Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Principles in Practice: November 2007

Doing Violence to Free Speech by Don Watkins by ARI Media
Yesterday's Highlights: Stories From Home by Lisa VanDamme
Deep-Six the Law of the Sea by Craig Biddle
Don't Say Grace, Say Justice by Craig Biddle
What We Owe Our Soldiers by Alex Epstein by ARI Media
The Injustice of 'Doing Something' about Subprime by Alex Epstein by ARI Media
Environmentalists Are Muscling In on Atlanta's Water Supply by ARI Media
Justice on the Web by Craig Biddle
Mere Atheism by Craig Biddle
Scrutinizing Scruton's Scrutinizing by Craig Biddle

Friday, November 30, 2007

Doing Violence to Free Speech by Don Watkins

Posted by ARI Media at 9:45 PM

The Federal Communications Commission recently asked Congress to hand it broad powers to regulate "excessive violence" on TV, the way it currently restricts "indecent" speech: broadcasters who violate the FCC's limitations on "excessive violence" will face crippling fines and, potentially, the loss of their broadcast licenses. Isn't it time to ask: How did a country that reveres free speech end up with a government agency that imposes continually expanding speech restrictions—and where will those restrictions end?

Free speech means the right to express the products of the mind (scientific conclusions, artistic creations, political views, etc.) using whatever words or images one chooses over a medium one can rightfully access, without interference by the government. It means the right of a publisher to publish a controversial novel; the right of a newspaper to run an article criticizing the government—and the right of broadcasters to decide what content will flow over their airwaves.

But in 1927, just as radios were becoming widely used, the government seized control of the airwaves, declared them "public property," and assumed the power to regulate them in the name of the "public interest"—an undefinable term that can be stretched to mean anything. Thus broadcasters' right to free speech was cut off at the root, as the government, having irrationally barred broadcasters from owning the airwaves they made valuable through their technological innovation and broadcast content, went on to dictate how those airwaves could be used.

Initially the government pledged that only "obscene" speech—materials that "depict or describe patently offensive 'hard core' sexual conduct"—would be barred from the air. But having abandoned the principle of free speech and established itself as the unchecked arbiter of what could be said on the airwaves, the government was later able to ignore its pledge and, in 1978's FCC v. Pacifica ruling, expand its speech restrictions to include the broader (and even more nebulous) category of "indecent" speech. Thus, broadcasters could be fined for anything from profanity to sexual double-entendres, to vague references to sexual acts. Now, advocates of censorship are appealing to this precedent in order to justify regulating "excessively violent" content as well.

Moreover, Americans had been assured that speech restrictions would apply only to broadcasters operating on the "public airwaves." But now, in its quest to regulate "excessive violence," the FCC is insisting that its regulatory mandate be expanded to cover subscriber-based media such as satellite and cable TV.

If we allow this progression to continue, it is only a matter of time before the FCC starts restricting "offensive" philosophic or scientific views (as some religious opponents of evolution would like). And having gutted free speech on radio and television, what is to stop the government from censoring the Internet, books, and newspapers?

What made this trend toward increasing censorship possible—and inevitable? When the FCC assumed the power to subordinate free speech to the "public interest," it declared, in effect, that individuals are incompetent to judge what speech they and their children should be exposed to, and so their judgment must be usurped by all-wise FCC bureaucrats, who will control the airwaves in their name. Given this disgraceful principle, it did not matter that the FCC's initial restrictions were supposedly limited to speech pertaining to sex: if the government knows what's best for us in the realm of sexual speech and can dictate what we watch or listen to, then there is no reason why it should not control what ideas we should be exposed to across the board. To reverse this destructive trend, therefore, we must do more than resist new speech restrictions—we must abolish existing ones and restore our commitment to the principle of free speech.

Does this mean that parents must be forced to let their children view programming they regard as indecent or violent? No. It is a parent's job, not the government's, to decide and control what his child watches, just as the parent is responsible for deciding what he himself watches. If a parent determines that a show is not appropriate for his child, he is free to change the channel, turn off the TV, or block his child's access to it in some other way. His need to monitor what his child views on TV no more justifies censoring broadcasters than his need to vet what his child reads justifies censoring authors.

Americans face a choice: free speech or censorship. There is no middle ground.

Don Watkins is a writer and research specialist at the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Yesterday's Highlights: Stories From Home

Posted by Lisa VanDamme at 11:24 AM

We at VanDamme Academy love hearing stories about things the students do or say at home that reflect their VanDamme Academy education. I recently asked parents to share some stories from home. Here are a few highlights:

Calvin (5):

I was talking to Calvin about the upcoming trip to Schoolhouse Rock, and I told him how much I enjoyed the songs as a child. I started singing "Conjunction Junction" for him: "Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He cut loose the sandbags but the balloon wouldn't go any higher. Let's go up to the mountains or down to the sea. Always say 'thank you' or at least say 'please.'" Then Calvin said, "Pan, fire, bag, balloon, mountain and sea are nouns."

Mrs. O'Brien's poetry discussions and literature readings have had an impact on Calvin. He's begun to describe things metaphorically. Yesterday he told his little sister she has a smile of sparkly snowflakes. He told me my eyes are made of fairy dust, ocean water and chocolate milk. (They're green with flecks of brown and a rim of blue.) Later that evening he was thinking of Mrs. Beach and her black hair. He said, "Mama, Mrs. Beach's hair is made of night-time sky and pretty, pretty stars."

Last week we were sitting down to dinner and Calvin said, out of the blue, "Daddy, would you rather eat leather or die?" (I hope my cooking didn't put that idea in his head.) After some prompting from us, he told us he learned from Mrs. Beach that Columbus and the sailors on his ship ran out of food and had to eat leather to survive. He made a little game out of thinking of other things that might have some nutritional value and could pass as food if he were stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean. "Would you rather eat sawdust or die? Would you rather eat leaves or die?"

Jonathan (7):

Allie, Johnny's younger sister, received a copy of the Disney film Pocahontas. She was telling him about the movie when he said to her: "That's not the real story at all." He then proceeded to tell her his entire history lesson on the subject. When I asked him if it bothered him that the movie wasn't the real story, he said, "No, movies aren't real."

Lana (8):

Yesterday, on the way to a birthday party, we passed La Paz Rd., and Lana declared, " La Paz is the capital of Bolivia!" (A fact learned in Mr. Mizrahi's geography class.) Later that day, she feared Greta was being too rough on their dog Gracie, and said, "Be careful not to hyperextend her paw." (A term learned in Mr. Krieger's science class.) Over the summer, when I was at the gym with the girls and Lana heard someone say his son didn't "do too good in school," Lana waited until he was gone and whispered to me, "Don't worry, Mom. I corrected his grammar in my mind."

Darcy (4):

Darcy was telling me that she missed her family in Virginia and wanted to move back. I told her I understood how she felt and that it would be so nice to be near her aunt and grandma. I then said that if we did go back it would mean that Darcy wouldn't have her friends Lana and Greta nearby, wouldn't be in Mrs. Beach's class, wouldn't have her classmates, etc. Darcy said, "I have an idea. We can do what they did in olden times and start a colony."

Bianca (8):

At home one evening, Bianca was plotting schemes to steal balls from the boys at recess in their benevolent, ongoing boy-girl rivalry. She read her plans to me in the car on the way to school. I was instantly struck and thrilled by her scheme: it was in outline form! I thought to myself, "My child has an orderly mind! She THINKS in outlines!" This is unquestionably the result of the structured note-taking and writing she does at VanDamme Academy.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Deep-Six the Law of the Sea

Posted by Craig Biddle at 11:00 AM

Thomas Bowden has an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal calling for the recognition of property rights with regard to the ocean floor. Here are the first few paragraphs:

The Law of the Sea Treaty, which awaits a ratification vote in the U.S. Senate, declares most of the earth's vast ocean floor to be "the common heritage of mankind" and places it under United Nations ownership "for the benefit of mankind as a whole."

This treaty has been bobbing in the legislative ocean for the past 25 years. After President Ronald Reagan refused to sign it in 1982, repeated attempts at ratification have failed. Last month, however, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17–4 to send it to the full Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to ratify.

What's at stake are trillions of tons of vital minerals such as manganese, nickel, copper, zinc, gold and silver—enough to supply current needs for thousands of years—spread over vast seabeds constituting 41% of the planet's area. Senate ratification would signify U.S. agreement that the International Seabed Authority, a U.N. agency based in Jamaica, should own these resources in perpetuity.

Why should we agree to this?

Like any other hard-to-reach resources, these undersea minerals are completely valueless where they now rest. What is it that makes such resources actually valuable? It is the thinking and action of inventors, engineers, explorers and entrepreneurs who devote their mental energy to the task of finding and retrieving them. These undersea pioneers don't just find wealth, they create wealth—by bringing a portion of nature's bounty under human control.

Despite the treaty's allusion to seabeds as the "common heritage of mankind," mankind as a whole has done exactly nothing to create value in the deep ocean, which is a remote wilderness, virtually unexploited. Under the proposed treaty, however, the ocean mining companies—whose science, exploration, technology, and entrepreneurship are being counted on to gather otherwise inaccessible riches—are treated as mere servants of a world collective.

Read the whole thing.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Monday, November 12, 2007

Don't Say Grace, Say Justice

Posted by Craig Biddle at 11:39 AM

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

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

Is freedom a gift from God? It is not. Freedom, the absence of physical coercion, is a political condition resulting from the rational, principled thought and action of men—men such as Aristotle, John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Frederick Douglass, and American soldiers.

Did God make the ambrosia that melts in your mouth, or the asthma medicine that keeps your child alive, or the plush recliner in which you relax, or the big-screen TV on which you watch your favorite show? Did God create the jetliners that bring friends and family from afar, or the stealth bombers that keep the barbarians at bay, or the music that warms your heart and fuels your soul?

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

Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally—according to what they say, do, and produce—and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. If someone spends the day preparing a wonderful meal, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for doing so. If someone provides his family with a warm, safe, comfortable home, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked for providing it. If a policeman or fireman or doctor saves someone’s life, justice demands that he, not God, be thanked. If a loving spouse or child or parent or friend provides you with great joy, justice demands that he, not God, be acknowledged accordingly. If a philosopher discovers the principles on which freedom depends—and if others put those principles into practice—justice demands that they, not God, be given credit.

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

Rational, productive people—whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself—are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. This holiday season—and from now on—don’t say grace; say justice. Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they’re through. It’s the right thing to do.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

What We Owe Our Soldiers by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 10:28 AM

Every Veterans Day we pay tribute to our fellow Americans who have served in the military. With speeches and ceremonies, we recognize their courage and valor. But justice demands that we also recognize that we should have far more living veterans than we do. 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 Veterans 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.

Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

The Injustice of 'Doing Something' about Subprime by Alex Epstein

Posted by ARI Media at 10:22 AM

As we witness large numbers of defaults on subprime loans—loans extended to those with no credit or bad credit—many are calling for the government to do something to stop the suffering. At the same time, many recognize that a bailout of struggling homeowners would be wrong. Thus, we see a growing list of proposed solutions that purport to save the day without a bailout: "borrower assistance" programs to refinance defaulting mortgages, crackdowns on "predatory lending" practices, or laws restricting mortgages the government deems too risky.

In fact, regardless of how these proposals are described, all embody the essence of a bailout: they absolve individuals of responsibility for their bad decisions—and force those who did nothing wrong to pay the price.

While we may empathize with those suffering the pain of foreclosure or bankruptcy, we must recognize that any struggling borrower or lender who signed a clear, non-fraudulent contract, is responsible for making sure it is paid off. In cases where fraud was committed, the victims can and should take legal action under existing laws—but there is no evidence that such cases are epidemic. Most of the defaults are due to the simple fact that many lenders and borrowers made risky loans. Some were betting on a never-ending real-estate boom. Some, observing the Fed's longtime manipulation of interest rates to keep them artificially low, expected that their adjustable rate mortgages would stay low forever. Others did not carefully assess the contracts they signed—while certain lenders gave money without carefully analyzing the borrower's finances. Still others were encouraged to buy homes, even when it didn't make financial sense, by a government that believes home ownership is essential to the American Dream.

Given this range of factors, many people and institutions besides struggling borrowers and lenders—most notably, the federal government—bear responsibility for the mess. But the ultimate responsibility lies with the borrowers and lenders themselves. Any problems they have are their responsibility to remedy—just as any gains borrowers and lenders have made on risky subprime mortgages are theirs to keep. In the case of a mortgage borrower, taking responsibility might mean trying to find a lender who will pay off and renegotiate the old mortgage into a more manageable one. If such attempts fail, however, a person must accept the unfortunate consequences—for example, the borrower who loses his house and must live more modestly, or the lender who must take a large loss from a loan default. The only alternative is to make others pay for the consequences of his actions—which is exactly what all government attempts to "do something" necessarily do.

The government is not a savvy lender or mortgage expert able to contribute innovative financing strategies or new knowledge to the mortgage market. Its sole power, which all forms of "doing something" utilize, is the power to forcibly compel some people to give up their money or freedom for the sake of others.

Any government "borrower assistance" (read: borrower bailout) programs, such as a Massachusetts proposal to give struggling homeowners new loans they could not get on the free market—at a cost to taxpayers of at least $250,000 per homeowner—compels those who did not make or take out risky loans to bail out those who did. The same is true of measures to target "predatory lending"—an undefined term that gives the government license to extract huge fines from any innocent lender it retroactively deems should have given better counsel to borrowers. The government is also punishing the innocent when it attempts to "protect" future borrowers. For example, proposed prohibitions on future mortgages that the government deems overly risky punish individuals who manage risk well, many of whom will not be able to afford new homes without these vehicles.

The proper response of the government to subprime problems is simple; commit to no new interventions in the housing market, and cease all existing intervention designed to influence home ownership—from programs like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to artificially low interest rates. Such a move would send a message befitting a free people: a message of responsibility. Individuals would be responsible for the loans they make and for choosing the housing option that is best for them. The government would protect everyone's rights by enforcing laws against theft and fraud, and by protecting the individual's right to make his own decisions and keep his own money—even when others make bad use of theirs.

Alex Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Environmentalists Are Muscling In on Atlanta's Water Supply

Posted by ARI Media at 11:16 AM

Irvine, CA—With the Southeast suffering a prolonged drought, the city of Atlanta, Georgia, has only about a three month supply of readily accessible water. Nevertheless, in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, the Army Corps of Engineers continues to drain more than a billion gallons a day from Lake Lanier, Atlanta's main water source, to release it downstream for an endangered species of mussel.

"The Endangered Species Act is a danger to the human species," said Dr. Keith Lockitch, a resident fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute. "People find it hard to believe that environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act could really require the sacrifice of human beings to nature. But that is exactly what they have to mean in practice; they mean that in order to sustain some obscure mussel species, the people in Atlanta must go without water.

Environmentalists claim that blaming the mussels is unfair. They say it is just a way of diverting attention from the real causes of the water crisis, which, in their view, are a lack of strict water conservation mandates and the 'unbridled development' of metro Atlanta over the last few years."

But, says Lockitch, "this amounts to the bizarre claim that the problem is not a failure to build reservoirs and expand water capacity, but a 'failure' to obstruct economic progress and impose draconian water restrictions on Atlanta. In other words, the environmentalists' view is that Atlantans should sacrifice even more to nature.

"In fact, the opposite is the case. Solving the Southeast's water problems requires the rejection of the Endangered Species Act and environmentalist obstacles to development and growth. Indeed, the real solution is more profit-driven development. What is needed is a water management system that is entirely owned and operated by private individuals and companies, who would be driven by the profit motive to ensure a sufficient water capacity. A wholly private system would protect the rights of all users with a legitimate interest in the Chattahoochee River Basin—including metro Atlanta as well as the energy plants downstream and the Florida seafood industry in the Gulf—with no one requiring that human beings be sacrificed to mussels."

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Monday, November 05, 2007

Justice on the Web

Posted by Craig Biddle at 3:16 PM

Gus Van Horn, one of the best bloggers on the Web, is leading in the final polling of the 2007 Weblog Awards in the “Best of the Top 6751–8750 Blogs” category. Gus deserves this and much more, so vote, vote, vote this year (you can vote every 24 hours), and let’s see if we can ratchet up the justice next year. The polls close on November 8, so vote now.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Mere Atheism

Posted by Craig Biddle at 9:54 AM

During the question period of the otherwise unremarkable debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza on the question of “Is Christianity the Problem?” the following two questions were posed to Hitchens: 1) “What [does atheism] have to offer us as an ethics?” and 2) “What standard [of value] can you appeal to?” Although any objective approach to debating a theist on this subject would involve answering these two questions in the main course of the debate, Hitchens had not addressed either of them there and was unable to answer either when asked. Instead, he went off on tangents about such things as the absurdity of a God who would permit cannibalism and suffering, man’s oversized adrenal glands (which supposedly explain why people do bad things), and the alleged value of “human solidarity” (a euphemism for altruism and collectivism).

This is yet another example of the feckless nature of mere atheism. While religion holds that morality comes from God via faith and revelation—and while religion posits all sorts of divine laws that are supposed to provide people with moral guidance (e.g., the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes)—atheism provides no moral guidance at all. Atheism says nothing about what is good or bad, right or wrong; nothing about how people should live; nothing about what we should and shouldn’t do. All atheism says is: “There is no god.” It is true that there is no god, but that truth alone is of no value to anyone.

If religion is wrong, then what is right? It is not enough to say “Go by reason, not faith.” What does it mean to go by reason? To what moral principles does reason lead? How are those principles validated? And what do they mean in practice?

Until atheists come to understand and embrace a positive, rational moral philosophy, they will continue to default to the ethics of religion (i.e., altruism and collectivism); consequently, they will continue to accomplish nothing of significance in the battle against religion. And in order to understand and embrace a positive, rational moral philosophy, they will have to find the courage not only to be atheists but also to be egoists—because egoism is the only morality supported by observation and logic.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Scrutinizing Scruton's Scrutinizing

Posted by Craig Biddle at 7:50 PM

In an article titled “Altruism and Selfishness,” Roger Scruton challenges Ayn Rand’s concept of selfishness—by committing the very fallacy that Rand identified as the cause of all the confusion on this issue. (There are many problems with Scruton’s article; I’ll address only the most egregious of them.)

Scruton attributes to Rand the notion that being selfish consists in taking whatever action one wants to take or in taking whatever action one has a motive to take. Scruton writes that according to Rand:

When a father works to provide for his children; when a woman spends her money on a person she loves; even when a man lays down his life for his friend—all this is selfishness, doing what one wants to do, because one has the motive to do it, because that is what the I requires.

Not only did Rand not accept the idea that a motivated action is thereby a selfish action; she explicitly rejected it. Rand held that whether an action is selfish or unselfish depends on two things: the standard by reference to which the action is motivated, and whether or not the action is rational. If a person is motivated by the idea that the standard of morality is self-sacrifice—if he holds that being good consists in selflessly serving others—and if he therefore quits his cherished career, say, making music, in order to serve others by doing something he loathes, say, changing bedpans, then, if words have meaning, he is not being selfish; he is being unselfish.

Although Scruton somehow missed this, Rand demonstrated in several books and essays that the objective standard of moral value is man’s life—meaning, all that which is required for man to live and flourish materially and spiritually. She further demonstrated that the objective purpose of morality is to guide the individual in choosing and pursuing the values that will fill his days and years with meaning and joy. Correspondingly, on her view, for a person to be genuinely selfish, he must do more than take action “directed at the self”; he must also be guided exclusively by reason, because only reason can account for the long-range and wide-range requirements of his life and happiness.

Acting on the principle that one should selflessly serve others is not the same thing as acting on the principle that one should rationally pursue one’s own life-serving values. To treat these essentially different things as though they are essentially the same is to commit the fallacy that Rand called “package-dealing.”

Scruton commits the fallacy again here:

Learning to love your neighbor as yourself is learning to take pleasure in the things that please him, as a mother takes pleasure in the pleasures of her child. To call this "selfishness" is to abuse the language. A selfish act is one directed at the self; an unselfish act is one directed at others. And the truly unselfish person is the one who wants to perform unselfish acts, who takes pleasure in giving, and who enjoys the prospect of another's success. This is not, as Rand would have us believe, just another form of selfishness. It is an altogether higher motive, one in which the other has replaced the self as the object of concern.

Who is abusing language?

The characteristic that makes an action selfish or unselfish is not whether it is directed at the self or whether one wants to take it or whether one takes pleasure in it or whether one enjoys it. If it were any of these, then junkies, rapists, welfare bums, and bank robbers would have to be considered “selfish” along with people who, on principle, take care of themselves, enjoy exclusively consensual sex, produce goods or services, and respect property rights. To say that it is illogical to treat these two radically different kinds of people as though they are essentially the same would be to understate the case.

For a person to be genuinely selfish, he must not only hold his own life as his ultimate value; he must also recognize and accept the principle that his only means of knowledge and his basic means of living is his faculty of reason; he must commit himself to being guided only by his rational judgment—because only it can account for the long-range and wide-range requirements of his life and happiness.

If one loves one’s neighbor because one judges him to be rational, honest, just, and of great importance to one’s life and happiness, then appreciating or taking pleasure in the things that please him can be selfish. If, however, one loves one’s neighbor not because one judges him to be rational and valuable to one’s life, but because one has accepted the religious dogma that one should “love one’s neighbor,” then doing so is unselfish. What could be more selfless than forgoing one’s own rational judgment and obeying religious dogma?

The only thing Scruton gets right in this regard is his recognition of the fact that a person who wants to forgo his own rational judgment—a person who wants to obey dogma in service to some “higher motive”—and therefore does so, is wholly unselfish.

PermaLink | Email this link to a friend | Write TOS about this post