Prof. Machan missed an important point.  (This came up as a random past article. I found the comments mostly useless. I am sorry that Prof. Machan is not here to discuss this, but I am confident that others will find it interesting in its own right.) The point that Prof. Machan missed is the value of catechism: as you speak, so you think; as you think, so you do. Moreover, even if your inner soul does not improve, your better outward actions make life better for everyone else.  Both of those are defeasible. I am sure that Prof. Machan would agree with me on that if he were here now. I just point out that he did not address them in his essay.  And they are cogent because his arguments for the right to be wrong are insufficient in themselves.

We also have a logical problem.  If P then Q, means that if Q exists, then P exists.  Starkly put: If all men are mortal then I must die; hence, I must die because all men are mortal.  My point is that logically, morality is antecedant to liberty. Immoral people do need to be constrained from violating the rights of others. 

I admit that not all immoral actions violate the rights of others. You can engage in many self-destructive behaviors that do not harm others. That is why we argue for the legalization of all so-called "drugs."  Let people do what they want to themselves.  (Independent of that, an open market in recreational or supplemental pharmeceuticals would result in better, safer, cheaper, healthier inventions.)  It goes far beyond drugs, of course. Rock climbing is dangerous. Jogging degrades your knees. Never go scuba diving alone. (You can't even get your tanks filled without a certification, an example of a free market protection not mandated by the government.) Scuba is dangerous, even with a buddy.  You can rent time on a speed track and drive as fast as your car will go.  "If it doesn't require a waiver, it can't be any fun." But it is the libertarian hedonists who argue along such lines.  Objectivists have higher, consistent standards. We still would allow other people to do stupid things to themselves.

But the collectivists have a strong argument. Take helmet laws. In a pure libertarian society, what would you do with someone who has a brain injury from a motorcycle accident?  Look at the address on their license and dump them on the doorstep?  You will not win any arguments with that line. You have to come up with a pro-life, pro-man-qua-man solution. Helmet laws are an example of that.  No matter who owns the roads, the owners say that you cannot use them on a motorcycle without a helmet.  In that context, you have no liberty to be immoral.

I have a range of arguments in support of Prof. Machan's thesis.  We were all (most of us) raised with the Pledge of Allegiance. In my elementary school days, we the class got pick the patriotic song of the day, typically, "America the Beautiful" or "My Country 'tis of Thee" (seldom "The Star Spangled Banner").  Yet, here we are today, none of us jingoists.  If you goto the ARI website and find the lists of Essay Contest winners, you will see bunches of them from Catholic schools. The schools are not handing out Ayn Rand books. nine or ten years of catechism just did not take hold on those individualists.  So, my point in this paragraph is that forcing people does little good for them. "Bad" people get around "good" rules. 

But it is argued to be better for everyone else if you are not drinking, gambling, taking the Lord's Name in vain, and missing church. Constraining your bad behavior makes life livable for others.  Prof. Machan did not address that.

I could say that you must take the good with the bad. That is Harry Lime's argument in The Third Man. The Medicis engaged in bribery, corruption, murder, and assassination and they gave us the Italian Renaissance. In 500 years of peace and democracy all that Switzerland gave us was the cuckoo clock.  I think that, too, is false, but it does strike to a core argument about the benefits and costs to an open society.

...it is only in substantially free societies that men and women can be morally good.

That statement from the article is wrong in one sense.  It carries an implication that one can't be morally good unless there is a politically clear path towards successful actions arising from morality.

Here is a quick example:  A highly moral man is wrongly jailed.  He has almost no liberty at all.  But he will still attempt, within the extremely limited range of actions inside of jail, to live by his ethical standards.  Morality is first a set of beliefs that are chosen, and then against which external circumstances are evalutated - actions are then chosen after evaluations and their success or failure is yet another aspect.

It is very true that it requires a substantially free country to protect a substantial range of actions for its citizens.  Governments, by their nature, prohibit and consfiscate - those are their two primary functions.  If they prohibit a great many actions that are morally good, that is, of course a problem.  But morality is more fundamental than liberty.

The title to Professor Machan's article, if taken literally, mis-states the relationship between Liberty and Morality.  It could have been "Liberty is Necessary for MAXIMIZING Moral Actions" - or, "Liberty is Necessary for PROTECTION of Moral Actions" - or, "Liberty is Necessary for Many Moral Actions to Succeed".  (all very boring)

But this article, which might not have the best title, does an excellent job of examining the relation between morality and coercive governments in other ways.

Professor Machan made the point that being 'good' because you were forced to, is a radically different thing from being good because you chose to.  That's a valid point with important ramifications. 

And it is a particularly important point to make in our society where progressives are trying to use the government to force us to be good in almost every single area of our lives.  They tell us that to be good requires this kind of light bulb, that kind of toilet, this kind of tax, that kind of license, helmets for our heads, only politically correct thoughts for our minds, labels on our clothes and food, safety stickers on ladders, no trigger words from our mouths, and it goes on and on and on.

He also shoots down the weak argument of the moral skeptics who attempt to support liberty by saying liberty is required since no one can know what is really good or bad or right or wrong. (And, I'd add, that the arguments of the relativists are similarly flawed.) 

He made an argument against those who would choose elites to command us... as if these elites had an inside knowledge of what is good, bad, right and wrong that the rest of us don't. 

There is currently a cartoon being published where the passengers in a plane are protesting the "insider" status of the pilots and demanding that an outsider, "one of us" fly the plane.  That is the progressive elite's view of Trump's election where they see Trump as an outsider who is unqualified which illustrates the progressive's belief that they, as elites, hold special knowledge and should be in power.  And then they can command into existence the morally good state of things.  And it serves to comfort themselves by refusing to acknowledge that more and more people are rejecting the very idea of elitism in government.

Going back to the main issue.  Morality comes to the individual far before they are even old enough to conceptualize it explicitly.  They can choose to act in ways that are deemed good.  This might include choosing not to cut in line, not to hit their siblings, and this applies even where it's not against the law, or even if they can 'get away with it'. 

As children we were instructed, and even commanded, to do the right thing.  We were taught.  As adults we engage in that mental process to establish the moral weight (by whatever standard and whatever psychological quirks unique to the individual) a given choice will have.  There could never be a regime so totalitarian as to encroach on this process totally - it would bring about coma-like results in all people, all the time.

Professor Machan made other excellent points: Coersion will have the effect of undermining personal responsibility.  That virtue will not arise out of forced charity.  That paternalistic governments are really not concerned with helping and protecting but rather they are power-seeking with morality as their excuse.

So, I disagree with the article's title - as worded - for the reasons stated, but I applaud the many excellent points that were made along the way.  For me, the heart of the article was that the relationship between morality and politics favors those who seek liberty and that the exercise of morality is bettered when liberty exists and that those who claim moral grounds for reducing liberty are wrong and that many are simple power-seekers hiding behind false claims of promoting moral values.

How to Cut in Line and When to Hit Your Sibling

SW:  Morality comes to the individual far before they are even old enough to conceptualize it explicitly.  They can choose to act in ways that are deemed good.  This might include choosing not to cut in line, not to hit their siblings, and this applies even where it's not against the law, or even if they can 'get away with it'. 

 

As children we were instructed, and even commanded, to do the right thing.  

(1) How to Cut in Line

Usually, most people in our society will let you cut in line if you give a reason. It does not necessary need to be a good reason, but by offering it, you excuse your own bad behavior by pointing to an outside circumstance. In the grocery lane, you can point to your fewer (very fewer) items. You can say that your spouse is waiting, or that the kids are waiting. Almost any excuse will work.

In elementary school, you can get a teacher's permission to let you cut in line by the same ploy. Getting untended peers to make way might be harder, as children are by definition unacculturated.  You might need to ask several, but each time, move closer to the front.  Saying that you were called to the principal's office but do need to get lunch now is an example; or your mother is waiting, or something else.

(2) When to Hit Your Sibling

Sibships are so strongly hierarchical that a mere word of warning might not be enough. If your big brother or older sister does not know how to use a knife and is drawing the cut toward them, and ignoring you, you are morally justified in getting their attention by hitting them no harder than necessary to get them to pay attention to your wise  counsel. That applies to jay-walking, balancing on the guardrail of a highway overpass, holding a firecracker, or even going on a date with a loser.