A Passion for Liberty
Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review
Posts tagged pragmatism
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.
Column on Another Pitch for Pragmatism
Feb 10th
Another Pitch for Pragmatism
Tibor R. Machan
This article surprised me a bit because I have been reading The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for a long time and he never appeared to me an unprincipled person. Yet in an essay for The New York Review of Books, titled “On Isaiah Berlin,” he pushes for unabashed pragmatism, which is the philosophy of expediency, of “anything that works.”
Kristof’s essay is about the late philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin, most famous for his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In that essay Berlin laid out and clarified a notion that had been making the philosophical rounds for about a century if not more–for example, in the writings of the English idealist philosopher, T. H. Green–namely that in politics two ideas of human freedom are prominent, negative and positive. Basically negative freedom or liberty amounts to not intruding on someone, leaving him or her be. This is the liberty endorse by John Locke and by the American Founders.
The other type of freedom is positive, meaning one gets to be supported by other people so as to have the ability–freedom–to advance in one’s life, for example, the freedom to get health care or insurance or public housing or whatever is produced, via coercion, for those who need it by those who can. If others are forced to provide (foregoing some of their values), then they will be free to pursue the values they need and want to have.
Berlin never thought this distinction is all-encompassing but he believed it covers a good deal of what goes on in contemporary welfare states where both types of freedom are supposedly being secured by governments. And he embraced a very controversial view about morality, ethics and politics, namely, that we can have values–ideas of what is right and wrong, good and bad or evil–that are in conflict, that it is false that “there must somewhere be a true answer to the deepest questions that preoccupy mankind.” While he noted that great minds throughout human history had assumed this, the idea is nevertheless false!
Kristof thinks he knows why Berlin held to this belief–he gives a typical psycho-historical explanation based on Berlin’s early life and later experiences with totalitarianism and what Berlin liked to call “unbridled monism” (the idea that the universe hangs together seamlessly and although we rarely know how it does so, in principle we could; this is pretty much what is assumed in all the sciences other than, perhaps, in chaos theory, so Berlin’s helter-skelter account of the world would seem to be the odd one, not that offered by those who seek, even if they cannot find, a comprehensive account).
But what stands out most in Kristof’s essay is how he attempts to enlist Berlin to support pragmatism. As he puts it, “What exactly is Berlin’s legacy in philosophy? To me, it is his emphasis on the ‘pluralism of values,’ a concept that suggests a nonideological, pragmatic way of navigating an untidy world.” He does this without bothering to explain how Berlin’s (or indeed anyone’s) version of pragmatism could give support to Kristof’s own favorite causes, including rescuing women who are oppressed across the globe. Can a pragmatist really object if someone replies, “Well it is very useful to oppress women (or whoever else), at least to us here in this country or region”?
Never mind. Barack Obama has declared himself a loyal pragmatist, at least in economic policy, so his cheerleaders, among them Nicholas Kristof, are doing whatever they can to make this a respectable outlook. Is it? Or is it a rationalization for unprincipled personal conduct and public policy? I suspect it is the latter. The more one can shore up the credibility and respectability of shooting from the hip, never mind justification and, more importantly, justice, the more unchecked power one can claim is necessary to do one’s work. Dangerous stuff, I’d say.
Column on the Impracticality of Pragmatism
Dec 21st
Impractical Pragmatism?
Tibor R. Machan
Yes, it sounds paradoxical because by “pragmatic” is usually meant “practical, workable, functional.” So when President Obama made it clear last year that he is a loyal pragmatist when it comes to economic policy, he received praise from some, especially those who denounce ideology or ideological thinking.
Yet this is not a sound approach to life or public policy because telling where one should be pragmatic and where one should hold on to one’s principles no matter what is impossible. If, say, one is ideological about a woman’s right to choose whether to continue her pregnancy beyond a certain point, or, alternatively, whether to preserve the life of a budding human being no matter what, is that all to the good or not? Or if one opposes rape under any and all circumstances, is one being ideological, dogmatic, a fundamentalist in the bad sense meant by the likes of Professor Paul Krugman who think that market fundamentalism is something really, really bad? What about parents who insist that their children tell the truth and not lie, ever? Are they dogmatic, mindless people and is their child rearing seriously flawed?
Yet when it comes to confiscating the resources of people for various supposedly public purposes, as per the U. S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2005 in Kelo v. City of New London Connecticut, serious legal scholars claim this is wise pragmatism, a sensible rejection of mindless market fundamentalism or ideological thinking? Why is the principle of private property rights less binding on us all than the principle of the integrity of a woman’s body? Why are these same intellectuals not being pragmatic about torture or child molestation, why don’t they condemn those who insist that under no circumstances may anyone commit statutory rape, as crass dogmatists?
Could it be that these folks find it convenient, to their and their preferred people’s advantage, to downplay the principles of private property rights? That is surely what one would think about anyone who would counsel flexibility about matters such as rape or child abuse. There is no excuse to abandon principled thinking and conduct about such practices but for some reason it is OK to accept stealing a bit here, robbing a bit there and dogmatism or ideological to oppose that attitude?
The bottom line is that pragmatism is fatally flawed. No champion of it can identify where it is permissible or acceptable to be pragmatic and where pragmatism would be something odious and intolerable. In the case of President Obama and his public policy cheerleaders they, too, have no clue when principled thinking and conduct are required and when it is dogmatic or ideological to strictly adhere to principles. No clue at all, which then gives them carte blanche about how they should carry on with public policies or even personal conduct. Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods then can cry out, but why are they condemning us for breaking our marriage wows when they break all sorts of principles? And, worse, supporters of water boarding or even more Draconian forms of torture can invoke pragmatism, saying well it works sometimes, so given the importance of getting information from the victims it would be dogmatic or ideological to forbid it. Where is the line between conduct that may follow the pragmatic approach and conduct that may not? Where is principled conduct expendable? And why there and not someplace else?
It seems that champions of pragmatism like President Obama and his intellectual supporters have a problem here and if they think that a president should lead by example, they could be guilty of providing an impossible example for others to follow. Indeed, it is an interesting question just what Mr. and Mrs. Obama teach their own children about principles–may they be tossed whenever they become inconvenient, wherever they stand in the way of pursuing certain desired objectives like bailing out banks and auto companies with other peoples’ money?
Looks like pragmatism is not at all practical, the very thing for which it is often praised. It cannot be practiced consistently, coherently, in either personal or public affairs.
Column on Stossel’s Blues
Dec 19th
Stossel’s Blues
TIbor R. Machan
John Stossel is a fine journalist with a serious libertarian political orientation. (I once worked with him on his ABC-TV Special, “John Stossel Goes to Washington,” broadcast a few years ago and still in circulation.) He has just moved to the cable station, Fox Business News, where he hosted a pretty good program on the health care and insurance topics recently. Stossel and Whole Foods owners John Mackey were quite effective in laying out the case for a free market in the fields of both health care and health insurance, at least until they came up against a rabid and smart enough statist, Russell Mokhiber, who demonstrated that if you aren’t fully consistent in your support of human liberty, you are going to be utterly vulnerable to the arguments of the detractors.
If you have been around the block a while trying to show folks that living in a fully free society is not only more economical but also more just than living in alternative systems, you will know that if you give even a millimeter to a statist, he or she will grab your arm and swallow it up good and hard. So when Stossel and Mackey insisted that there is plenty wrong with the prevailing approach to health care and health insurance in these United States, and that no Canadian system can compare to one based on the principles of the free society, this well prepared adversary, activists Mokhiber, stopped them in their tacks by asking such questions as, “Would you privatize the national forests?” “How about a free market in education and roads?” and “What about the public funding of thousands of parks across the country?”
Stossel may be a libertarian in the depths of his mind and heart but he is working at what is in the end still a mainstream TV network. And extending the principles of the free society to education, parks, forests, roads and the like is so way out there for most people, even those most loyal to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, taking on these rebuttals is just too taxing. And Mokhiber knew this very well and never let go of the idea–so that in the last analysis John Stossel and John Mackey were trapped in a dilemma: they either embrace a pure libertarian position in which there is no room for any wealth redistribution and public works–everything must be privatized apart from the judicial system and the military–or they have to accept the socialist health care proposals of the liberal Democrats, better known as Obamacare, as just another task the government can take over.
Stossel tried to escape his dilemma by saying that the issue is big versus limited government but this won’t work. It isn’t the size of government, really, that is of concern but its proper scope. Matters pertaining to the protection of the basic and derivative rights of the citizenry are the government’s purview but nothing else, including parks, forests, lakes, roads, and so forth. But this consistent libertarian idea, implicit in the Declaration of Independence but not explicated by the American Founders–indeed, compromised by them when they wrote the Constitution and tolerated slavery, for example–still doesn’t sit well with most Americans, including the audience that watches John Stossel on the Fox Business Network. The sad truth is that millions of people around the globe, including in America, want to be free up to a point but not completely. They will sell their right to liberty for some allegedly guaranteed security by way of Medicare, unemployment compensation, social security, etc. and so forth.
And once these compromises on the right to liberty are accepted, it becomes impossible to give liberty a principled defense. “How come you are willing to tolerate coercing people to pay for public parks and forests and Medicare but not Obamacare?” Indeed, how come. Once the principle is abridged, those who don’t want any liberty at all for anyone have a clear path before them. Sure, they might like some liberty for themselves but for that all they need to be is pragmatists, just as Mr. Obama and those with him proudly claim to be.
I do not envy Mr. Stossel who I am sure would gladly go all the way with liberty but working in a more or less mainstream industry he feels he cannot do so. Maybe he ought to try anyway.
