A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Posts tagged pragmatism
Column on How To Use the Constitution
Jan 5th
How to Use the Constitution
Tibor R. Machan
Many in the just seated House of Representatives have been clamoring for a return to the Constitution. This is what appears to underlie to planned challenge to Obama care, the massive piece of legislation that President Obama has been eager to make a part of the law of the land, legislation that contains provisions that toe many in the new House appear to be in violation of the U. S. Constitution. In particular, objections have been raised against forcing citizens to buy insurance, something that clearly goes against several principles associated with the American political tradition, such as freedom of contract, freedom of trade, etc. Some of these principles have found a way into the Constitution but it isn’t always crystal clear just where in the Constitution they appear–the fifth, the fourth, the ninth, the first or which amendment or which ruling that contains precedents should constitutional watchdogs rely as they to issue the proclamation: “Unconstitutional.”
The plain fact of the matter is that while the U. S. Constitution–specifically the Bill of Rights–contains some very laudable provisions, all of them require a fairly nuanced interpretation and application to contemporary issues (such as government coercing people buy health insurance). While for some citizens this is all a piece of cake, no problem at all, for others it isn’t a slam dunk by a long shot. That’s because these folks focus on the fact that the principles incorporated in the Bill of Rights are stated in terms that had a slightly different meaning back when the Constitution was ratified from how we understand them today.
Such development in the meaning of terms is often used as an excuse for evading constitutional principles but it could also be legitimate. Terms do change their meaning, more or less drastically or radically, even in the physical science–the term “atom” as used today doesn’t mean what it had been used to mean a hundred years ago. The more people involved in the study of those matters for which such terms were coined come to know–the more information comes to light about the surrounding facts–the more likely some alteration of meaning is probable.
Now this doesn’t mean the ridiculous idea that nothing is constant in the world, nothing stands still, nothing is stable and dependable, only that one needs to be sure what is and what isn’t. Some constitutional scholarship would track just such developments–have the crucial terms of the constitution kept the meaning they had back at the time of ratification or did they change a bit or a lot? The changes wouldn’t be arbitrary, with the result that anything goes–which is the result some of the avid skeptics about the Constitution would try to make us all believe. They hold to the doctrine originally ascribed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus who held that everything is always in flux–he is famously held to have said “You cannot step into the same river twice” because, well, the river is always changing. And if all of reality were like the river, we could never count on anything to be stable or solid, certainly not principles that are supposed to govern human community life.
But the American Founders and Framers disagreed and had spelled out some–few?–principles that do apply to human community life precisely because it is, after all, human communities that are at issue, not communities of ants or birds or cows. And these beings, human ones, are not all that changeable even over the time span of centuries. We know this from anthropology, archeology, history, philology, and other disciplines that study various aspects of humanity’s past and make pretty good progress understanding them.
So there could well be certain invariable principles, ones that need to be considered in dealing with or governing people and once these make it into a constitution, that document could come in very handy in figuring out public policies and plans. But none of this would be happening automatically, not certainly from simply reading the Constitution, not by a long shot. Honest constitutional study and understanding would be needed. Only then would the imperative to pay heed to the Constitution come to something valuable, important.
The reason that objecting to Obama care would appear to be not just constitutionally misguided but a misguided way of dealing with citizens is that people are the kind of beings in the world who may not be pushed around by other people–they must have their sovereignty or rights to life and liberty well respected and protected. Unfortunately this idea is so often and widely violated around the globe and, of course, throughout human history, that it is difficult for anyone to be loyal to it.
Many people are bent on pushing other people around–always, of course, for lofty purposes–and so bringing up a constitutional objection to their doing so would be annoying for them, even undermine their philosophy of life and their aspirations to be influential in the world. So they will then commit to the philosophy of Heraclitus, a philosophy that gives them carte blanche about how to interpret the U. S. Constitution or any other document containing principles by which communities must be governed. It’s a living document, you see, which can be taken to mean whatever one wants it to me, pragmatically and not according to common reason.
Yes, it is good to refer to the Constitution but it is even more important to keep in mind the underlying philosophical clashes and to make sure which side is right.
Column on The Times’ Phony Integrity
Oct 7th
The Times’ Phony Integrity
Tibor R. Machan
In its October 6, 2010, editorial, “Lamentable Speech,” The New York Times stood up for a hard line stance on the right to free speech. As the editors wrote, “To the American Nazi Party, Hustler Magazine, and other odious figures in Supreme Court history, add the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. and the members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. Their antigay protests at the funeral of a soldier slain in Iraq were deeply repugnant but protected by the First Amendment. All of the sympathy in the case of Snyder v. Phelps, which was argued on Wednesday at the Supreme Court, goes to the family of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, the fallen Marine. But as the appeals court in the case observed, using words of Justice Felix Frankfurter, ‘It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have often been forged in controversies involving not very nice people’.”
OK, so far so good except, as one comment on the editorial pointed out, where has The New York Times been when hate speech laws were being passed? Why didn’t it defend the right of those uttering hateful opinions about blacks? Well, one can only suppose that those folks do not deserve the same protection that was provided to the American Nazi Party or, in this case, the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. and the members of the Westboro Baptists Church. It would have been politically incorrect or, to use the old fashioned term, impolitic to argue for that.
Even more obvious is The Time’s very partial support of constitutional integrity when one thinks where it stands on the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment which suffered a major blow from the U. S. Supreme Court back in July of 2005, in the case of Kelo v. City of New London Connecticut, when it supported the confiscation of private property for the purpose of bolstering the City’s tax based by approving its taking of private property to be given to a private firm that was to develop it and then pay big bucks to the city in taxes. (BTW, to this day the property hasn’t been developed!) So while it is OK for the court to insist on the full protection of the free speech rights of a group of nasty bigots, it isn’t OK for it to insist on the full protection of the equally vital constitutional principle private property rights against the intrusiveness of city governments. Not a sign of true integrity, me thinks; more a matter of the philosophy of “a living constitution”!
So what is it with The Times and others who appear to hold that the right of freedom of speech is vital–well, except when hate speech is involved–but the right to private property, which actually supports the former right (because, after all, unless property rights are secure, freedom of speech or religion isn’t either), can be dispensed with? I hazard to guess that the cherry picking of rights is in the spirit of The Times’ pragmatic philosophy, one that actually has no respect for basic principles in any sphere of reality. To pragmatists everything is negotiable. And that doesn’t preclude posturing as defenders of principle now and then, when some agenda one is favoring may benefit from it.
What agenda might be served by insisting on upholding the principle of the right to freedom of speech in this case? Well, what pops to mind is that perhaps those soldiers and their families who are being harangued by Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. and the members of the Westboro Baptists Church aren’t fighting in a war that The Times approves of. Another might be that The Times is not very fond of the US Military in general. Yet another might be that freedom of speech is only of special interest to The Times–after all, it mostly operates under the protection of the First Amendment as it editorializes and opines about innumerable subjects. (But to come out and defend hate speech would be too much–The Times is too committed to the special interests of certain groups at which such speech is often aimed.)
No, I do not for a moment believe that The New York Times has come to see the significance of principled adherence to the Bill of Rights no matter how readily its editorial quotes Justice Felix Frankfurter. Pragmatism does not forbid making use of principles when it serves the special purpose to which a pragmatist is devoted, just as Communists and Nazis have no trouble making use of the US Constitution as they defend those principles that make it possible for them to attack the very political system that’s founded on them.
One needs to be careful not to be taken in by the phony parading of principles by those who really, in the end, care not a whit for principles, for whom integrity is deep down but a sign of naive fundamentalism–consider how defending free market capitalism is ridiculed as “market fundamentalism” by one of the favorite columnists of The Times even though most who stand up for that system do so as a matter of their commitment to principle!
Column on Principles vs. Pragmatism vz. the Mosque
Aug 22nd
Column on Principles vs. Pragmatism viz. the Mosque
Tibor R. Machan
It’s not my preference to beat a dead horse but this topic goes to the heart of certain features of our current political and legal climate.
When one is in some doubt about what to do–and there can be many situations that one isn’t well prepared for–a way to act is to consider one’s basic principles. Take someone married who is suddenly strongly attracted to someone other than a spouse. It happens but if those marriage vows matter at all, such a situation would be when they would come in most clearly. One is pulled toward breaching an oath but since it is an oath, presumably taken in earnest, one will refuse to yield to the temptation. Or if one is tempted to do a bit of shoplifting or prevaricating. This is when one’s principles come into play, however strongly one may feel like circumventing them.
If it is true that men and women in human communities ought not to intrude on their fellow citizens’ liberties, then that idea would come in full strength just when it is most tempting to butt in. So, given how strongly millions of Americans feel that those planning to build a Mosque near Ground Zero are misguided, the upright thing for them to do is to refuse to yield to such a feeling and go with the principle that everyone has a right to freedom of religion even when that religion leads one astray. Yes, it is difficult and very tempting to toss such a principle and ban the plan but so are numerous other principles very difficult to abide by. That’s just what makes them principles–they must not be treated lightly, they must apply even when one is really tempted to ignore them.
Now all this applies when one sees human beings guided by moral and political principles but not if one sees them as pragmatists for whom principles do not apply. As the joke goes with traffic lights, if they are only suggestions, not firm rules of the road, then by all means dodge them as you wish, if you can get away with doing so.
The famous American pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James argued once that if breaching the truth gives one serious satisfaction, then one should breach it. As he put it in his famous essay, “The Meaning of Truth,” “The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal ‘objectivity,’ as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its ‘elegance,’ or its congruity with our residual beliefs” (p. 41). So it isn’t what’s objectively true that counts for us but what is subjectively useful. When it comes to dealing with such matters as whether to incarcerate Japanese Americans, regardless of whether they have been proven guilty of anything, or to ban a mosque near Ground Zero, never mind that no one has shown that anyone’s rights are being violated, the pragmatist can always go around the principle and say, but do it if it feels good.
I am not here going to attempt to show the superiority of the principled as distinct from the pragmatic approach to human conduct or public policies in a human community. What I want to call attention to is how addressing issues pragmatically differs from how someone with principles would address them. Pragmatists distrust principles, thinking them to be a result of loose, ideological, and dogmatic thinking, while those who stress principles insist that what they rely upon for guidance has gone through centuries of trial and error and by now deserve to be heeded even when they appear to be inconvenient.
Most of the American founders were convinced that certain well considered principles apply to how a human community must be governed, how citizens ought to deal with one another, no matter what. Many today seem to scoff at such an attitude. Of course they usually make exceptions, for example, when they oppose torture or rape or child molestation, and it is unclear how can they square these exceptions with their avowed pragmatism in other areas. But they do try. We are witnessing how this drama plays out about something many Americans feel strongly about.
Column on Two Insidious Trends in America
Jul 8th
Two Insidious Trends in America
Tibor R. Machan
Two powerful intellectual developments are ruining America. One is egalitarianism, the other pragmatism.
The former is an effort at the highest levels of American education, at institutions such as Harvard University and the University of Chicago, for example, to help establish a regime or political system that has as its firm and unrelenting goal to make all people equal in the benefits and burdens they enjoy and shoulder in their lives–economic, educational, medical, psychological, etc. The clarion call of this movement is to demand government mandated fairness for everyone.
The latter, pragmatism, is also being promulgated at some of the most prominent and prestigious institutions of higher education. This is a broad philosophical school of thought, originally forged on American soil by the likes of Charles Peirce, William James, C. I. Lewis, John Dewey, and numerous others, including the most radical member of the school, the later Richard Rorty; it insists that no basic principles can be identified in any area of human concern, not in ethics, not politics, not even metaphysics or epistemology (or theory of knowledge). Instead of finding basic principles on which to rest one’s reasoning and actions–in morality or law, for instance–an attitude of practical expediency is all that human beings can hope for.
“Whatever works,” is the simplified motto of pragmatism but there is a big problem with this, since things work always with respect to some goal and certain goals are clearly not worth pursuing, others are. Pragmatism insists, however, that there is no way to tell which goals are important, which are trivial and which are out and out insidious. That is all a matter of the intuitions of those who are in charge of calling the shots. (Currently, for example, President Obama and his team–most notably Professor Cass Sunstein of the Harvard Law School–proclaim the superior merit of pragmatism and pursue workable approaches to solving problems they feel need solving.)
Both egalitarianism and pragmatism tend to unleash an army of government regulators upon members of society, in the effort to cut everyone down to the same size and achieve goals the leaders believe need to be achieved, respectively. But both of these outlooks are hopeless, futile and must produce confusion and the tyranny of some people over others. As a result, the egalitarian objectives will mostly turn out exactly as George Orwell indicated in his novella, Animal Farm, namely, a group of members of society will be running the show and thus defeat the very idea of equality among human beings. And given how unprincipled conduct also encourages the rise of elites and petty tyrants, pragmatism also produces very bad public policies. Moreover, the pragmatist agenda flies directly in the face of some of the most noble aspects of the American political tradition, namely, the rule of law and the Founders’ declaration of the vital need for basic principles, such as individual human rights within the legal system. (Cass Sunstein explicitly insists that such rights do not exists and the only “rights” you have is what the government grants you!)
What might be put in oppositions to these two clearly dangerous movements so widely embraced by elite public philosophers? A renewed commitment to the American Founders’ idea that human beings all have basic rights–in this respect they are indeed equal–and the most vital public good or purpose is the protection of their basic rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc. Some adjustment will have to be made on the Founders’ ideas but very little. One point to keep in mind is that just because basic principles can indeed be identified in areas such as ethics, law and politics, it doesn’t mean they are going to be timelessly fixed, unalterable. (That is the point of the amendment process)
Unfortunately the education of American students is mostly in the hands of those who embrace both egalitarianism and pragmatism, so it isn’t going to be easy to rekindle the commitment to the Founders’ ideas and ideals. Still, that is the most significant way to counter the drift of the country toward greater and greater government regimentation. Everyone who understands this needs to discover ways to arrest that drift. It is an eternal struggle but worth it.
Column on Misunderstanding the Fiasco
Apr 11th
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.
