(Thanks, DailyPundit)

Tim insists that I link to this article about the cost of the US involvement in Iraq. Surprise, surprise, “reconstruction” is costing a fortune. Probably the biggest cost of the war is the cost in increased oil prices (no “blood for oil,” eh?) Since there has been some misunderstanding about my stance on Iraq, let me clear things up.
ATTN: World
Re: “Iraqi Reconstruction”
I adamantly oppose the reconstruction of any oil refinery, factory, or even one golf shack with money taken from me without my consent. Furthermore, I oppose any “peacekeeping” or policing efforts in any foreign country, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. What I oppose even more than the above however, is die-happy fundamentalist terrorists blowing up my countrymen and putting my life in danger. This is why I support the US military taking whatever steps to kill those bastards as fast and as efficiently as possible, while risking the lives of American soldiers as little as possible. The best way to do this would have been to take out the two governments that are the most active in supporting terrorism around the world: Iran and North Korea. Having failed to do that, Iraq is better than nothing. This involves taking out the Iraqi government by whatever means necessary. What the Iraqis decide to replace Saddam with is not my concern, though I doubt that any semblance of a democracy is possible.

 

August 5, 2003

(Note: I now disagree with the conclusions in this essay.)

My original goal in writing this essay was to answer a question on the morality of homosexuality. I believed that it was a deviant, potentially self-destructive behavior, (primarily because psychological and physiological problems stemming from the “gay lifestyle”) but it was probably outside the realm of choice, and thus one should maximize his happiness according to whatever identity maximizes their happiness.

After considering the issue, I realize that the crucial question to ask is whether one’s sexual orientation is a matter of choice or not. This question must be answered by examining both the empirical evidence coming from genetic, pre-natal, and environmental influences and by a psychological evaluation of where one’s sexual identity comes from. Key to the understanding of how deviant sexual orientations come out is an understanding of any gender identity develops in the first place. Thus, there are several preliminary questions about gender identity that must be answered before analyzing the nature of homosexuality.

The first question to ask is – what is the nature of gender roles? Let us consider some alternatives that are widely believed today:

a) Gender roles and sexual orientation are entirely genetic and outside of one’s volitional control.

b) Gender roles and sexual orientation are determined entirely by one’s society/environment/early childhood experiences. There is no basis for sexual orientation other than some social consensus about how men and women should act.

c) Gender roles and sexual orientation are a choice one must make, but there exists a “natural” orientation for each gender. This orientation is determined by one or both of two things:
1.) An intrinsic moral code (such as religious doctrine)
2.) Some fact of reality about the nature of each gender that gives rise to a correct and incorrect gender identity.

d) Some combination of the above.

In order to determine which of these views is correct, we first need to determine whether any aspects of human nature give rise to gender roles for men and women. To do so, we will first briefly review the fundamental nature of both men and women as human beings. (Unless explicitly specified, “man” and “he” will refer to instances of both genders.)

Like for all living being, continued survival for man requires a continuous effort to gain the values necessary for his life: food, water, shelter, and every other comfort that aids man in his life. Furthermore, man is born as a self-contained being, possessing the primary means necessary for his survival: his mind to choose the means by which to ensure his continued survival, and his body to act on those choices. Unlike animals, which are guided by instinct and have no such choice, man’s primary choice in life is to act towards his life, or if he does not, to act towards his death. The primary means of man’s survival is his mind, which he must use to choose the means and values that are necessary to sustain his life.

Since the nature of reality determines the material values man needs to sustain his life, the facts of reality also determine which actions man must take to gain those values. Man cannot achieve these material values by acting randomly: he can only ensure his continued survival by a consistent and continual effort to achieve the values needed for his life. In order for this effort to achieve the desired results, man must respect his nature are a physical, living, rational being as well as the nature of reality and the actions he must take to gain the values he desires from the rest of the universe. In short, to make living in accordance with his nature as a rational human being a constant part of his life, man must hold and live by certain values. (A value is something that you act to gain or keep. – Ayn Rand) Supreme among these values is reason, the means by which man determines all his other values. Secondary, are the values of purpose and self-esteem. Together, the values reason, purpose, and self-esteem allow man to realize his ultimate value: his life.

To act on his values, man must translate these values into virtues by which to guide his actions. (A virtue is “the action by which one gains and keeps a value.” – Ayn Rand)

The virtues on which the primary values depend are rationality, productivity, and independence. The man who is successful in living is able to derive the values necessary for his life and to translate them into the virtues necessary to gain and keep them. Some skeptics might say that this is a “cold, unemotional, and rationalistic” way to go about life, but nothing can be further from the truth. The man who confidently acts to achieve the values necessary for his life knows that it is his life he is acting to further, and that it is his values that he is achieving. The emotional state of knowing that one is an effectual, capable, productive individual who is master of his own destiny is self-esteem. Self-esteem is the confidence one has in his own worth as a human being and his ability to achieve his values. When a man makes the achievement of his values a way of life, happiness is that state of consciousness that results. Thus, the rational, productive, and self-confident man and woman know the value of their life and takes pride in their achievements.

These are the facts of human nature as they apply to all human beings. What facts give rise to the differences between the two genders? To begin, let us first consider the known physical facts that are self-evident by direct observation. These facts not in question: they just are.

1. Human beings can be differentiated into two groups: men and women, distinguished by different physical characteristics.
2. Men have a penis, women a vagina.
3. The man’s penis becomes erect when he experiences a particular kind of emotion, in response to his mood, premises, values, and — the woman
4. For sexual intercourse, the penis must be erect; there is no analogous requirement for the vagina.
5. The man is much stronger than the woman.
6. The woman bears the children; there is no analogous activity for the man

This is the evidence presented at the physical level. Further evidence can be gained from introspection, but since one is always limited to his own gender, so are the direct inductive conclusions one can make about gender roles. We can however observe some well-known differences between the behavior of men and women in society to gain objective evidence about gender roles as perceived today:

• Men tend to settle disagreements by argument and sometimes by physical force, while women are much more likely to discuss their disagreements and compromise on their differences.
• In case of disagreement between men and women, men more are likely to stubbornly insist on their side, while women are more likely to retreat and perhaps get around the disagreement in other ways. (Especially in a relationship.)
• The woman in a given relationship usually does most of the child-raising.
• Men are known for being too proud to ask for directions, women have no such inhibitions.
• Women usually seek a successful man for a mate, even if they are already financially independent. They are also more likely to willingly sacrifice their career for their husband than men are for their wife.
• Women often desire taller men, while man desire women who are shorter or equal to them in stature
• From an early age, girls are much more eager to please than boys.
• Young girls usually look up to their fathers much more so than young boys to their mothers.
• Women are much more careful about their appearance and more concerned with how others will judge their appearance then men.
• Women are usually viewed as more emotional than men.
• Despite claims that a “sense of humor” is the most important characteristic they seek in a partner, women generally seek out men who are successful, dependable, ambitious, faithful, and self-confident while men look for attractiveness, obedience, and affectionate tendencies in women.

The above observations come from many factors, but along with personal experience, we can sum them up into the following conclusions about the gender role differences that currently exist in society:

• Women are usually attracted to strong, successful, ambitious, and trustworthy men, while men are usually attracted to beautiful, obedient, and affectionate women.
• Men tend to be confident, arrogant, and independent while women are more compromising, self-conscious, and seeking of approval from their peers.

These differences in gender roles are not limited to any age, society, or other cultural differences, but tend to persist with few exceptions across time and geography. The important question we must now ask is – what is the basis of these gender roles? Are they, as some theists say, a commandment from God, or as some subjectivists claim, are they mere social consensus? Or, as I will now argue, do they come from facts of reality that give rise to particular gender roles?

Consider again the physical properties given above. When a man has sex with a woman, it is common usage to say that the man “takes” the woman, and this is for good reason. On a physical level, the roles a man and a woman play during sex are fundamentally different: the woman’s role is passive, while the man’s role is active. The primary action of the woman for sex is to be receptive or to “surrender” to the man, while the primary action of a men (stemming from the physical action of erection and penetration) is active. In short, the woman surrenders, and the man takes. This basic physical difference between the sexual action of men and women is the source of the concepts “masculinity” and “femininity.” Note that this is not an ethical, social, or legal distinction, nor is it a normative prescription. It is not a statement that a man should somehow be morally, socially, or legally superior to a woman. It is simply a description of the physical function of a man and a woman in relation to each other and the psychological differences that correspond to this distinction.

Masculinity

While masculinity is a concept that stems from a man’s role in relation to sex, it also colors the rest of his life. The essence of masculinity in man’s life is expressed in his confidence, the emotional state that proceeds from successful action in pursuit of values. Note the traditional stereotype of the “macho” man: an arrogant, insensitive, over-confident, and rash brute. Although misguided, this stereotype has a grain of truth: it reflects the masculine man’s fundamental attitude in relation to the rest of reality: as a master of his own fate, a self-made soul capable of shaping his own identity. In relation to a woman, man’s metaphysically active role in sex carries over and is intensifies these values. He is “master of his domain,” a supremely confident being for whom sex is an expression, the highest expression, of his approach to the rest of reality: it is essentially benevolent, and provides him with the values necessary for his life.

Femininity

If the essence of masculinity is confidence, is the essence of femininity self-doubt and insecurity? Certainly not. A woman is equally in need of affirmation that her life is inherently valuable and the universe is essentially benevolent. The virtues she must posses in order to be successful in life are the same as those required for men: rationality, productivity, and confidence. However, in the realm of sex, the woman cannot be the “conqueror” because she is both weaker than the man, and plays a receptive or metaphysically passive role during sex. This, “confidence” is not the proper word to describe femininity. The best term to describe the female state of mind in regard to a man is “hero worship.” Note that the relationship is in regard to a man, not men — it expresses a woman’s relation to the particular man she chooses to hold as a value rather than the male sex in general. What are implications does this view for the kind of mate a woman seeks?

Recall that women are much more likely to be concerned about their appearance than men. This fact stems from the function a woman has in a relationship. Her primary role in a relationship consists of arousing and maintaining a man’s interest in her, while a man’s role is to be the one initiating the relationship and taking action. Notice how unfeminine and out of character it is for a woman to demand sex from a man and the kind of cultural stigma such women receive. Furthermore, one of the primary traits women seek in a man is trustworthiness. Why? Because surrendering to a man in bed leaves a woman very vulnerable — but not necessarily powerless or weak. In a relationship, she allows another to have control – that is why it’s important that the woman trust the man in a romantic relationship. Ethically, the choice is always the woman’s. It is the man however, who must decide whether to honor her choice.

None of this is to say that a woman should be a mindless, weak, or unconfident

In all other aspects of her life, a woman must be as independent, self-confident, and productive as a man. Furthermore, in relationships, a woman should be very selective that the man she chooses to value is a worthy recipient of her love. A valuable woman doesn’t need to play hard to get because is hard to get. She allows the right man to conquer her, but she does not make it easy, and she does not open her (metaphorical) gates to just any barbarian. The woman is confident of her worth as a human being and her feminine attractiveness, and she must choose a man worthy of her value. For a woman CEO to choose a janitor for a mate would be to abdicate her role of choosing a proper recipient of her valuing. Thus, femininity doesn’t put any “limitations” on a woman in a relationship. It simply describes what feels good and natural to her.

Feminism

As I have shown, the roles attributed to men and women are derived from the physical differences between men and woman the metaphysical relationship between them. To deny that there is a difference between the proper romantic roles of men and women is to deny the physical differences differentiating the two sexes. While it may seem intimidating to some, the task of rewriting reality comes naturally to feminists. To get a feel for their views, it is sufficient to look at some notable quotes:

• “A woman who doesn’t care what men think of her – ah, this is dangerous. This is the worst conceivable insult to the male ego.”
  Lesbianism and the Women’s Liberation Movement” 1970 – Martha Shelley

• As women we are living in a male power structure, and our roles become necessarily a function of men. The services we supply are services to the male ego. We are rewarded according to how well we perform these services. Our skill – our profession – is our ability to be feminine – that is dainty, sweet, passive, helpless, ever-giving and sexy. In other words, everything to help reassure man that he is primary.”
  Politics of the Ego” 1970 –New York Radical Feminists

• A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.
  – Gloria Steinem

• Love is the victim’s response to the rapist.”
  The Cynic’s Lexicon – Ti-Grace Atkinson

• “Love has to be destroyed. It’s an illusion that people care for each other. Friendship is reciprocal, love isn’t.”
  The Retreat From Motherhood New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House. 1975, 222 pages,page 58. – Ti-Grace Atkinson

• I think that what women are conditioned socially to experience as love is a form of annihilation of self … Feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage and sexual harassment. Compare victims reports of rape with women’s reports of sex. They look a lot alike … In this light the major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot see anything wrong with it.”
  “Hard-Line Feminists Guilty of Ms.-Representation.” Wall Street Journal, November 7, 1991, page A14 – Catharine MacKinnon

• “All men are rapists and that’s all they are” – Marilyn French, Author, “The Women’s Room”

• “Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” — Andrea Dworkin

• “The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist” — Ti-Grace Atkinson “Amazon Odyssey” (p. 86)

• “When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression…” – Sheila Jeffrys

• “Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.” – feminist leader Sheila Cronan.

• “The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist.” –U.S. National organization for Women Times.

• “All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.” Catherine MacKinnon

And some colorful quotes from anti-feminists:

• [Feminism is] a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. —Pat Robertson

• No man is as anti-feminist as a really feminine woman. —Frank O’Connor

The original feminists did indeed have a noble goal: political equality for women. However, the feminist movement as we know it today has long forgotten its noble foundations. Feminism today is essentially a doctrine of vicious man-hatred –for man as a human, man as sexual being with certain objective properties distinguishing the sexes, and man a species that expresses its highest joy in the merging of the two. Furthermore, the so-called fight for “economic equality” to supplement “political equality” is simply another collectivist attempt to gain special privileges for yet another “disadvantaged” group. As Ayn Rand explains:

Just as the egalitarians ride on the historical prestige of those who fought for political equality, and struggle to achieve the opposite-so their special sorority, Women’s Lib, rides on the historical prestige of women who fought for individual rights against government power, and struggles to get special privileges by means of government power. (“The Age of Envy,” The New Left . New York: Signet, 1975. p. 173)

The feminists of course deny that the physical differences between the male and female sexes lead to any metaphysical and psychological differences. They label the universally held views of gender roles as “tools of oppression,” invent mythical Amazonian tribes that somehow defied reality, and suppress their own femininity by becoming lesbians. When other women tell them that they really do enjoy sex with men, and that hero-worship is not demeaning but natural to their status as a woman, they engage in gross evasion and excuse it as some sort of brainwashing the males have imposed on un-enlightened women.

Homosexuality

Now that I’ve given N.O.W. sufficient reason to call me a chauvinistic, misogynous pig, it’s time to offend the next interest group and address the question of homosexuality. The issue of sexual orientation does not fall under philosophy, but psychology. Philosophy tells us that “sex is good” and that man should live according to his nature as a rational being. It is up to the psychology to determine what that nature is in relation to sex. Since ethics is limited to the realm of choice, the key question is – are you choosing to live in accordance with your nature or not? If one’s sexual orientation is a choice, then as I have shown, it is contrary to one’s nature as a human being and thus immoral. If it is not a choice and is in fact a part of one’s nature, then it would be immoral to go against it – thus it would be wrong for a gay man to choose to date women.

As I have explained, the sexual identity of men and women is derived from their metaphysical nature. If that is so, then what implications does this view have for homosexuals? There are three major views about homosexuality today. One side holds that homosexuality is caused by genes, brain structures, hormone abnormalities, early childhood experiences, and other genetic and environmental factors. Supporters of this view argue that whatever the cause of homosexuality, it is outside the volitional control of individuals. Another view holds that just like gender roles, ones sexual identity is a social creation that reflects a matter of personal choice. Both of these views generally accept a homosexual lifestyle as completely equivalent to a heterosexual lifestyle from an ethical standpoint. Yet another view, generally held by religious groups, holds that it is irrelevant whether the urge to be a homosexual is a matter of choice, because homosexual behavior is intrinsically immoral even if the urge to be gay is outside the realm of choice.

Since I do not believe that morality is intrinsic, I find that the question of whether ones sexual orientation is a matter of choice to be key for a moral evaluation of homosexual behavior. (The intrinsic theory holds that the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved. — Ayn Rand, CUI) If the nature of human beings is such that are fixed in their attraction to one gender and unable to derive pleasure from being with the other, then it follows that they should maximize their happiness with whatever sex attracts them the most. However, if one has a choice about which sex he can enjoy being with, then one should strive to be with the one most in line with his essential identity in the realm of sex – that is with his opposite.

The predominant claims for various biological source of sexuality can be brushed aside quite easily. Not only are they highly politicized and non-scientific, but if taken at face value, they are contradictory. Some declare “proofs” that sexual orientation is genetic, others claim that hormonal imbalances and brain size abnormalities cause homosexuality, while others claim certain genes and chromosomal abnormalities, and still others claim that early developmental factors are key. Grouped together, these “proofs” amount to arbitrary claims motivated more by political consideration than any genuine search for the truth. The fact is that our understanding of human physiology and its relation to psychology must evolve a great deal before an objective evaluation of such claims can be made.

A much simpler statistic to verify is the pattern of strong demographic and historical trends in the incidence of deviant sexual orientation. If homosexual behavior was caused by some random genetic or other inherent trait, then it should be found across all races, societies, and time periods (since it is not limited to any particular group in the United States.) However, this is not the case. Even accounting for social stigma, there are extreme variations in how widespread homosexual behavior is amongst various cultures. Lesbianism for example, is virtually unknown in the Latin and Slavic world, while it is relatively widespread in America. Further evidence is found in the patterns found in our own society. Homosexuals in America tend to be middle class white or black men. Usually, they have strong ties with the left and grow up with friends (if not family) who tolerate their behavior. Especially today, it has become politically correct to express some feelings of bi-sexuality if not outright homosexuality and various liberal groups (the feminist quotes above are no exception) actively encourage homosexual tendencies. From personal experience in leftist groups, I am familiar with the process of indoctrinating acceptance in public school and then active promotion of homosexuality in college. Many college students today can associate with the confusion that follows when they are repeatedly told that feelings of repulsion at homosexual behavior amount to bigotry and racism (!) and are simply evidence of their own gay tendencies. Some see through this propaganda, but others feel guilty for not having gay tendencies of other own (after all, sexual orientation is a sliding scale, and not having gay tendencies of your own amounts to being an “extremist”) and pander to political correctness in thought or action. Of course no one will deny that at least some “repression” occurs on both sides, so we must look again to the basic source of sexual orientation to determine its origins.

Supporters of homosexuality often point to animals as an example of how “natural” homosexual behavior can be. After all, if it’s good enough for animals, why shouldn’t it be good enough for humans, who are, in their view, the lowest, most violent, and self-destructive species of animal. However animals don’t have any conception of gender or sex – they don’t have any concepts of anything at all. Animals survive by acting on instinct rather than reason, as humans must. Therefore, a gazelle cannot be born or possess the desire to mate with other male or female gazelles – it can only respond to its inborn commands to follow this smell and not another – to mate with a creature with horns and certain other physical traits and not others. It is only humans who can form the explicit concepts of male and female identity. Like animals, human beings are born with certain automatic urges – to eat when they are hungry, to sleep when they are tired, to copulate when they are horny. However, they are not given any automatic guidance for how to go about this – and certainly, no built-in concept of what a man or woman is. This information comes to them inductively, from direct personal experience at a very young age. They see certain physical difference between girls and boys, mommies and daddies, certain divisions of labor in the household, and certain expectations about their behavior. It is important to stress that this is not entirely a social phenomenon – girls and boys see real physical differences between the two genders, as well as the different roles formed by those differences. Throughout their early childhood they observe gender roles of their peers and parents and form the inductive basis for the conclusions they will make about sexual identity as they reach puberty.

Since the experience of puberty is essentially universal (for anyone old enough to be reading this essay) – I present the reader’s own introspective evidence of the subconscious choice they made to be attracted to a particular sex. The choice must exist regardless of any “instinctive” tendencies, real, or imagined because the concept of “man” and “woman” is never automatic for humans and entirely absent for animals. As humans, we rely on our reason to choose how to fulfill our sexual urges because we have no automatic guidance system that tells us how to fulfill our values. At this point, an evolutionary biologist might argue that humans are naturally attracted to particular traits –symmetry, skin tone, ample fat reserves, muscle tone, etc. This is certainly true, but these are only weak means of evaluating the health and reproductive capacities of individuals – they can be overridden by social mores, as skinny fashion models long ago proved, and they can be applied to members of both sex – otherwise what basis would gay individuals ever have to find their own sex attractive? In short, sexual orientation is a choice created by observing the inherent metaphysical differences between the sexes as well as the social context in which they operate, integrated into a into a coherent (although sometimes contradictory) view of what it means to be a man or a woman.

If gender roles and one’s sexual orientation are self-made, what do they imply for the morality of homosexuality? Recall that the fundamental nature of masculinity and femininity stems from physiological differences between the sexes. A choice to live a homosexual lifestyle is thus one that goes against one’s basic identity as a man or woman. It leads an individual to act in a way that is contrary to his metaphysical identity.

Recall that the essence of masculinity is confidence and the essence of femininity is hero-worship. In a male homosexual relationship, that difference is turned upside down as one of the man attempts to be the valuer rather than the value. His attempts to assume the role of the woman by being submissive rather than assertive. In a lesbian relationship, one of the females inevitable attempts to be the “man” or the value. Note that just as in heterosexual relationships, there is never, nor can there be a balance of the two. There is the inevitable (and cliché) submissive make and the “butch” female.

“Gay Marriage”

Advocates of gay marriage argue that the government has no right to regulate who gets married. They are right – consenting adults may do whatsoever they please, as long as the do not initiate force against anyone else. If they desire to live together and bind themselves under a contract that shares their wealth and imposes certain obligations on each other, there is no reason why the state should not honor that contract. Since it is a contract between two individuals, they can include any provisions they want – as long as they do not impose any obligations on any third parties. However, this is not what the “gay rights” movement demands. They explicit purpose of the “gay rights” movement is to fully equate homosexual marriage with heterosexual marriage – both legally and socially. By doing this, they intend to force everyone else not involved in the marriage contract to recognize it as such. Corporations that wish to provide benefits solely to straight couples would be force to ignore the distinction and provide both with equal benefits. They may wish to do this because it is a well-known fact that a male homosexual lifestyle is much more dangerous that a conventional one, or because gay relationships are statistically a lot less stable than straight ones, or perhaps simply because the company believes it to be immoral. Whatever the case, they will now be forced to ignore the distinction. It is almost certain that many companies will (and already do) extend the same benefits to gay couples – and it may well be a good idea for them to do so. However forcing a company — or any individual – to abide by the “gay rights” movement’s definition is a clear violation of their rights. From a personal standpoint, two (or more!) people can call their relationship whatever they want, but if they want the government to honor their contract, they cannot expect to force their definition on others for them.

It could be argued that the government could simply make the distinction between “conventional” and “unconventional” marriages. This is possible, but it is not what the “gay rights” movement demands. In any case, the definition of the term “marriage” is not an arbitrary social convention – it is based on the facts of human nature. Man is a being with a particular nature, one that finds its highest joy in sex, and does so according to the physiological facts of each gender. These facts are not arbitrary, but based on the facts of reality, and a mere change in legal statue does not change those facts. Man is a man, a woman is a woman, and wishing otherwise does not make it so.

A disclaimer: Although homosexuality is a choice that goes against the basic human nature, and marriage can only be regarded as a contract between a man and a woman, the moral evaluation of someone who engages in a homosexual lifestyle must be seen in context. The primary error of homosexuals – evading their nature qua man or woman is often (perhaps the great majority of the time) rooted in early childhood experiences, when one gains the inductive experience of what male and female gender roles are. For the great majority, this process is subconscious and rarely connected to the time one “realizes” their orientation. In short, it can be a psychological error with very deep roots that are very difficult to properly analyze and correct. It doesn’t help that (as far as I know) no one has ever written a correct analysis on the nature of sexual identity. So when judging the immorality of a homosexual lifestyle, one must maintain a proper context and be aware that homosexuality cannot be “cured” by simple moralizing. It is a choice that must be made only after a proper understanding of one’s identity as a man or woman, and it may take many years to reverse the years of psychological errors learned in an improper lifestyle. The switch may not even be worth the effort for some individuals with deeply ingrained childhood trauma. However, this uncertainty does not apply to the great majority of “casual” homosexuals, whose mistaken case of sexual identity comes more from perverted view of sexual mores than traumatic childhood experiences. The deviance of these individuals usually comes from a rebellion against a flawed conventional morality that tells them that it is wrong to enjoy sex. Faced with a false dichotomy between dutiful servitude and sinful pleasure, these individuals prefer to swing to the other extreme and completely detach sex from ethics.

I had to cut short a letter to the editor I wrote about monopolies, but if you want to read some common misconceptions about monopolies, you can do so here here:

June 12, 2003

Regarding Monopolies

(In response to a letter)

Robert presents a number of common misconceptions about monopolies. He correctly points that natural monopolies may arise in certain industries because of economies of scale. However, it is important to keep in mind that the returns from increasing size decrease rapidly as the complexity of any given bureaucracy increase. Like many government agencies, large bureaucracies in business can also grow non-responsive to consumer trends, resist efforts to change, foster corruption and waste, and perhaps most importantly, grow stagnant because they fail to innovate. The major difference between public and private bureaucracies is that the invisible hand of the market quickly punishes companies that grow too large for their own good, and rewards small and innovative startups that are able to move quickly, and take the big risks necessary to take advantage of innovations.

Companies like Microsoft and IBM must constantly try to maximize efficiency and spent massive amounts of funds on research to stay ahead in their markets. Microsoft may well have a “natural” monopoly on the Operating System market – but if it fails to constantly improve its products, foresee new trends, and keep its prices down, competitors will quickly eat up its market – and many will argue that competitors like Linux are in the process of doing just that. Furthermore, the fact that Apple and Unix-based operating systems have formed a small but solid niche immune to any “undercutting” efforts by Microsoft – no thanks to the Antitrust Dept. — clearly undermines your argument that abusive monopolists can simply wish competitors out of existence. In any market where there is a monopoly, small competitors are always waiting for the first slipup to jump into the market.

Unfortunately, the major barrier to competition and sustainer of monopolies is not private companies but the government. Cox Communication – your example of a “bad” monopoly, is only able to maintain it because the FCC makes it illegal for new competitors to enter the market without essentially bribing politicians into giving them a license (permission) to do business. On the local level, Cox has made deals with cities (like BCS) giving them a legal monopoly over the local market.

Rather than increasing competition, the Antitrust Department is actually used as a tool by jealous competitors to force better and more efficient companies to compete in the courts rather than in the market. The only constant of the arbitrary rules used by the DOJ is that any successful business can be punished at any time for just about anything. When companies charge prices lower than their competitors, they are accused of “predatory behavior,” when they charge prices that are higher, they are fined for “gouging,” and when they match their competitions, they are accused of “collusion.”

You suggest that the government should nationalize the communications market just like it nationalized the roads. You forget that like all other monopolies that only exist because of a politicians favor, this would form yet another gang that fines and imprisons inventors and entrepreneurs who try to introduce cheaper and better products. Imagine if the government got involved in the software market in the early 90’s — I’d probably be typing this letter on an old typewriter rather than a sleek, cheap, and fast new computer.

About

I have an unusual proposition to make: gun-control and abortion are two sides of the same issue. Both are opposed by the same erroneous logic, and even worse, both are defended on the wrong philosophical principles. A proper understanding of individual rights is not only a requirement for an understanding of both issues, but leads to the same conclusion in both cases. The traditional conservative and liberal rejection of the right to have an abortion and own arms, respectively, is based on a rejection of the individual’s right to his own life and a confusion of the potential versus the actual. A proper understanding of both issues will show that both rights must be unconditionally protected if individual rights are to be respected. Legally, the primary difference between the right to own a gun and the right to have an abortion is that the first is explicitly protected under the Constitution of the United States, while the other is protected by virtue the power to regulate abortion not being granted to the government, and thus being reserved to the people. The legal issue is complex and can be argued at length, but I am concerned here with what the law should be, rather than any particular legal system.

The traditional conservative argument against the right to an abortion is that a fetus has the moral and legal status of a human being. It claims that all men have a God-given right to their own life from the moment of their conception. Because no person has the right to have their life unjustly taken, a fetus, which is a potential human being, must be protected from voluntary harm by its own mother. The last point is significant because even the great majority of anti-abortionists realize on some level that the killing of a fetus is not quite the same as the killing of a grown human: they realize that the practice of abortion is not quite the same level as the mass murder of Jews in Nazi Germany. If I did in fact believe that an abortion was the moral equivalent of the killing of an innocent Jew, I would feel as a failure of a human being if I did not use any means, no matter how extreme or dangerous, to destroy anyone who perpetrated such crimes. Thus, those who do not recognize on some level that an abortion is not the exact equivalent of the murder of an innocent human being are either actively trying to kill or maim those who perform abortions or self-delusional hypocrites. Since the first belong in prison and the second are spineless hypocrites who betray their own principles, this essay is only intended for those who recognize on some level that murder is not morally equivalent to abortion.

The traditional liberal argument against the right to own a gun is that it is inherently a dangerous weapon, and can be used to kill or maim innocent people. Even when owned by an upstanding and righteous individual, it can easily be lost, stolen, misused, or sold, placing it in the hands of a violent criminal or a child who is liable to harm himself or others. Some believe that guns are inherently dangerous and ought to be banned outright, while other hold that some level or precautions and restrictions allows enough security to keep them in the right hands. Additionally, some people believe that people are shaped mostly or entirely by their genes, peers, family, or society: thus they believe that the potential for violence is beyond any particular individuals self-control and must be limited by the State.

Common traditional liberal defenses of abortion are that the life of a child will be immeasurably better off if it is born to a family that wants it, that the mother resort to “coat hangers” or other dangerous methods that risk her life, and that society will be better off without unwanted children who are likely to grow up in bad families, resort to crime, etc, etc. When defending gun rights, conservatives sometimes mention that they are useful tools for both self-defense and recreation, but the most common argument is that firearms are not inherently dangerous and are deeply rooted in America’s culture.

The arguments used against both abortion and gun rights make a major flaw: they confuse the actual with the potential. Conservatives believe that a potential human life has rights because an actual human life has rights: but the potential is not the actual, and a lump of cells does not equal a human being. Likewise, every weapon can potentially be used to harm innocents: but just because I can potentially use my gun for evil does not mean that I will. Conservatives and liberals fail to recognize the difference between potential and actual harm because they fail to recognize the essential characteristics of human nature: individuality and free will. Man is a rational, independent being who must use his mind to create the values necessary for his life. In order to pursue his life and happiness, man must be treated as an end in himself, not a slave of his society. The function of government is thus to protect the individuals inherent rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Women cannot be free to pursue their happiness when they are made slaves to potential humans and made responsible for children they did not desire. Gun owners cannot protect their life and happiness if their primary means if defending themselves is taken from them. It is true that children may grow up to be productive and righteous citizens and that guns may be used against them – but that potential is not an actual and does not give the State a claim against the life or the mother or the gun-owner. The essential characteristic of man is his independence and free will – and when the State makes a grievous error when it recognizes them in a fetus but fails to recognize them in a human being.

There is another similarity between those who oppose abortion and gun rights. Liberals who are well known for being anti-nationalistic and skeptical of all governments as well as famous defenders of the press are often the first to argue for completely disarming the citizenry and giving the government a monopoly on arms. The freedom to keep and bear arms was held precious by the founders because of a long history of governments who disarmed their citizenry before perpetrating horrible atrocities on them. A few of the more prominent ones include Nazi Germany, Nationalist and Red China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda. These governments have have killed over 100 million of their own people in the 20^th century alone. (See the JPFO for more.) Liberals who argue that I will never need an assault weapon for hunting forget that the primary need for an assault weapon is so that I won’t need it. They trust government to implement their social and economic views but forget what happens when politicians get drunk with power and come after the same intellectuals who argue for those powers. They let “reformed” rapists out of prison and refuse to let women carry have the guns to protect themselves. However conservatives cannot take the moral high ground either: they also wish to have the government replace their own volition and moral principles in enforcing morality. They believe that they can give the politicians power to enforce their particular religious views while ignoring all the governments in history who perpetrated atrocities against minorities. History provides ample evidence of the bloodshed that follows when one group after another tries to enforce it’s religion on the populace. The tradition of the separation of church and state in America comes mainly from the experience of one after another monarch trying to force his version of Catholicism or Protestantism on the populace in England. Both liberals and conservatives wish to give politicians the power to enforce their particular ideology as long as they are in the majority – but they forget that everyone is in the minority sooner or later.

Unfortunately, both liberals and conservatives today contradict their own position and fail to consistently defend their position on a moral basis. Liberals argue that legal abortions best serve the interests of the State in preserving the mothers’ health and the potential child’s quality of life rather than arguing for abortion as an unconditional right of the mother to determine the course of her own life. Conservatives compromise with gun control activists, and instead of arguing for the right to keep and bear arms as essential to individual liberty, they defend their ability to own guns as a hobby and cultural icon. The only proper defense of either right must be based on a defense of individual rights rather than confused and contradictory symbols of their own ideologies.

Despite the noble claims of those who support erecting a statue of Matthew Gaines on campus, their real motivations are dishonest, and their “tribute” is fundamentally racist in nature.  If Gaines had been instrumental in the founding of A&M, and had his contribution hushed up because of his race, there might be a case for recognizing his efforts –but even his supporters admit that their primary motivation for his memorial is his skin color.  Whether they believe that the memorial will inspire other students or be a politically popular move for the administration, there can be no doubt that their motivations are racist in nature.

 Some people reduce racism to a dislike of a particular skin color or ethnic group, but this is a very incomplete understanding.  Racism is the notion that one’s race determines one’s identity.  It is the belief that one’s values, character, and achievements are determined not by their mind, but one’s anatomy or blood.  To praise or condemn an individual based on his race is to claim that the value of a person comes from inherited characteristics rather than their achievements, destroying people’s confidence in their own mind.  Classifying people by racial identity creates an unbridgeable gulf between groups, as though their skin color determines their identity and actions.  When Frederick Douglass took inspiration from Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words that “all men are created equal” was he mistaken in applying them to himself because he was not white?  Am I wrong for thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. and Walter Williams as heroes and great Americans because I am not black?  Should those who follow the teaching of Jesus forget them because he might be white, black, or neither?  Would the supporters of the memorial have me ignore the contribution of all the great men and women in history because they are not the same sex or color as I?

 I will not accept this view.  I will judge individuals based on their values and actions, not their race.  If the administration truly wishes to extinguish racism, it must teach students to recognize people for their values and actions, not traits that they have no control over.

 

 

The mind and the senses: essential components for all knowledge.

April 7, 2003

(Note: the empiricism mentioned in this essay in not the same as Locke’s empiricism. The differences are recognized as “possible pitfalls” in the essay.)

1. I believe that out of the three positions studied in class, the empiricist position comes closest to the truth. Properly understood, empiricism presents the right standard for true knowledge as well as the correct process by which truth is determined. A potential weakness of empiricism is to overlook the role of the mind in converting simple sense impressions into knowledge by failing to fully recognize the contextual nature of knowledge and thus making a false distinction between primary and secondary properties. Such a view should be amended to more precisely define the role of the mind in interpreting sense date and forming concepts from sense impressions.

2. Empiricism starts with two important principles: that senses are the only source of information about reality and that the mind is a blank slate at birth. The basic assertion of empiricism is that senses are the only thing needed for to obtain knowledge about reality, and the mind is only the means by which sensory data is converted into knowledge, not a tool of perception itself. This position rejects a number of other traditional sources of knowledge, such as divine revelation, innate ideas, sixth-sense intuition, and rationalism. The task for the empiricist is then to determine how sense data is converted into true knowledge, and how knowledge may be verified and reduced back to sensory inputs. In order for knowledge itself to be possible, the empiricist must affirm show that the universe is causal and exists independently of the mind. Without these basic assumptions, no true knowledge is possible, since “truth” would be relative to each individual’s mind. Furthermore, if knowledge were not obtained by a causal process, then the idea of proof itself would be meaningless.

3. The empiricist position holds that supernatural sources of knowledge can be rejected because there isn’t any evidence of such otherworldly guidance. Likewise, there is no evidence that children inherit ideas from parents or ancestors before birth. However more fundamentally, a major strength of the empiricist position is that any proof against the senses must contradicts itself because it must assume that sensory inputs are valid. For example, someone claiming to be able to read minds would have to assume that his audience is real, that the words reaching his audience are the same ones as the ones he is hearing come out of his mouth, and that the same mind reading method he tries today will work tomorrow. The last assumption relies on a causal theory of perception – the same sense organs and the same inputs, will produce the same sense perceptions every time. Without accepting a causal reality and valid senses, the idea of “proof” is meaningless.

4. If all knowledge must be based on the evidence of the senses, than the mind must start as a blank slate at birth, and base all knowledge on an inductive process. Here, the rationalist may claim that mind reaches conclusions about many abstract ideas that are not directly presented by the senses. He might say that knowledge of things such as mathematics, politics, and history does not come from direct sensory evidence. In order for the empiricist to have a concrete theory, he must first explain the process by which knowledge is derived from sensory data. The inductive process presented in class is a major strength of the empiricist position because it is the only position to firmly connect knowledge to reality by a specific process. Because a possible pitfall of empiricism is to ignore the role of the mind in forming concepts by assuming that knowledge is a passive process of “absorbing” information from reality, a proper account of the process of knowledge-formation must account for the contextual nature of knowledge.

5. The method by which raw sensory data is converted into useful concepts that may include any number of instances, is key to the empirical theory of knowledge. For an example of the method, consider an orange. Visual sensory data presents an orange blob that is oval in shape, with a dark border on one side (the shadow). This is all that the sense organs are able to present, as they do not have any ability to interpret the data that they convey, and the mind does not have the ability to affect sense perception. No amount of wishing or thinking will change the fact that certain photos are hitting one’s eyes and causing certain chemical reactions, and send specific electrical impulses to the brain. Upon receiving the visual data, the perceptual part of the brain converts the simple sense impressions of the orange blob into the perception of a round object by combining different elements (the oval shape, the shadow, the orange color, the cellular texture) into a single perceived object — an orange sphere, a few inches in diameter. This is done by an automatic process (learned by every human at a very young age) of recognizing solid objects and distinguishing them from the rest of reality. At this point, it is as if the orange is being seen for the first time – the mind’s perceptual faculties alone do not know if they are seeing an inflatable toy ball, a weird egg, or a fruit. Only after the orange is recognized as a distinct object by the mind’s perceptual faculties, the conceptual part of the brain notices the similarity of the object’s properties to other objects it has seen before, in the concept it has labeled as “orange.” This is possible because the mind is able to abstract away the variations between different oranges that it has observed, and recognize the similarities between different instances of the single concept “orange.” Once the object being observed is recognized as an instance of the set “orange,” we “realize” that the object being observed is in fact an orange, and attribute all the properties of taste, feel, and smell that we normally associate with oranges.

6. An important characteristic of the process of recognizing an object is that the process is not automatic. The concept of “orange” is not contained in the object itself, and does not automatically present itself to the mind, but is rather the result of a complex process of sense perception and conceptualization. A corollary is that everything that is perceived, must be perceived within the context of the nature senses feeding data to the minds conceptual faculties: no form of sense-independent perception is possible, and all valid knowledge must be based on an inductive process of interpreting sense data and converting them to concepts.

7. A possible pitfall of the empiricist position at the point of forming concepts is to fail to recognize the role of the mind in converting sensory data into knowledge by making a distinction between “true” and observed reality. According to this view, objects posses two kinds of properties: primary and secondary. Primary properties are the “true” nature of perceived objects, while secondary properties are consequences of the primary properties that vary according to the nature of the observer. However, this position confuses concepts with perceptions: the difference between primary and secondary properties is not a matter of fundamentally different properties, but the difference between concepts and sense-perceptions. In the example of the orange, the empiricist may claim that certain properties are objective and unchanging (the size, mass, molecular structure of the orange) while others vary according to the observer’s perspective and sense organs (feel, color, smell.) However, even “secondary” properties are objective within the context of the particular sense organ and perspective of the observer. Furthermore, the round shape of the orange is not perceived directly: we do not see the orange from all sides, just as we cannot see a square building from all sides at once. Whatever is perceived, must be perceived as raw sensory data according to the nature of the perceiving sense organ, and the conclusions reached about the object being observed must be contextual to nature of senses making the observation. As we approach a tall building, it takes up a larger and larger amount of our vision, but does that some property of the building varies according to our distance from it? No, the “visual size” of a building varies according the rules of perspective, which is what allows us to grasp the size and shape of the entire building in our mind even though we cannot see it all at once or perceive such a thing as a “square” or a “sphere” directly.

8. A similar argument that can be presented against the validity of the senses in forming knowledge, is that the senses can only present a limited and biased view of reality. In the case of the orange for example, normal human senses can directly observe only the physical dimensions, texture and taste of the orange. On a biological level, many other properties can be derived, which explain the orange’s composition and formation on a more basic level. On the atomic level, the properties of an orange are explained on an even more fundamental level. The atomic level itself may be explained by ever more minute interactions of basic particles. Which level represents the “true” nature of an orange? The empiricist’s answer is (or should be) that each perspective is equally valid within its own context, and a context-less perspective of the orange is not only impossible, but also meaningless. If we somehow determined the precise sub-atomic composition of an object, but did not know anything about it on the scale of everyday life, we would know whether it hot or cold, edible or poisonous. All knowledge is therefore contextual, and equally valid within each context.

9. Another objection to empiricism is the existence of higher abstract concepts such as numbers and laws of physics that do not have any directly observable counterparts in physical reality and cannot be deduced directly from observation. Since the empiricist holds that there is no such thing as innate concepts, he must be able to explain how such concepts are derived from perceptual inputs. He can do this with numbers by showing that a number is just like any other concept, only one that can be applied to any set of objects, rather than one particular kind. For example, a single apple is an instance of the abstract concept of “one.” An apple, an apple, and an apple is an instance of the concept “three.” By abstracting away the differences between two different concepts, say, an apple and an orange, we can come to hold the more complex concept of “fruit.” The same general process that is used to derive a simple concept can be extended to ever more complex categorization of knowledge until it accounts for the whole scope of human knowledge. In such a way, the empiricist can demonstrate that all of human knowledge has a sensory connection to reality and that knowledge can only be valid if it is based on the process of perception and conceptualization of data received from sensory inputs.

10. Thus, by demonstrating that all human knowledge must be based on sensory data and explaining the process of perception and concept-formation, the empiricist can form a solid case for his position. Because he is able to show how all knowledge is derived from sensory data, any refutation of empiricism becomes contradictory, for the concept of proof itself assumes that the senses are a valid way of obtaining knowledge.

La-La Land Economics

March 23, 2003

Recently, the professor of my economics class discussed the “flaws of markets,” claiming, “markets are only more efficient than state run intervention when they approach perfect competition.”  She then addressed public choice theory, the idea that government bureaucracies are inefficient because bureaucrats tend to care mainly about their budget and job security rather than the function they are supposed to perform.  She dismissed the idea as “la-la land” and claimed that bureaucracies could be efficient as long as bureaucrats acted in the “best interests of the country.”

An uncritical classmate might reach the following conclusions from my class: markets are more efficient than government if competitive markets exist, but government can be more efficient at distribution of resources as long as politicians have the country’s best interest at heart.  Since conditions for competitive markets (which are characterized by perfect information, no profits, free entry and exit out of the market, and no power by individual companies to set prices) rarely exist, government obviously has a major role to play in “optimizing” the markets.  My classmate would certainly not be alone in such a conclusion, as this is the predominant view of economics today among both economists and non-economists alike.  Non-conformists who claim that laissez-faire capitalism is inherently superior to inefficient bureaucracies are obviously living in the “la-la land” of perfectly competitive markets and universally corrupt politicians.

A more inquisitive classmate might have several unanswered questions about this view of capitalism.  Both markets and governments seem to distribute wealth, but where does this “wealth” come from?  We know what mechanism the markets use for allocating resources (supply and demand) — but what mechanism does government use?  If a corrupt politician cares only about his job or budget, how does the honest politician define the “good of the nation?”  Finally, what do the honest and corrupt businessmen care about?  The answers to these unanswered questions are crucial to understanding the true nature of capitalism.

Because most economists today rely on the Marxist definition of wealth, it is not surprising that they have a Marxist view of wealth production as well.  To them, wealth is a natural resource either found in nature or produced by “homogeneous human labour.”  However, no man can survive by passively waiting for wealth to come to him or random “labor” without thought or planning of its ends. Oil may lie in the ground, but it takes a conscious and skillful effort to extract it.  Forests must be cut down, land must be tilled, and the required technology invented before it can be used.  In all its forms, wealth must be created by the intelligent effort of entrepreneurs and innovators, before it can be distributed to anyone.  Why does the entrepreneur engage in productive enterprise?  He does not work to benefit the “social good” but because he knows that he must either steal or earn his living, and he chooses the life of a producer over that of a thieving moocher.

Markets allocate wealth according to the value created by individual producers. Politicians, no matter how noble their intentions, have no objective basis for forcefully redistributing wealth.  Consider a case in which a judge has to decide whether a merger between two companies creates a monopoly or not.  Does a company have to control 50, 60, or 80 percent of the market to be a “monopoly?”  What about Amtrak, which has not made a profit in over 30 years of operation?  Does the “social good” of the having trains which conveniently fetch politicians to Washington DC and back outweigh the cost of running an unprofitable operation? What would a “good” and a “corrupt” politician decide?  Without a market to determine which ventures are profitable or not, no “efficient” decision is possible.  As Ayn Rand explained, “Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear.”

Thus, we come to the question of the nature of a good businessman and politician.  A good businessman is a self-interested creator of wealth, who seeks to profit not society, but himself.  A good politician is a policeman who seeks to not redistribute others people’s wealth, but to make sure that no party steals what belongs to another.  Theories to the contrary usually ignore the basic nature of capitalism and enter the realm of “la-la land economics.”

 

Government, Social Obligation and the Nature of Rights

January 30, 2003

A recent reading of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government(1) provided me with important insights into the nature of rights. In today’s world, when the term “human rights” is used to demand the “right” to healthcare, social security, affirmative action, and cable television, while property rights are being violated for the “social good” and criminals are let off with a slap on the hand, the concept of rights is all the more important to understand.

As John Locke said, without a rational justification for the concepts of rights and government, we “will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion.” We have seen this happen in many parts of the world, where government is solely a means for one group to benefit at the expense of another, without any notion of justice or individual rights. “Democracy” has become the ideal of social organization and solution to all social ills. Majority tyrannies (i.e. voting) have become the ultimate standard of right and wrong, while the Lockean notion that there is a higher law, namely the concept of natural rights, has been largely forgotten.

According to Locke, men are unique on this earth because they need to use their mind in order to make the goods necessary for their survival. Animals roam the earth, forage, and kill each other to survive, but man is alone in that he can and must use his mind to make his daily bread. As a corollary, while men deal with nature as causal agents, the deal with each other as moral agents. We don’t blame the tree for dropping a branch on our head, and we don’t imprison a mosquito for biting us: we simply avoid walking under old trees and wear repellent. According to H.H. Hoppe “Conflict… is not a sufficient prerequisite for ethical problems, for one can come into conflict also with a gorilla or a mosquito, for instance, yet such conflicts do not give rise to ethical problems. Gorillas and mosquitoes pose merely a technical problem. We must learn how to successfully learn to manage and control the movements of gorillas and mosquitos just as we must learn to manage and conrol the inanimate objects of our environment…”(2) Furthermore, the rationality present in human is an undeniable prerequisite for moral judgment: “No one can deny, without falling into performative contradictions, that the common rationality as displayed by the ability to engage in propositional exchange constitutes a necessary condition for ethical problems because this denial would itself have to be presented in the form of a proposition.”(3) Thus, while men deal with animals by force and incentive, men can interact with each other as independent, rational agents –rulers of their domain.(4) By “rulers,” Locke means that all men are equal in authority in their natural state – no man or group of men has any more authority than any other. No man has any more rights than another and no man (or any number of men) has the right to enslave another. To define the proper relationship between men in society, we have the concept of rights.

Rights are “moral principles which define and protect a man’s freedom of action, but impose no obligation on other men.”(5) They are also called “natural rights” because they come from our nature as human beings (that is, our nature as rational agents) not from any other men or group of men (such as a government.) The most fundamental right is the right to one’s own life. This can also be understood as the property right to your own body. A crucial idea to understand at this point is just what “property” and “ownership” is. To own something means to be able to dispose of it as you please. This is ALL that a property right is. Thus, when we say that men have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” we really mean that men have a right to own their life, which means that they may do as they please with their own body. Of course, most people own much more than their own body, and according to Locke, this is because when men apply their minds and labor to something that is not previously owned, they make it their own. For example, if you come to a barren field that no one owns and grow crops, those crops and that land becomes yours by virtue of the labor you applied to it. According to Locke, it is as if the land has become an extension of your own body. This is hard to grasp at first, but when you realize that the land and your body now serves the same basic purpose (as tools your mind uses to achieve the values necessary for your survival) the idea makes a lot of sense.

Just because all men are equal in authority in their natural state does not mean that everyone will choose to respect the rights of others. Some men decide to infringe on other’s rights by not recognizing every persons right to life. In effect, by their actions, they claim that all men are not created (or born) equal and some have more rights than others. When men choose to initiate force against others by infringing on the natural rights of other men, they forfeit their own right to life. It is crucial to remember that rights cannot be given or taken away, only infringed upon. When a thief steals something from you, he does not gain a right to your property, but rather forfeits his own right to property. The rights we forfeit by initiating force against others are proportional to the rights we violate. This is why we punish criminals – not for revenge or deterrence, but because they forfeited their own right to life when their chose not to recognize it in others. This does not mean that a petty thief automatically looses his right to life — we punish criminals in proportion to the severity of the crime. (An ingenious scheme for determining punishment is presented by Judge Posner: punish the criminal in proportion of the crime times the inverse of the probability that he will be caught and convicted to make sure that crime literally does not pay.(6)) In the state of nature, when someone commits a murder and forfeits his right to life, any man can justly and properly kill him. In our society, this power is reserved to the state, but the principle remains the same.

Of course, few men live as hermits or in a state of nature today. Today, we must trade with other men in order to make our living. Most people do this by exchanging a part of their property (their body & labor) for a part of another person’s property (their money.) This is what we normally call a job. In effect, you are temporally giving certain uses of your body to another person’s control in exchange for property that person created by applying his body to some value-creating actions. In a modern society the pattern of who-owns who and who creates a value for whom becomes very complicated very quickly. It is likely that disagreements will develop between some parties even when both have the best intentions in mind. It is also likely that these parties are not going to be able to be perfectly rational judges of their own case, and this is where government comes in. The sole function of government is to protect property rights – our right to our own life and the product of that life. Governments can do this by (a) defining property rights by objectively predefined laws (b) enforcing laws and punishing criminals when those rights are violated and (c) protecting us from foreign invaders. This is done by (a) legislatures (b) police and courts (c) the military. This is all government can do without infringing on the property rights of one person of another. Programs like welfare, social security, Medicare, etc in effect violate the property rights of the taxpayers by forcibly transferring property from one group of individuals (taxpayers) to another (welfare recipients). That tax-payers have a say in the process and may receive some of the benefits themselves does not change the nature of the argument — if two muggers and their victim vote on whether to take his valet or not, the theft is not justified even if the thieves offer a few pennies back on each dollar stolen. Welfare may perhaps be a valid function of private charities, but they are not valid functions of government.

The sole area government is justified in dealing with is force – a monopoly on the use of force in order to prevent men from initiating force against each other, and punish those who do. What some people call “civil liberties” – the right to vote, protest, equal treatment under that law, are either extensions of our right to life, or the practical necessities in preventing government from overstepping its bounds. Hence, “the right to vote” is not a “right” but a necessary check on the power of government. Voting is not a magical claim of legitimacy to use force on others (as happens in a democracy) and it does not give the majority a right to enforce its will on a minority, whether it participates in the vote or not. The purpose of voting is not to determine what is just, but to make sure that the law adheres to a “higher” natural law – the law of right and wrong. Without this recognition, government is just another tool by which looters can mooch from the producers of a society – a condition known as Statism and common to socialism, communism, and the mixed economy.

The claim that men owe the produce of their labor to society comes from another popular fallacy — the claim that men have a moral responsibility to their community because of an implicit “social contact.” Contracts however, are by definition voluntary agreements entered into by mature, rational people, not born, or locked into during childhood – and especially not locked into by pieces of paper signed several hundred years ago. Being born intro a contract with pre-defined obligations and debts is slavery, pure and simple. It is not total slavery, but to some degree, it is slavery nonetheless. This means that mandatory public education, the draft, and even taxes are all forms of involuntary servitude. Just obligations come from voluntary contracts, not ancient, hereditary, un-chosen contracts. This is not a negation of the fact that I have benefited from the courts, schools, military, etc, but a claim that because none of those obligations were voluntarily chosen, they do not automatically represent any legal or moral debts on my part.

The justification for why men are not born as slaves to their brothers is closely based to the practical requirements of man’s life. One of the primary virtues necessary for any individual to lead a happy and fulfilling life is self-reliance. Self-reliance is the idea that each person should life by his or her own labor rather than a moocher or a sacrificial animal to the needy. The only way for this to happen is for men to act as traders, exchanging the products of their mind and labor on a voluntary basis. This fact comes from the basic nature of man –as described in the beginning of this essay. The only social system capable of allowing this kind of voluntary interaction is capitalism. Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of justice and individual rights, which recognizes the basic nature of man as a rational, productive being. (Private ownership of production and the means of distribution are merely characteristics, not the essentials of capitalism.) Such a view of man is clearly not compatible with vague altruistic obligations to “the community.” In fact, there is no way that we can benefit “the community” – just as there is no collective mind to produce wealth, there is no collective stomach and no collective bank account (yet) to consume it, so in fact, we can only benefit other individuals by our labor. When political power defines who those individuals are, the result is always tyranny by small, politically nimble, yet thoroughly inept and corrupt elite – the inevitable outcome of a mixed economy and all other forms of Statism.

None of this is to say that I am categorically opposed to private charity. I don’t think it’s any great virtue, but a respect for human life (rather than altruistically-motivated guilt) is a corollary of a optimistic and productive view of man and a proper view of value. A man who values his own life and respects individual rights is much less likely to let a child starve than someone who worships the Society or the State, without regard to the sanctity of individual human life. However, acts of charity are only virtues if they are voluntary. They must not wasted by incompetent bureaucrats and lazy bums, but individually chosen to benefit people that one personally cares about.

References:

1. John Locke. Second Treatise of Civil Government. 1690.

2. Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Democracy: The God That Failed p201-202 Transaction, 2001.

3. Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The Economics and Ethics of Private Property. p205. Kluwer, 1993.

4. Locke, Ch2, p14.

5. Ayn Rand, Man’s Rights, in Capitalism:The Unknown Ideal. 1966.

6. Richard A. Posner. Economic Analysis of Law. Aspen, 1997.

Modern Art and Visions of Values

January 24, 2003

Two weeks ago, the Battalion featured a photo of a life-like ultra-realistic human sculpture in the local gallery.  The model clearly showed great talent in its construction – although I did not see it in detail, I will grant that the artist has better skill in the reproduction of a human body than I ever could.  However, which specimen of the human race did he choose to portray?  Did he decide to create a beautiful woman entranced by some book (or perhaps a lover)?  Did he create a strong hero that gave the audience a sense of courage, pride, and confidence?  Perhaps, he showed a wise man (or woman) lost in though over some crucial problem?  No, the artist portrayed an old woman, deeply wrinkled, and with a smiling, yet meek expression, as if to tell the world “fate has tossed me this way and that, and here I am at your mercy.”  This typifies an approach to art that is known as “modern art.”  As I will explain however, modern art is such a complete failure as art, that there is no term to describe it other than anti-art, the epitome of what art is not, and should not be.

The last art museum I went to was the Dallas Museum of Art.  I brought along my digital camera, determined to find some good art to add to my (photo) collection. I spent about four hours in that museum, and only took three photos.  I deleted them after I downloaded them into my computer at home (but kept the photos I took of skyscrapers next to the museum.)  As I left the museum, I thought that my seventh grade art class had better samples of art than the entire Dallas Museum of Art.  Let us see why.  I clicked on the website of the current exhibitions page, and see the following image:

This is the latest masterpiece of “renowned German artist Sigmar Polke.”  Mr. Polke “has refined his continuing investigation of popular culture imagery through experimentation with “printing mistakes” – technologically marred images culled from various printed media.”  What does this mean in plain English? Besides the collectivist implications of the term “popular culture imagery” – implying that art is a product of a society, rather than individual creativity, Mr. Polke’s goal is to explore what art is.  In short, his work is art for the sake of art. 

It is not art designed to project any particular ideals or values of the artists (at least, consciously).  It does not attempt to reproduce or project the artist’s conception of the world.  It is art designed simply to explore art.  It does this by reducing every single element that real art holds as a value:  there is no subject, because that limits the “freedom” of the artist to portray whatever he may like.  There is no realism, because that prevents the artist from exploring the medium.  There is no perspective, illusion, dimension, or any other sense of space because the artist would be “restricted” to recreating three-dimensional space.  There is no attempt to create a harmony of composition, color or tonality, no attempt to balance white space, no effort whatsoever to create a painting that appeals to the audience, because all these things limit the artist’s “freedom” in exploring art for the sake of art.

But what is the nature of this “freedom?”  By throwing out all the elements that make a painting an inspirational, appealing, eye-catching, and romantic piece, the modern artist defines himself out of art is, and into something equivalent to the palette of colors the painter mixes to get just the right shade.  But again, I give modern art too much credit – the artist’s palette has a purpose – to produce harmonious and appropriate colors, whereas the modern artist’s work has no purpose, no meaning, and thus, no value.  This then, is the true nature of modern art, and it is an exact reflection of the philosophy that created it: subjectivism.  Modern art rejects all the principles that make art good because it rejects the notion that there are absolute standards by which to judge art.  Hand in hand with subjectivism, modern art is nihilistic in that rather than attempting to present an ideal, value or inspiration to the viewer, it abhors things like “gender bias,” “western imperialism,” and “ethnocentrism” and attempts either “realism” or pure abstractionism, devoid of subject or theme.

Realism, of course, is not a random sampling of reality: no one can “sample” the world without bringing in his personal values.  Rather, the “realists” usually choose the lowest, most pathetic, weak, and degrading elements of society or primitive tribal art of non-western cultures – not realizing that their choice of subject is the message itself.  Their choice of the lowest and worst elements of humanity typically presents their view of man as a weak being, living a life full of suffering and sin, alleviate only by acts of pity and self-sacrifice.  Don’t take my word for it however, – go to your local museum of modern art, and see for yourself. 

Imagine if instead of a meek old woman, the local art gallery presented a man in the image of Michelangelo’s David, or a woman in the image of the goddess Diana, rather than a suffering Christ, a glorious God in the form of Man, proud and confident of his own existence, in control of his actions, and successful in his exploits.  Such a sculpture would truly be a depiction of great art – by its selection of a subject that seeks to inspire rather than demean and degrade, by its successful exploitation of the principles of color harmony, dimension and tone, it would serve as a source of inspiration rather than degradation.  By choosing an inspiring subject matter and a masterful use of technique, it could serve as a source of inspiration, concretizing values in a physical creation, giving our goals and ideals concrete form, and inspiring us to better ourselves.

Art is essential to man’s spirtual life as savings and investment is his material life. If subjectivism manages to drown great art in the sewage of meaningless scribbles that passes for art today, they will also take away our most vital source of inspiration. If romantic realism (the presentation of man as he can and should be) once again replaces modernism as the dominant from of art, it will inspire our society to a new renaissance. Ayn Rand once said that “the purpose of all art is the objectification of values.” It is only such a vision of art that man must adopt if he is to survive qua man.

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