Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: May 2006

Monday, May 29, 2006

Memorial Day Must-Read

Posted by Craig Biddle at 9:13 PM

As swamped as I am with the journal, I'm late getting to this (and I see that Diana Hsieh and Gideon Reich have already done justice), but if you haven't read this op-ed elsewhere, then read it here. Now. This should be on every website in the country.

Memorial Day: What We Owe Our Soldiers

by Alex Epstein  (May 25, 2006)

Every Memorial Day, we pay tribute to the American men and women who have died in combat. With speeches and solemn ceremonies, we recognize their courage and valor. But one fact goes unacknowledged in our Memorial Day tributes: all too many of our soldiers have died unnecessarily—because they were sent to fight for a purpose other than America's freedom.

The proper purpose of a government is to protect its citizens' lives and freedom against the initiation of force by criminals at home and aggressors abroad. The American government has a sacred responsibility to recognize the individual value of every one of its citizens' lives, and thus to do everything possible to protect the rights of each to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. This absolutely includes our soldiers.

Soldiers are not sacrificial objects; they are full-fledged Americans with the same moral right as the rest of us to the pursuit of their own goals, their own dreams, their own happiness. Rational soldiers enjoy much of the work of military service, take pride in their ability to do it superlatively, and gain profound satisfaction in protecting the freedom of every American, including their own freedom.

Soldiers know that in entering the military, they are risking their lives in the event of war. But this risk is not, as it is often described, a "sacrifice" for a "higher cause." When there is a true threat to America, it is a threat to all of our lives and loved ones, soldiers included. Many become soldiers for precisely this reason; it was, for instance, the realization of the threat of Islamic terrorism after September 11—when 3,000 innocent Americans were slaughtered in cold blood on a random Tuesday morning—that prompted so many to join the military.

For an American soldier, to fight for freedom is not to fight for a "higher cause," separate from or superior to his own life—it is to fight for his own life and happiness. He is willing to risk his life in time of war because he is unwilling to live as anything other than a free man. He does not want or expect to die, but he would rather die than live in slavery or perpetual fear. His attitude is epitomized by the words of John Stark, New Hampshire's most famous soldier in the Revolutionary War: "Live free or die."

What we owe these men who fight so bravely for their and our freedom is to send them to war only when that freedom is truly threatened, and to make every effort to protect their lives during war—by providing them with the most advantageous weapons, training, strategy, and tactics possible.

Shamefully, America has repeatedly failed to meet this obligation. It has repeatedly placed soldiers in harm's way when no threat to America existed—e.g., to quell tribal conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. America entered World War I, in which 115,000 soldiers died, with no clear self-defense purpose but rather on the vague, self-sacrificial grounds that "The world must be made safe for democracy." America's involvement in Vietnam, in which 56,000 Americans died in a fiasco that American officials openly declared a "no-win" war, was justified primarily in the name of service to the South Vietnamese. And the current war in Iraq—which could have had a valid purpose as a first step in ousting the terrorist-sponsoring, anti-American regimes of the Middle East—is responsible for thousands of unnecessary American deaths in pursuit of the sacrificial goal of "civilizing" Iraq by enabling Iraqis to select any government they wish, no matter how anti-American.

In addition to being sent on ill-conceived, "humanitarian" missions, our soldiers have been compromised with crippling rules of engagement that place the lives of civilians in enemy territory above their own. In Afghanistan we refused to bomb many top leaders out of their hideouts for fear of civilian casualties; these men continue to kill American soldiers. In Iraq, our hamstrung soldiers are not allowed to smash a militarily puny insurgency—and instead must suffer an endless series of deaths by an undefeated enemy.

To send soldiers into war without a clear self-defense purpose, and without providing them every possible protection, is a betrayal of their valor and a violation of their rights.

This Memorial Day, we must call for a stop to the sacrifice of our soldiers and condemn all those who demand it. It is only by doing so that we can truly honor not only our dead, but also our living: American soldiers who have the courage to defend their freedom and ours.

Copyright ©2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Saturday, May 27, 2006

Notes on the Near Eastern Legacy of Islam

Posted by John David Lewis at 11:14 PM

I just finished teaching an undergraduate university class on the Ancient Near East: 15 weeks on Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. I read as many original documents and modern histories—and looked at as much art—as I had time to do. I became intrigued by the many parallels between radical Islam and the ancient historical background. Here are just a few, in no particular order, each of which needs more work:

  1. The idea that the world is divided into the realms of light and truth (ruled by a god's favorite on earth), versus the realm of darkness and lies (ruled by men). There are many parallels between Zoroastrianism (which sees the world as divided into warring realms of light and dark), Manicheism (similar views spread by a Persian mystic in the 3rd century A.D.), and Islam, particularly the Dar-al-Islam versus Dar-al-Harb, or World of Light and Submission versus World of Darkness and Chaos. From such views came Bin Laden's war with the west, which can only end when the forces of Islam have conquered the forces of Chaos.
  2. The idea that the truth can only come from the authority of a higher power, to be accepted by faith. The ancient Persian kings saw a "world of truth" versus "world of lies," in which the Great King triumphs over those who lie. Islamists today see enemies lying to them everywhere—while they accept the grossest lies themselves (teaching their children, for instance, that Jews are born of pigs and monkeys). See Elan Journo's article in The Objective Standard for the conspiracy theory mentality that develops from the idea that myriad enemies are engaged in organized lying.
  3. The idea that evil is a powerful force in the world, to be opposed by the forces of goodness derived from the divine. They see chaos whenever there is no divine force bearing down on men to keep them in line. In such a world, to be at war is natural—and good, if one is on the "good" side. Morally, they claim, those who initiate war for the realm of light are good, while those who defend themselves from such war are evil. Thus Palestinian suicide bombers are said to be good when they blow up little children, while the children are enemy occupiers who deserve death.
  4. The idea that proper political rule is based on the sanction of a divine power, whose commands are enforced by those who fight successfully on earth. For the Persians, it was the god Ahuramazda, among others, who legitimated the king's rule. The "peace" that follows when the king establishes his rule is a distinct parallel to claims by Islamic totalitarians that all will be well once Islamic law is imposed by a totalitarian Caliphate or ruling council. For such mentalities, adherence to divine commands is more important than the consequences on earth; thus the Taliban brought misery to their people, but called it goodness.
  5. The idea that man is unable to guide himself by reason means that he must be controlled, by either an inner or an outer jihad. Reason was unknown in the ancient world, but is today rejected by Islamists, who claim that each one of us must submit to the power of a god in order to restrain the emotions of rage that lead to chaos. From this follows a series of social rules: women must cover themselves, for instance, else men will go wild and dirty them. Palestinians must have a periodic "day of rage" to vent their anger at the hostile world that does not grant their whims.
  6. There is a need for an external enemy, as a point of focus for the rage which would otherwise turn into civil war. The Arabic tribes were in constant warfare, until Islam pointed their energies outwards, into conquest. To this day, the civil wars return to such areas whenever there is no external enemy, or no dictator to keep order by force. (There is a parallel to countries in Medieval Europe, which warred constantly unless they pointed their energies outward toward a Crusade against infidels.)
  7. The wars of expansion—by which the Near Eastern kingdoms and, later, Islam rose—continued until a dictator imposed his will. The ancient Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Median and Persian Empires all expanded to the limits of their power. For the Persians, the expansion to universal rule was stopped by the Greeks. Similarly, Islamists today say that a Caliphate will impose Islamic law over all, by force if necessary, under a totalitarian dictatorship.
  8. The demand by every ancient king for submission to his will everywhere is a precise parallel to the demand by Mohammad, and the Islamic totalitarians today, that people everywhere submit to the will of Allah. Ancient Persians were all slaves to the Great King; now, they are all to be slaves to Allah (as early Christians called themselves the slaves of Christ).
  9. The "everywhere" of expansion and submission is important: as the ancient Persian-Iranians set out to expand their kingdom over the entire world, so modern Islamists demand the spread of Islam over the entire world. Universal submission is their aim.
  10. The idea that the world of light receives its sanction from the divine—whether the Persian god Ahuramazda, or Allah—is the prime motivator for war and dictatorship. The rest of the world must either submit to highly motivated warriors, or die.

There are many more parallels between Islam and the Near Eastern past, and the transmission of these ideas through history is complex. But there is one central issue at root: only reason can allow human beings to reject the claim that God dictates the truth to submissive servants, who gain his favor by imposing that claim by force.

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Theocracy and Precedent

Posted by John David Lewis at 7:22 PM

Here are excerpts from the expatriate Iranian satirist Ibrahim Nabavi's open letter to President Ahmadinejad, in the online Persian daily Rooz:

. . . Oh adorable little boy who makes noise and needs attention!

. . . you had written to [President] Bush to present a solution to the problems in the world. What an excellent idea. But have you noticed that the problem in the world is you yourself? . . .

You wrote to George Bush: '[You intend to] establish a single global society which is to be ruled by Jesus and by the righteous of the earth . . .'

All Westerners, including the Americans, have for 200 years been diligently saying that they are not interested in a religious regime, and that they advocate secularism. Now you say that they are interested in rule by Jesus? . . . Go find the nutcase who taught you these things, fire him, and don't listen to him any more. [Those who taught you] see that you are naive, so they want a laugh at your expense . . .

The letter is available at the Middle East Media Research Institute, an organization that deserves our moral and financial support.

To this point in time, Nabavi is right: explicit calls for a theocracy inside America remain limited to a small group of religious conservatives. But while explicit calls for socialism remain among only a small group of leftists, our country has nevertheless adopted socialist policies impossible three generations ago. The encroachment of religiously-based laws can accomplish a similar theocratic result in less time, if not opposed in a principled way. Fines against the media for "indecency," and "faith-based" initiatives, are cases in point; all such censorship and religious socialism set precedents for even greater attacks on our freedom in the future. The price of a secular society is eternal vigilance against such laws, and intransigent opposition to the ideas and people that make them possible.

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Thursday, May 25, 2006

Michael Farris Interview on 'Fresh Air'

Posted by Alan Germani at 3:44 PM

Yesterday on NPR's radio show "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross interviewed Michael Farris, president of the fundamentalist Christian school Patrick Henry College. This regrettably named institution seeks to train home-schooled Christians to be tomorrow's leaders, "ready to reclaim the biblical principles upon which our land was founded." The interview with Farris, who also teaches Constitutional Law at the school, shows the dangerous results of two misunderstandings regarding the nature of our government.

Gross questioned Farris about a passage from his book, The Joshua Generation, in which he proclaims his desire that Christian students "engage wholeheartedly in the battle to take the land." His reply:

Everyone who engages in politics, everyone who engages in public discussions wants their philosophy to succeed, that's the nature of democracy. People who believe the kinds of things that I describe in that book, and that we teach at Patrick Henry College, we want to be successful, just like everybody else. And in a democracy, people listen, and they decide which candidates, which ideas are the better ideas. And if they like the ideas of one, they vote for them. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about winning the war of ideas by having a better way of articulating our principles than the principles of people who are on the other philosophical camp.

This is indeed the nature of democracy, and being "successful" or "taking the land" in this context means that you've convinced a majority to vote to advance your philosophy with government force. With a legion of college students trained to spread Christian ideology in the public sector Farris hopes to use the democratic process to one day force his agenda on America—including restrictions on abortion, extramarital sex, and homosexual activity.

Democracy places an individual's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness at the mercy of his countrymen, which is why the Founding Fathers were opposed to it, along with monarchy, theocracy, and all other forms of tyranny. The Founders instead established a republic, the laws of which are constitutionally limited to the protection of individual rights. In this revolutionary system of government, the democratic process was intended to play a bit part in the popular election of individuals to administer the government's powers of protection.

Today, the essential nature of our government is misunderstood to be exactly what the Founding Fathers tried to avoid: a system in which a majority of citizens can enact laws that violate the rights of the minority. Liberals and conservatives agree on this point—they only argue over the types of violations to enact and over which gang gets to hold the gun. A shift away from the idea of majority rule and back to the Founders' view of government as a protector of rights is needed to defend our liberty from would-be theocrats like Michael Farris.

However, misunderstanding the nature of rights presents another deadly hazard to freedom, as Farris makes clear elsewhere in the interview:

…as Thomas Jefferson said, "we're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights" and unless you believe that rights come from a source above man, you can't really believe in inalienable rights. If men create rights, men can take away rights. Unless God creates rights, as Thomas Jefferson said, you can't get there intellectually.

The alternative as Farris presents it, and as it is commonly understood, is that rights are either granted by society or granted by God. If rights are granted by society they are indeed meaningless; the result of this viewpoint is simply democracy, where individuals have rights only until they're voted out of existence. If rights are granted by God, one can surmise that He didn't grant rights to abortion, gay marriage, working on the Sabbath, and so forth. If this is our alternative, what good are rights?

Fortunately, Ayn Rand did "get there intellectually," and showed that this is a false alternative, that rights are neither granted by other men nor granted by God. From Atlas Shrugged:

The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man's rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.

Only the abandonment of democracy as it is practiced today and a return to respecting individual rights—properly derived from man's nature—can protect us from Michael Farris and his anti-life followers.

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Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The Society for Military History: A Report from the Front

Posted by John David Lewis at 10:25 AM

I just returned from the national conference of the Society for Military History (SMH), held at Kansas State University. I presented a paper on the military campaigns of the Roman Emperor Aurelian, arguing that his use of overwhelming force had resulted in a bloodless collapse of two major threats to Rome. At the conference I also had a chance to tour the combat simulation exercises at Fort Riley, to visit the National Cavalry Museum and the Eisenhower Center, and to hear a speech by the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers.

From the outset the conference set an utterly different tone than one hears at America's largest historical enclave, the American Historical Association. The difference starts with the membership: the AHA is almost totally academic, while the SMH has a large number of historians working directly with military units, either in uniform or as civilians. The opening speaker at the SMH said two things that I have never heard at the AHA: he praised our "passion for facts," and he urged us to write history always "with practical value for today." The purpose of history, I heard repeatedly at the conference, was to place modern events into an historical context, and to offer people—civilians, officers and soldiers—a means to better understand the present, and to plan for the future.

People not involved in academia may not understand how refreshing this was to me. At the AHA, outright hostility will usually greet such claims. I have sat on history panels where the first thing said is "there are no facts—only interpretations; and there are no lessons—only the contemplation of complexity." I have been in job interviews where the committee members' eyes glaze over when you even mention political, intellectual or military history. To them, everything is the subjective creation of gender history, "queer" studies, how the average man lived, or the "history" of oppressed peoples. It's all generally disgusting, irrelevant to understanding human events, and downright boring.

At the SMH, the experience was different in kind. One military officer stated publicly that his job was to write history in order to help military officers make better command decisions. I told him privately that a piece of my work had been delayed in publication because an anonymous reader had written that my work was not history. Why had the reader come to this conclusion? Because I had written of lessons from the past, to which the reader replied: "serious historians" know that "there are no lessons of history." To him, history is only the "contemplation" of the past. At the AHA, this is accepted doctrine. But the officer at the SMH nearly shouted back "He's an idiot!!" I agree. The officer deals with situations where HISTORY MATTERS. He works under deadlines, is evaluated by his superiors, and trains soldiers who are going into combat. If they don't recognize facts, they die. In contrast, the average academic has no one to please except other academics, who usually "think" like he does, else they would not have made it past graduate school and faculty hiring committees.

The Greeks and Romans knew that the purpose of learning history was to live a better life today. In the world of today's academics, this is all but forgotten. To hear it stated as a matter of fact at a professional conference was like a breath of fresh air. I do hope they accept my paper proposal next year....

This does not mean that I agreed with everything I heard. But the people I disagreed with accepted the presence of an external reality, with facts to be discerned and evaluated. This makes it possible to learn, to uphold truth and to correct one's errors. In the universe of the AHA, there is no truth, only your subjective opinion versus mine. Can you imagine such people in charge of nuclear bombs?

As to the practical consequences of this, consider: the organizer of the 2003 Columbia University conference at which a professor wished for "a million Mogadishus" was Eric Foner, Professor of History and former President of the AHA. After the applause died down, Foner did not disavow the remark. At the SMH, this would not have been applauded, to put it mildly.

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Monday, May 22, 2006

Altruism: The Morality of Logical Fallacies

Posted by Craig Biddle at 11:47 PM

[This post is an adapted excerpt from my lecture “Ayn Rand's Morality of Selfishness,” a ninety-minute introduction to the Objectivist ethics.]

Altruism holds that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving others. Despite its self-destructive nature, altruism is accepted to some extent by almost everyone today. Of course, no one upholds it consistently—at least not for long. Rather, most people accept it as true—and then cheat on it.

All religionists—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—are altruists. Their holy books demand it. All so-called “Secular Humanists”—Utilitarians, Postmodernists, and Egalitarians—are altruists. Their philosophies demand it.

From the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim points of view, the significant “others” are “God” and “the poor.” They are the “others” for whom you should sacrifice. From the Utilitarian point of view, the “other” is “everyone in general” (the Utilitarian principle is “the greatest good for the greatest number”). From the Postmodern and Egalitarian points of view, the “other” is “anyone with less wealth or opportunity than you have”; in other words, “the better off you are, the more you should sacrifice for others—the worse off you are, the more others should sacrifice for you.”

Sacrifice—Sacrifice—Sacrifice. Everyone believes it is the moral thing to do. And no philosopher has been willing to challenge this idea.

Except Ayn Rand. Quote:

[T]here is one word—a single word—which can blast the morality of altruism out of existence and which it cannot withstand—the word: ‘Why?' Why must man live for the sake of others? Why must he be a sacrificial animal? Why is that the good? There is no earthly reason for it—and, ladies and gentlemen, in the whole history of philosophy no earthly reason has ever been given. [Philosophy: Who Needs It, pp. 61–62]

On examination, this is true. No reason has ever been given as to why people should sacrifice for others. Of course, alleged reasons have been given, but not legitimate ones. Let's consider the alleged reasons—of which there are approximately six—each of which involves a logical fallacy.

  1. “You should sacrifice because God says so.” This is not a reason—certainly not an earthly one. At best it is an appeal to authority—that is: to the “authorities” who claim to speak for God. (More fundamentally, it is an arbitrary claim, since there is no evidence for the existence of God. But for our purposes here, suffice it to say that it is an appeal to authority.) Just because some preacher or some book makes a claim does not mean that the claim is true. Among other things, the Bible claims that a bush spoke.
  2. “You should sacrifice because Society says so.” This is not a reason, either. It is an appeal to the masses. Matters of truth and morality are not determined by what society or a group of people say. American society used to say that slavery should be legal; some societies still do. That did not, and does not, make it so.
  3. “You should sacrifice because other people need the benefits of your sacrifice.” That is an appeal to pity. Even if one person's sacrifice could produce benefits for another person (which it cannot—a subject for another post), it would not follow that this is a reason to sacrifice. If it were a reason to sacrifice, then anyone could walk up to anyone else at any time and demand anything: his money, his time, his effort, his property, his wife, or his life. Everyone has needs. I need a bigger house. Should other people give me one? Does my need constitute a moral claim on their time, their money, their effort?
  4. “You should sacrifice because if you don't, you will be beaten, or fined, or thrown in jail, or in some other way physically assaulted.” The threat of force is not a reason; it is the opposite of a reason. If the force-wielders could offer a reason for why you should sacrifice, then they wouldn't have to use force; they could use persuasion instead of coercion.
  5. “You should sacrifice because, well, when you grow up you'll see that you should.” This is not a reason, but a personal attack and an insult. It says, in effect, “You're immature” or “You're stupid”—as if demanding a reason in support of a moral conviction could indicate a lack of maturity or intelligence.
  6. “You should sacrifice because only an evil person would challenge this established fact.” This kind of claim assumes that you regard others' opinions of you as more important than your own judgment of truth. It is also an example of what Ayn Rand called “the argument from intimidation”: the attempt to substitute psychological pressure for rational argument. Like the personal attack, it is an attempt to avoid having to present a rational case for a position for which no rational case can be made.

That's it. Such are the “reasons” offered in support of the claim that you should sacrifice for others. Don't take my word for it: Try to think of another reason. Ask around. Ask a priest or rabbi. Ask a philosophy professor. Email this post to your friends, and see if they can think of another reason. You will find that all the “reasons” offered are variants of these—each of which, so far from being a “reason,” is a textbook logical fallacy. Most even have fancy Latin names.

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Saturday, May 20, 2006

Islamic 'Heaven'

Posted by Craig Biddle at 11:57 AM

Thanks to Jack Crawford for sending me this hilarious, 48-second clip of comedian B.J. Novak. Oh to be a Muslim woman.

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Thursday, May 18, 2006

Welcome, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted by Larry Salzman at 9:36 AM

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is among the most courageous women (and incidentally among the most beautiful) in the world today. She sought asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 as an escape from an arranged marriage brokered in her native Somalia. When established in Holland she was shocked to find the same radical Islamism she left behind growing in her adopted country and became an outspoken critic. In 2003, already hunted by Islamists for her ideas, she acceded to a seat in Parliament and became a Continental voice for reason against Islamist oppression. She gained enormous attention by authoring the script for, and acting in, a short film entitled Submission, directed by Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh was shortly thereafter murdered by an Islamist in retribution for the film and her life was also threatened. The New York Times ran an interesting article about her entitled "Daughter of the Enlightenment" last year, which is now available at no charge.

I was planning to write soon to describe the cowardice of her neighbors, who sued—and won a court victory—to have her evicted from her apartment. The problem: she is so hunted by Islamists and under such heavy security that it causes a nuisance to neighbors who must put up with the security and fear for their own safety should the building be the target of an attack. See this post at Volokh.com for details, which includes links to an English translation of the court decision. An article decrying this injustice and promoting Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, The Caged Virgin, recently appeared in Slate.

Today, however, that injustice has been compounded beyond comprehension. Rather than celebrated as a national treasure, this remarkable woman has been stripped of her Dutch citizenship by a bureaucrat—the Minister of Immigration and Integration—because she "lied on her citizenship application" by using a false name. This is a breach of Dutch law and she is being forced to flee Holland. There is now an immigration debate raging in the U.S., and I have no sympathy with those who insist that all they seek is "for immigrants to follow the law," but it is worth asking in this case: Why did she lie?

She lied because she feared that her family would find her in the Netherlands after her escape and altered her last name on her citizenship application so it could not be easily searched by those who would harm her. See her statement on the affair here. Perhaps most bewildering, the decision to revoke her citizenship was not mandated by the law but was a discretionary act of a "hardline" enforcer of immigration policy. This article in today's Spiegel Online (English edition) details this action.

In the context of our national debate on immigration, I advocate total neutrality on the part of the government: except to keep out criminals and perhaps those with communicable diseases, the government should remain indifferent to who or how many people may seek a better way of life in the United States. This case, however, is an exception. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is twice a victim, by two anti-American forces stalking the United States today: Islamism and anti-immigrationism. It is a moral imperative that the United States extend a public invitation, courting Ayaan Hirsi Ali and making certain she knows how welcome she would be here. Drawing her to the United States would be an important symbol against militant Islam. Breaking a pattern of appeasement, it would say to the world: the United States stands with those seeking shelter from Islamists anywhere. And where else will she be more free to continue her campaign against Islamism, which is a direct benefit to our national security? Furthermore, the attention her arrival in America would generate would make her virtues more known to the world and dramatically publicize just how much the Netherlands has lost by its unjust policy. Such a lesson may erode support for similar bad immigration policies being advocated here.

Fortunately, as the Spiegal article linked above notes, she resigned from Parliament today and her first trip as a non-citizen was a visit to the U.S. Ambassador at The Hague, who offered her any assistance possible. In addition, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, nearly immediately offered a position in Washington, DC. These are promising signs and I can only hope she arrives soon. And on a more personal note: if she prefers California to Washington and needs a roommate, I would like it to be known that no matter how intrusive her security needs, I would never seek to have her evicted.

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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

The Meaning of 'Price Gouging' Legislation

Posted by Craig Biddle at 9:50 PM

David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute explains:

Dear Editor:

The House has approved a bill that imposes criminal and civil penalties (up to $150 million for refiners and $2 million for retailers) on any energy company found guilty of "price gouging." But selling at prices some people feel is too high violates no one's rights—there is no such thing as a right to cheap gasoline. Moreover, "price gouging" has no objective meaning or definition—it is in the eyes of the beholder. People who complain about "price gouging" merely want a product at a lower price than it's being sold for.

Perhaps recognizing the unsolvable problem of objectively defining "price gouging," the House bill does not even attempt to do it, but delegates the task to the Federal Trade Commission.

But as Jeffrey Schmidt, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition admits, "One of the problems with price gouging is that there are a lot of different definitions of what price gouging is."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has his own "definition": "we know price gouging when we see it."

"Price gouging" laws are like the sword of Damocles, hanging over the heads of businessmen, who at any time may be found guilty of the "crime" of selling at market prices that politicians deem too high. Businessmen should not have to live under this constant threat; as owners of the products they sell they have the moral right to set the prices.

David Holcberg

Copyright ©2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

A Folly Well Examined

Posted by Craig Biddle at 3:53 PM

Here is an excellent letter to the editor from Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute:

Dear Editor:

As Saddam Hussein's trial resumes, he will face further charges for slaughtering thousands of Kurds—but Hussein deserves no regular trial. A trial that presumes him innocent is a travesty of justice. Hussein is not a private citizen, whose guilt requires proof in an objective court of law, but a dictator whose incontestable evil was manifest to any rational observer of his tyranny.

Hussein deserves to be definitively condemned as evil and then executed—immediately or after any valuable information is extracted from him. Prior to his execution, there can be a legitimate reason to hold a public hearing—not to establish his guilt, but to fully expose his secretive dictatorship's myriad vile deeds. Such a hearing would acknowledge that as dictator he is responsible for all crimes committed by his regime.

Instead of endorsing the trial of Saddam Hussein, the United States should withdraw its moral sanction from such corrupt proceedings.

Elan Journo

Copyright ©2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Spot on, Mr. Journo. Hussein’s trial belongs on the pages of The Onion.

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Monday, May 15, 2006

The Little Dictators

Posted by John David Lewis at 3:49 PM

America is the land in which productive individuals were largely set free of the coercive power of the government. The result was the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. But, over the past two generations, our freedom has been subordinated, in myriad ways, to the "Little Dictators" among us. The language of despotism is proper to them, for they wield the force of the government and demand obedience to their commands. To disobey them is to risk loss of career, property, and even life.

Who are the Little Dictators? Here are some real examples I have known; you can probably think of others. The local building inspector is one; he decides whether I can live year-round in the cottage I bought. Others include the fire inspector who decides whether a small day-care center—barely able to stay open—has to spend $10,000 for a fire door to cover a residential-type kitchen stove; the planning commission that decides whether I can build a house on my lot; the bureaucrat who collects money for permission to drive a car; the health inspector who says he is not sure whether he will allow a house to be built in this part of town; the zoning board that decides a restaurant is OK on this lot, but not on that one.

Their names are friendly; their power immense. One I knew, "Jim," had final say over whether a 42-story office building in a major city could open. Another, "Marty," said he did not care that his failure to read a blueprint had cost a small business $10,000—"that don't matter" were his words. Another, an inspector named "CJ" (the initials have been changed to protect his victims) was asked whether building requirements had changed "in his town"; he said, "I haven't decided. I'll let you know." Another, "Frank," showed up smelly and unshaven at the final inspection of a new high-tech manufacturing plant, and delayed its opening for three days pending a test of the fire alarm system's batteries.

Some personalize everything. "I ain't gonna allow it," I heard one decree, as he told a contractor to tear down a stone chimney and start over because the hearth was an inch too narrow. Another told me, "I ain't lettin' no more cottages be converted to year-round use. There's too many now," as he slapped a red tag on my neighbor's door. Once I was doing a project at a very remote site, which took hours to get to, including a boat trip. An offical said, to my face, that he'd require our technicians to return as often as he saw fit: "Not everyone can work in my town." Another made similar demands at a major state university; his son was our competitor, and had lost the bid.

These Little Dictators have the power of government guns to enforce their decisions. To avoid their wrath, a productive individual must suppress his rational judgment, and go by the rules they enforce. They are enemies of independent thought and comrades of conformity. Their whims and their rules coercively substitute for reality in the minds of their victims.

Americans should be up in arms about this tyranny in their midst. But they are not. Many have come to see the world as the Little Dictators wish it to be. Without the security of their decrees, many people would feel dread at the thought of making their own decisions. But this is dictatorship—the dictatorship of petty bureaucrats for sure, but dictatorship nonetheless—and it is growing by leaps and bounds. When Americans regain their understanding of liberty, they will feel a proper sense of outrage against these tin-badge despots, and the legislatures that empower them. But, first they must regain that understanding.

Comments:

From Diane Viewing, May 19, 2006

How are these fungi to be eradicated? They are not elected, evidently answer to no one, and have the power of government force behind their pronouncements. Their whims rule, and any appeal to reason is met with indifference, scorn, or laughter. The concept of property rights has become null in their hands.

From John Lewis, May 22, 2006

Dear Ms. Viewing:

Great question—and fungi is a perfect description: non-productive organisms living off of others.

The first thing to ask is: where did they come from? The answer is: philosophy. They came from the idea that to live by one's own rational judgment is scary, but to let others judge for us is safe—that businessmen are selfish brutes but bureaucrats have our best interests at heart—that the possibility of a problem anywhere means that everyone must submit to inspection everywhere—that nature's storms, earthquakes and diseases are normal, but power plants are unnatural and dangerous—that freedom applies to areas that I want to be free, but not to the freedoms of others—that we can compromise our liberty in some small area without threatening freedom across the board—that the Little Dictators deserve some credit for the prosperity we enjoy—that the government must have any powers needed to create a safe, stagnant world, because individual reason is flawed, inefficacious or malicious. Most people will deny many of these ideas if stated as such, but they use every one of them whenever they concede that the alternative to the Little Dictators is a frightening chaos of uncontrolled men.

To end this scourge people need to regain the self-esteem needed to act on their own judgments, and to take the consequences. They need to understand that reason—not conformity to whims—is how man lives, and that the alternative is a dictatorship that grows like a fungus that devours the host. The first step to ending such outrages is never to accept that they are necessary despite a few bad apples. The most dangerous of the Little Dictators I know are the conscientious ones, who pursue their tasks legally and with the support of their victims. Do what they demand if the alternative is personal ruin, but don't sanction them.

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Sunday, May 14, 2006

The Form of the Blog Name

Posted by Craig Biddle at 4:44 PM

Before starting this blog, we at TOS thought long and hard about possible names for it, but we kept coming up short; nothing seemed quite right. So we decided just to go with our initials and call it “TOS Blog.” As soon as the blog went up on the Web, the wrath of Diana came down upon us: “I do have one terribly important complaint about the ‘TOS Blog’—and that's its terribly boring name.” Ouch. She was, of course, right. But being the perfectionists that we are, we were not going to settle for a fancy name that wasn’t worthy. Unless we were struck with the Form of the blog name, it would remain TOS Blog. Then I had a revelation: “Principles in Practice”—that’s it! (Don’t bother to disagree; you would be wrong.)

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Saturday, May 13, 2006

A Victory for 'Abstract Concepts of Personal Autonomy'

Posted by Larry Salzman at 8:22 PM

About a week ago the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit told a lower court that it was wrong to dismiss out of hand and must reconsider a claim "whether the Due Process Clause [of the U.S. Constitution] protects the right of terminally ill patients to decide, without FDA interference, to assume the risks of using potentially life-saving investigational new drugs that the FDA has yet to approve . . ." See Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. FDA. The opinion is filled with qualifiers, as it must be given the state of constitutional law in this area, but it is instructive for just that reason and nonetheless remarkable.

Since roughly the Progressive Era, the principle of liberty has been under direct attack by those who have largely succeeded in gutting the Constitution's due process clauses. Previously, the U.S. Supreme Court understood the Constitution's guarantee of "due process" to protect individuals against legislative acts that were not enacted in furtherance of legitimate governmental purposes, but were mere acts of force wielded at the behest of majority vote. In the 1874 case of Loan Association v. Topeka, for instance, the Court wrote that:

"[T]here are...rights in every free government beyond the control of the State."

…

"There are limitations on such power which grow out of the essential nature of all free governments....No court, for instance, would hesitate to declare void a statute which enacted that A. and B. who were husband and wife to each other should be so no longer, but that A. should thereafter be the husband of C., and B. the wife of D. Or which should enact that the homestead now owned by A. should no longer be his, but should henceforth be the property of B...."

"To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less a robbery because it is done under the forms of law.... This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative forms."

The legal doctrine of "substantive due process" embodied the idea that laws violating certain pre-political, moral rights, which establish the purposes of government, may not be upheld, regardless of whether they were enacted with all the right procedures in place. Today the phrase is almost an epithet in many judicial and academic circles because the judiciary has largely institutionalized the view that "due process" does not properly speak to substantive limits on the content of legislation. As the Supreme Court reminded us just last term in the controversial Kelo v. New London eminent domain case, today the government most certainly is able "to lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals," assuming that before doing so the legislature makes a determination that it will result in some public benefit.

And so it is worth some note that an appellate court has said "[d]espite the FDA's claims to the contrary . . . it cannot be said that government control of access to potentially life-saving medication 'is now firmly ingrained in our understanding of the appropriate role of government' so as to overturn the long-standing tradition of the right of self-preservation.'" It may be difficult for non-lawyers to grasp that this watered down statement is an unusually straightforward defense of the principle of liberty, particularly if one reads the opinion and sees how much more water is spilled. But it may help to consider the thorough confidence of the dissent, which argues that by allowing a lower court to even hear a case on this subject—presenting the most minimal risk to the FDA's total control over what drugs terminally ill individuals may ingest—the Court has engaged in judicial subjectivism and invented a new individual right "deduced [not from law, but] from abstract concepts of personal autonomy."

For terminally ill patients to decide solely on their own what drugs they should take ignores the "intense and complicated scientific and moral debates about how best to regulate new drugs" and, according to the dissent, is an affront to the "particular balance already struck by Congress and the Executive." The right thing to do, under the law as understood by the dissent—which in my estimation is more representative of the majority of judicial opinion—is for these patients to place their faith in democracy, "in which the voices of votes allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress."

The DC Circuit has said, haltingly, "No," at least not in this case.

(case citations have been omitted for ease of reading)

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Friday, May 12, 2006

Tribute to Iran

Posted by John David Lewis at 10:05 PM

The High Muckety-Muck (HMM) of Iran sent President Bush an 18 page letter this week, doubtless with very tiny writing, in which he wrote:

Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.

Translation: in the war we are fighting, you in the west will be defeated, and we Iranians will win, because you have failed to help others.

One of HMM's chief platoons in the war is Hamas, a terrorist group that receives religious, moral and economic support from Iran, and now has a base of operations in the Gaza. Without Iran, Hamas—and the war—would not last long. So what have American leaders done about this?

This week, Secretary of State Rice convened a meeting with Russia, the UN Secretary-General, and Europeans, to discuss the resumption of economic payments to Hamas. Rice said that their goal was "to provide assistance to the Palestinian people so that they do not suffer deprivation and do not suffer an humanitarian crisis." In other words, the Secretary took HMM up on his challenge to send him money.

Caroline Glick has exposed this forcefully as a flight from reality: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0506/glick051106.php3

In Glick's potent words, "the US on Tuesday recommitted itself to a Middle East policy that has no connection to reality and thus no chance of ever succeeding. Indeed, failure is inevitable."

There is, of course, a consequence to such a "delusion": "the fact is that by aiding Hamas, the US is aiding Iran." This is the fact that our leaders are desperate to evade.

Glick recognizes that "The purpose the Quartet was founded to advance was the shunning of reality, in the hope that if reality was rejected strenuously, that reality would change." This is the epistemology of subjectivism: the notion that reality follows our whims.

Our leaders refuse to see that the Iranians—and Hamas—will not use the cash to help their people. They will see our largesse as weakness. The money will demonstrate, to those most passionate for war, the very weakness that HMM wrote of in his letter. What our leaders see as altruistic goodness is in fact moral capitulation. It is aiding and abetting the enemy, by paying him tribute.

The Romans once demanded tribute from those they conquered by the sword. As their Empire lost strength, they began to make payments to the barbarians at their gates. The barbarians saw this as weakness, and stepped up the attacks.

Today, our weakness is not physical, it is moral. We are not forced to send tribute to killers. Our leaders do so because they accept it as a duty. It won't help us—and they know it—so the delusions get deeper as the aid increases.

It is only our acceptance of this duty that motivates us to send tribute to our sworn enemies. At least the Romans had to be forced to pay. At their worst moments they were never so perverted as to do it voluntarily.

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Thursday, May 11, 2006

'Flight 93'

Posted by John David Lewis at 7:08 PM

On May 1, writer Tom Miller reviewed the film "Flight 93" for Military.com.

http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,95869,00.html?ESRC=dod.nl

Miller is a novelist, and a former history professor, Army officer, and Vietnam veteran. His review is less of the film than of the need to remember why it needed to be made:

[I]f people need to be reminded, maybe it's already too late. We have been at war with these Islamo-fascist thugs since long before 9/11. They have told us—repeatedly and clearly—what their intentions are. Why can't we accept them at their word? Especially after 9/11?

Osama bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, the Iranian ayatollahs, among others, have echoed Muhammad's words from his farewell address in 632: "I was ordered to fight all men until they say 'There is no god but Allah.'" The ultimate goal of these hateful tyrants is a universal Islamic empire governed not by secular law but by divine law. That leaves no place for freedom.

Miller is right about all of this, especially his forceful identification of the Islamic empire as the enemy's goal, and its connection back to the founder of Islam. This is what needs to be remembered.

Miller is also right not to name Saddam Hussein as one of those advocating the Islamic empire—Hussein was just a tyrant of the non-religious type and an enemy of Iran. If only our government had empowered our soldiers—the guys being shot at—to take out the Islamic totalitarians, instead of digressing into Iraq…

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Faith and The Founders

Posted by Alan Germani at 12:55 PM

There is a widespread and dangerous misconception that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. As religious fundamentalism increases today, so does the likelihood that faith-based laws will be enacted and enforced by our government. Items on the agenda of faith-wielding politicians—who are increasingly pushing for rule by religion—include banning abortion, criminalizing sexual acts between consenting adults, and (further) stifling the creation and use of life-promoting medical treatments. To protect America from these wannabe Mullahs, we must understand and propagate the truth that the founding fathers were as opposed to religious tyranny as they were to every other form of statism.

This piece in the New York Times briefly reviews three books that consider the Founding Fathers’ religious beliefs and their opinions on the place of religion in government. (Spoiler: It has no place.) Based on the review, two of the books—David L. Holmes's “Faiths of the Founding Fathers” and Peter R. Henriques’ “Realistic Visionary”—merit reading by those interested in the topic. Even the piece itself is interesting reading as it contains specific facts indicating not only that the Founding Fathers were serious about the whole “separation of church and state” thing, but also that most of them were, by today’s standards, barely religious at all. You might know that Thomas Jefferson “cut and pasted his own Bible”—but did you know that John Adams denied “the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, total depravity and predestination”? That would be a good thing for all Americans to know.

Comments:

From Peter Murphy, May 11, 2006

And what is also conspicuously absent from today's religionists' revisionism is the reason why the founding fathers advocated the separation of church and state - namely: they recognized that faith was useless in gaining knowledge, and therefore destructive in the public sphere whenever injected into a government's legitimate processes like adjudicating contract disputes or legislating to protect individual rights. Only a dispassionate identification of facts and reasoned evaluation by objective standards like the Bill of Rights, they held, could have any chance of arriving at the level of justice required by a civilized society. Contrast their dominantly pro-reason stance with the so-called "courts" of today's theocratic societies like Egypt or Iraq: God said it (as interpreted by my feelings about this book), you must believe it, and that settles it! This is the key argument against the incursion of religion into government: reason and faith are irreconcilable opposites, with the former enabling civilization and progress, and the latter leading inexorably to barbarism and annihilation. Faith must remain solely in the private sphere (where, in a more rational society, it will naturally atrophy as it did among most of the Founding Fathers).

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Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The Social Worker and The President

Posted by John David Lewis at 10:28 PM

A social worker recently told me why I should support government programs that bring money to people in need. Isn't it good, she asked, to live in town that is prosperous, with neighbors who are not desperate for the basics of life? By giving to them, I make my own life better. This is really in my own self-interest, she said.

She is, in a sense, right. It is better to live in such a town. Prosperous people rarely mug others, and their prosperity goes hand in hand with a healthy business climate. That is good for me. But, her proposal is altruistic through and through, because the prime beneficiary of the argument—and its purpose—is "others first."

Academic philosophers and nuns aside, few people today argue for overt sacrifice. They have to claim that the sacrifices are really for one's own good, in order to draw supporters who would recoil if told there was nothing but losses in it for them. It is a rationalization to claim that I can benefit myself by sacrificing to others. A rationalization here is a pseudo-argument, used to support a predetermined conclusion that has been reached emotionally and not rationally.

A similar appeal is made by President Bush, on behalf of his "Forward Strategy of Freedom," which claims that we can defend our own freedom by sacrificing for others overseas. A "strategy" is a plan of action, a means to achieve a goal. Bush notes that free nations do not attack others. He then sets the freedom of others as the goal of the war, which, he says, protects our own. He then sends young men to die for Iraqis, hamstringing them from defeating our own enemies while stealing the prestige of a staunch defender of America.In every particular action in Iraq, the primary question to be asked is: is it good for the Iraqis?

Each of these cases is altruistic through and through. This is true even if the parties involved really believe that they are acting for their own self-interest. Their intentions do not change the facts: each is giving up values for others, making others the prime motive for their own actions, and then trying to justify it as "self-interest" in their own minds and the minds of others.

For both the social worker and the President, our self-interest is equated with doing good for others. Can anyone think of a better way of effacing the legitimate concept of self-interest in the minds of Americans, than by replacing it with this?

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