Wednesday
October 10, 2007 |
 Federal Censorship of Children’s Book?
by Tibor R. Machan
Governments run the country’s schools and while some variation is still evident in how they are administered, there is a pretty strong movement toward a one-size-fits-all policy. Certainly, when the United States federal Congress can pass bills banning books from use in elementary schools, this does not bode well for educational pluralism and diversity. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (13 messages)
Wednesday
September 26, 2007 |
What Free Country?
by Tibor R. Machan
When I first arrived on these shores, back in 1956, the idea that America is a free country had at least some rhetorical currency, backed by frequent enough association between the country’s founding documents and the desirability and undesirability of various public policies. Just as Abraham Lincoln, so many others who addressed what kind of laws the country ought to have tended still to invoke the authority of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and ideas from the Founders and Framers. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (9 messages)
Shoring Up the Nanny State
by Tibor R. Machan
Given how bad the arguments are for forced wealth redistribution, it is no great surprise that mainstream welfare statists are constantly revamping them. In the August 22, 2007, issue of the International Herald Tribune, the European paper that�s put out together by The New York Times, an editorial makes yet another attempt to help give the nanny state the moral advantage. Let us take a look at how this attempt is made. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (1 message)
Tuesday
September 11, 2007 |
America and Libertarianism
by Tibor R. Machan
Because America is still widely regarded as a pretty decent country, even while Left, Right and the rest find a lot of fault with it, the question of whether Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, Populists, or Libertarians are the most faithful to its central ideas and ideals is important to ask and answer. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (10 messages)
Ron Paul Isn't Being Censored
by Tibor R. Machan
Some of the folks who are eager supporters of Representative Ron Paul as the Republican presidential nominee are sadly misspeaking themselves these days. On the Free Market News Network web site the question of whether Paul is being censored by mainstream media has been posed, as one of the site's polls, and the overwhelming majority has answered "Yes". But this is very confused. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (39 messages)
Must the Senate Butt In?
by Tibor R. Machan
As I do my frequent working trips around Europe, I often listen to webcasts from various good radio stations. I am especially fond of one that offers all piano jazz, all day round, with just a few ads.
There is a persistent message, though, that the management airs, having to do with a bill in the US Senate that aims to establish what its promoters call Internet Radio Equality. One Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) has introduced one in the House that would reportedly overturn a recent ruling that requires webcasters to pay a flat rate per song streamed, rather than the traditional percentage of their revenue.
The website about this bill reports that something called "the Copyright Royalty Board recently raised rates on Internet webcasters, who will soon face greatly-increased fees for streaming music on their stations." It goes on to state that when this occurred it "affected not just Internet broadcasters but noncommercial groups like NPR, and the broadcasters filed an appeal of the decision earlier this month, but were denied." The management of the piano jazz station to which I listen so loyally urges listeners to call their senators and leave messages urging the passage of the Senate version of Jay Inslee’s bill so they can continue to offer the music they feature without what they fear will be onerous fees. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (11 messages)
Proof of Free Will
by Tibor R. Machan
Some of my readers may be getting tired of and even exasperated with me about my repeated discussions of free will. Part of this is because the topic has been around for ages and some hope for some kind of final resolution. There will never be that! But this doesn’t mean there cannot be a right answer, only not one that will lead to some kind of world wide consensus. Indeed, is there any inquiry that leads to that? (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (57 messages)
What Do We Celebrate on the Fourth of July?
by Tibor R. Machan
One way to appreciate the meaning of the Fourth of July is to reflect on what nearly every one of the Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls focuses on in his or her interviews and speeches. Apart from Texas Representative Ron Paul, who is openly libertarian while running as a Republican, all the rest are emba... (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (14 messages)
Normative versus Positive Statements
by Tibor R. Machan
Professor Walter Williams is a very good economists but not so good at moral philosophy, as is demonstrated by his recent column (titled in my local paper, "Don't Confuse what is with what should be".) In this piece he lays out what can fairly be said is now a widely discredited theory about whether moral judgments, like those in the various sciences, are subject to proof. He states that "Normative, or subjective statements deal with what's good or bad, or what ought to be or should be" and adds, that "there are no facts whatsoever to which we can appeal to settle any disagreement." He goes on: "One person's opinion on [a normative] matter is just as good as another's." (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (5 messages)
Why Not Regulate Religion and Speech?
by Tibor R. Machan
When I was in college ages ago the truth in advertising and lending and such measures were high on the agenda of modern liberals. Oddly, they were the same people, usually, who declared themselves to be loyal champions of free speech, defenders of an absolutist stance on the First Amendment to the US Constitution. But not when it came to commercial speech. You know those people in commerce—all chronic cheats and liars, of course. (The modern liberal’s hatred of commerce trumps their most cherished ideals!) (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (20 messages)
Fairness Is a Minor Virtue
by Tibor R. Machan
Few ideas serve more wicked purposes as "fairness." In public policy it is probably the most overused justification for increasing the power of some people over others, for meddling in others’ private lives, and for being guiltlessly resentful. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (4 messages)
What Social Responsibility?
by Tibor R. Machan
Over the last several decades the field of business ethics has become very popular in colleges and universities, including business schools around the world. Actually, all professional ethics courses have gained entry into the curriculum—medical, legal, engineering, and the other ethics. (Oddly, though, the ethics of education and scholarship have not joined this trend!) (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (1 message)
"Must We Mean What We Say?"
by Tibor R. Machan
The tile of this column is the title of an early book and the title essay in it~by Harvard University philosopher Stanley Cavell. Cavell’s work was to me fascinating because it argued, putting it very roughly, that when one uses words with widely understood meaning, one may not expect that one’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the words should override the former. And there is pretty plain evidence of the acceptance of this in how we treat each other’s utterances. If someone calls you a fool and you take offense, it is no good for the person to say, "But what I mean by ‘fool’ is ‘wise and sensible’." When one says "fool," one must mean what "fool" means. If one fails to realize this, that is a failure indeed and no one can escape the consequences by pleading ignorance. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (23 messages)
Ron Paul on "Blowback"
by Tibor R. Machan
During the Republican presidential candidate debates Ron Paul insisted that 9/11 can best be understood as an instance of "blowback," meaning the expected reaction of those in the Middle East to the US government’s interventionist foreign policy. To this Rudi Giuliani said he has never heard anything so ridiculous. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (8 messages)
Buchanan on Ron Paul’s Debate Point
by Tibor R. Machan
Shortly after the South Carolina Republican presidential hopefuls’ debate I wrote chiding Ron Paul for suggesting that 9/11 was a blowback in response to the fact that the US government had been in the Middle East for ten years or so. As Paul put the point, "They attack us because we've been over there, we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East…." My point was that however ill conceived, even evil, US foreign policy in the Middle East may have been, it would not serve to justify the blowback of murdering 3000 innocent working people in the Twin Towers on 9/11. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (37 messages)
Soft Pedalling Coercion
by Tibor R. Machan
All those of us who travel by air have probably come across those announcements in airports about how smoking is forbidden. If airports were private facilities, I would have no problem with this. And, in fact, since I don’t smoke, I am not personally put out by those bans, either. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (6 messages)
America's Government School Woes
by Tibor R. Machan
The removal of banners in a high school, which had the words "God" and "Creator" on them, placed there by a school math teacher, have led to a lawsuit against the Poway Unified School District in San Diego. Most people take this to be a confrontation between religion and secularism but it isn't. What it is, however, is a confrontation between government and private secondary education. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (0 messages)
Free Will or Not?
by Tibor R. Machan
Sure enough, some topics resurface quite naturally in the wake of certain types of events. The Virginia Tech massacre has brought out the gun control champions, as well as those who anticipate their histrionics and warn that banning guns can do more harm than good in just such circumstances. Also, the issue of whether perpetrators of such heinous acts are helpless or in fact possess free will and are therefore responsible for their actions has come up (notably in a recent missive by New York Times columnist David Brooks.) (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (112 messages)
Ayn Rand, Libertarianism, and ARI
by Tibor R. Machan
In a recent letter to the editor to The Los Angeles Times, Jeff Britting of the Ayn Rand Institute writes as follows:
"Ayn Rand did not write novels of "uncompromising libertarianism." In her view, libertarianism has no philosophy to uphold uncompromisingly.
Libertarianism rejects the need for a consistent, objective, philosophic defense of liberty and regards politics as primary. Rand was a defender of reason and recognized that political freedom requires a philosophy of reason and egoism. That is why Rand repeatedly condemned the libertarian movement, regarding herself, instead, as a "radical for capitalism." For further explanation, see Rand's novel of uncompromising objectivist, not libertarian, ideas — "Atlas Shrugged" — celebrating its 50th anniversary this year." (Letters, March 30, 2007) (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (84 messages)
Property Rights Redux
by Tibor R. Machan
A little while ago I had occasion to spend time with some fine legal minds. For one thing, they were all convinced that the right to private property is central to a just legal order. And many of them were involved in striving to get this idea established and strengthened within the American legal system, in the various ways that’s possible to do through the legitimate avenues of advocacy, litigation, scholarship, and so forth. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (5 messages)
Is Free Will Incredible?
by Tibor R. Machan
As someone who became convinced early in my life and even more so in my career as an academic philosopher that human beings normally possess free will, I have been fighting something of an uphill battle about the issue despite how ubiquitous the assumption is that we indeed do have this capacity. Anytime we hold people responsible, or urge that they alter their conduct, resist a temptation, battle some bad habit, and so forth, the free will idea lurks in the background. The criminal and even tort law, of course, assumes people could have done otherwise than they did, all things being equal. Politics, with all of its blaming and praising, is in the same situation, as is personal morality where none of it would make sense unless we had the capacity to choose how we act and thus can be faulted for failing to do what’s right. As the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant said, "ought" implies "can." (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (155 messages)
Abortion Debate Redux
by Tibor R. Machan
Sometimes a debate or discussion goes completely astray because concepts are used that are entirely confusing. The abortion debate is a case in point. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (58 messages)
Revisiting Human Nature
by Tibor R. Machan
False alternatives are often presented as if there is nothing else to choose—like, love me or hate me, or being kind or mean. But in most cases there are many other options. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (6 messages)
Unauthorized Government is Wrong
by Tibor R. Machan
What has been most horrible about the bulk of political history is that some people have ruled others, often to the point of using them entirely against their will, even sending thousands and thousands of them to their deaths or using their lives for purposes they had no part in choosing. The big deal about the American revolution was the idea that one owns one’s life—the Lockean idea of the unalienable right to one’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This was so radical a notion—although here and there expressed by earlier thinkers but never really given official endorsement—that even now most folks just don’t get it. No one owns you—not your country, not your family, not your neighborhood, not your community, no one. You are the one who owns your life and properly gets to say what will be done with it. To reiterate what Lincoln so aptly said about this, "No one is good enough to govern another without that other’s consent." In some respects everyone has an inkling of this idea—it is entirely unacceptable for a doctor to operate without the patient’s consent, or for an auto mechanic to work on your car without your giving permission, and so forth. Plain as anything can be! (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (6 messages)
Lexus Parallel Parking not For All
by Tibor R. Machan
One of the annoying elements of advertising is that it often treats us all as if we were just one person. So, for example, because some people may benefit from a product--say Lexus's new automatic parallel parking device—it appears to be suggested in the ad that this is something for us all. Of course, very few products or services being promoted to us are really for all of us. But back when advertising used to come mainly from the radio and TV industry, and both of these were oligopolies, ads were indeed usually addressed to millions of people all at once, with no differentiation among them possible. With diversified commercials now possible, targeting people in markets whose interests it is possible to anticipate, this apparent one-size-fits-all assumption in ads has subsided. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (6 messages)
|
