Principled Perspectives

Is Governor Christie Winning NJ's Public School War?

2012-01-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

OK ... maybe "winning" is too strong a word. 2011 was to be the year of education reform, according to Governor Chris Christie. The results were underwhelming, to say the least.

But Christie has two more years of his first term to go, and an interesting development occurred on the last day of the 2011 NJ legislative session; passage by a heavily Democratic legislature of the Urban Hope Act. This narrowly tailored bill would authorize private companies to build and run public schools. The companies would finance and build the schools themselves, but would draw upon tax dollars to fund operations. They would have to operate under strict state- and municipal-imposed guidelines. Furthermore, these schools would be restricted to only three "failing" districts; Newark, Camden, and Trenton. In other words, the bill is minimal "privatization", but not a significant move toward a genuine free market.

The interesting thing about this bill is not the bill itself, but the fact that it drew the reluctant support of the New Jersey Education Association - the teachers union. The question is why?

The union has long been a steadfast opponent of anything with a scent of privatization. As such, the decision to support this bill came as a shock to government-run public schools’ staunchest defenders. Bob Braun of the NJ Star-Ledger, writing on the eve of what looked like certain passage, blasted the union endorsement:

In a move that displays either its weakness or cynicism — or both — the state’s largest teachers’ union has joined forces with archenemy Gov. Chris Christie and the powerful Camden County Democratic machine of George Norcross to endorse the "Urban Hope Act," which would allow private companies to build and manage public schools using taxpayer money.

The union’s flip-flop shatters the unity of a coalition that has consistently opposed the Christie administration’s efforts to bring privatization to public education. It left spokesmen for some of those groups literally speechless.

So again, the question is, why? The answer could be that the union views itself as losing a battle it can’t afford to lose; Christie’s ultimate goal is universal parental school choice. Braun continues:

Privately, union allies say it had no choice but to support the bill. They say the union hopes its collaboration with the Camden County machine might forestall legislative action on Christie proposals the NJEA fears more than it does private management of public schools — private school vouchers and tenure reform.

"The passage of the Urban Hope Act certainly will remove the logic behind the argument for vouchers,’’ Schnitzer said. She denied reaching a quid pro quo for the union’s support of the Norcross bill.

I hope Christie reads the tealeaves as pointing to a green light for more aggressive initiatives. The argument that the UHA “will remove the logic behind the argument for vouchers” is wishful thinking. Why should only parents with kids in “failing” school districts have choice? Once the principle that parents have the right to direct the course of their own children’s’ education is accepted, as is increasingly the case, the “logic” leads more and more towards freedom and individual rights in education – until and unless proponents get cold feet. This is not to say that I support Christie’s plan of implementation, which is, ultimately, fatally flawed. As I wrote in my 5/19/10 post “The Voucher Trojan Horse”:

Governor Christie intends no small, half-way measures. His approach is bold, aggressive, and courageous. He means to engage the entrenched establishment, including the coercive political power of the state teachers’ union, in full frontal ideological combat. He has done us a huge service by bringing education to the front burner in a big way. The government-run public school monopoly has been put on notice - your days are numbered in New Jersey. For this, he deserves enormous credit.

Unfortunately, his energetic enthusiasm is hitched to the wrong solution. While some measure of educational improvement is bound to occur early on, if his plan is fully implemented, the very advantages of private education that makes parental choice so appealing will eventually be washed away. They will get smothered by establishment conditions attached to their voucher checks, as the bureaucratic handcuffs are slipped on and their entrepreneurial freedom such as it is slips away.

A better way to implement universal choice is through a plan I spelled out in my Spring 2011 Objective Standard article, Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits? It is a plan that gives full private control over all education tax dollars to all that pay those taxes, and is thus a real, viable step toward an education free market.

That aside, the political message that can be drawn from the passage of the Urban Hope Act is that the education establishment is on the defensive as the momentum continues to shift toward the parental school choice movement. Governor Christie has played a big part in humbling the Democrats’ strongest constituency in a heavily “blue” state – no small achievement. This is no time for true education reformers to rest on their laurels.

Hypocrisy Right and Left

2012-01-23T08:11:00.002-05:00

In a recent editorial appearing in a major newspaper right after the NH primary, and before Newt's big SC win, "Mitt Romney's free market success draws Newt Gingrich's attacks," the editors lectured Newt Gingrich as follows:

Let’s see if we have this straight: Newt Gingrich, the Reagan conservative, and his patron Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner, want us to believe that Mitt Romney is evil because he practiced capitalism when he ran Bain Capital.

We have entered strange new territory. With Romney’s win in New Hampshire, the race now moves to South Carolina, where Adelson has purchased enough TV time to hammer this message home. The emotional punch comes from testimony by individuals who are said to have lost their jobs as a result of buyouts by Bain.

So ask yourself this: Is it inherently wrong for an investor to purchase a firm and then reduce its staff?

Suppose the investor finds a way to do the same work with fewer people. Or that diminished demand for the firm’s product means that it must shrink to survive.

In those conditions, the only rational answer is to lay off employees. Because if you don’t, more efficient competitors will grind the overweight firm into dust. And at that point, all the firm’s jobs will be lost.

That’s the logic of a market economy. And yes, what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called 'creative destruction' takes a human toll. It’s important to have a safety net to soften the blow with unemployment benefits, job training programs and other help. But to suggest that Romney is somehow a force for evil because Bain’s buyouts resulted in layoffs is pure demagoguery.

Bain’s business model was to make leveraged purchases of firms, bring in new management to make them more efficient, and then sell them. Economists say that leveraged buyouts like this typically cost jobs in the short run, but position the firms to create more jobs in the long run.

...But for a conservative like Gingrich to vilify Romney based on the simple fact that jobs were lost is beyond hypocritical. And it’s a reminder, as if one were needed, that he is not fit to be president.

The Wall Street Journal? Investors Business Daily? Nope. That was none other than NJ's largest newspaper - the left-leaning Star-Ledger, on 1/12/12. Perhaps this editorial can be explained by the paper's late encounter with economic reality. Like most newspaper corporations, the Star-Ledger has had to brutally downsize in recent years to survive, cutting many jobs along the way. In any event, when liberals begin sounding more like capitalists than a leading presidential candidate of the allegedly pro-capitalist GOP, it's all the proof we need to show how desperately the party needs new blood ... and ideas.

But just three days earlier, on 1/9/12, the same NJ Star-ledger exposed a bit of its own hypocrisy, blasting an innocuous sounding bill scheduled for a vote near the end of the lame duck legislative session - since shelved - that would "allow local governments to stop posting legal notices in newspapers." The editors wrote:

The cover story is that this will save local governments money by allowing them to post the information online instead.

That’s not true, because towns would have to build and maintain secure computer sites for this purpose.

The sponsors of the bill haven’t bothered to calculate that cost, but the Legislature’s non-partisan researchers warn that the bill could actually increase costs to local governments.

The bosses don’t care about the costs, though, because saving money is not the real purpose. And they don’t care that many poor and elderly people don’t use computers, either.

The real purpose is to give them a tool to bully newspapers. Under this bill, a local mayor or county executive could retaliate against newspapers by pulling these advertisements. The bill is an attempt to turn watchdogs into lapdogs.

Coming from a major supporter of the regulatory welfare state, this editorial is almost laughable. Businesses are routinely bullied by antitrust crusaders; developers by local zoning boards and environmental protection agencies; medical doctors by Medicare/Medicaid price controllers. ObamaCare will bully every individual and every business into government-approved health insurance policies. Antitrust laws, government zoning, governement-run medicine, and other regulatory welfare-state schemes are all forms of government bullying of private Americans that the Star-Ledger supports.

The Star-Ledger may have a point about this proposed law, but their sob story rings hollow considering their philosophical love affair with statism. Sooner or later, chickens will come home to roost.

Politics 2012: Can “American Individualism” Save the GOP – and America?

2012-01-17T11:08:00.001-05:00

In a recent speech in Kansas, President Barack Obama once again reiterated his collectivist ideological premises. In this PJTV interview, Yaron Brook called the speech “about the death of individualism in America and that the standard from now on needs to be collectivism.” Obama “knows what his ideology is [and] has laid it out for us,” Brook stressed. This “anti-American” speech, he said, should make it clear that “the job of the Republican candidate, whoever it is, [is] to have this speech for taking on individualism, capitalism, [and] freedom.” (For an indepth look at the president's deep-seated premises once again exposed in this latest speech, see my 3-part 2008 essay Obama’s Collectivist Manifesto – Parts I, 2, and 3.

Is that candidate a part of the group currently competing for the Republican nomination? It doesn’t look like it. To be sure, some of the makings of a candidate of such stature do exist, but he is scattered among all of them. When listening to the debates, one can pick out policy positions from each candidate that, put together, would produce a pretty decent prospect. The dark cloud hanging over the entire field, however – at least the ones participating in the debates – is that cast by the dominance over the party of the Religious Right and its social authoritarianism. That dominance hollows out the party’s allegiance to individual freedom and free markets – to the extent that that allegiance even exists. More broadly, the Republicans hold to the same collectivist premises as Obama, often speaking of “the will of the people” or the “overall good of the country.”

Without a consistent ideological commitment to counter Obama’s explicit collectivist message, the Republicans may actually lose an election that should be a slam-dunk for them – and they would deserve it. The GOP’s muddled message, if you can even call it a message, is no match for Obama’s philosophical consistency, which Dr. John David Lewis labeled Obama's Atomic Bomb. Consequently, the GOP may be headed for a shipwreck that could send the old guard packing and direct the party toward a search for new ideas and a new identity. This would open the door to the kind of innovative thinking that could rejuvenate the GOP into the kind of ideological counter-force to the prevailing collectivist trend that American statists have not encountered in a long time.

Does such innovative thinking exist? Fortunately, the answer is yes; and that is the subject of a book review of mine that has been published in the Winter 2011-2012 Objective Standard. The book is called American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party by Margaret Hoover. Ms. Hoover is a young Republican activist, a Fox News contributor, and the great-granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover.

Hoover’s book is strikingly reminiscent, in its broad theme, of my November 2008 call-to-action entitled My Challenge To the GOP…a Philosophical Contract With America. Ms. Hoover’s thesis has significant flaws, however. Her proposed political platform for the GOP is far less consistent with her theme than it could be, even allowing that a full platform of laissez-faire would not be realistic in today’s political climate. For example, although Hoover calls for some privatization such as “private accounts within Social Security and health savings accounts for health-care spending [so as to] maximize the individual’s ability to make his or her own decisions,” she does so not as a step toward full freedom, but as an end in themselves. She accepts the basic validity of the New Deal and Great Society programs in direct contradiction to the principles of the individualism she promotes. Put another way, she does not "maximize the individual’s ability to make his or her own decisions." Rather, she keeps him locked up in coercive government programs, albeit with more "choice." More crucially, Hoover fails to defend individualism morally, which is the source of the contradiction. Instead, and in line with most pro-freedom thinkers dating back to the Enlightenment, she attempts to reconcile individualism with altruism.

The pattern of defending individualism and by extension capitalism and individual rights on a base of altruism has been the dominant formula, and failure, of conservatism to this day. Hoover continues along that path. But one must acknowledge that she is not a philosophic innovator, after all, but a political innovator. Even so, Hoover seems to at least understand the basic existential nature and supreme value of individualism and its vital connection to America. And although she does not explain or defend individualism down to all of its deepest philosophical roots, it is unclear why. There are times that she hints a fuller understanding, and she does mention individualism’s foremost moral defender, Ayn Rand, alluding to her fiction and non-fiction works as influential to conservatism in the economic sense. She comes closest to a proper description of individualism in the metaphysical and epistemological realms; the individual as sovereign and the individual mind as the source of all human progress. And though she nibbles at the ethical aspect of individualism, it is here that she goes off the rails. Though she doesn’t use the term “altruism”, it’s clear that’s what she has in mind when she says that individualism must be “tempered” or “imbued with service to community … and country,” because the acknowledged inspiration for her current work is the 1922 book written by her great-grandfather Herbert Hoover. In his book, “American Individualism” – a title which Margaret Hoover borrows and which is indicative of its supreme importance to her thesis – the man who would become our 31st president makes an impassioned plea for “the sole source of progress … [the] intelligence, character, courage, and … divine spark of the human soul [which] are alone the property of individuals.” Yet this self-described “unashamed … American individualist” would forbid “individualism run riot, with no tempering principle.” Despite his acknowledgement that “we dare not abandon self-interest as a motive force to leadership and to production, lest we die,” his lack of understanding of the true nature of individualism leads him to that “tempering” principle – the “ideal” of “the aspiration and satisfactions of pure altruism.” Herbert Hoover can serve as a philosophical case study in how the most passionate defender of individual freedom will be inexorably drawn to statism - as evidenced by his presidential policies - as a consequence of altruism's influence.

Does Margaret Hoover not understand the moral case for individualism? Does she understand it but not agree with it? Does she understand it, perhaps even agree with it, but believe that promoting individualism on its proper egoistic base is politically untenable? The answers are unknown to me, but a yes answer to this last question is a distinct possibility. Hoover seeks to inject individualism into the heart of the Republican brand. With service and sacrifice as the accepted moral norms within a culture that still implicitly reveres individualism, she may be attempting to make individualism more politically palatable. But there are better ways to do that. For example, although individualism recognizes no unchosen moral obligations of a positive nature (i.e. requiring action), she could explain that there is nothing about the nature of individualism, properly understood, that would preclude self-interested chosen moral obligations to fellow citizens, to private efforts to make one’s community environment a better place to live, or to the kinds of humanitarian efforts like the WW I food relief efforts to stave off famine that Herbert Hoover led and which Margaret Hoover describes and lauds in her book. Indeed, Herbert Hoover himself disproves the need for any tempering principle, as this “unashamed … American individualist” stepping up in an emergency in no way contradicts the egoistic nature of individualism: Self-reverence is the moral core of individualism, and that is where compassion, good will, and the valuing of others begin. After all, who would want the truly needy – those unable to help themselves through no fault of their own - to be without any charitable options? (In fact, 19th century America – the most individualistic century any nation ever lived – was also a very generous and compassionate America, as Don Watkins and Yaron Brook explain in the current issue of Forbes.) Individualism does not preclude flourishing relationships at the level of romantic love, friendship, child rearing, or associations with neighbors. In fact, individualism fosters close personal relationships based upon shared values. Individualism does not mean narrow self-centeredness or personal isolationism. Furthermore, it does not mean power-lust; the domination or exploitation of others, which is a form of selfless pseudo-individualism that in fact is the flip side of the coin that also embodies parasitism. Living through and/or at the expense of others takes many forms – none of them individualistic. A true individualist would never rely upon anything other than honest and voluntary associations with others because, being an individualist, he doesn’t fear or resent self-reliance.

That said, Hoover’s main thrust is toward individualism, and politically her sympathy clearly lies with individual freedom; her view being, essentially, that altruism is compatible with individualism, and some limited statism is compatible with freedom, rather than the other way around on both counts. Hoover's initiative is a rather courageous one, as she risks the scorn of establishment conservatism (ex. being labeled a “RINO” – Republican in Name Only). She sought a formula for a new Republican majority and found it in what she views as the common ground between her great grandfather’s ideas and today’s millennials, and seeks to transplant American Individualism 1922 into 21st century politics. The focus on individualism will move the political debate into freedom’s ideological territory, and could begin the long process of building a proper philosophical foundation for the GOP.

A philosophical principle has its own dynamic, being grounded as are all concepts not in the subjective opinions or understandings of any individual mind but in the objective facts of reality. That Ms. Hoover doesn’t establish the moral foundation of individualism does not mean it doesn’t exist. Others may come forward to take on the task of defining it. That her flawed conception leaves the moral argument for individualism to others to properly define does not diminish the political significance of what she is proposing. A principle carries the virtue of being a reference point or yardstick by which to measure the validity of a party’s entire platform agenda. Under the unifying principle of individualism, competing GOP factions would have to anchor their positions to that premise – or leave the party. It would draw a bright line between the two major parties; a line that currently doesn’t exist except as a matter of degree between ideologically like-minded political entities. A GOP fused around individualism would serve a dual purpose: It would compel the Republican Party toward consistency in defense of freedom, while painting the Democratic Party into a collectivist corner.

A Hoover-esque “American Individualism”-oriented major party would give the more consistent defenders of individualism, individual rights, and capitalism a broad political opening. Herbert Hoover’s gallant attempt to stand against the collectivist tide of his day anticipated his successors of the 20th century conservative movement with his vigorous defense of individualism on a moral base of altruism. Capitalism, the political derivative of individualism, has been defended by conservatives on that premise ever since. That formula has been put to the test over the past nine decades, and has failed. To make their case, individualism’s consistent defenders may now draw upon the historical failure of that formula to stop the incremental advance of the very socialism that Herbert Hoover sought to stop. They also have something else that didn’t exist 90 years ago; the wide-scale philosophical case for the morality of individualism provided by philosopher Ayn Rand, whom Ms. Hoover credits only narrowly as merely a champion of economic liberty.

Hoover’s valiant attempt to infuse the Republican Party with “individualism as [its] integrating philosophy” is a breath of fresh air. Despite its flaws, the value of Hoover’s book is that it introduces the proper principles into the political realm, whether explicitly or implicitly. It points the national dialogue toward better ideas, because the fundamentals of individualism lead to pro-individual rights, pro-egoism, pro-capitalism political legislation, as the course of least resistance.

Is Margaret Hoover’s a lonely voice in the wilderness of an intellectually challenged Republican Party, destined to be drowned out by the social authoritarians and the pragmatist me-too-ers? Or, is she a pioneer in a new vanguard destined to revolutionize the party? As of this writing, the Republican field seems unable to produce a candidate that could actually have a strong chance of defeating Barack Obama. But in this era of “the protestor,” coupled with the steady abandonment of the two major parties by American voters, the Republican Party my emerge from the coming 2012 election season in search of new ideas and a new direction. This is the silver lining circling the GOP field. In that event, Margaret Hoover’s “American Individualism” could be an influential book. It is the kind of political initiative that freedom-lovers can encourage (and be encouraged by) – not in every premise and certainly not in every concrete detail – but in the direction it would take the political dialogue. It would be the equivalent of a Republican atomic counterattack. As I concluded in my condensed review published on Amazon.com:

Despite the serious ethical contradiction inherent in her central thesis, however, Hoover is a political innovator who seeks to point the GOP in the right direction, and deserves strong - albeit qualified - support from liberty lovers. Both within the GOP and in the nation at large, her proposal could reorient America's political debate around the central conflict - individualism vs. collectivism. It could infuse our politics with a broad, vital debate on ethics, the rights of the individual, the proper role of government, and the fundamental nature of individualism itself. By calling on the GOP to be a principled, consistent advocate of individualism - even a significantly flawed conception of it - we may finally get "a choice not an echo" against the Obama Democrats' crusading collectivism. Should the GOP be serious and farsighted enough to adopt Hoover's basic strategy, we may begin to turn America's political tide away from the approaching abyss of totalitarian socialism.

John David Lewis, New Intellectual

2012-01-10T08:38:00.022-05:00

John David Lewis, one of a small but growing number of Objectivist intellectuals taking the lead on spreading the ideas of philosopher Ayn Rand (and by implication the ideals of the Enlightenment and of the Founding Fathers), died on January 3rd, 2012.

ARI has put up a memorial page, which contains a listing of his contributions to Objectivist thought. Several excellent tributes have been written, including by Craig Biddle, who summed up Mr. Lewis' personal and professional mission:

John taught at Duke, where his primary message to students was that their minds are efficacious; that they can acquire knowledge of the world, including historical and moral truth; that they can achieve their dreams if they are willing to think and work; and that their lives are theirs to live and enjoy.

Mr. Biddle's tribute and those of others who personally knew him such as Ari Armstrong, Alex Epstein, and Diana and Paul Hsieh lend a personal perspective for those of us who didn't know him. Leonard Peikoff, echoing others who spoke of John Lewis' enthusiam for life, wrote:

John waged a heroic battle against cancer, never giving up, always focusing on trying to achieve a recovery in the future. When told a little while ago that it was the end and he had only several months, he wrote me words to the effect of: I am not concerned about death, which I will never know, but about life, which I intend to go ahead and live as long as I can.

My motivation in recognizing Mr. Lewis' death here is to raise some awareness of his work in the activism field. I've often quoted from and linked to his work, including his articles in The Objective Standard such as Obama's Atomic Bomb: The Ideological Clarity of the Democratic Agenda
and What the “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” HR 3962, Actually Says.

I've enjoyed, learned from, and been inspired by his public talks and lectures, as well. I particularly liked Health Care Reform: Setting Doctors Free, delivered seven months before his death. In this lecture, Dr. Lewis discusses the inextricable link between life and action. He shows how to live requires the freedom to not just think but to act on one's thinking. Government-run medicine is fundamentally anti-life because it forcibly interferes in the doctor's ability to act on his own judgement.

Ayn Rand defines "intellectual" thusly:

The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher. The intellectual carries the application of philosophical principles to every field of human endeavor. He sets a society’s course by transmitting ideas from the “ivory tower” of the philosopher to the university professor—to the writer—to the artist—to the newspaperman—to the politician—to the movie maker—to the night-club singer—to the man in the street. ... The intellectual is the eyes, ears and voice of a free society: it is his job to observe the events of the world, to evaluate their meaning and to inform the men in all the other fields.

With so many of this country's intellectuals of both Left and what today passes for the Right working to advance statism and thus undermine freedom, America desperately needs the kind of "voice of a free society" that Dr. Lewis provided. Furthermore, he provided inspirational leadership to those many of us who occupy the next level of the army's intellectual hierarchy; those whom I would characterize as the foot soldiers to the field agents.

Ayn Rand placed the blame for the decline of American ideals squarely on the shoulders of the intellectual profession, and called for The New Intellectuals to arise to lead the way to an American Renaissance. John Lewis was in the vanguard of this new intellectual force. He was an invaluable asset to the Objectivist movement.

Best of 2011

2012-01-04T11:45:00.002-05:00

Here are a few of my favorite posts of the past year:

"Responsibility Depends on Individual Rights"

In the Spirit of “Compromise”, How About a Flat Tax? - I go on record in support of a flat rate income tax.

"The Message of Christ" and New Jersey's Education wars, on the hypocracy of the public school defenders.

Cohen: Hate-Crime Laws are "Totalitarian Nonsense" - more on a crucially important issue.

Social Security and the "Hypocrisy" Charge - addressing the statist extortionists.

What is the "Key" to Job Creation? talks a bit about the nature of real - i.e. remunerative - job creation, and their source.

Does Freedom Equal "The Wild West"? - another statist trap exposed.

America: A Nation of Sacrifice? - If America is to survive long-term, it is the notion of sacrifice as a virtue that must be challenged and defeated.

Welfare Statists Circle the Wagons - A key issue of the 2012 election campaign will likely be the "wealth gap", which is an outgrowth of the primitive idea discussed in Challenging the Tribal Premise.

PSA Testing: Are Death Panels Arriving Under Cover of “Scientific Evidence”? and and Forbes: "Death Panels ... We already have one" expose the way in which health care rationing will be smuggled in.

“Occupy Wall Street” Sharpens the Ideological Battle Lines - My first take on OWS.

America's Core: Liberty, or Compromise? - Freedom's defenders must recognize that the "virtue" of compromise ends at principle's door.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2011-12-31T10:51:00.001-05:00

Christmas…A Holiday For All

2011-12-23T15:24:00.001-05:00

Can non-Christians celebrate Christmas? Many do, and why not? I’m an atheist and I have no problem celebrating Christmas, even though it has no religious significance for me.

What’s great about Christmas is that it is both a religious holiday, being based upon the birth of the Christian icon Jesus, and a secular holiday as well.

How can I say that? I am indebted to philosopher Ayn Rand for identifying the resolution of that seemingly contradictory proposition:

[In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas:]

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property… of the Christian religion. (The Ayn Rand Lexicon)

This makes perfect sense. A national religious holiday in a secular nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state is a logical impossibility. Since to have a secular government means to have one that is neutral with regards to the fundamental beliefs of all of its citizens, an American national holiday by definition cannot be religious.

In fact, what we today call Christmas originally didn't have any connection to Jesus at all, writes Onkar Ghate in U.S.News & World Report:

"Before Christians co-opted the holiday in the fourth century (there is no reason to believe Jesus was born in December), it was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, of the days beginning to grow longer. The Northern European tradition of bringing evergreens indoors, for instance, was a reminder that life and production were soon to return to the now frozen earth."

The Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice with the holiday Saturnalia. In Northern Europe, the holiday was called Yule.

Indeed, as philosopher Leonard Peikoff notes over at Capitalism Magazine, the leading secular Christmas symbol - Santa Claus - actually contradicts some standard Christian tenets:

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. ... In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

...Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

So, regardless of your beliefs, go ahead and enjoy Christmas on your own terms.

On that note, let me extend to everyone a hearty wish for a joyous, safe, and thoroughly non-contradictory…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

America's Core: Liberty, or Compromise?

2011-12-15T11:20:00.000-05:00

In a NJ Star-ledger column earlier this year, John Farmer Jr. lamented the current state of American politics, which he says threatens the survival of our republic because of its "factional dysfunction". His column referred specifically to the debt ceiling battles of Summer 2011. But the wider issue he points to is of crucial importance. He quoted the Founding Fathers extensively, forgetting the philosophical context within which those words were uttered.

I left an extensive rebuttal in the comments section. Before reading it, however, I urge first the reading of Farmer's column in its entirety, which in this case is better than my usual method of using selected quotes. Here is my correspondence:

August 07, 2011 at 2:06PM

The cult of compromise is killing America. By “cult”, I mean the view that compromise is the only absolute; that nothing is above compromise. Some things, however, must never be compromised. America is disintegrating because it has compromised away its core moral principles – individual rights and limited, rights-protecting government. These compromises have led directly to Madison’s “mortal disease” – “The emergence of factions… united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community’ ”. The “interests of the community” were understood to be based upon universal respect for the rights of each individual citizen to his own life and property, and the liberty to pursue his own goals, values, and happiness without interference from his fellow citizens, including those acting in the capacity of government officials.

Farmer Jr. misinterprets the Founding Fathers. They understood that a workable field of political compromise is only possible when the power of political factions are limited by an uncompromising national adherence to the core principles of liberty as outlined in this country’s philosophical blueprint, the Declaration of Independence. They sought to place the violation of individual rights outside of the scope of governmental action; i.e., of the power of any electoral majority or influential minority group. When everyone’s individual rights are protected, the interests of some are not a threat to others, because no one has the power to force their will on others through government coercion. Government has no power to dispense economic favors by forcibly seizing, redistributing, or regulating private property. It is constitutionally forbidden to do so. Competing economic interests must deal with each other through voluntary cooperation and persuasion, by mutually beneficial private contractual agreement rather than competing to pull the levers of government coercion. The government protects the rights of all against force and fraud, and is otherwise out of the equation. America was a constitutionally limited republic, not a gang rule, democratic republic.

That Farmer seems to believe that any compromise is possible between slavery and freedom is a result of the corrupting influence of his belief in the cult of compromise. But the resolution of the slavery problem would not have been possible under any conceivable compromise, because there can be no compromise on moral principles – between good and evil. The Civil War was a direct consequence, not of the failure to compromise, [but] precisely because of the compromises that allowed slavery at our Founding. Either a man is free, or he is not. The political choice was either/or, one extreme or the other. Slavery could not coexist with the Declaration of Independence. One or the other had to go. One can not imagine any compromise between the two. As I said, some things must never be compromised.

Today we have a different sort of political battle, but one that is rooted in the same absolutist moral conflict that defined the slave issue early in our nation. The regulatory, mixed economy welfare state has demolished the only real common good – respect for the rights of others. Today’s “cold civil war” of pressure groups is exactly the result of the breakdown of that respect, leading to “the ruins of public liberty”. Today’s political atmosphere is the realization of Washington’s fear: the “frightful despotism” of “the alternate domination of one faction over another” under the “the absolute power of an individual… chief of some prevailing faction.”

The only answer to today’s polarized political atmosphere is to reassert our Founding principles, and to reject the ideology of the supremacy of the state. There can be no compromise between the two, which means the welfare state can not coexist with the Declaration of Independence. The return of civility in the 21st century depends upon beginning the long process of unwinding the divisive welfare statism of the 20th century. Those who today uphold individual rights and limited government, and are willing to take a firm stand in defense of those principles, are following in the footsteps of Washington and Madison. They and the rest of America’s revolutionaries, it must be remembered, took up armed revolt against tyranny rather than compromise their core principles. No armed revolt is necessary or desirable today, of course. But the same spirit of uncompromising loyalty to the same principles, in the face of an encroaching “frightful despotism”, is exactly what is needed to save the Founders’ achievement.

As a followup, I responded to another correspondent calling himself RememberHistory, who had this to say:

August 07, 2011 at 1:17PM

...I have grown tired of the political theater and hope that a centrist backlash will eventually develop. It took us years to get into this mess, and it will take years to extricate ourselves but ONLY if we have the political courage to see it through.

We are at war at the moment - among ourselves. A sense of balance and compromise needs to be restored in order to throw off this state of emotional hand-wringing. Moderate Republicans and Democrats need to stand up together and push both extremes to the political sidelines. The first step is to starve the beast that feeds this ranting: end ALL PACs, right and left, and encourage politicians to think about the national good instead of themselves or their favorite donors. Encourage reasonableness with your voices and votes....THAT'S what made this country great, not vilification or demonization!

Here's my response:

August 07, 2011 at 5:53PM

End all PACs: Is that your answer, RememberHistory? PAC stands for “Political Action Committee”, which is a peaceable assembly of private citizens to speak out and engage in the political process, a fundamental unalienable right sanctioned by the First Amendment.

The two extremes represent the primary battle that needs to be settled. One side upholds the supremacy of the autonomous individual and his liberty, the other the supremacy of the predatory, collectivist state; the worldview of the Founders vs the worldview that has dominated human history. The clash of these two extremes underpins every issue confronting this nation. “Moderation” between the two ideological extremes doesn’t represent “reasonableness”. It represents cowardice. Those who don’t acknowledge the fundamental choice we face, and take a stand, are feeding the growth of the predatory state by default.

“We are at war … among ourselves”, all right (See my comments below [a reference to my original commentary]). This will continue until we recognize the two extremes, and then choose the Founders’ ideals of live-and-let-live liberty. Trashing the First Amendment to silence those willing to take a stand is a horrifying “solution”.

RememberHistory, apparently forgetting history, came back with this:

August 07, 2011 at 9:21PM

I did read your comments, and carefully too, I might add. Being a student of history, I began to theorize the eventual outcome of your "pitched battle" analogy. Since the Framers also took infinite pains to protect the rights of the minority, it would appear your philosophy might hit a metaphysical snag IF you do indeed hold those principles as sacred as you claim.

Our country, our institutions, and our heritage are a result of gleaning the best from opposing sides...we didn't become great because we all shared the same philosophies, religions, and cultures, but because despite differences, we made them work together as best as humanly possible. Reading your comments brought to mind images of citizens marching in blissful lockstep towards an ill-defined Utopian goal.

To say that compromise is cowardice defies logic, reason, and all the intangibles that have made our country great. Legislation on both sides of the political spectrum have been passed and implemented because reasonable people have understood that success can be achieved in many ways, not just one.

And as far as PACs go, their purpose is no longer to advocate - but to purchase, which means the ones with the most money win, regardless of validity. If that's the kind of political, economic, and social Darwinism you espouse, then there is a philosophical chasm between us.

I don't know what he read, because I answered most of what he said in my original monologue. He either didn't read my commentary, or ignored what I said. Either way, he's less than honest. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to come back to this forum to respond directly to his/her comments. But a few more words need to be said here.

Leaving aside his somewhat confusing verbiage, think of what RememberHistory is actually saying here. If you are confronted by an armed thug who puts a gun to your head and demands your wallet, you are obligated, under the principle of "gleaning the best from opposing sides", to consider the thug's forcible claim to your money as equally valid to your belief that he has none. After all, both you and the thug value your money. Yes, you worked for the money and he didn't, but you both need the money and since "success can be achieved in many ways," you should not engage in any "pitched battle" such as defending yourself or seeking police assistance. That would be "Utopian". We must understand that a gun and an honest day's work are mere "differences" which should be "made [to] work together as best as humanly possible." You must, on RememberHistory's premises, be "reasonable" and "moderate" by, say, seeking a middle ground whereby you get to perhaps keep your wallet and enough for cab fare home, while agreeing to let the thug have the rest of the contents. To refuse to compromise in this manner, according to RememberHistory, "defies logic, reason, and all the intangibles that have made our country great."

In fact, moral compromise is the worst form of cowardice. To stand on principle is tough, but courageous, practical, logical, and reasonable. It is, in fact, a necessity of life. The easiest thing in the world to do is to cave in to moral degeneracy. In essence, this analogy captures the "philosophical chasm between us." What made this country great was that no one could impose his "philosophies, religions, and cultures" on others by legislative force. In short, based upon the Founders' Declaratory and constitutional principles, the government was forbidden to act as an armed thug. This removed force as a valid method of human association, clearing the way for legislative compromises. It is only on the basis of the commonly held principle of respect for, and refrain from violating, the rights of others - live and let live, or laissez-faire - that makes civility possible. When the armed thug gets elevated to a status of political legitimacy, no civility is possible among people. The opposite - the "cold civil war" of the mixed economy - is all that's possible.

In the name of compromise, RememberHistory accepts force as a valid philosophy that must be accommodated, and then accuses me of "espousing" "political, economic, and social Darwinism"! The "Darwinism" of the PACS is exactly what one would expect in a mixed economy. A mixed economy is a direct result of the very uncompromising defense of compromise espoused by the likes of RememberHistory and Farmer Jr. It is they and their ilk who have sold out American principles to political thuggery on the alter of compromise. What other consequence can one expect when every group's political activism becomes a threat to every other group's economic interests? When government acquires the power to violate rights, it becomes a magnet for pressure groups seeking to gain control of the rights-violating powers in order to "purchase" governmental favors extracted from others. The competition for power is then on, as the number of political pressure groups expands exponentially.

The failure to grasp that moral compromises makes practical compromises impossible is RememberHistory's (and many many other's) own monumental blind spot. As Philosopher Ayn Rand has observed:

A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal.

I added my emphasis. When legislative action increasingly means the sacrifice of the interests, rights, and property of some people to the advantage of others, the entire basis for civil discourse and "working together" is obliterated. When force replaces values, the basis for compromise evaporates. How do you deal with an adversary who chooses a gun over a rational argument? Do "reasonable people" succumb to the gun? For too long, alleged defenders of liberty have conceded the premise that the armed thug has a moral claim to the nation's wallet - bit by legislative bit - in the face of statists' demands for "compromise". The result: America has moved from mostly free to the precipice of totalitarian fascist socialism, in less than a century. As Ayn Rand has discovered:

In any compromise between good [freedom] and evil [statism], it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube . . .

When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels—and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.

She is referring, of course, to fundamental political and moral principles. The Founders sought to create a republic under which the government is strictly a protector of individual rights, thus cutting off from any group or individual the path to despotic power. They did indeed seek to construct a balanced system whereby "Legislation on both sides of the political spectrum [could be] passed and implemented [by] reasonable people [who] understood that success can be achieved," but only on the premise that the rights and sovereignty of the individual remains outside of the scope of political compromise. Re-read the Founders' quotes in Farmer's article from the actual viewpoint of America's Founding ideals, and you will see the fundamental flaw in his entire theme.

Does this mean that, in today's context, defenders of liberty must demand all-or-nothing legislative action that eliminates in one fell swoop rights-violating government interference? No, because statism is so entrenched today that it will take time to roll it back completely. What political compromise requires is for freedom fighters to boldly uphold their philosophy, and then fight for as much incremental movement toward greater and greater freedom as is possible in a given political context. Legislation must only be supported if it unequivocally restores some degree of individual rights, reduces government interference, and simultaneously lays the foundation for further legislation down the road for even greater freedom, and so on until full freedom is restored in a given field. For example, I put forth a plan for parental school choice based upon tax credits, which I believe does just what I said here. It is a political compromise that accepts some lingering statism based upon current political realities yet also advances toward the fundamental principle of full freedom and individual rights in education.

The key to political compromise: Never make ideological compromises by conceding any moral legitimacy to any degree of statism, even as you concede the necessity of accepting statist elements in the short term.

In searching for a solution to America's "Political dysfunction [and] factionalization [that] threaten our republic," Farmer Jr. need look no further than to the principles the great men he quotes stood for. The Founders did not set out to enshrine compromise as the ruling principle of the land, where everything is on the table and anything goes - including the ideals they fought for - so long as a political concensus could be reached. Rather, they set out to establish liberty, whereby every individual's unalienable rights to his/her own life and property are free from political interference, thus preventing the rise of predatory pressure groups, PACs, special interests, or what have you. It is liberty, not compromise, the the Founders revered. The Founders would never have approved of the cult of modern compromise, any more than they approved of any suggestion to compromise with the British Crown in 1776. They would have pledged - today - their "lives,... fortunes and ... sacred honor" to defend against any attempt to compromise away the political principles that created this nation. That kind of commitment, to properly understand Benjamin Franklin, is what it will take to keep our republic. Both the author of this article and RememberHistory should, well, remember history ... or perhaps learn it.

The "Tea Party Budget" Emerges

2011-12-09T17:59:00.005-05:00

“The only way we will ever reduce the debt and balance the budget is if ... tea party activists take over this process.”
Matt Kibbe
Washington, DC

* Repeals ObamaCare in toto.
* Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or
privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
* Ends farm subsidies, government student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don’t support us
— luxuries we can no longer afford.
* Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from
government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.
* Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.
* Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in
deficit.

These are some of the highlights of the newly released Tea Party Budget proposal. As FreedomWorks puts it, "The only means for reducing government is to cut programs and confine the power of government." The Tea Party Budget does just that. I have only given it a brief glance, but it is definitely a major step in the right direction. It should please anyone outside of the parasite/power-lust axis.

The Ryan budget was a start, but it only reduced, but did not eliminate, the deficits. Disagreements over specifics aside, the Tea Party budget is the real deal, in the sense that it doesn't tinker around the edges with, for example, "cuts" that really amount smaller spending increases. As Don Watkins says in this interview, the best feature of the Tea Party budget is that "It reintroduces the 'A' word - ABOLISH!"

I particularly like the feature that abolishes government student loans, one of the most destructive higher educational intrusions by government ever, if not the most destructive. For example, Neal McCluskey reports in the New York Post on how "the jet fuel [of] federal student aid" has driven college tuition through the roof. He calls it a "College-Cost Crisis", which it surely is, and a government-created one.

This budget in noteworthy in that it attempts to reign the federal government back within the confines of constitutional constraints. Taking the constitution seriously is also a good first step. Of course, the next steps will be more difficult - addressing the constitutional vagueness and the loopholes that opened the door to statism (ex. the Commerce Clause). And, even more critically, the budget must be philosophically, not just constitutionally, defended.

Culturally, this budget - along with the Occupy Movement - should spark the Tea Party, which has grown a little stale of late. A reinvigorated Tea Party should help make 2012 the most consequential presidential election cycle in decades.

On the political front, the question is: Will any of the GOP presidential candidates embrace the Tea Party budget? This will be a test of which if any of them is the real deal.

Stay tuned.

From Digital Revolution to "Global Community" Supremacism?

2011-12-03T19:59:00.000-05:00

Collectivism never quits. In Digital revolution gives individuals means to change the world, Fairleigh Dickinson University president J. Michael Adams employs a new twist to resurrect the age-old attack on the independent mind. Individuals the world over from common folk to royal families to political rulers to corporate kingpins, he says, have been empowered by digital technology to "spread their message and influence".

"The 'I' — the individual — is now at the center of everything,", says Adams. "Power and influence are dispersed and the 'I' — from young innovators to determined activists to elderly monarchs — now holds all the cards." The digital revolution has definitely enriched all of our lives. Is this a good thing? Apparently not, he implies, at least not in the long run. Now that the world is interconnected, "That’s the end of the revolution, but just the beginning of the story."

What, as Paul Harvey used to say, is "the rest of the story?" According to Adams, it is the "next revolution" - world collectivism. Adams doesn't use that term, of course. But:

If the [digital] revolution has so radically empowered the individual, then the individual has newfound responsibilities. In politics and society, in business and the private sector, in science and the arts, the winners will be those who use digital tools to support causes larger than themselves.

In other words, those who merely use technology - he calls them "toys" - to make the most of their own lives and pursue personal happiness and flourishing will be overshadowed by the true "winners" and their "causes". I don't pretent to know specifically what Adams is talking about, but the implications are chilling. He continues:

It used to be vital to own information, but now nearly everyone has access to the knowledge base of our species. So today, it’s much more important to know how to find, analyze and use information to solve problems.

Whose problems; your own? - or the collective's or Society's? The current financial crisis was bred in Washington by people whose "cause" was to solve the alleged societal problem of a lack of “affordable housing”. And this is mild compared to major historical figures whose visions (or delusions) of grandeur had brought such misery and suffering to nations like Russia, Germany, and China in the 20th century.

Even more critically, we must be able to connect with other individuals. The "I" may be the center of everything, but there are many "I’s" out there who can help us. This means we must appreciate diversity, embrace multiple identities and comprehend other viewpoints. We must be able to see the world through the eyes of others.

Is Adams merely saying that one must consider all viewpoints? But, that takes the exclusive attribute of the “I”; rational judgement, which depends upon seeing the world through one's own eyes; i.e., measuring the viewpoints of others by reference to the universally observable facts of reality. How does that jive with "diversity", "multiple identities", or other forms of group identity such as multiculturalism?

There is no turning back. The digital revolution rewired our minds and gave the "I" new tools to shape the world.

But those who are truly destined to change the world are those who understand that the toys at our fingertips are just the means to an end. Those who will lead the next revolution are those who look beyond the "I" and view themselves as part of a global community.

Once again, Adams is not specific. In what way should the world be changed or "shaped", and why? One thing is certain: The degrading of the individual is a prerequisite of collectivism. Those "toys" of the digital revolution: They are the means to whose ends, the individual's own? No, the "global community's". The implication that the individual is a means to tribal ends is the real message Adams is attempting to get across here.

I've left the following comments:

Posted by Zemack on September 04, 2011 at 8:54PM

Hasn’t this revolution already happened, with devastating results?

The “I” is your mind. For what purpose should you give it up? Give it up to “see the world through the eyes of others”, who will give up theirs in the same fashion, and around and around we go until the “global community” is filled with empty heads “wired” to look to the next person for intellectual guidance. Who will be there to fill the intellectual vacuum? Those who seek to offer the “guidance” – i.e., to rule.

This is nothing more than a rehash of collectivism; the dead 20th century ideology that brought a revolution of poverty, war, and torrents of blood to more than half the globe. Some global community. How does one collectivize a population? Turn each individual away from the evidence of his own eyes, by convincing him that truth and facts lie in the thoughts of others, not in objective reality to be discovered by his own reason. Turn him away from his independent mind, his “I”. Present it in terms of cooperation and understanding with others. Then the population will be ready for the “cause larger than themselves” – the authoritarian state.

Better to keep your “I” as your highest value. Look through your own eyes. Evaluate the facts – and others’ opinions – based upon your own independent judgement. Then recognize that the global community is you – and every other individual. The global community is not larger than the “I”. It is made up of “I”s. There is no higher value than the individual human being. Think and act on you own judgement; set your own goals, values, and purposes; pursue your own welfare and happiness – and fight for the freedom to do so. Then, respect the next person’s right to do the same. Don’t let gadgets or others “wire your brain”. And don’t try to wire the brains of others. Define your own person and character, because you have the power– until and unless you de-emphasize your “I”, your mind. Deal with others as equals with the ability to do the same with theirs. Recognize that you are the supreme cause, because you are an individual.

By all means fight for the next revolution. But remember where the last one got us. We must not repeat it. The last century belonged to collectivism. This one should belong to individualism.

The intellectual establishment - the mainstream media, big education, big government, etc. - has seen its monopoly over the cultural discourse broken. Anyone can get his information independently. Ideas can no longer be stifled by establishment kingpins (Ideas can never be fully stopped, just slowed down). The proliferation of Internet access with its powerful search engines, by enabling universal “access to the knowledge base of our species”, dilutes and minimizes centralized intellectual authority.

These developments have largely drowned out the establishment leaders' ability to shape the flow of information and ideas. They are losing control of defining the philosophical direction of societies. Cultures worldwide are in a state of flux and transition; but, transition to what? Perhaps for reactionary old guard leaders like Adams, it should be toward recapturing the intellectual elite's ability to shape the culture to its liking. Throughout the past century plus, American intellectuals have been very successful at doing this. America has moved progressively - both figuratively and literally - from mostly capitalistic freedom to mostly socialistic authoritarianism. The intellectuals’ uniquely American philosophical weapon – Pragmatism (See also Tara Smith's lecture, The Menace of Pragmatism: How Aversion to Principle Is Destroying America
, as well as her article in The Objective Standard.

But as the intellectual establishment's hegemony over the flow of ideas dwindles under the onslaught of the Internet, not only the forward progression of their collectivized agenda is threatened, but also the "gains" already made. Individualism - the "I" - is the antitheses of collectivism. No digital revolution can create individualism, of course, only philosophy can do that. But perhaps what Adams sees is that the sudden free flow of information, knowledge, and ideas has established the foundation or architectural framework for the rise of individualism. Thus, the threat: An individualist does not submit to the will of any authoritarian figure, including those figures who aim to claim the mantel of leadership - read control - over the collective – now expanded to encompass the entire globe.

This is the meaning of Adams call for individuals to renounce their "I" - the application of their minds and judgement to their own flourishing - and subordinate themselves to the world collective. It is to save the eroding power of the establishment intelligentsia, which for two centuries has been on the side of undermining the Enlightenment ideal of individualism and its derivative values of individual rights, capitalism, and limited, servant government. Those “newfound responsibilities” of the individual to “support causes larger than themselves” will translate into the responsibility to promote only causes defined by the new masters of the global community. It’s the only way it can be for anyone who subordinates his “I” to the collective.

ObamaCare "Death Panel" Targeting 70-Year-olds?

2011-11-28T14:00:00.004-05:00

For anyone who doubted Sarah Palin’s charge that ObamaCare would lead to government “death panels”, more evidence supporting her charge has surfaced. We Stand Firm, the website of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine, has posted excerpts of a conversation between an Illinois neurosurgeon and radio talk show host Mark Levin discussing “upcoming new guidelines from the Obama administration restricting how doctors can deliver medical care.”

In the FIRM post, Dr. Paul Hsieh compares this neurosurgeon’s comments to another neurosurgeon, Dr. Hendricks, a character in Atlas Shrugged who rebels against socialized medicine. The full transcript of the segment of the Mark Levin show can be found here. Notably, patients are referred to by government bureaucrats as “units”. This is the rhetoric of bean counters, not doctors.

In the transcript, the neurosurgeon, who called himself Jeff, said:

I just returned from Washington, DC, where we were reading over what the Obama health care plan would be for advanced neurosurgery for patients over 70, which we all found quite disturbing. As our population gets older, the majority of our patients are getting over 70. They'll require stroke therapy, aneurysm therapy, and basically what the document stated is that if you're over 70 and you come into an emergency room... if you're on government-supported health care, you'll get "comfort care".

You know, we always joke around -- 'it's not brain surgery' -- but I did nine years after medical school, I've been in training ten years, and now I have people who don't know a thing about what I'm doing telling me when I can and can't operate.

Apologists for the new healthcare law strenuously deny the death panel charge. But they are correct only in the very narrowest sense. ObamaCare does not specifically establish actual Death Panels, but it does establish the broad scope of power to do so, which is laced throughout the law. As John David Lewis explains in his Winter 2009-2010 Objective Standard article, What the “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” HR 3962, Actually Says, “This legislation empowers the executive branch, namely the Secretary of Health and Human Services and a ‘Health Choices Commissioner,’ to write thousands of pages of regulations, and to force Americans to comply with them.” In other words; death panels by a thousand edicts.

One of the apologists is PolitiFact.com which calls the death panel charge the "Lie of the Year." Yet buried within its own article debunking the charge, it unintentionally points to how the nature of the law proves Palin right:

History professor Ian Dowbiggin, who has written several books on medical history, euthanasia and eugenics, said he had never heard the term before Palin used it. He said the phrase invokes images of Nazi Germany, which denied life-saving care to people who were not deemed useful enough to broader society. Adolf Hitler ordered Nazi officials to secretly register, select, and murder handicapped people such as schizophrenics, epileptics, disabled babies and other long-stay hospital patients, according to Dowbiggin.

"It's not far-fetched to make the historical argument that as you get government more and more involved in health care, you create an environment that is more hospitable to the legalization of forms of euthanasia," Dowbiggin said. "But the Nazi example should be used very advisedly."

No, it's not far-fetched given the nature of ObamaCare and of government-run medicine generally. When the government coercively takes over responsibility for paying for something, it acquires the power to control. Who pays the bill, sets the terms, ultimately. When the government pays for healthcare, it will assume the power to make healthcare decisions for the patient and medical judgements for the doctor, including life and death decisions. And it’s not only about end-of-life situations (See my posts of 10/19/11 and 11/20/11).

Obama is not Hitler, and ObamaCare is not Nazism. But both empower government with the same kinds of authoritarian mechanisms as Germany had. Hitler drew upon the established German government powers of Bismarck’s 19th Century welfare state. The Obama administration is already on record - through a key adviser - as advocating overriding the Hippocratic oath with “social justice.” Just as Hitler placed the collective (the race, in his case) over the needs and rights of actual individual human beings, so “social justice” places the collective (society) over the needs of individuals. This means, in essence, that healthcare decisions must be weighed against “whether the money could be better spent on somebody else” – those, according to a key presidential adviser, who may be better qualified for “being or becoming participating citizens”. ObamaCare, like Hitler, will favor those “deemed useful enough to broader society.” When the responsibility for dealing with the cost of healthcare is stripped away from the individual, where it rightfully and morally belongs, and turned over to the government under the guise of calling it a national problem, which clearly it is not, the individual patient is reduced to a “unit” – expendable on the whims of bean counters and the alter of “communitarianism”.

[Important Note: FIRM has an update alerting us to the fact that the claims of Levin's talk show guest are being refuted. See Snopes Disputes Neurosurgery Rationing Claim. However, whether or not the claims of the guest are false, the fact remains that ObamaCare empowers government with such controlling authority.]

A Thanksgiving Message

2011-11-23T07:00:00.009-05:00

Reprinted below is a thanksgiving message that I think captures the true essence of Thanksgiving, a holiday practiced only in America. Regardless of how one believes he came into existence (God or nature), the reality is that man is a being of self-generated wealth based on reason who requires certain social conditions for his survival. America was the first country founded explicitly on those conditions; i.e., a country where every individual owns his own life and possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and to the pursuit of his own happiness, coupled inextricably with the obligation to accept the reality that all people are equally endowed and to treat them accordingly.

It is thus that America, born of the enlightenment ideas of individualism, reason, and republican government, achieved in the span of a mere two hundred-plus years (following centuries of stagnation) its spectacular standard of living. The ensuing essay correctly recognizes where the credit for America belongs: to any man or woman, on whatever level of ability or accomplishment, who contributed to American greatness by doing an honest and productive day's work in pursuit of his or her own well-being.

Thanksgiving: A Most Selfish Holiday by Debi Ghate

Ah, Thanksgiving. To most of us, the word conjures up images of turkey dinner, pumpkin pie and watching football with family and friends. It kicks off the holiday season and is the biggest shopping weekend of the year. We're taught that Thanksgiving came about when pilgrims gave thanks to God for a bountiful harvest. We vaguely mumble thanks for the food on our table, the roof over our head and the loved ones around us. We casually think about how lucky we are and how much better our lives are than, say, those in Bangladesh. But surely there is something more to celebrate, something more sacred about this holiday.

What should we really be celebrating on Thanksgiving?

Ayn Rand described Thanksgiving as "a typically American holiday . . . its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers' holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production." She was right.

What is today's version of the "bountiful harvest"? It's the affluence and success we've gained. It's the cars, houses and vacations we enjoy. It's the life-saving medicines we rely on, the stock portfolios we build, the beautiful clothes we buy and the safe, clean streets we live on. It's the good life.

How did we get this "bountiful harvest"? Ask any hard-working American; it sure wasn't by the "grace of God." It didn't grow on a fabled "money tree." We created it by working hard, by desiring the best money can buy and by wanting excellence for ourselves and our loved ones. What we don't create ourselves, we trade value for value with those who have the goods and services we need, such as our stockbrokers, hairdressers and doctors. We alone are responsible for our wealth. We are the producers and Thanksgiving is our holiday.

So, on Thanksgiving, why don't we thank ourselves and those producers who make the good life possible?

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to recognize what we are truly grateful for, to appreciate and celebrate the fruits of our labor: our wealth, health, relationships and material things--all the values we most selfishly cherish. We should thank researchers who have made certain cancers beatable, gourmet chefs at our favorite restaurants, authors whose books made us rethink our lives, financiers who developed revolutionary investment strategies and entrepreneurs who created fabulous online stores. We should thank ourselves and those individuals who make our lives more comfortable and enjoyable--those who help us live the much-coveted American dream.

As you sit down to your sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner served on your best china, think of all the talented individuals whose innovation and inventiveness made possible the products you are enjoying. As you look around at who you've chosen to spend your day with--those you've chosen to love--thank yourself for everything you have done to make this moment possible. It's a time to selfishly and proudly say: "I earned this."

Debi Ghate is associated with the Ayn Rand Institute.

This Thanksgiving, Don't Say Grace, Say Justice by Craig Biddle

The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition.

Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?

Since God is responsible for none of the goods on which human life and happiness depend, why thank him for any such goods? More to the point: Why not thank those who actually are responsible for them? What would a just man do?

Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally--according to what they say, do, and produce--and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves.

To say grace is to give credit where none is due--and, worse, it is to withhold credit where it is due. To say grace is to commit an act of injustice.

Rational, productive people--whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself--are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. ... Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they're through. It's the right thing to do.

Craig Biddle is the Editor of The Objective Standard.

These truths are obvious. A simple rudimentary knowledge of history, coupled with basic observation and logic, are all that's required to realize it.

Have a joyous, and well earned, Thanksgiving.

-Mike "Zemack" LaFerrara

Forbes: "Death Panels ... We already have one"

2011-11-20T16:46:00.003-05:00

Last month, I cited the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's downgrading of PSA testing for prostate cancer as evidence that Sarah Palin's ObamaCare "Death Panels" charge was coming true. In that post, I quoted from a NJ Star-Ledger letter-to-the-editor correspondent who came to the same conclusion.

Recently, that viewpoint received some prominent support. In The Department of Health and Human Services' Death Panel, Steve Forbes wrote:

[T]he U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a committee of “experts” appointed by the Department of Health & Human Services ... recently de-clared that men should not be routinely screened for prostate cancer. The most common test is the PSA, which is part of a blood test. The panel also said no to rectal exams and ultrasounds, claiming that testing does no good, that it doesn’t save lives.

The emphasis is mine. So, it's worse than I thought. Just as in my previous post on the subject I cited numerous examples of the success of regular screening, so Forbes points to his own:

After skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer found in men. Last year it killed 32,000 people in the U.S. The panel’s tortured reasoning is that oftentimes traces of cancer in the prostate don’t lead to a full-blown attack that can kill the patient. True enough, as far as that goes. But the panel ignored the inconvenient fact that physicians have a measurement called the Gleason score to determine how dangerous the disease is. If that score is low doctors will take a watchful attitude; if it gets high they’ll recommend action.

I know. A routine rectal exam last spring resulted in an alarming finding, subsequently confirmed by an ultrasound and a biopsy. The Gleason score was flashing red, so my prostate was removed, and—knock on wood—it seems the disease was caught early and successfully.

The task force makes a big deal about the unpleasant side effects in treating prostate cancer. But with a disease like cancer I’ll take the side effects of treatment over letting nature take its course.

In other words, the government - if and when these recommendations are adopted - will come between the doctor's judgement and his patient's fundamental right to make his own decisions about his health. Where would Mr. Forbes be if doctors were probibited from doing rectal exams and ultrasounds, let alone PSA tests?

When Palin made her famous Death Panel charge, ObamaCare defenders were quick to point out that nowhere in the bill are anything resembling Death Panels explicitly called for. Some opponents of ObamaCare concurred. In his Summer 2011 Objective Standard review of Why ObamaCare is Wrong for America, Jared M. Rhoads writes:

[I]n the section titled bluntly "Are There Death Panels In ObamaCare?" (to which they answer "no"), the authors explain how the contraversy arose and what protections are in place to prevent the emergence of death panels - and then acknowledge the legitimate basis for concern over this issue, which is the conflict of interest introduced when the federal government makes decisions about coverage while simultaneously trying to control costs (p. 92).

The emphasis in the above quote is mine. This is why, in my 10/19/11 post, I said that "these government studies can not be trusted" because:

The Federal government now controls almost 90% of healthcare spending, both directly through programs like Medicare and Medicaid and indirectly through its crony arm, the quasi-private health insurance industry. Consequently, the government now has a vested interest in controlling costs. The deep, inherent conflict of interest is apparent, and should scare all of us.

It is a mistake to take Sarah Palin literally. But that doesn't mean she was wrong. The truth is much more subtle and sinister than that. In John David Lewis's Winter 2009-2010 Objective Standard article, What the “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” HR 3962, Actually Says, Lewis writes:

This bill is 1,990 pages of mind-numbing legalese. It will reach deeply into federal and state regulations and laws, on a scale that will require years for experts to interpret. It will establish institutions that will be effectively irreversible. It will grant arbitrary powers to bureaucrats, who will have to interpret and enforce its dictates. A full analysis of its impact would require a commentary at least as long as the bill itself. American citizens cannot be expected to read and understand such legislation. But they should be aware that this is the nature of the laws being written by their (alleged) representatives in Washington.

This legislation empowers the executive branch, namely the Secretary of Health and Human Services and a “Health Choices Commissioner,” to write thousands of pages of regulations, and to force Americans to comply with them. For every line in this bill, many pages of regulations will be written. As a result, the bureaucracy will expand, the final cost will be many times more than the original estimates—and the impact on American medicine will be devastating.

Death Panels will arrive through the "arbitrary powers [of] bureaucrats" writing "thousands of pages of regulations" implementing policies often based upon the recommendations of reports such as the PSA study issued by the benign-sounding U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. The devastating results may not occur immediately. As Forbes writes:

Two years ago this task force said wom-en under the age of 50 shouldn’t get annual mammograms—a “finding” so preposterous even the Department of Health & Human Services ran away from it.

This latest dictate is meeting the same fate.

Though they may not yet be able to get away with this particular attack on prostate cancer screening, it is an indication of the kinds of hidden forces being unleashed against American healthcare. The dictatorial power over our health care being accumulated by our government will lead inexorably to Death Panel results sooner or later, if not repealed. It is our children and grandchildren who will ultimately pay the full price.

Echoing others, Forbes concludes:

If the government succeeds in dominating health care, as it’s now on its way to doing, we can expect more of these weird and lethal findings. The focus will be on rationing and saving money. What we need in health care is more free enterprise, not Soviet-style controls.

School Choice, Collectivist Style

2011-11-14T09:49:00.001-05:00

Recently NJ Star-Ledger columnist Joan Whitlow wrote:

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to improve education in Newark [New Jersey], and it was announced that the city would seek matching funds, Newark residents were told they would decide how the money would be spent.

Newarkers would decide? Well, it's more like Newark residents may get to suggest. Unless they can plunk down a $10 million donation, they won't be on the board that does the deciding — not as it stands now.

That needs to change.

According to Whitlow, the Foundation for Newark's Future will dispense the money. That board is made up of Mayor Corey Booker and anyone who donates $10 million bucks or more. The trouble is, thinks Whitlow, the board members don’t have to be – and apparently aren’t – from Newark. It is “hoped” that “the group will [eventually] include Newark people”.

But apparently “Newarkers” won’t have much to say on who sits on the board and on how the money is spent, because according to Gregory Taylor, the foundation's president and CEO, “letting the people have their say is not how professional philanthropy works.”

Whitlow concedes that “When people put up big money, they want — and have a right — to have a say over how the money is spent to protect those assets." But she still believes this represents a broken promise. Her solution?

If the goal is to improve education in Newark, the board should be expanded to include voting members from and of Newark, with a direct say in how the money is spent. That fund needs people who have a sense of what has worked and already failed, people who have a stake in the outcome. The board needs balance against any preconceived notions about education that might motivate someone to give $10 million, or more.

Yes, it's their money. But it's Newark's kids.

I’ve left the following comments:

October 07, 2011 at 10:22PM

Newarkers should decide. I agree. Soliciting tens of thousands of residents to each put their two cents in is not the power to decide. But neither is handing out seats on some board to a few people “from and of Newark” letting “Newark residents … decide how the money would be spent.” It is an end run around the freedom to decide.

How about real decision-making power? Start by turning Zuckerberg’s grant and the matching funds into tuition scholarships for parents who want to decide in which school, public or private, to enroll their kid. But don’t stop there. Supplement parents’ decision-making powers with tuition tax credits, so they can apply their own education dollars according to their own judgement. If letting Newark residents decide is truly the goal, then how about universalizing the tax credits, so every resident that pays school taxes can finance any child’s education – a niece, grandchild, neighbor – or pledge his/her credits to the Zuckerberg scholarship fund?

A centrally planned, government-run monopoly by any other name is still a centrally planned, government-run monopoly. Fighting over who gets to impose their ideas on everyone else does not change the nature of the beast. Does it really make a difference whether or not the planners have a Newark address or not? No, because we are not talking about “Newark’s kids”. They are the parents’ kids.

Ultimately, only a free market empowers parents, because the fundamental truth is, whoever pays sets the terms. Creating scholarship funds is a step in the right direction, because it at least brings parents directly into the process, giving them a voice. If the conditions donors place upon their money do not satisfy the beneficiaries, there will be no beneficiaries. Handing their money over to the same establishment that currently runs failing schools is not the solution, no matter who sits on what board.

On This Veterans Day, A Word About Those Who Support the Greatest Military in History

2011-11-10T15:48:00.001-05:00

This is the time of year that America salutes, and gives thanks to, our military veterans who have protected this nation from foreign enemies for more than two centuries. I join in that celebration. My thoughts about them are conveyed in my Memorial Day tribute, and need no restatement here, except to convey the essence of that post. I wrote:

The highest tribute I can pay to our fallen is to say that they were cut from the mold of the Founding Fathers; that they did not set out to die for their country but rather that they set out to fight for that radical set of ideals that is the United States of America.

So, I’d like to use this Veterans Day post to acknowledge the unsung heroes of America’s veterans, the productive American citizen. No military as strong and as competent as America’s can exist in a vacuum. It requires something else - something indispensable – a great economy. Rome fell, it’s welfare statism rendering its economy unable any longer to support its military defenders. Ditto, the 19th Century British Empire.

America, historically the most productive society the world has ever seen, is the foundation that supports our military personnel. American taxpayers pay trillions of dollars, American defense contractors invest in and produce the most advanced weaponry in the world, weaponry that American soldiers rely upon to do their jobs and stay alive. American technology produces the high tech means for our intelligence community to gather the information our soldiers need to keep track of the enemy.

What is the foundation of that foundation? What enabled the creation of the economic powerhouse that enabled the creation of our military powerhouse?

In 1776, the Founders of this nation signed the Declaration of Independence, which sanctioned the individual to egoistically pursue his happiness in support of his life, by guaranteeing him a government that protected his unalienable individual rights – his liberty – to act upon his own reasoning mind. That short document unleashed the power of the human mind, possessed individually by every person. The result was an unprecedented explosion of productiveness leading to exploding general prosperity and a standard of living unimaginable by the wealthiest noblemen of centuries past. The cause of that progress is simple: the unleashing of every individual to self-interestedly strive to make his own life the best it can be, by his own effort, and free from the coercive interference of his fellow man. America was built not by sacrifice, as it is fashionable to assume, but by personal achievement.

So, let’s celebrate, along with our vets, the productive American of all income levels. Let’s celebrate the individual pursuit of happiness that is the fuel for that American. Let’s celebrate his willingness to pay for and support the military whose job it is to protect his pursuit of the good life.

Today, the foundation of America’s economic and military might is under intense attack by those who would “fundamentally change America”. Let’s stand up and reject that “change” from liberty to tyranny, and instead proclaim our allegiance to the Founding Fathers, who sought a change from tyranny to liberty. The best tribute one can give to our military veterans is to vow to fight for the rediscovery and restitution of the ideals that this country stands for: the supreme value of the individual human being, his freedom, and a government whose sole duty is to protect his right to live and prosper for his own sake.

Because that is what American veterans fought for.

Happy Veterans Day!!

-Mike LaFerrara

Bank of America Rescinds Debit Card Fees

2011-11-08T20:23:00.002-05:00

Bank of America has rescinded its plans to impose monthly fees of $5 on its debit cards. The fees were a legitimate response to political meddling into private bank/merchant business transactions. Once again we see politicians escaping blame for the consequences of their meddling, while the victims face vicious and unjust attacks. The NJ Star-Ledger recently editorialized:

Debit cards and ATMs were supposed to save everyone — banks and customers — time and money. Bank officials, including those at Wells Fargo and Chase, tossed that rationale out the window in the face of federal regulations to rein in excessive fees. No longer able to charge high fees to merchants, the banks pouted and announced they had no choice but to extract the fees from consumers. It was all Congress’ fault, you see.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.) called out Bank of America for attempting to circumvent regulations, and noted the bank’s president took home nearly $2 million in compensation last year. He called the fee “a surcharge on working people.”

The editors attribute B of A’s retrenchment to “mounting consumer outrage” and competition from “other banks and credit unions”. “So credit not just consumer rage, but the free market,” the editors brazenly assert, just a few paragraphs after they approvingly cite “regulations to rein in excessive fees…to merchants”!

In an epilogue to my previous post on the subject, I’ve left the following comments:

Did B of A respond to consumer and competitive pressures? Or were they knee-capped by thug politicians like Pallone, Durbin and other Democrats’ mob-like threats of antitrust prosecutions and regulatory reprisals?

The double standard here is obvious. Those “regulations” referred to are the price controls forcing banks to lower “excessive” fees charged to merchants – fees mutually agreed to through voluntary contracts and legitimized by widespread market acceptance. When “consumers” attempt to “circumvent” the $5 fee, it is hailed as a “small revolution”. When B of A attempts to “circumvent regulations” to recoup legitimate profits stolen at the behest of the merchant lobby - through an equally moral and legal addition of fees on debit cards - they are threatened, demonized, and ridiculed as “pouters” who dared to defy the imperial congress.

Philosopher Ayn Rand warned half a century ago that “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” It appears we have reached that stage, at least in finance. This congressional micro-managing of financial transactions and the political bullying of B of A shows that economic fascism is here.

As a final word, let me add that this episode puts the lie to the Left's propaganda that the financial crisis was caused by the "free market". A market in which government can impose pricing regulations such as those cited here is anything but "free".

“Occupy Wall Street” Sharpens the Ideological Battle Lines

2011-11-03T06:42:00.002-04:00

From the first I heard about “Occupy Wall Street”, I knew it was a Left Wing movement. The name itself speaks volumes to its nature: It implies disdain for the property of others. The spirit of it suggests to me the barbarians who sacked the remains of the Roman Empire. Notice I said “spirit”. Not everyone in it is a barbarian.

But the second thing I heard about OWS is its opposition to big bank bailouts. No disagreement there. Some latched onto this aspect as evidence of its similarity to the Tea Party. There is some superficial truth to this. Like the Tea Party, OWS contains a wide diversity of often-contradictory ideas. And it is driven by a belief that something is fundamentally wrong in America. Also like the Tea Party, OWS is a movement – one driven by a fundamental view of human existence.

But the similarities end there. OWS is much deeper and broader than a mere protest. At root, it explicitly represents collectivism – and it has plenty of heavyweight ideological support. The Tea Party, on the other hand, only implicitly represents its birthright - individualism, based upon its general insistence on a return to this country’s Founding Principles. Both OWS and the Tea Party represent the tip of very big and irreconcilably hostile philosophical icebergs.

Politically, OWS is a direct outgrowth of Barack Obama’s incessant demonization of the “rich”, or the “top 1%”. Every advancing statist movement needs a societal scapegoat: Hence, the OWS’s self-description as “the 99%” as victim of “the 1%’. But this demonization depends upon a view of “the rich” that was quite true throughout most of human history, and is still largely true perhaps in much of the world – the reality that the rich became so by looting the masses. I am talking about looting rulers, of course, who simply steal under cover of taxes. In this view, the “top 1%” is a static caste or class. In free, or even semi-free, societies, however – and especially America - the opposite is true: people get rich by productive work, or the application of intelligence to physical labor. Unlike the looters, they enrich everyone by their productive genius, as they flood the culture with mass-market products while creating jobs by the bucketsful. Trade, not confiscation, is the source of riches. But, the collectivist view leaves no room for the truth. It depends upon the tribal view of wealth. In this view, it makes no difference whether someone acquires his wealth by government favor of by earning it in the private marketplace. Either way, he got more than his “fair share” of the “economic pie”. In Obama’s world, the “top 1%” is a static caste of privileged individuals who, along with the rest of us, are locked into a particular lot in life – a world without individual social or economic mobility. This view is epitomized by NJ Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran, who said “In the past 20 years, all of the economic gains we’ve made were captured by the top 10 percent of earners”. (See my post of 10/15/11).

But Obama isn’t the only big ideological gun underpinning the OWS movement. The ethical root of collectivism is altruism, and now OWS has the blessing of modern altruism’s biggest sponsor – the Catholic Church:

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours [sic] like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

This sounds a lot like communism’s one-world proletarian dictatorship. Athough not communist, the church has long upheld implicitly the ideal of socialism, and disdain for capitalism:

The recent Council reiterated this truth: "God intended the earth and everything in it for the use of all human beings and peoples. Thus, under the leadership of justice and in the company of charity, created goods should flow fairly to all." (20)

All other rights, whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle [of a global welfare state].

It is for the public authorities to establish and lay down the desired goals, the plans to be followed, and the methods to be used in fulfilling them [i.e., totalitarianism]; and it is also their task to stimulate the efforts of those involved in this common activity. But they must also see to it that private initiative and intermediary organizations are involved in this work. In this way they will avoid total collectivization [?] and the dangers of a planned economy [?] which might threaten human liberty and obstruct the exercise of man's basic human rights.

What is the state of affairs when property and free trade rights are subordinated to need, and governments establish the goals and plans and the methods and means toward “common activity”? An intelligent and prescient intellectual of the Left, E.J. Dionne, states:

The report spoke of “the primacy of being over having,” of “ethics over the economy,” and of “embracing the logic of the global common good.”

In a knock against those who oppose government economic regulation, the council emphasized “the primacy of politics — which is responsible for the common good — over the economy and finance.” It commented favorably on a financial transactions tax and supported an international authority to oversee the global economy.

Moreover, the Vatican office’s intervention shows that those protesting against a broken and unjust financial system are not expressing some marginal point of view.

It is always entertaining for those of us who are liberal Catholics to watch our conservative Catholic friends try to wriggle around the fact that, on the matters of social justice and the economy, Catholic social teaching is, by any measure, “progressive.”

What do you call a state of affairs in which politics takes “primacy” over “the economy and finance”? Dionne is oh-so-right: OWS is “not expressing some marginal point of view”, but – wittingly or not – the core elements of totalitarianism. Dionne correctly points to the bridge that connects the worldview expressed in this latest Church statement back to its mid 20th century origins, when Catholic leaders embraced world collectivism. “[T]his document,” writes Dionne, “is firmly rooted in papal teaching going back to Popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.”

I’ve nicknamed OWS “The March of Greed”, based upon its call for an eternal something for nothing. Some OWS demands read a lot like the Nazi Party platform of the 1920s or FDR’s “Economic Bill of Rights” in their calls for authoritarianism and expanded entitlements. But OWS must not be viewed merely as a political phenomenon or as a Left Wing reaction to the Tea Party. It is essentially a manifestation of collectivism and altruism, and it has very deep roots, as we have seen.

The antidote to statism/socialism is of course capitalism. But the antidote to statism/socialism’s roots – collectivism/altruism – is capitalism’s roots; individualism/egoism. Today’s battle between socialism and capitalism is at root a battle between collectivism/altruism and individualism/egoism, and that is where the battle needs to be fought. The forces of socialism are much more bold and consistent in upholding their roots. The forces of capitalism, as represented by the Tea Party, have yet to firmly embrace their roots. But there are signs that it is starting to happen, and it can’t come too soon.

The rise of OWS will sharpen the fundamental clash between collectivism and individualism. I believe – with a dash of hope, perhaps – that with its individualist wing taking center stage, the Tea Party will rise to meet the collectivist challenge. Just as Obama’s ideological clarity added fire to the rise of the Tea Party, so OWS will probably trigger a reinvigoration of the Tea Party. We are entering new territory, and 2012 is going to be an interesting year.

See also The Vatican’s assault on capitalism (part 1)
, The Vatican’s assault on capitalism (part 2)
, my 3-part essay "Obama's Collectivist Manifesto" parts 1, 2, and 3, and Ayn Rand's "Requiem for Man" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal .

B of A's Debit Charges: It's About More Than Fees

2011-10-26T19:44:00.002-04:00

The Christian Science Monitor recently discussed Bank of America’s decision to charge fees on its debit cards, ascribing that decision to a reaction to new federal price controls:

In early 2012, Bank of America customers with basic accounts will be charged a $5 monthly fee for shopping with their debit cards. The fee will be charged whether customers choose 'debit' or 'credit' at the point of sale.

ATM usage fees will remain the same, and those customers who do not shop with their debit card will not incur the $5 monthly fee.

Why is Bank of America making this move?

The move is partly prompted by a new federal regulation, starting Oct. 1, that will begin limiting the cut banks can take from merchants at the point of sale. Bank of America is expecting the new lower rate to reduce the revenue that those merchant fees currently bring to the bank. In 2009, those fees amounted to $19 billion in revenue.

So in other words, Bank of America is shifting a part of the fee obligation from merchants to customers.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois responded bluntly to Bank of America's announcement: "After years of raking in excess profits off an unfair and anti-competitive interchange system, Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers," Senator Durbin said Thursday. "It's overt, unfair and I hope their customers have the final say."

I left some comments. But that triggered an interesting debate with another correspondent, a former restaurant owner. The debate hits upon a crucial distinction that has been lost – the difference between voluntary private agreements and government force; between economic and political power. Here are my comments, followed by the exchange. The other correspondent calls himself The_rabbit_error. For convenience, my comments are italicized and The_rabbit_error's responses are blockquoted. I interjected some additional comments, shown in regular type:

As a B of A customer, I am angry – but not @ B of A. As the article clearly states, the government imposed price controls on banks in regard to fees charged to merchants, and the B of A is merely reacting to it. B of A is acting rationally and morally (and, I might add, legally) in seeking to recoup the lost revenue stolen from them by meddling politicians illegitimately forcing their terms on private voluntary contracts mutually agreed to by banks and merchants. I notice Durban’s temper tantrum. This is classic thug reaction. Politicians love to regulate everything in sight, then blame someone else - usually the victims - when it backfires. Durban can stamp his feet all he wants, but he and his cohorts are the real villains. I don’t like bank fees any more than the next guy. But, on principle, I hope B of A’s new fee sticks, their customers stick with them, and instead direct their displeasure at the politicians that caused it.

Really? I'm sure as hell blaming the banks for charging an unfair fee to merchants. Perhaps you've never had to run a business but the fee they take out of EVERY transaction quickly adds up, and people like you never realize it. I use to run a restaurant, and every thing we severed from drinks to food had to be marked up a good 3-4% to cover our transaction cost. That quickly added up to well over 5$ a month for any one who came in more then 2 times a month. Other restaurants have to do the same. We can't charge a "convenience" fee for people using cards because the banks wont allow it, if we tried we'd lose our card readers.

Put simply, these banks are to damn big and they are able to push small people and groups around. They can nickle and dime us to death, and people like you don't seem to care. Most people never even notice because they hide these cost from consumers and then make us take the blame for their BS. I've had accounts at banks and credit unions, so far I've never seen a credit union need to implement such fees, and they seem to be doing pretty damn good. It just makes it even more damning when these smaller banks and credit unions can pull a significant profit with out these added fees. Clearly the big banks are doing something very wrong. Personally I applaud Senator Durbin, were I in his state he'd have my vote in a heart beat.

I have friends who are in business, so I do know how these fees work. No one forces merchants to accept credit cards. Most do because it on balance is good for sales, and profits. But remember that merchants can pass on those charges to credit card paying customers, OR offer discounts to cash customers – as many gas stations now do in NJ. If a merchant is forbidden by a voluntary contractual agreement to do so, however, then what’s the beef? Drop the contract, lower your prices, and go cash only. One of our favorite restaurants is Spirito’s in Elizabeth. It has been around since 1928, does good business, and has never accepted credit cards. The bottom line is, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Credit cards are big business because most people find them convenient, merchants get higher sales and fewer bounced checks, and are an overall facilitator of economic activity. Credit cards, fees and all, are widely accepted by merchants because they are on balance a net plus for them. If banks make big profits from their valuable products, good for them – they earned it. But it is simply wrong to get the benefits of a product by forcing your own terms on the provider of that product through political coercion – as the merchant lobby has done in this case.

Wow, you really don't get it. Merchants' DONT have a choice. If I didn't accept cards I wouldn't have had sales (about 80% of our sales were charges of some kind). If I didn't accept cards I wouldn't have enough money to stay open. Which consequently would mean that I couldn't hire people and thus provided jobs. Every other small business in my area faced similar problems, and the end result was our customers paid more then they would have otherwise, because we had to cover our loses. All this law does is force these banks to be up front about what's happening rather then hide it all. Ask most people about merchant fees and they wouldn't know what your talking about.

As for offering cash discounts, it's also not possible for the same reason that adding fees to card transactions isn't possible, I was not contractually not able to. I couldn't get a better contract because when it comes to small bussness they are all "cookie cutter" contracts with no allowances for me to negotiate. The only one's who would have any ability to negotiate for lower fees or the like are large or mega corportations. In the end, even with a decent business and a staff of 50 I still I had no power to negotitate, this law helps level the playing feild so that I can get similar terms that bigger bussness get, and so that people can actually see what's happening. Big banks are making big profits off of MY hard word, and I don't have a choice in the matter. In order to run a successful business I need to accept cards because they have become the defacto standard of transactions. This is a fair and just law, if these banks want to continue to earn heaps of money they can all they have to do is charge the consumer for there valuable service. Only now they have to be in the open about what actually takes place.

Again, all this law does is level the playing field and force the banks to be open about were their money is actually coming from, the consumer. If the banks truly have earned these profits then they can continue to do so by charging the consumer directly rather then trying to pass the buck and hide their tactics.

You’ve made my point quite eloquently, rabbit! Credit cards are a boon to your business and, according to you, others as well. In fact, the "mega corporations" are profiting off of THEIR OWN valuable products, NOT your hard work. It sounds like small business should give silent thanks for the added business. And don’t tell me you don’t have a choice. No one is putting a gun to your head to do business with the card companies. You do so because it is in your own best interest, which I consider to be the essence of moral action. But others have the same right to the same moral action. And this is exactly the point: A voluntary contract is mutually beneficial, and your customers get the convenience of charging their purchases, to boot. It’s a win-win-win. Yet, on the other hand, you find it ok to put a gun to the heads of your own benefactors whose products you readily acknowledge you need "In order to run a successful business"?!? A level playing field is one in which contracts are strictly voluntary agreements. When one side resorts to legalized force to get by political power what he can’t get by voluntary agreement, there is no level playing field. I am strongly pro-free market, and I hold American businessmen in high esteem. But when you seek personal gain by political force, you’ve lost me. American business is cutting its own long-term throat by empowering government to impose private contractual terms – and selling out the rest of the country in the process.

Take note at this point: Considering the regulatory power of government – especially the antitrust laws – diatribes against private citizens by politicians like Durbin can never be dismissed as hot air. Subsequent to his comments, the Democrats began seeking antitrust investigations against B of A. There is no defense against antitrust, making the Durbins of the world more akin to dictators rather than “public servants”. This blatant assault by government officials against B of A over bank fees shows how much today’s politicians believe they can get away with, how much Americans’ reverence for and/or understanding of freedom has eroded, and how far along the path of economic fascism we have traveled, a prelude to a full collapse into dictatorship.

Rabbit flippantly rationalizes that “if these banks want to continue to earn heaps of money they can all they have to do is charge the consumer for there valuable service. Only now they have to be in the open about what actually takes place.” Look where being “in the open” has led – the threat of still more government controls, this time in the name of “the consumer”. While merchants like Rabbit seek to have their cake and eat it too – get the card benefits without paying for it – the government expands and freedom contracts.

Cards have replaced cash. That's not a boon, it's a curse. Fundamentally they are making money off of us not the reverse. If cards didn't exist I would likely have had the same amount of business only with out the over head. Banks want people to replace money with their cards, and they have done so at the expensive of society. People have failed to realize this because these cost are offten hidden, now thanks to this law they can see what it cost them. See this is a point you REPEATEDLY miss, these cost are hidden, all this law does is force them out into the open. Banks are hiding these cost from people and fundamentally cost everyone more because of it.

There is nothing voluntary about this arrangement. If I don't accept cards then I don't have a business anymore, because people have slowly but surly replaced cash with cards because the banks have effectively hid the cost from consumers. I can argue the contracts or get a better one because my business isn't big enough. You completely miss this point again and again. There is no choice here, ether I play by the rules the bank made or I fail. Ask most people on the street you'll find that the majority don't carry cash any more. Hence it's not it's not really possible to operate with out being able to accept it. Remember many places can't offer cash discounts and still accept cards. The end result is that everyone pays more for the same thing, and the bank parasitically takes away the profit. Its a tax that's worse then any the government issues, at least when I get tax some of my money goes back to the community.

Fundamentally the banks have a bigger gun then I could ever have. They have such vast amounts of wealth that they could quite easily crush my business. They've done it to more then enough already. Force comes from many places, and the force of wealth tends to often beat the force of politics. Consider that there must be a damn strong push from people to fix this issue if The banks are still able to charge fees to both parties, they can still make money. No one has taken that away from them. The banks are still making the same amount of money, only now they have
to take it directly from the consumer rather then take it indirectly. The few major banks have an oligopoly over non cash based transactions and they are consequently being regulated. This is all a result of their abused of the system and it seems quite fair and just to me. In the end this will benefit consumers. They will now have a better idea how much their banks are actually costing them, and will hopefully be smart enough to act accordingly.

Translation: "I can't have my way, so I'm entitled to force others!" Those blasted cards are a curse! Notice how the age-old cover for plain thuggery oozes into Rabbit's rhetoric - altruism and collectivism. It’s bad for "Society". Somehow, “society” has no choice. Somehow, the banks “abuse the system”. So, let’s regulate the fees to merchants down. It’s not for the unearned benefit of merchants like me. Oh, no. “In the end this will benefit consumers.”

And restaurant meals have replaced eating home. That’s not a boon, it’s a curse. Fundamentally, they are making money off of people’s need to eat. If restaurants didn’t exist I’d likely have had the same number of meals, and "In the end this will benefit consumers" who would have more money in their pockets and more home cooked meals.　Your logic can be repeated ad infinitum, right back to the cave man era.

But in fact, your first sentence says it all. The widespread acceptance of credit and debit cards speaks to the extraordinary value of the product as determined by tens of millions of people, proving it to be one of the most important financial innovations of the 20th century. They facilitate trade, and lesson the risk of carrying large amounts of cash. Such wide use also proves that the fees are very reasonable and fair. Why? Because if they were "excessive", they wouldn’t have achieved such success in the market. What is the "market"? The cumulative voluntary choices of individual participants. Any other method of determining pricing is the method of an armed thug. 　

Let’s be clear: force means physical compulsion or violence, or the threat thereof, and nothing else. I know of no instance where someone was forced to use or accept cards. Choosing a course of action based upon competitive necessity or need is not force. The fact that you need to accept credits cards or face lost business does not force you to accept credit cards. You can always choose fewer customers, because you are free to choose. Life is about choices. But if someone demanded a meal at half price or he would break your legs, that would be force; i.e., criminal. The law forcing banks to lower fees to merchants is the same thing, only worse – legalized criminality. All of the banks’ wealth can’t crush your business. Wealth is not force. Only your customers can "crush" your business, by choosing not to patronize it. No bank can stop a customer from entering your business. Only you can by failing to offer competitive value.　

As to those fees, they’re no more hidden than any other business costs such as utility bills, cost of supplies, insurance, building upkeep and taxes, etc. They are also not relevant to the customer, unless you believe that every customer has a right to see your books. The only things relevant to the customer is service, price, and quality. Your resentment against cards is one man’s opinion, and you don’t speak for anyone else. Everyone has free will and the right to exercise it freely without forcible interference from others, including others in their capacity as government officials. Cards add value to the lives of everyone who has one, otherwise they wouldn’t have one, now would they? The banks legitimately and morally earn their fees, however they’re levied, by providing that value. If "Society", the "community", the "consumers", or whatever you want to call it doesn’t bow down to your wishes, you need to deal with it.

You know, I've gone off my original point here so I'm just going to sum it up right now. Banks are business I understand and respect that. However the fact is the larger one's have been hiding most of their cost behind these fees. Merchants have no choice but to raise the cost of their goods to cover these fees (and not accepting cards is not an option in the present day). So while the price of a soda may jump from 1.25 to 1.50, the consumer may not see that the bank has increased the merchant transaction fee and instead declare that it's the restaurant that's being greedy (and I got this complaint a lot). This law forces the banks to be open and honest with their fees, rather then hide behind people like me. BoA can apply fees as they wish, and smarter people will move to better managed banks and credit unions who know they don't have to charge these dumb stingy fees to turn large profits.

With that I'm done, you can ignore my points all you wish from here on out.

I know your point, and I don’t disagree with you – just your methods. But since you widened the discussion considerably, I needed to respond in defense of free markets. I don’t really care how fees are levied, as long as they are based upon voluntary contractual agreement. By the way, I’m no big fan of the banking industry, because it is 70% controlled by the government. No free market there, just bits and pieces here and there – and dwindling all the time.

Cheers

"Force comes from many places, and the force of wealth tends to often beat the force of politics." This statement by Rabbit, more than any other in this exchange, points to one of the destroyers of both economic and political freedom; the inability to distinguish - or the deliberate blurring of - the line between private and governmental action. Statements such as this, Harry Binswanger writesThe Dollar and the Gun,represents "...a fallacy grounded in the deepest philosophical premises of those who commit it. To defend capitalism effectively, one must be able to recognize and combat this fallacy in whatever form it may appear. The fallacy is equivocation—the equivocation between economic power and political power." The difference between the two, he writes, is between "the ability to produce material values and offer them for sale" - symbolized by the dollar - and the power to impose "fines, imprisonment, and ultimately, death" - symbolized by the gun. Binswanger writes:

Economic power stems from and depends upon the voluntary choices of the buying public. We are the ones who make big businesses big. One grants economic power to a company whenever one buys its products. And the reason one buys is to profit by the purchase: one values the product more than the money it costs—otherwise, one would not buy it. (The savage polemics against the profits of business are demands that the entire gain should go to one side—that “the little guy” should get all of the gain and businesses none, rather than both profiting from the transaction.)

To the extent a business fails at producing things people choose to buy, it is powerless. The mightiest Big Multinational Conglomerate which devoted its power to producing items of no value would achieve no effect other than its own bankruptcy.

Economic power, then, is purely benevolent. It does not include the power to harm people, enslave them, exploit them or “rip them off.” Marx to the contrary notwithstanding, the only means of exploiting someone is by using physical force—i.e., by employing the principle of political power.

Binswanger's essay is an important read, and I highly recommend it. More can be said about Rabbit's comments and his underlying premises. But the key lesson here is: Never accept the premise of equivocation.

PSA Testing: Are Death Panels Arriving Under Cover of “Scientific Evidence”?

2011-10-19T15:19:00.011-04:00

A recent widely publicized and controversial study released by the federal U.S. Preventive Services Task Force “will propose downgrading its recommendations for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) for prostate cancer,” according to Rob Stein of the Washington Post:

Task force chairwoman Virginia Moyer said the group based its draft recommendations on an exhaustive review of the latest scientific evidence, which concluded that even for younger men, the risks appeared to outweigh the benefits for those who are showing no signs of the disease.

It’s notable that the study was done under the purview of the same bureaucrats charged with administering federal health care programs, including ObamaCare:

The 16-member independent panel is organized by the Department of Health and Human Services to regularly assess preventive medical care. Its recommendations have a widespread impact, especially on what services Medicare and private insurers pay for. The group’s influence was enhanced by the new federal health-care law, which will base some of its requirements for coverage on the group’s ratings.

The proposed recommendations come as doctors, researchers and policymakers are increasingly questioning whether many tests, drugs and procedures are being overused, unnecessarily driving up health-care costs and exposing patients to the risks of unneeded treatment. (Emphasis added)

According to Stein, “The test … has significantly increased the number of prostate cancer cases being diagnosed at very early stages.” Despite this fact, however:

[I]t has been a matter of intense debate whether that translates into a reduction in the death rate from the disease. Prostate cancer often grows so slowly that many men die from something else without knowing they had it.

Because it is not clear precisely what PSA level signals the presence of cancer, many men experience stressful false alarms that lead to unnecessary surgical biopsies to make a definitive diagnosis, which can be painful and in rare cases can cause serious complications.

Even when the test picks up a real cancer, doctors are uncertain what, if anything, men should do about it. Many men are simply monitored closely to see whether the tumor shows signs of growing or spreading. Others undergo surgery, radiation and hormone treatments, which often leave them incontinent, impotent and experiencing other complications.

What is actually being said here? Note the vagueness surrounding terms like “appeared to outweigh”, “increasingly questioning”, “intense debate”, “not clear precisely”, and “doctors are uncertain”, and contrast that mush to the acknowledged fact that PSA testing “significantly increased” early cancer detection. Yet, this study is cited as a possible justification for “requirements for coverage” over both government and “private” coverage – imposed by HHS. Keep this in mind.

The recommendations drew immediate and forceful rebuttal:

The “decision of no confidence on the PSA test by the U.S. Government condemns tens of thousands of men to die this year and every year going forward if families are to believe the out-of-date evidence presented by the USPSTF,” said Skip Lockwood, chief executive of Zero, a patient-advocacy group. “A decision on how best to test and treat for prostate cancer must be made between a man and his doctor. This decision is coming from a panel that doesn’t even include a urologist or medical oncologist.”

Several other experts agreed.

“The bottom line is that we should encourage screening because it will give men the full range of options to avoid death from prostate cancer,” said William J. Catalona of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

J. Brantley Thrasher of the University of Kansas Medical Center said, “It appears to me that screening is accomplishing just what we would like to see: diagnose and treat the disease while it is still confined to the prostate and, as such, still curable.”

I didn’t devote much attention to Stein’s article (which was carried on the front page of the New Jersey Star-Ledger on 10/7/11) until two letters-to-the-editor were published in the 10/13/11 Ledger. Tina Levorse of Parsippany and John Schlager of Springfield strongly objected to the proposed recommendations, citing personal experiences regarding early prostate cancer detection thanks to PSA tests. But it was Levorse’s perceptive LTE that got my attention. Entitled “Are death panels here?” she wrote:

While I’m not a big Sarah Palin supporter, it appears she was right. The Obamacare death panels are here.

I left the following comments:

In the past two months, I had two close friends diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer thanks to PSA screening. After biopsies and consultations with their doctors, both are now pursuing courses of action they deemed best in their individual circumstances. Both Levorse and Schlager provide indisputable logic as to the value of regular screening.

On the face of it, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s “recommendations” appear to make no sense at all. But, viewed within the context of the government’s ongoing takeover of healthcare, it makes perfect sense. The Federal government now controls almost 90% of healthcare spending, both directly through programs like Medicare and Medicaid and indirectly through its crony arm, the quasi-private health insurance industry. Consequently, the government now has a vested interest in controlling costs. The deep, inherent conflict of interest is apparent, and should scare all of us. Early screening leads to early detection, which leads to a much higher survival rate, which leads to more people living longer lives, which leads to – higher costs to government.

I believe Ms. Levorse has nailed it. Death panels are inherent in government-run medicine, and may be arriving under cover of “science”. Of course, there are no explicit death panels written into ObamaCare or any other government program. There don’t have to be. Through the bureaucratic tyranny set up by ObamaCare, those recommendations and others like them will become mandatory, and restrictions will be written into the guidelines doctors must follow. The freedom of the doctor to focus on the best interests of his patient and the freedom of the patient to decide for himself based upon his doctors’ recommendations, will be lost to professional bean counters. Such are the consequences of surrendering to government the responsibility for paying for one’s healthcare.

This should be another wakeup call to Americans, but for too many, it probably won’t be. But one thing is for sure: No study connected to government financing can be trusted, given the government’s massive role in healthcare.

I am by no means a medical professional or expert. So, I can not and will not offer opinions on the accuracy of the study or its conclusions. But that is really beside the point. The point is, these government studies can not be trusted. The entire character of this article proves the point. How can anyone be sure of the motives behind the conclusions?

The vagueness of the arguments against PSA screening must raise suspicions in light of HHS’s ObamaCare-mandated “cost containment” mission. Add to this deep conflict of interest an inherent contradiction. The article states early on that “the risks [of PSA screening] appeared to outweigh the benefits for those who are showing no signs of the disease”. The express purpose of PSA screening is precisely to detect “signs of the disease” via the red flag of high or rising PSA levels. As a 62-year-old man anxious to get many more quality years out of his life, I have a vested interest in getting an early jump on any health issues that I may confront. In light of the acknowledgement that it is “not clear precisely what PSA level signals the presence of cancer,” who would it be best for me to depend upon most, my doctor’s advice or some distant panel’s mandates? As I said in my comments, I have two friends dealing with PSA-detected cancer. Who knows: I may be next. Yet government officials who do not know I exist have the power to deny me my unalienable right to exercise my own judgement on this matter, by their control over healthcare spending - financed by me, and countless others like me, to boot. And that’s the point: They don’t focus on any individual:

“Unfortunately, the best evidence is that while some men might be helped by screening, others would be harmed, and on balance the test is not useful overall,” said Howard Brody of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

No human being is “overall”. And here we come to the essential difference between government-run and free market healthcare – the irreconcilable clash between collectivism and individualism; between a non-existent statistical average and actual living breathing thinking individual men. There is no compassion behind the bean counters’ and their “greater good of society”. There is only a callous disregard for the value of individual lives. I do not mean to imply that every member of the government bureaucracy and his or her panels is callous. I mean to say that callousness is inherent in their jobs, by virtue of the fact that their “overall” findings disregard the unknown “some men [who] might be helped by screening”, and by the unknown agendas of the political masters whose funding they depend upon. They can be nothing but callous, because that’s the nature of the beast. Central planning by definition must focus away from any concern for the best interests of individual men and the judgements of individual doctors in favor of the statist apparition - the public health.

Leaving the treatment decision “between a man and his doctor” is a moral hallmark of the free market and the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. Snatching decision-making power away from millions of men in favor of a 16-member independent [?] government-sponsored panel – which, incidentally, will also undermine the Oath - is the hallmark of government-run medicine. This is the fundamental issue here, regardless of whom is right about the value of PSA testing. As a layman, studies such as this can be a factor in my decision-making. But they should not pinch hit for my decision-making rights.

To again quote Skip Lockwood, “the decision of no confidence on the PSA test by the U.S. Government condemns tens of thousands of men to die this year and every year going forward.” This reminds me of a question I remember being posed by a champion of government-run medicine some years ago: “If socialized medicine is so bad, where are the victims?” The answer – “They’re all dead.”

Welfare Statists Circle the Wagons

2011-10-15T22:03:00.005-04:00

The political strategy of the Left is becoming clearer as we move deeper into the 2012 election cycle. After being seemingly knocked back a bit on their heels by the Tea Party rebellion, the Left is beginning to regroup and circle the wagons around the welfare state. One battle line has formed along the moral front. Another is forming on the economic front. The Left’s latest target is the growing “wealth gap” between rich and poor, a rehash of an old bugaboo. Its main weapon is, as always, its extreme collectivist ideology. NJ Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran seized upon a report allegedly showing a widening gap:

Shake the numbers any way you want and the answer is the same: Millionaires are getting richer fast, and their tax burden has been cut in half since World War II. The middle class is slowly sinking, despite working longer hours with greater productivity. And the army of the poor is flooded with new recruits, most of them with a long history of working in lousy, low-wage jobs.

The tax statement is utterly false, of course. Tax rates have come down, but the tax burden has shifted steadily up the income scale. The top 1% of earners now pay about 40% of all income taxes. The bottom 50% pays virtually no income tax. (Moran is vague here, however. The Left has taken to throwing payroll taxes into the mix, which skews the overall tax burden down the income scale, as measured by percentage of income. But even including payroll taxes, the top 1% pays nearly 30% of all federal taxes. Furthermore, Medicare and Social Security are tied to contributions, with the benefit calculations skewed toward the lower end of the income scale, as well. In other words, in relation to what they pay in taxes, lower income folks make out quite well. Payroll taxes are much less progressive, owing to the earnings cap. This is hardly unfair, though. One can hardly say that the economic bottom is being cheated)

How do they propose to correct that alleged problem? Not by liberating the economy from oppressive government, but by targeting the people that by their own admission are doing well. How will that foster a return to economic health? It won’t, but they don’t care. Why? Because they are ideologically driven, uncompromising, unabashed statists:

The irony is that robust government programs on a scale we need today are very popular. The GI Bill helped create the middle class by sending a generation of veterans to college. Social Security ended widespread poverty among the elderly. Medicare made sure they would not die without a doctor.

No serious person can argue that private charity would have matched this government effort.

That last sentence is all too true, and that points to the fundamental problem. The private sector could not and would not match it, because the vast majority of people receiving government “help” neither need it nor are worthy of private, voluntary charity. (The GI Bill is a special case, which can be seen as payment for services rendered in defense of America. But that is beside the main point.) All of those programs are still in place, and have in fact been expanded into uncharted, vastly unfunded territory. And many more have been added. The results are in. But again, the Left statists are not interested in reexamining the entire welfare state concept. Their goal is more of the same, as they press forward toward their long dreamed of egalitarian utopia. The inverted mentality that seeks to achieve a better economy by sacrificing people who are doing well is dramatized on page 535 of Atlas Shrugged:

“There are people who aren’t broke,” said Boyle slowly [at an economic crisis meeting of top-level government officials]. “You boys have no excuse for permitting all that need and misery to spread through the country – so long as there are people who aren’t broke.”

Moran continues:

America wasn’t always like this. After World War II, the country made big gains that were widely shared. The result was the most prosperous middle class the world has ever known. Play by the rules and you could make out fine, and expect that your kids would do even better.

What was the difference between the post WWII period and today? For one thing, the New Deal and thus the Great Depression ended, Truman lifted wage and price controls, and the gold-backed Bretton Woods international currency system kicked in. Tax rates were high – 91% at the top – but almost no one paid the highest rates, and they were widely seen as a drag on the economy. Remember that Democrat JFK ran on a 1960 presidential campaign slogan “get America moving again”, and followed that up with his signature tax accomplishment that lowered the top rate to 70% in his across-the-board rate reduction plan.

But the most important difference between then and now was the size and scope of government, which was much, much smaller then. Beginning in the mid 1960s, the welfare state exploded, the gold standard ended, and government spending soared at an accelerating rate. Today, the welfare state has reached new heights, federal spending alone now consumes 25% of GDP, and government regulations are descending upon the economy at the most feverish pace since at least the Great Depression.

No, as Tom Moran says, “America wasn’t always like this.” There was a time when we were freer, and consequently individuals had a much easier time rising economically. The struggles of the middle and lower income people that Moran describes are exactly what one would expect in a controlled economy like we have today. But, the Left doesn’t see the obvious correlation between today’s economic troubles and today’s burgeoning welfare state. They don’t want to see it, because the facts threaten their statist worldview. So, they set up a straw man like the wealth gap, and point to that as a symptom of what’s wrong with the economy. It is a symptom, but not in the way the Left believes. Moran and others on the Left have taken a huge bite of foot, this time. The supreme irony is, all of the government-imposed programs Moran credits for lifting the lower and middle classes are still in place, and have been joined by a myriad of new programs piled on top as the welfare state continues to expand to this day. If the size and scope of the welfare state is to be the measure of middle and lower class well-being, then the only conclusion one can draw is that it has been a dismal failure, having wrecked both the middle class and the economy.

[Note: I use the term “class” only in the economic sense of reflecting income brackets. There are no actual classes in America.]

The dream of every stripe of American socialist is to turn the middle class into a welfare class. This is being accomplished by forcing productive Americans to launder their hard-earned money through politicians’ hands via an ever-growing assortment of wealth redistribution programs, return that money in various strings-attached ways, and then call them vital “government benefits”. Social welfare programs did not create the middle class. They were created by politicians – regrettably, often with widespread popular support; but still, by politicians making an end run around the constitution they swore to uphold. Who pays for the welfare state? It is the productive achievements of private citizens that pay for and make the welfare state possible.

What created the middle class? – The individuals that make it up, led by the highly productive rich who break out to new economic heights, creating the mass market products we see all around us, jobs, raising the physical labor productivity that leads to rising real wages, and providing investment opportunities that enable millions to share in the profits of productive businesses. The middle class arose naturally as a direct corollary of the rise of free market capitalism in the 19th century, which arose naturally as a direct consequence of the American ideals of unalienable individual rights and limited rights-protecting government. Popular support or public opinion polls notwithstanding, the facts speak for themselves: The modern welfare state did not create the middle class, but was made possible by the exploitation of the middle class.

The statist mentality has to create the myth that free individuals acting on their own judgement can not take care of themselves, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, in order to justify the case for omnipotent government. Welfare statists love to claim credit for such things as educating veterans, “end[ing] widespread poverty among the elderly”, and “ma[king] sure they would not die without a doctor”, even though such programs are actually paid for by widespread forced taxation of private productive citizens. But the fact is, the very few people who can’t – as opposed to won’t – take care of themselves were merely the rationalization for forcing everyone into a welfare state trap.

What is it that the Left depends upon to make such a defense of its welfare state crown jewel appear to make sense? Moran writes:

Now that social contract has been broken. In the past 20 years, all of the economic gains we’ve made were captured by the top 10 percent of earners. The bottom 90 percent lost ground.

The “social contract” is a euphemism for the legalized armed robbery of forced wealth redistribution. The Left is driven by a bastardized egalitarian conception that views individuals not as equal before the law but as equal in the sense of an ant colony. All wealth is an anonymous collective achievement, this view holds. Intelligence, self-motivation, ability, self-discipline, innovativeness, and all of the virtuous individual character traits that productive work demands are irrelevant to the “distribution” of that wealth. The wealth or “economic pie” just appears, independent of individual activity, and falls into one big tribal pot. It is created by everyone but no one in particular. If someone has too high an income, it’s because they “captured” too much out of the pot. We are all ants, incapable of individually producing wealth by our own capabilities and voluntary private trade. The tribal wealth pot is a static quantity, where one man’s gain is another man’s loss. Left free, some will “capture” an unfair amount, leaving less for others. We need the queen ant, or the tribal chief, or the welfare state – variations of Plato’s “philosopher king” all - to step in to create a fairer distribution by cutting down the successful top. Then somehow, “the economic gains we’ve made” will keep coming.

Of course, all wealth is the product of individual minds, individual initiative, and individual work – the relative individual value of which is determined by free and voluntary association and trade, and, to the extent there is a free market, manifested in the amount of money each individual makes. This fact is buried under a mountain of collectivist jargon and the tribal view of wealth, which unfortunately is a view held beyond just the Left. The result is an ever-expanding government and the rise of force as the dominant means of social interaction. (See my post of 10/6/11).

Over the past century, power-lusting American politicians, by regularly exploiting the genuine needs of the few and the greed of those unwilling to plan their own lives, created today’s economic crisis. The alleged “income gap” is a straw man. The solution is not to go after the one economic group that still manages to flourish, which will only worsen the plight of everyone else. The solution is to begin to lift the suffocating blanket of statism from the economy – beginning with taxes and regulations.

The income gap isn’t growing because the top 10% is in some mystical way benefiting unfairly, it is growing because the government is stifling upward mobility through taxes, spending, monetary policy, central planning, and regulations, while destroying incentives through an expanding array of handouts that encourage the lazy and the shiftless and discourage the ambitious. The middle and lower economic groups are victims not of the top 10%, but of government. More than ever, to cite the Reagan wisdom that Moran quotes in his article, "Government is not a solution to our problems. It is the problem."

The soft communism of welfare state socialism is inexorably approaching its inevitable blind alley throughout the West. We could be witnessing the last gasp of the deadly 20th century scourge of collectivism. One can observe Moran’s reliance on collectivist premises to fortify his Leftist call to action. It is those collectivist premises that must be challenged, and the only alternative is individualism. There are signs that that challenge is beginning to emerge. But, by and large, the Right has so far failed to mount an ideological counter-attack, thus conceding the philosophical battlefield to statism. We must explicitly uphold individualism, otherwise the largely reflexive national recoil against “big government” epitomized by the Tea Party will crash and burn on the rocks of philosophical incoherence.

The Achievement of Christopher Columbus

2011-10-09T13:00:00.001-04:00

Excerpts from an op-ed in the Bucks County Courier Times, October 11, 2007.

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization

By Thomas Bowden

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?

Excerpts from an op-ed in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, October 10, 2008

Columbus was a hero

By Dimitri Vassilaros

Christopher Columbus could not have discovered a better spokesman than Thomas A. Bowden.

The accomplishments of Columbus should speak for themselves. But thanks to political correctness, the moronic multicultural mob keeps talking them down. Mr. Bowden has been speaking passionately and forcefully about Columbus for years.

Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to advance individual rights as the moral basis for a free society.

"My ancestors were savages," says Bowden matter-of-factly. Everyone can say the same, depending on how far back one is willing to look at lineage. "It's nothing racial or ethnic; it's historical fact."

"Columbus critics have a disguised criticism of Western civilization because Europeans replaced Stone Age Indians. They believe that this continent would have been better off without Europeans, that industrial civilization is an evil that is to be lamented and regretted.

"That is the real criticism of Columbus. I reject it completely."

Indians typically were widely scattered Stone Age tribes, he says. "They had little agriculture and lived in poverty, fear, ignorance and superstition. They had no concept of government, ownership or private property rights.

"Slavery was perfectly common.

Well, didn't Indians at least live in harmony with nature?

"No," says Bowden. "Man should not live in harmony with nature in the sense of simply keeping it pristine. We live by impacting the environment. The environment has no intrinsic value. Our civilization is more in harmony with nature by making it serve our ends."

Well, what about all the land supposedly stolen from the Indians by European settlers?

Indians did not own the vast reaches of land that they traveled on, Bowden says. Ownership of land is deserved, he says. By that, he means a settler can acquire property rights by making the land more valuable by, say, digging it up for farming. Or to build his homestead or business.

Columbus essentially was an explorer and discoverer bringing Western civilization's cures, science and technology, he says. The philosophical legal process was another gift the Europeans gave to the Indians, he says. "Indians got all that for free."

Columbus' critics should fall down on their knees and thank the Founding Fathers for creating a nation based on the moral principle of the individual's right to life, liberty and, Bowden stresses, the selfish pursuit of happiness.

"It's the only nation that came about in such a way. Anyone who has humanity's interest at heart should love America," he says.

Happy Columbus Day

Challenging the Tribal Premise

2011-10-06T18:28:00.001-04:00

One of Ayn Rand's most important non-fiction essays is the one that kicks off her book, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. In "What is Capitalism", Rand identified one of the core misunderstandings that is undermining and destroying capitalism, the tribal premise:

The tribal premise underlies today’s political economy. That premise is shared by the enemies and the champions of capitalism alike; it provides the former with a certain inner consistency, and disarms the latter by a subtle, yet devastating aura of moral hypocrisy—as witness, their attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of “the common good” or “service to the consumer” or “the best allocation of resources.” (Whose resources?)

If capitalism is to be understood, it is this tribal premise that has to be checked—and challenged.

I got an opportunity to challenge the tribal premise in a recent article that clearly demonstrates what Rand is talking about.

In How a flush country could be in debt trouble, Zachary A. Goldfarb attempts to explain why the US government's debt problems are not that big a deal. Here are a few selected quotes:

While the U.S. government’s $14.3 trillion debt is an eye-popping figure, the country has plenty of resources. It’s just that over many years Americans and their leaders have chosen not to tap them to pay the government’s growing bills.

The United States is a lot like a rich businessman who owns two homes, a yacht and millions of dollars in stock but is in debt because he took out a big loan to buy a private plane.

This fellow could always have used some of his wealth, for instance his stock, to pay cash for the plane. But he didn’t want to. Now, with the weak economy, he’s finding it hard to pay off the plane simply out of his salary. By putting most of his wealth beyond reach, he has boxed himself in.

Likewise, U.S. politicians have made a value judgment that they shouldn’t tap much of the country’s wealth to pay for government programs. That judgment, in turn, reflects the preference that many Americans themselves have expressed over the years for leaving private resources in mostly private hands.

"the country has plenty of resources", "chosen not to tap them", "the preference ... for leaving private resources in mostly private hands" are all examples of the tribal premise. Considering the prevalence of such views, is it any wonder that our free markets and individual rights - especially property rights - have long been under withering assault, and losing?

I posted the following comments on 7/31/11

The analogy of the businessman could not be more off base. The businessman is managing (or mismanaging) his own money. Comparing the United States Government to that businessman is to assume the premise that the nation’s wealth belongs to society, as represented by the government, rather than the citizens who produced it. This collectivist view ignores the source of wealth, the minds and labor of individuals. It ignores the moral principle of property rights, which are derived from the source of wealth. It assumes that the people are rightless creatures that exist at the pleasure of the imperial state. It holds that the nation may dispose of the lives of its productive citizens without any more concern than ancient rulers gave to their pyramid-building slaves.

The tribal view of America’s wealth implied by Goldfarb’s is more suited to an ant colony, to communism, or to a primitive tribe of ignorant savages. It is not suited to a modern, enlightened industrial country Founded on the principle of the sovereignty and sanctity of the individual and of the individual’s right to his own life.

"More Prosperity" or "Shared Sacrifice"?

2011-10-02T14:17:00.006-04:00

The NJ Star Ledger took NJ Governor Chris Christie to task concerning remarks he made in his recent Reagan Library speech. The clash points to the two fundamentally different worldviews that animate today's Left-Right debate about the political/economic future of America.

The Left's view was summed up by Elizabeth Warren, who recently advanced the view that no one succeeds on his own, and thus success translates into a societal claim on "a hunk" of that success:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Don Watkins of ARI more accurately called Warren's "social contract" a social shakedown, and Ari Armstrong shreds her argument in an op-ed in Pajamas Media.

In the Star-Ledger editorial, the editors echo Warren's point, and one correspondent actually quoted Warren in the comments section. What triggered the editorial were these comments by Christie:

“Telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others. Trying to cynically convince those who are suffering that the American economic pie is no longer a growing one that can provide more prosperity for all who work hard. Insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those who have already achieved the American dream.

“That may turn out to be a good re-election strategy for President Obama, but it is a demoralizing message for America.”

"Clue phone for the governor," advise the editors, "America is not demoralized by the notion of increasing taxes on top earners. Polls show that big majorities support the idea. Some even show that most Republicans do."

That's right: Let's raise taxes, but only on the other guy. That's not demoralizing. Hypocracy is OK, if the majority says so.

Why should we raise taxes only the rich? The editors, in part, had this to say:

The reason is that we need the money. We are entering a period of national sacrifice and most feel it should be shared.

It’s remarkable that Christie can look across the American landscape today and conclude that our priority should be to protect the interests of those at the top of the pyramid, the one group that is doing okay.

It is especially galling to hear this from Christie, who raised taxes on the working poor by cutting their tax credits. Are they better able to take the blow?

Remember, too, that businesses didn’t earn their money without help from taxpayers. They use public roads and rails, they rely on police protection, many of their employees were educated in public schools, and they enjoy the social peace that comes from a shared sense of fair play, a social contract.

The "tax credits" referred to is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which generally means a "refund" for those who owe no income tax. Under our convoluted tax structure, I'm not necessarily opposed to the EITC, since low earners do pay other taxes. Absent major tax reform, I don't necessarily agree with cutting it at this time. But let's not call it what it's not - a sacrifice.

I've left the following comments:

Posted on September 29, 2011 at 10:19AM

The Left is apparently circling the wagons around the welfare state, as the points made in this piece are suddenly cropping up around the media. But, they are a feeble attempt that runs straight up against logic, facts, and morality.

There is no “shared sacrifice”. The reduction of a handout (the earned income “tax credit”) is not a sacrifice, since one can not lose what one doesn’t rightfully own to begin with. Taking one’s earnings by force of a tax increase is.

Businesses provide far more benefits to “the taxpayers” through the products they provide and the jobs they provide than they benefit from them. Furthermore, the editors conveniently forget that businesses are huge taxpayers themselves, and they pay more than their share to fund public roads and rails, police protection, and public schools. Furthermore, businesses pay additional moneys for private security and employee education and training.

The IRS provides readily available data that shows that the top 1% already pays 40% of all income taxes, and the top 10% (which starts at about $120,000 annually) pays 70%, while the bottom 50% pays virtually nothing. Even including payroll taxes, the figure for the top 10% comes in at about 50%. And speaking of payroll taxes: Yes, it is unfair that the lower earners must pay for Warren Buffet’s healthcare and retirement. So, how about ending that travesty by privatizing Social Security and Medicare so that every workers earnings goes into his own personal account, rather than laundered through Washington and into the pockets of retirees who are capable of taking care of themselves?

The true mindset of the Left is revealed here. Why must “we” tax the rich more? “The reason is that we need the money”. Why go after the rich? Because they’re “the one group that is doing okay”. In other words, need is a license to steal, and – as Willie Sutton said – “that’s where the money is”. The Left’s mindset is that of a street thug, and they don’t even try to hide it any more. Christie is absolutely right, and the editors just gave us the ringing proof. The Left doesn’t want more people “doing okay”. They want shared poverty. It’s a moral travesty.

The regulatory welfare state soared over the last 11 years, and today is bigger than ever – at the very time when the struggles of the vast middle class multiply. The Federal government is consuming 25% of GDP as spending and deficits reach unheard-of heights, even when compared to the Bush profligacy. By now the village idiot can see what the increasingly desperate ideologues of the welfare state refuse to see or admit. The welfare state is destructive to prosperity, morality, the economy, and the middle class – and today, throughout the West, is coming to its inevitable dead end.

How about: Hands off our money and our choice.

2011-09-29T10:11:00.000-04:00

Inverted moral priorities lie at the base of our economic troubles, and concrete examples of it surface from time to time.

In a recent editorial, entitled Hands off the safety net, the NJ Star-Ledger reached new heights in disingenuousness. The economy is grinding through its fourth recessionary year, job creation is scarce, and record numbers of people are collecting government checks, even as tax receipts plummet. Yet, the editors point to all of this as evidence of the value of big government! “[T]here is a silver lining,” they write with a straight face, “The safety net of government programs held up.”

The safety net is "held up" by the same thing that is holding back the economy - government force. In fact, it is probably the biggest "growth industry" in America today. This brings to mind the emergency meeting of high government officials and businessmen in Atlas Shrugged, to address the dire economic situation:

“What? Again?”, yelled Mr. Weatherby, losing his primness [in response to steel magnate Orren Boyle’s request for another government subsidy]. “…with all of you boys going broke and the tax receipts crashing, where do you expect us to get the money to hand you another subsidy?”

“There are people who aren’t broke,” said Boyle, “You boys [the government] have no excuse for permitting all that need and misery to spread through the country – so long as there are people who aren’t broke.” [Page 535]

The editors write:

The recession’s toll became crystal clear this week with the U.S. Census Bureau’s release of 2010 poverty figures. Some 46.2 million are living in poverty. That’s 15.1 percent of our fellow citizens. For children, the rate is 22 percent. Also, 49.9 million, or 16.3 percent of the population under the age of 65, have no health insurance.

It’s a troubling snapshot of the upheaval American families are experiencing as incomes drop or stagnate and jobs disappear.

Leaving aside the fact that poverty today is not real, but relative, the editors reel off a litany of government programs that ignore where the money to pay for them comes from. They conclude with:

It’s important to keep these facts in mind as we approach an austerity budget. President Obama and the congressional supercommittee tasked with deficit reduction have to protect families on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Bash big government all you want, especially when it indulges in wasteful spending and earmarks for bridges to nowhere. But this is where government gets it right, big time.

I added my emphasis to make the point. The mentality, and the inverted moral priorities, exemplified in the Atlas Shrugged passages are clearly on display in this editorial. The editors are charter members of the tax-the-people-who-aren’t-broke – “tax the rich” - club. I’ve left the following comments:

Posted on September 15, 2011 at 6:13PM

This is where government gets it right? Let’s take a look at just one program, the big daddy, Social Security. A young person starts out his working life with the forced confiscation of 12.4% of his income – half directly taken from his pay check, and the other half dishonestly camouflaged as the “employer contribution”. He has no choice in the matter: His money is taken at gunpoint. He will pay this tax all of his working life, regardless of other uses he may prefer to use his own money for. If he dies before he reaches the point that he can begin collecting promised benefits, he cannot leave it to his estate for the benefit of his children or others he values. His money is simply gone.

If he makes it to retirement, he has not a dime to show for it. Every dollar taken from him by force was cycled through the hands of the Washington money launderers, and sent into the pockets of others. He has nothing but rescindable financial promises of politicians, many long gone, and payable out of the earnings of other victims. He spent his working life as a wage slave to others, only to be made a parasite on others in old age; a horrible position to force him into. This is right?!? It’s a moral perversion.

…As is the entire “safety net”. At a time when the productive private economy desperately needs relief from big government, the welfare state’s apologists dogmatically cheer it on to greater and greater heights. They perversely measure the success of government by how many people are dependent upon it. And when you worship dependence upon government, you get more and more of it. This is the editors’ idea of what “works”!?!

So now, big government is the champion of its own victims! 80 years after the “safety net” began its cancerous growth, and the government has reached new heights in spending and interference into and control of the economy, poverty is at record levels and the economy is in shambles. The editors apparently can’t see the connection between big government and big poverty.

Like all manifestations of malignant cancer, it must be cut out or it will continue to grow and metastasize until it ultimately kills the patient. How about facing reality? After 80 years, the government has had its chance at running our retirement, our healthcare, and our charity – and it has failed. It’s time to return control to the individuals who earn the money in the first place – to plan their own retirement, manage their own healthcare needs, and choose their own charitable endeavors. How about: Hands off our money and our choice.

Obamanomics and the Ghost of Title 2

2011-09-25T14:56:00.015-04:00

Nobody has ever been endangered by being offered poison in a bottle bearing a label with a skull-and-crossbones. Poison is usually offered in a glass of the best wine – or, modern version, in a quart of the milk of human kindness. – Ayn Rand (page 367)

Barack Obama’s newest plan for stimulating the economy is nothing new. “The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction” is a hodgepodge of massive government spending ($450 billion), central planning (an “infrastructure bank”), and a huge dose of increased taxes ($1.5 trillion). There is one particularly egregious feature of it I’d like to highlight. On page 15 of “The American Jobs Act” section, we find this:

Combat discrimination against the unemployed. Recent reports have highlighted companies that are increasingly expressing preferences for applicants who already have a job. Specifically, some companies are posting job listings that include language such as “unemployed candidates will not be considered” or “must be currently employed” or “must be employed within the last six months.” The exclusion of unemployed applicants is a troubling and arbitrary screen that is bad for the economy, bad for the unemployed, and ultimately bad for firms trying to find the best candidates. This is particularly true at a time when so many Americans have found themselves out of work through no fault of their own. New Jersey has passed legislation to address this practice, and members of the Congress also have introduced legislation. The President is calling for legislation that would make it unlawful to refuse to hire applicants solely because they are unemployed or to include in a job posting a provision that unemployed persons will not be considered.

The Obama Administration’s “jobs” scheme contains a poison pill taken from the medicine chest of a long-established precedent – a pill that has already gained a foothold, regrettably, in NJ. This new “anti-discrimination” clause is yet another assault on the right to voluntary contract and on the employers’ freedom to act upon his own judgement to the benefit of his own business – basic moral principles that are also prerequisites for a healthy job market. It would open up a whole new avenue for predatory lawsuits, empower government officials with new and still more arbitrary – i.e., tyrannical - powers, and further diminish freedom in America.

“Discrimination” has turned into a synonym for evil, even though discrimination is an indispensable corollary of free will and free choice based upon rational judgement. Discrimination is bad only in very narrow circumstances, such as judging a person based upon some personal trait over which he has no choice. Martin Luther King famously called for people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”. Not every unemployed person is of bad character, but a person’s employment record certainly goes to a person’s character, and a rational employer would certainly take that into consideration. Aside from character, there could be plenty of rational reasons why an employer may want to narrow down the field of job applicants in the manner described in the anti-discrimination clause. But, even if certain employers set objectively demonstrable irrational criteria, it is their right. They are violating no one else’s rights in doing so, since there is no such thing as a “right” to be considered for a job (See “Individual Rights”.

Illegalizing “discrimination against the unemployed” is such a broad and vague assault on an employers’ rightful prerogatives that any unemployed person turned down for a job or job interview represents the threat of a lawsuit or the bringing down of the wrath of some government bureaucrat with unaccountable, undefinable powers. If you want an example of why business is so reluctant to hire in America, look no further than this new “anti-discrimination” clause – which exemplifies the extreme anti-business hostility and the continuing assault on productive Americans that reigns in the current administration.

There’s a blatant element of hypocrisy here, too. Discrimination against job creators, which are largely clustered in the $200,000 - $250,000 and up income brackets, is just fine, apparently. Almost all of the $1.5 trillion in “revenue increases” that will allegedly be realized under Obama’s plan is targeted at this select group. The president apparently can’t see the contradiction – or perhaps that is the point. For Obama, “economic growth” has always taken a back seat to his ideological push for expanded government control and central planning. Even strictly from the perspective of the unemployed, there is nothing to be gained from outlawing “discrimination against the unemployed”, as a minute of thought would tell you. For every person who switches jobs, one job opening is filled and another is created at the employer he left, leaving the same number of job opportunities available. Unemployed job seekers gain nothing from Obama’s proposed intrusion into private hiring practices. But again, helping the unemployed is secondary to his ideological agenda. Government’s long established anti-discrimination crusade against private individuals has served as an ever-widening wedge of expanding statism.

The broader point is, we’re seeing the legal assault against voluntary private association continuing to run amuck. How and when did the government become the arbiter of good vs. bad discrimination? It all began in 1964, when the government usurped the constitution by arrogating to itself the power to prohibit discrimination it did not approve of in the private sphere. The escalating consequences followed. For a concrete example, the principle established then led to laws and regulations that contributed significantly to the chain of events that culminated in the financial crisis, as “financial institutions greatly increased their lending to targeted socio-economic groups that were less credit worthy due to fears that they might otherwise be hit with anti-discrimination law suits.” If a company sees it necessary to skew its hiring policy for the same reason, to the detriment of more qualified people, - a likely long-term consequence once the anti-discrimination police get their foot in the door – what will the consequences be? Logically, one can see a business facing the prospect of a less productive workforce, leading to an increasing reluctance to hire – i.e., to create jobs.

Obama’s latest assault on private business – an assault that is apparently bipartisan to some extent - is just another example of how bad principles metastasize. The principle established with Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act - that the government may regulate how and when private individuals may exercise discrimination - has led to ever-widening intrusions on our liberties. Since discrimination is inherent in any human choice involving two or more alternatives, the government now has the theoretical power of complete thought control over each and every one of us, particularly in the field of human associations. As I have argued before, and to once again refer to the wisdom of James Madison, the only way to avoid “the consequences in the principle [is] by denying the principle.” Title II is the birthplace of an insidious principle, which came cloaked in the righteous crusade against an evil brand of discrimination – racial discrimination. The “skull-and-crossbones” were hidden “in a quart of the milk of human kindness”, or good intentions, and the poison was swallowed. By ignoring the principle, lawmakers evaded the inevitable consequences. But as Ayn Rand has observed, "We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."

Title II is one of the legal breeding grounds of the relentlessly growing statism in America. It must ultimately be repealed if the drift toward totalitarianism is to be reversed.

-Mike LaFerrara

The Nauseating Assault on "the Rich"

2011-09-21T19:44:00.000-04:00

In June I discussed the rise of morality
into the political arena. More and more, political issues are being discussed in ethical terms. Since both modern liberals and modern conservatives both agree that sacrifice and service to others – i.e., altruism – is the essence of moral action, the debate over political issues has always revolved around practicality. Since all sides accepted altruism by default, the Left has always been able to advance their statist agenda over time. Since all forms of socialism are based upon altruism, the Left has merely had to tell us how some people need this or that, therefor it is the duty of the rest of us to put aside our selfishness and empower government to satisfy those needs at taxpayer expense. Since conservatives accepted the moral premise of altruistic sacrifice and service to the needs of others, they have been powerless to stop – and sometimes even helped advance – the Left’s socialist agenda.

But now the Left’s moral hegemony is being challenged. The result is that statists of all stripes find themselves in unfamiliar territory – fending off ethical arguments from the Right. This new phenomenon is increasingly evidenced in the media. For example, Onkar Ghate recently cited an article by Leftist star Paul Krugman entitled “A Tale of Two Moralities
”. Summing up Krugman’s piece, Ghate wrote:

[G]one are the days when policy disputes were about pragmatic differences in accomplishing the same goal. Today we see a difference in moral principle: one side considers the modern welfare state morally superior to capitalism and the other side considers capitalism morally superior to the welfare state.

The moral factor has surfaced in regards to an issue that figures prominently in the current debate on the Federal debt ceiling – taxing the rich. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, in an article focussed on the budget and economics, included this:

Besides this economic problem, I also see a moral issue with Ayn Rand's insistence that all of us, CEOs included, should be totally free of the ties that bind. I especially disagree when it comes to CEOs. As I wrote here a few months ago, the wealthy have a special responsibility. Much will be asked of those to whom much has been given. Participating in government and civic life, serving in war, helping the less fortunate, and--yes--paying a fair share of taxes are inescapable responsibilities for all Americans, especially for those who have realized the American dream that inspires us all.

I find this issue particularly nauseating. Cutting through Townsend’s twisted logic, we find altruism: Those who earn more owe an unchosen duty to hand over their wealth to those who earn less - through the intermediary of government, of course. If you think that statement is grotesque, how about a recent study that “proves” why the rich “are such a selfish, less empathetic and less altruistic lot” than lower income people. Aside from the battery of corny tests employed, the study relies on the assumption that selfishness is evil and altruism is virtuous. The rich, you see, have an “ideology of self-interest”.

Not surprisingly, and perhaps by design, that study serves as ammunition for the tax-the-rich crowd, but not necessarily in the exact way one might imagine. The NJ Star-Ledger recently ran an editorial lauding both the poor and billionaires, while panning the moderate rich whom they call the “affluent”. In an apparent paradox, the Editors write:

[A]ffluent Americans have been found to donate a much smaller proportion of their annual income than do very poor contributors, who are strikingly generous.”

But psychologists say it makes sense. Lower-class people depend on others for survival, so they learn social behaviors like understanding and empathy, and give more to those in need, says Dacher Keltner of the University of California-Berkeley, co-author of a study published this month in a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The wealthy don’t need to lean on each other so much and that causes differences that are apparent in psychological studies, Keltner says. Rich people are usually less empathetic, less altruistic and more selfish than poor people, according to numerous experiments.

“Our data say you cannot rely on the wealthy to give back,” Keltner said, because it’s “improbable, psychologically.”

The editors, relying on the conventional view of ethics, concludes that “Of course, there are plenty of exceptions — just look at [Warren] Buffett. But it’s another reason he’s right that the rich must be taxed, not trusted to tithe.”

But there is an Achilles’ Heel in this line of logic. If selfishness is so bad, and altruism is so good, why are the bad guys affluent and the good guys poor? I addressed that “paradox” in some comments I left:

Posted August 21, 2011 at 10:54PM

“Rich people are usually less empathetic, less altruistic and more selfish than poor people.”

This statement should be a tip-off to the real ideal ethical standard. Imagine if everyone were as altruistic as poor people – everyone would be poor. Altruism is the giving up of values for the unearned benefit of others. Selfishness is the pursuit, achievement, and keeping of values by one’s own efforts. The able poor should be more selfishly focussed on making the most of their own lives, rather than perpetually “depend[ing] on others for survival”. (Most low-income people, in fact, do just that – work their way out of poverty.) The rich are not selfish because they are rich, they are rich because they are selfish. And the [able] poor are not altruistic because they are poor, they are poor because they are altruistic.

The obsession with giving, especially the moral perversity of “giving back” as an act of atonement for material success, is intended to obscure the real source of human well-being and even generosity – production and trade. What is the source of production? The human intellect. The real measure of a person’s value to “society” is his money making, not money giving. Money making, as opposed to money getting at any cost, is the process of producing by work a value that can be traded for values produced by others. Generally speaking, the amount of money a person makes in this fashion is commensurate to the value he provides to others (assuming a relatively free market). Every time you buy something, you are receiving wealth produced by someone in exchange for your money. The greater a person’s monetary riches, the greater the wealth he has spread to others, and thus the greater good he has done for others – regardless of whether he ever gave away a dime.

The rich – the people the Star-Ledger’s editors and their ilk long to exploit - are so because they selfishly pursued their own chosen field of production and trade for their own benefit. In being so successful, though, what have they given? Plenty, in several ways. To the extent that their productive intellectual energy exceeds their personal physical capacity to realize their goals, they must hire people to help produce whatever value they seek to sell – they create jobs. Together with those they hire, guided by their intellectual energy, the products we all need and desire are spread throughout society in exchange for the money most of us earned in the jobs they created. The rich, which means the successful, also spread wealth more indirectly, by creating opportunities for suppliers, and other businesses that thrive from the sales they get from the holders of the jobs created. Every individual participating in this complex chain of production and trade are acting selfishly. No one in this chain gave or received anything for nothing. Everyone is enriched to some extend, without a dime of “giving back”. And the guy whose intellectual energy and ambition started it all and got rich in the process, earned every dollar of it just as did everyone else theirs . Selfishness, properly understood, is the life-giving force that keeps us all alive – especially including those who depend on the charity of others. It is the moral force that leads people up from poverty.

Yes, there are those who get rich by graft and political pull. Yes, there are the idle rich of inheritance. But remember that the income tax is aimed at the productive rich described above, not the idle fortunes of past production (which, in any event, serve as capital for growing enterprises). A Buffet should be lauded for the selfish pursuit and achievement of his fortune, the making of which in fact enriched others to a far greater extent than his giving could ever accomplish, or the size of his own fortune – rather than his small-minded call to tax the already over-taxed super-productive still more.

Why do I, a middle class tradesman soon to be retired, oppose higher taxes on the rich (or anyone else, for that matter)? It is in my own selfish interest to see a growing, productive economy to give my hard-earned dollars the growing value made possible only through the productive work of others, especially the fortune builders. And because if the property of the rich is at the pleasure of phonies who don’t believe they can be “trusted to tithe” enough of it away, then no one’s property is safe. And because it is downright immoral to glorify the unearned as a moral absolute, and to condemn the rightful owners of wealth – the earners – as “selfishly” uncaring. And because I consider selfish money-making, not altruistic giving, as the moral ideal.

Ayn Rand labeled altruism an “inverted morality”. That inversion is on display in the debate over taxing the rich. The Rich who earned the money are painted as predators who refuse to “give back” some of all that they have “been given”. But notice who the real predators are – the altruists. Who is it that is seen as the moral ones? The poor who will receive the tax money, those who will enact the taxes, and those who advocate the transfer – i.e., anyone who did not earn it.

“Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?

“The answer you evade, the monstrous answer is: No, the takers are not evil, provided they did not earn the value you gave them. It is not immoral for them to accept it, provided they are unable to produce it, unable to deserve it, unable to give you any value in return. It is not immoral for them to enjoy it, provided they do not obtain it by right.” - Atlas Shrugged

Mulshine Highlights GOP Hypocrisy

2011-09-18T18:03:00.003-04:00

The NJ Star-Ledger’s Paul Mulshine made some good points about the Republicans’ opposition to ObamaCare. Basically, he says, their call to repeal ObamaCare on the grounds that it is socialism rings hollow in the face of their almost universal support for the even more socialistic Medicare. The title of his article, Repeal Obamacare? Why not repeal Medicare first?, says it all. After pointing out that the vast majority of the Tea Party is both strongly opposed to ObamaCare and strongly supportive of Medicare, he writes:

[M]any Republican presidential contenders … are pandering to the seniors on this, a category that includes every candidate not named Ron Paul.

Medicare is a compulsory, top-down, single-payer system, more socialistic in every respect than Obamacare.

So if the Republicans were so vehemently against socialism, Mulshine contends, they would be calling for ObamaCare to be extended to seniors as a replacement for Medicare, because at least “ObamaCare [is] relying mostly on private insurers. And virtually all conservative commentators agree such an approach is preferable to a single-payer system.”

Of course, neither is preferable, because ObamaCare simply imposes total government control through nominally private insurers. It is socialism through the back door, which is fascism. Mulshine, I’m quite sure, understands this. His point is that most of the Republicans have no principled counterpoint to ObamaCare. He points out that the individual mandate is a redistribution scheme, and cites ObamaCare sponsor NJ Rep. Frank Pallone:

The mandate was designed to get younger and healthier citizens to subsidize older and less-healthy people, he said.

But, think for a minute what repealing Medicare would mean:

Imagine a young adult working behind the counter at Taco Bell. The government now takes 2.9 percent of his salary to provide free health insurance to Warren Buffett.

Now imagine we eliminated Medicare. That kid could put the money toward his own health insurance.

But what of those senior citizens not as rich as Buffett? Now that we’ve got ObamaCare, the poor would get benefits for free. The rest of the retirees would have their premiums subsidized under a sliding scale. Buffett would have to pay his own bill, though.

It’s an interesting thought. Younger folks would have a modicum more freedom. ObamaCare unequivocally moves non-Medicare American medicine towards single-payer. But turning Medicare into ObamaCare moves the huge senior market away from single-payer. Since Democrats ultimately want universal single-payer, it would indeed be interesting if Republicans were to “throw this issue back in the Democrats’ face”. Imagine the GOP proposing this compromise: We’ll drop our plan to repeal ObamaCare, if you’ll agree to repeal Medicare.

Of course, that’s no solution. It’s not even a step in the right direction because of the Republican Party’s complete lack of any philosophical conviction. A gradual withdrawal of government interference in healthcare is of course a very viable political course of action. But that course is only viable if free market forces have a firm hold on the moral rightness of their course, and a clearly defined statement upholding the separation of medicine and state as the ultimate goal.

I’ve left the following comments, including an answer to a response to my comments:

September 13, 2011 at 4:28PM

The Republicans’ handling of the healthcare issue is just another reminder of why I switched my voter registration to Independent 5 years ago. Obama handed the GOP a philosophical challenge in the 2008 campaign, when he vowed to “fundamentally change America”. It was a direct attack on individualism, capitalism, freedom, and constitutionally limited government – the very core of what the Republicans allegedly stand for. The central front in this philosophical battle was healthcare.

The GOP had a chance to offer America “a choice, not an echo” to Obama’s “change”, by putting forth a comprehensive plan to solve the problems of our heavily regulated, semi-socialized healthcare system with an across-the-board phase-out of government-run medicine, in favor of a free market (not “free market solutions”, but a free market). Instead, we get Republicans defending outright socialism against ObamaCare fascism (backdoor socialism). Obama’s challenge met a vacuum.

When we get Democrat statements like “The mandate was designed to get younger and healthier citizens to subsidize older and less-healthy people” going unchallenged, you know that there is no real difference between the two major parties. That statement is a fastball down the middle, and a principled defender of freedom would have hit it out of the park. It’s a brazen statement that every individual’s life and property is at the disposal of the state, to be seized by any two-bit politician with enough votes and an altruistic cause.

When in his Reverend Wright speech of 3/18/08, Obama said, “Let us be our brother’s keeper, let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well,” he was laying out the basic moral premise of collectivism and despotism. His “change” was to advance the principle of the supremacy of the group, with the state as the embodiment of the will of the group – as opposed to the revolutionary American principles stated above. And whether that moral premise flies under a banner with a hammer and sickle, a swastika, a donkey or an elephant, the end result will still be totalitarian socialism.

To be relevant, the GOP must reject the “we’re all in this together” dogma and uphold the opposite moral premise – the individual’s right to his own life, liberty, property, and choices (Ron Paul came tantalizingly close in that clip). We are not our brothers’ keepers, and only on the basis of that moral conviction can the Republican’s have any relevance. Then we will have a chance to repeal both Medicare and ObamaCare, and move on from there to a freer and freer society. And then, I can return to the Republican Party.

Posted by countyhaters on September 13, 2011 at 10:09PM

That means i have the right to take your life, liberty, property, and choices away from you because i choose too........lol

September 14, 2011 at 4:56PM

No, countyhaters. It means you have a right to your own life, liberty, property, and choices. The government protects you from predators who think and act otherwise. That's what a proper government does – if it is doing its job.

What happens when everyone believes that they are their brothers’ keepers? Then, they expect everyone else to be their keeper. Then you get the mentality that says “i have the right to take your life, liberty, property, and choices away from you because i choose too.”[sic] Why not? The next guy is his brother’s keeper, which means your keeper, right? Then the government becomes the criminal. You have a welfare state. Universal predation – and universal slavery – and finally, if nothing changes, progressive economic deterioration and impoverishment.

Freedom does not mean doing whatever you choose. Freedom means freedom from forcible interference from others, including others in their capacity as government officials – and respecting the rights of others to their freedom. That’s why we need a government.

Once again we see the false premise that freedom means anything goes. Statism rests largely on ignorance of the actual nature of individual rights.

Howard Roark and the GOP

2011-09-14T16:05:00.000-04:00

From GOP leaders must free themselves from the Tea Party’s grip by E.J. Dionne, regarding this summer's budget battles:

“The Tea Party’s followers have endangered the nation’s credit rating and the GOP by pushing both House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor away from their own best instincts.”

Now, why would a liberal want the Republicans to abandon the Tea Party? Could it be because “The Tea Party’s followers [are] pushing both House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor away from their own best instincts?” Those “instincts” have usually worked to the Democrats’ advantage, so it’s no wonder the GOP gets such friendly advice from the likes of Dionne. See my Extremists vs. the Moderates: Why the Left Keeps Winning, and the Right has been Powerless to Stop It, which references another Dionne piece.

Be that as it may, it is this paragraph that got me writing:

“The Tea Party lives in an intellectual bubble where the answers to every problem lie in books by F.A. Hayek, Glenn Beck or Ayn Rand. Rand’s anti-government writings, regarded by her followers as modern-day scripture — Rand, an atheist, would have bridled at that comparison — are particularly instructive.

“When the hero of Rand’s breakthrough novel, 'The Fountainhead,' doesn’t get what he wants, he blows up a building. Rand’s followers see that as gallant. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that blowing up our government doesn’t seem to be a big deal to some of the new radical individualists in our House of Representatives.”

And, why would a liberal be against “radical individualists”? Perhaps because such folks don’t easily succumb to the predatory welfare state.

Here is a commentary I left, interspersed with additional remarks, which are italicized:

Posted on 7/21/2011 10:05:53 AM EDT

Three things stand out in this column.

Ayn Rand was (and is) anti-statist, not anti-government. Her well-reasoned case FOR a government powerful enough to protect the rights of its citizens counterbalanced through being constitutionally forbidden to turn predatory is regularly sidestepped by supporters of statism, the doctrine that holds that the lives, freedom, and property of the people are at the disposal of the government. The question is not whether or not we need a government, but whether the government’s power is limited and if so, by what principles? If Rand is anti-government, then the likes of EJ Dionne are anti-freedom.

Brushing Rand off as “anti-government” enables statists to make an end run around the necessity of defending their big government agenda against her actual philosophical validation of the limited, rights-protecting state. By lumping her in with anarchistic libertarians, Dionne exhibits the kind of intellectual cowardice typical of statist ideologues. They uphold, in essence, a false dichotomy: The choice we face is either authoritarianism or anarchy. By sidestepping Rand, they sidestep the Founding Fathers.

It is fitting that Dionne would trivialize The Fountainhead’s hero Howard Roark as a man who “blows up a building [because he] doesn’t get what he wants”. Statists disdain individual rights, especially property rights. Roark took that illegal but principled action along with the risk of a decade in jail because his property – the design of the housing complex – was stolen from him and he was left with no other legal recourse. The analogy to the Tea Party Republicans “blowing up our government” is very loose, as the GOP offers little in the way of concrete suggestions for dismantling the rights-violating welfare state that is really at the heart of our fiscal crisis. But this much is true: In a vague sort of way, the Tea Party Republicans are nobly going to bat for those of us who oppose our freedom and property being systematically drained away, leaving us no other recourse but to “blow up our government” (figuratively speaking, of course).

Of course, it is highly unlikely that the Republicans by and large have anywhere near the philosophical intransigence implied by their so far uncompromising stand against tax increases. But the Left must sense what I sense; the stirrings of a real intellectual strength emerging from the Right.

Finally, Dionne’s slap at free market economic theory (our “intellectual bubble”) is disingenuous, to put it mildly. The Left/statists have always clung to their radical collectivist ideology, the driving intellectual force behind their agenda; building a socialist America one brick at a time. American welfare statists fear a principled pro-individual rights counterweight to THEIR OWN intellectual bubble. “[T]he answers to every problem [we face today do in fact] lie in books” by free market intellectuals and philosophers who predicted long ago where our government’s interventionist policies would lead. Left/statists want us out of our “intellectual bubble” because they have no defense against the theoretical arguments that can teach us how we got here and point us toward the way out - free market capitalism, individual rights, and limited rights-protecting government. Unfortunately, the Tea Party doesn’t have anything close to that kind of philosophical clarity.

On the face of it, Dionne appears to be taking an anti-intellectual position by denying any application of broad abstractions or principles to concrete cultural and political issues. But in fact, Dionne and the left always measure issues against the related ideological yardsticks of altruism in ethics, collectivism in metaphysics, and statism in politics. The incessant admonition to abandon ideology for pragmatic practicality is a ruse to intellectually disarm the Right, an admonition that too many free market conservatives are all to quick to embrace.

In regard to Dionne's "radical individualists" remark, this angle is not new. See my E.J. Dionne Answers the Call With Assault on "Extreme Individualism". Radical. Extreme. Do you see a pattern? The strategy is to abort any possible emergence of a principled free market opposition with smear charges of extremism and radical. The GOP should take some advice from Ayn Rand, which could be found in the essay "Extremism," or the art of smearing, which is as relevant today as ever before. She wrote:

The welfare-statists need a new cover. What we are witnessing now is a desperate, last-ditch attempt to put over two “anti-concepts”: the “extremists” and the “moderates.”

The best proof of an intellectual movement’s collapse is the day when it has nothing to offer as an ultimate ideal but a plea for “moderation.” Such is the final proof of collectivism’s bankruptcy. The vision, the courage, the dedication, the moral fire are now on the barely awakening side of the crusaders for capitalism.

The Left dare not say explicitly what motivates it, because what motivates it is the same ideology that brought us all of the 20th century tyranny and bloodshed. They have rarely had to, because the compromising Republicans have been granting the Democrats steady political gains bit by compromising bit. The rise of the Tea Party threatens to upset the game, and embolden Republicans to call the Left's "moderation" bluff. So, expect a lot of charges of "extremist" and "radical" to be hurled at the GOP in 2012. Will the Republicans find the ideological spine to turn the tables?

Finally, here is a response from another corespondent, who is obviously ignorant on both Rand and political philosophy:

Posted by grantmh

Fascists used the same language as Rand (and Zemack) to describe why their idea of a government designed to rule according to what a minority believes is optimal, is something other than fascism.

And my reply:

Posted on 7/21/2011 10:26:57 AM EDT

If Rand’s philosophy is fascist, then so were the Founding Fathers. In fact, the country should not be run by any minority. The minority – i.e., the individual - should be free to run his own life, so long as he/she respects and refrains from violating the rights of others to do the same. A proper government protects the individual’s rights, rather than run his life, and employs no policies that economically favor one group over another. It is capitalism – the separation of economics and state, and which is based upon the recognition of individual rights – that Rand upheld. This is the opposite of fascist doctrine, which means socialism through the back door.

It is primarily today’s Left that is in tune with fascism – in fact, rooted in it. Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism” makes the case unequivocally.

America: A Nation of Sacrifice?

2011-09-12T08:00:00.012-04:00

The New Jersey Star-Ledger’s editorial page memorial to 9/11 included a recount of some of America’s achievements:

Since the nation’s inception, we have scribbled big ideas on a blackboard and then executed them. We founded a democracy and nursed it through a bloody civil war. We overcame the Great Depression, beat the Nazis and built the middle class. We passed civil rights legislation, paved interstates and survived a corrupt presidency. We’ve been to the moon and back.

How did “we” do all of that, and all of the rest? Leaving aside the fact that this nation was not founded as a "democracy" or that "we" cannot do anything – only individuals acting independently, whether alone or in cooperation with others, are the source of human achievement – how does the Star-Ledger explain America’s past success? I’ve left the following comments:

Posted on September 11, 2011 at 9:45AM

"[W]e’ve missed the one common thread that runs through all of those historic accomplishments: personal sacrifice."

This nation was not built on “personal sacrifice”. Sacrifice is the rallying cry of the Islamic enemy that attacked this nation. They sacrifice their personal freedoms, the lives and property of others, and even their own lives, for the sake of a power higher than the individual human life – Allah, whose earthly representatives are to sit atop a worldwide theocracy. Sacrifice is the basic ingredient of every enemy of American ideals, from kings to feudal lords to tribal chiefs to Nazis to fascists to communists and – yes, it must be said - to welfare states.

America was built upon personal achievement, made possible by the celebration of the individual as the highest value. America was built by free people pursuing their own goals, purposes, values, welfare, and happiness within the framework of the protection of the individual liberties enshrined in our Founding documents. It is a nation built by individuals dedicated to doing the jobs they have freely chosen, to the best of their ability, even when that dedication means risking one’s life for others - like the first responders who died as a result of the 9/11 attacks. It is a nation defended by a courageous military whose individual members fight not for “the country” but for the ideals this country stands for, and by a citizenry that willingly supports it with its hard-earned dollars and patriotism.

The incessant demands for personal or “shared” sacrifice is killing America.

We must recognize that America was built and can only be restored by personal flourishing, not personal sacrifice. Logically, it can be no other way.

What, exactly, is a “sacrifice”? In today’s usage, it means giving up something desirable for another purpose. This vague understanding leaves out certain crucial contexts. For whose purpose? For a better purpose, or a lesser one? The vagueness leaves sacrifice to so broad a definition as to be almost meaningless. For example, a parent who forgoes spending on current luxuries in order to save for her child’s college education, or the young man who forgoes a social life to devote his time to a new business venture, or the soldier who puts his private life on hold to join the military, are commonly considered sacrifices, even though in each instance the individual is striving to make his life better by advancing a more important value or purpose that improves his life – an educated successful child, a future profit, or fight for the ideals that will later enable him to pursue his life in freedom.

These instances do not measure up to a clear, objective definition of sacrifice, such as the Objectivist definition:

“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue.

If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then renounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.

The second paragraph gives concrete instances of the difference between a gain and a loss, or sacrifice. The key is the relative worth one assigns to his values. As long as what is given up, no matter how valuable, is directed toward the achievement of a greater value to that individual, we are not talking sacrifice. The problem with today’s usage is that it conflates the two. This allows politicians or the Ledger to pass off and call for sacrifice as an unmitigated good, despite the fact that it could very well be evil. A true sacrifice is an act that makes one’s life worse – “the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue”. Who would advocate such a disastrous course of action on another human being, and how can anyone get away with it? Anyone attemping to advance their own agenda at someone else's expense, cashing in on the confusion surrounding the term “sacrifice”, and then switching the beneficiary of the sacrifice to the collective or some “higher” cause (In this connection, see “altruism”, the moral justification for sacrifice).

For example, the editors have been beating the drum for discriminatory tax increases on “the rich”. Will confiscating their money make them better off, as individuals”? The editors don’t care. “The country”, or “we”, will be better off. The loss is the individual’s, the gain is the collective’s, i.e., other people. Therefor, the rich must sacrifice, and be forced to do so, in order to, as the editors put it, “propel America to a new level of greatness”. “We” have a net gain. Politicians of all stripes cash in on the positive connotations of “sacrifice” in order to convince some electoral group or even the public at large to make their personal, individual lives worse; the argument being, essentially – “it’s for the better”, rather than “It’s for your betterment”, except in some vague undefinable way such as “the good of the country”.

We must come to understand the true meaning of the term “sacrifice”. It pertains only to individuals, and it means fundamentally only one thing – an individual making his own life worse. When a call is made to sacrifice, do not think of the parent, young man, or soldier I cited above. They, like most of us in the millions of choices we make individually in our private lives, are seeking to make their own lives better. When we are told that sacrifices must be made for the sake of some collective good like national greatness, a “stronger nation”, the common good, or some purpose “higher” than the individual, we are being told that America can prosper only if enough individuals’ lives can be made worse.

But a nation is made up only of individuals and it logically follows that a nation of sacrificial individuals can only lead to national disintegration. That is the process that is crippling our economy today. Sacrifice – true, objective sacrifice – is always an unmitigated evil. Always beware those peddling sacrifice – It’s your life they are after.

9/11 - A Decade Later, the Same Solution

2011-09-10T18:05:00.003-04:00

A proper war in self-defense is one fought without self-crippling restrictions placed on our commanders in the field. It must be fought with the most effective weapons we possess (a few weeks ago, Rumsfeld refused, correctly, to rule out nuclear weapons). And it must be fought in a manner that secures victory as quickly as possible and with the fewest U.S. casualties, regardless of the countless innocents caught in the line of fire. These innocents suffer and die because of the action of their own government in sponsoring the initiation of force against America. Their fate, therefore, is their government's moral responsibility. There is no way for our bullets to be aimed only at evil men. - Leonard Peikoff

This is a sampling of an essay by Leonard Peikoff, published on October 2, 2001. My contrbution to the commemoration of 9/11 is to highlight Peikoff's piece, entitled "End States Who Sponsor Terrorism".

This is a reminder that the "War on Terrorism" is not and never has been about terrorism. It is a War against an imperialist, aggressive, ideologically driven totalitarian movement bent on worlwide Islamic Supremacy. It is a movement that thinks in terms of decades and centuries, and believes that time is on its side.

We must Never Forget, and we must never forget the real nature of the enemy.

I'll close with the words that represent the root of the terrorists' hatred of us, and the only antidote to Islamic or any other brand of tyranny:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Related Links:

ARC on Islamic Totalitarianism

The Objective Standard, Summer 2011 Issue

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Some Recent Activism - 2

2011-09-08T13:29:00.013-04:00

Here are some articles and my engagement in the comments section:

Rand/Jesus Flap and Glenn Beck
- This article deals with the AVN ad I wrote about back in June.

In On income taxes and job creation, history debunks GOP views, the NJ Star-Ledger makes some spurious claims.

Cost should not matter when deciding birth control concerns insurance mandates.

Warning! Dangerous Intersection

2011-09-06T08:39:00.004-04:00

The Federal Government has filed suit against 17 major US and foreign banks. The Washington Post Business reports:

Federal regulators launched a broad legal assault on big banks Friday, claiming they sold nearly $200 billion in fraudulent mortgage investments to housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to massive losses during the financial crisis.

According to the court filings, those firms and others “falsely represented” the quality of the loans that were bundled into securities and sold to investors and “significantly overstated the ability of the borrower to repay their mortgage loans.” The result, the suits claim, were investments that were far riskier than the banks led taxypayer-backed [sic] Fannie and Freddie to believe, and the securities ultimately were worth a fraction of their original value.

“AHAH! We told you so. It was the free market that caused the financial meltdown, after all.” This is sure to be the rallying cry of statists from coast to coast. In fact, this case proves just the opposite. It points up the culpability of government and the dangers inherent in a mixed economy.

It’s fitting that the sub-heading of the Post website that published the aforementioned article is “Where Washington and Business Intersect”. That intersection is exactly the culprit.

Leaving aside for now the fundamental American principle of justice, “guilty until proven innocent”, let’s assume the banks did in fact fraudulently misrepresent the loans. The first question that comes to mind is; How could fraud on so massive a scale have happened in the first place? Fraudsters have always existed at the fringes of every walk of life. How did they suddenly acquire the power to bring an entire world financial system to the brink of ruin? There is only one possible answer – government interference into the market.

For an in-depth look at the financial crises, peruse the links provided below or my previous articles on the sub-prime mortgage crisis. But, here is a brief encapsulation.

Clinton/Bush/Congress affordable housing crusades “encouraged” banks to lower lending standards through regulatory pressure and mandates. The Fed provided unlimited amounts of ultra-cheap liquidity. Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie and Freddie, at the behest of politicians, bought up as many sub-prime mortgages that banks could originate. As noted in the article, they are taxpayer-supported. The bundled securities Fannie and Freddie pioneered were given AAA ratings by S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch - the government licensed, competition-protected rating agency cartel. Taxpayer-backed government mortgage guarantees and implied government bailout promises for “too-big-to-fail” institutions bestowed by politicians blessed the whole charade. Responsible lenders were disadvantaged in a politically corrupted marketplace, in favor of the quick-buck artists. The government created a conveyor belt of bad lending.

Only government force could have spread bad loans across the entire system. Now the government is using its prosecutorial authority to cover its own butt and support the politicians’ sinister attempts to switch the primary blame to a non-existent “free market”. It is the mother of all conflicts-of-interest. Nominally private banks face a civil suit by an institution that has massive regulatory power and can thus face regulatory reprisals; that has the arbitrary, predatory power of the antitrust laws and can thus face malicious prosecution; that has taxing powers, and thus face the constant threat of vengeful IRS audits: that has congress, with its posturing politicians and their investigatory and subpoena powers. The banks don’t stand a chance of a vigorously fair fight while their officers face the threat of political imprisonment and financial ruin – especially those with the weakest political connections.

The danger should be obvious. A government’s proper role in the sphere of civil dispute is to mediate; to be an impartial, objective arbiter between private parties who battle it out on the level playing field of the court system. But what happens when that allegedly objective arbiter is deeply entangled in the private economic sphere, as it is today in the financial system (and to varying degrees in all economic sectors)? When a private party is wronged by private fraud or breech of contract, it can turn to the government, whose sole responsibility is to protect everyone’s individual rights. What happens when your protector is the violator of your rights? To whom can you then turn? You have nowhere to turn, which means you are subject to the pressure of all manner of subtle, no-so-subtle, or even implied threats of reprisals from any number of governmental sources. Whether the banks are guilty or innocent, they are on anything but a level objective playing field.

This all reminds us to consider the answer to the age-old question: “Who will protect us from our protectors?” The point is not whether or not fraud was committed. It is not a matter of letting anyone off the hook. If fraud was committed, prosecutions are in order. It’s not even whether or not fraud was committed on so massive a scale as this suit implies; a likelihood that stretches the limits of one’s imagination, to put it mildly. The point is that if your protector is also the other party in the civil dispute, it’s no different than if you are accused of theft and the accuser is also the police chief, prosecutor, and judge – and refuses to recuse himself.

Never mind that the Federal Housing Finance Agency is separate from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They are all arms of the government, in one capacity or another, as are all of the government agencies that have some kind of authority over the private sector. They all ultimately come under the purview of the same politicians. The stench of political corruption is heavy. There is no way to know what complex interactions of political influence peddling is working behind the scenes. The article itself hints at this insidious process:

FHFA is an independent regulator, theoretically insulated from political influence in much the same way as the Federal Reserve. Still, the agency has been under pressure recently from the Obama administration, which has sought new measures to boost the weak housing market. Those ideas include a generous refinancing program that lets struggling borrowers get new mortgages at existing low rates.

Can anyone really say that the Federal Reserve is anything more than theoretically independent? Can any agency that owes its very existence to congress - that depends on congressional funding, confirmation hearings of its officials, legal monopoly guarantees, or congressionally bestowed taxpayer backing - be said to be truly independent? On what basis are we to believe that FHFA was not pressured by Obama or anyone else to file this lawsuit? And even if FHFA acted honorably and objectively in filing suit, that does not preclude pressure being applied to the defendants from other political players with a vested interest in the outcome being a guilty verdict.

The answer to all of these questions is, we will never know whether everything was on the up-and-up, because the conflicts of interest inherent in the mixing of economics – the sphere of voluntary contract - and law enforcement – the sphere of legalized physical force – are irresolvable.

The saga of the housing boom and bust is still unfolding. When the final chapter is written into the history books, the result is likely to be quite different from the history of the Great Depression. For decades, the Depression was blamed on the failure of the free market, and only very recently has that myth begun to unravel. Today, free market forces are armed with 70 additional years of theory, history, and experience. The incipient and corruptive nature of government interference is much better understood. In this very article, the reference to “taxypayer-backed Fannie and Freddie” speaks volumes about the government’s role in the crisis. This suit is just further evidence that the primary cause of the financial crisis was government interference. It could never have happened under laissez-faire capitalism. We need to close down the intersection of Washington and business, and instead phase in the separation of economics and state.

Rating Agencies? Still Subprime

ARC’s Response to the Financial Crisis

The Financial Crisis: Causes and Possible Cures

The Housing Boom and Bust

This year, Celebrate Intellectual Labor Day

2011-09-02T06:56:00.001-04:00

The United States Department of Labor, speaking on The History of Labor Day, had this to say on its website:

“Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those ‘who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.’ ”

Really? There is no doubt about what is meant here. McGuire was referring to people who “work with their hands”. Is that what built America? Physical labor has existed since time immemorial. What changed in the last two hundred + years that suddenly endowed the American worker with the means to produce “all the grandeur we behold” out of raw, “rude” nature? (Note the word “all”).

The American worker has, indeed, contributed significantly to the American Economic juggernaut. But, it was not because of his labor, as such. It was because of his intellectual mastery of the theoretical and material tools of production provided to him, that vastly increased the value of his labor.

Physical labor, as such, has very little value. Slaves can perform it. So can mules pulling hand plows.

Consider my trade, plumbing. If my job is fundamentally physical labor, then any able-bodied person off of the street can wander onto any construction jobsite and robotically perform the task of installing plumbing systems. He can simply be told: “Run this pipe from here to there”, and it will get done. He has the same muscles and bones, nerves and guts that I have, after all.

That, of course, could never be the case. Performing my task (or any construction trade) requires reliance on previously acquired theoretical knowledge, on-the-job apprenticeship training, the mastery of the tools of the trade, and years of learning experience. This is to say nothing of the continuing education that new materials and technologies require of me.

My job is knowledge-based. All modern jobs are, to varying extent. How did that knowledge become imbued in my brain? - by my choice to expend the intellectual effort to acquire it. Even the muscular physical motions my job requires had to be learned by a conscious mental effort that led to the appropriate neurological connections.

Do you still think labor built this country?

The idea that a laborer “works with his hands” is only superficially true. What directs the motions of his hands? It is his focussed, reasoning mind – if he is a motivated worker who strives to be the best that he can be at his chosen occupation. If not, then that worker is an occupational drone, an incompetent, or worse.

And that gets directly to the point. The celebration of “labor” as a holiday implies that mindless worker. Labor Day ignores the intellectual root of modern, productive labor. It ignores the intellectual labor that created the worker’s job to begin with, and the intellectual labor that the competent worker must expend to learn to perform his job.

Human knowledge is fleeting, but for the grace of those who came before us and chose to acquire it and pass it on. Knowledge can not be passed on from person to person or generation to generation innately. No one is born with previously discovered knowledge, but rather with a mind that is tabula rasa – a blank slate. To celebrate “all the grandeur we behold”, it is to the discoverer and the acquirers of knowledge that we must pay initial gratitude to. The worker, by learning the skills he needs to perform his job, plays his role in keeping that knowledge train going.

This does not, however, mean that labor is inconsequential. Theoretical knowledge in and of itself has little value, unless and until it is placed into the service of man’s living requirements. The process of turning knowledge into the material values humans need to live and to flourish is dependent upon the contributions of many economic players. The value of each player’s contribution to this productive process varies and is dependent upon many factors. But all through that process – from the discoverer of new knowledge to the final material product put together by the worker – the value added represents, at root, the application of the mind.

“[W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

“When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think…” (Page 1064)

Labor Day, according to the DOL, was created in 1882. That was the heyday of Karl Marx’s rise to prominence among the American intellectual elite. Marx was the theoretician of “Dialectical Materialism”, the idea that man’s consciousness – his spirit, his intellect, ability, and logic – plays at best a minimal role in the production process. Human beings, according to Marx, are conditioned by the physical world around them, including the means of production like tools and factories, which just happened into existence. Our modern, complex, and advanced industrial society is the product of mindless, conditioned muscular movements, according to Marx (and others). It is owing to the Marxist theory of the mind – i.e., spiritual values - as of little consequence that gave rise to the myth that labor and those that perform it are the primary engines of economic progress.

Labor Day, whether one knows or wants to admit it or not, is an outgrowth of Marxism and the “labor theory of economic value” that so enamored late 19th century American intellectuals.

The DOL concludes its Labor Day salute as follows:

"It is appropriate … that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

Not quite. Instead, we should pay tribute to the creator of the American worker.

This Labor Day, we should celebrate not workers, but those who made our jobs and prosperity possible. This country was not built by physical labor. It was built by intellectual labor applied to physical labor under a system of individual rights that allowed everyone the freedom to think and, above all, to act on his thinking. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for our labor, we “workers” should reflect on the mental efforts that we had to expend in order to acquire the previously discovered knowledge that makes it possible to perform our jobs. We should stop selling ourselves short. Labor Day is an insult to the American Worker.

More importantly, we should give silent thanks to all of those intellectual “laborers” who came before us – the discoverers, the inventors, the investors, the businessmen - who made our well-paying jobs possible.

Instead of Labor Day, we should celebrate Intellectual Labor Day.

Or, better yet, we should celebrate Capitalism – the social system of the United States of America. Capitalism unleashed the individual human mind. It is Capitalism that made it possible for the American worker to have acquired the means to rise to middle class status and prosper. It is Capitalism’s liberated human mind that from rude nature has delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.

Capitalism is what I will be quietly rejoicing as I enjoy my long weekend.

Happy Labor Day!!

A Bit More on Education Tax Credits

2011-08-30T16:48:00.000-04:00

In response to my 8/11/11 post, Education Tax Credits: Taking the Political Offensive, Ari Armstrong posted Another Look at Education Tax Credits. Much of his essay reiterates objections he already voiced against my proposal for universal education tax credits. However, he does make some points that I thought could be answered without being redundant. So, I’ve posted the following comments on his website:

Ari,

I appreciate your attention to this subject. Most of what you’ve said here I have already answered in my 8/11/11 post, and I refer the reader to that: http://principledperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/08/education-tax-credits-taking-political.html.

But, let me state that we are in complete agreement in regard to principled incrementalism. There is no confusion in my mind about “the relationship between principles and incrementalism”. That was the main point of my recent essay. However, people who agree on basic principles can differ widely on their application to practice – ex. personal accounts within SS.

Yes, they are government-enforced savings. But, what we have today is forced redistribution backed only by hollow promises of old-age benefits, rescindable at any time by congress. At least the taxpayer would have possession of, and a right to, his/her own money, rather than the politicians. I consider SS personal accounts to be a step toward individual rights, especially property rights - preferably without, but even with, basic investment controls. They can be advocated as a step in the phase-out process. Personal SS accounts are consistent with your statement that “tax credits advance individual rights … because at least they expand the individual’s control over his own resources.” Incremental reforms must certainly be anchored to explicitly proclaimed principles, lest we advance statism. On that we agree. As I’ve said before, I have yet to see an education tax credit program that meets the test of (free market) principled incrementalism – certainly not ones advocated by conservatives and Republicans!

This brings me to my “misunderstandings” about your positions. Any assumptions I’ve made are rooted in my analysis of things you wrote. Without going into too many details, let me just say in my defense that, as you acknowledge, your tax credit position is ambiguous. I’m still not clear on exactly where you come down on them. Your strenuous objections in your last piece seemed to preclude any support for tax credits, yet now you say you’d support “a decent tax-credit proposal”. Here we seem to agree again: A properly structured tax credit program would be a step in the right direction. What would a “decent proposal” include, in you view? Otherwise, I think you confuse “misunderstandings” with disagreement, such as on the issue of “inherent controls of tax credits”. If – and I can’t resist repeating myself here - “a universal tax credit program with absolutely no controls is pie-in-the-sky, rationalistic, detached-from-reality, utopian thinking”, then how on earth can anyone believe that “an actual legislature would [ever] institute” the complete separation of education and state?

By the way, what do you mean by “phasing in means testing (with lower taxes)” as one of “many concrete political strategies”?

That last question was not answered, so I still do not know what he has in mind.

That aside, notice that the issue of Social Security has surfaced as another area of disagreement. I’ll address that subject in more detail in a subsequent post.

In the meanwhile, I have a few additional comments. Toward the end, Armstrong writes:

LaFerrara points out that free-market elements of the economy routinely fall under increased political controls, too. But this misses the fundamental difference. In the market segment, the default is that the individual owns his own resources, and the government then overrides his rights for some alleged greater good. With tax credits, the default is that the individual does not own the resources in question, and the government is merely setting limits on how to allocate the government's money. With tax credits, the default and the inexorable condition is control.

I understand his point. But, isn’t this a distinction without a difference? The fundamental issue is not taxes. It is individual rights, with all of the principles that that implies. When a culture’s predominant political value is individual rights, the default is toward greater freedom. When individual rights are not valued, the default is toward steadily increasing government control. Today, most people would probably claim to be for individual rights. Unfortunately, few people have a real understanding of what rights are. Since one can’t value something that one doesn’t understand, “the default and the inexorable condition is control” throughout the economy, not just where tax credits are concerned.

Armstrong concludes:

If you think advocating tax credits will open people's minds to the idea that they actually own their own wealth, then I wish you well in that endeavor. But, in the interim, let's recognize tax credits for what they are: political controls on how people spend their money.

Opening people’s minds is exactly the point of advocating tax credits for the right philosophical reasons. I grant that “in the interim”, and lacking the proper philosophical backing, tax credits can coincide with political controls. But that need not be the case.

Paul Hsieh's Tribute to Steve Jobs

2011-08-27T17:00:00.001-04:00

By now most people have heard the news that Steve Jobs has stepped down as Apple CEO. In that regard, I want to call attention to an excellent tribute to him published in the American Thinker. It is by Dr. Paul Hsieh of FIRM (Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine).

In this piece, entitled Thank You, Steve Jobs, Hsieh draws on actual quotes by Jobs from an article in the Wall Street Journal. He concludes with this moving tribute:

So in the spirit of Atlas Shrugged, I'd like to thank you, Steve Jobs, for all the value you've added to my life. I know you did it for yourself, not for me -- and it is for that I thank you.

Why the reference to Atlas Shrugged? Let me first offer the passages Hsieh quotes, and then some.

* “We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

* “This is what customers pay us for–to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to customers, but it’s hard for them to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s great!’”

* “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

* “The problem with the Internet startup craze isn’t that too many people are starting companies; it’s that too many people aren’t sticking with it. That’s somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That’s when you find out who you are and what your values are.

“So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.”

* “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

* “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Do you recognize a particular sense of life? Hsieh cites Steve Wozniak, Job’s Apple co-founder, from TNW:

Despite times when Apple was in financial and structural turmoil, Wozniak believes Jobs’ speed of thought and endless drive helped the company move forward, believing that he may have adopted the ethos of the hard working, never failing Hank Reardon in Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged.

“Steve was very fast thinking and wanted to do things, I wanted to build things. I think Atlas Shrugged was one of his guides in life”

Ayn Rand is getting a lot of attention these days, primarily for her politics but increasingly for her radical new moral theories. But what gets lost in the shuffle is that Rand considered her body of ideas “A Philosophy for Living on Earth”. That philosophy, Objectivism, is first and foremost a set of principles to guide the individual in the pursuit of a flourishing life of his own.

It is not surprising then that Steve Jobs could have been inspired by one of Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes. It is also not surprising that so many millions have benefited from his work. As Hsieh implicitly points out in his closing statement, people pursuing their own dreams for their own benefit is the source of general well-being.

But Objectivism is not just a philosophy for productive giants. It is a philosophy for everyone.

Does Freedom Equal "The Wild West"?

2011-08-19T16:56:00.001-04:00

As I wrote about in June, New Jersey imposes no regulatory requirements on its homeschoolers (aside from a legal requirement that homeschooled children receive an education "equivalent" to that available in the public schools). But, triggered by a horrendous physical neglect case resulting in the death of a child, a chorus of calls have arisen to rescind that regulatory exemption. As I reported back then, the physical abuse case is merely a rationalization for curriculum controls. New Jersey's largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, has been leading the charge, beginning with its June 1st editorial.

The charge continued with a major July 10, 2011 piece entitled New Jersey home schooling: The Wild West of education by Julie O'Connor. Dropping any reference to the abuse case, O’Connor takes aim at a narrow range of ideas taught by some homeschoolers that she deems unacceptable. The ideas were lifted from the Conservapedia
of Andrew Schlafly
. Conservapedia’s purpose is to present a narrow conservative Christian viewpoint on a range of topics. The entire article focuses on Schlafly and the ideas he promotes for his homeschool followers and, based on this, calls for legislative action to impose state-approved educational standards.

I left these comments:

Zemack July 10, 2011 at 12:17PM

The key question is: Who gets to force their educational ideas on others? It’s not Schlafly. It’s the government, through curriculum, teacher credentialling, philosophy, and so on.

The fact that some of the ideas homeschoolers teach are garbage is not the issue. Plenty of garbage is peddled in the public schools as well; ex. Environmentalism. But that is not the fundamental issue, either.

The real danger is in the coercive nature of government-run schools. No one should be forced to financially support ideas they oppose. It is not private homeschoolers who demand that. No one should be forced to pay for the education of other people’s children. It is not private homeschoolers who demand that. No one should be empowered to impose his or her educational ideas on others. It is not homeschoolers who demand that power.

“One of the goals of creating clear, agreed-upon curriculum standards is to protect kids against people who have extreme ideological positions,” Harvard professor Robert Schwartz declares. “Agreed upon” – by whom? Whose “curriculum standards” are to be imposed? Who is to be the final arbiter of what constitutes such vague, undefinable criteria as “extreme ideological positions”? Who determines what ideas are “radical”? What of people who disagree? Shouldn’t they be free to pursue their own children’s education according to their own judgement? Advocates of state control say no – that would be “The Wild West of education” – the usual type of charge leveled against a fully free society. By that standard, this country’s founding principles of individual rights, free markets, and limited rights-protecting government is an “extreme ideological position”. John Dewey, the father of Progressive Education – the dominant public school philosophy – believed that the purpose of the schools is to prepare children not for a life as reasoning independent adults but to prepare them for authoritarian rule (“social adjustment”). But that’s not “extreme”, right?

For the record, I am not a proponent of homeschooling per se, but of freedom and individual rights in education. I am not a Christian, but an atheist. I defend the rights of homeschoolers because I defend rights, period. I believe that education and state should be walled off from each other in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of church and state. Rather than expand government controls, the government’s role in education should be steadily scaled back through such programs as school choice through universal education tax credits. Then the Schlaflys and Schwartzes can pursue their own educational agendas with neither having the power to impose theirs on each other or anyone else. Others will instead be free to choose among those and other’s ideas according to what they believe is best for their children.

It is standard practice for statists to narrow the focus to a handful of concrete instances of (allegedly) bad behavior in order to steer the discussion away from a broader context. For example, is the absorption by the child of a few objectively demonstrable factual falsities necessarily indicative of a bad education? That question is not answered in this article. Thus, the premise implied in this article is that education is merely about the memorization of specific facts. But, the more important question is: Is the child getting proper mind training? In other words, is the child learning how to understand and integrate the knowledge he is receiving, for instance? A proper education will equip the child with the ability to re-evaluate the knowledge he has received – to think independently - as and when he chooses, whether as an older child or as an adult. Religious dogma does often defy common sense. But plenty of religious people lead intellectually healthy lives, despite holding some erroneous “facts” in their brains. There is more to education than a few bad bits of knowledge.

I also want to focus on O’Connor’s “Wild West” analogy, alluded to in my article commentary, because it really offers a peak into the statist mindset. The Wild West conjures up images of a nearly lawless frontier town, where women and children scurry for cover while routine disputes get settled amid raging gun battles. Force is the name of the game in the Wild West, and law is the ingredient that is missing from the equation. What is the proper purpose of laws? To protect the citizens from the criminals who initiate the use of force.

So think about this for a minute. In New Jersey in 2011, the issue is again force and law. Only now, their relationship will have been inverted if Julie O’Connor gets her way. We’re not talking about the use of force by private citizens against other private citizens. We’re talking about government assuming the role of the criminal in the Wild West, and initiating force against private citizens. What is the enemy? The free flow of ideas.

But it actually gets worse. We live in a mixed economy, where government’s role as an individual rights-protector as envisioned by the signers of the Declaration of Independence has been seriously fractured. America is a long way from its original conception as a constitutionally limited republic. It is more accurate to refer to ours as a system of democratic statism. The government has the power, but its power is at the pleasure of whatever competing special interest pressure groups hold sway over government’s regulatory apparatus at any given moment. Since O’Connor holds that only government-approved ideas may be taught to children, then it follows that those ideas must be determined by the “recognized educational experts” of the political factions that hold immediate sway.

In other words, in the very same– though more “civilized” – Wild West fashion, permissible educational ideas are determined by legislative or bureaucratic fiat arising from the winners of the “democratic” battle over whose ideas may be forced upon all others. Such is the nature of government-run public education. Precisely this kind of battle is currently being fought at the state level in Texas, and such battles happen regularly around the country. And the winners of these battles may not always be to O’Connor’s liking. O’Connor should consider that Andrew Schlafly or other like-minded activists are the “recognized educational experts” behind the Creationist Texas factions fighting to impose “a misguided curriculum that defies science and, well, common sense”. And they may win.

It is largely to escape from ideas that they disagree with but that are forced upon them that so many parents choose private education, including homeschooling. Yet O’Connor and other statists are not content to live-and-let-live. O’Connor throws around terms like “Wild West” and “Free-for-all” to describe freedom of judgement for homeschoolers in the crucial field of educational ideas, and wants to stamp it out in New Jersey. To make her case, she smuggles in the premise that freedom is anarchy and government controls the only antidote, by means of inverting the Wild West analogy. But by inverting the premises of force vs. voluntary choice, and then choosing the side of force, she in fact is adopting the very methods of that lawless frontier town – attempting to settle differences with some homeschooling parents by force rather than persuasion.

But freedom does not mean anarchy. It means freedom from forcible interference from others. It requires a government of laws designed to protect that freedom. Anarchy and statism are two sides of the same coin, and freedom is the only antidote to both.

Education Tax Credits: Taking the Political Offensive

2011-08-11T10:32:00.037-04:00

85-90% of America’s K-12 education is government-run. Can a complete separation of education and state be achieved through incremental free market reforms directed over time at the heart of that institution? Or, are such efforts doomed by the intermediate threat of statist inroads into the private school sector, leaving the public school sector essentially off limits to major political challenge unless and until the ideal of free market education can be achieved in a single sweeping transformation?

I addressed those questions in an LTE response in the Summer 2011 issue of The Objective Standard. In light of a recent critique of education tax credits, however, an elaboration of my position is warranted.

Earlier this year, Ari Armstrong leaned in favor of an education tax credit plan shaped in line with a proposal I laid out in the Spring 2011 issue of The Objective Standard. In a more recent essay, he moved in the opposite direction. Though acknowledging that “There might be other good reasons for promoting universal tax credits for education,” Armstrong contends that tax credits nevertheless “will not eliminate government controls over education spending”. Thus tax credits, including my plan, must be rejected. Instead, he promoted a much more subdued reform agenda.

I believe his focus was right the first time. Can there be risks to the private school sector in pursuing tax credits? Yes, but so are there risks in a defensive political strategy, as I will show. The right course of action must be determined within the broad context of the political dynamics of our heavily regulated mixed economy.

I contend that an aggressive incremental approach toward greater and greater educational freedom is not only viable but the only realistic strategy in an economy as mixed – i.e., as government-dominated - as ours, and that free market forces can successfully apply that strategy against the public school sector. Armstrong, unfortunately, seems content to stop well short of taking the political offensive. But this approach is very likely self-defeating, because a mixed economy doesn’t stand still: Beneath the seemingly chaotic surface turmoil, a mixed economy is essentially a tug of war between statism and freedom. There is no fixed status quo between these two absolutes.

Notice how the political “center” keeps moving Left over time. Why is that? By its very nature, mixed economy politics is a game of compromise. And in almost any political compromise, one side scores a net gain, the other a loss. For generations, the predominant winners in the game of compromise have been the statists. But that is not because mixed economy politics inherently favors statism. The reason is that the Left/socialists have always cleaved uncompromisingly to their altruist/collectivist principles, enabling them to make political compromises that nevertheless always moved the ball toward their socialist goal line. On the other hand, the Right/capitalist side largely lacked the philosophical firepower that their case depended upon, leading to political meekness and retreat. A good example of this process in action is the recent healthcare debate, where Obama compromised by “caving” on the “public option”, yet through ObamaCare still scored significant progress toward his goal of universal healthcare. Thus, our mixed economy almost always seems to move away from freedom (For more on this, see my “Extremists vs. the Moderates: Why the Left Keeps Winning, and the Right has been Powerless to Stop It”.)

This dynamic mixed economy pattern can be turned to our favor. As Armstrong emphasizes, “we cannot move closer to that [free market] ideal without advocating the fundamental principles of liberty and individual rights.” We already understand these principles, which our case depends upon. So, to reverse the historic drift toward statism, we can and must take the offensive not just ideologically but also politically. My plan moves us from almost complete statism in education to a mixed system, featuring much expanded freedom. Once in place, it is simply not a given that statism must have the upper hand – until and unless we concede the statists’ premises. Armstrong states that “In a very real sense, the government continues to claim ownership of the funds in question [which is] money … not fundamentally owned by the person who earns it [!].” But that is precisely the political premise that our side can and must turn on its head (See my LTE response in the Summer 2011 issue of TOS). In a very real sense, statism is a government claim to every dollar earned, none of which is held to be fundamentally owned by the person who earned it. Just listen to the Leftists whose political rhetoric is saturated with the premise that every dollar retained by the private sector is in effect a “tax credit” against the government’s automatic claim to that money. Just what premise underpins politicians’ calls to “invest” in education, clean energy, and so on. When it is said that “we” or “society” must solve this or that social ill, what is implied? Statist politicians can and do claim ownership in a variety of ways, but we should never concede the premise of ownership apart from the principle of actual possession of the funds in question.

Armstrong contends that “The fundamental weakness of [my program is that] the government continues to forcibly transfer people's money to education.” That “fundamental weakness”, however, is inherent in this country’s educational system as it currently stands. As a transitional program, the temporary preservation of the taxing powers of the state is a vital component of my proposal. Armstrong worries that “tax credits further entrench the principle that government may force people to spend their earnings on other people's education.” I disagree. Once the choice of how their education dollars can be spent is relegated to the taxpayer, we will be closer to the day when it will be politically feasible to question why he or she must be forced to pay any government-mandated sum. The redistribution principle, already fully entrenched, can only be weakened under tax credits, in my view. This may be debatable but in any event it’s a risk worth taking. Given the political realities of the current system that guarantees every child a K-12 education – in theory if not in practice - this country currently will not stand still for any privatization plan that is perceived to leave any child without a financial means to an education. This will be true for the foreseeable future. Retaining the educational guarantee to each child is not a submission to the statist premises, but recognition of current political realities and, importantly, a nod to the practical and moral imperative to allow time for the development of a private school sector large enough to absorb the tremendous demand that will be unleashed by the ending of public education. If, as a transitional program, retaining some lingering statism for a time is a flaw, then all incremental “free market reforms” across the board are invalidated. Out the window go personal accounts within Social Security: out go Health Savings Accounts: out goes a flat-rate income tax; out go charter schools; out go any political proposals intended to bring greater freedom and fairness from an individual rights perspective, short of sudden and complete laissez-faire; Out, in other words, go free market forces from the political arena.

On the issue of the possible misuse of tax credits, the most deplorable cases have always served as a rationalization for statism. It is precisely in the face of the most despicable practitioners of any given right that freedom’s champions must take their most formidable stand. This is an issue not merely of educational freedom but of freedom, period. Statists don’t need tax credits to justify intrusive laws; just one high-profile despicable case will do– see my post A “Regulation-Free Zone for Home-Schooling Families” Comes Under Attack in NJ”. Here, a single horrific child abuse case involving alleged homeschooling parents has brought a chorus of calls for homeschool registration and curriculum controls where none now exist. After a similar case eight years ago, homeschool forces fought ferociously to kill proposed regulatory legislation. “You would have thought I had suggested the end of the world as we know it,” lamented the legislation’s sponsor after withdrawing her bill. Homeschool liberty’s forces wouldn’t accept guilt-by-association then, and shouldn’t now.

Wouldn’t Armstrong applaud the efforts to keep NJ’s homeschool sector unregulated? If so, that would contradict his position on tax credits. The very same type of arguments that he and TOS correspondents Plafker and McKendree make against my program are being leveled against NJ’s unregulated homeschool sector, and can be and are leveled against a fully free market as well. If the potential for abusive instances disqualify unconditional tax credits, shouldn’t a few instances of actual abuse also justify homeschool regulation in NJ? And if not, wouldn’t fighting to “protect and expand the liberties of homeschoolers” include not just stopping NJ’s proposed regulations but also fighting for the right of homeschoolers’ to spend their education dollars toward their homeschooling efforts?

Likewise, Armstrong’s charge of “rampant corruption a totally uncontrolled [?] tax credit system would promote” could double as an argument against free markets. Where does one see “rampant corruption” in people spending their own money in a manner of their own choosing – the basic premise of a free market – as they would under my plan? In a free market, wouldn’t there also be children whose educational needs will be neglected? If my plan is a political “fantasy” based upon this logic, then what does that say about the political possibilities of an actual free market? Once again, objections raised against my program are no different than those hurled by statists against a free market. If rampant corruption and widespread educational neglect would be the hallmark of my program, then the same must be said of a fully free market; which, after all, means “totally uncontrolled”. And if that were true, then free markets would not work.

In response to the argument that under my plan some will make bad or immoral choices, the proper response is: What about those who make good choices? Freedom will never mean universal rationality: It simply means free.

Perhaps a better way to understand my intent is to put it this way: As I’ve said, my essential purpose is to empower parents to in effect “opt out” of the public school system so as to separate education and state one child at a time. Thus the same arguments—the same principles—that underpin the case for full separation are applicable to each individual taxpayer participating in my program. A key difference between my plan and the one Armstrong laid out in his February essay is that he allows that government must establish limits on how tax credits can be spent, not just on how much can be spent on each child and by each taxpayer. He writes:

Note that our proposal does not really give the taxpayer full choice over his or her resources. Even our plan falls short of the standard of individual rights and free markets, for it requires people to direct a portion of their resources to schools. Real liberty means people can spend their earnings however they wish, whether for schools, medical research, a new business, or a trip to the Bahamas.

But why must it “fall short” at all? If, to revisit a previous point, the proper standard is individual rights and free markets, then does not succumbing to the premise of the government’s continuing “claim [to] ownership of the funds in question” constitute a contradiction of his own standard? Under his plan, as under mine, the taxpayer is spending his own money. “Each taxpayer pays a certain amount for education through various taxes. Whatever that amount is, the taxpayer should be able to decide where that money goes.” Why attach government conditions if “each individual has the right to control his own earnings, and…should be able to fund any school he wishes, or no school at all.” By his original concession to government regulation, Armstrong paved the way to the next logical step – “rethinking” his own plan based upon threats to the private sector; threats that his own concessions allowed in.

My plan links all education tax credits to the sponsorship of a child’s education. It also limits how much can be allocated to each child and the total amount the taxpayer can claim in credits, based upon the current public cost of educating that child and on how much the taxpayer pays in education taxes. The purpose of these restrictions is to maintain our current national commitment to finance the education of every child – which is an intermediate-term political and practical necessity, as I’ve said. Beyond that, the government is out of the picture for the very reasons Armstrong articulates it should be. If a parent has allowable credits of $10,000 and can properly educate his child for $6000, he is free to use the remaining $4000 for “medical research, a new business, or a trip to the Bahamas”. And why not? He has pulled his child from the public schools, relieving the government of that responsibility. He could, of course, send that $4000 to the public schools. But how is giving the government that undeserved windfall justified, but the taxpayer claiming it for non-education expenses “corrupt”? Once he pulls his child from the government schools, why shouldn’t that parent be free precisely “to control his own earnings”. I see no reason to grant the politicians any regulatory concessions or automatic claims to that parent’s money once a child has been moved to the private sector. (This feature of my program has the added benefit of injecting an element of price discipline into the private sector. By allowing that parent to use any unused credits for other purposes, he has an incentive to seek the most cost-effective education he can find. Without it, he will not much care whether his child’s private tuition is $6000 or $9999, since any “savings” gets turned over to the government schools.)

Furthermore, even after a fully free market is established, the debate over government’s role in education – and thus the threat of government controls - will still be with us. The issue is broad and deep. Armstrong accepts that “in a truly free market … parents who do not provide their children with a basic education, as with parents who do not provide adequate nutrition, may be charged with child abuse.” If so, then another “salient point” to keep in mind is that the government must define “basic education” - i.e. there must be “government guidance” – and the government must then implement a way to enforce parental compliance (standardized testing, perhaps?). So again, even in a fully free market, we run into the same fundamental problem as Armstrong fears under tax credits – the potential for an opening wedge of statism.

Indeed, the most complex constitutional and legal challenges for advocates of individual rights revolve around children. Parents certainly have a moral obligation to properly educate their children. Failing to do so certainly constitutes neglect if not outright abuse. Government, in its proper role as a rights-protector, certainly has a role to play in regards to children, whose rights are in effect held “in trust” by the parents. This role is clear-cut in regards to physical abuse. But enforcing an educational obligation by law is problematic, to say the least. Granting government the power to prosecute parents who neglect their children’s educational needs is, in the abstract, a proper function. And drawing a legal line or “wall” between that function and keeping government’s nose out of private education may be feasible. However I’m not at all convinced that it’s possible. So, until it can be shown otherwise, I’ve taken the position – no government say in any child’s private education. (I grappled with this issue for a long time, and only recently did I arrive at my current position. I owe an intellectual debt to TOS’s Craig Biddle for pointing me toward an understanding of the basic contradiction involved in granting government any say in education while struggling to achieve a free market in that field.) The broader point of this is to demonstrate once again that the risks inherent in any reform that retains, for a time, compulsory education taxation do not melt away even if those taxes are repealed and we achieve a fully free market. The debate over the proper role of government, and how that role translates into law, is ever present, and statists will always seek to levy controls on the private sector, just as they have levied an avalanche of mandates on private health insurance. If “tax credits will not eliminate government controls over education spending”, then neither will a free market, if “parents who [in the opinion of government officials] do not provide their children with a basic education … may be charged with child abuse”.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” and it always will be.

Yes, the risks are there. But, consider this very possible scenario. Suppose my plan were to be enacted, but with certain conditions attached by statists; ex. a minimal requirement to teach “the three Rs”, the “basic education” that Armstrong believes government should enforce in a free market. Given the realities of mixed economy politics, that could very well happen, or worse, even over our objections. One never knows how new laws will emerge from the legislative meat grinder. In that case, the odds would still be on the side of free marketeers. For starters, the very fact of my plan’s enactment will have implied strong public support for free market principles – i.e. a large degree of success in educating the public on principles of liberty. This, in turn, would imply a political consensus against serious government intrusion into school governance, limiting the statists’ power. This, coupled with the logic of the program, would leave principled free marketeers with the upper hand and the statists on the defensive – a reverse of the current mixed economy pattern alluded to above. The risk of government interference in the private market would be very manageable. And to the extent that children are moved into the private school sector, we will see an immediate reduction in government involvement in education.

As to the political viability of the program, the lack thereof at any given moment is not a valid argument against an idea. But it must be considered if one wants to make political headway. If “there is simply no way a law such as [mine] would ever pass”, then it is a free market that is truly a “fantasy”.

Armstrong argues that “real education reform” means to “protect and expand the liberties of homeschoolers and private schools, … check runaway spending on government education and seek to disempower the teachers' unions.” Can this really be called reform? These types of initiatives - along with charter schools, NJ’s new Interdistrict Public School Choice Program, and others like them – do not lack merit, within the existing context of government-run schools. But where does real structural reform begin, if we so restrict our political activism? Where does “the standard of individual rights and free markets” come in? Where exactly is “the movement toward true freedom in education” (Emphasis added)? Real education reform, I argue, must be broad and targeted at school taxes – i.e. the government’s hammerlock on education. Significant progress even on Armstrong’s restrained checklist of “real education reform” will remain a steep uphill struggle until control of education dollars is taken out of the hands of government. Absent that, the growth and freedom of the private education sector will remain peripheral and stunted – at best - under the suffocating blanket of the unchallenged status quo, and the tax-fueled power of the teacher’s union will remain largely intact.

We cannot ignore the realities and dynamics of mixed economy politics. We will never get to a free market if we don’t go on offense – indeed, we may well backslide if our strategy is merely to hold the line - and we will never get there all at once. The Alliance for the Separation of School and State outlines how parents and other private institutions could adequately fund the schools once a free market is established. But, how do we get from here to there? We need a strong conduit to bring our educational efforts into the political arena. It’s one thing to say, “each individual has the right to control his own earnings”, and quite another when you can add “and here is my plan to begin to make that happen”. We must be willing to take calculated risks and put forth practical ideas that may be politically challenging today, and then focus our ideological and educational efforts on bringing the public to us. A tax credit program affords the invaluable tool of concretization of the abstract case for free markets. Just two decades ago, school choice was a political pipe dream … a “fantasy” in Armstrong’s terms. Today it is in the cultural “mainstream”. In our era of rampaging statism, education is one area that the political winds are at the backs of free market champions.

We need to think hard about this issue. We must do more than tinker around the edges. I opened with a series of questions. My answers are embodied in my proposal. My final questions to critics: What do we do about that 85-90%? If not school choice through tax credits, then what? If not now, then when?

Mike LaFerrara

*Afterword*

As Armstrong mentioned in his essay, The Alliance for the Separation of School and State opposes both vouchers and tax credits. If the omission from my article of that fact conveyed the implication that they would be supportive of my program, it was strictly unintentional. I was well aware of their position, and I obviously disagree with them.

Constitutional Distortions: Free Speech vs. Freedom of Speech

2011-08-05T18:36:00.000-04:00

When we refer to “free”, what do we mean? In economics, free means to receive some man-made value without cost or payment; i.e., paid for by someone else (nothing that requires productive effort is actually free). In the political realm, however, “free” means freedom of action in a social context; i.e., in the absence of physical compulsion, threats, interference, or coercion from other human beings.

Clearly, there are two separate meanings. When taken together, you get a free, laissez-faire capitalist society: Politically, you may not be forced, from which follows that economically what is received free is only through voluntary means, such as a business promotional, a gift, or charity. Put another way, economic freedom – which means essentially a recognition and protection of property rights – presupposes political freedom. To destroy one, is to destroy the other.

A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country’s wealth is accomplished by inflating the currency—so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process entails such a growth of newly promulgated “rights” that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed. Just as bad money drives out good money, so these “printing-press rights” negate authentic rights.

The “gimmick” was the switch of the concept of rights from the political to the economic realm. (Emphasis added.)

Ayn Rand’s astute observation is relevant in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling on an Arizona law instituting public financing of legislative candidates. Since property rights, as philosopher Ayn Rand has observed, “are, in fact, political rights” because the acquisition of private property stems from the freedom of action inherent in the concept of political freedom - in this case, the freedom of production and trade – the “gimmick” will undermine both. Fortunately, the Arizona law was struck down. The decision did leave in place the basic legal legitimacy of public financing of political campaigns. My focus here is on the reasoning behind the decision on the Arizona law, both pro and con, and how they relate to the issue of rights discussed above.

The Arizona law was struck down because it was based upon a “printing-press right”; an alleged “right of reply”. In short, a candidate lacking the financial wherewithal to counter an opponent is automatically granted government funds for his campaign. The government-funding spigot is basically open-ended. (The law does place a financial limit of three times the “base amount” – the candidate’s initial public grant. But the number of candidates eligible is unlimited. This is relevant to the majority’s reasoning, as we shall see. Anyway, once the escalation principle is established, the politicians will inevitably “escalate” their limits through revisions in the law.) This is clearly a violation of others’ property rights; of taxpayers who must be forcibly obliged to provide the politician with a forum he himself could not or would not supply. This, of course, is nothing new. Our entire welfare state is based on this kind of redistribution of wealth. The NY Times gives a brief overview of the law that was struck down:

[The] Arizona law…provided escalating matching funds to candidates who accept public financing.

The majority said the law violated the First Amendment rights of candidates who raise private money. Such candidates, the majority said, may be reluctant to spend money to speak if they know that it will give rise to counterspeech paid for by the government.

The [Arizona law] gave public money to candidates who agreed to limit their personal spending to $500, participate in at least one debate and return unspent money. Such candidates received initial grants and then more money based on the amounts spent by privately financed opponents and by independent groups supporting them. (Emphasis added.)

Notice the italicized phrase. So, the law is an open-ended assault on the taxpayers based solely on any number of political candidates’ inability or unwillingness to raise money voluntarily. Rutgers Professor Frank Askin whines in the NJ Star-Ledger that the law is needed to provide “the wherewithal for additional speech (a right of reply?) by a candidate, who is being drowned out by an opponent who refused public money”. But as one correspondent put it:

The issue is really one of allocating public money to a candidate. The whole premise for arguing for this law goes back to the basic redistribution mantra. If a privately funded candidate makes a stronger case and gets more funding, why should the public have to jump in with their money to support the less popular candidate? It is one argument to give basic "seed money" to a candidate, it is quite another to keep upping the ante to stay competitive with the privately funded candidate. The real issue is, once again, income redistribution rather than free speech. (Posted by estowisdom, July 01, 2011 at 8:06AM)

Another was more succinct, zeroing in on what may motivate Leftists; the “drowning out” of privately funded free speech:

This law presented numerous scenarios in which a privately funded candidate would be burdened by spending over the initial limit ($21,000 in Askin’s example) To cite a few: in a race with numerous candidates the private candidates’ extra spending would trigger matching funds to all other candidates but not himself. Thus, the private candidate would be releasing 3 or 4 times his expenditure to his opponents. The matching program also kicked in if an independent group funded ads against the publicly funded candidates (again the private candidate received nothing); the matching program kicked in if an independent group-who by definition is out of the control of the candidate- runs an ad for the private candidate. Beyond theoretical scenarios, the District Court heard evidence of witnesses who testified they didn’t run ads for fear of triggering matching funds. (Posted by Jeff, July 02, 2011 at 11:35AM )

This is what Chief Justice Roberts was referring to when he said “Laws like Arizona’s matching funds provision…inhibit robust and wide-open political debate”.

The Left has always disdained private property rights. But now, if the minority had gotten its way, the ongoing destruction of property rights would have found its way into the political arena. It’s a good demonstration of Ayn Rand’s crucial observation that “Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced.”

It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.

The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree—and thus keeps the road open to man’s most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.

The violation of property rights is not the only danger; not by a long shot. Two other related threats aimed directly at the heart of a free society are evident. The “right to disagree”, a fundamental human right, gets smashed by this law. First, taxpayers – including those advocating, through their privately funded campaigns, the ideas that triggered the “right to reply” – are forced to support ideas with which they disagree. This is immoral at its core, and contradicts the very premise of freedom of speech, the press, assembly; the entire First Amendment. If the expression of one’s beliefs automatically triggers a government-mandated obligation to fund others’ means of expressing opposition, then one’s own expression is not free. Freedom of speech means simply that one may not stop others from speaking out against one. Others are always free to fund the expression of their own ideas, whether individually, or through activist groups or political candidates. But according to the Left, the “right to reply” morphs into “the right to reply at others’ expense”: a printing-press “right” negates an authentic right.

Second, the Arizona law opens the door to censorship. Dissenting Justice Elena Kagan said the Arizona law advanced First Amendment values. “What the law does — all the law does — is fund more speech,” she wrote. But as the history of the welfare state has overwhelmingly proven, the government will and must set the terms for the use of every check it cuts and doles out. When the government pays for the expression of ideas, it implicitly holds the power to determine which and whose ideas get funded. When statists declare that “all” they want to do is “fund” this or that, don’t believe it. Government financing is government control. We see it in government-financed healthcare; and education; and in highway funds dispersed to the states. A government check always comes with strings attached. Chief Justice Roberts zeroed in on the crucial essence of the issue. Quoting from the Times article:

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that its main purpose was to level the playing field for political speech, which several earlier decisions have said is an improper goal.

“It is not legitimate for the government to attempt to equalize electoral opportunities in this manner,” he wrote. “And such basic intrusion by the government into the debate over who should govern goes to the heart of First Amendment values.” (Emphasis added.)

Chickens are coming home to roost for the Left on this. The Left has always claimed to be supporters of the First Amendment, while simultaneously claiming the right to redistribute private property. That contradictory stance could not and can not hold. Here we see the climax of that contradiction coming to the fore in the form of the court’s minority opinion. The Left’s welfare-state destruction of property rights has led directly to their concerted attack on the First Amendment that they claim to cherish.

This case was decided 5-4. How disturbingly close we are to a major blow against freedom of speech is evident in the very narrow margin of the decision.

Is there Really No “I” in Teamwork?

2011-08-02T18:30:00.000-04:00

Though not interested in football, this article caught my attention; or rather, was brought to my attention through a private Objectivist activist e-mail community. The title of the article, Even now, there is no ‘I' in hall-bound Clendon Thomas, cuts right to the heart of what’s wrong with the world – the devaluation of individual ability, and of the individual as such.

Jenni Carlson writes about a luncheon held in honor of a great All-American football star, Clendon Thomas, who had been chosen for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. The 400-person luncheon was insisted upon by his friends, and held, over the objections of Thomson, whose character, it is said, is marked by “His deep humility”.

Even standing at the podium at a luncheon honoring him was tough for Thomas.

“This is an awkward moment for me,” he admitted. “I will go to New York in December (for the induction ceremony), and I will receive a token of appreciation for something that we accomplished together.”

He glanced around the room.

“We know there's no I on a football team.”

How many times have we heard athletes talk like that? Hundreds? Thousands? But really, how often have we believed that the words were genuine?

Thomas was.

In response, I left this commentary:

As a plumber working in the construction field, I can tell you that no building can ever be completed unless every individual - from the architect to the engineer to the material supplier to the construction manager to the supervisor to the general foreman to the foreman to the tradesman to anyone else involved - does his job, with all that that implies. Building a building, like any other cooperative human undertaking, is a team effort based upon the effort of a whole series of “I”s, each of whom acquired his knowledge and skills by personal choice and effort, and is driven by his own self-motivation, self-discipline, and self-interest.

Without the “I”, there can be no teamwork. This is a metaphysical fact, because the individual is the basic unit of humanity. The degradation of the individual leads to the false dichotomy between individualism and teamwork, which leads to the sad spectacle of a great achiever deflating his own achievement. Rather, Thomas has every right to feel and exhibit pride that he played his particular position well enough to earn his place in the Hall of Fame, even as he pays due recognition to his teammates.

In any event, congrats to Mr. Thomas.

There is an inherent contradiction in any manifestation of collectivism - which is based on the ethics of altruism; the doctrine that holds that the measure of the moral worth of any person consists solely in putting others above self. Clendon Thomas’ “humility” highlights it. If the primary source of Thomas’ achievement lies with his teammates, then it follows that the primary source of each of their achievements lies not in their individual abilities but in other teammates. If what’s true for Thomas is true for each member of the team, then what is the source of the team’s national titles of 1955 and 1956? This circular logic leads to the bizarre conclusion that great teams require no individual excellence; that the team’s metaphysically autonomous human components are of no consequence; that nobody on the team can claim the right to say, “I achieved this”. A team achievement without individual achievement is a contradiction in terms.

Without the “I”, there can be no teamwork, because there could be no team.

The Resurrection of Ronald Reagan

2011-07-29T12:24:00.011-04:00

The Democrats have re-anointed former Democrat Ronald Reagan into their party! They are lecturing Republicans to follow their hero’s example. But, what is the real lesson the GOP should draw from the Left’s sudden infatuation with Reagan?

Ronald Reagan is the icon of the modern conservative movement. He is also the only American politician that I have ever been passionate about. To be sure, he was a very mixed bag from an Objectivist perspective. But he stood for certain definite principles, even though in practice he was far from consistent. On the positive side, he went to bat for the productive members of society, he extolled the individual and the private sector against the state, and his agenda of income tax rate cuts, modest regulatory restraint, and sound Federal Reserve monetary policy ignited a nearly two decade long economic expansion that blasted Keynesian economics into the dust bin of history, despite its vampire-like reincarnation of the past few years. From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, unemployment, interest rates, and price inflation all trended steadily lower simultaneously. This was thought to be impossible according to Keynesian dogma (along with the 1970s “stagflation” – the combination of high price inflation and slow economic growth).

Perhaps the biggest blockbuster of his presidency was his policy towards the Soviet Union. He firmly championed, and pursued policies to reflect, the fervent belief that Soviet Communism was a house of cards that would collapse of its own weight if only the West would stop propping it up economically. The results were dramatic.

He had plenty of flaws and inconsistencies, however. He supported the New Deal, and as president signed a bill raising Social Security taxes in order to save it for 75 years (remember that?). He helped ignite the Religious Right by courting them as part of the “Reagan Coalition”, swinging to their authoritarian social agenda including eroding the separation of church and state. He failed to fight hard enough to reign in government spending.

The Left has seized upon this last to transform Reagan into a welfare state icon. In The new party of Reagan, Dana Milbank writes:

After he switched to the Republican Party in 1962, Ronald Reagan famously quipped: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”

Now, the Republican Party is doing the same thing to him — and Democrats are happy to take Reagan back.

Milbank then reels off a litany of compromises Reagan made, both as Governor of California and President of the United States. They range from tax hikes to debt limit increases to a Medicare expansion. He is “revered by many Democrats”, a “procession” of whom “claimed Reagan’s support for their position…during the debt-limit debate”. Audio recordings of Reagan warning of the dangers of failing to raise the debt limit is the new rallying cry of the Democrats. There is even a quote from Mike Huckabee about how “he made deals with Democrats [and] compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.”

But what are the Democrats really saying? Perhaps not exactly what they think they are saying. There is a lesson hidden behind the Democrats’ sudden resurrection of Reagan from liberal hell.

The NJ Star-Ledger weighs in:

[The GOP] is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan, who raised the debt limit 18 times and included tax hikes in 11 of them. He saw that deficits were skyrocketing on his watch, and he understood that compromising on his conservative principles was not the same as betraying them. He was a realist.

In answer, I left the following comment:

Zemack, posted July 22, 2011 at 6:59PM

In their enthusiasm to trash the Tea Party, the editors made the “radical Republicans’ ” case. Every budget Reagan sent to congress in the 1980s was declared “dead on arrival” by the liberal Democrats, who then so larded them up that even the surging federal tax revenues of the ‘80s, which doubled under Reagan’s watch, couldn’t keep up. Yet, Reagan “compromised his conservative principles” in the name of “realism”.

Imagine if, instead, Reagan had taken the “radical” stand of drawing the line somewhere along that parade of debt ceiling and tax increases? Imagine if he had stuck to his conservative principles and demanded that congress bring its spending into line with the generous revenue stream emanating from the Reagan economic boom? Imagine if his party then picked up where he could have left off, rather than go the way of neo-conservatism and George W. Bush.

The obvious lesson to be drawn here is that the explosive growth of the welfare state spending juggernaut – now at an astounding and destructive 25% of GDP - is driven by the Left’s best secret weapon, those principle-compromising Republicans. It’s a pattern that has been going on for decades. The Republicans are guilty, all right. We’ve been brought to the economic precipice by welfare statists traveling on a long road paved by conservative compromises.

Democrats are trying to save their winning strategy, by posthumously re-anointing Reagan back into their party. Suddenly, Reagan is the liberals’ new hero! But any retreat by the GOP on the very modest principle of no tax hikes would be disastrous. In fact, we need true reform proposals, starting with the complete privatization of SS and Medicare through personal accounts and a new low-rate flat income tax. The GOP – or at least part of it - is merely trying to hold the line, and only because of the much-needed intransigence of the Tea Party. You call that radical? I call it a starting point, because that’s not enough. The West’s and America’s economic crisis is a failure of the soft socialism of the welfare state. The Republicans need to go on offense with a pro-free market, pro-individual rights economic agenda. I have hope, but I’m not holding my breath.

But at least the editors clarified the issue for us, and demonstrated the value of today’s Tea Party.

Where did Reagan’s repeated compromises with the Left get the country. For one thing, they killed his own “Reagan Revolution”. Since Reagan, the welfare state has surged, especially over the past dozen years. No wonder the Dems suddenly want to hold Reagan up to the country as a model for today’s Republicans to emulate.

Of course, Reagan had his strengths, as I pointed out at the outset of this article – strengths that Democrats ignore. I believe that his strengths outweighed his weaknesses, even though his weaknesses – his compromises – helped sow the seeds for the problems we have today. The implications behind Reagan’s economic policies of income tax rate cuts, regulatory restraint, and support for a sound Fed monetary policy should be a model for any president who has widespread prosperity as a goal. But, as Steve Forbes recently observed, “Sadly, …President [Obama] does not … have much interest in slowing down Washington's spending machine, recognizing that big spending means more power for the central government.”

Amen! The Democrats are not interested in learning from Reagan’s strengths, either, because they are not interested in emulating Reagan's pro-growth economic policies and actually compromising on their principles. Their phony exaltation of Reagan contains a lesson for Republicans that they ignore at their, and the country’s, peril: compromising on your principles of free markets and limited government paves the way for expanded government and shrinking freedom.

The Balanced Budget Amendment is not the Answer

2011-07-24T11:29:00.001-04:00

What is the purpose of a constitution?

Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force: It is the only institution in any society that is sanctioned to use force against people. Accordingly, some means is necessary to tell those in charge of the apparatus of government under what circumstances they may and may not exercise its powers. That is the purpose of a constitution. Its sole purpose is to define the limits of government power, for the purpose of protecting from government power the individual rights of its citizens. Government officials – politicians, bureaucrats, employees, all of them – may act only within the confines of the enumerated powers granted by the constitution. In other words, government acts by permission only.

A constitution is not designed to define the limits of personal private behavior (such as with amendments forbidding flag-burning or limiting marriage to one man and one woman). That is the purpose of laws created by government officials operating within the limits imposed upon them by the constitution. Nor is the purpose of the constitution to specify particular government policy. A proper constitution doesn’t spell out how to deal with the Middle East, what level of taxation is appropriate, or what criminal penalties are appropriate for Bernie Madoff. It will simply lay out the abstract parameters within which such policies and laws may be enacted and carried out.

The Balanced Budget Amendment being pushed by the Republicans does not measure up to these constitutional criteria. As Robert J. Samuelson writes over at the Washington Post: “The Constitution is the repository of the nation’s basic political principles, …not a handbook for the day-to-day operations of government.” A balanced budget mandate may be a good idea, but that belongs under the purview of elected legislators. Should they decide to enact one, it - like all laws – must then pass muster with the basic political principles enshrined in the constitution. But any attempt to muddy up the constitution with such concrete minutia would render it unworkable. As Samuelson writes:

The fatal flaw of the BBA is that it would take the Constitution in precisely this direction. It not only says the budget should be balanced, but one Republican version says it should be balanced at 18 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). That’s not a principle; it’s an instruction. Why not 17 percent or 22 percent of GDP? What happens in a national emergency?

All this threatens to turn many budget disputes into constitutional crises, as one side or the other takes to court to prove the other side violated the nation's Magna Carta. Do we really want to force unelected judges to make what are fundamentally political decisions? Didn’t we learn anything from Bush v. Gore?

Beyond that, a Balanced Budget Amendment may hinder but will not stop the welfare state express, as many conservatives hope. The driving force behind the rise of socialist statism in America is moral and philosophical. It is only on moral/philosophical grounds that the welfare state can be successfully challenged. As long as statism’s fundamental altruist/collectivist intellectual underpinnings are in place in the culture, the politicians will always figure out a way to get around the constitutional restrictions posed by the amendment. Samuelson continues:

The BBA is another example of congressional evasion. “It’s showcasing. It plays to the public,” says political scientist Allen Schick of the University of Maryland. What it does not do is balance the budget, now or ever. Only unpopular decisions to cut spending, including Social Security and Medicare, and raise taxes can do that. The BBA distracts from this and, if ever adopted, would undermine the Constitution.

I, of course, don’t favor raising taxes. But, Samuelson does raise an important point. Those “unpopular decisions” belong in the legislature. Furthermore, given the philosophical corruption of the collectivist mindset, it is not at all certain that a BBA will translate into much in the way of spending cuts. Such a constitutional mandate could (and will) empower judges to impose tax hikes to enforce that mandate. (This in fact happened in New Jersey, where in the 1970s the State Supreme Court essentially rammed a state income tax down the throats of the legislature and the state’s residents to enforce a constitutional education mandate. See my post New Jersey's Constitutional Roadblock to Reform.) A BBA could well become a tool for further entrenching the welfare state.

There are good reasons to oppose the Republicans’ initiative. (There may also be good reasons to support such a constitutional amendment. If there are, I have not seen them.) Not all opponents base their reasoning on respect for our basic constitutional principles, however. No discussion of our constitution is complete outside of the context of the philosophical principles that form our original constitution’s foundation. Stepping outside of that context is the means by which statists have been able to dominate over the past century. A good example of this tactic is provided by Doug Kendall and Dahlia Lithwick in a piece entitled The Balanced Budget Amendment would make the Framers weep.

The principles that must always form the framework for any constitutional question are laid out in the Declaration of Independence, this nation’s philosophical blueprint. The principles of unalienable individual rights and a government whose sole purpose is to protect those rights is the frame of reference upon which all aspects of the constitution must be considered. Rights are sanctions to freedom of action in a social context, not an automatic claim to unearned benefits. The freedom of action that rights convey also defines the limits of that freedom. Since rights are unalienable and held equally by all people at all times, each individual is free to act only so long as he respects and refrains from violating the same rights of others. Equally important, the principle of individual rights defines the limits of government’s power – a broad limitation indeed. In regard to the relationship of the government to the people, the Founders fundamentally intended this: The domestic laws and their agents – the police and the law courts - protect the people from criminal predators, while the constitution protects the people from governmental predators. Despite some imperfections and contradictions it contains, the original constitution was mostly true to its fundamental principles.

Kendall and Lithwick try to make the case that the Founding Fathers would have opposed the BBA. They are almost certainly right. So, it’s interesting that they sneak in Chief Justice John Marshall's 1919 quote that our constitution is a document that may be “adapted to the various crises of human affairs”. The “Living Constitution” doctrine attempts to airbrush our founding principles out of existence, a la “1984”, and has done far more to undermine our constitution than anything the Republicans have proposed. That helped paved the way for the ongoing stealth transformation of America from a constitutionally limited republic to a democracy. But the Founders understood majority rule as an institution that must be severely limited, because democracy unconstrained by the principle of individual rights is another form of totalitarian tyranny. Redefining America as a democracy is the Progressives’ real intend. Kendall and Lithwick take the right position for the wrong reasons. They oppose the BBA not to preserve the constitution or in deference and respect to the Founders or America’s founding principles, but because they fear it “would remove huge swaths of lawmaking power from majority rule and arbitrarily limit the size of government to a level not seen since the 1960s. Under the guise of promoting fiscal responsibility, we would be creating a government that could not govern.”

The 1960s are notable for a huge wave of rights violating “social welfare” legislation. Those programs clearly violate our founding principles. But the distorted view of our constitution that took hold mostly in the 20th century paved the way for democracy-driven welfare statism. Kendall and Lithwick fear the BBA not because it contradicts the roper purpose of a constitution, but because they fear that it will hamper the Progressives’ ability to “govern”. And to “govern”, in the Progressives concept, means to dictate.

I agree that the Founders probably would not have approved of the BBA. But they would have been horrified at the Progressives’ view of the constitution as a document devoid of the very principles that formed the basis for their achievement in creating this country.

There's more to the Light Bulb Controversy than Efficiency

2011-07-20T12:24:00.001-04:00

A recent move by House Republicans to repeal the upcoming ban on incandescent light bulbs is mainly symbolic, politically, since there’s no chance their efforts can succeed this year. But the episode is valuable because it highlights a tactic used by statists: to expand government by means of narrow concrete issues that may only be framed in regards to its practical desirability.

Of course, all legislation presupposes an abstract view of such broad philosophical issues as the proper role of government. Viewing legislation and law from that philosophical perspective is anathema to statists, because that view automatically draws upon the nation’s Founding principles – principles that clash with the statists’ agenda. So, defenders of rights-violating, nanny-state laws like the light bulb mandate seek to discredit any attempt to measure government action against the yardstick provided by the Declaration of Independence and the original constitution. Instead, they try to keep the dialogue grounded in concrete trivia about the practicality of the legislation’s intent. The new fluorescent bulbs may or may not be better than the old incandescent ones, but that is not the point. Statists just want it to be the point, because otherwise their case collapses. Fluorescents may be objectively better, but the standard of individual rights forbids them from forcing it on others through an act of law. So to get their way, they employ the gimmick of brushing off principled opposition through ridicule and evasion. The NJ Star-Ledger provides a good example of this tactic. In an editorial entitled Republican lawmakers screwing up light-bulb debate, they write:

How many lawmakers does it take to screw up a light-bulb law? Maybe we’re about to find out.

On Tuesday, the House defeated an attempt by some dim bulbs to repeal a law that requires light bulbs to be more efficient. Now, the Light Brigade is bringing the bill back for another vote.

For weeks, conservatives had been making “Give me filament or give me death!” speeches, insisting that light-bulb liberals were encroaching on their personal freedoms.

Creating jobs? A debt-ceiling deal? Reworking Social Security benefits? Rescuing the middle class? Nah, the pressing issue for many conservative Republicans is whether they should have to pluck their eyebrows or read their Grover Norquist pledges in the harsh light of fluorescent bulbs.

See what I mean? But, aren’t “Creating jobs [economic policy], the debt-ceiling, Social Security, and Rescuing the middle class” tied in with the same fundamental issue, personal freedom? By allowing the debate on light bulbs to shift onto the higher plane of individual rights, the editors would establish a premise of having to measure their entire statist agenda against that principle. I’ve left the following comments:

Zemack, July 16, 2011 at 8:50PM

Why do statists ridicule “Ideological Claptrap”, as the print version of this editorial is headlined? Because abstract ideas – principles – drive human events. This country – the freest, most prosperous, most powerful ever – was the first to be founded explicitly upon an ideology. Read the Declaration of Independence, the philosophical foundation for the Constitution. It is an extremely abstract document. Supporters of the omnipotent state are powerless against its principles. They know that they have no answer to those who understand the fundamental issues involved where the relationship of the state to the individual is involved.

Freedom – and by that I mean individual rights - can not survive except on a foundation of sound political principles. For those who want to empower government to run the lives of its people, it is those principles that must be expunged from political dialogue. Since statists don’t dare attack the Declaration’s message directly, they seek to disarm their pro-freedom adversaries philosophically. This is why the S/L editors ridicule some Republicans’ noble attempt to properly frame the debate – as one of principle. A principle is a universal truth, an essential premise that can apply to an unlimited number of concrete issues.

It’s not about light bulbs. Absent government coercion, the debate over which bulbs are superior can be objectively decided in the market, where all participants – manufacturers and consumers electric companies – deal with each other voluntarily. All considerations – pros and cons - get fleshed out in relation to the personal voluntary choices of individuals – the cost of the bulb vs. the cost of electricity vs. the quality of the light, etc. (Never mind such vague rationalizations as “we all pay for pollution and climate change, and we all pay for additional power plants”. If those collectivist notions are a proper justification for violating individual rights, then the Soviets and the Nazis had it right.) The key here is the principle of voluntarism, a core necessity of freedom. No one – not private citizens nor citizens acting in the capacity of government officials - may initiate force against another. All are restricted to rational persuasion – until and unless some people decide that they may employ government’s force to impose their will on others.

If the Republicans can successfully overturn this law based not on the narrow technical issues surrounding the “efficiency” of light bulbs but upon the principle that a proper government protects the individual citizen’s right to decide for himself – or, for that matter, merely raise the public’s awareness that “This is about more than just energy consumption, it’s about personal freedom” - then the entire regulatory welfare state that was built on the opposite premise is under assault. A philosophical debate on the proper role of government and of its relationship to the people is long overdue. Statists such as the editors fear that debate, otherwise this editorial would have been a serious discussion about the connection between the light bulb law and freedom, rather than an end run around the issue raised by the GOP. Instead, they seek to bury the only means of seeing where they want to take the country: the ability to see the forest for the trees, or the principle behind the law - which only ideology can provide.

Fortunately, a much more mature (to use the liberals’ latest mantra to describe statist attitudes) analysis comes from a correspondent. MarkM defends the law by relating it to the constitution. For this, I commend him, for he at least bases his position on a proper framing of the issue:

MarkM, July 18, 2011 at 4:40PM

In a recent article in NewsFeed, the author wrote: "The energy-efficient bulbs are more expensive than regular incandescent light bulbs, a point of contention for Republicans who said their constituents can not afford the more expensive bulbs." This would be the first time in recent memory that Republicans expressed any concerns whatsoever about those a the lower end of the economic spectrum. To date, their principle focus has been the opposite end of the scale.

For those believing in abstract political ideas, then the notion of the "Common Good" ought not be neglected in their analysis. The idea behind the common good is the notion that individual liberties ought necessarily be limited in certain cases to attain a desirable goal which is identified as the "Common Good." This idea goes back to the very early stages of English Common Law and probably beyond. Thomas Paine writing in "The Rights of Man" addresses this issue.

Given the real and acute energy crisis that we face, especially at a time when we are experiencing a down economy as we currently are, it makes sense to weigh the common good, versus individual liberties. In this case we are weighing a sensible energy policy versus the right to use outdated technology that wastes energy. The tension between individual liberties and the common good has existed long before we came along and will be around long after we are gone. People debated it then, are debating it now, and will debate it in the future. There is no handy guide that says, "this good outweighs that personal liberty." These things must be decided according to the needs of a given society.

The Constitution of the United States which is a concrete manifestation of abstract political ideas, call for our government to "provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare." As many other provisions of the Constitution, Americans have argued over what the "promote the general Welfare" part means. The "provide for the common defense" clause seems self-evident to most of us.

So what does this have to do with light bulbs? Well, the Department of Defense is the government agency which is entrusted with the lion's share of the work of "providing for the common defense." Over the years, active duty and retired military officers have written extensively about the role of energy in national security. It is unsettling reading to say the least. In its its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, there was a lot said about this topic. To save you the trouble, the short summary is:
1. DoD sees affordable energy, or lack thereof as one of the principle security threats to the United States in the years going forward
2. DoD is greatly concerned that an acute energy shortage will result in a lack of readiness of US armed forces.
3. DoD sees enhanced probability that in the future, we may have to secure foreign energy resource by direct intervention in other countries affairs.

Recently, we read in at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304665904576385843719478096.html?mod=googlenews_wsj that high energy costs are actually forcing the DoD to change ground level strategies and tactics to adapt to the reality of more expensive and increasingly scarce energy supplies.

Saving energy is getting to be more and more of a security issue, not just some ephemeral goal or talking point for politicians.

Should we burn up expensive oil that we buy from overseas while our troops are having to change the way they go about the business of carrying out their mission?

I do not know what the answer is in the common good/individual liberties tradeoff. What I am suggesting is that it is a much more complex calculus than simpletons the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann would suggest.

Here is my response to MarkM:

Zemack, July 18, 2011 at 10:08PM

Thoughtful commentary, MarkM - much more so than this editorial. Very refreshing. I have a few dissenting comments, though:

There is no answer to the “common good/individual liberties tradeoff”, because there is no tradeoff. To suggest that there is, is to obliterate “individual liberties” – i.e., individual rights. The common good means the good of every individual. And the good of every individual, as understood by the Founding Fathers and codified in our founding documents, is served only by recognizing and protecting individual liberty. The term “to promote the general welfare” means government’s job to ensure the social conditions necessary for each individual’s right to the exercise of his unalienable rights, which means to live and freely act by the judgement of his own mind. The “tension between individual liberties and the common good” is easily resolved by a proper understand of rights. You are free to act to pursue your own life, so long as you respect and refrain from violating the same rights of others. In other words, the principle of individual rights both sanctions your right to freedom of action and defines the limits of your actions, based upon the premise that rights are unalienable for every individual. Thus, the common good means individual liberty, and only individual liberty.

Any other definition of the common good is antipodal to the concept of unalienable rights – rights held equally, by all people, at all times, and protected equally and at all times for all people. Any claim that the common good conflicts with individual liberty is a claim that the interests and rights of some people are to be sacrificed to the interests and privilege of others, based upon the political expediency and pressure group victors of the moment; i.e., “decided according to the needs of a given society”. In today’s usage, the “common good" (or public interest) is used as a weapon to bludgeon away people’s right to their own life and to empower government to run our lives. To say that our national security depends on violating our rights to decide for ourselves which bulbs to use is to obliterate the very justification for a military, whose job it is precisely to protect and defend our right to make such decisions – i.e., to “promote the general welfare”.

Every issue implies certain principles, whether one chooses to recognize them or not. Once you can identify those essential premises you will find that it really is quite simple to find the right answer. This is not to say that codifying the principles of individual rights into law is necessarily easy – it can be quite complex. But with our founding principles as a frame of reference, the path to sound, objective, right-respecting laws is easy to identify, especially in regards to such clear-cut issues as who should decide which bulbs to use.

PS – There is no “energy crisis”. There is a crisis of political meddling driven largely by environmentalist dogma.

Backlash Against NJ's Charter School Expansion

2011-07-15T08:17:00.006-04:00

A major backlash has erupted against NJ Governor Chris Christie's aggressive charter school expansion program. Driven by a suburban grassroots resistance, the backlash has taken the form of a bill that would require a community vote before any charter school could open in any district. Currently, charter school proposals need only be approved by the state Department of Education. Recently, the Christie administration approved 23 of them.

NJ Star-Ledger columnist Bob Braun covered this emerging development. In Parents push for laws allowing communities to vote on charter schools
, Braun writes:

On the polished floor of the community center in Millburn’s Taylor Park, a small group of children sat quietly, hands folded, as their mothers chanted:

"What do we want? A vote! When do we want it? Now!" while an assortment of politicians pledged obeisance to what these parents demanded: An end to the unchecked growth of charter schools.

The scene was repeated elsewhere last night, in South Brunswick and Highland Park, where this mothers’ crusade known as Save Our Schools-New Jersey pushed for the passage of laws allowing local communities a vote on permitting charter schools and subjecting the privately operated schools to strict accountability.

The legislation may not survive the opposition of Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic leaders — including Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Camden) but the message has found traction.

"The bills may be bottled up, they may be blocked,’’ said state Sen. and former Acting Gov. Richard Codey (D-Essex), who attended the Milburn rally, "but the state’s leaders cannot ignore this message. These people are angry. They can’t be ignored.’’

They’re angry, and they want it now! What do they want now? To “check” the growth of educational alternatives sought by other mothers unsatisfied with the public schools in their districts. What’s actually going on here? This bill is a double-barreled attempt to crush charters. First, vote them down. If that fails, suffocate their innovative appeal by switching “accountability” from the charter parents to the school board or some other dictatorial committee.

I’ve left some comments, which triggered a short comment thread
, republished here with some added unpublished commentary, shown in italics:

Zemack - June 23, 2011 at 3:54PM

This bill should be entitled the Empower the Mob bill.

The charter school movement is driven by pent-up market demand – i.e., the desire of thousands of individual parents to seek a better education for their children. They are taxpayers, too. If the schools paid for by the taxes they are forced to pay don’t measure up in their judgement, who has a right to stand in their way? This bill says; that mystical entity called the “community”, as represented by any ballot box majority that decides protecting “its schools” requires crushing the rights of the minority.

But this is the nature of tax-supported schools, of democracy, of collectivism. When everyone is required to pay for the education of everyone else’s children, but not their own, they give up the sovereignty over their own children. Then, children become political pawns, with their education delivered into the power of special interests - grass roots, organized, or otherwise.

We are seeing a good demonstration of the naked face of democracy in action; mob rule.

saveourschoolsnj - June 23, 2011 at 4:13PM

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." (Churchill, from a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947)

Zemack - June 23, 2011 at 4:43PM

But what was Churchill referring to? In essence, a constitutional republic. A democratic majority is only legitimate when its power is limited by a constitution that protects individual rights. Today, America has morphed into a combination of a republic and a democracy.

Democracy is a form of totalitarianism, in its pure form. This charter vote bill is a manifestation of pure democracy, in that it places the parents and their children at the mercy of a legalized mob. Charter schools are not a panacea, but they make a bad situation – government-run schools – a little more tolerable by offering some choice and innovation.

luvsewemore - June 23, 2011 at 5:01PM

So it is your considered opinion that a handful of parents and private investors should be able to use public funds to open a Mandarin Chinese immersion school in a district that is rated 14th in the state? Just because they WANT this for their children? Tell me with a straight face that the parents in Milburn and Livingston are so disturbed by the horrible quality of their public schools that there are thousands crying out for alternatives for their children.

Zemack - June 23, 2011 at 7:10PM

And others should be able to stop them, just because they WANT to?

No. It is my considered opinion that no one should be educated with public funds. But since that’s the situation we have, it must be remembered that the “handful of parents and private investors” are tax payers too, and thus have as much claim to those “public funds” as you or any other taxpayer, no matter how large a group. Therefor, if a group of “investors” wants to establish a “Mandarin Chinese immersion school” and some parents are willing to voluntarily send their children there, then the public funds should follow. If a parent chooses to relieve the traditional public school in her child’s district of the responsibility to educate that child, on what grounds can that school claim the public funds – which belong as much to that parent as to any other?

That there are thousands of parents in Milburn and Livingston (or any other municipality) who are satisfied with their local public schools does not justify them legally (i.e., forcibly) being empowered to stand in the way of the small number that isn’t (to say nothing of the non-parent voters). Even the “best” schools will fail some students. I consider this to be a fundamental moral issue.

Publicly funded ventures always set up irreconcilable conflicts of interest – conflicts that would not arise in a fully free, private education market. That’s not what we have, so one alternative is for the state to allow whatever numbers of charters are necessary to meet the demand.

By the way, true “investors” invest their own money, not public funds.

URnoexpert - June 23, 2011 at 8:44PM

"And others should be able to stop them, just because they WANT to?"

No. It is because the removal of those funds could be detremental to a successful district. If someone wants to build a boutique school to cater to a small minority they should do it on their own dime, rather than the parasitic way charters aim to feed off the host. Want to learn a foreign language not offerred? Buy Rosetta Stone and leave the successful school districts alone.

Zemack - June 30, 2011 at 5:18PM

Nor should the "successful district" parasitically feed off of the taxes of the minority. There is an old saying: "Never lose sight of the forest for the trees". But the oppoisite is also true. Collectvism blinds you to the individual human beings that make up any group. Again, my arguments have not been refuted, because collectivist slogans will not do.

And on whose judgement are those districts “successful” – your “experts”? And on what basis do the experts draw their conclusions – some average drawn from standardized testing? The mental corruption wrought by collectivism is obvious here. Every student is an autonomous individual apart from that mythical average student. The enemies of school choice ignore those actual human beings. What if a district is detrimental to some students? No district is successful for a student whose needs his parents believe are not being met. And those parents’ judgement on that district is just as valid as any majority of parents who believe otherwise. And again, they’re taxpayers.

Aggalapta - June 28, 2011 at 9:17PM

Zemack,

Give me a break and knock off the drama--mob rule--please...its called democracy--something very foreign to republicans for some time now.

Zemack - June 30, 2011 at 5:02PM

Be careful what assumptions you make: I am not a Republican (most of whom also preach the "democracy" line). And don't worry about the "drama". Words have specific meanings. If you can refute my "mob" analogy, I'd like to hear it.

Title 2: A Lesson on Activism - from the Left

2011-07-09T13:59:00.000-04:00

How does one fight "the good fight"? Here is a lesson on the only way to do it; stand on principle, even at the risk of taking an unpopular stand or "defending to the death" the most abhorent individuals.

In my post of 7/10/10, I opened this dialogue on Title 2 with a discussion of the crucial importance of principles. So, when I read this editorial by my favorite Left-leaning media outlet, I seized the opportunity to use the words of a staunch defender of Title 2 to demonstrate the importance of principles - and the hollowness and utter futility of attempting to pragmatically cherry-pick one's principled stands.

In a short editorial entitled, ACLU of New Jersey: 50 years of defending rights on left and right, the NJ Star-Ledger praises the American Civil Liberties Union for its adherence to principles. They write:

"For 50 years, the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has defended rights that many take for granted — or that some would withhold from others.

"The ACLU has taken a purist view of the U.S. Constitution: It applies to every American regardless of race, faith, gender or sexual orientation. As might be expected, controversy has never been far behind.

"Most people recall the ACLU defending the free speech of American Nazis, or fighting to keep religious displays off government property."

I've left the following comments:

zemack June 16, 2010 at 1:45PM

Now, why would the Star-Ledger praise the ACLU for defending a Nazi’s right to freedom of speech? Could it be that principles matter? According to the Editors, “The ACLU has taken a purist view of the U.S. Constitution.” A “purist” view recognizes that the Constitution is derived from the philosophical groundwork laid out in the Declaration of Independence, which holds unequivocally that rights are political guarantees to freedom of action, are unalienable, possessed equally and at all times by every individual, and protected by government equally and at all times. So long as you don’t violate the same rights of others, your rights can never be stripped away by government.

In other words, the implied meaning behind the ACLU’s Nazi stand is that when you violate the rights of a single individual, you invalidate the principle of unalienability, and thus the rights of “every American regardless of race, faith, gender or sexual orientation.” You cannot defend any right, unless you are prepared to defend that same right for everyone, including those of the most despicable practitioners of that right. Therefor, it logically and morally follows that a Nazi (or National Socialist) has the same unalienable right to act on his free speech guarantees as anyone else.

So, I have to wonder. Where does the ACLU, and for that matter the Editors, stand on Title 2 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which trampled another unalienable right of the individual – his property rights? That Act swept away the last remnants of legally sanctioned, government-imposed segregation. This monumental advance for justice and a civilized society was marred by the “public accommodations” clause, known as Title 2, which denied the individual’s right to freedom of association on his own private property. An individual’s earned property is the means by which he sustains his life. Thus his right to his property – which means the right of use and disposal – is tied irrevocably to his right to life. All other rights, including to speech and religion, rest on a foundation of property rights – which makes them the most important of all rights. When the government takes away property rights, it takes away a person’s means of sustaining his life. Without property rights, all other rights are effectively rendered a fraud.

Property rights are unalienable just as are free speech rights. The same logic that applies to the defense of Nazis’ free speech rights applies to private segregationists’ property rights. Both Nazis and private segregationists hold despicable and evil ideas. Both are racist ideologically, with Nazism being the worst because it also includes the totalitarian element. And, just as a Nazi exercising his own free speech rights is violating no one else’s free speech rights by doing so, so to a business owner who exercises his own property rights by excluding certain customers for irrational reasons is likewise violating no one else’s property rights by doing so. And for the very same principled reason that a Nazi’s free speech rights must be defended, so to must a private segregationist’s property rights be just as vigorously defended, however hard and nauseating that may be.

As the Editors correctly seem to be saying in praise of the ACLU, “a purist view of the U.S. Constitution” requires a fully consistent defense of “rights that many take for granted — or that some would withhold from others.” A purist view demands taking an uncompromising stand regardless of how controversial or unpopular, because rights apply “to every American regardless of race, faith, gender or sexual orientation” or anything else so long as he refrains from violating the same rights as others.

I don’t recall the ACLU rushing to the defense of Rand Paul, who was recently vilified because of his long-time principled opposition to Title 2 based on that’s clause’s violation of property rights. If the ACLU doesn’t stand with Rand Paul on Title 2, it is exposed as blatantly hypocritical and devoid of credibility.

The editors might object that Title 2 involves action, while free speech is just expounding a viewpoint and thus not hurting anyone. But freedom of thought without the freedom to act on that thought means no freedom at all. The act of speech is action, in and of itself. The right to hold views without the right to expound those views is a contradiction in terms. So is the right to property without the right to set the terms of use for that property. To deny a person freedom of association on his own property is tantamount to denying a person the right to speak his own mind.

I also want to point out some excellent comments made by another correspondent:

individual June 16, 2010 at 1:36PM

Excellent editorial. Our rights under the First Amendment are for everyone, not just those that we agree with. A common conservative myth is that the ACLU "supports" various nefarious groups (take your pick). Nothing could be further from the truth. When the ACLU says that Nazis have the right under the First Amendment to express their views, the ACLU is not "supporting" the Nazis' views. They are only supporting the First Amendment freedoms of everyone, including even Nazis.

Generally, when conservatives support "freedom," they mean freedom for themselves, not anyone else. While talking about "less government intrusion in our lives," these same conservatives want laws banning abortion from the moment of conception, laws censoring erotica and even laws telling consenting adults what kind of sex they can have in the privacy of their own home (Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia takes this view). Yes, some conservatives have more of a "libertarian" view and don't support the Scalia mentality. But the vast majority of conservatives are not libertarian, and want the government to intrude into the most intimate aspects of our lives.

Unlike conservatives, the ACLU recognizes that freedom is for everyone, even the hated, even the despised. Freedom is not just for those we agree with.

Of course, individual is only half right. The same as what he says about conservatives can be said of liberals. Neither side is a consistent defender of individual rights. Certainly, when it comes to property rights, the liberals are not proponents of the belief "that [to paraphrase] freedom is for everyone, even the rich, even the successful". If they believed that, they would have to oppose the redistributive welfare state down to its core. It's true that conservatives are social authoritarians. But, liberals are economic authoritarians. Certainly, under Title 2, the 1964 Civil Rights Act empowers "the government to intrude into the most intimate aspects of our lives" - our personal beliefs on our own property.

That aside, individual makes a good overall point. He writes that "When the ACLU says that Nazis have the right under the First Amendment to express their views, the ACLU is not 'supporting' the Nazis' views. They are only supporting the First Amendment freedoms of everyone, including even Nazis." Well, how does he feel about Title 2? Since he criticizes only "conservatives", one might logically infer that he is a "liberal". So, would he agree that "When Rand Paul (or John Stossel, or I) say that any private individual has the right under the principle of property rights to exclude people of a certain 'race, faith, gender or sexual orientation' from his own place of business, Paul is not 'supporting' the bigot's views. He is only supporting the property rights freedoms of everyone, including even bigots".

The Editors conclude with:

"By taking up these important and sometimes unpopular causes, the ACLU of New Jersey exemplifies what fighting the good fight is all about."

If the Star-Ledger really believes that defending individual rights is "what fighting the good fight is all about", then it has a lot of rethinking to do on a whole host of issues it holds dear. It needs to learn that "what fighting the good fight is all about" requires unbending philosophical consistency. Without that, the editors, and the ACLU, are exposed as opportunistic phonies.

Behind The Debt Ceiling Debate

2011-07-05T08:41:00.001-04:00

This NJ Star-Ledger editorial appeared in May 2011. It discusses the political impasse regarding the raising the debt ceiling to accommodate the insane Federal spending binge. Since that impasse is still with us, I thought I’d publish a bit of activism I engaged in back then.

Basically, the editors chastise the Republicans for refusing to “compromise” by accepting tax increases in exchange for spending cuts. The S/L writes:

House Speaker John Boehner … issued an ultimatum. His party will agree to raise the debt limit only if Democrats yield to the Republican solution on the debt — $2 trillion in spending cuts and no tax increases.

A $2 trillion spending cut over the next decade is reasonable if it is done in a way that protects the most vulnerable, as the president’s bipartisan commission attempted to do.

But the Republican budget plan fails that test. While protecting tax cuts for the wealthy, it imposes two-thirds of its spending cuts on programs that serve families of limited means. Medicaid, food stamps and college scholarships would face deep cuts, to name a few.

The bigger problem with Boehner’s ultimatum is that he pretends we can solve the debt problem without raising taxes.

The federal government today is taking in revenue equal to about 15 percent of the GDP. It hasn’t been that low since the 1950s, before programs like Medicaid and Medicare existed. To keep revenue that low as Baby Boomers retire is simply not realistic.

This is classic. Raise taxes now, and we promise to cut spending, but not on the really important programs (which is just about anything the statist Left wants). The Republicans, in my mind, have already compromised too much by failing to demand tax cuts along with those spending cuts. But my comments concerned other aspects of this. As usual, I used my screen name Zemack. First, I answered this:

Eatontownbob May 12, 2011 at 8:02AM

Cut the $4 billion in subsidies (our money) for the top 4 oil companys which combined made $18 BILLION in first Quarter profits. With oil trading for aprox $100 a barrel, I don't think they need tax breaks to be encouraged to explore/drill.

Zemack May 12, 2011 at 12:08PM

A tax break is not a subsidy. It's a taxpayer (individual or corporate) keeping more of what he earned. There is no government money - i.e., other taxpayers' money - involved.

Aside from that fact, eatontownbob is on to something. Our income taxes - both corporate and personal - are corrupt, special interest-driven monstrosities that empower politicians to manipulate the private economy and dole out political favors. I would agree with eatontownbob if he endorsed the general idea to eliminate all tax breaks, including the massive renewable energy subsidies. That industry is a gigantic corporate welfare scheme that should be freed to compete and sink or swim on it own economic merits.

Then, how about lowering both taxes to a single flat rate with no deductions except for personal exemptions for each individual? It would be economically stimulative (promote production, trade, profits, and jobs), more justly progressive, much fairer politically, and thus more moral than what we have now.

Here is another comment and the exchange that followed:

Zemack May 12, 2011 at 1:14PM

The Star-Ledger is being incredibly disingenuous here. It states that “The federal government today is taking in revenue equal to about 15 percent of the GDP. It hasn’t been that low since the 1950s”.

But revenue receipts are not the true measure of the governments tax take: Spending is. And today, federal spending as a percentage of GDP is at about 25%. That means 25% of America’s wealth is being consumed by the federal budget alone, the highest since WW II.

The Editors fail to mention inflation – the artificial expansion of the money supply via the government printing press to finance the deficit. Inflation is a tax that confiscates your purchasing power, while leaving you with increasingly devalued dollars manifested in rising prices.

The real problem is not the deficits, but rather the government’s consumption of the nation’s wealth. The only way to address that problem is through spending cuts, which means the privatization and gradual elimination of the immoral wealth redistribution programs that constitute the bulk of federal spending.

The editors call for compromise as the ultimate solution to the latest crisis, and berate the Tea Party for refusing. But more and more people are on to the sinister game that has been going on for more than a century in America. The current state of affairs has been built on such compromises as the Coburn/Durbin deal the editors trumpet. The spending cuts are non-existent, because the programs that feed the growth of spending are not being phased out and eliminated. The tax hikes are real, however, and will only serve to feed the cancerous growth of socialism in America.

Conservatives and the GOP have historically caved time and time again, always falling victim to the god of compromise. But any compromise between Left and Right always benefits the Left. And yes, compromise sometimes is a moral failing. And yes, it is “time to settle long-standing grievances”: to attack the fundamental causes of the crisis. If not now, then when? Putting that day of reckoning off time and again is irresponsible, irrational, and immature. Real adults think long-term and don’t continually punt the problem down the road, as the editors would have us do once again.

BigMarbles May 12, 2011 at 2:56PM

zemock- Your numbers are bad.

The Congressional Budget Office last Thursday released its latest projection of the 2011 deficit - an astonishing $1.5 trillion. The spending that goes along with the deficit has been the focus of news and commentary around the country. The other culprit hiding behind the deficit is of course Federal Government Revenue levels. Revenues are projected to be some where around 15% of GDP an all time low over the last 60 years. The average revenue level as a percent of GDP for the last 30 years is 18%.

Yes, some of the revenue short falls are due to the recession, but much of it is related to the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Why is it you eightballs who constantly attack the SL are ALWAYS proven wrong? And the SL is ALWAYS RIGHT???

Some people do get my point, though.

Deceiverbo May 13, 2011 at 8:36PM

Lost Marbles, it appears you have a serious comprehension problem. The poster wasn't denying the 15% figure, he was pointing out the flip side of the coin (spending) which people like you and the liars at the SL try to hide.

I tried one more time with BigMarbles.

Zemack May 12, 2011 at 7:50PM

If government is spending 25% of the nation’s income (GDP), and only 15% is supplied by direct taxation, where does the balance come from? Borrowing - which means pulling investment capital and savings out of the economy. But to the extent that the state can't sell its bonds in the open market, as is mainly the case now, it grabs your wealth indirectly through inflation.

One way or another, the government is taxing the economy to the exact tune that it is spending. The combination of direct taxation, borrowing, and inflation (ex. - Bernanke’s “quantitative easing”) adds up to a commutative tax take of 25%. There is no way around these numbers. Reality is the final arbiter. I stand by my numbers. The wealth consumed by government spending doesn’t come out of thin air, or grow on trees, or miraculously appear from government printing presses.

Governments nationalize their monetary systems under central banks so they can grab a much bigger share of their nation’s wealth than people would tolerate through direct, easily perceivable taxation. That so many people never catch on to the monumental crime of inflation is a testament to the ability of governments to hide the truth by distorting the teaching of basic economics in their government-run schools.

BigMarbles May 13, 2011 at 12:14PM

zemac- Geeeez...............Who should i believe..........who's numbers are correct??....................
The Congressional Budget Office...............................or ZEMAC??.............................................
CBO or Zemock?????...................this is a tough one..................................................................
I gotta tell ya, zemock,..........................I GOTTA DO WITH THE CBO!!!!!
Sorry!

Sigh! I really didn’t think this guy that can’t spell would understand. But I made my point.

July 4, 1776: Words that will Never be Erased

2011-07-01T15:36:00.001-04:00

The Fourth of July is a national holiday that, to me, stands far above all of the others. It represents the greatest political achievement in world history. More than that, the birth of the United States of America represents a towering and unprecedented philosophical achievement. America, born of the Enlightenment, is the first nation founded on the principle that man the individual has a fundamental, natural right to his own life, and that government’s responsibility is to protect that right…that the people act by right, while the government acts by permission.

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

So opened the document signed by a small band of revolutionary intellectual leaders of a fledgling nation about to take on the most powerful Empire in the world. Above are the most radical words ever written as the foundation for a nation. For the first time in human history, a government was to be the servant of the people, by conscious design. “The people” were understood to be, not a collective, but a collection of sovereign individuals recognized as possessing unalienable individual rights. America was the triumph of reason, which was understood to be a faculty of the individual. The government would now be charged with the task of protecting every individual’s freedom to act on his own sovereign, reasoning mind … as a matter of unalienable right.

The birth of America was the culmination of Mankind’s long tortuous philosophical journey that began with Aristotle, and continued through his rebirth via Aquinas, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, and the Enlightenment. Tribalism was to be swept into the dustbin of history, along with “The Divine Right of Kings” and all manner of omnipotent ruler. Men would be set free from the forcible domination of other men.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence, America’s Founding Fathers, were almost violent in their radicalism. Standing up against the tide of history, with only the winds of the ideas of John Locke and the Enlightenment thinkers at their backs, this unique group of intellectuals took action. Indeed, the ideological violence of the ideas to which they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor turned to armed rebellion. The rest, as is said, is history.

America’s Founding was flawed in many respects - the failure to eradicate the ancient evil of slavery being the most obvious and most egregious. The anti-slavery forces simply did not have the strength to defeat that vampire, and so slavery had to be accepted into the young nation. But the moral groundwork had been laid – that all men are created equal – and the fate of the slave states was sealed. 89 years after the signing of the Declaration, America’s Founding ideals caught up with them. Some have pointed to America’s early acceptance of slavery as proof of its basic depravity. In fact, the defeat of slavery represented one of America’s finest hours, and a testament to the formidable power of its ideals. America’s Founding was the most monumental political achievement in world history.

America is currently backsliding from its Founding ideals. As America goes, so will go the world. But, the words of July 4, 1776, have been written, and will never be erased. Proof of the power and viability of individual liberty is written across the brief span of those 234 years. The ideas of reason, egoism, and capitalism have been unleashed. The philosophical foundation for a second Renaissance and American rebirth has been laid, and the final rout of statism is tantalizingly close.

“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

By making that pledge, those great men of 1776 declared that they would accept no substitute for the ideals in which they believed. Against widespread skeptism in the New World, and ridicule and scorn across England, they laid it all on the line for those ideals. They would succeed or perish. That utterly uncompromising stand gave us the United States of America. The least we could do is pledge to uphold those principles, to roll back the compromises that are undermining them, and to accept no substitute.

Happy Birthday America.

The Moral Factor Enters the 2012 Campaign

2011-06-25T16:14:00.010-04:00

A recent ad put out by a Christian Left group exposes the ethical rift between Ayn Rand and Jesus – probably the worst kept secret ever. The point of this ad is to target Christian conservatives and Republicans who embrace Ayn Rand on some level. The ad, entitled "Christians Must Choose: Ayn Rand or Jesus", has triggered a (possibly orchestrated) flurry of related articles and initiatives apparently intended to draw ethics (and religion) into the 2012 political campaign. Below the ad there is a list of the articles – quite an extensive one, in fact, and continuing to grow.

This tells me two things. First, Ayn Rand’s ideas have reached a level of cultural penetration that the Left now believes can no longer be ignored. In other words, the collectivists are getting nervous. They find themselves in unfamiliar territory: They must defend their ethical underpinnings against a potent and growing challenge. Second, the Left apparently believes Judeo-Christian ethics, the dominant moral code of the last two thousand years and the ethical foundation of socialism, can be a political winner against the Objectivist ethics. (This is not to imply that Jesus would approve of socialism. But there is no way around the fact that socialism is the political implementation of the doctrine that “We are all our brother’s keepers”.) The strategy: Tie Ayn Rand to the GOP, disenfranchise the Christian Right, win the election.

Of course, as is typically the case among Rand’s critics, her actual ethics are ignored, and a false straw man is foisted in its place. This is obvious both in the ad and in the related articles. That straw man consists essentially of equating Rand’s egoistic moral theories with the conventional definition of selfishness, by implication. This is vital to their strategy, because, properly understood and explained, one would come to realize that most Americans – Christians included – live their personal, private lives more in tune with the Objectivist ethics than Judeo-Christian ethics. In other words, Americans are by and large rights-respecting rationally selfish individualists at heart, even though few recognize it as of particularly moral significance. This is the potent secret weapon in the Objectivist arsenal.

So, the Left will pit altruism against selfishness and count on people’s superficial understanding of the two to carry the day, and to one more electoral victory. But they are between a rock and a hard place, and they seem to know it. Otherwise, why run this ad at all? Why draw attention to Ayn Rand at all? Altruism is the dominant morality, is it not? It has always been a winning political strategy to tie expanded government to altruistic motives. And Rand’s ideas are the antipode, right? The Rand/Jesus flap can only help raise Rand’s profile, so why help her? The answer can only be: Rand is gaining too much momentum to ignore any longer. So, the Left must believe that the less risky course is to draw Ayn Rand into the political fray, and attempt to discredit her.

This is not to say that their strategy will not succeed. If they can peel away the Christian Right from the secular right via the ethical debate, they’ll win in the short term. And this is not to say that Ayn Rand has anywhere near as much influence inside the GOP - especially among the leadership - as the Left would have us believe. There is undoubtedly a large element of preemption involved. As of now, most alleged admirers of Ayn Rand peal off only her economics and her politics, while ignoring the deeper ideas supporting them, including egoism and the supremacy of reason (and the consequent rejection of faith and religion). The Left has long claimed the moral high ground, and the Right has never challenged that moral hegemony. They want to keep it that way. Pro-capitalist, pro-freedom champions burdened by the contradictions of the altruist ethics can’t win against the statists’ unity of collectivism and altruism, as the history of the last century plus has proven.

The Christian Left has a powerful weapon against the Christian Right – they are the consistent side. They understand that altruism – or, more precisely, Judeo/Christian ethics, a somewhat diluted form of it - is incompatible with capitalism: On this, they and Rand thoroughly agree. The Right that upholds both capitalism and altruism is burdened by an irreconcilable, fundamental contradiction. Capitalism is fundamentally about the pursuit of individual self-interest, and - as Rand understood - must be defended on that moral base; something that conservatives both religious and secular have historically been unwilling to do, with devastating results.

It is this contradiction that the Left hopes to exploit. And they already have some allies on the Christian Right who do fully understand the Rand-Jesus rift. Chuck Colson claims to be an opponent of big government – and proceeds to concede the moral high ground to the Left. No matter how sincere their devotion to freedom and capitalism, Christians will forever be at odds with capitalism, the system of individual rights, as long as they stand opposed to its ethical base that Rand identified. Colson’s rant dramatizes that on the deepest level, the future hinges not so much between Left and Right, but between egoism and altruism, which means between reason and faith.

Some on the Left now see this, led by President Obama. In regards to his “virtue of selfishness” campaign remark, I said, “Barack Obama knows who his real enemy is. And it’s not McCain-Palin, the GOP, or the modern conservatives.” I believed, and still do, that Obama is one of the most philosophically astute politicians on the modern American stage. He saw, sooner than most on the Left, the threat posed by the rise of the Ayn Rand Right. He was dead on, as the surge in interest in Ayn Rand since he took office attests. He also saw the political moral gold mine that the Christian Right represented; hence, what I dubbed Obama’s Christian Strategy. He seemed to recognize then what the AVN and others on the Left have just discovered – It’s either/or; either Ayn Rand or Jesus.

So Obama’s Christian Strategy seems set to shift into high gear. They will attempt to split the Right along ethical grounds, and they will have logic on their side. Despite the attention garnered on Ayn Rand during the recent surge of interest in her ideas, conservatives by and large have never been true, philosophical adherents. As Rand has said, the fundamental battle between socialism and capitalism, collectivism and individualism, freedom and tyranny, is a moral one. It is on the moral battleground that the future of America will be won or lost. The penetration of Ayn Rand into what loosely passes for the American Right has been wide but generally shallow. Much has been said about her Atlas Shrugged “predictions” of today’s economic events. Few have any idea how or why she was able to do it.

The how and why is rooted in her understanding of the role of ideas in determining the political/economic direction of a culture. It is these ideas that most of her newfound admirers on the Right can not or will not address, because those ideas are rooted in the clash between altruism and rational self-interest. The Left seems poised to exploit that failing by seeking to hoist the Right and thus by extension the GOP by its own contradictory petard. It will brand the Right’s smaller government agenda, such as it is or will be, as heartless anti-Christian Ayn Rand selfishness. Faced with the choice of upholding the free market’s moral underpinnings or melting like butter in the hot sun, they will probably melt.

Perhaps I am overstating the political significance of the Rand-Jesus campaign. But if the moral factor enters the coming electoral Left/Right clash in a significant way, it will vault the political campaign squarely onto the battlefield upon which Objectivists have always fought. And if the Right is cowed on the moral issue at this critical juncture in American history, the full weight of the fight will fall on Objectivists, the only fully consistent – i.e., philosophical – defenders of capitalism. With numbers way to small, it will be a tough battle indeed.

But, for better or for worse, a major opportunity is at hand; the chance to focus on the most important issue of the day – the moral factor. If the Rand/Jesus gambit takes hold, this could be one of the most defining political campaigns in American History; certainly the most significant in my lifetime. The AVN ad gets it right: “The choice is simple: Ayn Rand or Jesus Christ. We must choose one and forsake the other.”

Indeed. Let the debate begin.

A “Regulation-Free Zone for Home-Schooling Families” Comes Under Attack in NJ

2011-06-19T20:08:00.001-04:00

Another education battle has erupted in NJ, this time involving homeschooling.

In 2003, a New Jersey child abuse case involving four homeschooled children prompted state Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg to propose a law “requiring other home-schooled children to get an annual physical and pass standardized tests.” Under pressure from homeschooling parents, she withdrew the bill, leaving New Jersey to remain “one of 11 states that are regulation-free zones for home-schooling families [whose children] get no public monitoring from the school system”.

Now, eight years later, another child abuse case – this time involving the death of a child – has prompted renewed calls for homeschooling registration and regulation. Led again by now state Senator Weinberg, politicians are considering new legislation.

What I find abhorrent here is the injustice of what can only be called guilt-by-association. Homeschoolers are specifically targeted, as if the abused children were victims of homeschooling. Before I go on, though, let me state my fundamental position: The responsibility for the education of the children rests with the parents, not the state (or “society”), and as such any parent that so chooses has an unalienable right to opt out of the public school system in order to school his/her child as he/she sees fit, no questions asked. The government’s job is to protect that parent’s right to do so, not chase him/her down for any kind of “public monitoring”.

This does not imply that the state has no role to play in regards to the welfare of minors. For a full discussion of the proper nature of that role, see my essay "Regulating" Business - the Good and the Bad. The principles that apply to the business-government relationship apply also to the issue of child welfare. In this case, the crime of physical child abuse should be treated like any other crime – prosecute the villains. In the absence of any evidence or suspicion of rights violations, the government takes no action.

But punishing the guilty is not what this is all about. There are already ample laws on the books for doing that. It’s really about statists exploiting these crimes against children to expand government controls under the guise of protecting children. What we have here is a microcosm of one of the causes of the expanding regulatory state; punishing the innocent many for the wrongdoing of the few. (A huge example of that; Sarbanes-Oxley, under which, in response to the fraud of a handful of corporate shysters, draconian regulations were foisted on the thousands of public companies that didn’t cook the books.)

The proper way to view the homeschooling issue is: until and unless evidence of an actual crime surfaces, leave them alone! That is how objective law works. In regards to homeschoolers, my Italian analogy from my above-cited essay applies.

But that is not the mindset behind the push to end NJ’s regulation-free zone. Consider:

“We just want to know your child exists,’’ Weinberg said. “How do children disappear from view?’’

“I think it’s a big issue. I absolutely support the state not only requiring children to register, but to track the curriculum and track that the kids are there,’’ [national child welfare expert Judith] Meltzer said. “I understand why parents would choose to home school but not why they object to registering and certifying they have a curriculum that has standards for their children.”

It’s a big issue, all right. Who is “We”? “Disappear from view” – of whom? Apparently not the families, friends, clergy, family doctor, etc. Whose curriculum? Whose standards? And here we come to the core issue, and it’s not about protecting the rights of the child and prosecuting child abusers. After recounting the horrific and heart-wrenching death of an 8-year-old girl, the regulation-supporting NJ Star-Ledger chimes in:

Parents don’t have to notify the state when they choose to home school. They aren’t required to show evidence their instruction is academically equivalent — no curriculum, no textbooks, nothing. They don’t even have to be high school graduates. And their kids don’t have to take state tests or earn high school diplomas.

As my daughter pointed out, only two cases of abuse in eight years and thousands of those whom the Star-Ledger acknowledges are “dedicated parents” successfully producing well-educated children must submit to intrusive bureaucratic interference. But as I said, it’s not about catching abusive parents, who exist also among public school children. As the Ledger makes crystal clear, the goal is expanding the government’s grip on education. (It’s interesting, in this context, that no mention is made of the percentage of abused homeschooled children vs. abused public school children. If statistical proof showed a higher level of abuse in the homeschool community, you could bet statists would be shouting the news from the rooftops.)

Supporters of homeschool legislation tell us they’re only after some reasonable middle ground. “A physical or basic skills test doesn’t interfere with the right to home school. And it could save lives”, the Ledger tells us. And Robert Kunzman of the Indiana University School of Education “supports requiring home-schooled children to be registered with the state and to undergo periodic ‘basic skills’ testing to measure literacy and simple math proficiency.” Many homeschooling parents in states that have such laws may say that it’s not all that bad or intrusive, and perhaps it’s no big deal or at least bearable for many of them.

But that’s not the point, and homeschooling activists who believe there could be some middle ground between freedom and government controls are falling into the same statist trap that has given us the cancerous growth of the ever-expanding regulatory state. When Kunzman suggests “Home-school supporters could compromise a little more and not lose the autonomy they cherish”, he is setting a dangerous trap. There is no compromising “just a little”. Once you accept the principle that government officials may determine standards relating to curriculum, textbooks, or the education level of the parents; impose state-approved standardized tests; even determine how much bible instruction or TV watching is appropriate – the “autonomy they cherish” is what is compromised and, sooner or later, on its way out.

Homeschool advocates have it right. “This is not a home-education issue; this is a problem that is squarely with DYFS [Division of Youth and Family Services],” said Carolee Adams, president of Eagle Forum of New Jersey. I.E., It’s a law enforcement problem. Homeschooling parents fought and defeated the last attempted statist attack on their fundamental rights as parents 8 years ago, and they should fight just as hard this time around. They should fight against the injustice of being held accountable for crimes for which they had nothing to do with; against being used as tools for the alleged purpose of “saving lives” or serving “society’s right to know children are protected in the rare cases of abuse and neglect”; against the notion that homeschoolers are guilty until proven innocent.

A government should and already does have the legal tools necessary to deal with physical abuse, when and where it can be objectively proven to exist. For example, it can remove the child from the home. But government’s proper role here involves physical – and only physical – abuse. It has no business in a free society to interfere in the field of education … i.e., the field of ideas.

Though some supporters of this potential new legislation may innocently believe that it is about protecting children, nothing can be further from the truth. It’s about expanding government education control over one of the few bastions of semi-freedom existing in that field.

Some Recent Activism

2011-06-14T20:04:00.002-04:00

I've left comments under the following three articles.

A Refreshing Defense of Individualism by CATO's Edward H. Crane triggered some brief supportive comments from me.

Tax Credits and the Separation Issue by Linda Stamato and Sanford M. Jaffe deals with a recent Supreme Court decision.

And in Wolves, Vultures, Consumers - and New Debit Card Regulations, Chuck Jaffe @ MarketWatch attacks merchants and banks for fighting in Congress over the new regulations - a fight that would not and should not have to take place except for the intrusive regulations themselves.