Chapter 6
THE ETHICS UNDERLYING SOCIAL STRUCTURE
* Some Ethical Concepts Defined
* Philosophy Underlies Society
* Foundation of Law
* Stateolatry
* Miscellaneous Ethical Topics
* Voting
* Majority Rule - Democracy
* Assisted Suicide
* Abortion
* Ethics as Black-and-White
* Honesty vs Dishonesty
* Crime - The Criminal Mentality
* Hate Crimes
* Conspiracy
* What is a Slave?
* Profound Ethical Concerns
* Charity - Egalitarianism - Welfarism
* Coerced Compassion
* Effect of Social Complexity on Statism
* Dual Ideologies
* Hallmarks of a Conservative
* Libertarian Foreign Policy
* The Ethical Carnivore
* Voluntary vs Coercive - Trade vs Theft
* Self-Defense
* Preemptive Force
* Rules vs Principles
Thoreau might have written only yesterday about our government today.
What makes his commentary so timeless in its application is that he saw
beneath the superficial manifestations of government to its underlying
principles of operation.
What is important is to define the condition toward which the human
community should be advancing. To set the social goals toward which the men
and women of good will should strive; the general relationships that should
exist between human beings. To produce a schematic for civilized life, a set
of instructions. This is the intent of my writings on Ethics.
* Some Ethical Concepts Defined
term: genus: differentia:
ethics human behavior interpersonal
libertarianism political principle voluntary
statism political principle coercive
anarchy political structure voluntary
government political structure coercive
Ethics is the study of interpersonal human behavior. There are several
such forms of behavior: sexual, economic, and political, to name a few. In
each of these behaviors an interaction occurs between two or more people. In
sexual behavior, for example, the interaction involves erotic stimulation.
In economic behavior the interaction involves material wealth. And in
political behavior the interaction involves human liberty. In each case
there are two fundamental manners in which the interaction can transpire:
coercively or voluntarily. In sex I would define these as rape vs consensual
sex. In economics I would define them as theft vs trade. And in politics I
would define them as statism vs libertarianism.
Libertarianism is the statement of a political principle. As John Hospers
described it:
"a philosophy of personal liberty - the liberty of each person to live
according to his own choices, provided that he does not attempt to coerce
others and thus prevent them from living according to their choices.
Libertarians hold this to be an inalienable right of man; thus,
libertarianism represents a total commitment to the concept of individual
rights."
Libertarianism, as a political philosophy, is concerned with the
appropriate use of force. It asks one question: Under what conditions is the
use of force justified? And it gives one answer: only in response to the
prior use of force.
The opposite of libertarianism is statism, the principle that it is
proper for the community (or a selected subgroup thereof) to compel the
behavior of its individual members.
Anarchy is a narrower term, contained within the context of
libertarianism, and referring to the social institution by means of which
the principle of libertarianism shall be implemented.
Government is the social institution by means of which the principle of
statism is implemented. In practice throughout history, the fundamental
distinguishing characteristic of government has been that it is an
institution comprised of the strongest gang of aggressors in a particular
area at a particular time. Government is not itself a principle but is the
institutionalization of an ethical principle. The gang of bandits becomes a
government when it establishes an institution for the purpose of
implementing its principle of coercion.
Consider that when people live together in a society, that is, a group in
which interactions can take place among all the members, there must be
institutionalized a set of ethical standards of behavior designed to inhibit
actions which would result in the violation of freedom. This is the
ostensible (but NOT historical) purpose of a legal system.
A society can have either non-aggression or coercion as its standard of
behavior. In accordance with the first alternative, the social institution
(legal system) for implementing that standard of behavior will be an
anarchy. On the other hand, if coercion is the standard of behavior then a
government will be the implementing institution.
An anarchic society is not a Utopia in which the inititation of violence
is impossible. Rather, it is a society which does not institutionalize the
initiation of force and in which there are means for dealing with aggression
justly when it does occur. The absence of government does not mean the
absence of violence. It simply means the absence of an official, legal,
institutionalized tool for its imposition.
A statist society is one in which aggression is institutionalized.
* Philosophy Underlies Society
Philosophical principles are food for the mind in just the same sense
that there is food for the body. It is not necessary that you eat poison to
be sick - is suffices merely that you fail to eat the proper food. For
example, you will suffer if you fail to eat vitamin C. In just the same way,
an individual person - or a social organization - will suffer not only if it
implements wicked philosophical principles, but also if it simply fails to
implement proper philosophical principles.
In the case of an individual, that failure can occur when a person takes
actions based on his principles. To the extent that the principles do not
correspond to reality, the actions he takes will fail to achieve beneficial
values. Thus it is that a philosophical failure will have destructive
consequences in reality.
In the case of a society, the danger arises from the fact that there will
always be individuals whose personal beliefs lead them to perform actions
which violate rights. Wicked people are drawn toward the state because the
state is able to "socialize" the costs of persecution and thereby save them
the expense (or potential danger) of implementing their wickedness. Many
individuals would use their positions wickedly if they could. However, the
institutional arrangements within which people perform their tasks determine
whether or not such abuses can be carried out. If social institutions fail
to accomodate this fact, the actions of those individuals will be
detrimental to the society. Further, the deliberate institutionalization of
rights-violating behavior (e.g., government) is akin to the dietary failure
of actually eating poison. Thus it is that a philosophical failure will have
destructive consequences in social reality.
Society doesn't function because government intervenes occasionally to
resolve disputes. Rather, the vast majority of people depend on continuing
relationships wherein it's customary to keep one's word, treat others with
respect, and comply with mutually beneficial norms. These privately-
developed norms are the glue which holds society together, by and large in
spite of the interference of government.
Here are examples of two different norms, each of which produces a
completely different type of ethical behavior, depending on the acceptance
or rejection of government interference in an interpersonal relationship:
Consider a man and a woman who have lived together in a state of intimacy
for 20 years. At the end of that time, they decide that the best thing for
them to do would be to go their separate ways and each live independently of
the other. So what happens? Each hires a lawyer, goes to court, and attempts
to induce the government to use its coercive power against the other. This
sort of divorce occurs so frequently that it is considered a natural
process, always to be expected, even inevitable. But in fact there is
nothing natural, expectable, or inevitable about this arrangement. It is
simply the result of a mistaken cultural norm which is easily corrected by a
fundamental alteration in the individuals' perspective on government.
Consider a man and a woman who have lived together in a state of intimacy
for 20 years. At the end of that time, they decide that the best thing for
them to do would be to go their separate ways and each live independently of
the other. In this case, it would be unthinkable for them to go through the
above described legal process. Why unthinkable? Well, don't you see, they
are not husband and wife, but father and daughter (or mother and son).
You see, people CAN live peaceful, productive, and cooperative lives -
once they cease to regard government as an acceptable arbiter of their
interpersonal relationships. The Hutterite sect of Christianity, which has
existed for over 400 years, has never experienced an act of murder by one of
its members.
Many people consider philosophy to be very largely an affair of acquiring
and then displaying certain clever techniques of logico-linguistic
proficiency. Or they seem to want a philosophy resembling the multiplication
table or the periodic table of the elements. They want it to be such that
all philosophy is mechanistically determinate. So that whenever faced with
an alternative they can simply consult this "look-up" table and thereby be
relieved of the necessity of intellectual effort. They want an answer to
every question - even before it has been asked. Maybe what they really don't
want is the recognition of personal responsibility. They want a philosophy
that takes this burden off their shoulders. Responsibility must come from
within, as a commitment to one's own values, rather than from the outside,
as a duty to God, family, or community. Responsibility in action flows from
a sense of self-ownership - motivation by values rather than duties - and
independence of mind. The perspective of personal moral responsibility for
one's actions is being abandoned - it has nearly been culturally lost - and
the result is what you see in everyday's newspaper headlines: mayhem and
brutality.
* Foundation of Law
A natural law is a necessity imposed on an entity by the entity's nature.
It is a cause which mandates an effect: appropriate behavior. The law arises
from the interaction of the facts of the entity's nature with other facts of
reality: its environment. A natural law is practical - it must always "work"
- because it relates to things as they really are.
While it is generally recognized that man's physical and even his mental
nature are subject to the rule of natural law, it is just as generally
assumed that the area of ethics is completely outside the scope of natural
law. This assumption is held tacitly, rather than being identifed and
defended, simply because it CAN'T be rationally defended. It is quite
foolish to assert that man is a being with a specific nature and therefore
subject to the rule of principles derived from that nature in all areas
except his dealings with other men. Do men cease to have a specific nature
when they come into relationship with other men? Of course not! Natural law
does indeed apply to human relationships, and it is just as objective,
universal, and inescapable in this area as in any other. The proof of this
is that actions have consequences - in the area of human relations as surely
as in the area of human medicine. No matter how cleverly a man schemes, he
will suffer if he insists on acting in a manner which contradicts the nature
of human existence. The consequences may not be immediate, and they may not
be readily apparent, but they are inescapable.
The law of supply and demand, and all other market laws, are really
natural laws, derived from the nature and needs of man. The fact that market
laws are natural laws explains why a free market works and a controlled-
market doesn't: natural law is always practical - it always "works."
Thus man-made law must be identified rather than invented or decreed, as
is the case with government legislation. Law is necessary for the survival
and development of individual liberty, but decreed legislation is its
nemesis.
"True law is right reason, consonant with nature, diffused among all men,
constant, eternal." .... Cicero
Arbitrary legislation destroys the very certainty that we seek from
natural law: People can never be certain that the legislation in force today
will be in force tomorrow. As a result, they are prevented not only from
freely deciding how to behave but also from foreseeing the legal effects of
their daily behavior.
Legislation also often disrupts established inter-personal conventions
that have hitherto been voluntarily accepted and held to by individuals.
Even the possibility of nullifying these conventions tends to induce people
to fail to rely on any existing conventions or to keep any accepted
agreements, no matter how they may have come into existence.
Man's only duty is to respect others' rights and man's only right over
others is the enforcement of that duty.
A free society exists when people recognize, as a social, collective
rule, that individuals have the right to own property and to use their
bodies and minds as each sees fit. Their recognition of this right consists
in their accepting a duty not to interfere with these free actions of
individuals. This social rule has the enormous advantage of being the only
collective rule compatible with individual freedom and autonomy. This is the
only rational way in which society can cope with the problem posed by
nonagreement about "The Good."
Every bit of human progress has happened for a single, simple reason: the
elevation of the status of the individual. Each time civilization has
stumbled into another age that is a little better, a bit more enlightened,
than the ones before it, it's because people respected other people as
individuals. When they haven't, those have been the times of slipping
backward.
One of America's greatest shortcomings is that almost everything nowadays
is geared against the individual and in favor of the big institutions - big
corporations, big unions, big banking, big government. So not only does an
individual have trouble getting ahead and staying there, he often has
difficulty merely in surviving. And whenever bad things happen - inflation,
devaluation, depression, shortages, higher taxes, even wars - it isn't so
much the big institutions which get hurt, it's the individual, all the time.
More and more, individuals are being deprived of the power of decision,
and being allowed only the power of choice among the things government
permits. The more you depend on government, the more limited those choices
become. What must be reinstated is the opportunity for the individual to
make decisions that count. Small wonder that many people in big cities seem
so despairing: nothing in view indicates any care for what the individual
thinks or desires.
Hitler: "The individual must finally come to realize that his own ego is
of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the
position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the
nation as a whole... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will
are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an
individual."
* Stateolatry
The opposite of libertarianism is statism, the principle that it is
proper for the community (or a selected subgroup thereof) to compel the
behavior of its individual members.
The most firmly held myth in the world today is that society cannot
possibly exist without government. This myth is as decisive as belief in God
was for the people of Medieval European Society. This myth is held so firmly
and fundamentally by many people that they are entirely unaware even that
they hold it.
The stateolatrist is so devout a statist that he views government as an
object of religious worship. He regards government as being the ultimate
foundation of morality and ethics, and as an absolute prerequisite to
civilized human existence. He is unable to conceive that the time could ever
come when government will fade into an anonymity as deep as that of its
humblest subjects. He is one manifestation of what Eric Hoffer described as
a "True Believer."
A hallmark of the stateolatrist is the inability to perceive the
fundamental similarity between government viciousness and criminal
viciousness. He is not merely a patriot who loves his country, he is so
overwhelmed by his devotion that he cannot see the reality of government.
PATRIOT GAMES by Tom Clancy is a remarkable book. Not for the story
itself, but for what it shows about the mentality of the author. Never have
I seen such a blatant display of the stateolatrist syndrome. Clancy, who is
an excellent writer and storyteller, portrays with great clarity the nature
of terrorist behavior and the exactly identical nature of government
behavior, but then distinguishes between them with such a transparent film
of verbal gloss that in many places I laughed out loud with amazement.
Clancy's writing is an unparalleled example of a devout statist who is
totally self-blinded to the fundamental identicality of terrorism and
government.
In describing terrorists, one of Clancy's characters remarks:
"They don't relate to the people around them as being real people. They
see them as objects, and since they're only objects, whatever happens to
them is not important. Once I met a man who killed four people and didn't
bat an eye; but he cried like a baby when we told him his cat died. People
like that don't even understand why they get sent to prison; they really
don't understand. Those are the scary ones."
Clancy would be appalled at the idea that this same description could be
applied to the FBI and the BATF "terrorists" guilty of the Waco massacre.
For another good illustration of this syndrome see Heinlein's CITIZEN OF
THE GALAXY, pg 180. Here you can see someone to whom government is so
unquestionably pervasive that he describes human culture without reference
to it, just as you might describe society without reference to the air we
breathe.
Everyone is so immersed in the context of statism that no one really
knows the other alternative. Even though the governments of the former
Soviet Union might WANT to establish a free market, they simply do not know
what it is. Most people do not realize they could even HAVE any control over
their own economic situation. Because life is so wrapped up in bureaucracy
and law no one has any idea that government could be circumvented. So long
as people cannot perceive alternatives for comparison they will never even
become aware that they are oppressed. They will not only lack any impulse to
rebel, they will lack even the power of grasping that the world could be
other than what it is.
It is as Orwell said it would be: "You will lose the ability to think
certain ideas, and then you will be totally incapable of ever trying to act
on those ideas."
The only way out of this statist situation is for people someday to
realize that governments are NOT necessary for civilization - that in fact
governments are an impediment to civilization. When the day comes that
enough people are disillusioned with government, government will simply
cease to exist. It will go the way of Alchemy, Phrenology, the Flat Earth,
and other similar errors that were eventually discarded as being useless.
This is why I do not think anarchism to be utopian. Today it is only a
dream, a dream that will not soon come true, but if the idea is preserved it
will be used in the future.
Consider this: all government is founded upon Lies. But a lie will not
fit a fact. It will only fit another lie derived for the purpose. Therefore
the life of a lie, and of government, is simply a question of time. Nothing
but truth is immortal: 99.9 percent of all the laws ever passed by
governments have vanished from the society of mankind. But Aristotle's laws
of logic, Archimedes' laws of buoyancy, and Euclid's laws of geometry
persevere immutably.
* Miscellaneous Ethical Topics
* Voting
Here are the best arguments I could find - both for and against voting:
Thoreau (Civil Disobedience):
"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a
slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral
questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters
is not staked, I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not
vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it
to the majority. Its obligation, therefore never exceeds that of expediency.
Even voting FOR THE RIGHT is DOING nothing for it. It is only expressing to
men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the
right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of
the majority. There is but litttle virtue in the actions of masses of men."
"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the
eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have
other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his
hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it
practically his support.... Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper
merely, but your whole influence."
Voting is an indicator of personal intellectual and moral inadequacy:
anyone whose memory is strong enough to recall what was said during the last
election - and what was subsequently done by the winning candidates - will
realize full well the fraudulence and futility of electoral politics. You
advocated an undertaking you didn't fully understand. You were a participant
in an activity you failed to supervise. You did not check on the behavior of
a man whom you knew from experience to be a liar, and you permitted that man
to screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history. I'd say
you shirked your responsibility.
In America, voting is an all-or-nothing proposition: you either win or
you lose. If you can get 51% of the vote, you get 100% of the power. No
matter whether an office is filled by an 80% voter turnout or by a 15% voter
turnout, the new office holder has the full power of his office. If you are
on the losing side - the minority - you get nothing. The alternative
presented to the voter is absolutely exclusive: the selection of one TOTALLY
precludes the other.
There is a conflict in voting which is not found in the market. Market
choices conflict only in the sense that buying a given good leaves you LESS
money (not NO money) to purchase other goods. While you can buy some
pretzels and some pizza, you can't vote for some Bush and some Clinton. In a
market, the individual is never placed in the position of being a dissenting
(and powerless) minority.
Democracy is the opportunity to choose among rulers none of whom you
want, and the obligation to accept the ones you end up with.
Voting is just a method of choosing oppressors. Every time you step into
a voting booth you license a potential killer or thief. From the perspective
of either political party, there is no area of human activity that is
outside the sphere of government encroachment.
Some advocates of voting, when faced with the accusation that they are
perpetrating this evil, will counter with the assertion that your means of
control over the situation is to exercise your right to vote, and that if
you don't do so, you have no right to complain about the situation ("If you
don't vote, don't complain!" is what they say). Consider the nature of the
demand they are laying on you: your alternative is either to participate in
the wickedness (by voting) or refuse to participate and thus be condemned to
submit in silent acquiescence to being victimized by the wickedness.
In fact, only those who do NOT vote have a legitimate moral right to
complain: they are the only ones who give no sanction or support to their
persecutors.
Imagine a neighborhood in which two bullies dominate and intimidate
everyone. But they're democratic-minded bullies: they allow all (well,
almost all) the neighbors to vote every four years in an election to
determine which of the bullies will be empowered to possess a big stick and
for the next four years to rule the neighborhood, beating and robbing all
the residents. Now imagine that one poor persecuted resident complains about
being beaten and robbed, and in response is told: "Well, if you don't like
bully D then next time express your preference for bully R - but unless you
choose one of these bullies, you have no right to complain about being
beaten and robbed."
Such a demand for willing self-immolation is an act of inexcuseable
viciousness - worse even than the beating and robbing!
To commit a crime by proxy is to have someone else impose your will for
you. The most convenient and frequent manner of committing acts of harm by
proxy is to use government to commit the crimes you want done. All you have
to do is vote for whichever criminal promises to use force in the way you
wish. The very act of voting is an attempt on the part of voters to delegate
to another person a power that they could not justly possess themselves.
When you vote you participate in the selection of an officeholder. Thus
you acquire responsibility for his subsequent behavior - regardless of who
holds the office. Your participation is your concession that there should
indeed BE elected officials with the power of coercion. In voting, you give
your sanction to the institution that enables the officials to coerce. Even
though you may not approve of the particular officials who attain office,
you do approve of the enabling institution. Government is based on coercion,
but individuals should not have the authority to coerce others, and
therefore they should not put themselves in a position to delegate such
authority to third parties, which is the essence of voting.
There is plenty of mass-media crowing about the "high voter turnout"
(about 55% - that's high?), as an "affirmation of the system," and a "strong
endorsement of democracy." Nobody mentions the message of the 45%
abstention.
It is often said that refusal to vote means that one is left with no
voice at all, but that implies that having a voice in the proceedings of
government is proper and desirable.
An authoritarian activity is one which forces, directly or indirectly,
someone else to do something. But voting in itself does not do this. Only
voting for authoritarian candidates (including the lesser of evils, which is
still an evil) or for authoritarian policies is authoritarianism.
Voting AGAINST tax increases, measures to increase government controls,
and voting FOR libertarians truly committed to total liberty cannot be
authoritarian. Voting for freedom or against coercion does not delegate
power to another; just the opposite.
If someone is applying coercion against me, I'll resist by any means
available, even means provided by the coercer himself.
When you vote, you are devoting a part of your time and energy to making
a contribution to the political system. Your participation constitutes that
contribution, regardless of the intent of, or specific form of, that
participation. Like they say, it doesn't matter who you vote for, as long as
you vote.
Voting is not an expression of power, but an admission of powerlessness,
since it cannot do otherwise than reaffirm the government's supposed
legitimacy. Participation in electoral politics serves to legitimize the
entire political process and the existence of government. If people did not
vote, the democratic theory of government would lose its legitimacy and
politicians would have to justify their rule on the basis of something other
than the alleged consent of the governed. This, hopefully, would make the
true nature of the State more obvious to the governed. And such a revelation
might have the potential to motivate people to challenge or evade government
interference and coercion.
If you consider voting to be acceptable, then you must consider it
acceptable for the winning candidates to hold power in a coercive
government. The ultimate political issue is that of the Individual vs. the
State. But the voter, by virtue of his behavior, has already cast his lot
with the State.
Each candidate would use the State in a different way - but each would
use the State. Obviously, this is a game in which only the State can win. By
playing the game, you demonstrate your conviction that the game should be
played.
If voting could have kept this totalitarianism from happening, we
wouldn't have the police-state we have got, because people are forever
voting and they've certainly had enough opportunities to stop it or turn it
aside if that was possible. On the contrary, it is the process of voting
that has made it possible.
Suppose you are in airplane which gets hijacked and the hijacker says, "I
will kill you all unless you vote that you want to be set free."
Unfortunately, over 50% of the passengers are anarchists who are opposed to
voting, so they refuse to vote, and all the passengers are killed. In this
case, by refusing to vote, they indirectly contribute to the death of the
minority that would have survived if they had been the majority. Not voting
in this case is authoritarian.
Not voting constitutes an implicit declaration to the winner that "I
don't care what the outcome is." We are all living in a society hijacked by
the rulers. If we can vote for less coercion but refuse, we implicitly
endorse coercion. The fact is, when we are hijacked, as we are, or under
terrorist rule or subject to any authoritarians, we ARE involved, and a
refusal to voice a yea or nay can itself further authoritarian rule.
[This is a fundamentally collectivist argument - it assumes that the
victim is in some way responsible for the behavior of the criminal. It is
not the responsibility of the non-voters to save the voters from their own
folly.]
Back during the Vietnam era, the protestors used to say "What if they
gave a war and nobody came?" That represents only a superficial analysis of
the political system. A more fundamental analysis is represented by the
question "What if they gave an election and nobody came?" (But then,
Australia has a solution to that!)
Voting would make ME feel like a swim in the sewer. It would leave me
with a sense of moral pollution.
John Galt (Part3, Chapter8):
"It's the attempt of your betters to beat you on YOUR terms that has
allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries. Which one of us would
succeed, if I were to compete with you for control over your musclemen? ....
I'd perish and what you'd win would be what you've always won in the past: a
postponement, one more stay of execution, for another year - or month -
bought at the price of whatever hope and effort might still be squeezed out
of the best of the human remnants left around you, including me."
From Ayn Rand's notes for ATLAS SHRUGGED:
By accepting his decisions, which she knows to be wrong, then by helping
him to carry out bad ideas well, she only helps him to run the railroad
badly and thus contradicts and defeats her own purpose, which was to run it
well. She postpones the natural consequences of his bad decisions and thus
leaves him free and gives him the means to do more damage to the railroad by
more bad decisions, and worse ones. A bad thing well done is more dangerous
and disastrous than a bad thing badly done. For example: an efficient
robbery is worse for the victim than an inefficient one.
* Majority Rule - Democracy
In America, it is claimed, we have "majority rule." Just what do we have
in fact?
To find out, let us analyze a recent presidential election. I chose the
Johnson-Goldwater election of 1964 because the winner of that election
received the greatest plurality of votes of any recent (during the past
half-century) election: Johnson received 61% of the votes cast. But was this
landslide victory an expression of "majority rule"? I think not.
Certainly Johnson can be said to represent a majority of the voters - 61%
is, after all, almost two-thirds. But when you consider the total number of
eligible voters you discover that Johnson represents only 37% of them (they
didn't all choose to vote, you see). So Johnson represents only a bit over
one-third of the voting-age population of the country. That can hardly be
said to be a majority!
But even this is not a fair assessment of the situation. Johnson was,
after all, not merely president over those who chose to vote for him. And he
was not merely president over those who were qualified to vote. He was
president over EVERYBODY! And out of that "everybody" how many actually
expressed a choice to have Johnson as their president? 22%. Yeah, only about
one person in five chose Johnson.
As I said, I deliberately picked this election as an example. Any other
recent election shows even more strikingly that this so-called "majority" is
a quite small fraction of the population.
The notion of "majority rule" is hogwash!
Shortly after the 1964 election I realized that the American electoral
process contains a fundamental flaw. When you vote, the only choice you have
is to vote FOR one candidate or FOR another candidate. There is no way you
can vote AGAINST any candidate. There is no "NO" choice on the ballot, only
"YES" choices. This realization was one of the things that turned me off to
the idea of politics. You have no doubt heard (many times) of a disgruntled
voter going to the polls to choose "the lesser of two evils." I realized
that the lesser of two evils is still an evil, and to express a preference
for that evil is to don the cloak of moral culpability for his subsequent
behavior.
I observed with interest a peculiar electoral quirk during the 1976
elections. The LP, after the expenditure of an enormous amount of time,
energy and money, was able to get "None of the above" placed on the ballot
in Nevada. Thus there were three options available to the Nevada electorate
when they went into the polling booth to elect their congressman: the
Democrat, the Republican, and None of the Above. The outcome of this
election was very interesting: the Democrat received 23% of the votes, the
Republican received 29%, and NOTA received a whopping 47%. Can you guess
what happened? Very simple: the Republican went to Washington as the
congressman from Nevada. As of 1990, NOTA is still on the ballot in Nevada,
and the winner of every election is that PERSON who gains the greatest
number of votes. Votes cast for NOTA are simply wasted.
It is intrinsic to the American Constitution that there MUST be a
government. The people CANNOT choose "No Government" - that is not provided
for in the Constitution. Sure, the Declaration of Independence observes the
right of the people to "alter or abolish" their government, but the
Declaration of Independence is not a legal document.
I found it fascinating to watch the first post-Soviet general elections
in Russia. They had an explicit choice on their ballots: Yes or No for any
(and all) particular candidates. Such a large number of the Communist
candidates (who ran unopposed) received a preponderance of "No" votes that
run-off elections were held a couple weeks later. Those "No" votes were
indeed counted - unlike the NOTA votes in Nevada.
I found it fascinating also to watch the subsequent Hungarian elections,
which were held with the stipulation that unless at least 51% of the voting
population did participate, the elections would be invalid. The Hungarian
government has at least a more acute sense of "majority" than does the
American government. In a recent election for the Fremont County, Wyoming
government, only 13% of the population voted, and yet the government
selected by a portion of that tiny percentage does indeed rule Fremont
County. Some "majority rule" that is!!
American voter turnout as percent of voting age population, during
national off-year elections:
1966 47.9
1970 47.9
1974 38.9
1978 45.9
1982 48.5
1986 46.0
1990 45.0
Since 1972, when 18-year-olds first went to the polls, their election
participation has steadily declined. In 1990 less than 19% of the 18 to 20
age group voted.
The majority is invariably wrong. Consider the fact that every major
breakthrough in man's understanding of the world has always been greeted
with indifference or opposition by the majority. When private individuals in
18th century England introduced the "barbaric" practice of innoculating
against smallpox, the majority, including virtually the entire medical
profession, was appalled. Advances are made by individuals or by small
groups of cooperating people who OVERCOME majority opinion or indifference.
The fact that the majority is invariably wrong has interesting implications
for the concept of democracy - a system which means, in fact, State control
of the individual and his property in accordance with the supposed wishes of
the majority. In a word, where majority rules, progress stops. The goal of
free men should not be majority rule at all but self-rule, a society in
which not political action but individual action prevails.
Political freedom for the individual has become a charming legend from
the early years of the Republic when individual liberty - rather than the
will of the majority - was actually considered the core of democracy.
Nowadays, acceptance of the legitimacy of individual autonomy is a
contradiction wholly intolerable to the democratic ideology. Under a
democracy, when a man looks into a mirror he sees one ten-millionth of a
tyrant, and one whole slave.
Some of the devastating consequences of the Ambiguous Collective fallacy
can be observed in the phrase "we are the government," where the useful
collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over
the naked exploitative reality of political life. The government does not in
any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people. But even if it
did, crime is still crime, no matter how many citizens agree to the
aggression. There is nothing sacrosanct about the majority; the lynch mob,
too, is the majority in its own domain.
A black African guerilla, commenting on democracy:
"Vote, what is a vote? I don't have a vote in Mozambique. They don't have
the vote in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Angola or Tanzania. Nobody has the vote in
Africa, except perhaps once in a man's life to elect a president-for-life
and a one-party government. Vote? You can't eat a vote. You can't dress in a
vote, or ride to work on it. For two thousand rand a month and a full belly
you can have my vote."
* Assisted Suicide
Is it right to help someone to destroy himself?
Yes. He has a right to live his life - or end it - according to HIS
choices, nobody else's.
But how about selling him cigarettes, or booze, or other destructive
drugs?
The moral duty of a human being is to choose to live according to his
nature. The best such choices are those that enhance his nature - not those
that degrade his nature. It would not be ethically improper to sell him
drugs, but it would not be the decent thing to do. By "decent" vs "indecent"
I mean actions that contribute to another person's choices to enhance vs
debilitate his nature as a human being. Death is a normal, natural
phenomenon. Under the appropriate conditions it is proper to end a life. It
is not proper to contribute to its degeneracy.
He is responsible for how he uses the stuff he buys. You acquire ethical
culpability only if you know he is going to use the stuff to injure other
people.
* Abortion
One of the major issues of the day is the argument about Abortion. By and
large, the discussion is merely a diatribe of emotional invective,
containing very little in the way of factual analysis (see the remarks
below, by George Bush).
I will make not a moral or ethical evaluation but merely a factual
presentation upon which can be based whatever evaluation you choose to draw
from your own set of moral principles. (Personally, I am opposed to
abortion, but I am even MORE opposed to laws which forbid abortions.)
Many arguments are based on the contention that a fetus is a human being,
and is therefore possessed of the right to life. This is the "Human Rights"
argument.
There are six points of development at which a fetus can be claimed to
acquire the status of "human being." Any argument from this premise must
choose and justify one of these points:
1. Fertilization
2. Implantation in the uterine wall
3. Brain-wave activity
4. Quickening (when the woman becomes aware of the fetus' movement)
5. Viability (when the fetus can be withdrawn and survive)
6. Birth
Related to this is the "potentiality" argument:
Let us not confuse a potentiality with an actuality. The most you can say
about a fetus is that it is a potential human being. What you have at the
moment of conception, and for some time thereafter, is not a human being,
and so destroying it is not murder. If we forbid a woman who desires it the
right to have an abortion, we are sacrificing the actual--the adult woman--
for the sake of the potential--the fetus.
Some argue that whether or not the fetus is a human being, it is not a
"person" i.e., is not possessed of the complex of psychological
characteristics that distinguishes any one human being from all others - in
short, that the fetus, although a human being, does not yet have a soul.
Aquinas, rejecting the notion of a "fertilized-egg = person" equivalence
observed that "the body alone is begotten by sexual procreation, and that
after the formation of the body the soul is created and infused."
Others argue that even if the fetus is a human being, it is a parasite
and therefore does not possess human rights. This is the "Parasite"
argument:
What human has the right to remain, unbidden, as an unwanted parasite
within some other human being's body? The fetus does not have any right to
be fed and nourished, because such a right would make the woman its slave.
The only means of refusal is to expel the fetus. What the woman is doing in
an abortion is causing an unwanted parasite within her body to be ejected
from it. (This can be extended to include euthanasia for seriously ill
adults and dependent elderly people, as well as all those whose continued
existence requires material support provided by other people.)
This argument is countered with the assertion that parasitism is a
perfectly natural phenomenon (Mankind is itself a parasite upon the earth)
and therefore parasites do indeed have rights - the fetus has as much right
inside its mother as does man on mother earth. Both are in their natural
habitat.
And there is the "Infanticide" argument - the contention that a live,
born child cannot in principle be distinguished from a viable late-term
fetus: they both have an unconditional need for material support. Therefore,
if abortion is acceptable, so also must be infanticide.
There is also the "Supersession" argument - that the rights of the woman
supersede any rights possessed by the fetus:
Does not a woman have a primary right to her own life? The right to
determine the circumstances of her own body?
The "Contractual Obligation" argument:
Conception and pregnancy are foreseeable consequences of even careful
sex. By willfully causing a fetus to exist, parents implicitly recognize its
need for support; it's a package deal. When parents mutually enable their
sperm and ova to join, the parents are not enslaved - they have volunteered.
And its rebuff, the "Choiceless" argument:
How is it that the fetus, which is an entity incapable of making choices,
can be said to be a participant in that - or any - contract?
When couples who both carry the mutation for Tay-Sachs disease decide to
have children, they typically elect to have prenatal testing. If a fetus has
the disease, they usually abort it rather than give birth to a child who
would succumb within five years to a slow and horribly painful death.
Because it is always so uniformly hideous in its progression, extremely few
people believe a child afflicted with Tay-Sachs should be brought into the
world.
Scientific American, April 1996, contains an essay on frozen embryos.
"Test-tube" embryos, in the two- to eight-cell stage of development, are
placed in liquid nitrogen and kept in suspended animation until needed by
couples for subsequent attempts at in vitro fertilization. As the number of
frozen embryos grows (there are about a million worldwide) it has become
obvious that a sizable number of them will never be required. The essay
makes three references to cryopreservation being "fraught with ethical and
philosophical complications" but makes no specific mention of just what
these complications might be. (See this chapter's section on * Profound
Ethical Concerns)
See reference
The view of the Religious Right, as expressed by George Bush (LA TIMES,
12/12/88): "Well, it (may) appear to be a double standard to some, but I,
that's my position, and it's, we don't have the time to philosophically
discuss it here, but... we're going to opt on the side of life, and that is,
that is the, that really is the underlying part of this for me. You know, I
mentioned, and with, really from the heart, this concept of going across the
river to this little church and watching one of our children, adopted kid,
be baptized. And that made for me, and it was very emotional for me. It
helped me in reaching a very personal view of this question. And I don't
know."
Also to be considered are the inevitable practical results of anti-
abortion laws, since in the legal context created by such laws many
abortionists are dangerous and disreputable practitioners resorted to by
desperate people.
As many as 60 million abortions are performed annually, at least 50% of
them clandestinely in the 100 or so countries where the procedure is
illegal.
Unsafe abortions account for between 105 and 168 maternal deaths for
every 100K births in the Thirld World countries. This constitutes between
25% and 40% of all maternal mortality.
Every year, in six of the Latin American countries where the practice is
illegal, about 2.8 million women have abortions and half a million are
hospitalized for related complications.
In the USA, the abortion rate for Catholic women is 29% higher than that
of Protestant women. A study in Boston and Long Island showed that 66% of
women having their first abortions are young, single Catholics opting for
abortions rather than sinning repeatedly by using birth control. 70% of
those who have a second abortion are Catholic.
Each year in the USA, out of a total of approximately 6.4 million
pregnant women, 1.6 million choose to have an abortion. About half of all
women in the USA will choose to have an abortion at some time in their life.
* Ethics as Black-and-White
Moral principles are requirements of man's survival proved by reference
to the most fundamental aspects of his existence and to the deepest premises
of philosophy. They are life-or-death absolutes. But while the standard and
the principles of ethics (and morality) are black-and-white - as black-and-
white as are the laws of nature - the personal judgments, choices and
actions through which an individual realizes those abstract principles are
matters of degree.
* Honesty vs Dishonesty
There are times when a lie is not only ethically justifiable but is
actually morally obligatory. "What?! What?!" I hear you croak. "Is this guy
out of his mind?" Well, let me explain. Imagine that you set out to go
downtown having in your left pocket $10 and in your right pocket $100. As
you are trudging along the street a hoodlum snatches you into an alley,
claps his revolver (a Quickfire Arms Corp. Saturday Night Special) up gainst
the side of your pretty little head and wheezes softly into your ear:
"Allright, Cutie, your money or your life!" So you, trembling in fear and
terror, reach into the left pocket and produce the ten-spot. "Arrgh!! He
gasps, wafting into your nostril the stench of cheap Sicilian wine, "Izzis
alla dough ya got, kid?" I maintain that at this point your answer not only
COULD morally be "yes," but that it actually SHOULD be "yes" and that if you
answer "no" you are behaving in an immoral, self-destructive fashion.
Under ordinary circumstances a lie is an attempt to coerce someone - that
is, an attempt to separate him (without his consent) from some rightfully
achieved value. In the context of my little story, the lie is not a
coercion. Your money is not the hoodlum's rightfully achieved value, and you
have NO ethical obligation toward him. Your only moral obligation is to
extricate yourself from the situation in the least self-destructive manner
possible. Thus we see that a lie can be a perfectly proper act to protect a
value against an injustice; not a desire to gain a value by faking reality,
but a fully contextual recognition of the relevant facts of reality.
* Crime - The Criminal Mentality
Richard Adams, in his book WATERSHIP DOWN, made a profoundly important
identification of a connection between the individual and the group - the
connection that explains why people will do things when in a group context
that they would never do when acting as individuals:
"The current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves
primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as
individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without
conscious thought or will."
This is the psychological phenomenon that accounts for the clearly
distinct difference between the behavior of "individual man" and that of
"group man." How a man will behave in a social context depends very much on
his self-image.
An animal is an animal by nature. It has no choice in the matter. But a
human being must, by nature, CHOOSE to be a human. The necessity of choice
arises from the structure of his cognitive apparatus. A part of this choice
is, as an individual, to choose to think - and, as a member of a society, to
choose to live by the non-aggression principle. One can not claim to be
fully human unless one acts from the base of non-coercion.
The Objectivist stand is quite clear:
"The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may
INITIATE the use of physical force against others. No man - or group or
society or government - has the right to assume the role of a criminal and
initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man." (From "The
Objectivist Ethics," in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS.)
There are really only two kinds of people in the world: those who bother
other people without provocation and those who don't.
It is the initiation of force that distinguishes criminal from non-
criminal behavior, and it is the acceptance or rejection of the non-
aggression principle that distinguishes a civilized human being from a
savage; a libertarian from a statist. This helps to explain why the State
cannot respect - it can only fear. Animals do not have the attribute of
respect.
The Hindu religion approaches this distinction in its famous "beetle
test": as you are walking along the road, will you break stride to avoid
stepping on a beetle, or will you merely crush it and walk on?
Branden maintains that the fundamental moral "sin" is the failure to
choose to think (see THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-ESTEEM, chapter 4). I would draw
a parallel to this contention in the field of ethics and maintain that the
fundamental ethical "sin" is the failure to choose to judge. I mean
specifically failing to make judgments about the ethical propriety of your
own behavior, and instead allowing yourself to become merely an instrument
of someone else's will. Rand observed that the most contemptible man is the
man without a purpose. I believe the most evil man is the man who allows his
purpose to be determined by others. He makes no ethical judgments about his
behavior, but falls into the default of having his ethos determined by
someone else. This is the man who implements in practice the ideas proposed
by men who would otherwise be impotent. Without this man, Hitler would have
been nothing more than a house painter.
The most widespread excuse for this failure is the claim that "I was only
doing my job." I call this the "Nuremberg Defense" as it was the most common
defense offered by the Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials.
Whenever you hear this claim, what you are hearing is an attempt to justify
ethical viciousness on the grounds that the perpetrator has abandoned his
own judgment and accepted the propriety of acting according to the judgment
of someone else.
The Nuremberg Defense tries to divorce choice from action and thus avoid
the assignment of guilt. The man who makes the choice tries to absolve
himself from guilt by claiming "but I didn't DO anything," and the man who
performs the action tries to absolve himself from guilt by claiming "but I
didn't make any choice." When each has thus eliminated guilt from his
considerations, both together are capable of a completely unlimited scope of
wickedness. This "default of judgment" phenomenon lies at the base of all
government police agencies and all military organizations. Without this
default, the Hitlers of the world would each have to do his own murders
personally, and would not be able to act through a social institution
comprised of people trained to accept any judgment - any choice - governing
their behavior. Any judgment, that is, except their own.
The vast majority of the human race are secretly kind-hearted and shrink
from infliciting pain, but in a society where viciousness is
institutionalized they don't dare to assert themselves. One kind-hearted
creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally participates in
iniquities which revolt both of them. "In fear of what others might report
about you, you stoned the woman although your heart revolted at the act."
Hitler: "I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement
exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is neither morally nor
mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable
barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most
dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down. This is a
tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result
will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty."
But this process works only with "group man." It does not work at all
with the individualist. The individualist is the person who has a higher
allegiance to his own conscience than to the rules others set down for him.
The individualist thinks and judges independently, valuing nothing higher
than the sovereignty of his own intellect. He does not allow others to
determine his ethos. He is not the sort of chaff that makes good fodder for
a tyranny.
Those who believe that might is right must always perceive themselves as
mighty.
The Criminal Mentality:
If two men had walked down Fifth Avenue in March 1933, and one of them
had a pint of whiskey in his pocket and the other had a hundred dollars in
gold coins, the one with the whiskey would have been considered a criminal
and the one with the gold an honest citizen. If these two men, like Rip van
Winkle, slept for a year and then walked back up Fifth Avenue, the man with
the whiskey would have been considered an honest citizen and the one with
the gold coins a criminal.
I call this the Rip van Winkle phenomenon. It is useful in understanding
"psychological" analyses of crime. Any definition of "crime" that is founded
on government edict cannot ascribe a psychological basis for crime, because
nothing about the psychology of either of the two men changed during the
course of their nap. If, however, the definition is based on a fundamental
principle, then it will have to recognize the criminal nature of much of
government behavior: tax collectors as thieves - business licenses as
extortion.
If the definition of crime includes victimless activities, then the
analysis must account for the Rip van Winkle phenomenon. If the definition
does NOT include victimless activities, then the analysis must consider as
criminals those people who enforce victimless crime laws.
Either the distinction between crime and non-crime is one of arbitrary
edict, in which case it does not exist in principle, or analysts are looking
at the wrong people because they do not examine the government's acts of
coercion and ignore the fact that half the prison population are merely
lawbreakers, not criminals.
* Hate Crimes
A function of a criminal justice system should be to protect potential
victims by incarcerating the convicted criminal as long as he is likely to
repeat his crime. Here group hate is relevant. Someone who hates and kills a
cheating lover or an abusive boss does not necessarily have a motive for
killing anyone else. In many cases such a person can be safely released once
the requirements of punishment and deterrence have been satisfied. In
contrast, someone who kills because he hates all homosexuals has a proven
motive to kill and kill again. Releasing him puts innocent people in danger
of their lives. The proper function of "hate laws' is to guide the courts
and parole boards in reconciling justice for the criminal with safety for
potential victims.
* Conspiracy
I regard all conspiracy theories with a great deal of skepticism. Keep in
mind that the president of the USA (Richard Nixon), with all the power
available to him, could not cover up a simple second-story burglary. Is it
really likely that any of the so-called "conspirators" are intelligent
enough and/or competent enough to perpetuate the globe-girdling conspiracies
and cover-ups that are attributed to them? I think not.
If a field of study is dominated by the premise of collectivism - the
premise that the group (rather than the individual) is the basic unit of
analysis - then investigators in that field will tend to perceive conspiracy
where in fact there exist only individuals behaving in similar manners.
There is no conspiracy - it is merely the case that the fundamental beliefs
of the people involved are similar, therefore their attitudes and behavior
are similar. (Thus you won't find a priest in an abortion clinic, or an
atheist in a convent.)
The fact that many individuals with similar interests tend to advocate
roughly the same solutions to the same problems should be neither surprising
nor puzzling. Each is merely advocating what he sees to be obvious remedies
to the problems he perceives. There is no deliberate conspiracy involved in
this behavior. It seems like a conspiracy simply because many people acting
in accord with the same principle will all behave in a similar manner. But
it is a mistake to assume from this similarity of behavior that there exists
a collusion. Their cooperation results not from a conspiracy of men, but
from a similarity of basic premises - and the power directing it is logic:
if, when faced with a practical problem, some men point to a course of
action logically necessitated by certain basic premises, those who share the
premises will rush to follow that course of action.
But practical problems merely confront man with the need for action; they
do not determine what the action will be. It is the predominant philosophy
(of a man or of a country) that determines the action. For example: Hunger
will impel a man to take some kind of action - but it will not dictate
precisely what that action should be. The man's knowledge and ideas will be
the governing factors in what he chooses to eat. Another example: Loneliness
doesn't tell you who you need, only that someone is missing. It is up to you
to define the emptiness of your soul, and make an appropriate choice of
companions.
America in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was confronted with
the need for social change. The most influential set of ideas in the minds
of the men who implemented change was the philosophy of John Locke. America
was ideologically ripe for Jefferson. The intellectual groundwork had been
prepared by half a century of education in Lockean philosophy.
On the other hand, although the post-WorldWar1 situation in Germany
necessitated some kind of major changes in the country's institutions, it
was the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that governed the type of changes.
Germany was ideologically ripe for Hitler. The intellectual groundwork had
been prepared by a century of education in Kantian philosophy.
If one knows the principles behind a given phenomenon, one can predict
the direction it will take and its ultimate results. If you know a man's
convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant
philosophy of a society, you can predict its course.
For the great majority of men the influence of philosophy is indirect and
unrecognized. But that influence is real.
It is important to remember that social institutions do not have goals.
Only individual human beings have goals; political and cultural institutions
merely provide a framework enabling the participating individuals to pursue
their commonly-held goals. Institutions provide the incentives,
opportunities and constraints that structure the behavior of goal-seeking
individuals, but the institutions do not possess goals of their own.
* What is a Slave?
I see two fundamental distinguishing characteristics of a slave:
1. He is compelled to do whatever his master commands him to do.
2. He is forbidden to do anything without having permission, explicit or
implicit, from his master.
I will leave it as an exercise for you to determine to what extent these
two characteristics describe your own situation. Keep this in mind: Just as
the truly damned are those who are happy in hell, so the truly enslaved are
those who believe their enslavement is freedom.
* Profound Ethical Concerns
(See SIMPLISTIC-COMPLEXITY in the FALLACYS file)
See reference
You will frequently hear people claim that certain issues are fraught
with "profound ethical concerns." Issues such as research using fetal
tissue, DNA manipulation, organ transplants, etc. Watch carefully and you
will see that either they don't specify those concerns, or the concerns they
do name are simply irrelevant.
Here is an example of a rare instance wherein a proponent of such
"profound ethical concerns" actually makes a sensible statement of the
concerns he imagines:
Gene therapy raises profound ethical concerns. For instance:
1. Should therapy be applied simply to improve one's offspring, not only
to prevent an inherited disease?
[He implies that the elimination of an evil, "an inherited disease," is
perhaps acceptable, but the implementation of a positive good, "to improve
one's offspring," is of questionable propriety. Why does he object to a
good?]
2. Who would be empowered to decide?
[Here he clearly implies that someone is to have the authority ensuing
from "empowerment." Why must such an authority exist? Who, after all, is
"empowered" to decide which people shall be permitted to wear shoes?]
3. Is society willing to risk introducing changes into the gene pool that
may ultimately prove detrimental to the species?
[In fact, Yes. Not only does the willingness exist, but the perpetuation
of such detrimental genes is actually legally compelled by implementation of
medical techniques that preserve the existence of severely retarded people.]
4. Do we have the right to tamper with human evolution?
[Everyone who ever selects his/her spouse on the basis of "He would make
a good father" or "She would make a good mother" is "tampering" with human
evolution. Why does he object to this selectivity?]
Here is another good example:
As artificial livers emerge into common medical use, they raise difficult
ethical issues.
1. Is it ethical to deny a liver to someone who has cirrhosis in order to
transplant it into a hepatitis victim who would have died but for an
artificial liver device? After all, the hepatitis victim may recover
spontaneously, whereas the cirrhotic patient almost certainly will not.
2. Is it ethical to refuse to put a dying patient on an artificial liver
when there is a good chance that she will revive only enough to require a
new liver?
[What this ethicist ignores is the fact that the artificial liver is a
piece of property and the resolution of these "difficult ethical issues" can
be accomplished by the simple application of property rights.]
These are by far the most comprehensive assertions of the "profound
ethical concerns" syndrome I have ever seen. Usually no precise ethical
applications are specified at all. I can conclude only that the people who
make this assertion have a strongly-felt objection to the action under
consideration, but they have no rational arguments to support their
feelings, so the only attack they can make is an unsubstantiated one.
Perhaps their hand-wringing over such matters as genetic engineering and
other new technologies is often the result of ignorance about the basic
scientific principles underlying the new techniques. The problem seems to be
that, while plastic surgery and education are understood by the ethicists,
the basic facts of the science that makes genetic engineering a possibility
are not. Thus, in typical fear of the unknown, a hue and cry against the new
technology is raised.
* Charity - Egalitarianism - Welfarism
"Millions are given each year to charities which help crippled children,
old people, blind people and all kinds of disabled unfortunates; which is a
perfectly worthy cause. But, on the other hand, has anyone given much
thought to the crying, desperate need of helping the exact opposite type of
human beings - the able, the fit, the talented and unusual ones crushed by
purely material circumstances? That idea of hardships being good for
character and of a talent always being able to break through is an old
fallacy. A talented person has to eat as much as a misfit. A talented person
needs sympathy, understanding and intelligent guidance MORE than a misfit.
And the question arises: who is more worthy of help - the subnormal or the
above-normal? Who is more valuable to humanity? Which of the two types is
more valuable to himself? Which of the two suffers more acutely: the misfit,
who doesn't know what he is missing, or the talented one who knows it only
too well? I have no quarrel with those who help the disabled. But if only
one tenth of the money given to help them were given to help potential
talent - much greater things would be accomplished in the spirit of a much
higher type of charity. Talent DOES NOT survive all obstacles. In fact, in
the face of hardships, talent is the first one to perish; the rarest plants
are usually the most fragile. Are talented people born with tough skins?
Hardly. In fact, the more talent one possesses the more sensitive one is, as
a rule. And if there is a more tragic figure than a sensitive, worthwhile
person facing life without money - I don't know where it can be found." ....
Ayn Rand
Here is an appropriate response to a plea for charity:
Tax bills continue to take more of my time, hard work and earnings each
year. Because of this, I have less to contribute to the cause of charity. In
light of this increasing burden of taxation, I have decided to make
contributions only to those organizations which do not receive any funds
from government agencies. Since organizations which do receive such funding
already benefit from my involuntary contributions, I believe that I have
provided sufficient support to them. If your organization is one which I
identify as being free of tax dollar dependency, you can look forward to a
contribution from me in the near future. Otherwise, good wishes and enjoy my
tax money.
In considering which organizations to support, it would be a good idea if
you contribute not on the basis of NEED, but on the basis of PROMISE. Ask
which organizations have the greatest potential for achieving goals that you
deem to be of value.
In the case of an individual, "If you choose to help a man who suffers,
do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, or of the
fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is a trade, and his virtue
is the payment for your help."... Ayn Rand
When Menon, a Hindu, arrived in Delhi in 1947, he discovered that every
rupee he owned had been stolen. He approached an elderly, distinguished
Sikh, explained his plight and asked for a loan of 15 rupees to cover his
train fare. The Sikh gave him the money. When Menon asked for his address so
that he could pay it back, the Sikh said, "No. Until the day you die, you
will always give that sum to any honest man who asks your help." Almost 30
years later, just six weeks before his death, a beggar came to the Menon
family home in Bangalore. Menon sent his daughter for his wallet, took out
fifteen rupees, and gave it to the man. He was still repaying his debt.
Demands for "social justice" take two different forms, which can be
called egalitarianism and welfarism. The difference in these two conceptions
of social justice is the difference between relative and absolute levels of
well-being.
Egalitarians are concerned with RELATIVE well-being. According to
egalitarianism, the wealth produced by a society must be distributed fairly
- it is unjust for some people to earn fifteen, or fifty, or a hundred times
as much income as others, and since laissez-faire permits and encourages
these disparities in income and wealth, it is therefore unjust. The hallmark
of egalitarians is the way they use statistics to describe the distribution
of income. In 1989, for example, the top 20 percent of U.S. households on
the income scale earned 45 percent of total income, whereas the bottom 20
percent earned only 4 percent of total income. The goal of egalitarianism is
to reduce this disparity; greater equality is always regarded as a gain in
social justice. Egalitarians have often said that of two societies they
prefer the one in which wealth is more evenly distributed, even if that
society's overall standard of living is lower, Thus egalitarians tend to
favor government measures, such as progressive taxation, which aim to
redistribute wealth across the entire income scale, not merely at the
bottom. They also tend to support the nationalization of goods such as
education and medicine, taking them off the market entirely and making them
available to everyone more or less equally.
The welfarist, on the other hand, has a much more absolutist view of
social justice. He demands that people have access to a certain absolute
minimum standard of living. As long as this floor or "safety net" exists, it
does not matter to the welfarist how much wealth anyone else has, or how
great the disparities are between rich and poor. Welfarists are primarily
interested in programs that benefit people who are below a certain level of
poverty, or who are sick, out of work, or deprived in some other way.
To the welfarist, rights are conceived as rights to possess and enjoy
certain goods, regardless of one's actions; they are rights to have the
goods provided by others if one cannot provide them oneself. Accordingly,
welfare rights impose positive obligations on other people. If I have a
right to food, someone has an obligation to grow it. If I cannot pay for it,
someone has an obligation to buy it for me... etc. From an ethical
standpoint, the essence of welfarism is the premise that the need of one
individual is a claim on other individuals. The claim is an unchosen
obligation arising from the mere fact of his need. The ethics of welfarism
does not assert an absolute right to pursue the satisfaction of human needs.
The "right" asserted is, rather, a conditional one: those who DO succeed in
creating wealth may do so only on condition that others are allowed to share
that wealth. The goal is not so much to benefit the needy as to bind the
able. The implicit assumption is that a creative person's ability and
initiative are social assets, which may be exercised only on condition that
they are aimed at the service of others.
The egalitarian arrives at the same principle as the welfarist, but by a
different logical route. The ethical framework of the egalitarian is defined
by reference to justice rather than rights - by the idea that people are to
be treated differently only if they differ in some MORALLY (not
economically) relevant way. The most common position is a presumption in
favor of equal outcomes, and that any departure from equality must be
justified by its benefits to other people (as opposed to its benefits to the
individual who created the departure). But we can see that this is the same
principle that lies at the basis of welfare rights: the principle that the
productive individual may enjoy the fruits of his efforts only on condition
that those efforts benefit other people as well.
Both of these social schemes rest on the premise that individual ability
is a social asset - that the individual must regard himself as a means to
the ends of others. And here we come to the crux of the matter. In
respecting the rights of other people, I recognize that they are "ends in
themselves," and that I may not treat them merely as means to my own
satisfaction, in the way that I treat inanimate objects. Why then is it not
equally moral for me to regard myself as an "end in myself"? Why should I
not refuse, out of respect for my own dignity as a moral being, to regard
myself as a means to the ends of others? An honorable person does not offer
his needs as a claim on others; he offers an exchange of value as the basis
of any relationship. Nor does he accept an unchosen obligation to serve the
needs of others. No one who values his own life can accept an unchosen,
open-ended responsibility to be his brother's keeper. The principle of trade
is the only basis on which humans can deal with each other as independent
equals rather than as objects of property.
The only social constraint laissez-faire imposes is the requirement that
those who wish the services of others must offer value in return; that no
one may use the State to forcibly expropriate what others have produced, nor
claim a right to compel others to serve him involuntarily.
"What about someone who is poor, disabled, or otherwise unable to support
himself?" This is a valid question to ask, as long as it is not the PRIMARY
question asked about a social system. There is no ground in a rational
ethics for considering the poor and the sick to be the foundation of
society, or for regarding their needs as primary. It is in fact self-
defeating to think that the primary goal of a society should be the
treatment it gives its least productive members. We must remember that the
needs of the poor and the sick CANNOT be met unless someone chooses to
produce the means of meeting those needs. Thus the social prerequisites of
creativity and productivity MUST be accomodated FIRST if charity is to exist
at all.
* Coerced Compassion
Consider the vast majority of those who turn to police power to remedy
distress. Every one of them will say they act purely because of their
concern, their compassion, for those on the lower rung of life's ladder. Can
they not trust their own compassion to express itself? Apparently not, for
it seems, when they turn to government, they are insisting that they must be
forced to do that which they claim they already want to do. An absurdity!
People who want to control other people's lives never want to pay for the
privilege. What they usually expect is to be paid for the "service" they
impose upon their victims. What they never recognize is that the individuals
who are forced by government regulation to act against their own interests
are the very "public" which is supposed to benefit from the government
controls.
In any case, if you are going to do good for someone, it really should be
THEIR idea of good, not yours. In all cases, it should be the other person
who initiates the interaction - by asserting THEIR perception of their own
good.
Why was it necessary to have laws to FORCE racists to practice racism?
After all, the employers, landowners, businessmen, etc., were overwhelmingly
from the dominant group and were free to segregate and discriminate on their
own. The answer is that the voluntary structure of economic incentives works
against this behavior. As long as producers and consumers are free to act
spontaneously in the context of a free market, there are economic costs for
discriminating against minorities. There are likewise economic rewards for
avoiding discriminatory practices.
* Effect of Social Complexity on Statism
One reason socialism must always fail is that any society large enough to
be economically and technologically civilized is too large and complex to be
contained within the minds of any subgroup. The competence of government
began to decline precipitously after the First World War as society's
technological complexity began to increase exponentially. It will be the
final irony of the statist system that, once headless after a catastrophic
collapse, it will be unable to save itself. The centralized control of all
aspects of the country will prevent people from asking the questions that
must be answered before any organized recovery can begin.
* Dual Ideologies
The claim that countries which call themselves capitalist are guilty of
misdescription reflects the fact that politicians use dual ideologies -
those that actually guide their actions and those that are used as
instruments of deception in waging social conflict. The theory of a
political system is almost always its surface ideology, and it may be a
deeply, if not necessarily intentionally, deceptive facade.
People almost automatically assume that the goal of a political system is
to advance the welfare of at least a majority of the population. But this is
because some such goal is almost universally propounded in surface
ideologies, and, being credulous, they allow themselves to be taken in by
the surface ideology and never perceive the real motives that actually guide
the behavior of the state.
Much of the government's "crime-prevention" behavior can be explained by
the idea that the State has forbidden to the individual the practice of
wrongdoing, not because it desires to abolish wrongdoing, but because the
State desires to monopolize it.
* Hallmarks of a Conservative
The hallmark of a conservative is the phrase "too much." If you press him
until you can get him to identify the core of his social philosophy, you
will find that it is founded on a statement containing some variation of the
phrase "too much." He is not fundamentally opposed to slavery, just what he
perceives to be "too much" slavery. He is not fundamentally opposed to
government interference in private lives, just "an excessive amount" of
interference. He is not fundamentally opposed to tyranny, just a level of
tyranny that is "far beyond" what he judges acceptable. I call this the "too
much" syndrome, or the "uncalibrated quantification" fallacy.
An excellent example is the following quote from FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton
and Rose Friedman (page 61):
"Some restrictions on our freedom are necessary to avoid other, still
worse, restrictions. However, we have gone far beyond that point."
But consider that the distinction between an acceptable level of
restriction and an unacceptable level is an arbitrary one, because such a
distinction is based on a mere variation in quantity rather than a
difference in quality. The "point" the Friedmans refer to is an undefinable
position. To such people there is no wall between freedom and tyranny, just
a fuzzy line in their imagination. Such a mind-set inevitably leads to the
acceptance of tyranny, because to the man who holds it, first one thing
doesn't seem too wrong, then another thing doesn't seem too wrong. And
eventually nothing doesn't seem wrong. He has nowhere to draw a line.
Ben Franklin wrote in 1766 that "if Parliament has the right to take from
us one penny in the pound, where is the line drawn that bounds that right,
and what shall hinder their calling whenever they please for the other 19
shillings and eleven pence?"
The very best way to distinguish between a conservative and a libertarian
is to observe the presence or absence of the uncalibrated quantification
fallacy in his ideas. The libertarian is opposed to ALL tyranny, not just
"too much" tyranny. The conservative thinks he can make some compromise
between freedom and tyranny, but his belief that there is a happy middle
somewhere in between is wrong. That is not how compromise works. (See
Chapter 3)
See reference
A second characteristic by which a conservative can be recognized is his
reliance on religion. Almost all conservatives have religious belief as a
major foundation stone of all aspects of their philosophy. A noticeable
exception are the Randites, who are both conservative and atheist. But they
are atheists who have a god named Government.
A third characteristic by which a conservative can be recognized is that
politically, he is an "anti-". If you ask him what his political philosophy
is, he will usually reply that he is an anti-communist. This is what makes
conservatives attractive to philosophically superficial libertarians. Such
libertarians (who are themselves opposed to communism) see no deeper than
the "anti-communist" label presented by the conservative and conclude that
the conservative is their philosophical ally.
The libertarians have the idea that to be allies it is not necessary to
have a noble goal in commmon, but only to have a common enemy; that if your
ally defines himself only as an "anti-" you can use him without fear that he
will corrupt your purpose. Sometimes this can be true: an ally of
convenience, who merely shares a common enemy rather than a common goal, can
be useful - if you're careful. You have a big advantage: he knows only what
he DOESN'T want -you know what you DO want. But the flaw in applying this
idea lies in the philosophical superficiality of the libertarians. They do
not probe beneath the surface label of the conservative to observe that
fundamentally what he is FOR is the imposition of some form of coercive
social institution. This mistake on the part of the libertarians is what has
resulted in their being co-opted by the conservatives.
If morality consisted of social customs and traditions to which
individuals must conform, rather than principles which they grasp and accept
by means of reason, then it would be vital for a society to maintain a high
degree of uniformity in customs and traditions. This explains why the
conservatives are such strong advocates of immigration limits. An influx of
people with different customs and traditions poses a severe threat to the
conservative notion of morality.
The conservative believes that achievement of values is OK, as long as
you don't ENJOY that achievement - too much. (If you enjoy your achievement
too much you commit the Christian sin of Pride.) This points out a seeming
similarity between Objectivism and conservatism: they both approve the
achievement of values. But to equate the two philosophies on the basis of
this observation would be grossly superficial. It would be to equate
opposites by substituting nonessentials for their essential characteristics.
Conservatives always make this equating when they claim to be Objectivists
or libertarians. In fact, the Objectivist and conservative theses on the
fundamental nature of, and the purpose of, human values differ greatly.
* Libertarian Foreign Policy
Robert Ringer: "I am in favor of complete freedom of trade between
companies and people throughout the world, but not under the umbrella of
political partnerships between governments."
Thus a proper libertarian policy toward trade relations (a foreign
policy, as expressed by a free society) should be: We will trade with
individual people or with private companies, but we will not engage in any
exchange which is subject to the control of a government.
* The Ethical Carnivore
The man who eats meat but who won't kill an animal is often described as
an immoral person who condones a wickedness by enjoying the result of it. He
is accused of being equally guilty of the wickedness.
This label of "immoral" smacks of original sin. In fact, it is simply
impossible to live in America today without taking advantage of knowledge
that was gained by experiments (many of them quite horrifying) performed on
animals. Much of chemistry, and almost all of medicine, rest on such
research.
For example, here is a note from a researcher on nervous systems:
"Some mammals (such as the common laboratory rat) can have their entire
forebrain excised and are still able to walk, run and even maintain their
balance to some extent. Although they move with a robotic stride, without
making any attempt to avoid obstacles placed in their path, these animals
are fully able to operate their leg muscles and to coordinate their steps."
Personally, I would find it completely impossible to conduct such
experiments. Yet I study and learn from the results of them, with the
explicit knowledge of how those results were obtained. Although this
knowledge makes me feel depressed, it does not make me feel guilty. I have
eaten the Apple, and I must live with it. Am I a hypocrite?
Jeremy Bentham: What insuperable line prevents humans from extending
moral regard to animals? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they
talk? but, Can they suffer?
Infants and the mentally ill do not possess the attributes of "normal" or
"typical" humans, but are not left out of the realm of rights. Why then omit
animals? If there is something one would not do to a severely incapacitated
child, then neither should one do it to an animal that would suffer as much.
A scientist who did cancer studies on mice recounts that whenever he had
doubts about his work, he had only to think about the terminally ill
patients in the children's ward.
Veterinarians are particularly sensitive to the ethical problems of
dealing with animals - love of animals, after all, was what brought most of
them into the field. Vets point out that their job is not to prolong life
but to reduce the suffering of as many animals as possible. Human medicine,
they aver, is in many ways more heartless: "We're allowed to give suffering
animals euthanasia, but physicians are required by law to keep their
patients alive no matter what the cost."
Sooner or later man will be going outside the solar system. Sooner or
later we will meet types of intelligent life much higher than our own, yet
in forms completely alien. And when that time comes, the treatment man
receives from his superiors may well depend upon the way he has behaved
toward the other creatures of his own world.
Sagesse oblige.
* Voluntary vs Coercive - Trade vs Theft
As a starting point, here are some dictionary definitions:
Voluntary:
Acting on one's own initiative.
Controlled by or subject to individual volition.
Proceeding from the will or from one's own choice or consent.
Resulting from one's own free choice; given or done of one's own free
will; freely chosen or undertaken. Self-determining.
Acting willingly and without constraint or legal obligation or other
external compulsion.
Synonyms: deliberate, intentional, spontaneous, willful, willing.
Deliberate implies full consciousness of the nature of one's act and its
consequences.
Intentional stresses an awareness of an end to be achieved.
Spontaneous refers to behavior that seems wholly unpremeditated, a
natural response and a true reflection of one's feelings.
Willful often implies headstrong persistence in a self-determined course
of action.
Willing suggests acceding to a course proposed by another, without
reluctance or even eagerly.
Coercion: A relationship in which a person is subjected to physical force
(or the threat of it) in order to compel him to submit to the choices of
another person. The separation of a person from his rightfully achieved
values without his voluntary consent. Any course of action calculated to
inflict physical injury, regardless of whether or not the action succeeds in
its intent.
Fraud: Obtaining material values without their owner's consent under
false pretenses or false promises. Receiving values then refusing to pay for
them and thus keeping them by force (by physical possession) not by right,
and without the consent of their owner.
What bothers me about such concepts as "willingness" or "voluntary" is
that they can be identified only by examining the contents of a person's
mind. But this is not possible; hence my attempts to define them in terms
which are objectively verifiable, such as the observable result of a choice
and the observable conditions of the context within which that choice
occurs.
How can the existence of willingness be determined? A man with a gun to
his head (or whose values are indirectly threatened) will most likely ASSERT
willingness, but does his assertion really signify the existence of
willingness?
To determine whether or not something is voluntary, we should examine two
things: the person's behavior (both word and deed) and the context within
which that behavior occurs - including the temporal context: the person may
be operating under a threat laid on him in the past, and which is not to be
manifest until sometime in the future.
The concept "voluntary" cannot apply to any context in which coercion
occurs as part of the relevant environment. If a person's behavior is
mandated, regardless of her personal choice, then her behavior cannot
properly be labeled voluntary. No contract - whether direct, indirect, or
implied - is valid if it is coercively imposed, or if it is acquiesced to by
default within a context of coercion. Meaningful consent does not exist
under these conditions.
The fundamental distinguishing characteristic which separates the two
categories is the relevance of choice to the preservation of values.
For example: If I put a gun to your head and demand your money, the
situation is such that your choice has no relevance: you lose a value no
matter how you choose. Either your money or your life.
If your choice is to give me the money, then you lose the money.
On the other hand, if your choice is NOT to give me the money, then you
still lose the money - and your life, too.
No matter how you choose, you lose. That's what makes the situation
coercive.
If a person's choice is NOT relevant to the loss or non-loss of a value
then the transfer is a theft. If the person's choice IS relevant, then the
transfer is a trade.
There is a situation in which choice seems to be relevant, but
nonetheless the transfer cannot be termed a trade: when the transfer occurs
within a context of deception. This is fraud.
In considering the nature of deception, we must keep in mind that rights
impose no obligations on other men except of a prohibitive nature. Rights
are not a claim to affirmative action. Each man is obliged only to AVOID the
violation of the rights of other men. Therefore, in my dealings with others:
I have no obligation to convince them of anything.
I have no obligation to educate them about anything.
My only obligation is to refrain from telling them anything I know to be
untrue.
Nozick proposes three conditions for a just transaction:
1. It must be freely entered into by both parties.
2. There must be no deception on either side.
3. The goods traded must have been justly acquired - that is, acquired in
circumstances that accord with the first two conditions.
His third condition raises a critically important idea: the problem of
trade cannot be solved "out of context," that is, outside the general
context of the social institutions that shape our culture. Before such
problems can be fully solved, society must be restructured away from
institutions of government and toward ethically rational institutions.
Keynes described aggregate demand management as "the one kind of
compulsion of which the effect is to enlarge liberty."
Edmund Burke wrote, "Liberty too must be limited in order to be
possessed."
Rousseau, in The Social Contract: "Men must be forced to be free."
Page 3 of the 1993 IRS form 1040A starts out with this statement: "Thank
you for making this nation's tax system the most effective system of
voluntary compliance in the world."
The words "liberty," "freedom," "voluntary," etc. have been appropriated
by would-be tyrants who use those words to designate the opposite of their
cognitively correct meanings, thus leaving the majority of people with no
way to distinguish libertarians from our totalitarian enemies. The only way
I can see to combat this dismal situation is to attack it not on its
surface, by making futile attempts to persuade people of the correct
definitions of those critical words, but at its roots, by presenting the
notion that "Definitions Are Not Arbitrary". Unless your audience realizes
this, any argument you engage in will be merely a verbal battle of wits with
your adversary - the outcome dependent on who can make the most clever use
of eloquent phrases which are nevertheless meaningless in the minds of the
audience.
Governments can be contended to be not coercive only if it is assumed
that they own all the land under their jurisdiction. In which case, property
and property rights are based on force, and only governments own property.
In some cases, it is claimed that my behavior must be voluntary because I
do not exercise the alternative of departing from the social context in
which the behavior occurs. (America: love it or leave it!) But by what right
does my oppressor demand the abandonment of MY homeland as the price I must
pay to get HIS coercive government off my back?
I take my motive from Thoreau, who stated: "Know all men by these
presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of
any incorporated society which I have not joined.... If I had known how to
name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies
which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete
list."
Gulliver's Travels: "They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft,
and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that
care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's
goods from thieves, but honesty has no defense against superior cunning; and
since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying
and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived
at, or hath not law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and
the knave gets the advantage."
Solon believed that "being seduced into wrong was as bad as being forced,
and that between deceit and necessity, flattery and compulsion, there was
little difference, since both may equally suspend the exercise of reason."
* Self-Defense
Libertarianism is not a pacifist philosophy.
There are two very different kinds of force: one is coercive or
aggressive force - that which is initiated against other people, and the
second is retaliatory or defensive force - that which is used to protect
human rights. Libertarians oppose only the first of these.
The Objectivist stand is quite clear:
"The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may
INITIATE the use of physical force against others. No man - or group or
society or government - has the right to assume the role of a criminal and
initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man." (From "The
Objectivist Ethics," in THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS.)
Thus we are not opposed to force when it is used in self-defense. In
fact, we recognize the inevitable necessity of such force: it is necessary
to use defensive force to preserve civilized life against those who embrace
the use of coercive force.
Compare the appalling behavior of government with the plausible
alternative of self-defense:
Private handguns are successfully used for self-defense 645K times each
year. Ninety-nine percent of the times when a private citizen uses a gun to
prevent a rape, robbery or burglary, no one is shot.
Women use guns over 400 times per day to defend themselves against
rapists. The Federal Justice Department found that of 32K attempted rapes,
32% were actually committed. But when the woman was armed with a gun or
knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually committed. In 1966 a
highly publicized safety course taught women in Orlando Florida how to use
guns. Orlando's rape rate declined 88% during 1967.
In 1982 the city of Kennesaw Georgia passed a law allowing heads of
households to keep a weapon in the house. Ten years later, the residential
burglary rate was 72% lower than it had been in 1981.
Since the passage of Florida's concealed-carry law in 1987, over 258K
people have received permits to carry guns. Of those 258K, only 18 have used
their guns to commit a crime. The homicide rate in Florida has fallen 22%
during that time. A similar Georgia law, passed in 1976, was followed by a
21% drop in its homicide rate.
A gun kept at home is 216 times more likely to be used for defense
against a criminal than to cause the death of an innocent member of the
household.
Each year, more criminals are lawfully shot by private citizens than are
shot by police. But fewer than 2% of gun owners ever kill someone
unlawfully.
Eleven percent of people who are shot by police are innocent of a crime.
Two percent of people who are shot by private citizens are innocent of a
crime.
In 1985 the National Institute for Justice reported that 57% of the
felons polled claimed that they were more worried about meeting an armed
citizen than they were about encountering the police.
Society is safer when criminals don't know who's armed.
A society where peaceful citizens are armed is far more likely to be one
where Good Samaritans will flourish. But take away people's guns, and the
public - disastrously for the victims - will tend to leave the matter to the
police. In a recent survey, no less that 81% of the Samaritans polled were
owners of guns. If we wish to encourage a society where citizens come to the
aid of neighbors in distress, we must not strip them of the actual power to
do something effective. Surely it is the height of absurdity to disarm the
peaceful public and then, as is quite common, to denounce them for apathy.
Even worse are the insidious consequences of the denial, by law, of
individual self-responsibility and self-authority. In a society where the
individual is forbidden to act freely on his own authority within his own
personal sphere of influence, a sense of apathy MUST be the inevitable
result - both a local apathy, regarding his interpersonal relationships, and
a more generalized apathy, regarding his community. People who are prevented
from solving their own problems will not solve the problems of their cities,
either.
As Kropotkin put it in his book MUTUAL AID:
"In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the
citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other.
Under the theory of the all-protecting State the bystander need not intrude:
it is the policeman's business to interfere, or not. All that a respectable
citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the starving starve.
The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek
their own happiness in a disregard of other people's wants is now triumphant
all round. It is the religion of the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to
be a dangerous Utopian."
Government will always be opposed to self-defense. The government insists
on a monopoly of force because any force not under the government's control
poses a potential threat to the government. Thus self-defense must be
outlawed.
* Preemptive Force
Preemptive force is defensive force applied before an aggression actually
occurs. Within the context of the libertarian ethic of non-aggression, how -
if at all - can the use of preemptive force be justified? Must you wait
until your assailant actually shoots you before you can take any forceful
action to prevent your death?
If an ethical principle requires you to abstain from self-defense, can
that principle be valid? Can any philosophy whose practice results in the
death of the body or the spirit be moral or correct? As Rand pointed out,
the only valid morality is one that is life sustaining rather than life
negating.
The significance of Time:
Man cannot live range-of-the-moment. He needs to support his life by the
continuous use of reason. He must make correct identifications of reality
which can then serve to guide his behavior through time.
"'Man's survival qua man' means the terms, methods, conditions and goals
required for the survival of a rational being through the whole of his
lifespan...." (Rand, in THE OBJECTVIST ETHICS)
Man is obliged, by his nature as a rational being, to take account of the
future.
The point in time at which an event occurs is not philosophically
fundamental. It is the principled nature of the event that you must consider
in order to properly evaluate it. To be philosophically comprehensive you
must judge the event on the basis of the underlying principles manifested
therein. You must adhere to the principled distinction between coercion and
self-defense, whether the defensive force takes place before or after the
coercion. You must remember that when you defend yourself you are not
fighting for control over your enemy, you are not fighting to compel your
enemy's behavior, you are not fighting to separate him from a rightfully-
achieved value, you are fighting only to PREVENT your enemy from coercing in
the future. You are fighting for the preservation of your rights, your
freedom, and your life through time.
In my discussion of Rights (in Chapter 5) I claimed that the foundation
of all human behavior - both moral and ethical - lies in the Law of
Identity. Proper behavior is that which is consistent with this Law;
improper behavior is that which attempts to contradict it. The violation of
rights involves a contradiction of the Law of Identity. However, it is
consistent to take an action which eliminates such a contradiction, even if
that action, when considered out of context, could itself be a negation of
the Law of Identity. In ethics, as in the propositional calculus, one
negative cancels out another. (I find it personally distasteful, but I can
see no way to avoid the conclusion that two wrongs do indeed make a right.)
Thus to lie to a man who is trying to rob you, or to kill a man, when
defending your own life against his aggression, are ethically legitimate
(i.e., logically consistent) actions.
See reference
To limit your response would be a form of the pacifist thesis: the self-
destructive notion that you must restrict YOUR behavior while your enemy
places no restrictions on his. If there is a general principle involved, it
must apply to both parties, not merely to one (you). Your enemy enters the
relationship operating on the principle of coercion. If you cling to an
unrealistic principle of non-aggression that prevents you from defending
yourself against his coercion, then your enemy will always have the
advantage of you and you will be destroyed. Such behavior cannot be
ethically proper.
Threat:
Consider forceful action in response not to previous coercion, but in
response to the threat of coercion. If we consider threat to have the same
status as coercion itself, then the use of preemptive force is justified.
If someone is pointing a gun at you, it can be argued that this in itself
constitutes the initiation of force, because it is certainly an effective
form of coercion - even though he has not (yet) pulled the trigger. And
therefore if you use force against him you are reacting defensively, not
initiating.
When a man threatens you by asserting an intent to coerce, and has
available the means to coerce, then you have a right to believe he means to
do what he says. If he SAYS it, you HAVE to believe he MEANS it. The
alternative is to place yourself in a value-destructive situation.
A good illustration of this problem appears in THE PROBABILITY BROACH by
L. Neil Smith. The scene on pages 218 to 220 depicts an application of the
principle of non-aggression that precludes preemptive defensive actions on
the part of the intended victims.
* Rules vs Principles
A PRINCIPLE is a general and fundamental truth that can be used as a
standard of judgment in deciding conduct or choice.
A RULE, usually a precept adopted or enacted, is (or should be) the
specific application of a principle.
A rule is a self-contained prescription about concrete actions or
situations, telling you what to do or how to do it. In contrast to
principles, rules are specific and limited in scope, prescribing a
particular type of action in a particular situation. Because they are so
specific, no set of rules could possibly cover every situation and action to
which the corresponding principle applies.
Rules are formulated for specific contexts, but because humans are not
omniscient they can never fully specify the parameters of that context. As a
result, rules almost always have exceptions and they often conflict with one
another. Someone trying to follow rules without the benefit of broader
principles will have no way to determine when he is faced with an exception,
or how to resolve conflicts among rules.
By contrast, a principle gives us comprehensive guidance across a vast
number of circumstances that could not be covered by even a very long list
of discrete rules, and it tells us how to identify exceptions to the rules.
Properly formulated, a principle states the relationship between an action
and a goal. It is a statement of cause-and-effect, and thus a principle has
no exceptions.
To appreciate the problem, consider the Ten Commandments.
Leaving aside the first few, which deal with the worship of God, the list
is not unreasonable, as far as it goes. It's generally a good idea to honor
your parents, and not to steal, kill, commit adultery, bear false witness,
etc. But these rules hardly cover the whole of life. Honoring your parents
is normally a matter of justice as well as affection: giving them what they
are due for having given you life and nurture. But the fourth commandment
has exceptions: some parents treat their children with such cruelty or
neglect that no honor is due them; quite the contrary. But the commandment
gives us no guidance on this point. The principle of justice does.
Because it is so abstract, a principle must be applied to a particular
situation by the exercise of judgment, taking into account the specific
parameters of the situation.
The exercise of judgment cannot be eliminated from human life, and the
attempt to do so by erecting a detailed network of rules always has
destructive consequences in public as well as private affairs.
Unless rules are anchored in principles, they cannot be rationally
justified, and will be experienced by individualists as externally-imposed
constraints - limitations on their pursuit of happiness.
To be non-arbitrary, a moral code must be validated by reference to a
fundamental fact - an ultimate good to which all other goals of action are
the means. For Objectivism, that ultimate good is the individual's own life.
Moral principles identify the requirements for living successfully, given
man's basic needs and capacities: Production is a virtue because it provides
for our needs. Conceptual knowledge is a value because it makes production
possible. Rationality is a virtue because it is the only way to acquire and
maintain a conceptual grasp of reality. Honesty and integrity are virtues
because they are the only way of keeping one's actions tied to one's grasp
of reality.
A critic of rational ethics complained:
"If an ethical principle requires me to abstain from self-defense in
certain cases, then those cases constitute a reductio ad absurdum of said
principle, and I won't apply it to them. In fact, for any imaginable
principle, one can devise scenarios in which it will give absurd results and
must be abandoned. Thus it's impossible to devise principles of ethics which
will always work."
Principles of natural law (such as Archimedes' principles of bouyancy)
cannot be carried to such "reductio ad absurdum." They ALWAYS work. What
does this say about so-called ethical "principles" which CAN? It says that
they are not principles at all, but merely arbitrary rules.
The refusal, or inability, to distinguish between rules and principles is
a manifestation of the concrete-bound mentality that Barbara Branden
analyzed in her lectures PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENT THINKING.
On to Chapter 7
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