The Objective Standard Blog
The Objective Standard Blog: September 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
Good Press for Objectivism and Atlas Shrugged
There is a good article in Forbes today, titled “Atlas Shrugs Again,” by Marc Babej and Tim Pollack, focusing on the recent swell of interest in Ayn Rand’s ideas and on what it takes to “market something as amorphous as a [philosophical] movement.” After citing some of the recent items that have brought attention to Ayn Rand—from Alan Greenspan’s autobiography to New York Times and LA Times articles to TV mentions to the pending Atlas Shrugged movie—the writers ask Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute and a contributing editor to The Objective Standard, “Why the sudden interest in Any Rand?” Brook gives two reasons:
"First, she never really went away. Many who read the books when they were young, in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, are now confident enough to say that Ayn Rand is their favorite author, and they have the means to donate to the institute. That's enabled us to promote objectivism more aggressively."
Second, Brook cites what he calls a cultural vacuum: "Today's left doesn't have anything positive to offer to young people. When they were socialists, there was at least something they were fighting for, and they believed in a right and a wrong. Today's leftist agenda is negative and nihilistic—focused on stopping industrialization, capitalism and even Western civilization. But young people want positive values. That's why religion is so strong today, because many view it as the only thing that promises a brighter future."
According to Brook, this gap between liberalism and religious conservatism goes far to explain the surge in interest." Ayn Rand is the only voice that offers a secular absolutist morality with a positive vision and agenda, for individuals and for society as a whole," he says.
This is true, and while today’s relativists and religionists are increasingly sensing the threat that Ayn Rand’s observation-based ideas pose to their fantasy philosophies, many active-minded people are discovering the rational alternative to liberalism and conservatism.
Babej and Pollack offer some good advice for marketing Objectivism:
—Choose a fertile target. For objectivists [sic], this means conservatives who aren't comfortable with the religious right and feel alienated and orphaned. Objectivists can attract this audience with a moral argument for capitalism and individual rights by showing that free markets and individual choice aren't just smart and practical, but also moral.
—Activate your natural supporters. Objectivism is a natural fit for businessmen because it not only tolerates, but extols them. Fortune 500 CEOs can become to objectivism what movie stars are to Scientology and Kabalah [CB: with the added bonus that Objectivism is true rather than ridiculous]….
—Accentuate the positive. It's easy to be a naysayer. It's harder, but much more rewarding, to offer hope. To win hearts and minds, objectivists need to show not only why they're right, but how to get from here to there.
—Pick your controversies selectively, and don't be afraid to court the controversies you pick. Conservative Republicans have dominated presidential politics for over half a century by deftly capitalizing on wedge issues—the latest example being same-sex marriage. Objectivists would do well to steal a page from that playbook by picking a battle on a specific issue in the area of individual rights.
Read the whole thing.
There is also an article in today’s Orange County Register about the fiftieth anniversary of Atlas Shrugged. This piece is worth reading too, but don’t go there unless you can laugh off the absurdity of an English professor who says that Atlas is “sloppy and it's exuberant and it's overwritten and it's melodramatic”—and who likens the novel to Catcher in the Rye(!).
Labels: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Philosophy
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Congress Should Not Dictate Mental Health Benefits
Irvine, CA—By a unanimous vote, the Senate has approved the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007, which would forbid employers to offer less favorable insurance coverage for mental illness than for physical illness. Support for a similar measure is widespread in the House, so passage of a new federal law this year seems likely.
“This bill violates an employer’s right to set the terms of the benefits he offers," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. “The bill’s supporters point to the obvious fact that mental illness is as real and as destructive as physical illness. But employers have no duty to offer coverage for all ills, or any ills; they have an absolute right to limit or deny coverage on any basis. For example, many employers are reluctant to foot the bill for what they see as open-ended therapies whose great expense is not justified by any certain cure.”
Back in 1996, Congress enacted the first federal Mental Health Parity Act, which prohibited employers from imposing lower annual or lifetime limits for mental treatment, as compared to physical treatment. The new bill, which would apply to employers of more than 50 people, mandates equal coinsurance, co-pays, deductibles, and equal limits on frequency and duration of treatments.
“This legislation shows the insidious process by which creeping government regulation transforms independent employers and insurance companies into servants of politicians,” Bowden said. “Health care is not a right. It is a value offered by physicians, insurance companies, and employers who have a right to set their own terms of trade. The government should be phasing out, not expanding its coercive regulatory control over medical care."
Mr. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. His Op-Eds have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Healthcare, Individual Rights and Law
Caps on Fossil Fuels Would Be Devastating by Alex Epstein
The UN Secretary General echoed a common sentiment Monday when he claimed that the failure to take dramatic action in response to global warming would bring "devastating" consequences. But the truly devastating thing about the global warming issue is the proposed response to it: a severe cap on carbon emissions. The supposed "crisis" of manmade global warming is completely overblown. Even if the United Nations' incredibly speculative projections of an 8-degree warming occurred, they would easily be dealt with by industrialized people with ample energy, transportation, sunscreen, air-conditioners, and sturdy houses.
But this ability to cope with any negative weather patterns depends on utilizing our most plentiful, practical sources of energy--including fossil fuels. Yet this is precisely the value that drastic caps on fossil fuels would destroy. Such a cap would stunt development of every facet of industrial civilization through energy shortages and higher energy costs in the industrialized world--it would deprive the Third World of the ability to generate desperately needed energy. Nothing could be more devastating than that.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Environmentalism, Individual Rights and Law
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Reject the Latest Push for Net Neutrality
Irvine, CA—U.S. senator Byron Dorgan, a leading advocate of "Net Neutrality" legislation—which is supported by Microsoft, Google, and many other software companies—promised last week at the Future of Music Policy Summit that the push for this legislation would continue. Americans, he said, to a standing ovation, must "fight back and say this is something that's important for our country's interests." But, said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, "Any law enforcing 'Net Neutrality' would be a terrible blow to Internet freedom."
"'Net neutrality' is the idea that ISPs should not be able to favor some types of data over others; they must be 'neutral' toward all the data they carry. But just as cable companies have a right to apportion their bandwidth between Internet and television data, so Internet providers have a right to apportion their bandwidth between standard and premium Internet data."
"'Net Neutrality' laws would forcibly prevent network owners from selling innovative services to their customers," said Epstein. "Shame on Microsoft and Google for trying to deny their competitors the freedom that has made the Internet great—and shame on the politicians and activists who support this corrupt idea."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
Reject the 'Values Voters'' Culture of Living Death
Irvine, CA—On Monday, the Republican Values Voters Presidential Debate was held, billed as representing " America's Largest Voting Block." Most of the candidates involved, including straw poll winner Mike Huckabee, pledged their support for building a "culture of life"—a rallying cry for America's "values voters" in their opposition to all abortion and embryonic stem cell research, and in their opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide. By doing everything possible to preserve embryos, fetuses, and the incurably ill or vegetative, they say, we will bring about a "culture of life."
Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, denounced this idea. "Think about the reality of such a culture. Pregnant women who rationally desired to abort—whether because of accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, or danger to their lives—would be forced to attempt dangerous, 'back-alley' abortions, the kind that crippled or killed untold numbers of women before Roe v. Wade. Individuals with incurable and unbearable diseases would not be able to die with dignity at a time of their own choosing, but would be subjected to a protracted existence of often unspeakable agony. The potential millions who could be cured by treatments derived from the promising field of embryonic stem-cell research would instead suffer and die.
"To call this a 'culture of life' is a colossal fraud. In reality, it is a culture of suffering—of living death—in which actual human lives are sacrificed because 'God's will' commands it. It is a culture that consistently accepts the Christian ideal that human life is properly lived in sacrifice to God, and that suffering is proof of virtue.
"A true 'culture of life' would leave individuals free to pursue their own happiness—free from coercive injunctions to sacrifice themselves to religious dogma. Such a culture is what we must seek to create, as we do everything possible to fight religious conservatives' 'culture of living death.'"
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Individual Rights and Law, Religion
Make TV Free
Irvine, CA—The FCC plans to consider banning television content providers from bundling mainstay channels with less popular ones when negotiating broadcast terms with cable companies. This is seen as the first step to eventually forcing cable companies to offer cable channels to consumers "a la carte," rather than as part of a bundle. According to FCC chairman Kevin Martin, "If you only want one channel, you shouldn't have to take ten or twenty."
"This is an example of the government trying to solve a problem it created," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "In a free market, if consumers wanted to purchase cable TV channels 'a la carte,' there would be cable companies trying to cash in on that demand. But the TV industry is not a free market—at every level, the government controls and regulates it.
"Most cable companies, for example, are government-protected monopolies in the markets in which they operate, preventing consumers who are unhappy with their service from patronizing a different cable provider. At the same time, a tangled host of regulations and restrictions enable content providers to strong-arm cable companies into accepting bundled channels or else pay high retransmission fees.
"The end result of such regulations, and others like them, is that cable companies are both protected and hamstrung from freely trading their services at a range of price-points and channel combinations. It is ridiculous to think that the solution to this regulatory mess is more regulation.
"What we need is freedom in television, where content providers, cable companies, and consumers are free to deal with one another on mutually agreeable terms, without government interference or government favor."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
Message to Presidential Candidates: Income Inequality Is Good
Irvine, CA—Presidential candidate Barack Obama is receiving lavish praise for giving a speech on Wall Street that included “tough talk” about the issue of “income inequality”—an issue that he and nearly every other presidential candidate regard as a crisis.
But, said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, "there is no such crisis. Income inequality is a natural and desirable part of a free, prosperous society.
"Critics of income inequality act as if American wealth is a communal pie that belongs equally to all of us. But the vast wealth that exists in America has been created—through the productive activities and voluntary arrangements of individuals. And individuals do not necessarily create the same amount of wealth. Because all wealth is created, it rightly belongs to those who earn it (or their chosen beneficiaries)—and no one can rightly claim to deserve wealth earned by others.
"Critics of income inequality point to some legitimate problems, such as poor educational opportunities, growing healthcare costs, and stagnating wages—but these are the result, not of too much capitalism, but of government policies based on the same egalitarian mentality that denounces 'income inequality.' If business and wages were deregulated, we would see a dramatic rise in economic opportunity. If education and medicine were left free, with America's businessmen, doctors, and educators liberated to offer education and medicine at all different price points, we would see quality and price improvements like those for computers or flat-panel television sets. But these benefits of freedom require that we recognize the moral right of each individual to enjoy whatever he produces—and recognize that none of us has a right to something for nothing."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
The First Day of School: VanDamme Academy Style
I have often been told that, when asked what was special about their VanDamme Academy education, graduates say, "We always understood why we were learning what we were learning." This important effect has many causes, the most significant among them being that what the students are learning is, in fact, important, and that the teacher always makes a purpose of conveying, implicitly and explicitly, why it is important.
In a discussion of the distinctive VanDamme Academy history program, Andrew Lewis said that the little history that is taught in today's schools typically addresses five questions: Who? What? When? Where? and How? Mr. Lewis recognizes that the answers to those questions are inadequate without answers to two more: Why? and So what? The story of history must be causal and explanatory, the explanations must be relevant to the students' lives, and the students must understand the relevance.
It is this principle that defines the first day at VanDamme Academy. In each class, the teacher begins with the questions: What is this subject? and Why do we need to study it? Here is what I glimpsed walking through the school's halls on that inaugural day:
In Mrs. O'Brien's grammar classes: She discussed what grammar is (principles concerning the proper use of language), and answered the cliché objection, "We don't need grammar; we just need to make ourselves understood." She demonstrated that we cannot consistently make ourselves understood without the rules of grammar, presenting humorous examples from Eats, Shoots, and Leaves and Anguished English of the problems and ambiguities that result from the placement or misplacement of a comma (e.g., "Slow, children ahead," and, "Slow children ahead.") or from an amphibolous construction (e.g., "Customers who find the waitress uncivil ought to see the manager."). She introduced a theme to which she can refer throughout the year: that a mastery of grammar is vitally useful.
In Mr. Travers' literature classes: He began with a discussion of the personal value of literature. He explained that a great plot presents an extraordinary sequence of events that is purposeful and has an abstract meaning, differentiating it from the story of an ordinary day, which is full of the mundane, accidental, and meaningless. He showed how that abstract meaning can illuminate the world around them, and referred to the inspiration they had drawn from the themes of works they had previously studied (e.g., the virtue of independence in An Enemy of the People.) He showed that great works of literature present people who have been distilled to an essence, that they highlight the nature and consequences of certain traits of character, and discussed how this could help the students in understanding and evaluating qualities in others and in themselves.
Educators often wrestle with the question: How do we motivate the students? Many resort to the carrot and the stick, dangling rewards or threatening consequences. But the technique employed by Mr. Travers, Mrs. O'Brien, and Mr. Lewis, and the way they will make good on their promise to present what is important and show why it is important—that is the essence of motivation, and a defining feature of the VanDamme Academy curriculum.
Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy's free, e-newsletter, "Pedagogically Correct" featuring articles about the principles of teaching employed at the Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.
Labels: Education
Monday, September 24, 2007
More on Ahmadinejad's Forum at Columbia
In case the relativist “principle” guiding Lee Bollinger’s choice to invite Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia was not clear enough in his earlier statement, here is a brief video of him making it even clearer. The “principle” is that anyone willing to “debate”—regardless of his complicity in the torture and murder of thousands of people to date—regardless of his aspirations to torture and murder many more—regardless even of whether he has orchestrated the torture and murder of millions of people—will have a forum to speak at Columbia, because, after all, everyone’s opinions are equally deserving of consideration. To make this point perfectly clear, Bollinger tells us:
If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak … if he were willing to engage in the debate and a discussion, to be challenged by Columbia’s students and faculty, we would certainly invite him.
Labels: Foreign Policy and War, Philosophy
Friday, September 21, 2007
Religion and Relativism: The Axis of Evil (Exhibit 723-B: Ahmadinejad's Visit)
That the Bush administration is permitting Ahmadinejad to enter America for any reason other than to kill him on sight is a moral travesty. But, then, given that Bush and company’s philosophy counsels us to “resist not evil” and “turn the other cheek” and “judge not that ye be not judged” and “love your enemies” and the like, this should come as no surprise.
Of course, religionists don’t have a monopoly on such irrationality; relativists partake in the insanity too. While Ahmadinejad is in town, Columbia University is having him lecture to its students. This, says Columbia’s President Lee Bollinger, is in keeping with the school’s “long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.” What debatable ideas might Ahmadinejad present to Columbia’s students? Well, since most American college students are not yet fully primed for his usual directness, perhaps he won’t be as forthright with them as he is in this brief video, but here is what Ahmadinejad has to say on a typical day:
“Robust debate” indeed.
Religion and relativism are evil, America. It is time to discover objective morality.
Labels: Foreign Policy and War, Philosophy, Religion
Fall Issue of TOS Now Online
The online version of the Fall issue has been posted to our website.
In connection with all the press surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged—from the New York Times article “Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism,” to the Los Angeles Times piece “Ayn Rand's Epic Storytelling,” to Lionsgate’s selection of a director for the Atlas Shrugged movie—it is my pleasure to present Andrew Bernstein’s essay “Transfiguring the Novel: The Literary Revolution in Atlas Shrugged.” Bernstein examines Rand’s dramatization of the novel’s plot-theme, her use of literary techniques, and the nature and significance of key figures in the story, showing how Rand employed such elements to tap the full potential of this supremely conceptual art form, and shedding new light on Rand’s literary genius.
Also in this issue are “The Morality of Moneylending: A Short History” by Yaron Brook (which is accessible to all for free) and “How to Analyze and Appreciate Paintings” by Dianne Durante (which is accompanied by fifteen color images of the paintings discussed).
If you’ve not yet subscribed to TOS, why not do so today? An online subscription is only $49 per year—about 13 cents per day. Click here to subscribe.
Labels: Announcements
The Un-American Call for National Service by Alex Epstein
The lead article in a recent issue of Time magazine makes the case for “universal national service”—which the article describes as “the simple but compelling idea that devoting a year or more to national service, whether military or civilian, should become a countrywide rite of passage, the common expectation and widespread experience of virtually every young American.” This is just the latest call from commentators and politicians for Americans to engage in more national service. National service, they all claim, is necessary to preserve and sustain America’s greatness; the Time article calls it “a recipe for keeping a republic.”
In fact, the idea of national service is profoundly un-American.
America was founded on the principle of individualism: the idea that each individual is a sovereign being with the moral right to his own life and to the achievement of his own goals. This is the basis of the political idea, enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, that the individual possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Founders accordingly reconceived the purpose of government as being the servant of the individual, rather than his master.
But the idea behind national service is that service to the state is a moral duty. The government, its advocates claim, should teach us that service is an integral part of American citizenship. Robin Gerber, a professor of leadership at the University of Maryland, writes: “Young Americans should be told they have an obligation to serve, a duty to actively support their democracy.” Conservative writer David Brooks endorses national service because it “takes kids out of the normal self-obsessed world of career and consumption and orients them toward service and citizenship.” Brooks favors military-related national service, because under it, “Today's children . . . would suddenly face drill sergeants reminding them they are nothing without the group.”
This collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation. The notion that people are “nothing without the group” and owe their lives—or any portion of them—to the state is antithetical to American individualism and freedom.
The logical end road of the belief that you have a duty to serve the nation is legislation that forces you to do so—i.e., compulsory national service. Like Time magazine, Senators John McCain and Evan Bayh, who introduced the Call to Service Act in 2003, think that “national service should one day be a rite of passage for young Americans.” But there is only one way to make national service a “rite of passage”: by government coercion. McCain has long favored compulsory national service, but laments that it “is not currently politically practical.” Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution has proposed that every 18-year-old be forced to perform one year of compulsory service. This is nothing less than involuntary servitude of the youth in the land of the free.
On the premise that service is a duty, those—such as President Bush—who have called for voluntary national service will be morally powerless against future bills that seek to make it mandatory.
Every totalitarian society in history has rested on the premise of man’s alleged duty to the state. It was Adolf Hitler, for example, who declared that “the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.”
To call service to a collectivist state pro-American is perverse. To preserve our great nation, we must embrace not the subjugation of the individual to the state, but his sovereign right to the pursuit of his own happiness.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Foreign Policy and War, Individual Rights and Law
Thursday, September 20, 2007
EU Has No Right to Punish Microsoft
Irvine, CA—Under Monday’s ruling by a European Union appeals court, Microsoft must disclose secret software codes to rivals, strip Windows Media Player from its operating system, and pay a $613 million fine. The court rejected Microsoft’s appeal of a 2004 antitrust ruling in which the company was found to have “abused” its “dominant position” in the marketplace.
“This ruling violates Microsoft’s right to profit from the enormous popular acceptance of its Windows operating system,” said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. “Microsoft cannot force anyone to buy its products. If the company sets prices unreasonably high relative to its customers’ interests, then competitors are free to step in and offer a better value. But if 95 percent of consumers choose to buy Windows software, then Microsoft has a right to profit from that success and not be punished for it.”
The ruling forces Microsoft to disclose the secret codes used by workgroup servers to access Windows-based computers, and it also requires the company to offer a version of Windows that omits the company’s proprietary media player.
“European regulators should have no power to dictate the availability or price of any company’s inventory of goods, services, or intellectual property,” said Dr. Brook. “Antitrust laws in Europe and America unjustly threaten the freedom of every successful business and should be abolished.”
If Microsoft chooses not to appeal, the multi-million-dollar fine will be distributed to the member states of the European Union. “The governments of Europe should be ashamed, dividing the loot like highway robbers who have terrorized a helpless victim,” said Dr. Brook.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
End, Don't Extend, the Persecution of Microsoft
Irvine, CA—The government has been investigating and prosecuting Microsoft under antitrust law since 1990—including a 2001 judgment that forced the company to be subject to government dictates of its business practices that apply to no other software company. This regime was scheduled to end in November, but a group of states, led by California, are saying that it must be extended. According to the Wall Street Journal, their reason was that “Microsoft has faced little new competition” in “operating-systems and Internet-browser technologies.”
“This justification for further government control of Microsoft is a microcosm of the fundamental injustice of the government’s entire prosecution of the company,” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. The criticism against Microsoft amounts to: Microsoft has been too successful in comparison to its competitors for their liking. By this perverse logic, only if the company had been a miserable failure in producing desirable operating systems and Web browsers would it deserve to be free.
“Of course, Microsoft’s tremendous success is the whole reason it ever fell under antitrust prosecution in the first place. Antitrust law regards any company that has earned substantial market share as a dangerous ‘monopolist.’ Microsoft has suffered almost two decades of government threats and punishment on the grounds that its 90 percent plus market share in operating systems was a ‘threat’ to the consumers who eagerly chose Microsoft Windows over the competition. Microsoft used no force or fraud against anyone; its ‘crime’ was to choose to add a valuable feature, a Web browser, to its popular operating system.
“If the government extends its coercive ‘oversight’ of Microsoft, it will further compound this injustice. Instead, the government owes Microsoft an apology—and it owes other successful companies the justice of abolishing the success-punishing antitrust laws.”
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Economics and Ethics of Moneylending
In connection with Yaron Brook’s essay “The Morality of Moneylending,” Edward Glaeser’s NY Sun op-ed “Vilifying Lenders” is a hopeful sign. Glaeser makes some good points:
Not so long ago, banks were routinely vilified for not lending to the less fortunate. Over the past 15 years, a revolution in credit has made it possible for millions of less wealthy Americans to borrow to buy a house or a car, or to go on vacation. The rise in subprime lending has made credit available to the many, not just the privileged few.
And so politicians now denounce the banking industry for lending to the less fortunate. Lenders that entrust their money to riskier borrowers are routinely called predators, as if velociraptors crowd creditors' cubicles. Presidential candidates promise to "combat" subprime lending, as if we need a war to ban loans to people without perfect credit scores. More worryingly, politicians have called for a moratorium on foreclosures, which would rewrite the rules of perfectly legal loans. This might help politicians look like they are doing something, but future borrowers will pay the price. Any response to the current crisis must recognize that to protect the rights of future borrowers, we must protect the rights of today's lenders….
As we respond to the current subprime mess, we need to follow the letter of the law, not the rhetoric of anti-banking populists. If lenders broke the law, then they should suffer the consequences. Foolish lenders that made foolish loans do not deserve a bailout. At the same time, we must not help distressed borrowers by expropriating law-abiding lenders.
And:
Senator Obama's Stop Fraud Act threatens lenders with up to 35 years of prison and $5 million fines if they use any "false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises." Given the vagueness of the term "fraudulent pretenses," I would expect to see millions of borrowers use the threat of prison or the threat of a lawsuit to get out of paying back their mortgage. I would also expect to see lenders shun loans that can lead to such lawsuits. Perhaps, the law should be called the "Stop Credit Act."
Unfortunately, Glaeser also makes some concessions to statism, for example: “…we can consider small public grants to ease the distress of people who move because of a foreclosure.” But it is heartening that a major economist recognizes at least on some level that there is something wrong with vilifying lenders for providing objectively valuable goods and services.
I encourage Glaeser and others of his economic persuasion to read Brook’s article, which identifies not only the economic facts in defense of free markets in the moneylending industry, but also the moral facts in support of such freedom. As Brook points out:
An understanding of … economic principles is necessary to defend the practice of usury. But such an understanding is not sufficient to defend the practice. From the brief history we have recounted, it is evident that all commentators on usury from the beginning of time have known that those who charge interest are self-interested, that the very nature of their activity is motivated by personal profit. Thus, in order to defend moneylenders, their institutions, and the kind of world they make possible, one must be armed with a moral code that recognizes rational self-interest and therefore the pursuit of profit as moral, and that consequently regards productivity as a virtue and upholds man’s right to his property and to his time.
Until the morality of moneylending is understood and embraced, economic arguments in defense of the practice will carry little weight.
Labels: Business and Economics, Philosophy
HillaryCare 2.0: More of the Poison that Is Killing Our Healthcare System
Irvine, CA—Hillary Clinton has announced her new “universal healthcare” plan, which she claims will solve the problem of high insurance premiums. “You’ll never again have to worry about finding affordable coverage,” says Mrs. Clinton. “Your coverage will be guaranteed—if you pay your premiums and follow the rules, your insurance company will be required to renew at a price you can afford.”
Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, denounced the proposal. “Like all other ‘universal healthcare’—that is, socialized medicine—schemes, Mrs. Clinton’s is guaranteed to lead to disaster if implemented, because it ignores the basic requirement of medical progress and falling prices: freedom for doctors, patients, and insurance companies.
“Health care is a mess because it is one of America’s most controlled and socialized industries—beginning with the fact that we are all forced to pay for one another’s health care through Medicare and the government-induced third-party-payer system. In the name of the individual’s ‘right’ to health care and the government’s ’responsibility’ to provide it, the government has reached its tentacles into every facet of medicine, from how many doctors are allowed to be licensed to which medical professionals may perform what procedures, to what procedures insurance companies must provide on their plans.
“Mrs. Clinton and other advocates of socialized medicine all seek to ‘solve’ this problem by adding more government coercion to the system. For example, her ‘guarantee’ that ‘your insurance company will be required to renew at a price you can afford’ is a veiled call for price-controls—and a prescription for insurance companies to be exposed to a bankrupting combination of huge liabilities with comparatively low premiums.
“If anyone is interested in fixing American health care, there is only one solution: remove coercion from the system. If medicine were left free, with individuals responsible for paying for their own care and insurance, and America’s businessmen, doctors, and educators liberated to offer it at all different price points, we would see quality and price improvements like those for flat-panel television sets. Indeed, we already see this in the few realms of medicine that are left free; laser eye surgery, for example, has improved dramatically over the years while prices have fallen. We could see such developments with medical care as a whole—as soon as we agree to take responsibility for our own health, and get the government out of it.”
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Healthcare, Individual Rights and Law
What Not to Do about Subprime Failures
Irvine, CA—As high default rates on subprime loans continue, various state and federal officials are eager to “do something” to counter the failures—especially to give aid to the homeowners who bought mortgages they couldn’t afford.
“This is exactly the wrong approach,” said Alex Epstein, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. “The current subprime problems are the result of borrower and lender irrationality, and of government intervention in the market to ‘help homeowners.’ Government housing assistance programs, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encourage people to buy homes even when they cannot truly afford them. And the government’s longtime manipulation of interest rates to keep them artificially low led many to expect that their adjustable rate mortgages would stay low forever—only to see their fortunes at the mercy of government rate hikes or rate cuts.
“This does not absolve lenders or borrowers of responsibility for taking on risky loans, and it certainly does not justify any sort of bailout. The individual who buys an expensive home counting on interest rates to stay low forever is responsible for the consequences of his risky decision. For the government to ‘do something’—anything—to alleviate a mortgage failure necessarily rewards those who took on large housing risk at the expense of those who didn’t. And it invites future irrationality by telling people that they do not need to think about their financial decisions, because the government will always be there to save the day.
“The only moral and rational response by the government, besides prosecuting genuine cases of fraud, is to stop encouraging people to make bad decisions—but then leave them to face the consequences when they do.”
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
Poverty Causes Terrorism? by Debi Ghate
Archbishop Desmond Tutu's statement that "poverty causes terror" indicates a complete disregard for reality.
Poverty exists, for various reasons, in many areas of the world. Yet most of these people do not dedicate their lives to carrying out Jihad against the West. Many of these people, in fact, dedicate their lives to improving their condition. They find avenues by which to educate themselves, they work hard to gain wealth and they remove themselves from poverty. Witness the thousands of immigrants who left their impoverished homelands and who created new lives for themselves. Witness the economic successes of certain countries in Asia, which were once poor and now outperform most of the world.
No, Archbishop Tutu, poverty didn't cause terror. What led Islamists to take up the tactic of terrorism is their ideology, not their economic status. Osama bin Laden hails from a very wealthy family and many of the 9/11 hijackers were middle-class and well educated. It is their absolute commitment and submission to Islam and their bloodthirsty desire to impose their Islamist ideology on the rest of the world that "causes terror." Until we admit the real source of the problem, terrorism will continue to be a part of our lives.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Foreign Policy and War, Philosophy
Monday, September 17, 2007
'Single-Payer' Health Care Is Anything but Free by Paul Hsieh
Michael Moore's latest movie "SiCKO" sings the praises of the Canadian "single-payer" socialized medical system. Some Americans want a similar system implemented in the United States. Defenders of the Canadian system frequently claim that patients don't have to worry about money when they're sick—the health care is free. But is this really true?
No.
First, it is ludicrous to think the system is free. Each citizen is forced to pay for his neighbors' medical care in the form of high taxes. (As a percentage of GDP, total taxation is 28 percent higher in Canada than in the United States.) The government, rather than individuals, then decides how that money is spent.
Even worse, in the name of "equal access" the government generally forbids patients from purchasing medical services outside of its system. Canadian law makes it difficult or impossible for citizens to spend their own honestly earned money on medically necessary care for themselves or their loved ones, even when both the doctor and the patient are willing.
To control costs, the government restricts access to crucial medical services via infamous waiting lists. This imposes a second, hidden, cost on patients: their time.
According to the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, "Canadian doctors say patients wait almost twice as long for treatment than is clinically reasonable, . . . almost 18 weeks between the time they see their family physician and the time they receive treatment from a specialist."
Because of the waiting lists, mortality rates for treatable conditions such as breast cancer and prostate cancer are significantly higher in Canada than in the U.S. A Canadian woman who discovers a lump in her breast might wait for months before she receives the surgery and chemotherapy she needs, with the cancer cells multiplying rapidly as each week goes by. If she lived in the United States, she could receive treatment within days.
This tax on time is especially cruel because the burden falls hardest on the sickest patients, i.e., those with the least time to spare.
Consequently, Canadian patients routinely suffer and die while waiting for their "free" health care. The National Center for Policy Analysis notes, "During one 12-month period in Ontario, . . . 71 patients died waiting for coronary bypass surgery while 121 patients were removed from the list because they had become too sick to undergo surgery."
To guarantee "free" health care, a government must force the individual to pay for everyone else's medical care and limit his freedom to pay voluntarily for his own. With bureaucrats deciding who receives what, the individual is therefore forbidden from spending his money according to his own rational judgment (and the advice of his doctors) as to what's best for his health. When a government forces people to act against their own interests, it's no surprise that the results are misery and death.
Fortunately, Canadians are starting to recognize the problems inherent in "single-payer" health care and are taking very small steps towards limited private medicine. America must not repeat Canada's mistakes. As P. J. O'Rourke said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."
Paul Hsieh, MD, guest writer, is a practicing physician in the south Denver metro area. He is a founding member of the Colorado group Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (www.WeStandFIRM.org). The Ayn Rand Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Healthcare, Individual Rights and Law
End, Don't Mend, the World Bank
Irvine, CA—A panel led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volker has issued a report detailing myriad corruption problems at the world bank. A "Wall Street Journal" editorial calls the report "a devastating indictment of . . . the bank's 'ambivalence' toward both corruption and its own anticorruption unit."
"Many longtime critics of the World Bank will take this as occasion to say it needs to 'reform,'" said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "But no proper reform is possible, since the World Bank is an inherently corrupt organization.
"The basic job of the World Bank is to use the funds of successful countries to give cheap loans to governments whose economies fail—allegedly as a means of fostering economic progress. But if economic progress is one's goal, there is one time-tested solution: free up a country's economy to unleash domestic production and spur foreign investment. The World Bank does the exact opposite: it rewards the failures of anti-capitalist countries, putting more cash in the hands of economic dictators with the hope that somehow they will work economic magic. Whether these leaders use the money to line their own pockets or to execute the latest ill-conceived socialist scheme, the result is an injustice: successful countries are looted to reward destructive economic policies.
"It is time to end the World Bank, and tell those who want prosperity that they must stop demanding handouts and start embracing capitalism."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Foreign Policy and War, Individual Rights and Law
End Government Licensing
Irvine, CA—According to a recent “Wall Street Journal” story, the range of professions now requiring a government license in certain states includes taxidermy, massage therapy, interior decorating, selling mobile homeseven fortune-telling! While many would laugh about these particular fields having government licensing requirements, nearly everyone concedes that government licensing is, in general, a necessary and beneficial practiceespecially for complex fields like medicine.
“In fact,” said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, ”if we want a market with ample information, high-quality products, and freedom of competition, government licensing is an impediment that must be abolished across the board.
“Contrary to advocates of government licensing, it is not true that without it, we would be taken in by unqualified charlatans in every endeavor, whether getting a haircut, a taxicab ride, or a triple bypass. Since there is great value for consumers and producers to have independent, expert verification of quality products and services, they would gladly pay for it. This is especially true for businesses whose most valuable asset is their reputation. The only difference between free-market licensing and government licensing is that private licensing organizations cannot force people to follow their advice, but must instead persuade them to follow their counsel. This is a life-and-death difference because it leaves experts, producers, and consumers free to acquire and act on the best possible information. Under government licensing, by contrast, individual judgment is rendered irrelevant, what the government says, goes.
“The more complex the field, the more destructive coercive licensing is, because the more urgent it is that there be freedom of thought and action. In a vast, continually evolving field like medicine, in which a huge and growing range of medical procedures exists, each requiring different skill sets, it is absurd and incredibly costly to have the government reserving jobs for full-fledged MDs that could be done by other medical professionals, while giving an official stamp of approval to MDs who do jobs that they lack necessary specialized knowledge to do (such as general practitioners who prescribe complex psychiatric medications).
“It may be funny when governments take charge of licensing fortune tellers, but it is deadly when it is in charge of licensing doctors. We should abolish the government’s coercive licensing power and unleash a free market of objective-standards bodies who function by persuasion, not compulsion.”
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Journalistic Jabberwocky: The Classificatory Nonsense of Kay S. Hymowitz
In an article titled “Freedom Fetishists: The Cultural Contradictions of Libertarianism”— which has been published in both Commentary and the Wall Street Journal—Kay S. Hymowitz has labeled Ayn Rand a “libertarian.” This would be unworthy of comment were it not for the fact that, as Rand herself put it, “the uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.” So, for Hymowitz’s own edification (in case ignorance was the problem), and especially for the sake of those readers who might be misled by her piece, I wish to point out a few readily available facts that Hymowitz either remarkably does not know or conveniently ignored. (There are myriad errors in Hymowitz’s article; I will address only the most egregious of them.)
Rand was emphatically not a libertarian; she was a “radical for capitalism”—radical here meaning one who “goes to the root of” capitalism—capitalism being the social system of individual rights, including property rights, protected by a strictly limited government. Under capitalism, physical force is banned from social relationships; the use of force is delegated to the government, which may use it only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. Although, like libertarians, Rand held that the initiation of force is wrong and should be banned, unlike libertarians, she recognized that this truth is not an irreducible primary or an axiom. Rand expended a great deal of effort demonstrating that this principle is a derivative principle—a principle that presupposes and depends on an entire moral and philosophical system—a system that she developed, codified, and called Objectivism.
Rand wrote many letters, several essays, and a few books explaining that the impropriety of initiatory force is based on deeper truths. These deeper truths include, in descending order: the principle that each individual has a moral right to act on his own judgment; the principle that the only thing that can stop an individual from acting on his own judgment is physical force; the principle that each individual morally should act in his own rational best interest; the principle that the life of the individual is the standard of moral value; the principle that an individual’s choice to live is what gives rise to the possibility and need of moral principles; and the principle that man’s use of reason (i.e., his judgment) is his basic means of living. Each of these principles is integrated with and supported by an entire system of observation-based philosophy that underlies and gives rise to the principle that the initiation of physical force is morally wrong and properly illegal.
But libertarians will have none of it. All that philosophy stuff, they argue, is too complex, too controversial, too restrictive, too problematic; we need a big tent that includes all people who are for liberty—regardless of any other ideas they may embrace—regardless of whether they advocate egoism or altruism or hedonism or relativism—regardless of whether they are guided by reason or faith or feelings. In the words of twice-nominee-of-the-libertarian-party Harry Brown: “It’s a pretend game for us to discuss what is morally right and wrong…. [Libertarians] want to minimize the use of force in solving social and political problems…. and we’re not going to solve them by discussing philosophy.”
Although libertarians claim that the initiation of force is “wrong” and “should” be banned and that liberty is “right” and “shouldn’t” be impeded, they either brush aside philosophy or, if they do consider it, reject the possibility of objectivity therein. Either way, they treat the “non-initiation-of-force” principle as an irreducible primary, a starting point beneath which one need not or cannot venture. As to where concepts such as “wrong” and “right” come from and how they can have any objective meaning apart from an objective moral code that is based on an objective standard of value that is based on an objective standard of knowledge, libertarians have nothing to say. In short, libertarians pay lip-service to the political principles of freedom, but they ignore or deny the more basic philosophical principles on which those political principles depend.
Far from being in cahoots with this anti-intellectual movement, Rand identified the central fallacy by means of which libertarianism proceeds, and she condemned the movement accordingly. Libertarianism survives and propagates by means of what Rand called the fallacy of “concept-stealing,” which consists in using a concept while ignoring or denying more fundamental ideas on which that concept logically depends. Libertarians steal multiple concepts—“wrong,” “right,” “should,” and “liberty” to name just a few—by using them while ignoring or denying the entire field of ethics, the need of an objective standard of value, and the need of an objective standard of knowledge. (If you doubt this, ask a libertarian to specify the objective standard by reference to which the initiation of force is “wrong” or liberty is “right” or the like.) Indeed, concept-stealing is so essential to the movement that libertarianism is properly defined as the anti-intellectual ideology that attempts to advocate liberty while ignoring or denying the moral and philosophical foundation on which the concept of liberty depends.
That Rand condemned libertarianism on these (and other) grounds is common knowledge among intellectuals concerned with liberty. (It is even common knowledge among libertarians, but that is another matter.) So why does Hymowitz categorize Rand as a libertarian? Does she genuinely not know what Rand wrote and stood for? That would seem odd since Hymowitz has written a piece ridiculing Rand’s (alleged) ideas. Might it be the case, then, that Hymowitz knows full well what Rand actually said but chooses to evade this knowledge in order to smear Rand and avoid confronting her actual ideas? One can only speculate.
What is certain, however, is that Hymowitz’s own ideology—conservatism—cannot withstand the spread of Rand’s actual ideas. What is also certain is that, if Hymowitz’s classification of Rand as a libertarian was an honest error, then, in the light of this and other articles that have brought relevant facts to bear on her falsehoods, Hymowitz owes Rand a public apology—which should be forthcoming in the pages of both Commentary and the Wall Street Journal. If Hymowitz remains silent on the issue, her silence will speak for itself.
Labels: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Philosophy
Friday, September 14, 2007
How to Truly Defeat OPEC
Irvine, CA—After some verbal wrangling between OPEC and Western countries over oil production, in which OPEC officials argued that "there is enough crude in the market," and in which the West claimed that oil production should increase to lower prices, OPEC has decided to allow a 2 percent increase in oil production.
"While some in the West might consider this a victory," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "every day that OPEC continues to wield such power over us is a loss. It is taken for granted that this despicable cartel of looter regimes who allow no truly private enterprise in oil, can manipulate our energy future on a whim. But such a state of affairs is completely unnecessary; it is a product of U.S. environmental regulations that strangle domestic energy production.
"In a free energy market, the response of competing producers to OPEC-influenced high prices would be to eagerly cultivate new oil sources in America—such as the many untapped sources of oil in Alaska and on America's coastlines—and to vigorously seek to produce truly practical alternative sources of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. Such actions would drive oil and energy prices down, and with them OPEC's ability to manipulate prices.
"However, thanks to environmentalist policies, America's energy market is anything but free. In the name of preserving pristine nature at human expense, our government has rendered huge oil and natural gas deposits off-limits, has strangled coal production for decades, and has demonized and practically prohibited the pursuit of nuclear power.
"It is only because America has for decades throttled domestic energy producers that the looting dictators of OPEC continue to wield major influence over our energy supplies. It is time for America to liberate itself from the shackles of OPEC by liberating energy production from the shackles of environmentalist policies."
### ### ###
Mr. Epstein is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. His Op-Eds have appeared in such publications as the San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Canada's National Post, and the Washington Times. He is also a contributing writer for The Objective Standard, a quarterly journal of culture and politics. Mr. Epstein has been a guest on numerous nationally syndicated radio programs.
Alex Epstein is available for interviews.
Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrand.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 213
For more information on Objectivism's unique point of view, go to ARI's Web site at http://www.aynrand.org/ Founded in 1985 the Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Environmentalism, Foreign Policy and War
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The Ideas of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged': A Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibit
Irvine, CA—Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" is the subject of a new exhibit to open on October 8, 2007, at the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library. Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the novel's publication, the exhibit is jointly sponsored by the Los Angeles Public Library and the Ayn Rand Institute, and is curated by Jeff Britting, archivist of the Ayn Rand Archives, a special collection of the Ayn Rand Institute. The exhibit will include a reception open to the public on the date of the novel's fiftieth anniversary, October 10, 7 pm, as well as four public talks devoted to the ideas of "Atlas Shrugged" and their contemporary importance.
The exhibit—a sequel to the library's 2006-07 exhibit on Ayn Rand's time in Hollywood—titled "The Ideas of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged,'" once again displays items from the Ayn Rand Archives, including rare and never-before-displayed reproductions of manuscript pages and notes from early drafts of the novel. Also on display will be original promotional materials produced by Random House, including a dollar-sign cigarette; an excerpt from Rand's manuscript for a television miniseries written shortly before her death; and the cover artwork of historic and foreign editions.
Portions of the exhibit text have been extracted from Mr. Britting's illustrated biography, "Ayn Rand" (The Overlook Press, 2005).
In addition to the exhibit, the library will present, free of charge, four Saturday afternoon discussion sessions about the ideas of "Atlas Shrugged" and their relevance to today's world. Hosted by Mr. Britting, this series will feature presentations by speakers from the Ayn Rand Institute:
- Oct. 20, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Mr. Alex Epstein on Capitalism
- Nov. 3, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Dr. Onkar Ghate on Morality
- Nov. 17, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Mr. Elan Journo on Foreign Policy
- Dec. 8, 2007, at 3 pm: talk by Dr. Keith Lockitch on Environmentalism
In "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand wrote a philosophic mystery story that she said integrated metaphysics, politics, economics and sex. It also presented for the first time her original philosophic system, later called "Objectivism," a philosophy advocating reason, rational selfishness and laissez-faire capitalism. The theme of "Atlas Shrugged" is "the role of the mind in man's existence," and the novel dramatizes what would happen to the world if the creators withdrew their works. "Atlas Shrugged" became an immediate best-seller, but was so vilified by critics and academics at the time that Ayn Rand realized she would have to become a full-time philosopher in order to defend and spread the philosophy that made her fictional heroes possible.
"Atlas Shrugged" ranks as one of the most influential books of all time, ranking second only to the Bible in a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress. Selling more copies than ever before, it is studied every year by thousands of students and is regularly cited by businessmen, athletes, scholars and politicians as a book that changed their lives. Even though it was written a half-century ago, the ideas in "Atlas Shrugged" are still profoundly relevant to the moral, cultural and political issues we face today. As Ayn Rand herself explained: "My attitude toward my writing is best expressed by a statement of Victor Hugo: 'If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.'"
The exhibit at the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library runs through December 11.
### ### ###
Jeff Britting, manager of the Ayn Rand Archives at the Ayn Rand Institute and associate producer of the Academy Award-nominated feature documentary "Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life," is available for interviews.
For more information on the "Atlas Shrugged" Exhibit, or to interview Mr. Britting, please contact Larry Benson: 800-365-6552, ext. 213 (office) or 949-838-5137 (cell), media@aynrand.org.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Philosophy
Blame the Government, Not the Market, for Exorbitant Health-Care Costs
Irvine, CA—The New York Times reports that employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased by 6.1 percent this year—not as high as last year's 7.7 percent increase, but still far ahead of wages or inflation—and that since 2001 they have increased by 78 percent.
"These statistics will be used by the advocates of collectivized medicine to say, once again, that the 'free market' has failed, and that we need some form of government-controlled 'universal health care' scheme," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. "But the truth is the opposite. These skyrocketing premiums are testament to the huge destruction that the government's massive control of healthcare to date has already wrought.
"Health-care is one of America's most controlled and socialized industries—beginning with the fact that we are all forced to pay for one another's health-care through Medicare and the government-induced third-party-payer system. In the name of the individual's 'right' to health-care and the government's 'responsibility' to provide it, the government has reached its tentacles into every facet of medicine, from how many doctors are allowed to be licensed to which medical professionals may perform what procedures, to what procedures insurance companies must provide on their plans. Is it any wonder that health-care is a mess?
"Observe that in the fields that are left free, like the computer and electronics industries, over time the cost of any given product generally goes down, not up. If medicine were left free, with individuals responsible for paying for their own care and insurance, and America's businessmen, doctors, and educators liberated to offer it at all different price points, we would see quality and price improvements like those for flat-panel television sets. Indeed, we already see this with the few realms of medicine that are left free; laser eye surgery, for example, has improved dramatically over the years while prices have fallen. We could see such developments with medical care as a whole—as soon as we agree to take responsibility for our own health, and get the government out of it."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Healthcare, Individual Rights and Law
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
A Soldier Speaks
Here is some correspondence I had with Maj. Wendy Milling, who is stationed in Camp Victory, Iraq. I post this with Maj. Milling’s permission and with her disclaimer that “the views expressed are solely my own and do not reflect that of the Department of Defense or any other government agency.”
Sir,
Craig Biddle writes, “The life of one American soldier is worth more than any economic costs my proposed campaign would impose on America.” The life we are talking about is mine. I would like to express my utmost gratitude to him and to other Objectivists, especially Elan Journo and David Holcberg, for their defense of a soldier’s right to life and their salute to the nobility of the American soldier in recent op-eds and letters to the editor. It is a relief to have true defenders in the ideological realm.
We are under constant intellectual attack in the form of maudlin, self-indulgent portrayals of the soldier as a God-driven, self-effacing nursemaid to the world’s poor by conservatives on the one hand—and in the form of screeching, self-righteous portrayals of the soldier as the neurotic, PTSD-driven criminal by liberals on the other. The one side advocates useless national military action not despite the fact that soldiers will die, but because of it (there can be no glory without sacrifice); the other side just wants us to die.
Regarding attacking Iran, I wish to point out that wars cannot be won solely by means of air power; decisive victory always requires ground forces. This is standard military doctrine for decades, and there has never been a case where air power alone secured victory. (A complete nuclear annihilation of all human beings in the enemy country, if that were possible, would be the exception to this rule). Although air power is critical and has even precipitated surrender in some cases, there must always be ground troops to occupy the enemy country. The reason is that control over a country requires humans on the ground to oversee local conditions, to make observations and collect intelligence, to make decisions on what will be done and what is permissible, to dictate to individuals on the ground regarding implementing specific terms and decisions, and to enforce those edicts. Without the physical presence of troops, the vanquished would be neither willing nor able to comply with the victor’s intent. Any military plan of action must unavoidably incorporate ground forces. It also means that American civilian leaders and ground force commanders had better know exactly what they are doing during the occupation phase, because an incomplete strangulation of the fountainhead of Islamic Totalitarianism would be a serious strategic loss, resulting in trouble for America.
Sincerely,
MAJ Wendy Milling
Camp Victory , Iraq***
Dear Maj. Milling,
Thank you for your kind and eloquent note—and for your courageous efforts to defend America.
I’m not necessarily opposed to sending in ground forces—after we’ve destroyed via long-distance bombing everything we can that is known to support Iran’s military. My point is that we should not send troops in on foot to do a job that can be done with bombs from long distance. But nor do I think we need to occupy Iran in order to eliminate the threat posed thereby. If we were to obliterate from long distance everything known to support the regime, and then airdrop leaflets across the Middle East explaining: “From now on, this is how America will respond to any and all threats to her citizens or allies. We will be watching the entire region via satellites and other hi-tech means. If we see anything that appears to threaten our interests, we will obliterate it and everything in its proximity without further warning”—I think occupation would be unnecessary. But I’m open to persuasion on this. (Several months ago, I posted a 5-step plan incorporating this idea, which I think would work well.)
Whether or not we need to occupy the enemy state, we certainly should use whatever tools are available and necessary to destroy the enemy regime—and, in so doing, we should make every effort to keep our soldiers out of harm’s way.
With great admiration and appreciation,
Craig Biddle
P.S. May I post your letter to Principles in Practice? I would of course omit your name—unless you’d prefer that I include it.
***
Dear Craig,
Thank you again. Objectivists are the best kind of patriots. You have my permission to publish my letter, with or without my name as you see fit, but I would kindly ask that you add a disclaimer to the effect that the views expressed are solely my own and do not reflect that of the Department of Defense or any other government agency.
A thorough bombing campaign would be an essential part of the military action, but I am convinced that without a follow-on physical occupation, the enemy would simply declare a victory after the bombing stopped. The denizens in this part of the world are very superstitious and already believe that American soldiers possess technology which gives us superpowers, and yet they continue to launch attacks anyway. The only deterrent has been constant, continuous, overwhelming presence and force. Don’t overestimate their rationality. Without an occupation, I believe containing the threat would be impossible.
Sincerely,
MAJ Wendy Milling
Camp Victory , Iraq
Although I remain unconvinced that an occupation is necessary to eliminate the Iranian threat, I greatly appreciate Maj. Milling’s thoughtful views, and I hope that, on her excellent example, more Americans (especially civilians) will speak out against soldiers being used as cannon fodder for Bush and company’s altruistic ends—and in favor of thoroughly destroying our enemy.
Labels: Foreign Policy and War
Reject the Un-American Call for 'National Service'
Irvine, CA—The lead article in a recent issue of Time magazine makes the case for "universal national service"—which the article describes as "the simple but compelling idea that devoting a year or more to national service, whether military or civilian, should become a countrywide rite of passage, the common expectation and widespread experience of virtually every young American." Many commentators and politicians have called in recent years for Americans to engage in more national service, which they claim is necessary to preserve and sustain America's greatness. The Time article calls it "a recipe for keeping a republic."
"In fact," said Alex Epstein, a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, "the idea of 'national service' is profoundly un-American. America was founded on the idea that each individual is a sovereign being with the moral right to his own life and to the achievement of his own goals. This is the basis of the political idea that the individual possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. American individualism and freedom are incompatible with the notion that people are servants who owe their lives—or any portion of them—to their neighbors or to the state.
"The collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation. Every totalitarian society in history has rested on the premise of man's alleged duty to the state.
"To call service to a collectivist state pro-American is false and perverse. To preserve our great nation, we must embrace not the subjugation of the individual to 'national service,' but his sovereign right to the pursuit of his own happiness."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Foreign Policy and War, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, September 10, 2007
Be Healthy or Else!
Irvine, CA—Under Democratic presidential contender John Edwards's "universal" health-care proposal, every American would be required to go to the doctor for preventive care in order to keep health-care costs down. In a similar proposal, a Tory panel in Britain suggested that, in order to control the spiraling costs of its socialized health-care system, Britons should be forced to adopt a government-prescribed "healthy lifestyle" or else be denied certain medical treatments. Britons who improve their health by, for example, quitting smoking or losing weight would receive "Health Miles" that could be used to purchase vegetables or pay for gym memberships.
"These proposals are the reductio ad absurdum of nanny-state paternalism," said Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "According to these politicians, instead of having a government that protects our right to live our own lives, we are to be treated like incompetent children who need someone to force us to visit the doctor and eat our veggies.
"Such proposals are the inevitable consequence of socialized medicine, where the only ways to control spiraling health-care costs are to cut benefits or attempt to reduce demand for medical services by forcing preventive care on individuals. Indeed, the fundamental justification for socialized medicine rests on the view that individuals are helpless to manage their own lives and so need beneficent bureaucrats to take care of them. Under socialized medicine, the government gives us 'free' health care—and in exchange, it gets to dictate how we live our lives. It's like a parent who tells his child, 'So long as I pay the bills, I make the rules!'
"But coercing people into 'healthy' behavior is not only destructive to individual liberty—it's destructive to health. If an individual is to maintain his health and well-being, he must (in consultation with his doctor) make myriad judgments about what is good for his life and what is harmful, given the context of his knowledge, goals, and interests. When the government takes away the individual's freedom to pursue his well-being as he sees fit in favor of coercively enforced collective judgments about what is healthy or unhealthy, it prevents him from making such judgments and the life-promoting decisions they entail. It also leaves him at the mercy of any errors the government makes in its declarations about what is 'healthy.' Imagine the destructive consequences had people been forced to abide by the USDA's now widely discredited 'food pyramid.'
"To protect our health and our freedom, we must reject socialized medicine in any form."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Healthcare, Individual Rights and Law
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Socialized Medicine Kills by Don Watkins
A new study that compares international cancer survival rates demonstrates what opponents of socialized medicine have been saying for years: socialized medicine kills.
The study finds that Britain (whose much-touted "universal health care" system is held up by the left as a model for America) has among the lowest cancer survival rates in the West—drastically lower than the United States, which has the world's highest survival rate.
Researchers attribute Britain's dismal numbers primarily to late diagnoses and lengthy waiting lists for treatment. But long lines and waiting lists are necessarily endemic under socialized medicine. Just as a "free" grocery store would not be able to keep its shelves stocked, a "free" health care system necessarily lacks sufficient resources to adequately treat all those seeking care. The result is thousands of unnecessary deaths—and millions of grief-stricken families.
Rather than adopt Britain's deadly socialized health care system, we should end the government interference which is increasing the costs and reducing the quality of U.S. health care, and increase freedom in medicine.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Healthcare, Individual Rights and Law
What Real War Looks Like by Elan Journo
On the anniversary of 9/11, we are reminded that the forces of Islamic totalitarianism continue to threaten our lives. What should we do to protect ourselves? Depressingly, today's prevailing answer is to urge some form of "diplomacy"—and rule out as inconceivable the one option our self-defense demands: a war to defeat the enemy. If, like many people, you believe we've already tried this option and failed, think again. Washington's campaign in Iraq looks nothing like the war necessary for our self-defense.
What does such a war look like?
America's security depends on identifying precisely the enemy that threatens our lives—and then crushing it, rendering it a non-threat. It depends on proudly defending our right to live free of foreign aggression—by unapologetically killing the killers who want us dead.
Those who say this is a "new kind of conflict" against a "faceless enemy" are wrong. The enemy Washington evasively calls "terrorism" is actually an ideologically inspired political movement: Islamic totalitarianism. It seeks to subjugate the West under a totalitarian Islamic regime, by means of terrorism, negotiation, war—anything that will win its jihad. The movement's inspiration, first triumph and standard bearer is the theocracy of Iran. Iran's regime has, for decades, used terrorist proxies to attack America. It openly seeks nuclear weapons, and zealously sponsors and harbors jihadists. Without Iran's support, legions of holy warriors would be untrained, unarmed, unmotivated, impotent.
Destroying Islamic totalitarianism requires a punishing military onslaught to end its primary state representative and demoralize its supporters. We need to deploy all necessary force to destroy Iran's ability to fight, while minimizing our own casualties. We need a campaign that ruthlessly inflicts the pain of war so intensely that the jihadists renounce their cause as hopeless and fear to take up arms against us. This is how America and its allies defeated both Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan.
Victory in World War II required flattening cities, firebombing factories, shops and homes, devastating vast tracts of Germany and Japan. The enemy and its supporters were exhausted materially and crushed in spirit. What our actions demonstrated to them is that any attempt to implement their vicious ideologies would bring them only destruction and death. Since their defeat, Nazism and Japanese imperialism have essentially withered as ideological forces. Victory today requires the same: smashing Iran's totalitarian regime and thus demoralizing the Islamist movement and its many supporters, so that they, too, abandon their cause as futile.
We triumphed over both Japan and Germany in less than four years after Pearl Harbor. Yet more than five years after 9/11, against a far weaker enemy, our soldiers still die daily in Iraq. Why? Because this war is neither assertive nor ruthless—it is a tragically meek pretense at war.
We went to battle not with theocratic Iran, but with the secular dictatorship of Iraq. Indeed, the Islamist regime in Iran remains untouched, fomenting terrorism. (Our leaders now hope to "engage" it diplomatically.)
And the campaign in Iraq was not even aimed at crushing whatever threat Hussein's regime posed to us. "Shock and awe" bombing never materialized. Our brave and capable forces were hamstrung: ordered not to bomb key targets, such as power plants, and to avoid firing into mosques (where insurgents hide) lest we offend Muslim sensibilities. Instead, we sent our troops to lift Iraq out of poverty, open new schools, fix up hospitals, feed the hungry, unclog sewers—a Peace Corps, not an army corps, mission.
U.S. troops were sent, not to crush an enemy threatening America, but (as Bush explained) to "sacrifice for the liberty of strangers," putting the lives of Iraqis above their own. They were prevented from using all necessary force to win, or even to protect themselves. No wonder the insurgency has flourished, emboldened by Washington's self-crippling policies. (Perversely, we are now tossing even more Americans into this quagmire.)
Bush did all this to bring Iraqis the vote. Any objective assessment of the Middle East would have told one who would win elections, given the widespread popular support for Islamic totalitarianism. Iraqis swept to power a pro-Islamist leadership intimately tied to Iran. The most influential figure in Iraqi politics is now Moktadr al-Sadr, an Islamist warlord lusting after theocratic rule and American blood. When asked whether he would accept just such an outcome from the elections, Bush said that of course he would, because "democracy is democracy."
No war that ushers Islamists into political office has U.S. self-defense as its goal.
The war in Iraq has been worse than doing nothing, because it has galvanized our enemy to believe its success more likely than ever—even as it has drained Americans' will to fight. Washington's feeble campaign demonstrates the ruinous effects of refusing to assert our self-interest and defend our freedom. It is past time to consider our only moral and practical option: end the senseless sacrifice of our soldiers—and let them go to war to bring the Islamic totalitarians to their knees.
Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Foreign Policy and War
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
'Muslim Opinion' Be Damned: Hatred of America is Irrational and Undeserved by Alex Epstein
To listen to most of our foreign-policy commentators, the biggest problem facing America today, six years after 9/11, is the fact that many Muslims are mad at us.
"Whatever one's views on the [Iraq] war," writes a New York Times columnist, "thoughtful Americans need to consider . . . the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world." In response to the Abu Ghraib scandal several years ago, Ted Kennedy lamented, "We have become the most hated nation in the world, as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons." Muslim anger over America's support of Israel, we are told, is a major cause of anti-American terrorism.
We face, these commentators say, a crisis of "Muslim opinion." We must, they say, win the "hearts and minds" of angry Muslims by heaping public affection on Islam, by shutting down Guantanamo, by being more "evenhanded" between free Israel and the terrorist Palestinian Authority—and certainly by avoiding any new military action in the Muslim world. If we fail to win over "Muslim opinion," we are told, we will drive even more to become terrorists.
All of this evades one blatant truth: the hatred being heaped on America is irrational and undeserved. Consider the issue of treatment of POWs. Many Muslims are up in arms about the treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and at Guantanamo—many of whom were captured on battlefields trying to kill Americans. Yet these same Muslims are silent about the summary convictions and torture—real torture, with electric drills and vats of acid—that are official policy and daily practice throughout the Middle East.
Or consider "Muslim opinion" over the U.S. handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the United States is accused of not being "hard enough" on Israel—a free nation with laws that protect all citizens, Jew and Arab alike—for Israel's supposed mistreatment of Palestinians. Yet "Muslim opinion" reveres the Palestinian Authority, a brutal dictatorship that deprives Palestinians of every basic freedom, keeps them in unspeakable poverty, and routinely tortures and executes peaceful dissenters.
So-called Muslim opinion is not the unanimous and just consensus that its seekers pretend. It is the irrational and unjust opinion of the world's worst Muslims: Islamists and their legions of "moderate" supporters and sympathizers. These people oppose us not because of any legitimate grievances against America, but because they are steeped in a fundamentalist interpretation of their religion—one that views America's freedom, prosperity, and pursuit of worldly pleasures as the height of depravity. They do not seek respect for the rights of the individual (Muslim or non-Muslim), they seek a world in which the rights of all are sacrificed to the dictates of Islam.
The proper response to Islamists and their supporters is to identify them as our ideological and political enemies—and dispense justice accordingly. In the case of our militant enemies, we must kill or demoralize them—especially those regimes that support terrorism and fuel the Islamist movement; as for the rest, we must politically ignore them and intellectually discredit them, while proudly arguing for the superiority of Americanism. Such a policy would make us safe, expose Islamic anti-Americanism as irrational and immoral, and embolden the better Muslims to support our ideals and emulate our ways.
President Bush, like most politicians and intellectuals, has taken the opposite approach to "Muslim opinion": appeasement. Instead of identifying anti-American Muslims as ideological enemies to be discredited, he has appealed to their sensibilities and met their demands—e.g., sacrificing American soldiers to save Iraqi civilians and mosques. Instead of seeking to crush the Islamists by defeating the causes they fight for—such as Islamic world domination and the destruction of Israel—he has appeased those causes, declaring Islam a "great religion" and rewarding the Palestinian terrorist Jihad with a promised Palestinian state. Instead of destroying terrorist regimes that wage war against the West—including, most notably, Iran—he has sought their "cooperation" and even cast some as coalition partners.
Such measures have rewarded our enemy for waging physical and spiritual war against us. Condemn America, they have learned, and American leaders will praise your ideals and meet your demands. Attack America via terrorist proxy, terrorist states and movements have been taught, and America will neither blame you nor destroy you, but redouble its efforts to buy your love.
Every attempt to appease "Muslim opinion" preserves, promotes, and emboldens our enemies. Every concession to angry Muslim mobs gives hope to the Islamist cause. Every day we allow terrorist regimes to exist gives their minions time to execute the next Sept. 11. America needs honest leadership with the courage to identify and defeat our enemies—"Muslim opinion" be damned.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Foreign Policy and War
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