Table of Contents: -------------------- Individual Rights vs. Special Interests Journalistic Sloppiness Anti-Smoking Fasicsm on the Rise On Not Having to be Taught Everything Why Medical Costs are High Why So Many Lawyers? Explaining Women's Anger Suicide and the Right to Life On Not Having to be Taught Everything (2?) Violence Does not Come from Television News in New York Royal Willie Business Versus Business The Welfare State and National Service Fallout from The Rich Tom Brokaw, Political Advocate School Choice and Taxes Andy Rooney and CBS's Double Standard Due Process versus Desired Results Media Double Standards Serious Education Reform Feminism Reconsidered Goals Versus Expectations Why All the Fuss About Skin Pigmentation Good Bye Free Speech Making Society Unlitigous Discomfort from Sexism Journalistic Sloppiness Scandinavian Misunderstandings When Comedy Won't Do=20 Ideology versus Pragmatism Generational Progress Sleaze Literature Pragmatic Tactics Liberal Hypocrisy Human Rights Around the Globe Values and America Antidote to Gloom and Doom Customs and Due Process Corruption at Harvard University Press Scholarship and Ideology Critical Fallacies Why All the Fuss About Skin Pigmentation Individual Rights vs. Special Interests Free Speech on Public Property Individual Rights and Public Realms=20 Clinton and the Military Paranoia About Manipulating Nature Family Leave is Bad for All What is Criminal Guilt? Bill Clinton's Marxism TV's Influence The New Immigration Like Government, Like Us Due Process versus Desired Results Bill Clinton's Marxism Democracy and Foreign Affairs Critical Fallacies Compassion in Washington and Hollywood Groups with Memories Business Versus Business Creating Jobs via Theft Liberals Regroup "In Melville, New York, twelve passengers who were injured ..." "A problem has surfaced in connection with changes in Easter ..." "The Democrats are clearly bad news for America ..." "Don't count on building your dream home or apartment complex ..." "There is a distinct possibility that in communities where ..." "Prague, August 14. The oddly constructed Czechoslovakian nation ..." "Those who are bent on taking more and more of our liberties ..." "The controversy over the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution ..." "During this time of euphoria among environmentalists ..." What's to Worry About Ross Perot? "One of America's most important gifts to the world was ..." "In recent years more and more American Indians ..." "Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes interviewed the Milwaukee legislator ..." "Although the idea that animals have rights goes back to at least ..." "Words is going around these days of the revival of the Socratic ..." Unfair to Economic Freedom Clinton's "economists" are Misguided Harmful Intellectual Excuses Why Communitarianism Must be Rejected Robert Bork on the Abortion Debate Liberals Hoisted on their Own Patard Nobel Prize to Economic Imperialist The Welfare State and National Service Problems with Western Culture The Deficit and the Tragedy of the Commons The Folly of The Plan Why Not Call it Nepotism? America's Coming Collectivism? Government at Micromanagement Improving Our Lives Debate vs. Prejudice Andy Rooney and CBS's Double Standard Science and The Planned Society Goodbye to Highway Courtesy Mourning the Fourth of July Boys Scouts Under Assault The Burden of Bad Laws Accountability Begins at Home Unfair Attack on Conservative Foundations Given them all a Proper Defense! The Free Society Assaulted The Romantic Realism of Camile Paglia Yes! PBS (and NPR) Ought to Go! The Law versus Air-Pollution=20 Our Loss of The American Vision=20 Voting and the Media Why not Sue the State? Sex Education Backlashes Why All the Fuss About Skin Pigmentation A Brief on Individual Human Rights Media Double Standards Critical Fallacies Scholarship and Ideology Tightening Whose Belt? Operation Rescue is Wrong Laura Tyson's Economic Duplicity Mr. Clinton v. The Laffer Curve Uncle Sam: Don't Go to Somalia! Media Double Standards Creating Jobs via Theft Democracy and Foreign Affairs Canada's Backsliding The Debate on Natural Law Pragmatism and American Leadership Communitarianism: the New Statism What is and isn't Censorship Revisionist Socialism Gender and Science Reconsidered Gorbachev and Democratic Socialism Liberals Create Big Corporations Soviet Tyranny Without the "Western Threat" Misdirected Venom Statism and Police Brutality Faith and Public Controversy=20 Public Broadcast "Editing" The Boogyman of America's Racism On Crime, Rape and Sex Government Safety Standards Are Too Conservative "One of ironies of the elections of 1990 is the election of ..." Scientific Fakery Why Are Conservatives Uncreative? New Jersey Firms Forbidden to Ban Smoking A Really Bad Idea Why Should We Worry About Happiness Anyway? Why The Welfare State Lasts? The Gall of a Bureaucrat Capitalism and Trivial Pursuits Why the Good Get a Bad Press It's not the Size but the Scope of Government Varieties of Harassment Journalism a la NPR A Splendid Application of Natural Law Children and Their Rights ========================================================================= ========================================================================= =========================================================================== >Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 11:27:46 -0500 (CDT) >From: Tibor R Machan >Subject: Group of Columns Individual Rights vs. Special Interests When on November 2nd the school choice proposition went down in defeat, the results were rather provocative. After the opponents outspent proponents 4 to 1, they won by about 2 to 1. So be it - that is how democracy works, all or nothing, never mind that millions dis- agree. Indeed, this is just why such issues should never even have to come to a vote. It is the right of every individual to spend his or her money as he or she chooses, whatever the majority believes. This is no different from everyone one's basic right to speak out or join a church, no matter what the majority believes. It is a clear sign of America's decline as a distinctive, path breaking society that no longer are individual rights unalienable, protected for everyone. Instead, if a large enough group elects to violate these rights, that is now permitted. It is interesting, however, that this time few people are making noises about the subversion of democracy. This is probably because the majority includes all those who usually speak out on such matters. University and college professors, teachers, intellectuals, and the like comprise the membership of the special interest group that went to bat against school choice. They may deny it, but they were voting in large measure to save their special position in society, a position largely secured by the force of arms. If you do not pay your property and other taxes, from which all these folks are paid, you go to jail. They do not need to prove themselves to their client, as lawyers, psychologists, doctors, palm readers, auto mechanics and millions of other persons need to, in order to obtain a living. They go, instead, to the government and urge it to force people to pay up. =20 Some years back, in the early 1980s, Californians voted on a referendum regarding whether to impose certain costs on oil companies. The oil companies put on a powerful media campaign and the referendum went down in defeat. At the time, however, the verbalists were on the other side. They lost. Following the vote, dozens of articles appeared around the state claiming that democracy had been subverted because those who opposed the special tax on the oil companies outspent the proponents by a wide margin. Activists claimed that people were duped into voting for "big oil" and that if it had been a fair contest, the oil companies would have lost. I am wondering now how many intellectuals of this ilk will be publishing Op-Ed pieces claiming that if it weren't for the big money poured into the anti-choice campaign, the proposition would not have been defeated and that democracy was subverted by the big teachers and public service unions. Of course this is not the most relevant aspect of the vote, but it is interesting: the general public would do well to learn from it. Even though movies, magazines, and news reports usually focus on exposing the hypocrisy of money makers, there is plenty of such hypocrisy within the ranks of our intellectuals. As I tell my students, do not be mislead by the fact that intellectuals do most of the talking and focus most of their criticism on non-intellectuals - mostly corporations, business, Wall Street, and the like. In fact, your teachers, authors, writers of sitcoms are all just as susceptible to corruption - and, moreover, are more dangerous when they are corrupt since they have a near monopoly, as a group, on the bully pulpit, namely, the media. ======================================================================= Journalistic Sloppiness If there were a tradition of malpractice lawsuits against members of the press, many journalists would now be broke. But while nearly every other productive enterprise and profession is under fire from lawyers seeking to collect judgments in the face=20 errors of judgment, the press is protected from such prospects by the First Amendment - or, at least, by a certain reading of it. (It is arguable that readers who notice distortions and incompetent reporting should be able to take publications to court for just the sort of malpractice that is involved.) Consider the front page article by Peter T. Kilborn in the=20 International Herald Tribune, Monday, September 6, 1993, "When a=20 Job, Not Income, is Disposable." Here we are told that when Lyndon B. Johnson "promised Americans a 'Great Society' in which=20 'the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor," Johnson was spelling out "capitalist ideals." And, since these ideals have not be realized, capitalism is as much of a failure as communism. That is what is implied in Mr. Kilborn's remark that "today, in America, in Russia, indeed throughout the=20 industrialized world, work has drifted a long way from the Marxist=20 and capitalist ideals." But the plain fact is, completely misreported by Mr. Kilborn, that capitalism hasn't been tried. Indeed, a conscientious reporter might have noted that not even Marxist ideals have actually been implemented - Stalin, whom Kilborn calls a Marxist, was basically a fraudulent Marxist, only a bit more that Lyndon Johnson was a fraudulent capitalism (except that LBJ never claimed that he was a capitalist). Still, it is accurate that under Stalin the command economy was given a good college try. But it is totally false to identify the principles of the Great Society with those of capitalism. What did the Great Society stand for? Put simply, the welfare state. Under its neo-Keynesian policies, involving prolonged government intervention in what was never a fully free, laissez-faire economy in the first place - just read Jonathan R. T. Hughes' THE GOVERNMENTAL HABIT (Basic Books, 1972) - the Great Society engaged in massive wealth redistribution and thus undermined the central ideal of capitalism, namely, freedom of trade or voluntary economic relations among human beings. =20 By now the impact of this kind of relentless, merciless tinkering with people's efforts to find solutions to their problems by means of freedom of association, including uncoerced commercial transactions, has been felt not only throughout America but, of course, everywhere in the world. Governments are broke, productivity is falling, employment opportunities are shrinking, the standard of life is being eroded, and journalists are probably the only professionals who aren't experiencing their governments' desperate and inept efforts to remedy matters by even greater controls over people's lives. But never mind all this. Mr. Kilborn and his ilk will likely continue to misreport the situation and readers will continue to consume his product, probably the only one that is not subject to liability lawsuits, the only one free of government regulation, and thus the=20 only one that has a decent chance of being corrected by the reporting of competitors in some other front page article, on some Op-Ed page in the free world. And that, perhaps, is our last hope - that the press is free and Mr. Kilborn and his friends, who seem to wish that capitalism go the way of the Stalinist command economy, haven't become a monopoly, yet. ========================================================================= Anti-Smoking Fasicsm on the Rise =09It is ironic that at a time when not only some of the current liberal=20 democratic administration's leaders but certain conservative jurists=20 (Reagan nominated Judge Vaughn R. Walker of San Francisco's Federal Dis- trict Court) are proposing the decriminalization of banned drugs, Ellen=20 Goodman, a very prominent and Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist,= =20 would join those fanatics who want to ban cigarettes. =09No one can contest the claim that cigarettes are a health hazard, so=20 there is no dispute about this, any more than there is a dispute that in ge= neral=20 drug abuse is unhealthy. When I was a child of 11 my parents back in Hun- gary knew this. Anyone who professes ignorance of the health hazards of=20 cigarettes must have lived in a cave for the last century. =09The important question is whether government has any rightful author- ity to prohibit me from smoking and the cigarette companies from providing= =20 me with tobacco products. In a free society it should not even be necessar= y=20 to raise such a question. Unfortunately we are far from a free society whe= re=20 the basic rights of individuals to life, liberty and the pursuit of happine= ss are=20 protected by law. Instead we are a society where the state is acting as if= we=20 were children and the government were our parents. And pundits such as Ms.= =20 Goodman, as well as news organizations such as ABC-TV's "Day One" are=20 aiding and abetting the destruction of our individual rights. =09If I choose to smoke, despite the fact that I know or could learn that= =20 my health is hurt by it, I ought not to be forbidden to do this, any more t= han I=20 should be forbidden to do other risky things such as driving, climbing moun= - tains, flying, taking a swim in the ocean, etc. It is my life and if I cho= ose to=20 take risks, I am not violating anyone else's rights. (And it is no argumen= t to=20 respond that my bad health has public costs -- there should not be any publ= ic=20 provision of health care in the first place, since that is a blatant case o= f rob- bing Peter to provide for Paul!) =09Finally, health is not everything. Many people take big risks with thei= r=20 health, indeed their lives, because they judge the rewards worthwhile. it = is=20 even possible that someone should smoke, despite health hazards, if smoking= =20 provide him or her with a benefit otherwise unobtainable. Individuals diff= er=20 in how they ought to live and except for some very general virtues, there a= re=20 many ways to live right. =09If it were left for the likes of Ellen Goodman, our lives would be regi- mented 24 hours a day. Everyone, smoker or non-smoker, ought to be con- cerned, first and foremost, with our individual rights to be sovereigns, fr= ee=20 citizens, and not subjects of the state. =09The "Day One" ABC-TV program blatantly promoted government=20 regimentation of our lives -- indeed, it was nothing less than statist prop= a- ganda. It presented tobacco companies as villains for daring to produce ci= ga- rettes that pleased their customers. It pretended to be shocked at the eff= orts=20 of these companies to gauge the amount of nicotine in cigarettes and produc= e=20 cigarettes with varying levels of nicotine. =09But what else are tobacco companies to do? They are in business to=20 satisfy the choices of free, adult citizens who are supposedly able to vote= ,=20 drive and make determinations as to how they want to live. Ms. Goodman's= =20 and ABC-TV's views are an insult to our humanity, nothing less, and a threa= t=20 to our liberties. =========================================================================== On Not Having to be Taught Everything =09In a recent essay, published in Harper's Magazine (March 1994), author M= ary=20 Gaitskill recounts an occasion in her youth when she took LSD and then was = seduced by a=20 young men who was actually quite nice to her but to whom she was afraid to = say "No" for=20 fear she might meet with violence. She considers her experience to have be= en date rape,=20 although she claims the situation is a bit more complicated than intellectu= als who write=20 about this issue have treated it. =09Gaitskill's major thesis is that the problem begins not so much with wha= t men do=20 but with how badly women are prepared to deal with men's unwelcome advances= . She=20 relates her experience on a radio talk show panel discussion where one woma= n advocated=20 a law "prohibiting men from touching or making sexual comments to women on = the=20 street." She tells of a woman who called in and said, "If a man touches me= and I don't=20 want it, I don't need a law. I'm gonna beat the hell out of him." To this= comment Gaitskill=20 recalls one panelist responding, "I guess I just never learned how to do th= at." =09Never mind for now whether being touched or spoken to this way deserves = having=20 the hell beaten out of one. Perhaps a less violent reaction will do - even= the law punishes=20 the use of unnecessary force. But what about taking refuge from the charge= of wallowing=20 in victimization by claiming that if one isn't taught to do something, one = has no=20 responsibility to do it? =09If Ms. Gaitskill's argument were sound, nothing new in the world would e= ver have=20 been accomplished by human beings. Instead, of course, people learn not on= ly from being=20 taught but also from their own creative thinking, imagination, logical infe= rence and similar=20 intellectual and mindful initiatives. =09Arguably, when Ms. Gaitskill unwisely took the acid among strangers, as = she=20 admits, she ought to have thought about what could happen. This is not unl= ike the case of=20 someone who drinks and then drives and when causes a mishap, tries to excul= pate himself=20 by pleading ignorance of what could happen. The fact is, one ought to have= thought about=20 the consequences and chosen a different course, in both cases. =09Not that taking advantage of someone who is careless and irresponsible, = indeed,=20 somewhat out of commission due to drug abuse, is not itself a culpable act.= But as in so=20 many cases, what went on in her story is both parties doing things wrong, w= ith predictable=20 bad results. In so many cases today we find that both parties mess up and = then plead for=20 victim status from society, from the courts and public opinion. Instead, a= s in the Bobbit=20 case, we see two very likely irresponsible, vile people, neither of whom de= serves much=20 sympathy and both of who ought to be held in contempt. =09And as to the issue of not having been taught excusing one's ineptness a= nd=20 recklessness, what should one say to a racists who says, in his or her defe= nse, "Well, I just=20 wasn't taught to be respectful to members of other races than my own."? Pl= ainly: "You=20 ought to use your head. Think, do not just rely on what others teach you -= they may, after=20 all, be wrong." ========================================================================= Why Medical Costs are High During the last few months there has been much consternation about the very high cost of medicine in the United States of America. Well, I have heard all sorts of explanations for this but not appealed to my common sense. Today I came up with one of my own and I am=20 sufficiently vain to think it makes very good sense. But first a bit of background. I have medical insurance through my place of work. Usually I get a check up every year. I am now at the age when it makes sense to do this, although I have no unhealthy habits. Still, my father died of a heart attack at 67, and I am 55, so why be complacent. Today I had a stress exam to see if I might have heard disease. The ratio of bad to good cholesterol came up bad in my last blood test, so my doctor prescribed this tread mill test where one walks for about 8 minutes at a rapidly increasing rate of speed, after which one is injected with some stuff that enables the machine under which one is placed to take pictures of the behavior of the=20 circulatory system. As I was lying there for about 20 minutes I was thinking about=20 high medical costs. And it dawn on me: Of course our medical costs are high. We have a very intense desire to live! I would hypothesize that this actually explains why we spend so much money on medicine: we badly want to live as long as we can, and we want to be as healthy as=20 the ingenuity of researchers and practitioners makes possible. Of course, there are those who say that we will continue to live in some sense after we die, but no one knows well enough just how that is going to go. I certainly have no clear idea and I have tried to=20 think about that problems of decades. Few who firmly believe in an after life can make clear just what is involved in it. But most=20 importantly, nearly everyone who so believes still would like to=20 continue to be in good health and live long. But that is a costly proposition. When one adds to this that many people also wish to strain their biological capacities with such indulgences as heavy drink, heavy smoke, reckless driving, and numerous others that can clearly put one at high risk of medical difficulties. For lack of a better catch phrase, let's say that the intense desire to live and to fill one's life with much enjoyment, pleasure, and=20 adventure will make it very likely that people in American will=20 spend much more money on medical care than people would elsewhere, in cultures where the human life is no so highly prized. I am not here trying to justify any of this, although I will readily admit that I find none of this objectionable. My main point is just to give something of a sensible answer to this puzzle, raised by Bill and Hillary Clinton's alarmed tone of voice, as to why we pay so much for medicine, more than people do elsewhere. I suggest it may simply be that we want to live longer and with more intensity than people do elsewhere. ====================================================================== Why So Many Lawyers? Compared to, say TV GUide or Reader's Digest, The New Republic is a low circulation magazine. Yet it is probably this country's most prestigious and maybe most astute political-cultural publication. It carries articles on a wide ranging set of topics - from daily political affairs to reviews of the most esoteric philosophical books. It has stars such as Michael Kinsley and Fred Barnes. Its editorial views are not easily predicted. And it is very enjoyable to read, whatever your politics happens to be. As a co-founder of what is hoping to be a competing publication, Reason, I must admit that The New Republic is far and away the best read for those of us who care about public and cultural affairs. Yet stupidity is not unfamiliar to its pages. Thus in a recent review of several books of fiction and non-fiction on law, the author of the review offers this unabashedly ignorant passage: "To an imagination of any scope," [Oliver Wendell] Holmes wrote,=20 "the most far-reaching form of power is not money, it is the command=20 of ideas." That now has the platitudinous ring of a commencement address to which the graduating class listens patiently, all the=20 while believing, on the evidence of nearly everything that surrounds them, that money will always be a vastly more far-reaching form of power than the command of ideas. How else is it possible to explain the enormous growth of the legal profession in the last thirty years? In this country between 1965 and 1990, writes [Lincoln] Caplan, "the number of lawyers leaped .. from 296,000 to 800,000...." Aside for the fact that this passage confirms Holmes' observation -- the belief in the power, not to mention corrosiveness, of money is itself= =20 a result of the command of an very ancient idea -- the rhetorical question does not have the self-evident answer the author believes it does. There is a very obvious alternative possibility. Is it not just possible, indeed very likely, that the enormous growth of the legal profession is due to the enormous growth of laws? We have since the 1960s increased the number of laws and regulations enormously. The federal government alone writes thousands of new laws every year. The states, counties and municipalities add their share. And the people -- all the way from the local barber to the multinational corporation's CEO -- need to hire lawyers to help them navigate the resulting legal labyrinth. The New Republic is, no doubt, a superb magazine. But it suffers from its own ideological blinders. The editors probably found this=20 rhetorical question about lawyers perfectly sensible, given the command of the idea that money is something awful but very tempting and that the relentless manufacture of laws and regulations in this country is, well, the thing to be taken for granted. Had they but considered that maybe these laws and regulations are mostly superfluous, the product of politicians posturing as savers of humanity, they might have asked the review to think again about that sentence, to consider that the entire drift of the review might need to be recast to reflect not a well entrenched prejudice about money but the reality of the enormous growth of statism in the United States of America. ===================================================================== Explaining Women's Anger In the past decade I have often criticized the more extreme or=20 militant versions of feminism. These say, among other things, that all men have conspired to keep women in a subservient role in life. They say that there is a special, probably superior, female ethical=20 perspective that men have tried to surpress. They say that such=20 areas of concern as philosophy, science and art all reflect a male bias and that history itself is a distortion because it has been mostly males who have studied it. =20 In many cases these feminists have been careless in how they have framed their claims, including all men in their indictments, making the same mistake toward men they claim men have made toward women. Such generalizations are insulting to me and all the men I know of whom none of what these militant feminists say is true. But in all fairness I should also note, now and then, that many women are quite justified in getting angry at some men, perhaps even at most of them. There is little doubt that some men simply do not get it - they just do not see that women can be and often are every bit as decent and worthwhile human beings as men can be and often are. These men treat women badly when they try to blame them for their own professional mistakes, when they try to intimidate them into accepting such blame. Many other men, or perhaps even the same ones, do actually exhibit a dehumanizing outlook on women. I recall when I was an enlistee in the United States Air Force, many of my fellow enlistees showed the most disgusting attitude toward their girl friends, wives and dates. They spoke about these women as pieces of meat, while they were gambling away their checks and leaving the women with no money to pay for the expenses both incurred. Now and then I hear women express amazement that some men treat decently, gently, kindly. I am amazed because it occurs to me that there cannot be any joy in relating to women in any other way. But=20 I am told that often men are crude and inconsiderate in how they=20 behave with their dates, girlfriends and even wives. I know of men who pay scant attention to their children, who are dead beat fathers, who leave child raising entirely to their mates.=20 Of course, these facts no more justify reckless charges agains all men than the misbehavior of some Hungarians justifies condemning=20 them all as brutes. But if one has for years been mistreated by Hungarians - maybe only because one happens to have run into a group of bad ones - it is understandable why one would be tempted to think badly of all of them. People should but do not always think carefully, logically, sensibly when they have had bad experiences. And while this isn't fully excusable, it is at least understandable. Much of what the wilder feminists shriek about is unjust but that is not the only thing we can say about it. Sadly many, too many men are hopelessly cruel to women, even while, of course, many women aren't better. But while women make their mistakes one way, not always by hurting men, many men make theirs by lashing out against women - by demeaning them, hurting them, treating them as inferior, lower beings. When women err in the way they try to address their problems, they should be set straight. But their motivation should also be appreciated. ================================================================== Suicide and the Right to Life Most of us have witnessed the sage of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan doctors whose has been aiding some people who wanted to commit suicide and whose efforts have met with considerable resistance from Michigan politicians. Now comes news that in Canada both suicide and assisting another who wants to die are forbidden. It is illegal in Canada "to advise, encourage or assist another=20 person to perform an act that intentionally brings about his or=20 her death." In light of this, Sue Rodriguez, a 43 year old Lou Gehrig=20 disease patient, had been asking the Canadian courts to change=20 the law and to allow her to end her life, in the face of certain=20 and painful death, one that the ban simply prolongs. But the Canadian courts would not budge and, in the end, Ms. Rodriguez did get an=20 unnamed doctor to help her anyway. She died in the arms of MP Svend Robinson, who is part of a movement similar to that in the United States where it has failed to get the law changed in referenda in the states of Washington and California. That the law in the United States of America would ban suicides and assisted suicides is scandalous. In this country each person's right to life is supposed to be protected by the government. True,=20 the U. S. Constitution does not directly protect each person's right to life. The Ninth Amendment, however, states clearly that even rights to enumerated in the Constitution must be protected. And since the founding document of this country, the Declaration of Independence, mentions everyone's right to life as one held to be self-evident by the founders, it follows clearly that the Ninth Amendment must include the right to life that government may not violate. But, one might wonder, how could someone defend suicide or assisted suicide by reference to the right to life! It is no mystery, actually. When one has a right, it means one has a choice. The right to=20 freedom of religion means that one who has such a right may not be prevented from choosing which religion to adopt or even whether to adopt a religion at all. The right to freedom of speech means one may not be prevented from choosing whether to speak out on something or to remain silent. Rights are precisely that sort of political principle: they afford us with choice in the midst of a communities where others could prevent us from having such a choice. A free society is one which recognizes, in its legal system, these basic rights of human beings. The right to life, in turn, means that no one may prevent us from choosing to live, or making the choice not to live if that is what we judge best for us. As to the option of commit suicide with the aid of someone else, here things get a bit complicated because assistance could easily be seen as murder. So the instrument of a "living will" or something similar to it needs to be established so as to make clear that any invited suicide assistance is not, in fact,=20 murder. Once that precaution has been taken, however, a free society stands in opposition to itself when it bans suicides or assisted suicides. Of course, as with every liberty, this one can also be exercised unwisely. But a free society rests on the conviction that the risk is worth it. We ought to treat our adult citizens not as we treat our children, dependents, namely paternalistically. We ought to treat them with respect for their adulthood, their sovereignty. Perhaps in Canada the philosophical underpinnings for respecting the rights of individual human beings to choose whether they will live or die do not exist. But the United States of America is supposed to be the leader of the free world, meaning, the leading free country in the world. This obligates it to guard individual rights more vigilantly than they are guarded anywhere else. ====================================================================== On Not Having to be Taught Everything =09In a recent essay, published in Harper's Magazine (March 1994), author M= ary=20 Gaitskill recounts an occasion in her youth when she took LSD and then was = seduced by a=20 young men who was actually quite nice to her but to whom she was afraid to = say "No" for=20 fear she might meet with violence. She considers her experience to have be= en date rape,=20 although she claims the situation is a bit more complicated than intellectu= als who write=20 about this issue have treated it. =09Gaitskill's major thesis is that the problem begins not so much with wha= t men do=20 but with how badly women are prepared to deal with men's unwelcome advances= . She=20 relates her experience on a radio talk show panel discussion where one woma= n advocated=20 a law "prohibiting men from touching or making sexual comments to women on = the=20 street." She tells of a woman who called in and said, "If a man touches me= and I don't=20 want it, I don't need a law. I'm gonna beat the hell out of him." To this= comment Gaitskill=20 recalls one panelist responding, "I guess I just never learned how to do th= at." =09Never mind for now whether being touched or spoken to this way deserves = having=20 the hell beaten out of one. Perhaps a less violent reaction will do - even= the law punishes=20 the use of unnecessary force. But what about taking refuge from the charge= of wallowing=20 in victimization by claiming that if one isn't taught to do something, one = has no=20 responsibility to do it? =09If Ms. Gaitskill's argument were sound, nothing new in the world would e= ver have=20 been accomplished by human beings. Instead, of course, people learn not on= ly from being=20 taught but also from their own creative thinking, imagination, logical infe= rence and similar=20 intellectual and mindful initiatives. =09Arguably, when Ms. Gaitskill unwisely took the acid among strangers, as = she=20 admits, she ought to have thought about what could happen. This is not unl= ike the case of=20 someone who drinks and then drives and when causes a mishap, tries to excul= pate himself=20 by pleading ignorance of what could happen. The fact is, one ought to have= thought about=20 the consequences and chosen a different course, in both cases. =09Not that taking advantage of someone who is careless and irresponsible, = indeed,=20 somewhat out of commission due to drug abuse, is not itself a culpable act.= But as in so=20 many cases, what went on in her story is both parties doing things wrong, w= ith predictable=20 bad results. In so many cases today we find that both parties mess up and = then plead for=20 victim status from society, from the courts and public opinion. Instead, a= s in the Bobbit=20 case, we see two very likely irresponsible, vile people, neither of whom de= serves much=20 sympathy and both of who ought to be held in contempt. =09And as to the issue of not having been taught excusing one's ineptness a= nd=20 recklessness, what should one say to a racists who says, in his or her defe= nse, "Well, I just=20 wasn't taught to be respectful to members of other races than my own."? Pl= ainly: "You=20 ought to use your head. Think, do not just rely on what others teach you -= they may, after=20 all, be wrong." ======================================================================== Violence Does not Come from Television As is now to be expected, our politicians are blaming sources=20 other than themselves for the evils of our world. Most recently it is=20 television violence that is blamed for the spreading of violent crime=20 across our society. Accordingly, our political leaders have bullied=20 cable television into adopting a ratings system and developing the=20 technology to enables parents to block violent programs from the sets=20 their children are watching. =20 I have no great trouble with either of these objectives, although = =20 I dispute that they will do much to discourage violence in our=20 society. The reason is that TV programs have never been and could not=20 really be responsible for actual violence. If anything, television=20 programs follow the tastes and preferences of the public, not the other=20 way around. ONly if the public prizes shows that feature violence, will=20 producers and networks find it profitable to feature them. If the=20 public felt revolted by violence in TV drama, there would hardly be any=20 on the tube, plain and simple. =20 But what then may be most responsible for violence in our society? = =20 I am sure there are several reasons and causes for this. But one=20 stands out as fairly obvious. =20 I have in mind the fact that more and more our politicians=20 regard violence as the means by which to solve the country's problems. = =20 For what else is the threat of jail than violence? What else is the=20 threat of police forcing citizens to comply with the growing number of=20 regulations and other government edicts than plain old violence? What=20 else is it but violence when the vice squad descends upon some region of=20 our lives and forces us to behave as the leaders of our society - our=20 politicians - deem appropriate?=20 Violence is the unjustified use of force. It is not violence=20 when I defend myself against muggers. The force I use is merely something = =20 I couldn't avoid, given what the attackers did to me. When,=20 however, politicians threaten to put me to jail if I do not comply with=20 their vision of how I ought to behave, that is violence or, at least,=20 its threat. What such policies clearly do is make it appear very=20 forcefully indeed that violence a legitimate means by which to solve =20 problems. =20 It isn't really surprising that some people find it perfectly=20 acceptable to deal with the discomforts of their lives in a violent way,=20 when all the people in Washington are doing the same. Bill and Hillary=20 Clinton desire a health plan, so they propose to force it upon us. What=20 if we do not accept their idea of how we ought to take care of our=20 health? They will send in the cops, in the last analysis, who will=20 chase us down and place us in jail for not going along with their=20 scheme. If employers refuse to hire or promote a certain number of=20 women or minorities, what is the politicians' response? Coerce them=20 into jail - threaten them with violence, that is. =20 The plain fact is that, by egging television producers on to=20 combat violence in fictional entertainment, politicians tend to divert=20 our attention from a very real source of violence in our society, namely, = =20 their own methods of handling human problems. It is government=20 coercion that is the most violent thing in our society - no criminal has=20 the guns with which government threatens us if we do not do politicians'=20 bidding. Thus this entire campaign against guns on the street or violence=20 in fictional broadcasts is, effectively little more than a ploy to=20 once again mislead us and make room for further botched up government=20 efforts to help out the society. When will our citizens realize that=20 they are being had once again, not helped in the least?=20 ======================================================================== News in New York An apology is due from me to all the small town television=20 news broadcasts. For years I have been complaining about how these media forums offer nothing but trivia masquerading as news. From=20stations in Santa Barbara, San Louis Obispo, Auburn, Alabama, Buffalo, New York, and so on, everyone in the country what we get by way of the evening or morning or mid-day TV news is fires, murders, Woody versus Mia, traffic accidents, sexual assaults, scandals, gossip, and the like. I had thought that his is mostly typical of small town television news. I was wrong. I apologize. Since August 17, 1993, I have been exposed to two New York City TV stations' news broadcast, the local affiliates of NBC TV and FOX TV. Since I did not order Cable TV for the ten months I was to live here, I watch the news on one of these two stations. And the news is uniformly mundane, looking and sounding more like the pages of National Inquirer than Time or Newsweek. As if in New York City nothing could be found that is newsworthy outside of Amy Fisher and Joe Buttefuco trials and tribulations, Woody and Mia's sordid custody fights, Donald and Marla's impending parenthood, etc., etc. =20 You look in vain for reports on local arts, science, education, innovation, exploration, controversy, or the like. Has anyone written a decent book in New York? You'll never know it. Has the world of science been enriched by some new discoveries made at one of the several dozen major universities in the vicinity? Forget it. But if you want interviews with David Letterman's replacement, well you will have so many of them you wonder whether the press agents bought off the news departments. Even foreign affairs are covered only to the extend that we get blood and guts, reports of rape or genocide. What is happening in Paris, London, Hamburg - oh, I forgot, Monica Seles was stabbed in that city by some crazed German who apparently didn't like Seles=20 beating Stefi Graf repeatedly - or Vienna? Nobody will tell you. ALl you get is gore and more gore and a bit of fluff and then some more gore. Why? Well, I don't rightly know. Is this what people want? Are the viewers really demanding to get this kind of garbage cast at them by the multimillion dollar anchors and reporters? Are there serious surveys done on this, are the stations sure that they have it right? =20 If the people want nothing else but such "news" - which, when you think about it, is no news at all but repetition eclipsing more repetition, with only the players changing their names - then I admit to being rather demoralized about the culture in which I live. I am too aware of the complexities of what causes this but I am sure enough that whatever the cases are, the consequences are pathetic. I cannot demure from saying: if you are one of those who craves such news reporting, please do not vote or make any decisions that have an impact on our country. Please, just keep to yourself and pig out on such offerings to your heart's content. I do not envy you. ===================================================================== Royal Willie Tibor R. Machan Heaven knows, I am no fan of unions. I haven't a clue whether the=20 striking flight attendants at American Airlines had good reason to=20 walk off their jobs. Perhaps they are a group of spoiled workers=20 who tried to rake in some coins by making it difficult for the=20 company just when heavy traffic was about to commence, during the=20 Thanksgiving rush. =20 But that's what bargaining is about, isn't it? When labor and=20 management cannot easily reach agreement, a bit of pulling and tug ging will be employed by both, so that eventually each will come to=20 see where their mutual interests lie. And the public will just have=20 to wait it out, since neither workers nor managers are supposed to=20 be subject to involuntary servitude, forced labor. Indeed, an occa- sional slowdown in the provision of goods and services can be a=20 wonderful educational device: it teaches the rest of us that we may=20 never taken the working people of the country for granted. They are=20 free agents, or until recently were supposed to be so regarded. =20 Now here comes King Willie, with his royal edict, bringing the=20 process of negotiations to a halt. Why? To rescue us from the=20 terrible hardship of American Airline's not flying during the=20 Thanksgiving season. =20 It isn't even an emergency, for God's sake. It is a matter of=20 some folks not getting where they might like to have spent time=20 devouring their turkey dinners. But no, King Willie must show who=20 is boss - the federales, that's who. =20 Well, the best we can do is to learn from the experience. Just=20 remember who took to wielding the power of the government for just=20 any purpose he felt like and you will understand the true nature of=20 the Clinton presidency. DOn't forget Hillary, either, who has no=20 compunction about unleashing her ire when she is displeased - recall=20 how she came down on the insurance folks for trying to give their=20 own input into the health care debate. She was outraged, just as a=20 queen mother would be who takes offense at having her will obstruct- ed. =20 I am no alarmist but it scares me now how readily the government=20 is taking things into its own hands when those who run it don't have=20 their wishes catered to pronto! In this atmosphere it is no wonder=20 that the great American values of freedom of thought, freedom of=20 speech, freedom of trade, freedom of choice and the rest are taking=20 a dive in prominence. Instead we have the old feudal ideal of the=20 divine rights of kings coming in through the back door once again. =20 The ideal is that, as with the ancient regimes, the folks at the=20 head of the state will take care of us, in return for which we will=20 have to do their bidding. =20 It is ironic that just when the most monstrous reactionary effort=20 to set us back to those days of near total statism has collapsed,=20 the people elected to govern the freest government of all of human=20 history have completely abandoned the principles of liberty and are=20 wielding power whenever and wherever it pleases them. ======================================================================== Business Versus Business One of Karl Marx's less notable mistakes was his belief that people in the world of business would promote their self-interest. If by self-interest we include, as I believe we ought to, the most rational social-political principles in support of a sound human institution's flourishing, then clearly people in business often act in a self-destructive manner. They promote policies that hurt business. Examples of such self-destructive business conduct are not hard to identify. Consider, as a very recent one, Ted Turner, the multi- billionaire mogul, who went to Congress a few days ago and asked the politicians in Washington to "shove down the throats of" broadcasters a TV violence rating system, unless the broadcasters adopt one pronto. Or consider a few months ago how New York City's wonder financier, Donald Trump, wanted legal action take against native Americans who were running gambling establishments, just because they are not forced to pay the taxes he has to pay. Furthermore, consider the recent=20 decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, followed by some state supreme court rulings, to refuse to place a cap on the amounts of punitive damage money that juries may award to plaintiffs who succeed in proving=20 that some service or product has injured them. =20 In each of these cases it is people in the business community who are advocating getting the government involved in the operations of the market place or, in our last example, to cut some slack for them from the processes of our system of justice. Turner's advocacy of government censorship of broadcasting is=20 perhaps the most disgusting of the three examples. Ted Turner, who is rumored to have admired the ideas of Ayn Rand earlier in his career, is actually promoting government's intrusion on freedom of expression. He wants the First Amendment to be voided when it comes to broadcasting. He should, instead, advocate the extension of First Amendment protection to the broadcast industry. He should advocate repeal of the federal law that has established the Federal Communications Commission - earlier the Federal Radio Commission - so that broadcasters and cable television operators could be enjoying the same freedom of communication as do the printed media. Instead, perhaps to appease the left wing liberals with whom is so socially chummy lately, he is asking the state to tell broadcasters how to run their business, what to do about its content, etc. =20 Trump, in turn, ought to be advocating the reduction of taxation on every front, including when it hurts his own business, but instead he is crying "unfair" and asking government to hit up the few people who have managed to escape its thievery. Trump out to use the example of native Americans to point out that taxation is unjust and it would be best to recognize this fact not only regarding native Americans but all of us who live in this country. But the wunderkind of New York and Atlantic Cities seems to lack the integrity and is proceeding in=20 a truly short sighted fashion. Those people in business who want the government to limit the=20 punitive sums juries may award to injured parties evade that such a limitation would rther arbitrary. No doubt some juries are willing=20 to indulge their collective prejudices against corporations by awarding=20 larger than reasonable punitive sums to victims of corporate malpractice. = =20 But the remedy for this is not to subvert the jury system but to embark=20 on a program of giving business a better press, demonstrating to the=20 public that the business bashing attitudes so typical of the Clinton=20 crowd are wholly unjust and injurious to our society. The source of jury's prejudices need to be addressed, but not by trying to subvert the jury system. The short cut method taken by too many prominent people in business will ultimately hurt the system under which business can flourish in a human community. Such an approach - which includes advocacy of=20 protectionist legislation, begging for subsidies and government backed loans, as well as protection of business against competition from up and coming entrepreneurs - is surely hurting the entire business community, even while it may give a few particular enterprises a=20 temporary leg-up. That business people do not realize how dear a price they are paying for the relief government gives them indicates that they are no less savvy concerning the relationship between politics and business than are academic left wingers who advocate out and out socialism. ========================================================================= The Welfare State and National Service A couple of years ago Bill Buckley wrote a book entitled Gratitude. It advocated national service for those who take advantage of free public education at the college level. Buckley argued that we owe it to our=20 elders to serve them, after they have done all the good for us we are enjoying in our lives. =20 It is ironic that what a major conservative journalist recommends should now be implemented by one of his adversaries, President Bill Clinton. Of course, the exact plan is still in the making. But the idea is close to that which Buckley spelled out. Our young people=20 should serve their country in return for the free education they have received. They will be paid, of course, but presumably their work will be much valuable than the pay they receive for it. Thus we find here the element of gratitude Buckley was emphasizing. There are several problems with this idea. For one, what people=20 do may benefit us without it having been their intention to do this at all - artists may create without any desire to help others, yet we all may benefit from the result. A scientist may seek truth without thinking of benefiting anyone else, though we could all gain by the discoveries that he or she makes. Indeed, much of what we benefit from is the result of work that is not intended for that purpose at all. Then, also, we may assume that those who did benefit us intentionally found value in doing this without expecting to be paid for this. I find it peculiar, to start with, that good deeds done for us without our asking for them should be taken to obligate us. Help, if it is genuine help,=20 deserves a thank you, not service in return. Otherwise it is not help but a commercial exchange process. Thirdly, it is interesting that what at first was touted as something our citizens are entitled to - remember the term "entitlements," which in political philosophy is referred to as "positive rights" - now we are told we must pay for. I recall back in the 1960s, when I began to pay attention to politics, the wide array of government programs advocated by champions of the New Frontier and the Great Society were said to be due us simply because we are citizens of this country. We were supposed to have a right to health care, social security, affordable housing, etc. Among these basic rights of ours was our education. We were supposed to be due an education simply because we lived in a civilized society. Some of us at that time warned that we will eventually see ourselves embroiled in all kinds of obligations we did not voluntarily incur, in the wake of all these so called free governmental services. We were told by the champions of the big welfare state that we are employing scare tactics, we are distorting the real nature of what welfare comes to, namely, generosity and compassion from our society. Of course that was nonsense - there really is no such thing as a free lunch, or a free college education. Somehow these things must be paid for - the last time I heard of a professor who was willing to teach free of charge was a lone air to a big fortune, and even he eventually resigned to live in some Western paradise instead of continue to work free of charge. Public service employees are forever threatening to strike unless they are paid roughly equivalent to private industry salaries. =20 So the only rational thing is that what is given would eventually have to be paid back. But what does this do to the concept of welfare? What about compassion and charity and generosity? =20 Instead was is emerging is a society in which government, with some=20 input from the people, hands out what some people deem to be valued services and goods and then, whether you like it or not, you will have=20 to come up with some service or payment. Is it not ironic that the very reason the welfare state was conceived= =20 in the first place, namely, that the commercial exchange system is not sufficiently generous, is now being forgotten and a rather distorted version of that commercial system is being reinstituted - only this time there is a wholly unnecessary middle agent, the government. And believe me that agent is hungrier for payment than any market agent has ever been. ========================================================================= Fallout from The Rich Although I came to America as a rather poor immigrant and after leaving home at 18 became dirt poor with no family support, I have also been fortunate as well as industrious enough not to end up on welfare or requiring handouts. From the start it seemed to me that=20 a chance such as I faced - namely, to make my way in the country of nearly every poor European's, indeed, foreigner's, dreams - demanded the best effort on my part, lest I blow it. Not that everything went smoothly but all in all I got nearly everything I set out to gain, including a superb education, a career that could be many people's envy, wonderful children, a great deal of travel, some of the best friends one could ask for, and at least a tolerable economic life that sustains me well enough albeit by no means in luxury. What all this leads me to suggest is that there clearly are many people who are far more prosperous than I, even if I doubt that too many have enjoyed the degree of happiness I have been fortunate to experience thus far. Still, I could easily benefit from having a good deal more money. Yet, I have never known envy in my life. Somehow the sight of greater wealth on the part of others has never lead me to desire to exchange their lives for mine. Nor, especially, have I ever felt ill will toward those who are rich. On the contrary, I have been very=20 pleased at the existence of the rich. And there are some good reasons=20 for my pleasure with them, even if I can hardly even think myself in=20 their shoes. =20 For one, the rich remind me that if I wanted to aspire to be one of them, I would have a decent chance at it. I know some rich people and some of these started nearly as low on the economic ladder as I did. But they wanted to be well off and found a way to do this while also gaining satisfaction from their work. I know some person who are millionaires, a few who probably have a billion or so, and in each case I know that the way movies or sitcoms or best sit coms pulp novels depict them is hopelessly inaccurate. None of these folks is mean or greedy or amoral, quite the opposite. I know that if I had wanted to concentrate my energies on securing wealth and great prosperity - e.g., by means of expertise in finance or corporate management - I could have given that a decent shot, with not too bad a chance at success. Another reason I welcome the existence of the rich in our society - near enough to the lives of my family and friends to witness what their lives are like - is that without them we and millions of others would scarcely have a chance to occasional luxury, a taste of the finer aspects of nourishment, entertainment, decoration, art and culture in general. =20 Who but the rich sustain good restaurants? Who but the rich make fine porcelain or jazz clubs or beautiful rugs or fancy furniture, not to mention stunning architecture and enthralling theater possible? I cannot afford to support artists, musicians, actors, great chefs, and the other people who create and produce some of the marvelous=20 features of our culture, nor can my equally middle level and poor income earning friends. But once in a blue moon we all manage to go to a great French restaurant, an art gallery, a neighborhood=20 where fashionable estates are located, or a shopping center that features exquisite merchandise. =20 It is wonderful to go to an elegant mall such as those strewn about in the New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, and other areas of the country where these businesses can count on enough wealthy folks to sustain them. I and those like me would not be able to support elegant ocean cruisers, delightful automobiles, great sports events such as Wimbledon or the America Cup. But there are those who can and I, for one, am extremely glad for that.=20 This is one of the reasons - although not the main one - for my distress about the kind of rich bashing that is so common in our culture. I find it disgusting how the envious among us would rather destroy the rich than witness the gap between their modest wealth and the great wealth of the rich. I find it especially loathsome=20 how so many American politicians, who ought to know better, gladly capitalize on this envy and persist on using the rich as a scapegoat of their own unwillingness to do the right thing, namely, concentrate on defending us from foreign and domestic aggressors and leave us be and fend for ourselves in peace, however much economic disparity=20 this may generate - far less, incidentally, than is generated in societies where politicians try to even things out and run the entire country's economy to the ground. Of course, the first thing to be said about the rich is that they have every right to seek their kind of life, so long as they do this in peace. But there is also this point, namely, that their existence is of enormous benefit to the rest of us, not just in jobs and national wealth but in keeping culture at a level that is there for all of us to enjoy, to save up for once in a while, even if we do not wish to live the kind of intense life they are willing to live. ====================================================================== Tom Brokaw, Political Advocate NBC TV's Nightly News engaged in outright political advocacy on Friday, March 12, when Tom Brokaw and his colleagues advocated the government regulation of private security guards. Not only did they repeatedly call for such regulation. Brokaw himself triumphantly announced at the end of the segment that "Congress may have a solution for this problem by drafting laws regulating private security police." What has brought on this unabashed politicization of NBC's Nightly News program? The occasional trouble some customers have had with unfit security officers. Never mind that these customers could simply file suit for malpractice, service fraud or something similar. But this would merely improve the security services by providing very strong disincentives for failure to deliver on their promises. No, Mr. Brokaw is interested in more, namely, giving our governments more to do, so we can consume more of the wealth of the nation. But=20 that tact is useless. The very same day this broadcast was aired, Brokaw was covering a story of a shooting at a Brooklyn family court where a crazed father shot his ex-wife to death in a custody fight - right in the court room. How did the father make it through the security system of the family court? Well, folks, he was a parole officer in the law enforcement system of the local government, that's how. Here we have a case of government control par excellance - one could not be more directly under such control. The parole officer is part of the government itself. That same day NBC TV New York news broadcast also reported that 3 members of the elite drug enforcement bureau of New York State have been arrested for trading in pure heroin. And all across the country government officials are being charged with crimes after crimes. So, what I want to know, where did Mr. Brokaw and his team of news reporters get the idea that the regulation of private securities by government is going to, on balance, improve matters in law enforcement? Government Corruption, Stupid! Have you not heard? Whenever something goes wrong in a regulated industry, such as in the wholesale or retail meat business (so that some children have died from tainted meat), we never, ever hear about how the regulators have gone wrong, how they are responsible for what happened (because they=20 and the likes of Tom Brokaw have lulled us into complacency with their=20 promise of solving our problems. When airlines or cars or trains crash, the production and safety of all of them extensively regulated by various levels of government, we just do not get reports on 60 Minutes about the ineptness and personal guilt of government regulators. Mr. Brokaw, wake up and smell the coffee - it's the government that does the most damage, stupid. ========================================================================= School Choice and Taxes Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes interviewed the Milwaukee legislator who managed to get Wisconsin to embark on an educational experiment in educational choice. All the experiment involves is the establishment of a private school funded with tax moneys that would otherwise have gone to public education. The methods of teaching in this project have been extremely successful thus far. While the public schools have a 60 percent drop out rate, with a large percent of those who graduate unable to read and write, the private experiment has a rate of 98 percent graduation from the same pool of students. But my point here is not to debate the issue of school choice. In my view compulsory public schooling is grossly immoral and, not surprisingly, produces rather inferior education for the students who experience it. As a college professor for the last 21 years,=20 I have noticed that the bulk of the students I teach, all graduates=20 of such compulsory schools, tend to hate to use their minds. They=20 think of education as a chore - exactly as one would expect from=20 anything shoved down their throats for 12 years by bureaucratic edict. What interested me in Mike Wallace's segment is the way each time Wallace mentioned the private school alternative, he said very firmly that these schools take away money that would otherwise go to public education. He kept stressing this point as if these schools got some kind of free ride that the public schools do not receive. In fact, of course, when those who choose the private alternative get this paid for by a tax rebate, nothing is taken away from the public schools. The teaching loads of public schools are reduced and thus they lose nothing. Furthermore, in the case of Milwaukee, while as a matter of the record public schools spend $6000.00 per student each year, the private school that serves as the successful alternative spends only $2500.00 or so on each student. Teaches in the private schools receive have the $30,000.00 salary of the public school teachers. Wallace, of course, also interviewed the head of the public school teachers' union, who, incidentally, earns $80,000 a year, who, wonder of wonders, opposes the experiment. And he also brought in the head of the regional NAACP, who is also against the experiment. In each=20 case Wallace accepted the claim - and repeated in throughout the program=20 - that the private experiment is depriving the public schools of a=20 large sum of tax funds. With a bit of fairness about the finances of the matter - something journalistic ethics would demand even of Mr. Mike Wallace - 60 Minutes could have figured out that the school choice ideas circulating these days involve no deprivation of funds but a change of where the tax payers' money will be spend. It is as simple as when someone decides to eat in one restaurant instead of another - he is not depriving the latter of anything, simply not spending his money there. That also=20 means that no meals have to be prepared for him. But, I suppose, if Mike Wallace and the chiefs at 60 Minutes=20 understood such elementary matters of finance, there would be more sense about the school choice issue in the first place. It would be one thing if public schools had such a brilliant record, so that taking children out of the system would be lamentable. But by all counts public schools, as most other politicized social projects, are=20 a big mess, supporting not the students who attend but the accumulated=20 bureaucracies surrounding them. ========================================================================= Andy Rooney and CBS's Double Standard I am not so much a fan of 60 Minutes as someone who believes he=20 needs to check out the most watched public affairs program on American television. I am a cultural anthropologists, not a fan! =20 For example, I am interested in Mike Wallace's way of treating=20 people - he once declared, after all, that "With the businessman [the=20 interviewer] may play prosecutor, or if the individual responds better=20 to lulling, then the interviewer goes that way. With Horowitz and=20 Baryshnikov [i.e., artists], I had to reassure them I was wearing my=20 white hat: I wanted to establish a rapport between us." =20 Indeed, Wallace always tries to nail people in business or other=20 profit making institutions, but with artists he wears kids' gloves,=20 despite the fact that artists are as prone to vice as anyone else. =20 (Consider the recent discovery that John Cage "borrowed" his idea of=20 silence as music from Harold Acton, a composer whose 1928 "Cornelian"=20 contained the idea that Cage gained fame for.) Notice, also, that Wallace & Company rarely if every take on academicians or others who are good with spoken words. They seem chicken when it comes to people=20 who are their own size, as it were! And most recently 60 Minutes did not disappoint me again. This time it was Rooney who spoke ill of some people and, unlike when he disparaged some minorities, he got no flack for it from CBS. In a commentary on the 1992 elections, Rooney lamented the way the candidates spoke out on the issues. In the course of airing some obvious complaints - who wouldn't wish for a more elegant election process? - Rooney said that he does not want his political candidates to sound like "vacuum cleaner salesmen." Well, I wonder why CBS isn't suspending Rooney this time, for his unjust denigration of the total membership of a perfectly honorable profession! Is it, perhaps, that it is not politically incorrect to lambaste people in the business world? Why? What is so acceptable about putting down people in business (Wallace) and making derisive comments about those selling vacuum cleaners? No doubt, most of us have some such prejudices and we don't=20 feel terribly about them. They matter little in our lives, although if they begin to matter somewhat, we really ought to look out and make sure we don't act on them. For the people on 60 Minutes, however, such prejudices are un- forgivable on two counts: First, they peddle themselves as the conscience of our society, what with their sanctimonious tone of voice, their constant accusations and their holier than though searches for further targets of their gleeful revelation of vice, great or small. (I recall how cheerfully 60 Minutes exposed the fact that at Auburn University=20 some football players got help from coaches to the tune of having $300 loans co-signed! Really worth national exposure!) Second, they are perhaps just a tad more influential with their audience than would be those outside the media. =20 If CBS reprimands Andy Rooney for slighting blacks or others, why=20 should Rooney escape censure for badmouthing those who sell vacuum=20 cleaners? =20 Maybe because CBS and 60 Minutes are not so much interested in =20 locating injustices in our society as they are in pleasing their=20 colleagues in the industry, fellow folks who are mostly interested in=20 being politically correct, never mean morally right and just. ========================================================================= Due Process versus Desired Results Human justice is directly concerned with process, indirectly=20 with results. =20 Life is itself a process. Human life in society manifests=20 itself in infinite processes, aiming at infinite results. There is only one common result all human life ought to seek and sometimes does indeed result in and it is the happiness, the morally good life of the individual human being. For this reason a good society has a system of legal justice that protects the processes whereby men and women will not have anyone around them obstruct their pursuit of happiness. It is that pursuit that is crucial to the law, not the result itself. A parallel situation obtains concerning attempts to adjudicate dispute among members of the citizenry. A criminal trial is such an adjudicative process. And here again the result is only indirectly the concern of the legal system, the process is the crucial factor. And this is clear from the fact that the system often leaves the=20 result in the hands of a jury, private citizens with no political=20 and legal office. The system is supposed to ensure that every trial follows sound procedures - due processes of law! But the tenor as well as the aims of our legal system have been=20 changing. Politicians, including their legal appointees such as the new Attorney General of the United States of America, are focused not on process but on result. The country is in danger of becoming a=20 semi-civilized lynch mob. This could be appreciated from watching the news reports of all the fuss associated with the Rodney King federal civil rights trial. Too many black leaders treated the event as a contest where they are awaiting a desired result, never mind what the process. After one trial resulted in what most people felt was a bad verdict, this was not written off as the cost of trusting due process of law. Instead a new trial was demanded, even though by the tradition of our legal system this came very close to being double jeopardy - trying persons for the same crime twice. The response that this isn't so because two different sovereign authorities are involved is pretty much indicative=20 of how due process has given way to desired result. How could a civilized community depend on a system of justice that has two, possibly divided, legal authorities governing it? Only because people are overly=20 concerned with results do they switch from the sovereign authority of the federal government to that of the state governments. Both the Left and the Right does this. In the abortion controversy the Right tends to count on state law. In civil rights matters the Left counts on the federal government. In other matters they line up the opposite way - for example, in some environmental matters the Left likes state law while the Right wants federal jurisdiction. And all this should not surprise us too much. Although the United States of America was conceived in terms of a legal system focused on due process, in more recent times the government began establishing=20 firm goals for us all to pursue. If the processes of the law do not produce an educated public, a relief for the poor, environmental purity, total racial harmony, decent speech, etc. When such a role is conceived for our government, is it surprising that the people are willing to throw out due process and insist in the desired results? What they wanted from the Rodney King trial was a conviction and punishment of the police officers involved and if the processes of law would not give them this result, they threatened to do damage to society. The Rodney King jury may have managed to retain its integrity during its deliberations but it is difficult to tell, given that they were undoubtedly aware of what would follow if they did not produce the desired result. And it looks like the delivered a safe verdict, one that would do little office to all concerned parties on the outside of the court room. ========================================================================= Media Double Standards It pays to be getting old. Not only are most of the painful=20 learning experiences behind one, so one lives a less anxious life,=20 but one can remember what others are still awaiting to learn. =20 All this came into sharp focus for me when I was watching President Bill Clinton take the very risky step of explaining to us what happened during the last few weeks in Waco, Texas. He seems clearly to know, despite the lack of any evidence, that the cult=20 members committed suicide, that the fire was set by them, and that it was really all the fault of their leader, David Koresh, no one=20 else. And wasn't it gracious of Mr. Clinton, as of his Attorney General, to "take full responsibility" for what happened when=20 everything came to a fiery end in Waco? As if Mr. Clinton will=20 have to stand trial and answer to a jury for what transpired there under his presidential watch! But most interesting to this semi-old-timer is now the bulk of the nation's media treated Mr. Clinton upon his all knowing declarations about who is guilty and what actually happened in Waco. Contrast this whith what happened when the killer Charles Manson=20 was first caught and accused of murdering Sharon Tate, among others,=20 and President Richard Nixon took it upon himself to announce the man's culpability before a trial had a chance to get under way.=20 The majority of the media produced a collective wagging finger, chiding their despised president for undermining the processes of justice and not allowing the legal system to do its job discovering who in fact was guilty of the crimes with which Manson had been charged. =20 Never mind that the case against crazy Charlie was nearly open and=20 shut, while eactly what Koresh's did is still fully hidden behind a=20 wall of confusion, the remains of an inferno, and numerous bureaucratic ambiguities and suspicions. =20 Just remember that Bill Clinton, in contrast to Dick Nixon, is the media's darling. So when he second guesses the investigative process of this country's legal system, it is not even worth a whisper of complaint. Where are the ACLU people being interviewed on Today? Why are Donahue and Oprah silent on Clinton's violation of the principle=20 of the presumption of lack of guilt? Why are they treating the=20 government with such kid gloves now? Let me hypothesize. It is, after all, their government now. Their agenda is being pursued in the White House, their socialist public policies are soon to be in the offing. And why would they worry about such niceties as due process of law, presumption of guiltlessness, etc., when branding Clinton guilty of subverting justice could possibly undermine his marvelously collectivist policy efforts? Sometimes journalists excuse their blindness by claiming that objectivity and fairness are impossible. Not, however, in those cases where these virtues would help their cause - if a jury is biased in favor of police officers, well then that jury just did wrong, period, no complexities, no troublesome skepticism is to be=20 found there at all. But when they ignore their darling politicians'=20 bad judgment, well it is all due to the impossibility of removing=20 one's prejudices from one's job. What a convenient doulbe standard! Yet, folks, this is all subterfuge. The Sam Donaldson's of celebrity journalism, the Katie Curric's and John Chancellors, all stand guilty of gross bias in support of politicians they adore, who are on their ideological side. We see it in how they handled Anita Hill, even though no proof favoring her case has ever been produced, quite the contrary. =20 We see it now with turning a blind eye toward Mr. Clinton's perversion of justice. =20 Because Mr. Clinton hasn't the faintest clue who was at fault in=20 Waco. He doesn't know whether Koresh ordered anyone to commit suicide. He does not even know whether the initial attack on the compound made any legal, never mind moral, sense. Yet he has already settle the matter to his full satisfaction and, moreover, told the American people=20 what to think, too. =20 But then Bill Clinton isn't Richard Nixon, the nasty man who ran=20 rings around the press, who was cleverer than they, and who simply=20 didn't play the kind of ball the press wanted him to. Isn't it reasonable to ask our sanctimonious media stars to be at least fair and hold every president to the same standards of good conduct and leadership? I think it is. ========================================================================= Serious Education Reform When the late Allan Bloom wrote his best selling The Closing of the American Mind a few years ago, a debate picked up about just what might be wrong about American higher education. Bloom took what he considered to be a very serious approach to his subject matter and concluded, essentially, that American colleges and universities have become hot beds of philosophical relativism, the position that in the end everything is equally important, there are no objective standards by which to judge educational performance or even what is important to learn about and what may be less important. Bloom said, in effect, that we have a philosophical problem with our educational system, one that has serious harmful practical consequences by leaving us without a compass, by disorienting us about values. Bloom's views were dismissed as elitist by many who run and teach in our educational institutions. This means that Bloom didn't accept that everything is equal, that all views and ideas have equal merit. This elitism does, of course, fly in the face of a certain feature of American education, one that many associated with it fully embrace.=20 This is the belief that everyone, regardless of interest, motivation and aptitude ought to receive the benefits of education. Such an egalitarian doctrine, which is a supporting assumption of the welfare state, does indeed conflict with the view Bloom championed, namely, that education should aim to teaching those who have a chance to make the most of it. But even Bloom didn't realize just how deep is the problem of=20 American higher education. A recent report, "An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education," spells out just how sorry a picture we have as we look at America's colleges and universities. The emphasis in this report, however, is on the lack of skills of=20 students who emerge from American higher education. It points out that the bulk of students graduate without any useful skills. It states that institutions of higher education "certify for graduation too many students who cannot read and write very well, too many whose intellectual dept and breadth are unimpressive, and too many whose skills are inadequate in the face of the demands of contemporary life." Yet, the report's authors, 16 prominent educators, leaders of=20 industry, heads of institutes and foundations and others, do not make any valuable proposals other than to urge that higher education be subjected to "a self-assessment." Since the obvious seems to escape these important observers, let me make some suggestions that are the result of having taught throughout the country's higher education system since 1967. The first and most radical but also elementary remedy for our educational woes is the abolition of compulsory schooling. This is necessary because children are simply not suitable to being subjected to the sort of massive uniformity that elementary and high school education imposes upon them. Children, as young human beings, share the essential trait of adults, namely, their individuality. Individuality means, among other things, that one is in need of special treatment, based on who one is, something that can come to light only if one is offered diverse developmental opportunities in one's education. Young people are ready to learn at different speeds, different subjects, with different aptitudes, by different methods. The type of uniformity that is part and parcel of the bulk of public education simply is not=20 suited to them. A system of higher education that follows in the steps of the schooling provided in public education is destined to serve most=20 students very badly. While some percentage of those students will have received just the sort of education they need, the bulk will=20 have been miseducated. As a result, they arrive at universities and colleges without motivation, skill, interest, or even elementary curiosity. =20 Day after day, over nearly three decades, I have taught entering college and university students who show an attitude of disdain and disinterest and the main test before me has been to inspire them to learning, never mind what it is they might come to learn. Having been coerced to attend school for 12 years, most of these students treat colleges and universities as prisoners would treat the outside world - they are mostly indulging their desires, satisfying their pleasures, resenting anyone who reminds them of what they were forced to do in the elementary and high schools they were forced to attend. In the face of their plight, many professors have no will to apply the strict standards that preparation for the adult world would actually require. Only a few students have the discipline to apply themselves after years of having their own needs and aspirations totally ignored. That for the first couple of years of their higher education they choose not to apply but to enjoy themselves is no wonder - they have, after all, been in confinement. During these=20 first few years all one hears from them as complaints about having to do anything at all. Tests, papers, quizzes and the like are resented. Day after day students ask whether class might be canceled - just for the fun of it. Indeed, fun is their primary objective,=20 having been robbed of much of their childhood pleasures by a system=20 of imprisonment, of involuntary servitude. There may have been a time in the past when societies required the forcible training of their young to carry out the drudgery that amounted to surviving, but we no longer live like that. We ought to adjust to the fact that our society is supposed to bring up sovereign citizens, not serfs or slaves. And such sovereign citizens are not going to be educated by means that fail to take into account the budding sovereignty of their children. Yet, that is perhaps the one lesson nearly all the witch dogs of American education deny. The recent nearly total opposition of the educational establishment to the very idea of educational choice, never mind that it wasn't nearly the sort of choice that is actually needed, testifies to this. Educators seem to be far more attached to the orthodoxy of public school than to the commitment to actually educator children. Not until we realize that a free citizenry is going to be left uneducated or at least undereducated without strict attention to the need for adjustment to individual differences, to the freedom to choose from different approaches to education. And higher educational institutions will continue to miseducated those who get such a very awful start in their human development. ========================================================================= Feminism Reconsidered There are few ideological movements that have the gall to=20 explicitly champion the idea that some group is superior to all others. Mostly that is done surreptitiously. The Black Power=20 movement and feminism are exceptions. The former of these can be appreciated because there is=20 little doubt about the mistreatment of most blacks throughout American history. I live in the south and I am amazed how little even prominent scholars acknowledge that the people of the South=20 had perpetrated a vicious injustice toward millions of blacks. In response to such evasion and out and out hostility, members of the targeted group have good reason to organize and mount a defensive campaign. Sometimes it can go overboard, but what human endeavors manage to avoid this? I am not sure that having a black television network counts as rectifying injustices perpetrated against blacks or a way to perpetuate racial division. Affirmative action and similar government mandated policies seem to me also to fuel racial strive rather than serve to right past wrongs. Feminism is another matter. Other than some bizarre cases, the lot of women in the past hasn't been that much worse than that of men. Sure, certain ancient divisions of labor no longer apply and not all have adjusted to this fact, some even resisting it with tooth and nail. Still, what kept women out of the seats of political power was not a conspiracy but, at worst, oversight and more likely obsolete habits of mind and policy. Once the rationale for the old divisions of labor no longer applied, adjustment began to be made and we are now well on the way to a society, unlike any other in=20 the world, where nothing stands between women and the sort of life they choose to live but some stubbornness and complacency. Thus feminism is largely superfluous. And indeed it awakens in many people suspicions of subterfuge. Is there really a cause for this ideology? Are women that much worse off - consider that although they have not had the opportunities of men in the world of politics, science, business and the military, they have also avoided much of the hardship that goes with these. Women haven't had to go to war much, and that, one would think, is a big plus. On the emotional front, they have not been brought up to think that they may not express their feelings, lest they undermine their effectiveness at work and other undertakings. They have had the great benefit of being near their children, something men have=20 only just begun to experience. Feminism, then, isn't really mostly about past injustices. Rather it looks like it does serve to enhance a rather peculiar=20 agenda. What is this? Well, contrary to denials by Gloria Steinem and others, the central unique theme of feminism, one that isn't already present in the quite different women's rights movement, is female exclusivity=20 and superiority. =20 The idea is that, for whatever reason, it is women who are more=20 moral, more intelligent, more politically and diplomatically astute,=20 more tenacious, etc., etc., than men. Furthermore, because of their inferiority, men have tried to squelch women's superiority with the sole weapon at their disposal, namely, physical prowess. It is, of course, difficult to get any direct statement of this kind from women. The exception is Andrea Dworkin, the author of the book Intercourse which sees all heterosexual=20 intercourse to be rape. And this book was by no means published=20 by some weird, fringe press. No, it was The Free Press of the=20 MacMillan Company that let us have the chance to read it, back=20 in 1987. And a not too different theme is advanced by the famous law school professor Catherine MacKinnon, in her A Feminist Theory of the State, published in 1989 by Harvard University Press. And through the community of academic feminists hundreds of essays are published month after months declaring such views as that lesbian love is superior to the heterosexual variety, that all of history=20 and science and philosophy to date produced by males has a distinct and destructive male bias, that women know differently from men and not having their point of view at our disposal is a major catastrophe in our understanding of the world, etc. I am by no means the first male to admit that women differ from men and that where that difference is essential, it is desirable. But it seems to me foolish to propose that men see the world differently from women - that only shuts off communication between men and women, something we certainly do not need. And it seems also nothing but useless agitation, a kind of provocation, to bait men with the idea that what they have contributed to the world is something low and shameful, whereas if it had been women who had made the bulk of the literary, scientific, philosophical and related contributions, we would all be in better shape today. Such a line does little more than put many men on the defensive and alienates them from any effort to=20 negotiate real difficulties with intelligence, tact and finesse. Feminism is mostly an ideology - a system of thought that tends,=20 in the main, to support preexisting frustrations, angers, disappointments, or indeed resentments. It is also a form of scapegoating - picking=20 some group identified by attributes one cannot choose as responsible for certain admittedly waxing problems in the world. In that sense, feminism is like other collectivist doctrines, such as Aryanism - it=20 serves mostly to separate us into groups who will go to war, not in=20 uniting us into communities in which we can all contribute our varying=20 talents and skills toward the solution of problems. ========================================================================= Goals Versus Expectations In politics that are essentially two very broad concerns. The=20 first has to do with what kind of country we ought to aim for. =20 Elections and all the other political machinations should focus=20 on this concern, first and foremost. =20 In this area our questions must center on what sort of=20 community should human beings live in. All the traditional=20 problems of political philosophy arise when we focus on the=20 goals of political life. There is another sphere of politics that is also vital. =20 Here we must determine our expectations. After all, even if we=20 are extremely wise and brilliant about the first area of concern,=20 we do not have full control about what actually will happen in=20 our communities. Attempting to gain such control is itself one=20 of the most troublesome political problems. If we recognize that=20 our sphere of authority is limited by other people's sovereignty=20 -- even when others fail to see this -- we will realize, also,=20 that in politics there is only so much that can be achieved by=20 individuals, by ourselves! So we need, also, to ask what can we=20 reasonably expect to happen. In our country everyone ought to strive for reorienting=20 politics on the course toward human liberty. That is because=20 the free society is, indeed, the most suitable to human=20 community life. Acknowledging everyone's basic rights to life,=20 liberty and property must be our goal. But can we expect that=20 this will actually be achieved in our society? Clearly not. As a father of three children, it concerns me what they can expect from America's political leaders. My own parents had a very similar concern back in Budapest, Hungary, when I was young. And since they realized that Hungary's communist regime will not be the most healthy place for their child, they arranged to have me smuggled out to the West. That is how I came to be an American citizen. My parents expected Hungary's political regime to be=20 very bad for my well being. I am not expecting things to turn out as badly here in America as they did for citizens of communist Hungary. But neither am I=20 expecting American politics to improve much for a while. When an administration such as that of President Bill Clinton is well received in a largely democratic country, it bodes badly for human liberty. Their nearly total willingness to turn every problem into one that government ought to try to solve, with the accompanying limitations on human liberty to follow, there is little reason for hope. The country can be expected to get worse before it gets better, at least as far as its political institutions are concerned. America is a radical experiment in human history and for the time being those in charge of this experiment are choking and have decided to return to the discredited approach to governing the Founders had tried to abandon. =20 The major feat of the Founders had been to invent a largely free=20 society, one that stopped depending upon paternalism, upon the reign of some few people who would run everyone's life for various goals of their own. Instead a country governed by principles of individual rights had been established. Today this political ideal is in retreat. More and more the=20 officials of the country prefer governmental solutions to those=20 produced by the people for themselves. Even in the courts the idea=20 of individual responsibility is being slowly abandoned. Everyone is doing things as a result of something having happened, not on his or her own initiative. Thus most bad things are excused. And the idea of collective guilt, which so much distinguished our culture=20 from, say, Nazi Germany, is reasserting itself in our society. Blaming all whites for the wrongs done to blacks in the past, blaming all men for wrongs done to some women in the past - such an outlook simply is taking our society back to the dark ages of politics. In this climate one has the responsibility to teach one's children - and everyone else who will but consider the advice - to expect to live dangerously, to have to be watchful of what they will say and to whom they will say it. Politically correct thinking will be demanded more and more and our children need to be prudent about how they will behave in such a political atmosphere. Of course, there is still a chance for improving our political lives. Only it is not highly probable that for a while such improvement will be forthcoming. For some time in the future the people will try, once again, to use force and power to solve problems, not to leave it to the people to find solutions. And when that happens, we can expect an era of political decline. ========================================================================= Why All the Fuss About Skin Pigmentation Now and then some of the talk about race takes on colorations of insanity. That was the case recently when one of the most prominent newspapers of this country ran an opinion article condemning Hollywood for casting Sidney Poitier to play Thurgood Marshall in the TV drama=20 "Separate but Equal" which dealt with the famous civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education. The author of this silly piece argued that "With black people, skin color counts." So, Hollywood is sup- posed to play ball and cast historical figures according to highly sensitive skin pigmentation of the potential actors. If anyone were to argue that "With white people, skin color counts," so we ought to cast white historical figures along those criteria, all hell would break loose - surely the whole point about the civil rights struggle of blacks is that skin color should not=20 matter at all unless it has direct bearing on some dramatic point. Skin color just hasn't much to do with what and who we are, period, be we black or white to red or yellow. Sure, when we are oppressed for our color pigmentation, this can put some irrational emphasis on color and even induce some people to unite into groups of political activists on that basis alone. But this itself makes sense only as a reaction. Without some having made a big deal out of color, making a big deal out of it would be entirely unjustified except for aesthetic reasons now and then. In response to this strange racist sounding missive about how=20 important color pigmentation is to blacks - one wonders whether this=20 is some kind of scientifically based remarks about the black population of the United States, world-wide or some apartment building in which=20 the author lives - some wild things were said in the letters section. For example, one writer put the matter this way: "In our relations with whites, it is racial origin and not skin color that is the final=20 assessment of us." Who has established this as fact? =20 Indeed, this is the kind of thinking that seems to lead a lot of Americans these days in to mere reverse racism rather than away from=20 the whole idea that race and color and other insignificant features of persons should make a lot of difference to how we relate to one another. This kind of groupism is what poisons the minds of so many: let's unite under the banner of color, sex, national origin, ethnic background, etc., etc. =20 But why? What does it matter toward the assessment of a person what color he or she is, what race he or she is classified as? There is nothing a person can do about these things, so surely they cannot be sources of merit or demerit. The main objection to racial prejudice is just that judging someone by race is irrational! It is merely a more particular version of the general point that judging someone as good or evil, competent or incompetent, etc. simply cannot be based on factors about him or her over which no control can be exercised (except perhaps via extra ordinary means). =20 Already back in the 60s we saw the development of the black power and black-is-beautiful movement and this was a big mistake. Sure, it made a bit of sense because when groups are unjustly linked and=20 treated, it is a matter of self-defense to seek some limited solidarity in response to that. But to make some kind of wholesale ideology of such temporary measures is very unwise. Blacks and everyone else would benefit from a good dosage of=20 the ideology that is getting most of the flack in our culture, namely, individualism. We should not assume black or white or any other kind=20 of solidarity about politics, economic philosophy, ethics, tastes in=20 entertainment, and the like. That is what denies people their basic humanity - namely, their nature as choosing, self-developing, self- governing individuals. ========================================================================= Good Bye Free Speech During recent decades there has been much debate over the=20 increase of government's intrusion in people's lives. Modern liberals defended big government, claiming that all this is needed so as to distribute the national wealth equitably. But, they added, that is=20 the only intrusion they support. =20 Their reason for favoring big government was their alleged=20 concern about the poor and the abuse of power by the wealthy. But,=20 they assured us, they do not favor government taking away our freedom of speak out, to promote diverse viewpoints, and to disagree with the government itself. They were, after all, liberals, so all they wanted is to liberate the poor and helpless, not to amass power for the state. Many of us feared that these hopes would soon be shatterer. Once government embarks on the futile task of making people equal,=20 it is only a small step to wanting to control what we say as well. =20 After all, the wealthy might be able to make their views more=20 effectively than those who are poorer. But no, we were told, this=20 would never happen - freedom of speech is too precious, vital to=20 a good society. The nineties may be the decade when the worry about government limiting our speech will prove to have been fully justified. There are some outstanding examples, small and great, of government muzzling people, or at least trying shameless to do so, with very little protest from liberals standing in their way. Most recently Hillary Clinton lead the charge against a group of insurance companies that dared to oppose her and her husband's plans to impose government managed medical services on the American citizenry. She went on the road with her attack, indignantly and with the style of a monarch who felt betrayed by her subjects. Instead of supporting a nation wide debate and withdrawing until the citizenry had had its=20 say, she jumped the gun with royal impatience and denounced those who dared to question her wisdom about what kind of medical care the American people ought to receive. And she did it with hardly any resistance from politicians or the media. Instead, the conflict was reported everywhere as if the insurance group had perpetrated treason - certainly Mrs. Clinton sounded off as if she believed=20 just that. In an unrelated but similar incidence, a Virginia citizen had his automobile tags invalidated by the Virginia motor vehicle=20 authorities because he had personalized these tags to read: GOVT SUX. The argument of these bureaucrats was that the tags are actually the property of the state, not of the driver, so they=20 have the authority to revoke their permission if they so choose. True, the government of Virginia owns the tags, just as the United States Government owns the electromagnetic spectrum over which the insurance companies' message was broadcast. And, for that matter, the governments of this country own the streets on which many of the country's newspapers and magazines are sold and onto which most of the country's book stores and publishing houses open. Thus, in a pinch, when the government gets terribly upset about some publication, it can claim that the industry is "invested with the public interest," exactly the justification used to impose smoking restrictions on restaurants and other private establishments. As the government expands its scope of involvement in the lives of its citizenry - gradually socializing the country - more and more of the limitations on it Americans have taken for granted will be eroded. Everything will be a matter of public administration, with no privacy left. This is just what the California member of the U.S. Congress who wants a national law banning smoking in all places with over ten persons present would rely on to defend his measure. Every place where people might gather is, after all, connected to some=20 public area - even private homes. The lesson is clear: there is nothing that can be protected from government intrusion once government has the power to manage our lives in the way liberals have always advocated. Those militant feminists who want publications controlled for their sexual content=20 and Janet Reno, who advocates government bans on television content, are merely taking the original liberal theory to its logical limits. The bulldozer of the bloated government cannot be limited. Maybe that is why our fellow citizen in Virginia wanted to call attention to the fact that government sucks - that it has become a corrupt, power hungry, unlimited institution in our society we ought to fear rather than honor. ========================================================================= Making Society Unlitigous We have all heard about the messenger who got it because folks didn't appreciate the message! Well, we have something akin to that today taking the country by storm. This is lawyer bashing. It used to be that only used car dealer had it so bad. They were the but of nasty jokes and derision everywhere, especially on the lips of comics. I recall Allen King, a fairly old timer, who started in on various institutions such as airlines and hospitals. It was all exaggeration and done in good fun, even thought it tended to sting a bit. If I were a doctor, I would not like coming under King's ire, not to mention an airline executive. But lawyer bashing has emerged big time recently. Books abound in the practice, movies such as "Henry" and "Class Action" go at it big time. No more respect for attorneys in the fashion received by Perry Mason, no sirree. Yet this is entirely unjust. The only reason attorneys are so visible, make so much money, is that the country has gone law crazy. Laws are made by the thousands every day, in COngress, at the White House, at the state, county and municipal levels of government. And=20 to fend off their oppressive impact, people must hire lawyers. And lawyers need to be trained at high expense, at reputable institutions, so they understandably command high fees. The citizen who hires an attorney expects the best defense at what he or she perceives as a vile prosecution based on needless, reckless laws. =20 But then the citizen turns right around and joins the media which is constantly asking for more laws - regulate this, regulate that,=20 and that only produces more laws and a greater need for lawyers. The latest of this process involves the desire to have vitamins regulated, and idea that was proposed in the early 1970s, by the late New York Senator Jacob J. Javits but didn't get far back then. Now there is another try. And with the leadership of reporters, such as those on the CBS TV program 60 Minutes, the public keeps accepting the totally silly idea that government regulation improves society. What it does=20 is make more jobs for lawyers. I have a solution to the problem. When someone sues a person -=20 including when some branch of government does this - if the suit fails, there should be major penalties. COurt costs, time spent dealing with the law suit, etc., as well as punitive damage for causing the head aches and psychological damage, need to be paid for by those who failed. I am reasonably sure that such a policy would reduce not only the number of law suits, both criminal and civil, but eliminate lots of jobs for=20 attorneys and even provide a discouragement for lawmakers. If to this one added the provision that when a mishap occurs with some firm that needs to comply with government regulation, say an airline or some rail company, it is not only the firms that may be held liable but the regulators, as well, the process of law and regulation=20 making would slow down considerably. And this would only serve justice and take away nothing from the quality of our lives. It would also restore law to its rightful place as an honorable profession, not some flaky business guided by no more than political huckstering. ========================================================================= Discomfort from Sexism Not long ago it was modern liberals who argued that while it is wrong to ban untoward opinions and expressions of ideas - e.g., flag burning, topless dancing - there is nothing wrong about regulating the conduct of people is business when such conduct=20 does not conform to moral norms. If a firm does not provide its employees with adequate insurance or wages, the government may=20 force it to do so. But, said the liberal, don't worry, be happy: None of this means that ideas and attitudes will ever be subject to government control. We are, they went on, friends of liberty, loyal to the First Amendment, and only want to make sure people=20 are treated well in the market place. Now, however, the legacy of modern liberalism has come to something not even recognizably liberal: The United States Supreme Court has ruled that expressing untoward sexual ideas or symbols in=20 the work place can be banned. Ideas have come under the jurisdiction of the government. If someone feels badly enough about such ideas, so that she considers it an impediment to comfortable work conditions, the people who wish to exhibit such untoward ideas or symbols can be shut up, period. I have spoken to some academic women about this matter and we agreed that some of the stuff displayed by men at the work place is clearly offensive and can make it tough for reasonable people to just accept it without protest. But there are some considerations about the matter on which we differed markedly. The first is that being offended simply is no grounds for calling in the vice squad, the government, with its force of arms. My colleague claimed that this option must be available to the offended party, at least if she is unable to get the institution to comply with her expression of dismay. My own view is that this should be a matter that one must handle apart from politics. Here is why: First, there is absolutely no guarantee that leaving such matters in the hands of the law will solve the problem. Politicians, judges, police officers, and the rest are not beyond being pretty unwise as to what is and is not offensive. Second, removing the matter from=20 the private sector encourages the demoralization of the society. It leads to people loosing a grip on their dos and don'ts, leaving it always to "higher authorities" to handle such matters. Third, the offended party is being treated as a child who is unable to handle her dismaying situation competently, who cannot, as it were, "kick=20 butt" when men get out of hand around her work station. Surely women are tougher than to require (mostly male) politicians to reach out and help them out of their predicament. But most importantly, the court's stance on how to handle sexual offensiveness in the work place has far reaching and insidious=20 implications for other types of offensiveness. There is here a clear case of the slippery slope danger - will we next ban the practice of placing provocative messages on the office doors of college teachers? Surely those can be extremely offensive - if my next door colleague, who may be a communist or fascist or advocate of some other ideas I despise, displays slogans on his or her door, and if this makes me feel bad and irritated, will I be able not only to complain in house, as it were, but also to call in the thought police? The court said one need not show psychological damage, only discomfort at the work place. Well, one can find oneself feeling such discomfort not just from disagreeable ideas but bad or ridiculous fashions, gross taste in art or design, etc., etc. In short, if the sensitivity of a=20 colleague to some expression by a fellow worker is the gauge of what may be banned or regulated by the state, look out. There cannot be any rational limits to this since sensitivity is inherently subjective. It depends on beliefs, convictions, upbringing, religious faith, etc., all of which, at least in a diverse and relatively free society, are to be expected to influence people with whom one works. Modern liberals had vein hopes for confining their interest in government regulation to economic matters. They wanted to remain civil libertarians - just look at the poor ACLU struggling to hold the line and grow anachronistic in the process. They have failed. They should have known, as libertarians always knew, that the free mind cannot be protected without also protecting a free market. ========================================================================= Journalistic Sloppiness If there were a tradition of malpractice lawsuits against members of the press, many journalists would now be broke. But while nearly every other productive enterprise and profession is under fire from lawyers seeking to collect judgments in the face=20 errors of judgment, the press is protected from such prospects by the First Amendment - or, at least, by a certain reading of it. (It is arguable that readers who notice distortions and incompetent reporting should be able to take publications to court for just the sort of malpractice that is involved.) Consider the front page article by Peter T. Kilborn in the=20 International Herald Tribune, Monday, September 6, 1993, "When a=20 Job, Not Income, is Disposable." Here we are told that when Lyndon B. Johnson "promised Americans a 'Great Society' in which=20 'the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor," Johnson was spelling out "capitalist ideals." And, since these ideals have not be realized, capitalism is as much of a failure as communism. That is what is implied in Mr. Kilborn's remark that "today, in America, in Russia, indeed throughout the=20 industrialized world, work has drifted a long way from the Marxist=20 and capitalist ideals." But the plain fact is, completely misreported by Mr. Kilborn, that capitalism hasn't been tried. Indeed, a conscientious reporter might have noted that not even Marxist ideals have actually been implemented - Stalin, whom Kilborn calls a Marxist, was basically a fraudulent Marxist, only a bit more that Lyndon Johnson was a fraudulent capitalism (except that LBJ never claimed that he was a capitalist). Still, it is accurate that under Stalin the command economy was given a good college try. But it is totally false to identify the principles of the Great Society with those of capitalism. What did the Great Society stand for? Put simply, the welfare state. Under its neo-Keynesian policies, involving prolonged government intervention in what was never a fully free, laissez-faire economy in the first place - just read Jonathan R. T. Hughes' THE GOVERNMENTAL HABIT (Basic Books, 1972) - the Great Society engaged in massive wealth redistribution and thus undermined the central ideal of capitalism, namely, freedom of trade or voluntary economic relations among human beings. =20 By now the impact of this kind of relentless, merciless tinkering with people's efforts to find solutions to their problems by means of freedom of association, including uncoerced commercial transactions, has been felt not only throughout America but, of course, everywhere in the world. Governments are broke, productivity is falling, employment opportunities are shrinking, the standard of life is being eroded, and journalists are probably the only professionals who aren't experiencing their governments' desperate and inept efforts to remedy matters by even greater controls over people's lives. But never mind all this. Mr. Kilborn and his ilk will likely continue to misreport the situation and readers will continue to consume his product, probably the only one that is not subject to liability lawsuits, the only one free of government regulation, and thus the=20 only one that has a decent chance of being corrected by the reporting of competitors in some other front page article, on some Op-Ed page in the free world. And that, perhaps, is our last hope - that the press is free and Mr. Kilborn and his friends, who seem to wish that capitalism go the way of the Stalinist command economy, haven't become a monopoly, yet. ========================================================================= Scandinavian Misunderstandings PARIS, France. On my last leg of a lecture tour in Europe this summer I stayed at the apartment of one of the organizers' grandmother here in Paris. It is a modern flat with a classic view: both the Eifel Tower and Momarte are clearly in sight from its balcony, with Gare St. Lyon to the left and much of Parisian industry stretched out below from one end to the other of the panorama. This was a very brief stay, following a somewhat grueling=20 series of train rides that took me from Stockholm to Copenhagen, Hamburg, Salzburg, Aix-en-Provence, Lugano, Switzerland, and finally, Paris, just before boarding my flight for Atlanta. In the small flat where I stayed for two nights I had the company for half a day of a=20 young Swedish man, a student of political economy, who attended some of my lectures.=20 On the morning he was to fly back to Stockholm we sat a talked for a while, waiting for his ride, and quite off the wall he remarked how different the apartment is from those in his homeland. The=20 remarked perked my attention because, after all, Scandinavian=20 furnishings are renown the world over. Who has not heard of the famous Danish or Swedish furniture styles? Who does not know of all those streamlined, aerodynamic, clean cut Scandinavian household appliances? Even this apartment in the middle of Paris had such a piece, namely, the small refrigerator in the tiny kitchen. I mentioned to my temporary room mate that he must have in mind the fact that this flat is cluttered with all kinds of belongings - indeed, it was a very busy place, with no particular style or decor, just vivid with all the trappings of modern as well as=20 much earlier apartment living. "But," came the answer, "that is just it - things are so mixed up, so varied, whereas nearly all the apartments in Sweden look alike." =20 Then it hit me - indeed, on all my visits to Denmark, Norway and Sweden I had noticed a uniformity, but one that didn't bother me a bit since, after all, I encountered it for only a few days, at the most, and it is all so nifty, is it not? "Yes, indeed, the style is neat and swift but the uniformity is utterly boring." "All right, but then why do people furnish their flats this way?" "Well, this is something that requires a bit of political history." And at this point I was given a skeleton of that history, the gist of which is that in Sweden, several decades ago, the social democratic government built thousands of apartment houses, all in the identical style, making it the least expensive way to furnish one's home for the ensuing years. With all this building and furniture subsidized by the state, it became economically irresistible to go the same route, at least for the bulk of the people. Ergo, the Scandinavian style, which so many of us elsewhere in the world take to be such a unique and refreshing experience, is little more than a big bore to many who live in its native regions. No one can deny that there is something esthetically and economically satisfying in the furniture that we see at,=20 for example, Danika House, a famous outlet for Scandinavian=20 style household items. But how many of us know that this is=20 something nearly imposed by government edict upon the people of those lands - a product of the welfare state? Moreover, how many of us would enjoy this style if, as it is with millions of Scandinavians, we were to see it in every neighbor's home, from Jacksonville, Florida, to Seattle, Washington? But that, it seems, is just what the Scandinavians have to put up with, courtesy their welfare state's policies of supplying everyone with politically conceived housing. ========================================================================= When Comedy Won't Do=20 P. J. O'Rourke is, no doubt, one of the best humorists in our land. He appropriately carries the title of "Mencken Research Fellow" at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., a think tank dedicated to the advancement of human liberty, pure and simple. Nonetheless, Mr. O'Rourke might not be the best philosopher speaking out on matters of politics, even if he does such a fine job on making us laugh at the expense of governments (e.g., in his book Parliament of Whores). At the opening banquet of Cato's brand new facility in Washington, held last May, this very funny man made some philosophical observations that just do not belong in his repertoire. Here is the remark he, no doubt, felt was extremely profound: "I don't know what's good for you. You don't know what's good for me. We don't know what's good for mankind. And it sometimes seems we're the only people who don't. It may well be that gathered here in this room tonight are all the people in the world who don't want to tell all the people in the world what to do." I have taught logic for over 20 years and rarely have I seen=20 a non sequitur was blatant as this one. There is simply no logical connection between not knowing what is good for people and not telling people what to do. And it should be simple to see why. If one does not know what is good for anyone, well then one=20 has no grounds for claiming that people shouldn't tell one another what to do. Whether they do or do not, we may then assume, is not something anyone knows is good or bad to do. =20 Indeed, this is one of the saddest aspects of many defenses of human liberty, the effort to make the defense in terms of ignorance. The reason is simple: From ignorance nothing follows, not even the wisdom of not forcing others to do things. If one is ignorant, one must, logically, keep silent, including about whether people ought to respect others' rights. Mr. O'Rourke, however, valiantly advances the view that "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please." But to believe that people have this right is to believe that "something is good for you," namely, that it is good for you for others not to infringe upon your liberty, not to kill you, not to assault you, not to rob from you, not to rape you, and generally not to do those things that are a violation of this right. Yet Mr. O'Rourke, along, sadly,=20 with many prominent defenders of liberty are careless enough not to notice that when they defend the right to liberty, they are, in fact,=20 claiming to know something that is indeed good for everyone, indeed, for humanity. This is the respect for and protection of individual rights. Perhaps Mr. O'Rourke was indulging in a bit of hyperbole. Still, it is dangerous to do this when one is trying to contribute some ideas to the defense of free institutions and against tyranny. For if one rests such a cause on ignorance, one will simply become trapped. Others will be able to say, well, hell, you don't know anything, so you don't know that tyrannizing some people, say the rich, is wrong. So you should just remain silent and let us handle matters of politics. No, more than such ignorance is required in order to give liberty an adequate defense. One needs to know a few things and among these is the fact that it is good for people to be free and not to be enslaved. Perhaps Mr. O'Rourke could change his tune at least on this score and continue to entertain us with his good humor without getting some of the important philosophical points wrong. ========================================================================= Ideology versus Pragmatism Steven Brull of the International Herald Tribune has penned a curious piece of journalistic nonsense recently, claiming that in=20 Japan's recent policy of deregulation and supply side economics=20 "ideological underpinnings are nowhere to be found." This, Mr. Brull, contrasts with Margaret Thatcher's and Ronald Reagan's policies of the 1980s which he claims "were motivated by a clear ideology." What is it to be motivated by a clear ideology as distinct from pragmatism? It is difficult to tell because when it comes to public policy matters, pragmatism is simply the implementation of practical measures based on certain beliefs one has. The beliefs are the alleged ideology, the practices the alleged pragmatism. It is true that when Thatcher and Reagan embarked upon their policies of deregulation and supply side economics, they gave them a forceful rhetorical send-up. They talked it up with a good deal of theory about individual responsibility and small government. As Brull accurately notes, these political leaders held to the belief "Get government out of the way and let markets do their thing." What is entirely uncertain is that Prime Minister Morihiro=20 Hosokawa lacks such belief, simply because he does not run around pontificating about it. Indeed, why would he have to? After all, hasn't history, economic theory, political philosophy, even the morality