God and the Pledge of Allegiance: It's Time for Separation

In response to a lawsuit filed by a New Jersey family against its school district claiming that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance containing the phrase "under God" discriminates against atheists, the NJ Star-Ledger editorialized recently that 'Under God' doesn't belong in the Pledge of Allegiance.

In the comments, a correspondent, givemeliberty wrote in support of "Under God" on 4/24/14:

    The people seeking to stamp any mention of God out of public life remind me of the anti-vaccination crowd. You can get away with not vaccinating your child because most of the population has been vaccinated, which forms a firewall against mass contagion. The people who don’t believe in God get to live among people who do. If there is no God, there is absolutely no reason not to lie, cheat, steal, murder etc. so long as you are smart enough not to get caught.
    Yes, enormous evil has been done in the name of religion, but that is because of the human spin put on God’s laws. Churches are in the world, but must not be of the world. . . . I do not dispute that evil has been done in God’s name, only that the evil is owned by man, not God.

I left this reply:

"If there is no God, there is absolutely no reason not to lie, cheat, steal, murder etc."

Your argument translates into: "There is no rational reason that people shouldn't lie, cheat, steal, and murder." 

This is absurd on its face. There are plenty of rational, fact-based reasons to want to live peacefully and honorably among one's fellow man. Religion gives you nothing but "God said"; an arbitrary set of out-of-context commandments based on the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority.

And that is precisely why religion should be kept strictly separate from political power. It is inherently authoritarian. You can rationalize away all of the horrors committed by religionists. But you can not erase the fact that when someone says "It's so because it's God's Law," what he is really saying is "It's so because I said so"—debate over. It is not in spite of, but because of, a belief in God that religion is one of the most deadly set of ideas in human history, second only to Marxism.

Any society governed by laws based on what anybody who claims to speak for God says they should be is a totalitarian theocracy. Godless (i.e., objective) laws are precisely what the Founders had in mind when they established "a government of laws and not of men." They believed whim had no place in society's laws, which led them to the doctrine of separation of church and state. Any breach in that doctrine is a step onto the "slippery slope." The reason why people who don’t believe in God get to live peacefully among people who do is precisely because people who do believe in God don't get to legally impose their version of "God's Law" on everyone else.

The legislative insertion of "under God" in the pledge is a sanction of religion by the state, an example of religious authoritarianism, and should be removed.

Anyone interested in what a rational, scientific, pro-life, live-and-let-live morality looks like should study Ayn Rand's ethics, called rational self-interest (See links below). As Jaana Woiceshyn notes in The Virtue of Rational Self-Interest at Capitalism Magazine, Rand's ethics, called rational egoism, is built "on the foundation established by Aristotle." 

Unlike religion's dogmatic, commandment-based ethics, Rand's morality is rooted in the observable facts of reality and human nature. Unlike religious dogma, Rand's ethical theory is open for reasonable, objective debate.

As to the Pledge, anyone is free to say it any way they wish. But Congress shouldn't legislate the content, and schools shouldn't require it, especially with "under God" in it.

Related Reading:

The Virtue of Selfishness—Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist—Tara Smith

Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It—Craig Biddle

Environmentalists, Luddites, and Collectivism

Responding to a column by Paul Mulshine, in which Mulshine cited draconian environmental laws for New Jersey’s economic stagnation, three letters appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger trumpeting environmentalism.

The first (and most prominent) letter was submitted by a high-profile NJ Sierra Club activist, Jeff Tittel (Who’s the Luddite?). Tittel took issue with Mulshine's equation of environmentalists as Luddites. Tittel argued to legally stop two fossil fuel pipelines—one oil, and one natural gas—proposed for NJ; claimed that fossil fuels are bad and should be replaced with wind and solar; and asserted that “Environmentalists are the ones who are trying to move this state and country forward with new technology and innovation.”

Shawn R. Klein (Cause and effect) complained about “the world’s industrial overdevelopment and lack of environmental consideration.”

And Rachel Funcheon (Don’t knock enviros) rolled out the collectivist argument, saying “The jobs or profits of some do not trump the good of all,” and demanded that “we . . . invest in clean, renewable types of energy that will help preserve the Earth for future generations.”

I left these comments:

Environmentalism is not so much aligned with ludditism as collectivism. Collectivism holds that the individual is subordinate to the group, which is the fundamental focus of moral concern. Collectivist ideology serves environmentalists purposes well. Note the handy rationalization for the Pinelands Commission decision, which, notes Tittel, stopped the gas pipeline because it "was for a private facility outside the Pinelands." But the private liberty to produce and trade—derived from the inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness—is precisely what government is established to protect. The pipeline was a means of private individuals to pursue their happiness through trade. The commission violated the rights of these productive traders, based on—what? To "preserve the Earth for future generations"—as Shawn R. Kline demands?—non-existent generations that take moral precedence over actual human beings alive today? Collectivists will always sacrifice the well-being of actual people in the name of a collectivist abstraction as a way to further their ultimate agenda.

Keep in mind that, contrary to popular belief, "environmentalism" is not about cleaner industrialization. It is about no industrialization. It is about preserving the "natural"—i.e., non-human developed—environment based on the theory that nature has intrinsic value; i.e., value apart from a valuer.

But nothing can have intrinsic value. The "natural" environment is inimical to human life and flourishing. Human beings survive and thrive by altering nature, through productive work and trade, for the purpose of turning the natural environment into a livable human environment. The vital social requirement is freedom to work and trade. Environmentalism is ideologically opposed to human environmentalism, and thus opposed to work, trade, and the freedom it depends on. Hence, the drive to use governmental force to stop construction and development of projects like the natural gas and oil pipelines. Nature, you see, has “intrinsic value”; except for man, who environmentalists wantonly excommunicate from nature—precisely because of his unique intellectual capacity to turn raw nature into a human value.

Our air and water has never been cleaner, our lives never longer, our planet never healthier, and our vulnerability to extreme climate and weather events never lower, than in the era of fossil fuel development. Where would we be without water purification and delivery systems, industrial waste disposal systems, clean central heating, electric stoves, and nat-gas delivery systems—all of which depend on reliable, economical, industrial-scale energy to power—as opposed to scooping water from polluted streams (provided there's no drought), cooking and heating over open wood- or dung-burning indoor fires, and smelly, disease-infested outhouses?

There was a time when people really did "preserve the Earth for future generations." It is called the Dark Ages. The preservation mindset is a prescription for human stagnation, poverty, and a short, miserable existence. That's because, as Annie sang, "Tomorrow . . . is always a day [or a generation] away."

Thankfully, there were no environmentalists around before the Industrial Revolution to "preserve the Earth." If there had been, the few of us that would be around today would still be existing in short, miserable lives, ever at the mercy of "untouched" nature; rather than enjoying the advanced technological industrialization bequeathed to us. We should celebrate the fact that the Earth wasn't preserved for our alleged benefit; and then build on the progress we inherited to make our lives still better and happier—by, for example, respecting the rights of productive individuals and their companies to build fossil fuel pipelines—which will result in the passing on to the next generation of an even more technologically advanced society.

We should not be worried about "the world’s industrial overdevelopment," as Rachel Funcheon says. "Overdevelopment" is a euphemism for stopping economic progress and keeping people poor and miserable. Anyone who loves life should be worried about environmentalism, which grew out of the 1960s "back to harmony with nature" ecology movement and is ideologically inimical to human well-being.

I'm all for the liberty of entrepreneurs to develop and market solar and wind in free competition with other energy producers. But I'd like to know exactly which environmentalists "are trying to move this state and country forward with new technology and innovation"; i.e., actually doing the work of investing their own money in, and doing the intellectual and physical work of, developing, demonstrating, and marketing these innovations. All I see are wealthy do-nothings lobbying government to increase control of the energy industry, inhibit and stop proven energy-generating methods, and steal from taxpayers to subsidize crony socialist "clean energy" companies.

Tittel claims that wind and solar are economically competitive with nat gas-fired and conventional power plants. Very well. Let's remove all energy subsidies, along with restrictions on all energy sources (including nuclear, the ultimate "clean energy," if that catchphrase has any meaning), and see what the market—the voluntary choices of producers and consumers freely contracting—"decides" is the most profitable, most economical, and most reliable means of meeting our industrial-scale energy needs.

Related Reading:

Earth Day: The "Anti-Industrial Revolution"

Return of the Primitive—Ayn Rand

Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet—Alex Epstein and Eric Dennis

The Un-American 'Buy American' Crusade

New Jersey is considering a law, S1811 , that

Requires use of goods made in the United States for State contracts; requires businesses that receive State contracts or economic development assistance to disclose job exportation information.

In response, Nancy McLernon, president and CEO of the Organization for International Investment, “which represents the U.S. operations of many of the world’s leading global companies that insource millions of American jobs,” penned a New Jersey Star-Ledger op-ed calling the law a “boondoggle”.

That didn’t sit well with a letter writer, John Hessel, who wrote:

With reference to the op-ed by Nancy McLernon ("New Jersey’s ‘Buy American’ boondoggle," June 11), the CEO of an organization that advocates for American corporations that have systematically moved offshore: What chutzpah.

. . . What she ignores is all the jobs American corporations have outsourced to increase profits at the expense of millions of unemployed Americans. It seems "Buy American" is a noble thought of a bygone era, like the slogan "Proud to be an American," or the pride in being a member of the AFL or CIO, earning a decent hourly wage.

I left these comments:

So, I have a few questions:

• Does an American worker have a right to go to work for a foreign-owned company operating in the U.S.?
• Does an American worker have a right not to work for a company that wants to hire him?
• Does an American worker have a right to quit a job to pursue better life opportunities?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, I say; What Chutzpah, John Hessel!

Just as workers have these rights, so American businesses have a right to operate facilities and hire workers in foreign countries; to not hire workers it doesn't want to hire; and to terminate employment for workers that no longer fit its corporate goals. American businessmen are no different than anyone else: They have a right to pursue their own interests, just as much as American workers do. Would you say that an American who works in a domestic subsidiary of a foreign-owned company "profits at the expense of thousands of American companies?" No? Likewise, American companies who operate overseas don’t "profit at the expense of millions of American workers," because, just as no company has a moral claim on workers, so no worker has a moral claim on the jobs these companies create and maintain.

"Buy American" smacks of nationalism, a fundamentally un-American concept. In America, individuals, not the state, are sovereign, having inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The owners of corporations are individuals. They are sovereign citizens, not subjects of a collective labeled “the nation”. Nor are they slaves who exist at the pleasure of "American workers," any more than American workers are slaves to American businesses. Companies don't exist to employ people. They exist to make profits, just as American workers exist to earn wages.

Aside from the immorality of "Buy American," it is economically destructive. International trade enriches trading individuals (and businesses) in both countries, feeding the growth of both domestic and exporting industries in each country.

"Buy American" is not a "noble thought" of a bygone era. Buy American has never been an American ideal. In fact, it is a collectivistic, and thus Un-American, concept.  A proud American upholds individualism, the foundation of this country.

FYI: I am a life-long member of a construction trade union (ret.) affiliated with the AFL-CIO. But I do not think the world owes me a living just because I'm a "worker". I respect the moral right of companies to do business how and where they please. Rather than demonize these companies, we should consider why they move abroad. To the extent that American companies are incentivized by government policy to operate abroad—as our corporate income tax structure does—we should advocate changing those policies. Now, that would be pro-American.

Related Reading:

'Buy American' is UN-American—Harry Binswanger

"Who is morally responsible for the deaths of innocents in Gaza?"

In a war in which the aggressor and the defender is clear, who is morally responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians? Craig Biddle answers this question in a TOS blog post. Here is the opening paragraph:

The fact that the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas in its Gaza-based war against Israel is the aggressor and aims to destroy Israel and kill all Jews living there could not be clearer. Amid the mountains of evidence supporting this are the fact that Hamas’s founding covenant explicitly calls for the obliteration of Israel and the death of all Jews; the fact that Hamas has launched thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel; the fact that Hamas has built a vast network of tunnels from Gaza into Israel for use in killing or abducting Israelis; the fact that Hamas produces and airs children’s television shows encouraging children to kill Jews; and the fact that Hamas regularly announces that it aims to “exterminate” all the Jews in Israel. There are many more supporting facts, but these few are sufficient to make the preliminary point.

The issue I’d like to address here is related and equally clear: Who is morally responsible for the deaths of innocents in Gaza, such as Gazan children, who are killed by Israeli bombs?

Read the rest of Hamas and The Left’s Pretense about the Deaths of Innocents in Gaza.

There is a lot of moral equivocating between Israel and its Islamist enemies. To the equivocators, consider this:

• If Israel’s enemies laid down their weapons, what would be the result?
• If Israel laid down its weapons, what would be the result?

The answer to these questions is obvious to any semi-conscious person: to the first question, the answer is peaceful coexistence; to the second, Holocaust 2.

Enough said.

Related Reading:

Obama’s Hideous Moral Equivalence Toward Israel

Craig Biddle on Israel vs. Hamas

Norquist/McAuliffe Fall Short on Antitrust

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and Katie McAuliffe, executive director of Digital Liberty, penned an op-ed in the New Jersey Star-Ledger blasting the antitrust attack on the Comcast/Time-Warner merger:

Histrionic warnings of a cable monopoly have all the credibility of Chicken Little.

When the Sherman Antitrust Act passed in 1890, its advocates promised a classically conservative use of law to keep markets competitive and free. But today, federal antitrust law distorts the market, exacts concessions under penalty of law, and has become a forum for rent-seeking by competitors, who hope to leverage government intervention when they cannot win in the marketplace.

Norquist and McAuliffe demolish the notion that the merger will lead to “monopoly,” pointing out the myriad choices consumers have in the video/communications market. They make a compelling practical case for why the merger should not be blocked by antitrust regulators.

Unfortunately, they stop short of condemning antitrust laws as such:

Antitrust laws should not be manipulated as a pretext to justify more central control and command of the economy by government bureaucrats. If critics can’t show in clear and demonstrable terms how consumers are harmed, then Congress and the administration should let companies do what is best for their customers and subscribers, including combine and merge.

How can a set of laws as non-objective as antitrust ever not be "a pretext to justify more central control and command of the economy?" Never, because antitrust itself is based in broader principles that can only lead to more command and control.

Norquist and McAuliffe accept the altruist/collectivist/statist justification for antitrust; that producers exist to self-sacrificially serve consumers, and the state has a duty to enforce that servitude. As such, they do not call for full repeal of antitrust laws, which consistent pro-free marketeers must do if they are to reverse the anti-capitalist trend in this country.

Even those conservatives who do call for full repeal of antitrust cling to self-defeating collectivist justifications. For example, Steve Forbes called for full repeal, but only because “Antitrust efforts serve no public good,” undercutting his whole case and leaving the moral high ground to anti-capitalists. What’s to stop any statist from finding a “public good” that antitrust produces? The term “public good” can’t even be rationally, objectively defined.

Antitrust should be abolished. But conservatives will never beat back antitrust statism—indeed, as Norquist and McAuliffe point out, antitrust is “a classically conservative use of law to keep markets competitive and free”—as long as they cling to altruism/collectivism ethics. Only egoism/individualism can lead to victory over antitrust tyranny.

I left these comments, focusing on the monopoly myth:

The antitrust laws were created in part on a myth; that free markets lead to monopolies. In fact, monopoly is impossible under free markets, because in a free market government is as neutral concerning business as it is concerning religion. Even if a company in a particular market were to achieve a dominant position, it is not a monopoly as long as it is market-driven; i.e., driven by voluntary choices of consumers and no competitors are legally barred from entering the market. Religiously, America is a dominant Christian nation, encompassing 80% of the population. Yet nobody fears a Christian monopoly. Why? Even if the Comcast-Time-Warner merger resulted in an 80% market share, it would not be a problem if consumers could readily choose from competitors freely operating on a level legal playing field.

The key is a level legal playing field. Only government intervention can create monopolies (e.g., cable franchise monopolies dictated by local governments). If you want to see what a monopoly looks like, consider K-12 education. The public schools collect their revenues by government force (taxation) and their "customers" by government force (truancy laws). Government has regulatory control over what minimal private alternatives exist. And if parents should choose a private school or homeschooling, they must still pay taxes to support the government schools, putting private schools at a severe competitive disadvantage (Imagine if Comcast were able to force its fees on everyone, even those who choose alternatives). The government dictates teaching methods, educational philosophy, and teacher credentialing. Everyone must pay, whether they agree with the ideas being taught or not (Imagine if you were forced to tithe the Catholic Church, even if you disagreed with their philosophy). Real competition against the government schools is legally barred, unless you consider parents paying double for choosing a private school from among a minimal range of choices "competition".

Those who scream monopoly against successful private companies while ignoring and even supporting the government school monopoly have no idea what they're talking about. If they were truly worried about monopoly, they'd want to apply the same free market principles operating in the video-communications market to the education market. Imagine what the same kind of competition could do for K-12 education; the robust innovation, rising quality, and falling prices. Imagine the same moral principles that govern a free market—the rights of producers and consumers to contract voluntarily to mutual advantage—being applied to education; people directing the course of their own children's education with their own money, and profit-seeking educators competing freely for the parents' business, as a matter of fundamental right.

It's a tragic shame that so many Americans can get so up in arms over the hint of "monopoly" when it comes to watching TV, while ignoring the monopoly issue when it comes to something as important as educating children.

Related Reading:

Antitrust Prosecution of Apple is Rotten

My published letter-to-the-editor: Google not a Monopoly

The Abolition of Antitrust by Gary Hull

SCHOLARS WITH THUMBSCREWS: ANTITRUST’S PREDATORY ACADEMICS—Tom Bowden

Is Income Inequality Causing American "Democracy" to Go the Way of Athenian Democracy?

The Left's crusade against "inequality"—i.e., against liberty—takes many forms. Oxford University professor Stein Ringen has one. In Is American democracy headed to extinction?, Ringen argues that Athenian democracy collapsed because the rich gained too much political power, and American democracy is headed for the same fate:

It took only 250 years for democracy to disintegrate in ancient Athens. A wholly new form of government was invented there in which the people ruled themselves. That constitution proved marvelously effective. Athens grew in wealth and capacity, saw off the Persian challenge, established itself as the leading power in the known world and produced treasures of architecture, philosophy and art that bedazzle to this day. But when privilege, corruption and mismanagement took hold, the lights went out.

Ringen starts with a false premise: While Athens was a democracy, America is a constitutionally limited republic (not a "representative democracy," as Ringen describes it). What's the difference? In a republic, the power of the majority is limited by the principle of individual rights. Not so in democracy, where the majority has absolute power.

I'm not too familiar with ancient Athens, so I can't judge Ringen's claims about what caused its collapse. But I will say that under the original conception of America, in which rights are inalienable and the government's only purpose is to protect those rights, the term "the people" means something entirely different from what it means under democracy. "The people", in America, means qua individual. In a democracy—representative, direct, or otherwise—"the people" means qua the majority; the group; the mob.

In America, to "rule themselves" means for the people to live their individual lives by their own judgment, free of coercive interference by other people, including people in their capacity as government officials—i.e., as representatives of the electoral majority. In a democracy, the individual exists at the pleasure of the electoral majority (or its representatives), and has no rights, only "privileges." The people "rule themselves" as a gang dominates its members. In America, the "just powers" derived from the "consent of the governed" is limited to rights-protecting functions. In a democracy, the powers granted by the governed is theoretically unlimited.

Ringen ignores these distinctions, and in fact doesn't even mention individual rights. That's because he doesn't have a problem with gang rule. He just has a problem with which gang rules. The problem, he asserts, is “concentrations of economic power that have become politically unmanageable”:

In the age of mega-expensive politics, candidates depend on sponsors to fund permanent campaigns. When money is allowed to transgress from markets, where it belongs, to politics, where it has no business, those who control it gain power to decide who the successful candidates will be — those they wish to fund — and what they can decide once they are in office. Rich supporters get two swings at influencing politics, one as voters and one as donors. Others have only the vote, a power that diminishes as political inflation deflates its value. It is a misunderstanding to think that candidates chase money. It is money that chases candidates.

If Ringen were concerned about the future of American "democracy," he would recognize his own implications. Yes, money belongs in markets, not politics. And what political-economic system separates money—i.e., economics and business—from politics? It's not democracy, but its antitheses; laissez-faire capitalism. If money chases candidates, then why? Because the government has so much power over the economy. True, money doesn't belong in politics. But politics doesn't belong in markets, either. The problem is not "politically unmanageable" economic power. The problem is politically managed economic power, as such.

When politics "is allowed to transgress into" markets—e.g., redistributionist taxes, regulations, anti-trust laws, etc.—money is drawn into politics. The consequence of that transgression is that economic interests have a triple incentive to seek political power: to gain economic favors from government at the expense of other economic interests; to hamper or destroy competitors through regulations; or to protect themselves from the first two. Politics, not economics, is the impetus for the deterioration Ringen laments.

Keep in mind that economic power is the benign and life-lifting power of production, attained through voluntary trade. Political power is the power of physical force. Economic power is not a threat, but a benefactor. Political power is a threat, when and if it is used for any purpose other than eliminating criminals, repelling foreign enemies, or mediating domestic disputes; i.e., protecting individual rights.

A mixed economy provides a path to turn economic power into political power. The problem is not economic power, whatever the concentration. The problem is coercive domination by political power of one economic power over others. A mixed economy features a revolving door of dominators, based on the politics of the moment—or, as Ayn Rand put it a cold civil war of pressure groups. Ringen isn't against domination, as such. He's against domination by the rich—as against, domination by whom? The poor, the needy, or the "proletariat"? Not anymore. Apparently, those are obsolete. Today, it's democratic rule by envy.

Of course, by Ringen's own premises, "democracy" in America has worked just fine. Just look at the size of the welfare state, government spending, and the national debt, which keep growing under both Democrat and Republican administrations. Apparently, for Ringen, democracy doesn't work well enough. Since free markets foster economic inequality—by virtue of human nature, which is to the moral credit of free markets—our markets are still too free.

And this gets to the essentials of Ringen's article. Ringen's concern is not for the poor. His real target is income and wealth inequality. His crocodile tears over democracy is really a camouflage for a call to cut down the "rich"; i.e., the productive, self-reliant citizen. Apparently, Ringen can't stand democracy when the vote goes against his egalitarian designs; i.e., when the American voter doesn't exhibit a level of envy and resentment sufficient enough to elect politicians to cut down the rich. So he tells us that we're doomed—not because we tax, redistribute, and regulate enough—but because we don't attack achievement viciously enough.

Is American democracy headed to extinction? Let's hope so.

Related Reading:

Eminent Domain in Readington, NJ Demonstrates Democracy in Action

Democracy in Action in Egypt

Rights and Democracy

Iraqi Democracy vs. Freedom

Don Watkins on Paul Ryan’s Welfare State Reforms

In a blog post exploring House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s welfare state reform plan, the Ayn Rand Institute’s Don Watkins takes aim at a common fallacy; that being against the welfare state automatically means being against any organized means of assisting people who need help in life. Watkins writes:  

It is misleading at best to suggest that opponents of the welfare state oppose a “safety net,” if that means they oppose mechanisms and institutions for helping “those who can’t help themselves and for those who just need a helping hand.”

. . . The real question is not whether we should have a “safety net” or not. The question is whether we should have a coercive welfare state. What I find offensive about Ryan’s (and by extension [James] Pethokoukis’s) whole approach is that it doesn’t regard the rights and well-being of those forced to pay for the welfare state as worthy of much, if any, consideration. Instead, it starts by observing that some people are in need and jumps immediately to the question of what welfare state programs would most help them.

But that’s immoral. Just because there are people out there suffering and Ryan wants to help them doesn’t give him the right to concoct schemes that treat you and me and everyone who pays his own way as a means to Ryan’s supposedly noble ends. What about my goals and priorities? What about my right to pursue happiness? What about yours?

Watkins is the author of the just-published book, Rooseveltcare: How Social Security is Sabotaging the Land of Self-Reliance.

Related Reading:

A "Liberal" Newspaper Acknowledges the Welfare State Dilemma

What is Objectivism?—Craig Biddle

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