Domestic & Foreign Wisdom
Tibor R. Machan
Tod Gitlin chimes in brilliantly on foreign policy for the United States
of American when he writes that “For the most part, when the United States
has set out, on its own and absent direct provocation, to overthrow a
government, and to think that, having installed a new one, it could tinker
with the effects and bring about a happy outcome, disaster has been the
result. To be sure, the frequently cited counterexamples of Grenada and
Panama may, to varying degrees, be conceded. But, again, unilateral
American intervention has done considerably more harm than good over the
past decades. It is worth revisiting this sorry lineage for a moment not
because it tells the whole story of American foreign policy—it does
not—but because it underscores some of the profound risks of reckless
intervention.” (Todd Gitlin, “On Liberalism and Force,” World Affairs
[Summer, 2008], p. 43)
Julian Gough, in turn, supplies the wisdom concerning domestic policies
for a free society when he writes: “Capitalism is seen as arrogant, but
that is merely the rage of Caliban* on seeing his reflection. The
extraordinary thing about capitalism is its humility and refusal to judge.
It will give us what we want; it will not force on us what it thinks we
need. Often we are disgusted by what we discover that we want--but that
reflects on us, not on the servant who brings us our fetish gear and
saturated fats. It would bring us organic turnips just as happily. If we
cease to desire a product, the product changes or ceases to exist. There
is nothing more powerless than a corporation.” (Julian Gough, quoted in
THE WEEK, 12 July 2008, p. 10.)
Detractors, such as Noami Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine, The Rise
of Disaster Capitalism (Metropolitan Books, 2007), argues precisely the
opposite, blaming virtually all maladies in the world on free market
capitalism and its champions (such as, and especially, the later Milton
Friedman). Who comes out more credible in this dispute is not my task here
to establish. Jonathan Chait, in The New Republic (July 30, 2008) has
accomplished figuring that out brilliantly already, showing that Klein
fabricated much of her evidence and besmirched the Chicago Boys utterly
unfairly, relying on reams of prevarications.
My focus here is the fact that a debate such as this one can actually
still be held in the better sectors of the American media. Both World
Affairs and The New Republic are competent, well edited publications, with
superb writers and editorial policies that bend over backwards not to
violate journalistic ethics. And that, I believe, is something to rejoice
about.
In the United States of America and in Great Britain there is civilized
debate and disputation on vital issues of the day, the month, the year and
the decade are widely circulated, with the contributors largely restrained
and polite without being at all dull. This form of exploration of
important human topics began back in ancient Greece and was carried on in
Rome, more or less consistently, although often surrounded by overt
violence and intimidation. And, of course, in many parts around the globe
today discussions of such vital topics has a hard time being carried out
in a civil tongue--the threat of bayonets and bombs is altogether real,
should someone in the minority annoy an opponent too severely.
However, the influence of modern classical liberal ideas, especially as
regards public affairs, has been to at least compartmentalize the
conflicts so that where ideas are discussed, weapons are barred. The
progress this exhibits must not be over nor underestimated. A few steps
forward can easily be obliterated by a few backwards.
Although some genuine jewels of ideas can thus surface and have a chance
of influencing public policy, there is never any guaranteed that the good
one’s will triumph. But when a few precious morsels such as the two I
quoted above do get some run for their money, I believe we should all
cheer and make the most of it. As that saying I have quoted before put it:
Notice the good and praise it! It will encourage some more good, I am
willing to bet.

Encouraging Dishonesty
Tibor R. Machan
Recently I have become a genuine frequent flier. My miles keep
accumulating at various airlines and I am making good use of them
upgrading to first or business class on some of those very long trips I
have been taking of late.
As anyone can imagine, flying after 9/11/01 hasn’t become very enjoyable,
even when one is fortunate enough to get upgraded or well enough off to
buy the expensive seats. A most annoying part of flying is the wait in
those security lines, especially if one has any kind of malady involving
standing or ambling about. (I do!) OK, perhaps it is no big deal to
experience such inconveniences and displeasures. Things could be worse or,
as the Hungarians have been saying since the 16th century, “Több is
veszett Mohácsnál” (“More was lost at Mohacs”), the place in southern
Hungary that got wiped out by Turkish forces partly so as to demonstrated
to the Austro-Hungarian leadership that the Turks had muscle.
Anyway, as I was standing around in Frankfurt some days ago, on my return
trip to the US, I noticed something that had escaped me thus far. Airline
personnel routinely lie about when the plane will be leaving, when
boarding will begin, and other scheduling matters. On several occasions in
Frankfurt it was announced that our flight will be ready to board in five
or ten minutes when, in fact, thirty or fifty minutes went by before any
passengers could make a movement toward the plane.
As we stood cooling our heels--a practice I am not very good at--I noticed
that there were dozens of children among the passengers, some too young to
know what was happening but quite a few able to tell that the
announcements made by airline personnel were very far from the truth.
Repeated claims about how in a moment we will be moving aboard were simply
followed by more such claims but no movement forthcoming. This couldn't be
missed by the kids, I am certain.
I was personally annoyed with the delays, of course, but it occurred to me
that here is an instance of adults seriously influencing children to
accept prevarication as the norm. Why, if it is OK for these uniformed men
and women to keep misleading hundreds of people should a child take it
seriously when implored to tell only the truth?
Come to think of it, such setting of bad examples surrounds children in
many areas of their lives, all the while they are being urged to be
honest. Doctors order them to come to their offices at a given time only
to make them wait at least a half an hour before they get to be seen. And
not just children. We are all taught to tell the truth, at least in church
and by various people who preach at us about how we ought to act. Yet we
are also clearly aware that the very people who give us these instructions
make a practice of not living up to what they say. Maybe a good many folks
are willing to give these liars a break, consider that circumstances may
not make full honesty possible, punctuality a reasonable expectations. But
many could well get the impression that honesty itself is simply
unimportant to many who speak to us. And these folks tend to be ones in
positions of responsibility, even authority, like the airline personnel
who unhesitatingly tell us lies. Maybe they, in turn, are being influenced
by politicians who make it a habit to lie to us!?
Well, you might say, what can they do. After all, they are facing
situations of uncertain information all the time. Yet I don’t think this
will do as any kind of excuse since such situations can be noted--there is
no great difficulty in adding to what one announces that these are simply
estimates and it is quite possible that the delays will be longer. It
appears, however, that airline companies haven’t yet figured out just how
to communicate honestly and effectively with their customers. They
probably do not want to fully disclose it when something delays a flight
that requires mechanical repair or supervision--such information, they may
be thinking, will only upset fliers. So let’s lie to them, instead. (The
Frankfurt-to-Dallas/Forth Worth flight was delayed, I later learned,
because on the flight over from the US an emergency landing had to be made
in Bangor, Maine, after smoke started pouring from the fuselage. Turned
out, it was only some trouble with the audio-video system, nothing major,
but from what I gather this was not deemed to be suitable information for
the waiting and increasingly irritated passengers.)
As technology races ahead and we eagerly embrace it for all the help it
can offer us, it is not always easy tell just how to keep up with ethics,
too. Cell phones, answering machines, voice mail, etc., and so forth--all
these require us to apply the ethical principles of human life
intelligently and competently. Even if we are making announcements to
waiting passengers at airline terminals.

A Visit to RFE-RL

Tibor R. Machan

Prague, Czech Republic. In 1953 I was smuggled out of Hungary by a
professional "flesh peddler" (as TIME magazine called these extremely
helpful people) and landed, for three years, in Munich, Germany. That's
because my father was working at Radio Free Europe there, as a director of
sports coverage. My stepmother was doing some acting gigs for the
Hungarian sector and even I got to do a few lines in various plays that
had a character in his teens. I used to hang out a lot at the facilities
in the English Garden and befriended a lot of expatriates from the various
Iron Curtain countries who helped the effort to inform listeners in those
countries about what went on in the world and whatever else they were
supposed to be doing. (Prior to leaving Hungary I used to listen to RFE,
when I could--because the reception was awful and transmissions were also
being blocked by the commies--mostly to hear my dad on the air.)

Later, when I began to think more carefully about political matters, I had
some trepidations about whether RFE and similar ventures carried out by
the United States government could pass my libertarian test for what
amounts to proper public policy. Should American citizens be forced to
fund this kind of undertaking--including Voice of America and, later,
several others, beaming news and, let's face it, propaganda to victims of
Soviet and Soviet bloc oppression? Can this be construed as legitimate
foreign policy for a bona fide free society? Why or why not?

But back in the mid-fifties I had no problem accepting RFE as a sound
effort, seeing how little information the Soviet satellite countries would
allow their citizens to gather from their state run media. There was
little doubt in my mind that the Americans and their Western allies were
far better, freer countries than those under Soviet rule and whatever
reasonable effort was made to thwart the power of the USSR was Ok by me.
Of course the big question for me turned out, later, to be what amounted
to reasonable in such efforts.

In our time it would appear to be clear enough that there is no longer any
plausible rationale for Radio Free Europe and its sister, Radio Liberty.
Yet, on my visit to Prague, where I was asked to give a short presentation
to the staff about the situation in mid-fifties and what I could recall
about RFE then, several folks argued that there are sound reasons to
continue what RFE/RL liberty had been and continues to be doing, which is
to "provide uncensored news and information to countries where a free
press is either banned by the government or not fully established." As a
died in the wool "defensivist" on matters of public policy, I have my
doubts that such efforts on the part of a government of a free country
qualify as proper public policy. A defensivist, you see, holds--following
the political science sketched in the Declaration of Independence--that
governments are instituted to secure our basic human rights. They are,
therefore, only justified in conducting defensive public policies and it
is unclear whether broadcasting propaganda, however honest and truthful,
into "countries where a free press is either banned by the government or
not fully established" qualifies as defensive public policy. Arguably
such an effort is more about defending the liberty of those in such
countries, not of the citizens of the United States of America whom the
government is sworn to serve.

Yet perhaps a more nuanced take on the foreign affairs of a free society
would not so readily dismiss what RFE and RL are doing as overstepping the
proper authority of a free government. Educating people in countries
where people have no chance to encounter discussions of the principles and
policies of relatively free societies may arguably amount to an element of
defense, given how ignorance about liberty can generate often deadly
hostility toward free societies. Moreover, engaging in this kind of
educational foreign policy may also be a rather preferable substitute for
more militaristic efforts to secure the liberty of citizens of relatively
free societies in today's world.

I am not proposing to resolve these matters here but it is worth
reflecting on them, I think, since the defensivist foreign policy that's
appropriate for free countries can take a variety of forms and, moreover,
isn't something to be decided upon a priori. My own experience with RFE
was an instructive part of my early life, helping me to come to terms in
time with the principles and problems of proper, free governments. I
suspect that investing in the peaceful propaganda efforts of which RFE and
RL are a part is highly preferable to embarking on various military
missions so as to defend liberty for American citizens and also to spread
it around the world in ways that do not produce hostility and acrimony.

The Scope of Public Choice Theory


Tibor R. Machan


Prague, Czech Republic. In October 1985 (I think it was) Professor James
Buchanan, now at George Mason University's Department of Economics,
received the Nobel Prize in his discipline for his pioneering work—in
collaboration with Professor Gordon Tullock—in what came to be called
public choice theory. The gist of this theory is that those who work in
government, often referred to in the honorific terms as doing "public
service," are, contrary to widespread impression, just as much motivated
by personal or self-interest as are people in the market place. In other
words, politicians and bureaucrats pursue their own agendas, not those of
"the public," just as people in business do. And from this a number of
interesting insights follow about the nature of government policy.

What makes this idea quite credible even at first inspection is that
politicians and bureaucrats would have a very hard time, even if they
wanted to, to serve the public interest. The reason is that the public is
a huge group of individuals with a great variety of different interests
and just a few common ones. All those people in centers of power who
lobby for support from various branches and divisions of government—those
folks so scornfully dismissed as looking out for mere "special
interests"—are, in fact, the only ones who can provide politicians and
bureaucrats with some clue as to what the public's interest amounts to.
They tell them, actually, about a lot of highly diverse private and
special interests, not any kind of public interest at all.

This fact is very important to keep in mind, especially in the midst of
political campaigns during which there is an inordinate amount of rhetoric
about the special interests versus the public interest, the goals of
different people versus the will of the people. Of course, the special
interest groups are nothing other than the people, so the will of the
people is really nothing else but the sum of the special interests all
those nasty lobbyists are promoting.

Even beyond all this, public choice theory also alerts us to the fact that
the most recent effort to shore up the case for government meddling in our
lives, namely so called libertarian paternalism—or nudging—is infested
with the problem that behavior that may be desirable from certain citizens
will not be so from others. What the politicians and bureaucrats choose to
nudge us to do—which is really a form of insidious manipulation even at
its best—is rarely what all of us being so nudged really ought to do. The
assumption of one-size-fits-all is blatant and public policies that follow
from it must of necessity misfire.

Suppose there is a problem in a society, say, environmental pollution.
What everyone ought to do about it is quite impossible to say. One
person or family may have to address it one way, another very differently,
and so on down the line. To believe, for example, that everyone who owns
an SUV ought to get rid of it because of pollution is the height of
ignorance and presumption. What one person or one family or one company
ought to do to address the problem will be quite different from what
another ought to, in light of the different circumstances and needs and
possibilities of all these different human agents.

Because this is so, the effort to address the problem by politicians and
bureaucrats is invariably going to misfire. Those so called public
servants, in short, have no clue at all what needs to be done by you, me,
our friends, colleagues, neighbors, and the rest, so they will promote
policies they happen to prefer, never mind whether they help solve the
problem. They will, as customary, feel the urge to "do something," even
if there is no demonstrable connection between it and any solution to the
problem that is supposedly being addressed.

The same goes for those doing the nudging being promoted these days as
ways to get us to behave properly. Right conduct is highly contextual. It
depends on highly particular conditions that people face. Only those close
to us have a decent chance of knowing the best way for us to act, so
public servants will necessarily be off base.

Sadly in their eagerness to impose their so called solutions, politicians
and bureaucrats are not likely to relinquish their power over us, never
mind how misguided they are in doing so.

Human Rights Were Not Invented

Tibor R. Machan

Professor Lynn Hunt's recently published book is titled Inventing Human
Rights and though it is full of very useful information about the
emergence of the idea of basic human, individual rights, it also
perpetuates, perhaps entirely unconsciously, a very serious error.

Moral and political ideas are not all that different from ones in the
various sciences. Based on better and better information about the world,
various new concepts need to be formed. Electrons, for example, hadn't
been identified until after atoms were. The prefrontal lobe wasn't known
until instruments were created that helped to search the brain thoroughly
enough to take a comprehensive inventory of its innumerable parts.
Initially all that was known is that there is a brain and only gradually
did its busy life and large number of attributes and properties come into
focus.

In morality something similar happens. From early times it has been clear
enough that some kinds of conduct are morally wrong and that some are
right. Broadly speaking, whatever promotes the human life of an individual
is right, whatever thwarts it wrong. But the details were slow to come to
light. Politically, too, the concept of justice was in place quite early
in human history—an institution or policy is just if it secures what is
deserved among human beings. But this isn't enough to take account of the
many details of the idea of justice. In time—starting quite a long time
ago, actually—it gradually became clear that human beings have certain
rights, based on their nature, which then provided a fuller understanding
of justice.

But, of course, there is a problem with all this. Unlike in the physical
sciences, in normative spheres there is a great deal of disagreement, some
if not most of it stemming from the input from those who want to undermine
the very notion of basic norms of human life. So even if at some point
human rights had been discovered—not invented—there were many who didn't
welcome this fact and mounted all sorts of ways to obscure it. A little of
this can also been detected in even the hardest science, such as physics,
chemistry or astronomy. But in the area of morality and politics it is far
more prevalent since the basis of these areas of focus are more
complicated and widely disputed.

One way to undermine a moral concept, of course, is to maintain that it is
merely an invention, a fabrication that serves not to help us understand
how to lead a human life but merely to further some special interest.
Accordingly, for example, Karl Marx and his followers argued that the
human right to private property was invented so as to aid the ruling
bourgeois classes to obtain and hold control of other people.

Judging by her book I doubt that Professor Hunt had this same agenda up
her sleeve. I am sure, however, that the claim that human rights are an
invention plays into the hands of those who would just as soon dismiss
these rights as being without any basis in facts of reality but simply a
concocted myth—or, as Jeremy Bentham characterized them, "nonsense upon
stilts."

In the case of Dr. Hunt, who teaches history at UCLA, there is another way
that the status of human rights is undermined. She makes a lot of the fact
that the Declaration of Independence associates our basic rights with
self-evidence. If they were self-evident, as she claims the Founders said
they were, then they need not be argued for. A self-evident fact needs no
proof. Thus the fact of the existence of the universe needs no proof—any
effort to prove it would already acknowledge that it is true. That's why
it is a self-evident truth.

What the Declaration states, of course, is that "We hold these truths to
be self-evident," not that they are self-evident. And for purposes of a
brief, succinct, inspiring announcement—a declaration—that's all that is
needed, namely, to treat those truths as if they were (that is, to hold
them to be), self-evident. In fact, however, they are anything but. Just
as John Locke and all of his followers who have labored long and hard to
prove that these rights knew this well and good. The existence of our
rights must be demonstrated, shown. It's not enough to assume them.

Dr. Hunt, however, claims that the Founders believed that it is
self-evident that we have these rights and proposes that they function,
therefore, as religious truths based on faith, not as discoveries—as
inventions not as something real. But this will not wash. Over the
centuries basic human rights were gradually identified, as a result of a
better and better knowledge of human community life and its role in human
affairs. So by now we know that all of us have these rights in our
communities, apart from some rare cases of crucially incapacitated people.
And we can therefore confidently state, for example, that a country in
which these rights are not acknowledged and protected fails at being fully
just.

It would have been only prudent for Dr. Hunt to have seen the matter along
such lines. As it is, she is aiding and abetting those who want to support
regimes wherein human rights are violated, left and right. If they are a
mere invention, what could be wrong with that?

Gas Prices Now and Then

Tibor R. Machan

Cologne, Germany. During the last several years that gasoline prices
posted at pumps were steadily rising I have run across a few obscure
articles, mostly produced by economists, which claimed that the actual
price of gasoline is now lower than it was back in the 1970s when we had
the nuisance of all those long lines at gas stations. I am no expert at
this stuff but I have noticed something that seems to lend credence to the
economists' claim: there are innumerable huge SUVs, minvans, and similar
gas guzzlers still all over the road in my neighborhood and wherever I
have been doing some driving (Florida, Washington, DC, Maryland, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, and South and North Carolina).

While the posted prices are, of course, huge compared to what they used to
be, it appears, from what these economists tell us, that the actual
percetage of people's income spent on gasoline is less now than it used to
be some thirty years ago. And given how many folks are hanging on to their
gas guzzlers, it looks like the economists are right.

What is puzzling me to no end is that virtually nothing about this is
discussed in mainstream media. No front page article has appeared in The
New York Times, The LA Times or other papers with which I am familiar, and
certainly none of the TV news programs have sent out reporters to check
out the economists' contention. Why? Is there something to be gained by
the press from hiding from readers and viewers the possibility, even
probability, that there really is no extraordinary oil crises? What if it
is all as it had been for several decades now, neither a smooth ride yet
not as bumpy one as mainstream opinion would have it? Is there something
dangerous about letting folks know that the real price of gasoline is
actually lower than it was back in the early 1970s when in today's dollars
gasoline cost about $6.50 a gallon?

Of course, gasoline has been quite a lot more expensive in Europe than in
the US for decades on end. And the difference is still evident. So
Europeans do tend to drive much smaller cars than Americans. Even allowing
for the fact that changing from a big to a smaller or really small
vehicles is not going to happen overnight, no major adjustments are
evident on America's roads. What change has come about can be written off
as panic reaction instead of prudence. Of course, for some people
adjustments may be warranted, but that's true anytime, given that the
market favors different producers and consumers based on productivity, the
fluctuation of supply and demand throughout the economy.

Nevertheless, it seems that oil prices, though high, aren't actually
higher than they have been for decades. So why is this not explored by
investigative journalists across the land?

Perhaps the answer is simply that good news is no news. So if there is no
oil crises then writing and talking about oil is worthless from the
viewpoint of the media. No one makes a big deal of the fact that there
haven't been many air crashes in recent years--no headline blares that
"Millions of passengers have reached their destination safely." On the
other hand should there be one or two crashes, this is going to be major
news everywhere even if on average flying is far safer than, say, driving
and ride bicycles.

Perhaps the lesson from this is that hardly anything one reads in
newspapers or views on TV should be taken at face value. One needs a
healthy dose of skepticism whenever one relies on conventional news
sources. But maybe there is an opportunity here as well: given that so
many newspapers are having economic difficulties now, what with the
Internet posing a major challenge to their economic base--namely,
advertising (especially classifieds)--some experimentation with reporting
more good news may be the answer.

Leader of the Free World Torpedoes Freedom

Tibor R. Machan

Cologne, Germany. As The New York Times reported the other
day--http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/business/worldbusiness/30trade.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin--the
United States was among three of the most powerful economies of the world,
China and India being the others, to ground to a halt the effort at the
World Trade Organization (which recently met met in Geneva, Switzerland),
to eliminate or at least lower farm subsidies so as to open markets that
could then admit as serious participants citizens of poor countries the
economies of which are only going to improve of their farm products can be
sold globally. It is truly disgusting and embarrassing that America is
among the countries where protectionism is a major political force.

For decades, even centuries, America was dubbed "the leader of the free
world." Just what did that mean? The meaning of "freedom" in this
designation is supposed to be that America`s citizens enjoy and fervently
support individual freedom for all human beings. As Thomas Jefferson and
many other Founders proposed, the Declaration of Independence was a
commitment to the equal right to liberty, among other rights, not just of
those who would live in the new country. That liberty was deemed a basic
human rights, unalienable, that all human beings possess and was to be
secured, in time, for all. The government of the United States of American
was instituted to secure these rights but all people across the world had
them whether they were respected and protected or not by their various
governments.

A clear, unambiguous implication of the right to liberty is to engage in
peaceful trade with any willing fellow human being. If you want to sell a
horse or car or apartment house and find someone who comes to terms with
you, the right to liberty means that no one may prevent the deal from
taking place. If anyone does, the person is a criminal, plain and simple.

But protectionism is precisely the official prevention of free trade.
Farmers from Africa or anywhere else have grain or some other produce for
sale and find others who are willing to pay what they ask for it but the
government, urged on by domestic farmers who don`t want the competition,
coercively prevent the trade from taking place.

That the Peoples Republic of China would take part in such a criminal
policy is perhaps understandable, seeing that the country is basically a
fascist state, run by a bunch of pragmatic rulers who have no commitment
to individual rights, such as to everyone`s unalienable right to liberty.
India, while nominally a democracy, is not a liberal democracy and thus
also lacks commitment to individual rights. It comes a bit closer by
virtue of its partial embrace of the principle of democratic political
participation but that`s by no means enough.

In the case of the United States of America its government`s opposition to
abolishing protectionism is out and out hypocrisy. A free country that
prevents its citizens from engaging in unhindered trade with willing
people abroad is, well, a contradiction in terms. America`s negotiators
at the WTO should make an open declaration of having jettisoned the
principles of the Declaration and the Bill of Rights in favor of the
system of mercantilism, commerce dictated by the central government in
behalf of various parties who are the favorites of the rulers! That is
the very system that the Founders attempted to overthrow, the system Adam
Smith criticised so powerfully in his The Wealth of Nations--published,
incidentally, in 1776.

On top of it all, the current American administration keeps insisting that
freedom is good for all people, including those in the Middle East, such
as Iraq, so much so that young men and women ought to be sent to risk and
give their lives so that this freedom could be realized abroad. But at
the same time members of this same administration willingly comply with
segments of the American citizenry who have zero interest in human
liberty, especially the human liberty of millions of farmers abroad whose
very livelihood directly depends on their right to liberty being respected
and protected.

It is very difficult, under the circumstances, to take anything seriously
that the American government declares in the name of the struggle for
liberty. All those men and women who are asked to stand up for liberty are
being deceived. It seems what they are protecting is the special perverse
interests of American farmers and other protected groups.

Obama & Europe

Tibor R. Machan

Cologne, Germany. It`s like Susan Neiman and I travelled on two different
continents during the last couple of weeks. In her Sunday July 27, 2008,
Op Ed column in The New York Times, Ms. Neiman says that "it`s hard for me
to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who
confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an
Obama presidency." So she acknowledges that Senator Obama produced
something of a frenzy in much of Europe but then maintains that no one
here has much confidence in his prospective presidency.

My own experience, after a week in Switzerland and then one in Heidelberg
(at the University there), is quite different. Most of the Europeans,
actually nearly all of them, eagerly expect a Barack Obama presidency.
This may be partly because so many of them dislike George W. Bush and do
not imagine Senator John McCain to be any different from him. I suggest
this in light of the fact that those with whom I have spoken about the
upcoming US presidential election exhibited nothing but delight at an
Obama victory. Yet this is not because of any enthusiasm about his
policies. Indeed, hardly anyone gave any indication of knowing about what
the Senator might do as president other than not be enthusiastic about
"staying the course" in Iraq. No one hereabouts seems to like that war,
that is evident.

But apart from this aspect of Senator Obama's candidacy there is little
else that the Europeans I know and have been talking to about this say
they welcome in the man they are nearly certain will be the next president
of the United States of America. No, it is all about what is probably best
considered a sort of feeling they have about how swell it would be to have
the Senator in the White House. Indeed, my impressions is that what
Senator Obama promises for these Europeans is finally to take race of the
agenda of American politics. Whether this is realistic or not, it seems
to be what a great many people here expect.

But such an expectation is naive. The measure of racism that exists among
various Americans isn't so superficial as to disappear with the ascendency
of Senator Obama to the US presidency. Were that the case, racism would
have disappeared a long time ago. Sadly, America's racists, as indeed the
world's, are mostly unshakable in their conviction that something is very
wrong with the people they demean. The only other place where I have
detected that kind of racism is South Africa and among Europe's
anti-Semites. So I am afraid that however much Senator Obama's candidacy
and likely victory in November amounts to a hopeful sign, much more
in-depth change needs to occur for racism to stop being a significant
aspect of American--and indeed world--culture.

What is actually disappointing in Senator Obama's candiacay is his rather
shallow discussions of racism, for example in his speech in Berlin. And
perhaps that is deliberate. Altogether too many Europeans share a certain
aspect of the racism that is still part of America. This is the idea of
tribalism or clanism, the view that human beings belong to various groups
by their very nature. In Europe there is altogether too much talk of
ethnic identity, both by those who are victims of such thinking and those
who engage in it. Individualism, the best antidote to collectivism, has
by no means swept the continent and, sadly, it seems to be disappearing
from America as well. Those who would be the best source of teaching
about the way individualism counters collectivist thinking--namely
intellectuals at universities, newspaper and magazine editorial
departments and think tanks--still embrace the prejudiced notion that
individualism is something that produces acrimony within human
communities. They, therefore, ne
ver miss the opportunity to denigrate it, to besmirch it, as if it and not
its opposite, namely, collectivism (in all its forms) were the real
scourge.

Senator Obama could in fact be a major influence both at home and abroad
in spreading Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous doctrine about what should
really count as we think about human beings, namely, "the content of
[their] character." Each person ought, accordingly, be judged as an
individual who either possesses or lacks admirable character traits, never
mind all the talk about "identity" and even "culture." Those are very
divisive aspects of anyone when treated as prominent.

So although most thinking Europeans, contrary to Ms. Neiman, do embrace
Senator Obama as America's next president, they do it mostly for what
might be considered a sort of reverse racism: he is going to make it
appear that race no longer matters. If it were only true! For that what
we need is for a figure like Senator Obama to discuss racism in more
fundamental terms than he has done so far.

My Mother the Historian

Tibor R. Machan

Heidelberg, Germany. My mother, who lives in Germany now, is nearly 90
years old and enjoys full use of her mental faculties. If anything, she
is sharper now than she has ever been, partly because at her age she no
longer can be bothered with trivial problems and has come to accept her
situation for exactly what it is. One reason she is in such good shape,
both mentally and to a considerable extent physically, is that all her
life she has been an athlete, competing for many decades and later
coaching in the sport of fencing.

On a recent visit I asked her whether judging by the stream of television,
radio, and print media news reports she finds the world she is aware of
now much worse, roughly the same or much batter than it had been
throughout her life. I figured she would have a reasonably educated
opinion about this, having lived through so much, smack in the middle of
Europe. The incredible economic upheavals in the first third of the 20th
century, then World War II and the Holocaust, then the cold war which she
spend in communist Hungary, and then the post 9/11 years. So I asked her
whether she thinks that today we are in such dire straits as so many
commentators claim we are?

As usually, my mother doesn’t make snap judgments but in the end the gist
of what she said was this: “Over the nearly 80 years of my conscious life
I have found that the worst thing was my and millions of other people’s
lives under Soviet style communism, with only the brief but horrible
experience with the Third Reich to match it. Apart from that, things have
been up and down but pretty decent during most times and the current
hysteria is just that, a way for politicians to scare people so they will
entrust them with the job of solving problems by taking everyone’s money
and imposing numerous restrictions of individual liberties and claming
this is necessary so as to remedy whatever ails us.”

My mother and I do not share each other’s overall philosophy, not by a
long shot. She certainly is no libertarian. But on this issue she and I
see eye to eye. I have never been convinced that the hyperbole broadcast
at television viewers gives an accurate picture of how things are with the
world. Nearly every day’s headlines suggest that everything is going to
hell in a hand-basket.

So with my mother’s admittedly amateurish but not ignorant help, I go back
to my old adage: “For every minute of watching TV news, also watch a
minute of some travel program.” Between the two sources of how the world
is doing, one is likely to get an accurate and balanced picture. Nearly
everything reported on the news presents the world as a miserable, failed
arena of human affairs, while nearly everything shown on travel programs
gives us a rosy view wherever the host is taking us, whatever aspect of
human life he or she shares with us.

No doubt there are overall better and worse times we all face around us
but they are rarely as lousy as the reporters, anchors, and commentators
at Fox TV, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC make them out to be. A quick clue to
this is available by comparing the facial expressions of the anchors,
reporters, and commentators in the media to the facial expressions of the
people one encounters in restaurants, sporting events, family dinners and
so forth. Indeed, if the former were an accurate representation of the
mood of the world, I suspect there would be far more suicides than there
actually are. Hardly anyone could carry on with the attitude these media
folks convey to us. A great many more of us than actually do would throw
in the towel.

Sadly, the mood conveyed in the media has its influence and that is
something highly lamentable. But if one remembers that those folks have a
personal stake in making things look much worse than they are, one may
regain a more levelheaded perspective on the world as well as about one’s
own—and one’s children’s and grandchildren’s—prospects.

The Statism of CNN

Tibor R. Machan

Should one ever claim that mainstream media is statist, let alone Left
leaning, a bunch of voices will rise in protest. How could that be?
After all, don’t giant corporations own the media? Which, of course,
assumes something totally unwarranted, namely, that corporations are
managed by champions of free enterprise. Baloney. Corporate managers can
be just as devoted to trying to get government to redistribute wealth in
their direction as are educators, artists, scientists, farmers, or any
other “special interest” group.

The charge that is worth considering is that the media, especially news
organizations with their commentators and reporters, lean toward statism,
which is to say, they favor turning to government with nearly any problem
people face in their communities. The only exception is where the press
itself faces problems, and when it comes to religious matters, mainly
because the fairly strong tradition of separation of journalism and
government, as well as religion and government, at least in the United
States of America.

On a recent lecture tour through a good bit of Europe I had a chance to
watch BBC-TV and CNN-TV quite regularly. Although I speak and understand a
smattering of German, English is the language I use routinely for
obtaining information on current affairs.

On one occasion I was watching a report on Kenya which just went through
an especially violent election season. I turns out that one result of
this has been a serious reduction of tourism in that country the economy
of which is usually the vital beneficiary of this industry.

At the beginning of the broadcast CNN’s anchor introduced the topic and
then brought in a stringer from Kenya who elaborated on it, giving some
specifics, numbers, and anecdotal evidence. Once this was over, the
camera went back to the anchor who promptly posed the following question:
“What is the Kenyan government doing about this problem?” Exactly why it
is the government’s task to do anything at all about tourism in Kenya
viewers were not told. Just what skills does the government possess that
would especially qualify it to do something about this problem? Nothing
was said about that.

Imagine for a moment that the TV audience was being given a report on a
sporting event, say the recent Wimbledon tennis tournament. As was the
case this year, many of the games, especially during finals, experienced
inclement weather. Frequent showers led to stoppage of matches and a few
had to be extended into the wee hours of the night. But, lo and behold, no
commentators raised the question, “What are the referees doing about the
inclement weather?”

But, you may say, well the weather is something very different from
violent interruptions of political elections. Yes, in some ways it is.
But in some ways it isn’t. Both manage to interrupt normal proceedings
and neither can be dealt with post facto, including by those charged with
upholding the rules. While the government might have done something about
the violence that interrupted Kenyan electoral politics, once the
interruption occurred, what could it do? Nothing.

The best way to improve the climate for tourism in Kenya has nothing much
to do with government. It has to do with merchants getting back to work,
resorts opening their doors, oil companies revving up their productivity,
and business in general hiring reliable security agents; this might well
make Kenya into an especially appealing place for tourists to visit with
no help from the government.

It is, of course, ironic that a CNN’s anchor would assume that government
will solve Kenya’s tourism problem, given that governments tend to pose
rather annoying obstacles to tourism in most places around the globe.
Moreover, the violence during the election campaigns had been prompted, in
large measure, by the political circumstances of Kenya, so it isn’t likely
that politicians are going to manage to remedy matters.

In any case, the point I wish to focus on is just how readily CNN buys
into the government habit, how it is nearly second nature to its anchors
to expect all problems to be solved by government, never mind whether it
is government’s expertise that best addresses the problem. And CNN isn’t
alone, only a clear cut example. For CNN the government is treated as the
almighty. Not only is it not the task of news anchors to perpetuate the
myth of almighty government but such a myth will reinforce false
expectations.

It is bad enough that too many ordinary folks place their trust in
government—the use of physical force—but to have the supposedly impartial,
unbiased media reinforce this is unprofessional and truly lamentable.

Scientists and Morality

Tibor R. Machan

Natural scientists are pretty much committed to understanding the world
without reference to morality since if what happens does so because of
impersonal forces of nature, there would seem to be no room for
consideration of right versus wrong, good versus bad, at least not so far
as human beings could do anything about it. So, for example, human
misbehavior or misconduct doesn’t depend on people but is due to
ineluctable natural determinants. Even the misconduct of scientists, the
few who fake evidence or plagiarize, simply happens the way a disease or
earthquake does. All one can do is lament it, the way one laments a
tsunami or tornado. No one is to blame. Nor, of course, are achievements
anything but welcome but impersonal events. No one is to be praised for
them, no one gains credit.

Yet, while many scientists are committed to expunging morality or ethics
from human life—at most they admit that there are undesirable and
desirable features of it—they also act as if morality or ethics did
matter. As when some of them, say ecologists or climatologists, blame
people for anthropogenic global warming or anything else that many believe
is due to irresponsible human behavior. They chide millions for imprudent
conduct; they denounce people who drive SUVs, fail to recycle, or ignore
the scientists’ warnings about what is or isn’t environmentally proper.
And, of course, medical scientists routinely blame patients for failing to
heed warnings about overeating or smoking or lack of exercise. There is,
also, the ubiquitous internal quarreling among some scientists about who
is right or wrong about various predictions and projections.

In short, even though many scientists are committed to viewing human
conduct as no different from the behavior of the weather or the change of
seasons—these just happen, never mind choice or decision—they also
frequently engage in moral chiding, blaming which assumes we can make
choices, for better or for worse. They talk of what would have happened
had people only done this or not done that, just as if they believed that
it is quite in people’s power to act differently from how they do actually
act, or to have done so in the past.

Yet, this internal inconsistency among many scientists who are also quite
moralistic about human behavior is not at all widely scrutinized. There
is almost a kind of polite silence about it all. When scientists complain
about how little attention people pay to their own warnings about one
thing and another, few if any ever raise the issue of whether people had
any choice about this—maybe they had to pay the little or no attention
they did, maybe that is all a matter of the unfolding of impersonal
evolutionary forces.

When a great many scientists, writing, say, for publications such as
Science or Science News, chide government for not supporting science with
enough funds—something that many of them do routinely vis-à-vis the
administration of George W. Bush and in anticipation of a new
administration—they forget all about their assumption of que sera, sera,
“what will be will be” and no choice exists about these matters, free will
being a pre-scientific illusions according to them—few take up this
paradox in their own stance. If, indeed, there is no choice about any of
this, then does it make any sense to complain that certain politicians
aren’t choosing to do enough about global warming and other environmental
issues? After all, they are powerless to do anything other than what they
do, are they not? But if so, what’s all the fuss about, why complain, why
chide?

It seems to be intellectually confused, if not outright dishonest, for
thousands of scientists to avoid this issue. They maintain that they are
the most reliable source of information about how we ought to be going
about many of our concerns in life, yet they are also committed to the
notion that whatever we do must happen and nothing can be altered as a
matter of our decision, our choice.

Perhaps the answer is that scientists, contrary to the conceit of many of
them, are not the only ones who can have something useful to contribute to
the understanding of human affairs. Perhaps they need to consider that
some of what is true about people isn’t informed only by their
relentlessly deterministic outlook. After all, they themselves aren’t able
to explain what they do from that perspective alone.

They should perhaps heed the words of one of their colleagues, the British
psychologist Bannister, who pointed out that a theorist “cannot present a
picture of man which patently contradicts his behavior in presenting that
picture.” (Borger & Cioffi/Bannister, eds., Explanation in the
Behavioural Sciences [Cambridge UP, 1970], p. 417.)

Some Sources of Anti-capitalism

Tibor R. Machan

There is, of course, the idea Marx made prominent that no one ought to
benefit from another’s need. So doctors and nurses and actually nearly
everyone who is working for another who has a need for this work should
just doing pro bono, out of the goodness of his or her heart. As all of
one’s clients and customers were one’s bosom buddies or one’s family. We
should just share our resources, our time, in the end ourselves with the
rest of humanity! That’s the ideal against which free market capitalism,
the arena of the deal, is being compared. No wonder it comes up short.
Anything would when compared with such a fantasy.

But there is another thing the matter with capitalism or what may come
close to it here and there in the world. This is another thing that’s
held against the system, namely, that lots of people like to obtain loads
of stuff that gets produced in it. Yes, consumerism is this supposed
evil, the thing the Pope recently complained about.

Now no doubt sometime people who are working hard or just got lucky like
to spend their money on lots of stuff, on vacations, and fine dining and
the like. The more the merrier, for some, it would seem, and refined
folks just won’t have any of that. Instead of finding this quaint and
understandable, consider that all these consumers come from families with
histories of poverty and bare subsistence—so a bit of indulgence could be
entirely forgivable (not to mention useful in creating millions of jobs).
The snooty ones, however, want everyone to purchase only articles that
come from museums and galleries. They deride those of us who just want to
have some goodies that our parents and grandparents never had the choice
to get. And for such accesses we are denounced as hedonists and
materialists! Oh, give me a break.

No doubt some of the exuberant acquisition that goes on in free markets
may look a bit over the top, even tacky. But why make such a big deal
about it? It doesn’t hurt anyone when people go shopping—they are
creating jobs, too, not just satisfying their wants and desires (as if
there were something wrong with that). There is little else people do with
strangers that comes as close to realistic good relations as what goes on
in free markets, even as people make deals and money off each other. When
people lash out at consumerism I get to thinking they haven’t got much of
a life and need to meddle too much in others’ affairs. A friend ascribes
nearly all of it to sheer envy but I suspect that the legacy of Puritanism
has more to do with it. You know puritans, whom H. L. Mencken accused of
being worried that someplace someone might just be happy and we cannot
have such a thing happen!

It is rue that in substantially liberal—classical not modern
liberal—societies men and women have the opportunity to be self-indulgent
to a fault. Such is it with freedom—a great variety of human tendencies
are given vent in free systems. But so long as the normal state of affairs
involves peaceful interaction among people, even this bit of
self-indulgence will be contained and have few negative externalities.
Moreover, with a little help from one’s family, friends and neighbors,
these can be reigned in.

Compare these awful liabilities of substantially capitalist systems with
those of socialism or fascism or communism. Now there are experiments
that take their toll on human societies big time. Concentration camps,
gulags, oppression, madness and such are routine when those dreams get
tried for real. All these attempts to coercively regiment human beings,
to force them to be good, noble, generous, valiant and the like may look
good on paper and in Hollywood movies but wherever they are seriously
implemented they produced disaster, misery, poverty and acrimony.

I bet all of us would be better of in a country where freedom is the
default position and on one gets to impose a one-size-fits-all approach on
the lives of the population. Sure, there will still be human failings
about. Yes, perfection will not descend upon us all. No, the critics will
not have exhausted their list of beefs with their fellow human beings.

But a free society is head and shoulders superior to any of the utopian
dreams the critics of capitalism invoke when they decry that system.

What’s the Pope’s Problem?

Tibor R. Machan

Salzburg, Austria. BBC TV broadcast the news a few days ago that Pope
Benedict has condemned “popular culture and consumerism” during his trip
to Australia. I am not sure why this is important to report—would BBC TV
inform its viewers about the pronouncements of the “Reverend” Moon, the
current leader of the Mormon Church or, indeed, of the leaders of the 4000
plus different religions registered in the USA alone? What makes this
particular church leader so special?

I ask this as a former Roman Catholic, one who was raised in that religion
as a kid in Communist Hungary and who is fully aware of the myriads of
negative side effects this can produce for a person (namely, guilt, guilt,
and more guilt for just wanting to have a reasonably joyful life). Since
that time I have come to be very, very suspicious of the claims of Roman
Catholics and, actually, members of most other churches to having a sound
understanding of human affairs. And one area where I am especially weary
of what men like the Pope say is concerning the mundane purposes people
have, such as wishing to live prosperously, wanting to gain some pleasures
and wealth in their lives, of hoping to enjoy themselves instead of
suffering, which is what many religions teach is the noble way for us all
to live. No, that just won’t do for me and, I suspect, for increasingly
many people.

It is, by the way, one thing for Jesus to have suffered since, after all,
he was supposed to be both man and God and as such suffering couldn’t
possibly amount for him to what it does for an ordinary mortal. So
imitating Jesus in this and many other respects simply cannot be something
humanly noble—why should a mortal human being seek to suffer? There is
simply no sense in that at all.

But even apart from the wrongheaded idea that we ought to reject what
pleasures and enjoyments this world can offer us—i. e., condemn
consumerism—there is the sheer audacity of the head the Vatican City
chiding other people for their embrace of abundance and wealth. Have you
ever visited the Vatican? I have and the measure of its ostentatious and
very mundane wealth—no, opulence—is something to behold.

Indeed, the very first attraction on the way around the City is a gaudy
shop with thousands of Catholic trinkets for sale. Talk about
consumerism—few places match this blatant display of commercial savvy.
(If you don’t know the place, just think of those shops you find at art
museums, with all those reproductions of the works displayed and the books
about them for sale! And then multiply these several hundredfold.)

All of this really comes down to the great likelihood of Papal hypocrisy.
And this cannot be news to most Catholics, either, given their awareness
of the display of splendor, glitter, and pomp at high mass. I don’t know
where else we would find the likes of this other than at some of the
palaces that remain as reminders of the obscene plunder of kings and other
monarchs and the dictators such as “communist” Rumania last dictator.
Who, then, is the Pope to condemn consumerism which, by my study of
history, is a feeble attempt of ordinary human beings, ever since the
emerges of relatively free markets, to acquire, honestly, a tiny fraction
of the world’s goodies compared to what the upper classes, including
religious leaders, of the past got their hands on mostly illicitly.

Yes, just think of it: consumerism amounts mainly to folks making a try at
acquiring, fair and square, all sorts of useful and enjoyable goods and
services now available to millions of us. In the past comparable stuff
was only available to a select few and they didn’t come by it honestly but
mostly by plunder and conquest. We today go shopping, after we have
earned some coins in the market place doing work that other people freely
chose to purchase from us.

Honest trade is a central feature of consumerism and this is what the Pope
finds so abhorrent. Would he rather have us return to an era when only the
leaders of Church and assorted monarchs were in the position to obtain
such merchandise, mostly by intimidation and extortion—such as selling
forgiveness to gullible well to do folks who went along with the deal
through ignorance and fear rather than free judgment and by threatening
subjects within the realm, respectively?

Furthermore is it not curious that the Pope’s pronouncements seem to
escape the scrutiny of the chattering classes? Perhaps not, since the bulk
of them also lament it endlessly that ordinary human beings would rather
go shopping than sacrifice themselves for various more or less dubious
objectives like taking precaution with the environment (whatever that grab
bag idea really is supposed to mean). Although many of these intellectuals
are doubtful about religion, they do share with the myriad of churches a
disdain for the popular pursuit of earthly joys.

So no wonder that the Pope condemns popular culture and consumerism—they
are in competition with him in the effort to gain people’s devotion and
loyalty. Trouble is what the Pope claims to offer is something quite
elusive and mysterious, whereas what we find in the market place, at the
mall for example, has the advantage of bringing us concrete, clearly
understandable satisfaction. No wonder we are implored to feel guilt for
wanting it in our lives!

Maybe I am just harboring resentments against the Catholics for having
made my childhood and adolescence so full of misery—guilt, shame,
self-denial, self-loathing, and so forth. Probably I just wish to warn
people off of falling for the ruse I went along with for a couple of
decades of my early life.

A Chance for Freedom?

Tibor R. Machan

Lugano, Switzerland: Over the last two and a half decades or so I have
been attending conferences organized by the Business & Economics Society
International that has its home at Assumption College in New Hampshire.
This summer I believe I have attended for the fifth or sixth time, often
presenting papers and taking part in discussions about business ethics and
political economy.

When I first decided to submit a paper I was very skeptical, given how
hostile so many academics are toward a fully free market. And indeed,
aside from the organizers who seem to have a penchant for a bit of
fireworks at these events, nearly all those who encountered my defense of
free markets, private property rights, globalization, free trade
agreements, and so forth found what I was saying nearly abhorrent.
Nonetheless, given the at least nominal commitment of academics to wide
open discussions in their various disciplines, I managed to find some who
would carry on a civilized conversation about my radical capitalist,
libertarian position. But as far as sympathies for it, there was very
little of that to be found and some were pretty hostile, charging me with
the usual stuff about being an apologist for the ruling class, etc.

But because I do have a bit of a knack for presenting these ideas in a
civil tone, the organizers kept accepting my submissions and in time
invited me to give one of the keynote addresses at two or three of these
meetings. That is just what happened this year when I presented my
critique of stakeholder theory—or Corporate Social Responsibility—to a
surprisingly packed house at the conference in Lugano, Switzerland.

Although there were several people who showed their disdain, even
hostility toward the position I laid out, I have to say things were quite
different this time from what they had been back when I started to attend
these meetings. To my very pleasant surprise a great many in this year’s
audience were very receptive and even went out of their way to express
their approval of someone with my position having been provided with a
prominent spot in the proceedings. And some of these were among the ones
who showed little patience back a few years ago for anything that smacked
of support for free market capitalism.

It is, of course, very difficult to assess whether a set of arguments is
gaining favor with a proportionately growing number of people in some
field but my impression over the last few years has been that around the
globe capitalism is gaining ground, at least as a way to understand how
economies should work. Scholars from New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan,
Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and many other places who attend these
conferences appear to be looking with greater favor at privatization,
globalization, the system of private property rights and freedom of
contracts than they did just a few years ago. Indeed, it is most often
academics from America and Great Britain who voice vehement opposition,
even outright hostility, while those from newly emerging countries, ones
who are just now beginning to join the international economic and business
community as active participants, show much interest and express support.


Of course I am under no illusion that these ideas I find most sensible are
sweeping the globe, especially in academic institutions. Even this last
time several of the scholars in the audience actually booed me, not just
once but repeatedly, when I argued my case for the right of shareholders
to set the direction managers should follow instead of having public
authorities and folks like Ralph Nader call the shots. The governmental
habit is still quite pervasive! This reactionary trust in top down
organization and management of the economic affairs of countries, one so
reminiscent of mercantilism despite the self-serving term “progressive”
its cheerleaders use to call it, is very disconcerting for anyone who
wishes economic well being for people throughout the globe.

It always baffles me a bit that a great many educated folks just stick to
the faith that when government undertakes to address a problem, there will
be solutions bubbling out all over the place, as if those in government
possessed magical powers. At the same time, oddly, their distrust of
people in business persists, as if free men and women had some innate
proclivity toward mendacity the moment they entered the market place.

Still, I am again encouraged and perhaps so should be all those who hold
out for the promise of liberty. It is no utopia but beats all alternatives
hands down with what it has achieved and has the potential for achieving.

An Anti-American Paradox

Tibor R. Machan

Over the decades, ever since I got smitten by the American experiment in
community life, it has been one of my more masochistic tasks to watch out
for criticisms, denunciations, derisions, ridiculing of and expressions of
contempt for the country, mostly by erudite intellectuals. It began with
my college professors who, nearly without exception, had only disdain for
the general ideas that have been associated with America. I am talking,
of course, the ideas in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of
Rights. Scorn is what a long line of such critics—well, that may be too
flattering a term for most of them since the bulk merely looked down their
noses at the place—expressed in class after class, book after book, paper
after paper, and article after article. Even as recently as the early
2000s I ran across a bunch of books in which the purpose was clearly to
invalidate notions of liberty, justice, and rights associated with
America. Thus we have professors writing books, published by the most
prestig
ious houses, on how ownership—the right to private property so prominently
featured in the U. S. Constitution, both explicitly and implicitly—is a
myth. Or how the rights listed in the Declaration and the Constitution are
far less significant than those invited in, say, the era of the New Deal.

Ok, so there are many critics of the American political tradition at
colleges and universities, at magazines that are sold to folks who
consider themselves sophisticated way beyond the simpletons who forged the
founding documents. That would be something to be expected. Colleges and
universities demand of their faculty “original research and scholarship”
and nothing passes better for that than tomes attacking the ideas and
ideals of the Founders and their teachers, like John Locke. It is beneath
the lofty self-image of the bulk of these educated people to actually
admit that those people who founded the country had identified true
principles of community life. No, instead what they are accused of having
done is incorporated their class biases into the foundations of American
society. They were, in short, mere ideologues, pretending that their
preferences amounted to basic principles—exactly as Karl Marx and his
followers had argued about John Locke and Adam Smith. (See, for the
clearest instance, Marx’s
posthumously published book, Grundrisse.)

Yet if you dig deep enough into the mass of critical works, there is
something rather peculiar that becomes evident. Nearly all the critics
deploy standards by which to denigrate American society, which are part of
the American political tradition itself. Take slavery. It is by reference
to the principles of the Declaration of Independence that this institution
turns out to be utterly peculiar, as Lincoln understood very well. Or take
the oft heard lament that American society has been unjust toward women
and minorities. This, too, is a complaint that gains its soundness from
taking the principles in the Declaration and the Bill of Rights very
seriously. All the concerns in the criminal law about the unjust
treatment of suspects make sense in light of the conception of justice
that the founding documents embody.

Even the more alien charges, say about the lack of equal pay for equal
work or the mistreatment of illegal immigrants, can be related, perhaps a
bit awkwardly, to certain notions in the American political and legal
tradition. Yes, some of those charges are based on a far more egalitarian
political stance that is incorporate in the American viewpoint but they
resonate with many Americans because they appear to be based on that
viewpoint—“all men [i.e., human beings] are created equal” and “they are
endowed by their creator with unalienable rights.” That surely includes
both citizens and foreigners!

Even criticisms of America’s frequently ill conceived foreign and military
policies gain their strongest backing from distinctly American principles.
Of course, from the inception of the country there has been a debate
afoot about how best to interpret the founding principles, with some
favoring a strong central government—including what this may imply for
foreign affairs—some championing limited (though perhaps not necessarily
small) government and how that would influence foreign policy. But the
basic notions about individual rights, due process, free markets, and
equal justice for all found few outright enemies apart from defenders of
chattel slavery and some reactionary male chauvinists.

The point to remember here is that anti-American lambastes tended and
still tend to rest on America’s very own distinctive principles, ones that
may be present to some extent in other societies (Great Britain,
Australia, France and some other European countries come to mind).
Foreign interventionism is ill fitted for a country that tends to rest on
the idea that force may only be used in self-defense. Never mind that
this has never been that closely adhered to, mostly with the excuse that
survival required expansion or humanitarian concerns imply exporting
American ideals abroad. The point is that the operative terms of debate
in all these instances arise from the American political and legal
tradition, not from those that form the basis of the countries in Europe,
Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. When the American government and
military are charged with the inhumane treatment, even torture, of “enemy
combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, the basic premise underlying the charge is
that individuals may not be
subjected to harm unless they have been shown to deserve this. Mere
“reasons of state” do not suffice to justify such treatment and that is
very much a tenet of the individualist social philosophy with which
American is so closely associated.

So all the while the intellectuals have frowned on the allegedly
simplistic and false 18th century notions drawn from Locke & Co., they
have not hesitated making use of those very notions as they have drubbed
American left and right. Not a bad record for such an awful system, me
thinks, comparatively speaking.