in extending the principles of the country to new and uncharted areas of the law.
I am no corporate attorney, nor a constitutional scholar but our legal system must make sense to all citizens, not just to experts. And as a plain, ordinary citizen it seems to me that all the derision extended toward corporations amounts to rank prejudice, bias, as a generalized dislike of movie actors or farmers would be. This is nothing to be proud of, that’s for sure, even if it is widely accepted and practiced. So was racial prejudice once. Not that those who have shares or manage corporations are all fine people, not by a long shot, but neither are all doctors, teachers, engineers or bureaucrats upstanding citizens. At any given time the bulk of the members of a professional could be engaged in malpractice or be decent in how they conduct themselves.
But there is no reason to suspect those who own or run corporations of any greater predilection toward malpractice than anyone else. Sometimes, of course, they operate in a system that encourages corruption, which the welfare state clearly does, what with all the selling and buying of political favors it involves. And big firms will probably be able to get more from politicians than little ones. That, however, is the problem of the system, not of any given profession.
Column on The Face of Envy
Feb 1st
The Face of Envy
Tibor R. Machan
In THE WEEK, January 16, 2010, the item “The last word” is given to someone whose attitudes and ideas have always put me off. I am speaking of Barbara Ehrenreich, a prolific author whose major theme tends to be that the world needs to make equality its primary public purpose and until that comes about, let everyone be miserable.
Her latest book appears to reinforce this impression. Her Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (Granta, 2010) is a relentless, over the top rant against a group of authors and advocates who have produced much print aiming to ease the agony of those who are suffering from cancer. Ehrenreich herself had recently survived a bout with breast cancer and as most good writer-entrepreneurs are wont to do, made this experience the basis of a book which expresses her exquisitely sour outlook on life by dissing all those who would wish to inject some measure of relief into the lives of those who have been hit with the often fatal malady. No doubt there is much hokum in these books, which essentially follow the doctrine promoted most prominently by Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking. Many of them have a desperate tone, especially the one by Anne McNervey titled The Gift of Cancer: A Call to Awakening.
Yet who could begrudge the effort, albeit at times inept and desperate, of authors and readers alike to find some solace in the midst of fear and pain? Who would make a fuss, spend precious time writing an entire book debunking those who try to manage and even flourish in the midst of their calamity?
It would be Barbara Ehrenreich, of course, the quintessential sourpuss of American popular culture. In THE WEEK article, which is excerpted from her book, she is actually depicted in a photograph from the UK newspaper, The Guardian, frowning out at the reader holding, you may not believe this, a happy face balloon! Talk about making a concerted effort to rain on other people’s parade!
Yet this is no surprise, not at least to those who have followed Ehrenreich’s paper trail, the numerous books she has penned which attack bourgeois society for even caring about the enjoyment of life! And no one can accuse Ehrenreich with false advertising–one of her books of essays is called The Snarling Citizen, a very apt description of her indeed. Yet despite this admittedly accurate self-assessment, Ehrenreich lacks a crucial quality of a sound cultural commentator, especially one whose focus is America. This is the realization that one size does not fit all. Perhaps for some folks the dour attitude of a Barbara Ehrenreich makes sense but it certainly does not make sense for everyone struck by misfortune. And since many, many folks will shake off a negative disposition even while undergoing hardship and distress, Ehrenreich appears to want to make them all feel bad, just as she prefers to feel. It seems to her to be even a sign of astuteness and erudition to reject a pleasant state of mind, or so at least would her writings suggest. But why?
I am not personally privy to the details of Ehrenreich’s personality and so I do not want to guess at what in her life may have supported her morose outlook. But I do suggest that whatever reason she has for apparently feeling so down all of the time, as a matter of intellectual discipline she ought to resist trying to recruit everyone to share the feeling. Because recruiting is just what she is after, especially with this latest book of hers. And that suggests a profound sense of envy toward all those who, unlike her, manage to have a fairly bright outlook on their lives even while in trouble. I suggest the more power to them and the less to Ehrenreich.
Fortunately my reaction to Ehrenreich’s efforts to spread her attitude of doom and gloom is shared by some who have access to prominent publications. Thus Amy Bloom provides a nice antithesis to Ehrenreich’s preaching, in her essay “The Rap on Happiness” (The New York Times Book Review, January 31, 2010). Bloom is not endorsing the peddling of false hope, not by any means. But she recognizes that Ehrenreich’s pitch is shrill and not needed at all. As she concludes, “I don’t see how even the most high-minded, cynical or curmudgeonly person could argue with” the reasonable understanding of human happiness Bloom presents in her short missive, one that identifies five components of such a state, namely, having basic necessities, getting enough sleep, having relationships that matter (i.e., not spreading oneself thin), extending generosity to others just as prudence to oneself, and going to work on stuff one is interested in. Not a bad list, me thinks–reminiscent, in fact, of Aristotle.
Column on Anti-Abortion Murder or Not
Jan 29th
Anti-Abortion Murder or Not
Tibor R. Machan
In Wichita a trial is under way in which Scott Roeder is charged with the murder of Dr. George R. Tiller. No disputing the charge that he did the killing and the only issue up for debate is wether the killing was murder or justifiable homicide.
The main line of argument in defense of Mr. Roeder is that Dr. Tiller murdered children–60,000 of them as reported in The New York Times–and his killing was the only way to prevent further such murders. As The Times reports, “’George Tiller shed the blood of 60,000 innocent children,’ Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, told reporters. Mr. Terry … said that he was neither condoning nor condemning Mr. Roeder’s actions, but that people should remember the children.”
So, then, the defense relies on the view that if there is injustice in a country, if the laws permit unjust acts to be committed, then citizens who want to remedy this may take the remedy they believe in into their own hands. I, for example, believe that taxation in official extortion by the government and all those who facilitate this extortion are engage in unjust acts. By the reasoning of the Roeder defense team, I would be legally justified in taking into my own hands the effort to remedy the injustice being committed by those complicit in taxation. If I felt the way to stop them all would be to blow up their office buildings or inflict serious injuries on tax collectors, I would have the legal authority to do this, according to the argument in support of Mr. Roeder.
Never mind for now that the belief that abortion amounts to homicide, let alone to murder, is if not out and out false then at least highly debatable. A human being is supposed to be rational animal and prior to a certain point of the development of the fetus only a potential human being exists since no cerebral cortex is present to make rationality possible. (The case becomes different with so called partial birth abortions–some of these may be homicide and even murder, some of them self-defense. The matter is not amenable to a simple discussion but even her taking the law into one’s hands is impermissible.) The notion of an unborn child is a virtual oxymoron when most abortions occur–no child exists then.
But one need not enter the abortion controversy fully to consider Mr. Roeder a murderer. This is because in a civilized society even someone who has murdered another may only be punished by following due process–by being arrested, brought to trial, convicted, and then sentenced to a particular punishment. Citizens only very rarely may avoid this process and take the law into their own hands and even then they need to follow some due process measures, such as making a citizen’s arrest and bringing the alleged culprit to the legal system for prosecution. This is the crucial issue for even those who do agree that Dr. Tiller was guilty of injustices and needed to be brought to justice.
If you add to this the difficulties widely recognized about construing ordinary abortions as homicide, let alone murder, then what Mr. Roeder did cannot be legally excused. No one has assigned him the job of administering justice in the state of Kansas. As I noted already, someone who considers taxation outright extortion, as I do, still must proceed by following due process in the effort to stop the policy. There are circumstances, of course, when the government’s failure to administer justice can serve as a justification for “taking the law into one’s own hands,” but these circumstances must come very close to those of totalitarian tyrannies where other methods of making changes in the legal system are completely unavailable. And when the matter is so thoroughly fraught with disputable allegations on all sides as is abortion, then going slow on how to make the needed changes, assuming they are needed, is especially necessary.
The reason there are courts of law and trials in a civilized country is that great care must be taken when someone is charged with an legally codified injustice and may be convicted by taking his or her liberty and even life. A carefully laid out system, honed by years and years of legal precedence, serves the purpose of not turning the process into back alley jurisprudence. So even if the defense offered up by Mr. Roeder is plausible, it is unreasonable even if one grants that abortion is itself something highly debatable. Its debatability is due in part to the fact that the determination of the exact beginning of a human being–which is what the issue is in abortion, not whether human life is involved, which is very ambiguous–is a serious problem. This is no geometry, after all, but biology and ethics. One must not demand the same precision here as one can in that other, more formal, discipline, something against which Aristotle had warned some 2500 years ago.
