 Welfare Corrupts
by Tibor R. Machan
Before anything else it needs to be noted that most of the welfare recipients are not unwed mothers but people doing business as major corporations. They receive subsidies, bailouts, protection from competition and so forth, all undeserved, all unjust, all lacking any legitimacy in a genuine free country. American firms, as thousands of others around the globe, have managed to persuade politicians to provide them with benefits at the expense of people who haven’t consented to any of the takings that provide the funds that make all this possible. (Read more...)
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Intellectual Products and the Right to Private Property
by Tibor R. Machan
Over the years there has been a debate among supporters of the free market concerning whether so called intellectual property is something to which one may have a private property right. One central element of the case, as advanced by some, is that because intellectual property is intangible, and tangibility makes wha... (Read more...)
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Taxation Again
by Tibor R. Machan
Instead of all the mud slinging between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, wouldn’t it be refreshing to have them engage in some serious political discussion? Since April 15 is nearly upon us, many American citizens might appreciate some in-depth exploration of the nature of taxation. The federal income tax, in particular, would deserve thoughtful examination. Senator John McCain could also enter the fray, me thinks. (Read more...)
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Too Much Love for Royalty
by Tibor R. Machan
Every time I encounter admiring references to royalty in America I cringe. (Read more...)
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Why don’t they get it?
by Tibor R. Machan
No matter how many politicians proceed to act self-destructively, engage in corruption, violate elementary principles of civilized conduct as New York governor Eliot Spitzer had done, the idea that they can be elected to office to take care of us, to handle the bulk of our problems, may be trusted with our income to spend it wisely and virtuously remains nearly immune to criticism. They keep promising to handle everything we find troubling in our lives and the majority of Americans--not to mention others around the globe--continue with their governmental habit, as if they still lived in an absolute monarchy where the king or queen are taken to be God’s agents and are expected to be "keepers of the realm." That famous legal doctrine of the police power is still part of our system, according to which government may impose its will on us for our own good, just as if the myth of its benevolence had not be disproved a thousand times over and over again. (Read more...)
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Bill Buckley, RIP
by Tibor R. Machan
William F. Buckley, Jr., has died, at age 82. I want to reflect a bit on him because he was the persons whose writing awoke in me my political passions. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
February 27, 2008 |
Unabashed Prejudice at The Times
by Tibor R. Machan
These matters tend to show up without much fanfare but that’s exactly what makes them interesting and significant. When Eleanor Randolph of The New York Times wrote these lines [Sunday, 2/24/08], I am sure she was being quite unselfconscious. It was simple common sense to her to say, as she wrote about the program "Law & Order"--which she and I both seem to have watched from its inception--that these shows "elevate Sam Waterston to his ethical pedestal, even though he appears elsewhere pitching investments." (Read more...)
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Thursday
February 21, 2008 |
Employment Blues Revisited
by Tibor R. Machan
Even though making lots of money is often derided by politicians, they do routinely champion employment security. Exactly why it is fine to want the latter but not the former is quite unclear to me. There are some theories about this, though. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
February 13, 2008 |
It Isn’t Throwing it Away
by Tibor R. Machan
Over the years, since when I voted for Barry Goldwater back in 1964, I have supported libertarian candidates and ballot measures, few of whom or which had any chance of winning. Often my more pragmatic, realistic friends tell me that I am throwing away my vote and I should stop this if I want to be serious about giving concrete support to my political convictions. They sometimes even suggest that it is irresponsible to keep up this practice of voting for hopeless candidates and measures. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
February 6, 2008 |
Americans Don’t Much Care About Freedom
by Tibor R. Machan
Ever since I have been an American citizen--starting 1961--I have noticed that after elections losers often blame winners for distortions, misrepresentations, and so forth. Few of the losers say, "Well, I lost because the voters didn’t agree with me." This become most evident for me during the elections when one ballot measure aiming to sock it to oil companies in California lost. Supporters of the measure, led, I think, by a very busy and prominent leftist political activist, Bill Press, insisted that their measure lost because the voters were deceived, lied to, and so forth, not because voters didn’t buy their pitch. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 30, 2008 |
Revolutionaries and Reality
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who are loyal to the political values of the American Founders are revolutionaries, far more so than any other type (like the Marxists or radical Muslims). This is because the American Founders identified something brand new and radical when they declared that individuals have unalienable rights to their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
(Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 23, 2008 |
Economic ups and downs
by Tibor R. Machan
Those who study a country’s economic conditions, mostly macro-economists, track general trends--is inflation or unemployment, how about productivity, comparative strength of the currency, etc., and so forth. But the basics of all these are mostly local matters, all about what happens to you, me, our neighbors, all about what we decide to do with our income and other liquid assets. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 16, 2008 |
Another Distortion at the Movies, etc.
by Tibor R. Machan
American Rhapsody is a movie about a family that gets smuggled out of Hungary in the early 1960s and all the various complications this gives rise to. Since I went through this ordeal myself when I was 14, not with my family but several perfect strangers and a paid guide, I thought I’d check out the movie. (Read more...)
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Freedom & the Needy
by Tibor R. Machan
The defenders of the free society assume that, generally, people can fend for themselves, often alone, more often in voluntary cooperation. But they are not blind to the plain fact that not everyone can or will do this--there are serious hard luck cases, people in dire straits, as well as many who make mistakes by failing to prepare for bad times or by producing bad circumstances for themselves. So such folks will require support in order for them to live reasonably well. (Read more...)
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"I'll Think of Something!"
by Tibor R. Machan
Often when some unexpected challenge faces a person, someone asks, "What are you going to do about this?" The answer, frequently delivered with casual confidence, tends to be: "I’ll think of something." (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 26, 2007 |
It's deja vu All Over Again
by Tibor R. Machan
Back in 1971 the late Harvard behaviorist psychologist B. F. Skinner published his popular best seller, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York, Knopf). The book followed several more technical works by Skinner arguing that the belief that human beings have free will and are morally responsible is all wrong, a pre-scientific prejudice that needs to be discarded and replaced with a technology of behavior.
(Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 19, 2007 |
Who Fires or Lays you Off?
by Tibor R. Machan
During economic downturns many people become hostile toward their employers, thinking whatever hardship they suffer is their fault. In fact, however, the responsibility lies with customers, consumers, and a host of other economic agents, rarely if ever with one’s employers. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
December 12, 2007 |
Are Values Universal?
by Tibor R. Machan
A frequent claim by erudite people is that the values on which America was founded--individual rights, rule of law, due process--are obsolete. They have been superseded by more recent ways of seeing things, of understanding people and their world. (Read more...)
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Varieties of "Imperialism"
by Tibor R. Machan
Imperialism is the policy one country has toward others when it is intent on ruling them. But these days the idea is also used to point to one country’s efforts to spread ideas and institutions outside of its borders, regardless of what those ideas and institutions are. So by some people’s account—evi... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 21, 2007 |
Some Pros and Cons of Ron Paul
by Tibor R. Machan
Texas Republican House member Ron Paul is undoubtedly the most committed libertarian among all the presidential hopefuls. Dr. No, as he is sometimes called, opposes virtually all government spending and other forms of oppression. He believes that many of the laws passed by Congress aren't authorized by the U. S. Constitution—a document he believes is sound because of its support of the free society and a limited federal government—and could only be passed by state political bodies, not by the feds. He is pro-life but instead of wanting to outlaw abortion—a dubious libertarian idea in my book—he wants the issue of whether there is a right to have an abortion to be dealt with at the state level. His views on banking, the Federal Reserve Bank, hard money, the IRS, and, especially, military adventurism all follow sound strict libertarian principles. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 14, 2007 |
Good Argument Ain’t Enough
by Tibor R. Machan
As rational animals, human beings do best when they think matters through and act accordingly. This is no less true in public policy matters. From the time of Socrates, political philosophers have urged us to be rational in our political affairs. Indeed, arguably the most famous Platonic dialogue, The Republic, is but a call to reason, what with the philosopher placed in the position of king, a symbolic role in a mythical society to remind us all that what matters most in both our personal and public lives is to think!
(Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 7, 2007 |
Life & Property
by Tibor R. Machan
When both life & property are threatened, there is much talk about how property is only stuff, easy to replace, so one should be concerned only or primarily with life. There are even those who disparage the right to private property, claiming it is not really a human right at all. Some prominent academics have been calling ownership itself a myth, claiming that no one really owns anything and all wealth belongs to government that’s supposed to manage it for the collective or public good. (See Murphy & Nagel, The Myth of Ownership [2002].) (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 31, 2007 |
Emotions and Reason
by Tibor R. Machan
One of the oldest topics in human thought is whether emotions drive us or are we guided by reason. The ancient Greeks thought reason will rule if we only engage it, while David Hume, one of the most influential modern philosophers, believed that reason is the slave of the passions. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 24, 2007 |
Ethics, East and West
by Tibor R. Machan
My title may suggest a sharp difference between East and West and that would be inaccurate. After all, we are all human beings, even though some of us grew up with different ideas from the others and over time these ideas may have divided us throughout the world, though by no means permanently or irrevocably. So, even ... (Read more...)
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Wednesday
October 17, 2007 |
 Atlas Shrugged & Ethics
by Tibor R. Machan
[This essay formed the basis of a talk at the Atlas Society celebration of the 50 th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in Washington, DC, on October 6, 2007] When Ayn Rand titled her collection of writings on ethics The Virtue of Selfishness, she also provided a clear clue to what... (Read more...)
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