A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Archive for November, 2009
Did Obama Snub Eastern European Victims?
Nov 12th
Was It Snubbing?
Tibor R. Machan
On Monday, November 9, I took part in a panel discussion of the collapse of the Soviet empire, in the company of several others who have managed to escape the system, two former Cubans and one former Russian. We discussed our own personal experience under the system–which I hesitate to call “communist” since communism has never existed; aiming to bring it about has been used as an excuse for some of the greatest horrors of human history.
For my money the greatest lesson of the Soviet debacle is that collectivism breeds the worst of human relations while individualism makes possible nearly any sort and discourages the worst. Yes, an individualist society, were it ever realized–and the bits of it evident throughout recent human history prove this–does not erase all evil in human life. Nor does it promise to do so, since in freedom men and women can certainly make bad choices, even in how they treat one another (although evil is diminished since one may not legally dump one’s malpractice on others with impunity). But individualism teaches that everyone who does not violate the rights of others is of value and even those who do must first be convicted by means of a fair trial to be treated badly (incarcerated, for example).
Individualism is often derided by the sophists among us because it runs the risk of leading to human alienation. And, true, individualism has its corrupt versions. But it need not be any means go there. Because in individualist societies men and women have their right to liberty secured, which makes it possible that they mismanage their lives, of course, and some will do just that.
But in socialist, communist and other collectivist systems people’s lives are systematically, necessarily mismanaged by those who step up to rule them against their will. For that is what collectivism comes to, even the mildest version of it, such as communitarianism or democratic socialism. Some will make the deceptive claim to be speaking and acting on behalf of all and thus gain power over all. In fact, no collectivist system is actually possible; instead what we get under them is the rule of some folks over the rest. Collectivism would only be possible if human nature were to change so that it would resemble the nature of bees or termites. (Karl Marx fully realized this so he predicted that in time, when communism arrives, humanity will develop what he called “the new man.”)
OK, all of this I mention here only because just as all these refugees from communism met to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, we learned, also, that President Barack Obama decided not to join other Western leaders in celebrating this event. Instead he delivered some rather uninspired words from his home, The White House, looking very much like he would much rather have been doing something quite different–say making another pitch to bring the Olympics to Chicago (a noble goal in support of which he did fly to Denmark not long ago). But he would not take the trip so as to commemorate one of the most pivotal international events in recent time, one that’s comparable only to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The collapse of the Soviet Union apparently has not been all that welcome by Mr. Obama’s political base, the extreme Left Wing of American liberals. These folks have always had a soft spot in their hearts and minds for experiments in collectivism. Any anti-individualist polity is for these folks a progressive undertaking since by their lights humanity makes progress when it moves toward lumping all of us into a huge mass to be guided by the likes of Stalin, Hugo Chavez, or Fidel Castro, all of whom want to impose on it a one-size-fits-all way of life.
So it is very likely that skipping the celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall was a calculated decision. It was, after all, the leader of the East German state who once answered a journalist, who asked him why they were shooting at those trying to escape across the wall, by saying, “Well those people are stealing from us.” “Stealing what?” “Themselves.”
You see, in that kind of system people literally belong to the state and when they try to leave, it amounts to theft.
From the Machan archives (April, 2009)!
Nov 10th
“Tempered by Government”
Tibor R. Machan
There must be some enormous carrot stimulating the proponents of a closely monitored and extensively regulated American economy. I reach this conclusion because day after day I run into essays, columns, commentaries on TV and radio, in which there is a constantly repeated and concerted effort to discredit free market capitalism.
The latest of these I have run across is a review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, April 19, 2009, where one Louis Uchitelle states that the authors of the book he is reviewing, titled Animal Sprits, How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2009) and written by George A. Akerlot and Robert J. Shiller, “challenge the reigning free-market ideology of the past 30 years or so….” He concludes the review–a gushing one for sure–by urging the authors of the book to “push hard” in the direction of “revamping economic theory to deal with a market system that, quite irrationally, failed to govern itself.”
Neither the reviewer nor the authors give any proof that we have all been under the spell of laissez-faire capitalism. They just assert this as taking even a miniscule peak around the country could easily confirm their idea. Yet, it’s just the opposite they could confirm.
As a rather quick refutation of this idea, that we have all been in the grips of free market fundamentalism–a claim made the famous Princeton economist, Paul Krugman in one of his columns for The New York Times–let us recall a point made by the late Milton Friedman at the 2002 Mt. Pelerin Society meetings in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In that talk Friedman reported that “In 1946, there were 9,000 pages in the federal register [which lists all the federal government regulations]. Today there are over 80,000 pages. The situation is the same in most western countries….” So why then go on repeating this myth of a supposed orthodoxy of a fully free market place in America, one that was in full force as the 2008-2009 economic fiasco transpired?
It’s not very difficult to ascertain that no free market system has been in place in America, ever, and that whatever elements of it did manage to find themselves part of the American system have by now been squashed good and hard. Oh, the legacy of FDR’s New Deal!
These authors and reviewers must be counting on their readers’ total ignorance of economic history. I suspect that promulgating the myth that it was a free marketplace that brought about the economic mess serve the purpose of disguising the real culprit, namely, the extensive forcible government intervention in peoples’ economic affairs in America and elsewhere. Among other things, if one can persuade people that it was “a market system that, quite irrationally, failed to govern itself,” whatever minor traces of capitalism can be found in the American economy will come under extensive government regimentation–or at least state nudging (a term used by New Deal enthusiast, Cass Sunstein, who used to be President Obama’s colleague at the University of Chicago School of Law and just recently moved to Harvard where he was picked to help President Obama to re-regulate the country).
For the umpteenth time, the free market didn’t do it. Moreover, it couldn’t have done it. That’s because there hasn’t ever been one in the country. And what elements of such a system could be found over the last 40 years, they have been pretty much abolished.
In plain terms, then, since there hasn’t been a free market in America over its entire history, it cannot be the case that such a market failed to “govern itself.” What America has been all during its economic history is a mixed system, with admittedly significant elements of capitalism, socialism, fascism and the like being tried by the statists in our capitols and promoted by their academic and journalistic cheerleaders, the likes of Paul Krugman, Louis Uchitelle and many, many others who probably sit and wait so as to get the nice government job of running other people’s economic lives!
In any case, book reviewer Uchitelle doesn’t by any means fail to disclose his agenda. He says outright that what we needs is to temper the market by the government. The fact that his involves coercing citizens all over the place, deploying prior restraint on all the agents in the marketplace under the benign-sounding rallying cry of “precaution,” does not make even a dent in the faith of these people in government’s purity of motives and their incredible conceit that they, instead of the millions of those in the market, can run things just fine!
Also, there’s no evidence that critics of laissez-faire have read public choice theorists who have shown that government regulators are every bit as tempted to misbehave as are those they are supposed to regulate–indeed more so.
We should heed the counsel of Oliver Cromwell, who wrote that “It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.”
Column on Does Background Count?
Nov 7th
Does our Background Count?
Tibor R. Machan
In its November 7, 2009 (Saturday’s), issue The New York Times ran an editorial tutoring its readers in how they ought to ignore the background of the accused murderer of the soldiers in Texas. All that matters is what he did, not what groups he joined in the past. So, his being Muslim should be ignored and nothing should be concluded about any Muslims in the light of his actions.
Now this advice has a ring of truth to it except that it is wrong. Certainly not all Muslims may be suspected of bad intentions in light of what one Muslim does. Not without some additional information. Did the shooter’s motivation stem from his Islamic convictions? Maybe a version of Islam, a radical variety, had something to do with how he felt or what he believed about his victims. If so, then his “background” certainly needs to be attended to. It all depends what aspect of his background one has in mind.
If someone’s background includes having joined the KKK or the Nazis, and even the Democrat or Republican Party, surely it makes sense to consider this fact as one evaluates the person and consider what he or she is or was likely to do. Is this not the case here? Being a radical Muslim isn’t like being black. It is what one chooses to be, like being a KKK member or indeed a member of any other partisan group. And as one M. D. Kruger put it, at The New York Times on line, warning about invoking the perpetrator’s background, as The Times’ editors did, appears to be no more than “the politically correct line.” As Kruger goes on to say, “personally, I’m pretty tired of the same cast of very bad actors that never seem to include a baptist minister’s wife, a disgruntled rodeo cowboy, a rogue Chinese food delivery man, a gay cake decorator or the Swedish consul general from San Francisco.”
In any case, being Muslim is not something one was born to be, like being a woman or black or a New Zealander. No one can help these matters, so holding it against someone is plainly unjust. But when one is a Roman Catholic, a Republican or Democrat or Jew, these are associations in one’s own power to enter into or the exit. If the convictions associated with such membership are morally or politically objectionable, it is perfectly sensible to consider them as one evaluates someone as a potential associate or friend or spouse. There can, of course, be some gray areas–most of us are brought up by parents who exert enormous influence on us while we are effectively helpless, including on what religion or politics we will have. But after a while a person is no longer captive of such influence and becomes fully responsible for either accepting or rejecting it.
Contrary, then, to The New York Times’ politically correct mantra, it is quite appropriate to ask after a person’s chosen convictions as one tries to understand what he or she did, why and so forth. As someone with very clear cut and strong positions on numerous issues, I am constantly being criticized for what I hold to be true. And very often the critics make no bones about their disdain for me, their considering me guilty for sticking with such views.
A radical Muslim, whose views promotes violence against innocent infidels, can also be held responsible and be blamed for the results of his or her convictions. And this should be pretty obvious, considering how millions of people blame their fellows for even just holding views espoused on Fox TV or by Rush Limbaugh or the editors of The New York Times. Or are we to accept the highly paradoxical notion that no one is responsible for what he or she thinks and for the actions that are guided by such thinking? I don’t think that makes any sense–people aren’t like parrots, having been trained by others to mouth opinions. They certainly have a hand in holding them (other than in the rare cases of having been brainwashed).
Column on the American Right
Nov 7th
American Right Wing
Tibor R. Machan
When those on the political Left refer to defenders of the free market
system as “right wingers,” there is understandable concern about how the
term is being abused. Classical liberals, the supporters of both economic
and civil libertarianism, have been anything but “right wingers,” quite
the opposite.
In European political history the Right has been royalists, fascist,
traditionalists, and even militarist, while the Left included mainly
socialists, communists, and welfare statists. Those who champion free
market capitalism do not fall within either of these groups because they
tend, in the main, to oppose statism or the use of the government for
purposes of problem solving. For the classical liberal the problems in a
society are best addressed within the private sector.
In America the classifications are different because America’s distinctive
tradition includes classical liberalism. The right wing in the USA isn’t
mostly fascist or royalists but religious and traditionalist but since a
central feature of tradition in American politics is classical liberal or
libertarian, labeling champions of the fully free system “right wingers”
makes a certain amount of sense. But it can also serve a dubious agenda of
the Left, namely, to associate free market capitalism with right wing
statism, as if the likes of F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and so
on had anything at all in common with fascists and royalists. (The Left
here is very eager to make it seem that Milton Friedman “Chicago Boys”
embraced General Pinochet of Chile rather than the other way around!) But
the association serves the not so hidden purpose of smearing them in
virtue of how the Right elsewhere does veer very close toward fascism and
royalism.
In the current dispute about the vast and rapid expansion of the role of
government in society, increasing government’s scope by leaps and bounds,
charging opponents with being right-wingers comes in handy. These
opponents are indeed a coalition of libertarians and American
conservatives because libertarians oppose statism on principle and also
for a variety of practical reasons and American conservatives oppose it as
a matter of the American political tradition–for example, the Declaration
of Independence and the Bill of rights. But the American right is quite
selective about embracing liberty. Mostly American conservatives support
free markets but not so much civil libertarianism. On that score the
American Left is more like the libertarians, although mainly for
opportunistic reasons.
This is evident on how readily the American Left, along with others on the
Left across the globe, supports the likes of Venezuela’s strong man Hugo
Chavez as well as Fidel Castro. In the case of these political figures,
the Left abandons its apparent support for civil libertarian ideals,
mainly because the American Left tends to share the revolutionary goals of
other Left wingers around the globe and any revolution, Left or Right,
would be slowed down by principled civil libertarian policies. So while
civil libertarianism is useful for the Left as it combats general right
wing measures such as those included in the more hysterical elements of
the homeland security, it is likely to be abandoned once the Left gains
power in the USA. For example, the White House’s overt attacks on Fox TV
news, or global warming skeptics, or its badmouthing of the opponents of
Obama & Co.’s health care ideas–instead of doing honest debate with
them–shows how little the American Left cares about civil libertarianism.
Yes, opposition to George W. Bush’s policies vis-a-vis terrorism suspects
has the ring of civil libertarianism about it. But at bottom that does not
seem to be the main reason for it. We can tell that from how readily
similar policies by Leftist governments around the globe do not disturb
many on the Left. Political categorization is not always easy and there
are too many exceptions in nearly all instances of it. (A Left oriented
public figure and commentator such as Nat Hentoff cannot be considered
merely opportunistic about civil liberties!)
In America the category of “right wing” is complicated by the fact that
the American political tradition is classical liberal, not at all royalist
or fascist. But without making this clear, those who label their opponents
right wingers capitalize on the fact that the Right includes racists and
anti-Semites, thus giving champions of free market capitalism a bad name
by including them on the Right.
Column on Responsibility & Ethics
Nov 6th
On Responsibility and Ethics
Tibor R. Machan
The basic task of ethics is to answer the question, “How should I act?” “What standards apply to me as I conduct my life?” “What are the fundamental principles that I should follow?” Those are pretty much equivalent questions but the answers are extremely complicated and multi-faceted. There are a lot of thinkers who have answered it in very different ways.
Almost every major philosopher throughout the history of philosophy, east and west, has advanced an ethical theory or ideal; a theory about or ideal of how human beings should conduct themselves. This is one thing that philosophers do. Some even contend that ethics is but a branch of politics which is prior to it, although the opposite is how most view it today.
There are, however, also philosophers and other thinkers who deny that there is anything like ethics. In fact for many philosophers, as well as many social scientists and natural scientists, the entire field of ethics is bogus. It’s kind of like astrology–though I don’t want to step on any toes here but I regard it a bogus field–and a lot of social scientists and natural scientists feel the same way about ethics. There is no such thing as ought. Ought is an incoherent concept. There is no such thing because most of the time those skeptics about ethics deny that there is any choice we have about our lives that we can make decisions as to what we will do, and thus for them ethics is a non-starter (like astrology). But the bulk of philosophers (and I would say the bulk of human beings) have a concern with ethics and they take it seriously. They don’t dismiss it as bogus. They tend to think there is some answer to the question, “How should I act?” “How should I conduct my life?” “What principles should guide me?” I’m sure that’s true for many of you although some of you probably are skeptics about this.
One of the reasons that ethics arises for us (not uncontroversial) is that we don’t have instincts prompting us to behave as we need to in order to survive and flourish in our lives. Other animals (and I’m not going to get into the big debate as to whether there are some borderline cases) have these instincts, these hard-wirings, so that say, in winter they fly south. Human beings on the other hand have to figure out what they should do, how they should conduct themselves. When you’re a parent you have to make a choice too be a good one. The issue of what are the right things to do and what are the wrong things to avoid doing always faces us. That is what editorials are about, that is what all the plays and novels are about. Almost anything interesting in life tends to revolve around ethics.
Responsibility underlies any school of ethics whether utilitarian, altruist, egoist, Aristotelian, Kantian, Christian or Hindu. However one answers the question, “How ought I conduct myself?” the issue of responsibility is central. What does it mean?
There are many uses of the word responsibility. Sometimes crop failures are ascribed to the weather so the weather is responsible for them. Buildings collapse because of earthquakes so earthquakes are responsible for them. In this sense what we mean by responsibility is merely that these are the causes of certain happenings. Some things happen because of this or that.
There’s a relationship between this use of the term “responsible” and the one that bears on ethics, a controversial one, because in the case of human beings, ethics tends to assume one of the most contentious ideas, namely, that human beings have what’s usually called free will, that we can act one way or the other and it is up to us how. It is one of the earliest ideas of ethics in any region of the world whether it’s east, west, north, or south. Wherever people write about ethics, it is understood that we have to do the right thing of our own free will. You don’t have to be an academic philosopher to appreciate that when human beings worry about their lives they worry about something over which they believe they have a say. Both ethics and morality concern themselves with right as distinguished from wrong conduct.
The famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant coined a motto, “Ought implies can.” It just means that if you ought to do something, it has to be something that you can do. It is nonsense to say you ought to jump 30 feet into the air unassisted because that is impossible. You couldn’t very well have a moral responsibility to do the impossible. But not only must one be free to do the right thing so that one isn’t not compelled one way or another but what is the right thing to do has to be knowable because obviously if there is no answer to the question, “what is the right thing for me to do?” or “what ought I to do?” then one can’t do it. So if ought does imply can, then it also requires that there be some standards of proper conduct, of proper behavior.
Moreover, if one ought to do one thing rather than another, one may not be forced to do it. Forcing people to do the right thing, other than to abstain from interfering with others, renders them morally impotent. People have to be free and there has to be some standard by which their conduct is to be evaluated. Otherwise there is no ethics.
Ethics is bogus without responsibility and liberty, if you cannot be free to choose the right course and if you cannot determine what the right course is.
