The Southern Secession Reconsidered

A post by The Vociferous Reader, “Lincoln’s War,” prompts me to revisit the issue of secession. The main obstacle to serious consideration of secession is its association with the secession of the Southern States, which was motivated by the issue of slavery. The resulting Civil War had three principle outcomes:

reunification of the United States by force (which did not determine the legality of secession)

the end of slavery in the reunified nation

the persistent myth of the South as especially bigoted and oppressive, despite the North’s undeniable record of racial tension, discrimination, and de facto segregation.

What tends to be forgotten is the South’s pre-Civil War stance with respect to the central government. Southern resistance to the centralization of political power, and to the central government’s unconstitutional exercises of power, long pre-dated the Southern secession and was founded on a valid interpretation of the Constitution.

The Civil War, as a forcible act of reunification, is defensible only insofar as a main result was the end of slavery in the United States. On constitutional grounds, however, the Southern secession was valid and should not have been contested.

I have elsewhere laid out a general case for secession. Here it is, in part:

[S]ome of the people of the Colonies put an end to the union of the Colonies and Great Britain, on the moral principle that no person or people is obliged to remain in an abusive relationship. That moral principle is all the more compelling in the case of the union known as the United States, which — mysticism aside — is nothing more than the creature of the States and the people thereof.

It was only by the grace of nine States that the Constitution took effect, thereby establishing the central government. Those nine States voluntarily created the central government and, at the same time, voluntarily granted certain, limited powers to it. The States understood that the central government would exercise its limited powers for the benefit of the States and their people. Every State subsequently admitted to the union has entered into the same contract with the central government.

But, as outlined above, the central government has breached its trust by exceeding the powers granted to it. In fact, the central government’s abuse of power has been so persistent and egregious that a reasonable remedy on the part of the States — individually or severally — is to declare the Constitution null and void. Each and every State, in other words, has the right to secede from the union and to withdraw from the central government its support and the support of the people.

My argument is buttressed by the pre-Civil War history of the United States, which includes the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, the Nullification Crisis of 1828-33, and the Northern States’ Rights movement, which flourished before the Civil War and was sympathetic to the idea of Southern secession. Some of these events find their way into a review by David Gordon of Kevin R.C. Gutzman‘s The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.

Here are some relevant excerpts of Gordon’s review (page references omitted):

The principal thesis of the book is that the Jeffersonian, states’ rights understanding of America’s founding and the Constitution is correct. When the American colonies assembled in the Continental Congress and adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they did not create a new nation, Abraham Lincoln to the contrary notwithstanding.

…The Declaration said that the colonies were now states, i.e., independent governments. “In the Declaration’s culminating fourth section, Congress declared the colonies to be ‘free and independent states’ and claimed for them the right to do everything that free countries could do.”

Nor did the Articles of Confederation change matters. Each state retained full sovereignty over all matters not “expressly delegated” to the United Sates….

As Gutzman makes clear, some delegates to the Philadelphia Convention certainly wished to change the nature of the American system. Instead of the usual split between nationalists and their opponents, however, Gutzman maintains that there were three parties in the convention: “The first was the monarchist party, the chief exemplar of which was New York’s Alexander Hamilton. The monarchists were intent on wiping the states from the map and substituting one unitary government for the entire continent … The second party consisted of nationalists, people who — without ever avowing admiration for the monarchical form — wanted to push centralization as far as could reasonably be hoped … Finally, there was a cohort in the Convention of members insistent on proposing a reinforcement of the central government while maintaining the primary place of the states in the American polity — a truly federal, rather than national government.”

Gutzman rightly points out that neither of the two nationalist parties got its way. Madison, the “Father of the Constitution”, wanted the federal Congress to have the power to veto state legislation, but this proposal was rejected. So far, our author has given a standard account, but now comes his key interpretive move.

He maintains that crucial to understanding the meaning of the Constitution were the intentions of the delegates to the ratifying conventions. These delegates, after all, were the people whose votes established the Constitution as legally binding. Gutzman concentrates on the Virginia convention, and he places great stress on one point.

The Virginia delegates looked on the new Constitution with great skepticism, fearing that it would become a tool for the federal government to crush the states. To placate opponents such as Patrick Henry, the leaders of the pro-ratification forces, who included Governor Edmund Randolph, the proposer of the nationalist Virginia Plan at Philadelphia, had to make a concession. They had to agree that the powers of the new Congress were limited to those “expressly delegated” in the Constitution. The delegates repudiated in advance any move by the new authorities to expand their powers beyond this. Further, they wrote into their ratification statement the right to withdraw from the new government, if it exceeded its proper powers.

Gutzman contends that because this understanding was part of Virginia’s instrument of ratification, no stronger central government can claim Virginia’s authorization. And since it would be senseless to think that the Constitution gives the federal government more power over some states than others, the Virginia restrictions apply to all the states.

This is the Jeffersonian view of the Constitution. Gutzman’s great contribution is to show that the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, the key statements of the Jeffersonian position, restated the understanding of the Virginia ratifying convention. Contrary to the Federalist opponents of the Resolutions, Jefferson and Madison did not act as innovators in 1798; and their position cannot be dismissed as merely one of several competing interpretations. It was firmly based on the legally valid Virginia ratification instrument.

Gutzman summarizes his main contention in this way:

“Most history and legal textbooks say that Jefferson and Madison invented the idea of state sovereignty. But … they only argued for what the founders had already understood to be true about the sovereign states from the beginning, even if some of the founders(the nationalist and monarchist wings) wanted to change that understanding.”

However sound the Jeffersonian understanding of the Constitution, it of course has not prevailed in subsequent American history. Gutzman assigns federal judges a large share of the responsibility for the transformation of the original understanding; and one judge in particular arouses his critical scorn. The judge in question is the foremost of all federalist judges, Chief Justice John Marshall….

For Gutzman, Marshall’s chief sin is … his repudiation of the Jeffersonian understanding of the limits of federal power. In McCulloch v Maryland, Marshall “wrote that while the Articles of Confederation had specified that Congress had only the powers it was ‘expressly delegated,’ the Constitution included no such language, so no such principle applied to it. This was an extraordinary argument, given that Marshall himself and other Federalists … had assured their ratification colleagues that this very principle of limited federal power … was implicit in the unamended Constitution even before the Tenth Amendment was adopted.” [It was, moreover, clear from the construction of Article I, Section 8, and the discussion of that portion of the Constitution in the The Federalist Papers (e.g., No. 45): ED.]

Given his Jeffersonian views, it comes as no surprise that Gutzman thinks the Southern states acted fully within their rights when they seceded from the Union in 1861. “The Federalists always insisted during the ratification debates — knowing that they had to win support for the Constitution — that the states were individual parties to a federal compact. Spelling out the logic of the compact, three states — Virginia, Maryland, and Rhode Island — explicitly reserved (in the act of ratifying the Constitution) their right to secede from the Union.”

Gutzman has made a very strong case for his Jeffersonian understanding of the Constitution. A critic might challenge him on the grounds that we need not today care about how the Constitution was understood by its eighteenth century ratifiers. But Gutzman could in response say that this is what was legally enacted; those who favor other views of government should not attempt to attain their goals through misreadings and distortion of the constitutional text.

Just so. There is no point in memorializing an agreement unless that agreement is meant to stand for all time, or until the parties to it agree to revise or revoke it. Legislators, executives, and judges are not parties to the Constitution; they are its sworn caretakers. And they have long failed in their duty.

As for Lincoln, he did his duty as he saw it — which was to preserve the Union. It is hard (for me) to fault the man who ended his first inaugural address with this:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

P.S. The foregoing makes a legal case for secession. A different case, which I make here, is that secession is valid because the Constitution did not bind the whole of “the people” when it was ratified, and could not have bound future generations.

* * *

See “The Constitution: Myths and Realities“.

Luck-Egalitarianism and Moral Luck

Luck-egalitarianism and moral luck are egregious, moral-philosophical concepts. The purposes of this post are (a) to explain their relatedness and egregiousness and (b) to offer a valid moral precept in their stead.

LUCK EGALITARIANISM

This, according to the current entry in Wikipedia,

is a view about distributive justice espoused by a variety of egalitarian and other political philosophers. According to this view, justice demands that variations in how well off people are should be wholly attributable to the responsible choices people make and not to differences in their unchosen circumstances. This expresses the intuition that it is a bad thing for some people to be worse off than others through no fault of their own.

Luck egalitarians therefore distinguish between outcomes that are the result of brute luck (e.g. misfortunes in genetic makeup, or being struck by a bolt of lightning) and those that are the consequence of conscious options (such as career choice or fair gambles). Luck egalitarianism is intended as a fundamental normative idea that might guide our thinking about justice rather than as an immediate policy prescription. The idea has its origin in John Rawls‘s thought that distributive shares should not be influenced by arbitrary factors. Luck egalitarians disagree among themselves about the proper way to measure how well off people are (for instance, whether we should measure material wealth, psychological happiness or some other factor) and the related issue of how to assess the value of their resources.

Luck-egalitarians evidently hold a skewed view of luck. For if it is a bad thing for some persons to be worse off than others through no fault of their own, it should be good thing for some persons to be better off than others through no action of their own. In other words, if “bad luck” is bad, “good luck” should be good.

But that is not how a luck-egalitarian sees things. A luck-egalitarianian deplores all “luck” because he seeks to compensate those who have had “bad luck” by extracting “undeserved” gains from those who have had “good luck.” In practice, luck-egalitarians do not bother to investigate the degree to which “luck” leads to variations in life outcome. It is enough for them to note that some persons are well off relative to others (usually in health, wealth, and income), and that disparity — to a luck-egalitarian — is “bad” per se. In the vernacular: “It just shouldn’t be that way.”

Luck-egalitarianism is therefore of a piece with the moral accountancy that is practiced by “liberals” and “progressives.” As I say here, moral accountancy is

the three-fold habit of setting oneself up as an omniscient arbiter of economic and social outcomes, then castigating the motives and accomplishments of the financially successful and socially “well placed,” and finally penalizing financial and social success through taxation and other regulatory mechanisms (e.g., affirmative action, admission quotas, speech codes, “hate crime” legislation”).

The key to luck-egalitarianism is the idea “that it is a bad thing for some people to be worse off than others through no fault of their own,” which leads to the following (usually implicit and subconscious) set of specious assumptions and conclusions:

There is a “right” set of life outcomes (e.g., a certain standard of living, a certain degree of health), which luck-egalitarians are qualified to choose and evaluate because of their superior moral character.

Therefore, it is wrong if some persons are worse off than others in terms of the “right” set of outcomes. (Here, the luck-egalitarian usually abandons the qualification of faultlessness, for — in the luck-egalitarian’s view — a person who descends into, say, poverty has no one to blame but the “system” that allows him to do so.)

Those who are better off (by the selective standards of the luck-egalitarian) owe aid to those who are worse off, even if those who are better off did nothing that made others worse off. The better-off simply do not deserve all that they have because, surely, they must owe much of it to luck.

Taking from the better-off to help the worse-off is further justified (in the luck-egalitarian view) by (a mistaken reliance on) the theory of diminishing marginal utility. The implication of that theory (as applied by luck-egalitarians) is that there is a universal welfare function, and that making a worse-off person happier somehow cancels or justifies the disutility of the better-off person who is forced to part with something for the benefit of the worse-off.

Strong luck-egalitarianism would strive for equal happiness for everyone, for all time. The weaker — and more usual — luck-egalitarianism strives only to rectify the most glaring instances in which persons are worse off through no fault of their own. Of course, it is the prerogative of allied bands of luck-egalitarians (e.g., Democrats in Congress) to determine who is worse off, by what criteria they are worse off, who is undeservedly better off, and how much the better-off should be taxed (or otherwise burdened) to compensate the worse-off. The usual — and accurate — term for such doings is “cheap compassion”; “cheap” because it is “compassion” bought with other people’s money.

The presumptuousness of the luck-egalitarian position can be appreciated by taking it to its logical extreme, which is that there is no such thing as an interpersonal difference based on choice because the ability to choose is ultimately based on luck, in the dominant secular view of existence. A high-IQ person, for example, is able to choose among ways of making a living that will yield more income and wealth than a low-IQ person can garner from the options that are realistically his. Isn’t IQ a matter of luck? Similarly, a person born to wealthy parents has a much higher chance of becoming wealthy, by some standard, than does the person born to poor parents, by the same standard. Isn’t being born to a certain set of parents a matter of luck? There are many other luck-dependent differences that strongly influence a person’s income and wealth: country and region of one’s birth, one’s congenital makeup (other than intelligence), and so on, almost endlessly. It follows that luck-egalitarianism, properly applied, would hold that no one deserves to have more than anyone else, and that everyone should therefore have the same things.

And yet, most of the luck-egalitarians whom I know personally, or by following politics, will not insist on trying to make every person in the world identical with respect to life outcomes. To put it baldly, the prevalence of weak luck-egalitarianism reflects a limit on how much a luck-egalitarian is prepared to sacrifice of his own health and wealth for the sake of improving the lot of others less fortunate than he. I have not noticed, for example, that affluent luck-egalitarians share their homes with the homeless, but they would do that (and more) if they really thought about the true extent of luck in shaping life outcomes — and acted according to their purported principles. Why do they not? Because luck-egalitarianism — at bottom — is usually a prettied-up way of assuaging one’s guilt about having more wealth and health than most other persons. Affluent luck-egalitarians are willing to pay a price for assuaging that guilt, but not too high a price. Thus they usually call on “the rich” (i.e., those richer than they) to bear most of the burden. There are, of course, some among the super-rich who do the same thing, but having become super-rich, they can afford to make such gestures and they do not care about and/or fail to understand the disincentivizing effects of their spurious generosity. (Luck-egalitarianism on the part of the diseased and impoverished and among “idealistic” youth is a kind of special pleading that should be disregarded.)

At this point, I should offer an alternative way of viewing differences in life outcomes. But first, I want to drive home the point that luck-egalitarianism is nothing but an arrogant pretension to omniscience, usually disguised as compassion.

I begin with this (not far-fetched) hypothetical:

A tornado rips through a trailer park in a particular region of a particular State. At the time, 100 persons were in the trailer park. Every trailer is either demolished or damaged beyond repair. One result of the destruction and damage is that 10 persons are killed and 40 persons are seriously injured.

The following questions and observations are in order:

1. Do the uninjured denizens of the trailer park, who (in one respect, at least) had better luck than the injured and dead, owe something to the injured and the estates of the dead? Why should any of the uninjured owe anything to anyone; the uninjured also suffered losses that cannot be fully compensated by insurance (if they were insured)? I doubt that a luck-egalitarian would insist on taking from the uninjured to give to the injured and the survivors of the dead; the uninjured also suffered bad luck, just not as bad as it might have been. This suggests that someone’s (relative) good luck does not automatically oblige him to compensate someone else’s (relative) bad luck.

2. If the uninjured denizens owe nothing, perhaps others owe something to the injured and estates of the dead. But why? Persons not living in the trailer park had no more to do with the tornado than the lucky, uninjured residents of the trailer park. The lucky ones — both inside and outside the trailer park — had nothing to do with the injuries and deaths suffered by some residents of the trailer park. In other words, to repeat myself, someone’s (relative) good luck does not automatically oblige him to compensate someone else’s relative bad luck.

3. Further, persons living outside the trailer park — in the same region or State, elsewhere in the United States, or elsewhere in the world — have their own kinds of bad luck to contend with. It just happens to be bad luck that is not well known, if at all, to others. We know about the bad luck that befell the denizens of the trailer park, but the notoriety of their bad luck does not mean that they are the only persons in the world who have suffered or will suffer bad luck. By what calculus, then, is one supposed to weigh all the bad luck and good luck enjoyed by everyone in the world, through the eons, and arrive at a “just” and workable scheme of balancing things so that everyone is (in some immeasurable way) made equally happy?

4. Persons uninjured by the tornado — wherever they reside — did not cause the tornado and, therefore, did not cause the deaths and injuries in the trailer park. Deaths and injuries, though not the fault of the dead and injured, were not the fault of anyone else, either. But luck-egalitarians who wield power (e.g., members of Congress) insist on burdening the blameless for the bad luck (and bad choices) of others. That these burdens are imposed on the excuse that the city, State, or nation must “pull together” as a “family” to help those in need does not lessen them. “Pulling together” and “family” betoken voluntarism, not compulsion by the state; such words and phrases are entirely inapposite when they are used in an effort to justify compulsion.

5. It is not the business of politicians to assign blame where there is no blame to be assigned. Yet that is what politicians do, in effect, when they penalize certain classes of persons (e.g., “the rich”) for being blameless. Where there is blame to be assigned — when a person’s is deprived of health, income, or wealth by actions of another person or persons — remedies are available in civil and criminal law. Fault-finding should be left to the courts of the land, and if the courts do not do justice, they should be reformed by open political processes.

On the last point, I must note that failures of justice are not one-sided affairs in which “the rich and famous” invariably get away with things, while persons who are poor, ill-educated, or members of minority groups bear an undue burden of punishment. Decades of blaming “society” for the willing acts of criminals have made justice something less than the swift and certain process that it should be if harm is to be rectified and deterred. It is no coincidence that the usual suspects — “liberals” and “progressives” who are quick to penalize blameless persons for the bad luck of others are also loathe to punish the blameworthy if they are perceived as having suffered the bad luck of being poor or of the “wrong color.” That their victims had bad luck — the bad luck of being victims — is of no account to luck-egalitarians, who possess the uncanny ability to measure and calibrate the universal social-welfare function.

In sum, luck-egalitarianism is arrogant presumptuousness harnessed to a perverse social agenda.

MORAL LUCK

Moral luck is another empty philosophical contrivance for placing blame on the blameless. In this case, the blameless are persons whose actions might have caused harm to others but did not. Thus their moral luck.

Moral luck is illustrated by this example:

Suppose there are two truck drivers, Driver A, and Driver B. They are exactly alike in every single way, drive the same exact car, have the same driving schedule, have the same exact reaction time, and so forth. Let’s say that Driver A is driving down a road, following all legal driving requirements, when suddenly, a child runs out in the middle of the road to retrieve a lost ball. Driver A slams the brakes, swerves, in short, does everything to try to avoid hitting the child — alas, the inertia of the truck is too great, and the distance between the truck and the child is too short. Unfortunately, the child is killed as the result of the collision. Driver B, in the meantime, is following the exact same route, doing all the exact same things, and everything is quite exactly the same –– except for one important distinction. In his scenario, there is no child that appears on the road as if out of nowhere. He gets to his destination safely, and there no accident occurs.

If a bystander were asked to morally evaluate Drivers A and B, there is very good reason to expect him to say that Driver A is due more moral blame than Driver B. After all, his course of action resulted in the death of a child, whereas the course of action taken by Driver B was quite uneventful. However, there are absolutely no differences in the controllable actions performed by Drivers A and B. The only disparity is that in the case of Driver A, an external uncontrollable event occurred, whereas it did not in the case of Driver B. The external uncontrollable event, of course, is the child appearing on the road. In other words, there is no difference at all in what the two of them could have done –– however, one seems clearly more to blame than the other. How does this occur?

This is the problem of moral luck. If we agree that moral responsibility should only be relevant when the agent voluntarily performed or failed to perform some action, we should blame Drivers A and B equally, or praise them equally, as may be the case. At the same time, this seems to be at least intuitively problematic, as — whatever the external circumstances are –– one situation resulted in an unfortunate death, and the other did not. (From an article formerly at Wikipedia, now available here.)

My reaction: The example only shows that moral luck is an empty construct. Putting aside the fact that Driver A was blameless (given the “facts” of the example), Driver B’s experience is irrelevant. First, no two drivers and driving situations are identical. Second, even granting, for the sake of argument, that Drivers A and B are identical, Driver B does not face the same circumstances as Driver A. The example avoids the true moral issues, which are these:

Did Driver A in fact drive prudently? That is not the same thing as “following all legal driving requirements.” Driver A might have passed a breathalyzer test, but perhaps just barely. Or Driver A might have been talking on his cell phone in a jurisdiction that does not forbid doing so while driving. Or Driver A might not have been paying full attention to his surroundings (an undetectable lapse) because he was thinking about where to make his next turn.

More fundamentally, the example fails to mention the actions of the child and the child’s parents. Was the child of an age to have known better than to dart into the street without looking? Why was the child allowed to play with a ball near the street? Why did a parent (or someone) failed to watch the child closely enough to prevent it from darting into the street? Why had the child’s parents not fenced the front yard and seen to it that the child could not unlatch the gate?

If Driver A drove prudently — above and beyond “legal requirements” — no blame can attach to Driver A. The blame, if any, must attach to the child or the child’s parents, an option that the example omits.

The article continues:

Moral luck entails two extreme outcomes, both of which seem intuitively unacceptable.

If, [on the] one hand, we accept moral luck as a real phenomenon and accept it as a valid restriction on personal responsibility (and, consequently, the assign[ment] of moral blame or praise), it is difficult to identify a situation where moral luck does not affect an event or an individual. Many, if not all, of the moral judgments that we engage in daily seem to become problematic, since any single action can be defended as having been affected by moral luck. Constitutive moral luck [pertaining to the personal character of the moral agent] especially highlights this problem –– after all, it is perfectly valid to argue that every single thing that we do relates in some way to our personal character disposition, and is not one hundred percent voluntary. Thus, if we do stick by our requirement of moral responsibility as needing complete volition, we cannot validly morally assess any action performed by an individual. As Nagel himself points out, if moral luck is accepted as a valid premise, the area of individual moral responsibility seems to ““shrink . . . to an extensionless point.”

On the other hand, if we deny the influence of moral luck and refuse to accept that it has anything to do with moral evaluation (as Kant most certainly would, for example), we are left with a single unappealing option: we are responsible for everything that we do, whether voluntarily or not, and for all the consequences, no matter how unforeseen or unlikely, that our actions entail. By this logic, the unlucky Driver A from our earlier example can take no solace in the fact that there was nothing he could have done to prevent the death of the child as the result of the accident –– he deserves the full amount of moral blame that can be assigned for such an outcome.

That is, moral luck either (1) negates personal responsibility or (2) places all responsibility on the individual actor to whom things happen. I reject the first premise because we have free will or must act as if we have it. (See this post.) I reject the second premise because, as I argue above, it fails to account for the freely chosen actions of others.

The concept of moral luck strikes me as baseless philosophical casuistry — an occupation for misused minds. Like luck-egalitarianism, the concept of moral luck attempts to place blame where there is no need to place blame.

THE REASONABLE ALTERNATIVE TO LUCK-EGALITARIANISM AND MORAL LUCK

In the words of an unknown wise man: Stuff happens; get over it.

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In Defense of Marriage

This post joins some old and new observations about same-sex “marriage.” I not only repudiate the travesty of homosexual “marriage” but also those so-called libertarians who would (unwittingly) harm the cause of liberty by their insistence on a “right” to same-sex “marriage.” In the end, I remind the reader that there is more to liberty than the mindless parroting of phrases like “fairness,” “justice,” and “equal protection of the laws.”

SAME-SEX “MARRIAGE” AS A LITMUS TEST

It is my firm impression that most self-described libertarians — and “liberals,” it should go without saying — view same-sex “marriage” as a right. “Libertarian” bloggers X and Y are typical of the breed.[1]

Blogger X, a professed homosexual, states flatly that “I’m being discriminated against, and I want it to stop.”

Blogger Y, a known heterosexual, takes a complementary tack. For example, he calls Ron Paul’s support of the Defense of Marriage Act[2] (DOMA) “state-sponsored bigotry.” Actually, Paul was criticizing the Obama administration for failing to support DOMA because the act

used Congress’ constitutional authority to define what other states have to recognize under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to ensure that no state would be forced to recognize a same sex marriage license issued in another state.

Paul adds:

I will stand … against Unconstitutional federal power grabs, and will fight to protect each state’s right not to be forced to recognize a same sex marriage against the will of its people.

Y seems to view Paul’s defense of States’ rights as wrong — in this instance, at least — because the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman denies marriage to homosexual couples. Further, that denial seems — in Y‘s view — to arise from bigotry. Perhaps it does, in Paul’s case, but I am here to defend marriage, not a crotchety Texan (see this, this, and this, for example).

SAME-SEX “MARRIAGE” IS A PSEUDO-LIBERTARIAN CAUSE

Blogger Y‘s position is a manifestation of the kind of rationalistic, political correctness that is common among left (psuedo)-libertarians. Will Wilkinson, for example, suggests that

most PC episodes mocked and derided by the right are not state impositions. They are generally episodes of the voluntary social enforcement of relatively newly established moral/cultural norms.

Wilkinson grossly simplifies the complex dynamics of PCness. His so-called “newly established … norms” are, in fact, norms that have been embraced by insular élites (e.g., academics and think-tank denizens like Wilksinson) and then foisted upon “the masses” by the élites in charge of government and government-controlled institutions (e.g., tax-funded universities). Thus it is no surprise that proposals to allow same-sex “marriage” fare poorly when they are submitted to voters.

Pseudo-libertarianism of the kind evidenced by Wilkinson is no better than any other kind of rationalism. It simply posits a sterile, abstract standard of conduct — one that has nothing to do with the workaday world of humanity — and finds wanting everyone but those who pay lip-service to that standard of conduct.

That is not libertarianism. It is sophomoric dream-spinning.

Where is libertarianism to be found? In conservatism, of all places, because it is a reality-based political philosophy.

But what does conservatism have to do with libertarianism? I have in various posts essayed an answer to that question (here, here, here, and here, for example), but now I turn the floor over to John Kekes, who toward the end of “What Is Conservatism?” says this:

The traditionalism of conservatives excludes both the view that political arrangements that foster individual autonomy should take precedence over those that foster social authority and the reverse view that favours arrangements that promote social authority at the expense of individual autonomy. Traditionalists acknowledge the importance of both autonomy and authority, but they regard them as inseparable, interdependent, and equally necessary. The legitimate claims of both may be satisfied by the participation of individuals in the various traditions of their society. Good political arrangements protect these traditions and the freedom to participate in them by limiting the government’s authority to interfere with either.

Therein lies true libertarianism — true because it is attainable. Left-libertarians believe, foolishly, that liberty is to be found in the rejection of social norms. Liberty would be the first victim of the brave new disorder that they wish for.

If there is a truly libertarian case for same-sex “marriage,” it can be made only by invoking the possibility of voluntary social acceptance of same-sex couples who bond in a manner analogous to the bonding of heterosexual couples. But analogy is not identity, just as reliance on the edicts of the state is not a proper libertarian approach to social change.

OPPOSITION TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS NOT INHERENTLY BIGOTED

Many (if not most) persons who oppose same-sex “marriage” are animated not by an animus toward homosexuals but by respect for the time-honored status of marriage — in the Western tradition — as a monogamous, heterosexual union. Is it bigotry to defend a traditional institution from redefinition at the hands of the state? I think not. The state’s proper role is to protect citizens and their voluntary institutions, not to undermine or usurp those institutions. Therefore, if the state is going to involve itself in voluntary institutions, it ought to do so only for the purpose of ensuring that those institutions are not reshaped involuntarily.

The only bigotry that I see is the bigotry of individuals like X and Y, who denigrate those who would preserve the traditional character of marriage. I remind X, Y, and others who cry “discrimination” and “bigotry” that marriage — in its Judeo-Christian roots — is a social institution that was established for the purpose of solemnizing and legitimating the union of man and woman — not for the purpose of causing harm to anyone.

As for the opponents of same-sex “marriage,” I do not believe that a general charge of bigotry on their part can stand scrutiny. I have no doubt that some defenders of traditional marriage defend it solely or mainly because they despise homosexuals, their “differentness,” and their sexual practices. But such exceptions do not change the fact that marriage is not an institution founded on bigotry.

TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE IS A LIBERTARIAN INSTITUTION

Moreover, there is a compelling, libertarian reason to preserve the time-honored status of marriage as the union of man and woman. It is an institution whose preservation is vital to civil society, upon which liberty depends:

[I]t is impossible and — more importantly — undesirable for government to police everyone’s behavior. Liberty depends, therefore, on the institutions of society — family, church, club, and the like — through which individuals learn to treat one another with respect, through which individuals often come to the aid of one another, and through which instances of disrespect can be noted, publicized, and even punished (e.g., by criticism and ostracism).

That is civil society. And it is civil society which — in the minarchistic view — government ought to protect instead of usurping and destroying as it establishes its own agencies (e.g., public schools, welfare), gives them primary and even sole jurisdiction in many matters, and funds them with tax money that could have gone to private institutions. Moreover, some minarchists aver that government ought to tolerate a broad range of accepted behaviors across the various institutions of civil society, as long as government also protects the negative rights of association and exit: the right to associate with persons of one’s choosing, and the right to live and work where one prefers.

Marriage — despite its imperfections and the state’s involvement (e.g., licensing, separation proceedings, divorce decrees) — remains a bulwark of civil society, or of the remnants of civil society that have survived usurpation and negation by the state. Therefore, the proponents of state-imposed same-sex “marriage” bear the burden of proving that the expansion of marriage to include homosexual partnerships will redound to the benefit of civil society. Saying that opposition to same-sex marriage amounts to bigotry is no kind of proof.

This leads me to ask whether (1) state-imposed homosexual “marriage” would be deleterious to civil society in the long run, and (2) if marriage loses its traditional definition, any institution of civil society is immune from the depradations of the state.

On the question of the long-run effects of state-imposed homosexual “marriage,” I turn to Jennifer Roback Morse:

Marriage is a naturally occurring, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society. Western society is drifting toward a redefinition of marriage as a bundle of legally defined benefits bestowed by the state. As a libertarian, I find this trend regrettable. The organic view of marriage is more consistent with the libertarian vision of a society of free and responsible individuals, governed by a constitutionally limited state…..

My central argument is that a society will be able to govern itself with a smaller, less intrusive government if that society supports organic marriage rather than the legalistic understanding of marriage….

The new idea about marriage claims that no structure should be privileged over any other. The supposedly libertarian subtext of this idea is that people should be as free as possible to make their personal choices. But the very nonlibertarian consequence of this new idea is that it creates a culture that obliterates the informal methods of enforcement. Parents can’’t raise their eyebrows and expect children to conform to the socially accepted norms of behavior, because there are no socially accepted norms of behavior. Raised eyebrows and dirty looks no longer operate as sanctions on behavior slightly or even grossly outside the norm. The modern culture of sexual and parental tolerance ruthlessly enforces a code of silence, banishing anything remotely critical of personal choice. A parent, or even a peer, who tries to tell a young person that he or she is about to do something incredibly stupid runs into the brick wall of the non-judgmental social norm….

No libertarian would claim that the presumption of economic laissez-faire means that the government can ignore people who violate the norms of property rights, contracts, and fair exchange. Apart from the occasional anarcho-capitalist, all libertarians agree that enforcing these rules is one of the most basic functions of government. With these standards for economic behavior in place, individuals can create wealth and pursue their own interests with little or no additional assistance from the state. Likewise, formal and informal standards and sanctions create the context in which couples can create marriage with minimal assistance from the state….

Some libertarians seem to believe that marriage is a special case of free association of individuals. I say the details of this particular form of free association are so distinctive as to make marriage a unique social institution that deserves to be defended on its own terms and not as a special case of something else.

One side in this dispute is mistaken. There is enormous room for debate, but there ultimately is no room for compromise…. We will be happier if we try to discover the truth and accommodate ourselves to it, rather than try to recreate the world according to our wishes….

Being free does not demand that everyone act impulsively rather than deliberately. Libertarian freedom is the modest demand to be left alone by the coercive apparatus of the government. Economic liberty, and libertarian freedom more broadly, is certainly consistent with living with a great many informal social and cultural constraints….

We now live in an intellectual, social, and legal environment in which the laissez-faire idea has been mechanically applied to sexual conduct and married life. But Rousseau-style state-of-nature couplings are inconsistent with a libertarian society of minimal government. In real, actually occurring societies, noncommittal sexual activity results in mothers and children who require massive expenditures and interventions by a powerful government….

When … Friedrich Hayek championed the concept of spontaneous order, he helped people see that explicitly planned orders do not exhaust the types of social orders that emerge from purposeful human behavior. The opposite of a centrally planned economy is not completely unplanned chaos, but rather a spontaneous order that emerges from thousands of private plans interacting with each according to a set of reasonably transparent legal rules and social norms.

Likewise, the opposite of government controlling every detail of every single family’’s life is not a world in which everyone acts according to emotional impulses. The opposite is an order made up of thousands of people controlling themselves for the greater good of the little society of their family and the wider society at large….

Libertarians recognize that a free market needs a culture of law-abidingness, promise-keeping, and respect for contracts. Similarly, a free society needs a culture that supports and sustains marriage as the normative institution for the begetting, bearing, and rearing of children. A culture full of people who violate their contracts at every possible opportunity cannot be held together by legal institutions, as the experience of post-communist Russia plainly shows. Likewise, a society full of people who treat sex as a purely recreational activity, a child as a consumer good and marriage as a glorified roommate relationship will not be able to resist the pressures for a vast social assistance state. The state will irresistibly be drawn into parental quarrels and into providing a variety of services for the well-being of the children….

The libertarian preference for nongovernmental provision of care for dependents is based upon the realization that people take better care of those they know and love than of complete strangers. It is no secret that people take better care of their own stuff than of other people’s. Economists conclude that private property will produce better results than collectivization schemes. But a libertarian preference for stable married-couple families is built upon more than a simple analogy with private property. The ordinary rhythm of the family creates a cycle of dependence and independence that any sensible social order ought to harness rather than resist.

We are all born as helpless infants, in need of constant care. But we are not born alone. If we are lucky enough to be born into a family that includes an adult married couple, they sustain us through our years of dependence. They do not get paid for the work they do: They do it because they love us. Their love for us keeps them motivated to carry on even when we are undeserving, ungrateful, snot-nosed brats. Their love for each other keeps them working together as a team with whatever division of labor works for them.

As we become old enough to be independent, we become attracted to other people. Our bodies practically scream at us to reproduce and do for our children what our parents did for us. In the meantime, our parents are growing older. When we are at the peak of our strength, stamina, and earning power, we make provision to help those who helped us in our youth.

But for this minimal government approach to work, there has to be a family in the first place. The family must sustain itself over the course of the life cycle of its members. If too many members spin off into complete isolation, if too many members are unwilling to cooperate with others, the family will not be able to support itself. A woman trying to raise children without their father is unlikely to contribute much to the care of her parents. In fact, unmarried parents are more likely to need help from their parents than to provide it….

Marriage is the socially preferred institution for sexual activity and childrearing in every known human society. The modern claim that there need not be and should not be any social or legal preference among sexual or childrearing contexts is, by definition, the abolition of marriage as an institution. This will be a disaster for the cause of limited government. Disputes that could be settled by custom will have to be settled in court. Support that could be provided by a stable family must be provided by taxpayers. Standards of good conduct that could be enforced informally must be enforced by law….

The advocates of the deconstruction of marriage into a series of temporary couplings with unspecified numbers and genders of people have used the language of choice and individual rights to advance their cause. This rhetoric has a powerful hold over the American mind. It is doubtful that the deconstruction of the family could have proceeded as far as it has without the use of this language of personal freedom.

But this rhetoric is deceptive. It is simply not possible to have a minimum government in a society with no social or legal norms about family structure, sexual behavior, and childrearing. The state will have to provide support for people with loose or nonexistent ties to their families. The state will have to sanction truly destructive behavior, as always. But destructive behavior will be more common because the culture of impartiality destroys the informal system of enforcing social norms.

It is high time libertarians object when their rhetoric is hijacked by the advocates of big government. Fairness and freedom do not demand sexual and parental license. Minimum-government libertarianism needs a robust set of social institutions. If marriage isn’t a necessary social institution, then nothing is. And if there are no necessary social institutions, then the individual truly will be left to face the state alone. A free society needs marriage. (“Marriage and the limits of contract: A libertarian case,” Policy Review, No. 130)

It is clear that a free society needs traditional, heterosexual marriage, which — as Morse explains — is a primary civilizing force. As if in answer to that truth, the proponents of same-sex “marriage” aver that its recognition by the state will not undermine the societal benefits of traditional marriage. They aver, rather, that it will extend those benefits to encompass those homosexuals who choose “marriage,” and their biological or adopted children.

SAME-SEX “MARRIAGE” IS A BLOW TO LIBERTY

Is there really a “win-win” argument for same-sex “marriage”? The answer, in a word, is “no.” The recognition of homosexual “marriage” by the state — though innocuous to many, and an article of faith among most libertarians and liberals — is another step down the slippery slope of societal disintegration. The disintegration began in earnest in the 1930s, when Americans began to place their trust in chimerical, one-size-fits-all “solutions” offered by power-hungry, economically illiterate politicians and their “intellectual” enablers and apologists. In this instance, the state will recognize homosexual “marriage,” then bestow equal benefits on homosexual “partners,” and then require private entities (businesses, churches, etc.) to grant equal benefits to homosexual “partnerships.” Individuals and businesses who demur will be brought to heel through the use of affirmative action and hate-crime legislation to penalize those who dare to speak against homosexual “marriage,” the privileges that flow from it, and the economic damage wrought by those privileges.

It should be evident to anyone who has watched American politics that even-handedness is not a matter of observing constitutional limits on government’s reach, regardless of who asks for an exception; it is, rather, a matter of expanding the privileges bestowed by government so that no one is excluded. It follows that the recognition and punitive enforcement of same-sex “marriage” would be followed by the recognition and bestowal of benefits on other arrangements, including transient “partnerships” of convenience. And that surely will weaken heterosexual marriage, which is the axis around which the family revolves. The state will be saying, in effect, “Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer — above all — will pick up the pieces.” And so it will go.

Almost six years ago, I constructed following parable (here), which builds on a post by Maggie Gallagher (part of a series at The Volokh Conspiracy on the subject of same-sex marriage):

Imagine a society that depends on the camel (the family, in this analogy) for transportation across a dangerous desert and into an oasis of civility. A camel that is operated by a man and a woman — joined contractually to do their best to steer the camel from danger — is most likely to arrive at its destination safely because the man and woman have complementary skills, and because they (and their offspring, to break the analogy for a moment) are bonded in an irreplicable biological symbiosis. A camel that is operated by either a man or a woman alone is next most likely to arrive at its destination safely because a sole operator, knowing that he or she lacks certain skills, is at least likely to try to compensate for that lack. A camel that is operated by two persons of the same sex is least likely to arrive at its destination safely because: (1) the operators’ bonding can never be as complete as that of a man-woman team and (2) the operators deliberately choose to omit half the skills required for the job.

Those differences might have only a marginal effect on the overall success of camel-driving operations if the state were not involved in licensing and supporting camel drivers. But the state is involved in licensing and supporting camel drivers, and it has done poorly by the camel in the process. The state began many years ago to encourage solo camel driving by enabling man-woman teams to break their contracts at will instead of trying to work out their differences. (The lesson: When the state sends signals about private arrangements, private arrangements tend to align themselves with the signals being sent by the state.) The state later began to encourage yet more solo camel driving by subsidizing women for driving solo (for raising children out of wedlock, that is) and fostering the dereliction of camel-driving duty in the name of “equality” (as if camel driving were a lesser occupation than, say, camel trading). Now the state is beginning to encourage the formation of man-man and woman-woman camel-driving teams. Given the state’s record in such matters, the predictable outcomes of that development are these:

An increasing proportion of camels will be driven by same-sex teams, thus decreasing the likelihood that camels will arrive safely at the oasis of civility.

A decreasing proportion of men and women will feel the need to form opposite-sex camel-driving teams, as they see that the state (having usurped society’s role in legitimating and supporting camel driving teams) values such teams less and less, thus even further decreasing the likelihood that camels will arrive safely at the oasis of civility.

Given the signals being sent by the state, the rate of formation of traditional, heterosexual marriages will continue to decline. (According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of adult males who are married dropped steadily from 71.1 percent in the 1960 census to 58.6 percent in the 2000 census; for females, the percentage dropped from 67.4 to 54.6. (The latest available figures, for 2009, show no significant change since 2000.) About half of each drop is explained by a rise in the percentage of adults who never marry, the other half by a rise in the percentage of divorced adults. Those statistics are what one should expect when the state signals — as it began to do increasingly after 1960 — that traditional marriage is no special thing by making it easier for couples to divorce, by subsidizing single mothers, and by encouraging women to work outside the home.

The well-known effects of such policies include higher rates of crime and lower levels of educational and economic achievement. (See this and this, for example.) Same-sex marriage would multiply these effects for the sake of mollifying a small minority of the populace.

“EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAWS” DOES NOT DICTATE SAME-SEX “MARRIAGE”

When all else fails, special-pleaders claim that to deprive a particular class of persons of a particular right is to deprive them of the “equal protection of the laws,” as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The current, perverted interpretation of Equal Protection — as applied by the proponents of same-sex “marriage” — leads to this: Despite the fact that marriage is good for society and should not be undermined, Equal Protection (in the perverse view) requires that marriage be undermined by redefining it. The law, in other words, cannot discriminate among individuals if there are objections by (or on the part of) those who are discriminated against. The reasonableness of the discrimination is of no account. Thus, in the not-so-far-fetched-extreme, criminals may not be discriminated against by putting them into prisons, but must enjoy the same amenities as law-abiding citizens.

Consider the infamous Proposition 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which was decided last year by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker (who has since retired and admitted his special interest in the case, as a homosexual in a “committed” relationship). Judge Walker addresses equal protection thusly:

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”…

Proposition 8 targets gays and lesbians in a manner specific to their sexual orientation and, because of their relationship to one another, Proposition 8 targets them specifically due to sex. Having considered the evidence, the relationship between sex and sexual orientation and the fact that Proposition 8 eliminates a right only a gay man or a lesbian would exercise, the court determines that plaintiffs’ equal protection claim is based on sexual orientation, but this claim is equivalent to a claim of discrimination based on sex.

The circularity of Judge Walker’s reasoning with respect to equal protection begins much earlier in his decision, where he writes that

The right to marry has been historically and remains the right to choose a spouse and, with mutual consent, join together and form a household. Race and gender restrictions shaped marriage during eras of race and gender inequality, but such restrictions were never part of the historical core of the institution of marriage. Today, gender is not relevant to the state in determining spouses’ obligations to each other and to their dependents. Relative gender composition aside, same-sex couples are situated identically to opposite-sex couples in terms of their ability to perform the rights and obligations of marriage under California law. Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.

But the right to marry, historically, has been the right to choose a spouse of the opposite sex, not merely to choose a spouse. Judge Walker even acknowledges that fact, inadvertently, when he puts aside “relative gender composition,” as if it were a mere trifle and not central to a social tradition that dates back millennia and should not be swept aside casually by a judge because he finds it “irrational,” on the basis of spurious social science. Walker then says that “gender is not relevant,” thus circularly assuming that which is to be proved. As if in support of that assertion he asserts, laughably, that “gender restrictions … were never part of the historical core of the institution of marriage.”

In sum, Judge Walker approaches the constitutional matter of equal protection by assuming that gays have the right to marry. Given that assumption, it is easy to assert that Proposition 8 amounts to a denial of equal protection for gays who seek to marry.

THE STATE SHOULD PROTECT MARRIAGE, NOT DESTROY IT

Although it is true that heterosexual unions have their problems, those problems have been made worse by the intercession of the state. And if the state legitimates same-sex “marriage” civil society will suffer a devastating injury.

Near-sighted, special-pleading proponents of same-sex “marriage,” even if faced with its anti-libertarian ramifications, will say that it is only “fair” to legalize it, and discriminatory or bigoted to deny it. These are the proper response to such playground taunts:

Marriage was neither created nor sustained for negative reasons. The preservation of a time-honored, beneficial, voluntary, social institution is no more discriminatory or bigoted than the preservation of, say, an honorary society that is open only to persons who excel in particular ways.

The legalization of homosexual “marriage” is unfair to the vast majority of Americans whose well-being depends on the proper functioning of traditional marriage, which is a bulwark of civil society.

Therefore, given that the state is deeply and irretrievably involved in marriage, I reject the unrealistic libertarian nostrum that the state ought not to have anything to do with marriage. The reality of the state’s continuing involvement with marriage leads me to embrace the consequentialist position that the state ought to preserve it by refusing to change its time-honored character as the union of one man and one woman.

The alternative is to advance further down the slippery slope toward societal disintegration and into the morass of ills which accompany that disintegration. (We have seen enough societal disintegration and costly consequences since the advent of the welfare state to know that the two go hand in hand.)

Faced with a choice between libertarian shibboleth and libertarian substance, I have chosen substance. I now say: Ban homosexual marriage and avoid another step down the slippery slope toward incivility and bigger government.

__________
1. I enclose “libertarians” in quotation marks because many (most?) self-described libertarians espouse policies that are, in fact, anti-libertarian. The legalization of same-sex “marriage” is one such policy, as I explain in this post; abortion is another salient one; others include a weak national defense, borders that are open to prospective supporters and beneficiaries of the welfare state, reflexive softness toward criminals, and a willingness to sacrifice the property rights of others to prove their own bona fides in matters of race. For more, see these posts:
On Liberty
Line-Drawing and Liberty
Pseudo-Libertarian Sophistry vs. True Libertarianism

Libertarian Conservative or Conservative Libertarian?
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Part I
Bounded Liberty: A Thought Experiment
More Pseudo-Libertarianism
More about Conservative Governance
The Meaning of Liberty
Positive Liberty vs. Liberty
On Self-Ownership and Desert

2. DOMA, as explained here, seems to have two legal effects:

DOMA Section 2 … relieves states of a constitutional obligation to enforce judicial custody, alimony or other orders made in other states that involve recognition of same-sex marriages…. It is unclear … whether states already had the power to refuse recognition in these cases before the enactment of DOMA, and whether the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to modify such state authority.

DOMA’s Section 3 prevents the federal government from recognizing the validity of same-sex marriages….

Later:

Section 2 of DOMA explicitly addresses the constitutional requirement expressed in the Full Faith and Credit Clause in Article IV Section 1 of the United States Constitution, quoting its language directly. That clause establishes that the states have certain reciprocal obligations to one another, specifically to recognize each other’s “public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings.” That same section of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to legislate on the question of those obligations. Section 2 of DOMA excludes same-sex marriages from the state “acts” that any other state needs to recognize.

[Regarding] Section 3 of DOMA…. On February 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama announced their conclusion that “a more heightened standard of scrutiny” is necessary for sexuality-based classifications and consequently… DOMA Section 3 is unconstitutional.

In other words, a constitutional act — which legitimately allows the citizens of the various States to define marriage for themselves — is cast aside precisely because the citizens of some States might reject same-sex “marriage.” Obama and Holder, in other words, have taken it upon themselves to grant same-sex “marriage” the same status as traditional marriage. Their “reasoning,” I suspect, flows from the circular application of the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that I discuss here.

Existence and Creation

Logic and facts are puny things when it comes to the question of existence. Human beings do not (and probably cannot) comprehend the essence of matter-energy — the stuff of which the universe and everything in it is made. The following observations are therefore on a conjectural plane with all such musings.

TERMS

Universe = everything that exists anywhere, including other realms (multiverses), unconnected with “our” universe; parallel realities (many worlds); and other discrete assemblages of matter-energy in space-time.

God = hypothetical uncaused cause of the universe — a being or force whose power, knowledge, and degree of involvement in the shape of the universe and its events are matters of faith.

FIVE POSSIBILITIES

1. The universe simply exists without cause, has always existed, and will always exist unless it contains the seeds of its own destruction.

2. The universe simply exists without cause, but came into existence at a specific (if indeterminate) time, and may persist or not (see 1).

3. The universe is coterminous with God (a kind of monism), has always existed, and will always exist, though its essence and form may change.

4. God and the universe are eternal, but God exists apart from the universe and may change the essence and form of the universe.

5. God is eternal and exists apart from the universe; He brought the universe into existence at a finite time, and — in addition to changing its essence and form — may extinguish it at any time.

DISCUSSION OF THE POSSIBILITIES

The idea of an uncaused universe runs counter to human experience, which finds a cause for everything. This is true even for quantum fluctuations, which involve the movement of energy from state to state but do not change the total amount of energy in the universe. Possibilities 1 and 2 are therefore counterintuitive.

Possibility 3 is consistent with some strains of theism and animism, and it is hard to separate from possibility 4. If the universe is coterminous with God, then (presumably) God shapes His own essence and form, but that leaves open the related possibility of a God who can diminish Himself and eliminate His ability to further manipulate the universe. This seems unlikely.

Possibility 4 posits an eternal force or being which stands outside matter-energy-space-time and shapes it (initially and/or continuously, to some degree). The unappealing aspect of possibility 4 is the eternal coexistence of God and universe, which allows the universe to arise without cause.

This leads to possibility 5, which is the most appealing one. It enables causal relationships in the fabric of matter-energy-space-time, while explaining the creation of those things, in the first place, by an uncaused cause. That uncaused cause precedes the universe, which is the proper relationship if God is not “just” the universe or coexistent with it (possibilities 3 and 4). And if God stands apart as Creator, then God (almost certainly) possesses the power to extinguish His creation. Possibility 5, of course, is consistent with the Big Bang, though there may be more than one of them in the past and future of the universe.

For the while, I leave (as an exercise for myself and the reader) the question of God’s role in the initiation and evolution of the universe and its contents.

Related reading:
Existence of God (Wikipedia article, with links to external sources)
Universes, by John Leslie
The Bible (Douay-Rheims):

Book of Genesis
[1] In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. [2] And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. [3] And God said: Be light made. And light was made. [4] And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. [5] And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day.

[6] And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. [7] And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so. [8] And God called the firmament, Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day. [9] God also said: Let the waters that are under the heaven, be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done. [10] And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good….

Gospel According to Saint John
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. [4] In him was life, and the life was the light of men. [5] And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it….

Lawyerly Obtuseness

In the matter of Obamacare’s “individual mandate,” Orin Kerr and a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit cannot grasp the activity/inactivity distinction. There should be no mystery about it:

The Constitution’s Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce — activities that actually involve the transmission of products and services across State lines. The Commerce Clause does not give Congress the power to force participation in interstate commerce.

Congress therefore lacks the power to regulate the absence of interstate commerce, including decisions by individuals and businesses not to involve themselves in certain aspects of interstate commmerce.

The Necessary and Proper Clause merely allows Congress to make laws that enable it to execute its enumerated powers. The clause is not a mandate for Congress to go beyond those powers. Therefore, the clause cannot properly be invoked as an authority for the individual mandate.

End of discussion. Next case.

P.S. Randy Barnett offers a different view of the proceedings, while David Kopel corroborates my view of the Necessary and Proper Clause.

The Killing of bin Laden and His Ilk

The following is from a post by Fernando Teson, a philosopher-lawyer:

[T]he extrajudicial killing of a named person by a government for a public purpose, can be morally justified outside the battlefield onlyif the following four conditions are met:

1) it is necessary to avert deaths of innocents;

2) the government has a just cause (this condition is different from the first one);

3) the target is culpable, a true villain; and

4) capturing the villain is not possible.

I think that the three first conditions were met in the case of bin Laden, but I’m unsure about the fourth. We don’t know what happened here but even someone as wretched as bin Laden has to be given the chance to surrender. I’m inclined to think that this last requirement does not stem from any fundamental right that bin Laden has, but rather from what our democracy should be.

Why is killing permissible only if capture is not possible? Bin Laden and others of his ilk were and are villains, beyond doubt. They should be captured instead of being killed outright only if these conditions are met:

Capture does not lead to a trial in a civilian court, with its opportunities for grandstanding and a betrayal of justice — acquittal or a sentence less than death because a terrorist is treated as if he were owed the rights of an American, whose rights he would strip if he could.

Capture is for the sole purpose of attempting to extract information that might be useful in tracking down other terrorists and/or thwarting terror plots.

What “our democracy should be” is ruthless in the pursuit of its enemies. They will never respect us, but they should fear us.

What about U.S. citizens who have joined forces with foreign terrorists? Teson objects to “the declared intention of the Obama administration to kill U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.” The link in the preceding quotation leads to a post by Glenn Greewald, who cannot be said to sympathetic to the defense of Americans from their enemies (see this and this). Greenwald does make a good point:

[T]he reality is that the [Obama] administration has retained and, in some cases, built upon the core Bush/Cheney approach to civil liberties and Terrorism. As Al Gore asked in his superb 2006 speech protesting Bush’s “War on the Constitution”:

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution?

If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?

If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can’t he do?

There are good reasons to curb governmental acts that are not authorized by or contemplated in the Constitution. Slippery slopes do exist, as is all too evident in the state of the union. But where were Greenwald, Gore, and all other Constitution-invoking “liberals” — past and present — when it came to such blatantly unconstitutional acts as the passage of Social Security, Obamacare, and the multitude of other extra-constitutional homages to tyranny? Their hypocrisy precedes them.

Having said that, it seems to me that the constitutional niceties could be observed as follows: Try al-Awlaki (and others like him) for treason; secure a death sentence; and enforce the sentence with a “hit.”

Transnationalism and National Defense

Ed Whelan of Bench Memos explains:

“Transnationalism” challenges the traditional American understanding that … “international and domestic law are distinct, [the United States] determines for itself [through its political branches] when and to what extent international law is incorporated into its legal system, and the status of international law in the domestic system is determined by domestic law.” Transnationalists aim in particular to use American courts to import international law to override the policies adopted through the processes of representative government.

Transnationalism is a manifestation of an attitude that seems to prevail among leftists and extreme libertarians. Such types advocate a kind of international legal order in which acts of aggression against Americans cannot be answered or avenged except through the observance of legal niceties. As if there are international tribunals that would dispense even-handed judgments where the U.S. is concerned. As if our enemies could be counted on to observe international laws against aggression.

This benighted attitude is found in this post by Don Boudreaux, an otherwise sensible libertarian:

One of the great tenets of liberalism — the true sort of liberalism, not the dirigiste ignorance that today, in English-speaking countries, flatters itself unjustifiably with that term — is that no human being is less worthy just because he or she is outside of a particular group. Any randomly chosen stranger from Cairo or Cancun has as much claim on my sympathies and my respect and my regard as does any randomly chosen person from Charlottesville or Chicago.

The problem with such sentiments — correct as they may be — is the implication that we have nothing more to fear from people of foreign lands than we have to fear from our own friends and neighbors. Yet, as Boudreaux himself acknowledges,

[t]he liberal is fully aware that such sentiments [about “us” being different from “them”] are rooted in humans’ evolved psychology, and so are not easily cast off. But the liberal does his or her best to rise above those atavistic sentiments,

Yes, the liberal does strive to rise above such sentiments, but not everyone else makes the same effort, as Boudreaux admits. Therein lies the problem.

Transnationalists equate sovereignty with jingoism, protectionism, militarism, and other deplorable “isms.” Transnationalists ignore or deny the hard reality that Americans and their legitimate overseas interests are threatened by nationalistic rivals and anti-Western fanatics.

In the real world of powerful rivals and determined, resourceful fanatics, the benefits afforded Americans by our (somewhat eroded) constitutional contract — most notably the enjoyment of civil liberties, the blessings of free markets and free trade, and the protections of a common defense — are inseparable from and dependent upon the sovereign power of the United States. To cede that sovereignty for the sake of transnationalism is to risk the complete loss of the benefits promised by the Constitution.

It is for those reasons that I reject and despise leftists and extreme libertarians who have used the recent, justified, and laudable execution of Osama bin Laden as an occasion for spewing their venom. Noam Chomsky exemplifies the left’s moral relativism:

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

Jeffrey Tucker exemplifies loony anarcho-capitalism:

I have some vague sense that many people are opposed to capital punishment, and for good reason, and especially when there is no trial and conviction, and yet we are expected uncritically to celebrate the death of Bin Laden at the hands of the U.S. state.

What Chomsky, Tucker, and their ilk have in common is their status as cosseted intellectuals who benefit from the existence of the very state that they profess to abhor. I have little doubt of the fate that would befall them should they venture into the wrong part of the world without a retinue of SEALs to protect them from what passes for “justice” among the savages.

More about Probability and Existence

In “A Digression about Probability and Existence” I address

the view that there is life as we know it — an outcome with a low, prior probability given the (theoretical) multitude of possible configurations of the universe — only because there are vastly many actual or possible universes with vastly many configurations.

I observe that

[i]n this view, life as we know it is an improbable phenomenon that we are able to witness only because we happen to exist in one of the multitude of possible or actual universes.

I should have pointed out that it is impossible to know whether life as we know it is a low-probability event. Such a conclusion rests on an unsupportable assumption: the existence of a universe which is “fine tuned” to enable life is a low-probability event. And yet, that assumption is the basis for assertions that the existence of our universe — with its life-supporting combination of matter, energy, and physical laws — “proves” that there must be other universes because ours is so unlikely. Such “logic” is an edifice of rank circularity constructed on a foundation of pure supposition.

Such “logic,” moreover, misapplies the concept “probability.” No object or event has a probability (knowable chance of happening) unless it meets the following conditions:

1. The object or event is a member of a collective of observable phenomena, where every member of the collective has common features.

2. The collective is a mass phenomenon or an unlimited sequence of observations, where (a) the relative frequencies of particular attributes within the collective tend to fixed limits and (b) these fixed limits remain the same for reasonably large subsets of the collective. (Adapted from “Summary of the Definition,” on pp. 28-9 in Chapter 1, “The Definition of Probability,” of Richard von Mises’s Probability, Statistics and Truth, 1957 Dover edition.)

Mises, obviously, was a “frequentist,” and his view of probability is known as “frequentism.” Despite the criticisms of frequentism (follow the preceding link), it offers the only rigorous view of probability. Nor does it insist (as suggested at the link) that a probability is a precisely knowable or fixed value. But it is a quantifiable value, based on observations of actual objects or events.

Other approaches to probability are vague and subjective. There are, for example, degrees of belief (probabilistic logic), statements of propensity (probabilistic propensity), and “priors” (Bayesian probability). Unlike frequentism, these appeal to speculation, impressions, and preconceptions. Reliance on such notions of probability as evidence of the actual likelihood of an event is the quintessence of circularity.

In summary, there is no sound basis in logic or empirical science for the assertion that the universe we know is a highly improbable one and, therefore must be one of vastly many universes — if it was not the conscious creation of an exogenous force or being (i.e., God). The universe we know simply “is” — and that is all we know or probably can know, as a matter of science.

Voluntary Taxation

Will Wilkinson, writing at The Economist, quotes Ayn Rand and begs to differ with her:

Ayn Rand’s position on government finance is unusual, to say the least. Rand was not an anarchist and believed in the possibility of a legitimate state, but did not believe in taxation. This left her in the odd and almost certainly untenable position of advocating a minimal state financed voluntarily. In her essay “Government Financing in a Free Society”, Rand wrote:

In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance.

This is faintly ridiculous. From one side, the libertarian anarchist will agree that people are willing to pay for these services, but that a government monopoly in their provision will lead only to inefficiency and abuse. From the other side, the liberal statist will defend the government provision of the public goods Rand mentions, but will quite rightly argue that Rand seems not to grasp perhaps the main reason government coercion is needed, especially if one believes, as Rand does, that individuals ought to act in their rational self-interest.

It’s true that we each benefit from the availability of genuinely public goods, but we benefit most if we are able to enjoy them without paying for them. A rationally self-interested individual will not voluntarily pay for public goods if she believes others will pay and she can get a free ride. But if we’re all rationally self-interested, and we know we’re all rationally self-interested, we know everyone else will also try to get a free ride, in which case it is doubly irrational to voluntarily pitch in. (from “Ayn Rand on Tax Day,” free registration required)

Wilkinson’s analysis is more than faintly wrong. A rationally self-interested individual will voluntarily pay for something if his expected benefit is worth (to him) the price he pays. The fact that a purchase might yield uncompensated benefits to third parties (i.e., positive externalities) is beside the point. Individuals do many things with their money that benefit others, without expecting to be repaid by those others. Individuals also do things that benefit others, in more than the ordinary way of voluntary exchange — sometimes for money, sometimes not, and sometimes at the risk of life and limb.

In addition to the obvious but signifcant case of philanthropy, there are subtle things like building an elegant house with beautifully landscaped grounds. Clusters of such houses on upscale streets yield satisfaction not only to their owners but also to drivers, joggers, and strollers who pass through the neighborhood — often with the main purpose of enjoying the elegance and beauty that surrounds them.

A similar case in point is the practice observed in many neighborhoods of creating elaborate displays of Christmas lights. Such displays not only please the homeowners who create them (or pay someone to create them) but also the flocks of sightseers who are drawn to such displays. Homeowners (for the most part) do this without compensation from sightseers. (Some homeowners in a less-affluent neighborhood in Austin, which is known for its over-the-top lighting concoctions, have been known to invite voluntary donations to help defray the cost of their displays.)

Finally, on this point, there are not-so-subtle examples of doing good for others as a habit and even a way of life. Many persons devote many hours a week to voluntary work in schools, hospitals, and the like. Then there are firefighters, police officers, and a goodly fraction of the members of the armed forces who perform jobs that put them in harm’s way, and do so not only for the money they earn but often because they feel a duty to make their towns, cities, and nation safer for the inhabitants thereof.

In any event, a rationally self-interested person who values national defense or the justice system would be a good candidate for making voluntary contributions to support those kinds of governmental functions. It would be a simple thing for influential and very wealthy individuals and major corporations to parlay their self-interest into the creation of organizations that raise money from like-minded individuals and corporations. Imagine a version of the American Heart Association called the American Defense Association; imagine a version of the Junior League called the Justice League. If anything, it should be easier to entice “voluntary taxes” in support of essential functions like defense and justice than it is to entice contributions to charitable organizations, which seldom yield more than “feel good” benefits to donors.

Not all fund-raising efforts for charities succeed in obtaining donations from everyone they solicit, but fund-raisers neither expect nor require 100-percent success. Similarly, an American Defense Association or Justice League would not require 100-percent success in its efforts to raise enough money to defray the costs of national defense and domestic justice. It is enough that the prospect of being “taxed voluntarily” to support such causes would appeal to a large number of affluent taxpayers.

Of particular interest to fund-raisers would be those individuals and couples with adjusted gross incomes in the top 50 percent of the AGI distribution. For tax year 2008, the top 50 percent paid 97 percent of federal income taxes collected by the federal government. Before the Great Recession and associated “stimulus” spending, when the federal budget was nearly in balance, spending on national defense and justice (at all levels of government) accounted for about 20 percent of all government spending. It seems to me that the a rationally self-interested person or couple in the top 50 percent would leap at the chance to eliminate all of his or their taxes if the alternative were to donate a smaller amount to the causes of defense and justice. There would be holdouts — especially among affluent leftists, of course — but there would also be the usual donors who give far more than their “fair share.”

Consider, for example, the persons in the top 1 percent of the AGI distribution, who paid 38 percent of the federal income taxes collected for 2008, or the persons in the top 10 percent, who paid 70 percent of the taxes. Members of those groups (as well as others in the top 50 percent) would have a strong incentive to ensure the provision of defense and justice, understanding (as most of them do) the importance of order and stability to their livelihoods.

Further, I expect that many of top income-earners would lead example (as they do for charities) with their contributions. Additionally, I would expect them to be leading contributors to advertising campaigns that explain the economic benefits of maintaining a robust defense and vigilant system of justice while, at the same time, paying a lot less for government services. Chief among the benefits would be stronger economic growth — as money is saved and invested instead of being poured down so many rat-holes and into counterproductive regulatory agencies. In the end, there would be more jobs, higher incomes, less need for charity, and more money with which to dispense charity to truly needy individuals.

In summary, Wilkinson’s analysis seems rooted in a sterile conception of rational self-interest. It seems to assume that bright, hard-working, high-earning individuals cannot perceive the real benefits that would flow from “voluntary taxation” for certain purposes, namely, national defense and domestic justice.

Osama, Obama, and 2012

Obama did what any president should have done. However, because Osama was killed by U.S. forces on Obama’s watch, much of the glory will redound to Obama. But the glory really belongs to the team of Americans who conducted the raid on Osama’s lair, to the intelligence apparatus that led the team there, and to everyone directly involved in command and support of the operation.

The killing of Osama, at this late date, probably will have little or no effect on the operations of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The killing of Obama is a symbolic act of justice, and that’s about all it is. But that, in itself, is worth a lot to any American who abhors the 9/11 attacks for what they were: murderous attacks on innocent persons by cold-blooded fanatics. Anyone who is celebrating today but who said ten years ago that “we asked for it” is a hypocrite who should be wearing sackcloth instead of celebrating.

It remains to be seen whether the almost-certain surge in Obama’s popularity will last. There is much about the man and his policies that deserves deep unpopularity. Yesterday’s events will recede from view before long, and Americans will return to their struggles with unemployment, inflation, intrusive government, and mounting debt. It is those things that most likely will occupy Americans’ minds when they cast their votes in November 2012.

A case in point: Bush senior enjoyed a surge of popularity following the decisive (but incomplete) victory in the Gulf War of 1990-91, but he was nevertheless unable to win re-election in 1992. The third-party candidacy of Ross Perot had a lot to do with Bush’s unseating. But had the election taken place right after the defeat of Saddam’s forces, Bush probably would have won handily. Unfortunately for Bush — and the country — the election took place 20 months later, by which time Americans’ discontent with their economic lot led too many of them to vote for Perot and Clinton.

As Yogi says, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

America’s Financial Crisis Is Now

Reissued here.

On Self-Ownership and Desert

INTRODUCTION

Fernando Teson, one of the Bleeding Heart Libertarians, addresses self-ownership:

Self-ownership is the property right that a person has over her natural assets, that is, over her mind and body. As is well known (and nicely summarized in Matt [Zwolinski]’s post,) Lockeans think that this right can, under appropriate circumstances, justify ownership over external assets. Most libertarians endorse the idea of self-ownership. Some progressives do too, but an important line of progressive thought rejects self-ownership. According to John Rawls (in A Theory of Justice,) natural assets are collective property. That is, they belong to society, not to the person who possesses them. The reason for this, Rawls thinks, is that just as we do not deserve being born rich or poor, so we don’t deserve our natural talents. For this reason, societal arrangements that reward talented persons are only justified if they benefit the least talented.

I am exasperated by claims, like Teson’s and Rawls’s, that appeal to abstract principles which adduce to human beings abstract, Platonic attributes. One such attribute is “natural rights” — a close kin of self-ownership. I am especially exasperated when such attributes are bestowed by third parties speaking from a position of judgmental omniscience. Desert is an excellent case in point.

The attribution to humans of ethereal characteristics (like self-ownership and desert) exemplifies the fallacy of reification: “the error of treating as a “real thing” something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea.”

Self-ownership is in a class with “natural rights” as a condition that somehow inheres in a person by virtue of his status as a human being. I have dealt with “natural rights” at length (e.g., here, here, here, here, and here), and will not repeat myself. The rest of this post takes up self-ownership and desert.

SELF-OWNERSHIP

The argument for self-ownership, as forumalated by Robert Nozick, goes like this (according to R.N. Johnson’s summary of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick):

The self-ownership argument is based on the idea that human beings are of unique value. It is one way of construing the fundamental idea that people must be treated as equals. People are “ends in themselves”. To say that a person is an end in herself is to say that she cannot be treated merely as a means to some other end. What makes a person an end is the fact that she has the capacity to choose rationally what she does. This makes people quite different from anything else, such as commodities or animals. The latter can be used by us as mere means to our ends without doing anything morally untoward, since they lack the ability to choose for themselves how they will act or be used. Human beings, having the ability to direct their own behavior by rational decision and choice, can only be used in a way that respects this capacity. And this means that people can’t be used by us unless they consent.

The paradigm of violating this requirement to treat people as ends in themselves is thus slavery. A slave is a person who is used as a mere means, that is, without her consent. That is, a slave is someone who is owned by another person. And quite obviously the reverse of slavery is self-ownership. If no one is a slave, then no one owns another person, and if no one owns another person, then each person is only owned by herself. Hence, we get the idea that treating people as ends in themselves is treating them as owning themselves.

In summary:

1. I own myself because I am capable of making rational choices for myself.

2. If someone else “uses” me without my consent (e.g., enslaves me or steals food from me), he is denying my self-ownership.

3. Therefore, when someone else “uses” me he is treating me as a means to an end; whereas, I am an end in myself because I own myself.

Oops. I went in a circle. I own myself; therefore, I cannot be used by someone else, because I own myself.

Nozick’s proposition amounts to nothing more than the assertion that everyone must act from the same principle. Immanuel Kant made essentially the same assertion in his categorical imperative:

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.

Well, what if the person making that statement believes that his end is to be a slave-owner — and that he has the power to make me a slave?

The fact is that people, all too often, do not act according to Nozick’s or Kant’s imperatives. As Dr. Johnson said, I refute it thus: Look around you. Rights are a social construct. They exist only to the extent that they are reciprocally recognized and enforced. There are very good reasons that rights should be only negative ones (here and here, for example). But those reasons do not trump the realities of human nature (follow the links in the final paragraph of the introduction).

The concept of self-ownership, as with many ideals, arises from the ideal world of “ought” instead of the real world of “is.”

DESERT

Desert is a more infuriating concept than self-ownership. Self-ownership, at least, is an attribute which supposedly inheres in me by virtue of my humanity. (That it does not inhere in me can be seen readily by looking at my 1040, my real-estate tax bill, and the myriad federal, State, and local regulations that govern my behavior and transactions with others.) Desert, on the other hand, is mine only if someone else says that it does.

The Wikipedia article about desert gives this illustration:

In ordinary usage, to deserve is to earn or merit a reward; in philosophy, the distinction is drawn in the term desert to include the case that that which one receives as one’s just deserts may well be unwelcome, or a reward. For example, if one scratches off a winning lottery ticket, one may be entitled to the money, but one does not necessarily deserve it in the same way one would deserve $5 for mowing a lawn, or a round of applause for performing a solo.

Whether or not one “deserves” one’s lottery winnings depends arbitrarily on who is making the judgment. The arbitrariness is readily seen in the opposing views of Rawls and Nozick (from the same article):

One of the most controversial rejections of the concept of desert was made by the political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls, writing in the mid to late twentieth century, claimed that a person cannot claim credit for being born with greater natural endowments (such as superior intelligence or athletic abilities), as it is purely the result of the ‘natural lottery’. Therefore, that person does not morally deserve the fruits of his or her talents and/or efforts, such as a good job or a high salary. However, Rawls was careful to explain that, even though he dismissed the concept of moral Desert, people can still legitimately expect to receive the benefits of their efforts and/or talents. The distinction here lies between Desert and, in Rawls’ own words, ‘Legitimate Expectations’.^[1]

Rawls'[s] remarks about natural endowments provoked an often-referred response by Robert Nozick. Nozick claimed that to treat peoples’ natural talents as collective assets is to contradict the very basis of the deontological liberalism Rawls wishes to defend, i.e. respect for the individual and the distinction between persons.^[2] Nozick argued that Rawls’ suggestion that not only natural talents but also virtues of character are undeserved aspects of ourselves for which we cannot take credit, “can succeed in blocking the introduction of a person’s autonomous choices and actions (and their results) only by attributing everything noteworthy about the person completely to certain sorts of ‘external’ factors. So denigrating a person’s autonomy and prime responsibility for his actions is a risky line to take for a theory that otherwise wishes to buttress the dignity and self-respect of autonomous beings.”^[3]

Jonathan Pearce, writing at samizdata.net blog, sorts it out:

[T]he idea of “deserving” poor or “undeserving” rich is, in my view, loaded with ideological significance, depending on who is using the term. Clearly, people feel a lot more relaxed about handing out money – either from a charity or from a government department – to people who are down on their luck but of good character, than they are about handing it out to the feckless. Similarly, it follows that there is more support for taxing supposedly “undeserved” wealth than “earned” wealth. The trouble with such words, of course, as has been shown by FA Hayek in his famous demolition of payment-by-merit in The Constitution of Liberty, is who gets to decide whether our circumstances came about due to “desert” or not. Such a person would have to have the foresight of a god. It is, as Hayek argued, impossible to do this without some omnipotent authority being able to weigh up a person’s potential, and then being able to measure whether that person, in the face of a vast array of alternatives, made the most of that potential. (“Desert according to whom?“)

Rawls and his fellow travelers (who are usually found on the left) simply cannot stand the idea of individual differences, and so they attribute them to “luck.” The idea of luck, as I have said elsewhere, “is mainly an excuse and rarely an explanation. We prefer to apply ‘luck’ to outcomes when we don’t like the true explanations for them.” In the case of desert, the idea of luck is used as an excuse for redistribution, even though it is an inadequate explanation for variations in economic and social outcomes.

I am “lucky” because I was born with above-average intelligence. I did not earn it, it just happened to me. So what? I had to do something with it, right? And I did do something with it, but not as much as I could have, because I lacked the temperamental qualities required to pursue great wealth and political power. I chose, instead, to earn just enough to enable an early retirement, which is comfortable but far from lavish. I could just as easily have chosen to earn less than I did.

There are many, many, many individuals whose IQs are lower than mine but whose earnings far exceed mine, and whose abodes make mine look like a shack. Do I begrudge them their earnings and lavish living? Not a bit. Not even if they are dumb-as-doorknob Hollywood “liberals” whose idea of an intellectual conversation is to tell each other that Bush is a Nazi.

By the same token, there are a lot of individuals whose IQs are higher than mine, and I am willing to bet that some of them did not do as well financially as I did. So what? Should they have done better than me just because they have higher IQs? I Where is that rule is written? I will wager that there’s not a Democrat to be found who would subscribe to it.

Everyone deserves what they earn as long as they earn it without resorting to fraud, theft, or coercion. Members of Congress, by the way, resort to coercion when it comes to paying themselves. Yes, there is a constitutional provision that congressional raises can’t take effect until the next session of Congress, but incumbents are almost certain of re-election, and most incumbents run for re-election. The constitutional provision is mere window-dressing.

Back to the topic at hand. Tell me again why I am where I am because of luck. I had to do something with my genetic inheritance. I did what I wanted to do, which was not as much as I might have done. Others, less “lucky” than me did more with their genetic inheritance. And others, more “lucky” than me did less with their genetic inheritance.

Well, I could go on in the same vein about looks, athletic skills, skin color, parents’ wealth, family connections, and all the rest. But I think you get the picture. “Luck” is a starting point. Where we end up depends on what we do with our “luck”.

Not so fast, you say. What about family connections? Suppose Smedley Smythe’s father, who owns General Junk Foods Incorporated, makes Smedley the CEO of GJFI and pays him $1 million a year. If Smythe senior is the sole owner of the company, that is his prerogative. The million is coming out of his hide or, if consumers are willing to pay higher prices to defray the million, out of consumers’ pockets. But no one is forcing consumers to buy things from GJFI; if its prices are too high, consumers will turn elsewhere and Smythe senior will rue his nepotism. Suppose GJFI is a publicly owned company? In the end, it amounts to the same thing; if the nepotism hurts the bottom line, its shareholders should rebel. If it doesn’t, well…

Now what about those who are born poor, who are not especially bright, good looking, or athletic, and who are, say, black rather than white. Do they deserve what they earn? The hard, cold answer is “yes” — if what they earn is earned without benefit of fraud, theft, or coercion. Why should I want to pay you more because of the circumstances of your birth, your IQ, your looks, your athleticism, or your skin color. What matters is what you can do for me and how much I am willing to pay for it.

But what about individuals who are poor because they have been unable to “rise above” their genetic inheritance and family circumstances. What about individuals who are poor because they have incurred serious illnesses or have been severely injured? What about individuals who didn’t save enough to support themselves in their old age? And on and on.

Those seem like hard questions, but there is a straightforward answer to them. Such individuals may be helped legitimately, by private parties. As I say here,

Every bad thing that happens to an individual is a bad thing for that individual. Whether it is a thing that calls for action by another individual is for that other individual (or a group of them acting in concert) to decide on the basis of love, empathy, conscience, specific obligation, or rational calculation about the potential consequences of the bad thing and of helping or not helping the person to whom it has happened….

There is no universal social-welfare function. Therefore, it is up to the potential alms-giver to give or not, based on his knowledge and preferences. No third party is in a moral position to make that choice or to prescribe the criteria for making it. Governments have the power to force a choice other than the one that the potential alms-giver would make, but power is not morality.

Charity is a voluntary act that one commits without a sense of obligation; one helps one’s family, friends, neighbors, etc., out of love, affection, empathy, or other social bond. The fact that charity may strengthen a social bond and heighten the benefits flowing from it is an incidental fact, not a consideration. Duty, on the other hand, arises from specific obligations, formal or informal. These include the obligations of parent to child, teacher to pupil, business partner to business partner, and the like. Charity can be mistaken for duty only in the mind of a philosopher for whom love, affection, and individuality are alien concepts.

What happens, instead, is that individuals — whether needy or not — are helped illegitimately through coercive government programs that draw on free-floating guilt, large measures of political opportunism and economic illiteracy, and coercive state action.

Except for criminals and “public servants,” we deserve what we inherit (or do not), what we earn (or do not), what comes to us by chance (or does not), and what is given to us voluntarily (or is not).

By what divine right do John Rawls and his followers make judgments about who is deserving and who is not? The “veil of ignorance” is a smokescreen for redistribution under the pretext of omniscience.

CONCLUSION

Self-ownership and desert belong in the pantheon of empty concepts, along with altruism.

Evolution and the Golden Rule

Famed biologist E.O. Wilson has recanted the evolutionary theory of kin selection:

apparent strategies in evolution that favor the reproductive success of an organism’s relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction.

Here is an explanation of Wilson’s change of mind:

Wilson said he first gave voice to his doubts in 2004, by which point kin selection theory had been widely accepted as the explanation for the evolution of altruism. “I pointed out that there were a lot of problems with the kin selection hypothesis, with the original Hamilton formulation, and with the way it had been elaborated mathematically by a very visible group of enthusiasts,” Wilson said. “So I suggested an alternative theory.”

The alternative theory holds that the origins of altruism and teamwork have nothing to do with kinship or the degree of relatedness between individuals. The key, Wilson said, is the group: Under certain circumstances, groups of cooperators can out-compete groups of non-cooperators, thereby ensuring that their genes — including the ones that predispose them to cooperation — are handed down to future generations. This so-called group selection, Wilson insists, is what forms the evolutionary basis for a variety of advanced social behaviors linked to altruism, teamwork, and tribalism — a position that other scientists have taken over the years, but which historically has been considered, in Wilson’s own word, “heresy.” (“Where does good come from?” in The Boston Globe online, April 17, 2011)

I will concede a role for evolution in the development of human behavioral norms. But, as I say in “Evolution, Human Nature, and ‘Natural Rights’,”

The painful truth that vast numbers of human beings — past and present — have not acted and do not act as if there are “natural rights” suggests that the notion of “natural rights” is of little practical consequence….

Even if humans are wired to leave others alone as they are left alone, it is evident that they are not wired exclusively in that way.

Cooperative behavior is a loosely observed norm, at best. (For the benefit of “liberals,” I must point out that cooperation can only be voluntary; state-coerced “cooperation” is dictated by force.) Cooperation, such as it is, probably occurs for the reasons I give in “The Golden Rule and the State“:

I call the Golden Rule a natural law because it’s neither a logical construct … nor a state-imposed one. Its long history and widespread observance (if only vestigial) suggest that it embodies an understanding that arises from the similar experiences of human beings across time and place. The resulting behavioral convention, the ethic of reciprocity, arises from observations about the effects of one’s behavior on that of others and mutual agreement (tacit or otherwise) to reciprocate preferred behavior, in the service of self-interest and empathy. That is to say, the convention is a consequence of the observed and anticipated benefits of adhering to it.

I must qualify the term “convention,” to say that the Golden Rule will be widely observed within any group only if the members of that group are generally agreed about the definition of harm, value kindness and charity (in the main), and (perhaps most importantly) see that their acts have consequences. If those conditions are not met, the Golden Rule descends from convention to admonition.

Is the Golden Rule susceptible of varying interpretations across groups, and is it therefore a vehicle for moral relativism? I say “yes,” with qualifications. It’s true that groups vary in their conceptions of permissible behavior. For example, the idea of allowing, encouraging, or aiding the death of old persons is not everywhere condemned, and many recognize it as an inevitable consequence of a health-care “system” that is government-controlled (even indirectly) and treats the delivery of medical services as a matter of rationing…. Infanticide has a long history in many cultures; modern, “enlightened” cultures have simply replaced it with abortion. Slavery is still an acceptable practice in some places, though those enslaved (as in the past) usually are outsiders. Homosexuality has a long history of condemnation and occasional acceptance. To be pro-homosexual — and especially to favor homosexual “marriage” — has joined the litany of “causes” that signal leftist “enlightenment,” along with being for abortion and against the consumption of fossil fuels (except for one’s SUV, of course).

The foregoing recitation suggests a mixture of reasons for favoring or disfavoring certain behaviors. Those reasons range from purely utilitarian ones (agreeable or not) to status-signaling. In between, there are religious and consequentialist reasons, which are sometimes related. Consequentialist reasoning goes like this: Behavior X can be indulged responsibly and without harm to others, but there lurks the danger that it will not be, or that it will lead to behavior Y, which has repercussions for others. Therefore, it’s better to put X off-limits or to severely restrict and monitor it. Consequentialist reasoning applies to euthanasia (it’s easy to slide from voluntary to involuntary acts, especially when the state controls the delivery of medical care), infanticide and abortion (forms of involuntary euthanasia and signs of disdain for life), homosexuality (a depraved, risky practice that can ensnare impressionable young persons who see it as an “easy” way to satisfy sexual urges), alcohol and drugs (addiction carries a high cost, for the addict, the addict’s family, and sometimes for innocent bystanders). A taste or tolerance for destructive behavior identifies a person as an untrustworthy social partner.

It seems to me that the exceptions listed above are just that. There’s a mainstream interpretation of the Golden Rule — one that still holds in many places — which rules out certain kinds of behavior, except in extreme situations, and permits certain other kinds of behavior. There is, in other words, a “core” Golden Rule that comes down to this:

Murder is wrong, except in self-defense. (Capital punishment is just that: punishment. It’s also a deterrent to murder. It isn’t “murder,” muddle-headed defenders of baby-murder to the contrary notwithstanding.)

Various kinds of unauthorized “taking” are wrong, including theft (outright and through deception). (This explains popular resistance to government “taking,” especially when it’s done on behalf of private parties. The view that it’s all right to borrow money from a bank and not repay it arises from the mistaken beliefs that (a) it’s not tantamount to theft and (b) it harms no one because banks can “afford it.”)

Libel and slander are wrong because they are “takings” by word instead of deed.

It is wrong to turn spouse against spouse, child against parent, or friend against friend. (And yet, such things are commonly portrayed in books, films, and plays as if they are normal occurrences, often desirable ones. And it seems to me that reality increasingly mimics “art.”)

It is right to be pleasant and kind to others, even under provocation, because “a mild answer breaks wrath: but a harsh word stirs up fury” (Proverbs 15:1).

Charity is a virtue, but it should begin at home, where the need is most certain and the good deed is most likely to have its intended effect.

None of these observations would be surprising to a person raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition, or even in the less vengeful branches of Islam. The observations would be especially unsurprising to an American who was raised in a rural, small-town, or small-city setting, well removed from a major metropolis, or who was raised in an ethnic enclave in a major metropolis. For it is such persons and, to some extent, their offspring who are the principal heirs and keepers of the Golden Rule in America.

There is far more to human behavior than biological and evolutionary determinism. (Not that Wilson is guilty of that, but many others are.) It is especially simplistic to rely on biological and evolutionary explanations of the particular subset of behavioral rules known as “rights.” For the final word on that point, I return to “Evolution, Human Nature, and ‘Natural Rights'”:

[T]he Golden Rule represents a social compromise that reconciles the various natural imperatives of human behavior (envy, combativeness, meddlesomeness, etc.). Even though human beings have truly natural proclivities, those proclivities do not dictate the existence of “natural rights.” They certainly do not dictate “natural rights” that are solely the negative rights of libertarian doctrine. To the extent that negative rights prevail, it is as part and parcel of the “bargain” that is embedded in the Golden Rule; that is, they are honored not because of their innateness in humans but because of their beneficial consequences.

Is College for Everyone?

Of course not. But don’t tell that to Obamanauts and other purveyors of what is mistakenly taken for compassionate wisdom these days.

This is from my post, “The Higher Education Bubble“:

When I entered college [in 1958], I was among the 28 percent of high-school graduates then attending college. It was evident to me that about half of my college classmates didn’t belong in an institution of higher learning. Despite that, the college-enrollment rate among high-school graduates has since doubled.

Here is a recent view from the front lines of higher education in the United States:

America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns.

Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades.

For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college. (“In the Basement of the Ivory Tower,” The Atlantic, June 2008; h/t Maverick Philosopher)

Perhaps the higher-education bubble is about to burst. A serious effort to reduce government spending would surely lead to the reduction of tax subsidies to state colleges and universities. Or so one can hope.

The Evil That Is Done with Good Intentions

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid do several bad things at once:

They crowd out prospective providers of retirement funds, medical insurance, and medical care.

They create “moral hazard” by lulling people into the false belief that they will be well-taken-care of in their old age, thereby making it less likely that they will put aside money for their old age.

They therefore cause under-saving and, thus, under-investment in those things upon which economic growth depends: innovation and business creation.

If growth were not hobbled, there would be far fewer people in need of welfare programs and far more money available for voluntary assistance to those who truly cannot care for themselves.

Does World War II “Prove” Keynesianism?

In “How the Great Depression Ended,” I say that

World War II did bring about the end of the Great Depression, not directly by full employment during the war but because that full employment created a “glut” of saving. After the war that “glut” jump-started

capital spending by businesses, which — because of FDR’s demise — invested more than they otherwise would have; and

private consumption spending, which — because of the privations of the Great Depression and the war years — would have risen sharply regardless of the political climate.

That analysis is by no means an endorsement of simple-minded Keynesianism (as propounded by Paul Krugman, for example), which holds that the government can spend the economy out of a recession or depression, if only it spends “enough” (which is always more than it actually spends). But there is no point in pumping additional money into an economy unless the money elicits productive endeavors: business creation and expansion, leading to net capital formation and job creation.

Pumping additional money into government programs results in the misdirection of resources, at best, and in the discouragement of productive private activity, at worst. Discouragement takes two forms: crowding-out and active interference (usually through regulatory inhibitions).

The answer to the question of this post’s title is that World War II has nothing to do with Keynes or Keynesianism, as it is widely understood. Employment and output (measured in dollars) rose sharply during World War II, but most of the additional output was devoted to the war effort. Huge increases in government spending did not lead to huge increases in the material well-being of Americans, most of whom were working harder while being deprived of the fruits of their labors, through rationing.

If anything, the post-war recovery “proves” the folly and wastefulness of efforts to stimulate an economy through government spending. It was not government spending that re-started the U.S. economy after World War II, it was private spending on capital investments and consumer goods. Some of that private spending was encouraged by the end of regime uncertainty. That end was brought about by the curtailment of New Deal initiatives (until the 1960s) because of the war and FDR’s death. Private spending — which was boosted by wartime saving — would have been purely inflationary had businesses not been willing and able to create jobs and expand output.

Rating America’s Wars

In “Why We Should (and Should Not) Fight” I say that

American armed forces should be used only to preserve, protect, and defend the interests of Americans.

I ended that post with an assessment of the engagements in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. But what about earlier American wars? Here are my thumbnail assessments of them (the dates indicate years in which U.S. forces were involved in combat):

Indian Wars (1637-1918). This long, episodic battle with Native Americans was justified when the purpose was to defend Americans and justly condemned when the purposes were genocide and theft of Indian lands by force or fraud. There is probably much more to be ashamed of than to be proud of in the history of the Indian Wars.

Revolutionary War (1775-1783). The struggle for self-government deserves praise whether the motivation was liberty in general or the economic interests of colonial planters, merchants, and manufacturers. The latter is a subset of the former, and the outcome of the war served both ends. In that regard, many of the leaders of the armed struggle also became prominent figures in the establishment of the Articles of Confederation and Constitution. Both documents were aimed at preserving and extending the liberty for which the revolution was waged.

War of 1812 (1812-1815). A leading cause of this war was the imposition by Britain of restrictions intended to impede American commerce with France. That, alone, would have justified the war if Britain could not be dissuaded by peaceful means, which it could not be. The U.S. had other legitimate grievances: impressment of American sailors into the British navy and British support of Indian raids in the Northwest Territory. The War of 1812 was, in effect, a belated and creditable resumption of the Revolutionary War.

Mexican-American War (1846-1848). The proximate cause of the war was the attempt by Mexico to retake Texas, which had won independence from Mexico in 1836 and annexed itself to the United States in 1845. The resulting war enabled the U.S. to acquire from Mexico — for $18,250,000 — land that is now California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. The U.S. was right to prosecute the war and entirely reasonable about the terms and conditions for resolving it.

Civil War (1861-1865). The war that is still being fought (with words) by many Americans pitted the morally reprehensible Southern defenders of slavery against Northerners, led by Abraham Lincoln, who hewed to the dubious proposition that secession is impermissible under the Constitution. The Civil War can be justified only in that it ended slavery in the United States, which was not Mr. Lincoln’s original aim in prosecuting it.

Spanish-American War (1898). This unnecessary war was fought on the excuse of Spanish atrocities in Cuba and the still-mysterious sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. It was in fact an exercise in imperialism through which the U.S. acquired the dubious honor of controlling Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines — altogether more trouble than they were worth. It is especially galling that Theodore Roosevelt rode the Spanish-American War to fame, and eventually to the imperial presidency.

World War I (1917-1918). The immediate cause of the entry of the United States into this war was German acts of belligerence — sabotage and the sinking of U.S. merchant ships. Those acts were aimed at preventing the U.S. from selling war supplies to Britain. Germany, in other words, was sorely provoked, and the U.S. government could not realistically claim to be a neutral party in what was really a European war, with Asian and African sideshows involving opportunistic attacks on German interests in those regions. Had the U.S. stayed neutral and avoided war, Germany might have won, though a stalemate was more likely. In either event, an exhausted Germany would hardly have been a threat to the U.S., and might even have welcomed trade with the U.S. as it rebuilt in the post-war years. All of this was last in the anti-German hysteria of the time, which played well to the super-majority of Americans whose roots were in the British Isles. It is pure hindsight to say that a victorious or stalemated Germany probably would not have produced the Third Reich, but true nevertheless. America’s entry into World War I was a mistake, in any event, but it turned out to be a horrendously costly one.

World War II (1941-1945). While Anglo-American and French politicians pursued the illusion that peace could be maintained through diplomacy and treaties, Adolf Hitler and Japan’s military caste pursued dominion through conquest. The Third Reich and Empire of the Rising Sun failed to dominate the world only because of (a) Hitler’s fatal invasion of Russia, (b) Japan’s wrong-headed attack on Pearl Harbor, and (c) the fact that the United States of 1941 had time and space on its side. Had the latter not been true, Americans could well have found themselves cut off from the world — and much the poorer for it — if not enslaved. World War II clearly ranks just behind the War of 1812 as the most necessary war in America’s post-Revolutionary history.

Cold War (1947-1991). This necessary, long, and costly “war” of deterrence through preparedness enabled the U.S. to protect Americans’ legitimate economic interests around the world by limiting the expansion of the Soviet empire. The Cold War had some “hot” moments and points of high drama. Perhaps the most notable of them was the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which was not the great victory proclaimed by the Kennedy administration and its political and academic sycophants. (For more on this point, go here and scroll down to the section on Kennedy.) That the U.S. won the Cold War because the USSR’s essential bankruptcy was exposed by Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup is a fact that only left-wingers and dupes will deny. They continue to betray their doomed love of communism by praising the hapless Mikhail Gorbachev for doing the only thing he could do in the face of U.S. superiority: surrender and sunder the Soviet empire. America’s Cold War victory owes nothing to LBJ (who wasted blood and treasure in Vietnam), Richard Nixon (who would have sold his mother for 30 pieces of silver), or Jimmy Carter (whose love for anti-American regimes and rebels knows no bounds).

Korean War (1950-1953). The Korean War was unnecessary, in that it was invited by the Truman administration’s policies: exclusion of Korea from the Asian defense perimeter and massive cuts in the U.S. defense budget. But it was essential to defend South Korea so that the powers behind North Korea (Communist China and, by extension, the USSR) would grasp the willingness of the U.S. to maintain a forward defensive posture against aggression. That signal was blunted by Truman’s decision to sack MacArthur when the general persisted in his advocacy of attacking Chinese bases following the entry of the Chinese into the war. The end result was a stalemate, where a decisive victory might have broken the back of communistic adventurism around the globe. The Korean War, as it was fought by the U.S., became “a war to foment war.”

Vietnam War (1965-1973). Whereas the Korean War was a necessary war against communist expansionism, the Vietnam War was an unnecessary entanglement in a civil war in which one side happened to be communist. Nevertheless, the U.S., having made a costly commitment to the prosecution of the war, should have fought it to victory. Instead, unlike the case of Korea, U.S. forces were withdrawn and it took little time for North Vietnam to swallow South Vietnam. American resolve suffered a body blow, from which it rebounded only partially by winning the Cold War, thanks to Reagan’s defense buildup in the 1980s. When it came to actual warfare, however, Vietnam repeated and reinforced the pattern of compromise and retreat that had begun with the Korean War, and which eventuated in the 9/11 attacks.

Gulf War (1990-1991). This war began with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of oil-rich Kuwait. U.S. action to repel the invasion was fully justified by the potential economic effects of Saddam’s capture of Kuwait’s petroleum reserves and oil production. The proper response to Saddam’s aggression would have been not only to defeat the Iraqi army but also to depose Saddam. The failure to do so further reinforced the pattern of compromise and retreat that had begun in Korea, and necessitated the long, contentious Iraq War of the 2000s.

The quick victory in Iraq, coupled with the coincidental end of the Cold War, helped to foster a belief that the peace had been won. (That belief was given an academic imprimatur in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man.) The stage was set for Clinton’s much-ballyhooed fiscal restraint, which was achieved by cutting the defense budget. Clinton’s lack of resolve in the face of terrorism underscored the evident unwillingness of American “leaders” to defend Americans’ interests, thus inviting 9/11. (For more about Clinton’s foreign and defense policy, go here and scroll down to the section on Clinton.)

Which leads us back to the wars and skirmishes of the 21st century.

Joe Stiglitz, Ig-Nobelist

This reminds me of these:

Joe Stiglitz, Ig-Nobelist

Taxing the Rich

More about Taxing the Rich

Social Justice

More Social Justice

The Public-School Swindle

I have a relative by marriage who’s a retired public-school teacher. She loved to moan about her “low” pay. She wasn’t alone, of course. Her refrain has been heard throughout the land for decade. Truth be told, however, she and her ilk were and are overpaid, as several commentators have explained (e.g., here, here, and here). The following diagram illustrates the machinations that yield above-market compensation for public-school teachers (and other) “public servants”.

Here’s a step-step-explanation:

1. The diagonal, solid-black lines represent the demand for teachers in the absence of tax-funded (public) schools (D-no pu) and the supply of teachers in the absence of tax-funded schools (S-no pu). The intersection of the S and D curves yields the level of teacher compensation (C-no pu) and employment (E-no pu) that would result were there nothing but private schools. (I am, for now, putting aside the question whether government should require school attendance through a certain age or grade, or dictate what is taught in schools.)

2. The picture changes dramatically with the introduction of tax-funded schools (indicated by the red lines). The supply of teachers for public schools (Spu) is to the left of S-no pu because (a) not all teachers are willing to work in public schools and (b) not all teachers are “qualified” to teach in public schools. The second condition arises when potential teachers have learned too much about the subjects they would teach, at the expense of taking too few (or none) of the “education” courses that enable fairly dim education majors to compile inflated grade-point averages.

3. The horizontal, solid red line indicates the inflated compensation (Cpu) that is offered by tax-funded school systems. This above-market rate of compensation is the product of an inter-scholastic “arms race”, in which school systems — goaded by administrators, teachers, parents, and (often) local businesspersons — seek to outdo the lavishness of other school systems, not only in the compensation of teachers and administrators but also in the number and kinds of non-essential courses and activities, and the lavishness and modernity of facilities and equipment. All of which is paid for (in the main) by taxpayers and consumers who have no say in the matter, but whose income and property can be seized for failure to pay the requisite taxes.

5. Not surprisingly, there are more teachers who are willing to work at public-school rates of compensation than public schools can hire (Epu), even with their inflated budgets. That is why some teachers turn to private schools, others accept substitute-teaching jobs, and some end up doing things like selling used cars. The green lines represent the supply of (Spr) and demand for (Dpr) private-school teachers. and the corresponding compensation of (Cpr) and number of teachers employed by (Epr) private schools.

6. The supply of teachers to private schools consists of (a) those teachers who cannot get jobs with public schools but are willing to teach in private schools and (b) those teachers who abhor the thought of teaching in public schools and are therefore willing to accept lower compensation for the privilege of teaching in private schools. The compensation of private-school teachers is lower than that of public-school teachers because

the compensation of public-school teachers is artificially inflated by the vast amounts of tax money extracted from persons who would not otherwise be in the market for education, let alone public-school education, and

the vastness of the tax burden limits the ability of persons who are in the market for education to pay for private schooling, that it, it artificially reduces the demand for private schooling.

Because the subsidization of public schools, there are far more teachers than would be the case in an entirely private system. Advocates of tax-funded education would count that as a plus, as they would the above-market wages of public-school teachers. In fact, it is a minus, because it means that resources are being diverted to less productive uses than they would be were education an entirely private matter. Moreover, mediocre teachers and administrators — often outfitted with lavish facilities and equipment — are being paid more than necessary to “educate” children in useless subjects, at the expense of taxpayers who could put that money to work providing better homes, relevant training, and more jobs for those same children.

This analysis undoubtedly applies to higher education as well as K-12 education. The presence of tax-funded colleges and universities unnecessarily drives up the cost of higher education and burdens many persons who derive no benefit from it.

In summary, public “education” — at all levels — is not just a rip-off of taxpayers, it is also an employment scheme for incompetents (especially at the K-12 level) and a paternalistic redirection of resources to second- and third-best uses. And, to top it off, public education has led to the creation of an army of left-wing zealots who, for many decades, have inculcated America’s children and young adults in the advantages of collective, non-market, anti-libertarian institutions, where paternalistic “empathy” supplants personal responsibility.

Related reading:
Mark J. Perry, “The Public-Sector Premium for School Teachers“, Carpe Diem, March 3, 2011
Ironman, “How Much Do Public-School Teachers Really Make Compared to Private-School Teachers?“, Political Calculations, March 30, 2017
Andrew J. Biggs, “No, Teachers Are Not Underpaid“, City Journal, April 26, 2018

Why We Should (and Should Not) Fight

G.W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein — a decision that was approved by Congress — was justified on several grounds. One of those grounds was a humanitarian consideration: Saddam’s record as a brutally oppressive dictator.

But humanitarian acts have nothing to do with the interests of Americans, except for the mistaken belief that the “rest of the world” (presumably including our enemies and potential enemies) will think better of the United States for such acts. The belief, as I say, is mistaken. Our foreign enemies and potential enemies see such things as evidence of American softness, when they do not see them as ways of obtaining U.S. weapons for future use against American interests. Our foreign “friends” (the sneer is well-advised) see the humanitarian acts of the U.S. government as one, two, or all of the following: (a) substitutes for their own humanitarian acts, which may accordingly be curtailed or withheld, (b) evidence of America’s “imperial” aims, and (c) evidence of the willingness of Americans to expend lives and treasure, sometimes in vain, for elusive or illusory objectives.

From the point of view of American taxpayers, the commission of humanitarian acts by the U.S. government is almost always and certainly a waste of money. (I have elsewhere discussed and dismissed the proposition that such acts are morally superior to the alternative of letting taxpayers decide how best to use their money.) It follows that now military operation can or should be justified solely on the basis of humanitarianism. And yet, that is the essential justification of Obama’s adventure in Libya.

Were Obama to come right out and say that our military involvement in Libya is really aimed at ensuring a continuous flow of petroleum from that country’s wells, refineries, and ports, he would be accused of waging a campaign of “blood for oil.” That, of course, was a leftist rallying cry against Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and Obama — as a man of the left and opponent of the Iraq war — does not want to be painted with the same brush.

Bush, too, sought to avoid the taint of “blood for oil.” But, in reality, it was in the interest of the U.S. (and other nations) to restore the flow of Iraqi oil to (or above) the rate attained before the imposition of UN sanctions.

Nevertheless, political discourse has become so mealy-mouthed since the end of World War II that no American politician dare speak of an economic motivation for the use of military force. And so, American politicians must adopt the language of hypocrisy, cant, and political correctness to justify acts that are either (a) unjustifiable because they are purely humanitarian or (b) fully justifiable as being in the interest of Americans, period.

In sum, American armed forces should be used only to preserve, protect, and defend the interests of Americans. To that end, American armed forces certainly may be used preemptively as well as reactively. And as long as it remains economically advantageous for Americans to import oil from other countries, it will be a legitimate use of American armed forces to defend those imports — at the source and every step of the way to this country. I would say the same about any resource whose importation is vital to the well-being of Americans.

The decision whether to use force to protect Americans and their interests, in any given instance, requires a judgment as to the likely costs, benefits, and success of the venture. For practical purposes, it is the president who makes that judgment, but he is ill-advised to commit armed forces without the backing of Congress. When armed forces have been committed, they should remain committed until the objective has been met, unless it becomes clear — to the president and Congress, the media and protesters to the contrary — that the objective cannot be met without incurring unacceptable costs.

A reversal of course sends a very strong signal to our enemies and potential enemies that America’s leadership is unwilling to do what it takes to protect Americans and their interests. Such a signal, of course, makes all the more likely that someone will act against Americans and their interests.

All of that said, I come to the following conclusions about current military engagements involving American armed forces:

Iraq was worth the effort, assuming that a post-withdrawal Iraq remains a relatively stable, oil-producing nation in the midst of surrounding turmoil.

Afghanistan is worth only the effort required to destroy its usefulness as an al Qaeda base. If that cannot be achieved, the large-scale U.S. presence in Afghanistan should be scaled back to a special operations force dedicated solely to the detection and destruction of al Qaeda facilities and personnel.

Libya is worth only the effort required to ensure that it remains a major oil-exporting nation. Aiding the Libyan rebels is likely to backfire because of the strong possibility that al Qaeda or its ilk will emerge triumphant in a rebel-led post-Gaddifi regime (as seems to be the case in Egypt’s post-Mubarak regime). Given that possibility, the U.S. government should withdraw all support of the NATO operation, with the aim of (a) bringing about the end of that operation or (b) forcing a “willing coalition” of European nations to do what it takes to ensure that a post-Gaddafi regime is no worse than neutral toward the West.

Earlier wars are treated here.

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