Fall 2014 • Vol. 9, No. 3

In May, at a conference cosponsored by FEE and the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, Max Borders and Craig Biddle debated the question, "Moral diversity: asset or liability for the liberty movement?"—and the discussion was, by all accounts, profoundly interesting. We present in this issue of TOS the transcript of that debate.

Joseph Kellard interviews Donna Hassler about the works of Daniel Chester French, the great American artist perhaps best known for his sculpture of Abraham Lincoln housed at the Lincoln Memorial. Ms. Hassler is executive director of Chesterwood, which was French's summer home and studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and which is now a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) was a 19th-century British political philosopher and a member of Parliament, who recognized that each individual has inalienable rights to direct his own mind and body, and to keep and use the product of his own effort. In defense of these rights, Herbert advocated a strictly limited, voluntarily funded, rights-protecting government.

Imagine being able to keep an extra 12.4 percent of every paycheck to spend or invest according to your own judgment. Imagine if, rather than seize that portion of your paycheck to finance Social Security, government recognized your moral right to that wealth.

Despite his retrospective missteps, Lincoln repeatedly responded to Douglas’s racist tauntings by turning back to his avowed purpose in the election—to remind voters that “the old principle of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison” was that slavery was wrong and should be placed on a path to extinction.

Whereas rational ethics holds that if you want the values on which your life and happiness depend, you must take the actions necessary to gain and keep those values; rational economics holds that if you want to trade value for value in the marketplace, you must first produce value with which to trade.

The so-called Civil Rights Commission did not rule that “the baker was wrong” (he was in fact wrong); rather, it ruled that government will punish the baker if he does not bake cakes for gay couples. There is a world of difference between a private individual condemning some action as immoral, and the government punishing that action.

When today’s leftists speak of “white privilege,” their goal is not to abolish overtly racist laws—those were abolished in part by Lincoln and his supporters in the Civil War and virtually in full within a century of the Civil War. Nor is the left’s goal to eradicate private bigotry—which today is big news precisely because it is rare (e.g., Donald Sterling).

Although it is senseless to campaign against so-called “white privilege," one sort of pervasive privilege is real, it is evil, and it should be not only checked but ultimately abolished. It is the privilege government grants to some people to violate the rights of others. Call it “statist privilege.”

Unfortunately, when some economists think of values as “subjective,” they assume that there is no objective standard for determining moral value; they assume that value is only a matter of personal opinion.

In “Terrorism, Altruism, and Moral Certainty,” the Afterward to my book Loving Life, I explain that “Islamic terrorists are religious altruists: They selflessly commit human sacrifices for the sake of a supernatural ‘other’—an alleged God.” A Muslim professor at the Islamic University in Gaza recently acknowledged this too.

Although in today’s context questions regarding immigration are complex matters involving the welfare state, laws governing citizenship, threats of cross-border crime and terrorism, and various other issues, the proper principle guiding any thinking about immigration is—as with every political issue—that of individual rights.

It can be perfectly appropriate to discuss Lincoln’s flaws and errors. What is not rationally defensible is to demonize Lincoln by quoting him selectively and ignoring relevant historical context and facts, such as the critical fact that the Confederacy fought to preserve and strengthen the most horrifically evil institution in America’s history.

In his recent address to representatives from the United Nations, Pope Francis called for “the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the State” in order to alleviate poverty. The pope believes economic inequality is wrong and that government should forcibly remedy the problem. But the pope is wrong on both counts.

Egalitarianism encourages people to express envy toward the most successful producers and to seek to publicly shame them. A rational morality treats producers at whatever level, to the degree they pursue rationally selfish goals to the best of their ability, as moral heroes deserving admiration and praise.

The modern left is so ideologically bankrupt that its representatives will blame a mass murder—even one perpetrated by an explicit and thoroughgoing collectivist—on individualism, and call for more collectivism as the “solution” to the problem. The murderer in question was an anti-individualist in every essential way.

As Rand points out, the tribal lone wolf mentality has nothing to do with genuine, rational, life-promoting selfishness. A rationally selfish individual, far from “living” (or killing and dying) by the opinions of others, lives by his own independent judgment and for his own self-achieved happiness, creating values and trading value for value with others.

It is absurd to suggest that opening one’s business to the general public somehow obligates one to serve every individual who walks through the doors, regardless of context. Must a cake baker bake a “God Hates Fags” cake for the bigoted Westboro Baptist Church, or a swastika cake for a neo-Nazi group?

Although Brat largely supports free markets, he does not consistently support them, as Rand did; he disagrees with Rand on important philosophic issues; and he himself recognizes that his views are not Rand’s. As examples, Brat parts ways with Rand dramatically when it comes to immigration and the source of individual rights.

The most important issue was not the influence of Rand on Brat—that was widely reported and thus abundantly obvious—but the differences between the views of Rand and Brat. That was the point that was not obvious to many people, and that is the issue that is crucially important for advocates of Rand’s ideas to clarify.

Although Galperina rejects the idea that a pet can be objectively valuable to a person, in fact it can be. As a cat owner myself, I can attest that cats are playful and cuddly, they often do amusing things, and they provide companionship. My owning my cat objectively—that is, factually—contributes to my life and happiness.

Dave Brat—who recently upset Eric Cantor in a Virginia congressional primary—says he is heavily influenced by free-market thinkers, including Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, and (to a lesser degree) Ayn Rand. More encouraging, a paper that Brat wrote in 2011 indicates that he endorses the separation of church and state.

The Supreme Court delivered an important but substantially mitigated victory to advocates of individual rights by throwing out the ObamaCare requirement that business owners pay for health insurance when doing so violates their religious convictions. At issue was whether the federal government could force businesses to provide health insurance that covers forms of birth control.

Rights-respecting foreigners have a moral right to move where they choose and to seek work where they choose, and Americans have a moral right to hire and otherwise associate with such people. These rights are instances of the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

Women who get birth control via insurance either pay for it via higher premiums, or, if their insurance is legislatively subsidized, get it for “free” only in the sense that others are forced to pay higher premiums (or higher taxes) than they would otherwise pay. In that latter case, the birth control is still not free.

The proper solution is for government to start protecting the rights of all individuals to act on their judgment, which means (among many other things) the right to operate their businesses as they see fit and to voluntarily contract with others—or not to do so—as they see fit.

Open immigration does not mean that government must let in criminals and terrorists. And our alternatives obviously are not limited to letting in criminals and terrorists or keeping out rights-respecting people who want to move here. The alternative consistent with individual rights is a policy under which immigration is open to all and only rights-respecting, non-rights threatening individuals.

Far from showing that government should restrict immigration of rights-respecting people even more severely, today’s immigration crisis further illustrates why government should stop violating the rights of rights-respecting people to immigrate and the rights of citizens to voluntarily associate with such immigrants.

Every so often, people hostile to Ayn Rand’s ideas try to attack them by saying that Rand said or implied something she never said or implied and then attacking that thing she never said or implied. Given that Rand’s actual views are so readily available, it’s baffling that her detractors wantonly make this stuff up.

Actor Kristen Bell recently portrayed a left-wing activist version of Mary Poppins in a Funny or Die video calling for a higher federal minimum wage. But a minimum wage violates the rights of employers to operate their businesses as they see fit, including their rights to offer terms of employment that they judge best for their businesses.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) claims the motto of freedom, opportunity, and enterprise. But, by “freedom,” apparently, some at AEI now mean that government should be free to forcibly take your wealth and give it to others, at least within certain (undefined and undefinable) limits.

Who is morally responsible for the deaths of innocents in Gaza, such as Gazan children, who are killed by Israeli bombs? Hamas is. And this fact is clear to anyone who chooses to think beyond the frame of a television.

Although environmentalists sometimes couch their policies in terms of improving the world for human benefit, fundamentally the environmentalist movement regards humankind as a blight on the earth whose productive activities are inherently immoral. Most recently, the Guardian reports a “plan to engineer a shorter, smaller human race to cope with climate change.”

Theocrat Rick Santorum is the CEO of the Christian film production company EchoLight, as the Heritage Institute reports. Unsurprisingly, judging from its trailer, one of the company’s forthcoming films, “One Generation Away: The Erosion of Religious Liberty,” substantially distorts the meaning and significance of the First Amendment’s language about religion.

The Dictionary of Human Form, by Ted Seth Jacobs. Santa Fe: Mariposa Press, 2011. 819 pp. $150. Reviewed by Daniel Wahl Ted Seth Jacobs painted The Open Window—one of the most beautiful paintings of the twentieth century. He taught Jacob Collins and Tony Ryder—two of the realist movement’s most influential…

The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, by Roger Kimball. New York: Encounter Books, 2005. 200 pp. $17.95 (paperback). Reviewed by Daniel Wahl Roger Kimball begins The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art by asking why we teach and study art history. “It is…

The Martian, by Andy Weir. New York: Crown, 2014. 384 pp. $24 (hardcover). Reviewed by Ari Armstrong Imagine you’re on a mission on Mars. Your space suit, not to mention your body, was punctured by an antenna blown loose by a raging sandstorm. Luckily, although the blow knocked you unconscious,…

Edge of Tomorrow, directed by Doug Liman. Written by Christopher Mcquarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, based on the novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, and Brendan Gleeson. Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of…

Star Trek: First Contact, directed by Jonathan Frakes. Written By Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, And Ronald D. Moore. Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates Mcfadden, Marina Sirtis, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell, And Alice Krige. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, 1996. Rated PG-13 for some sci-fi…

Regarding “Getting Lincoln Right” To the Editor: I would like to congratulate Alexander Marriott on his well-written and illuminating article “Getting Lincoln Right” [TOS Summer 2014]. Mr. Marriott eloquently addresses the most common moral and historical fallacies that are used to smear the legacy of a man who, in my…