Uncle Sam Is Not a Nanny

The New York Times reports that in a recent speech, Randi Weingarten, the new President of the American Federation of Teachers, offered her “new vision for schools in the 21st century”.

“[I]magine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?”

“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities and homework assistance,” she said. “And suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical and counseling clinics.”

Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama echoes this sentiment: “These children are our children… [i]t’s time we understood that their education is our responsibility.”

By “our”, Obama can only mean the State, acting as agent of public opinion. On this view, children belong to us all collectively, and so the State is responsible for every child’s development. Weingarten and Obama want us to imagine a new, expanded government school system where the State serves as nursemaid, parent, teacher, babysitter, recreation coordinator, counselor, dentist, doctor, and who knows what else.

Is Obama right? Is it part of Uncle Sam’s job to play wet nurse to American children?

Of course not. Children are the responsibility of their parents. Parents are responsible for supporting their children and making the judgments necessary to raise them properly.

There is no rational argument for the belief that child-rearing is a proper government function. A government exists to protect the rights of its citizens (including the rights of children whose parents cause them demonstrable harm). The state has no moral authority to implement its conception of proper child-rearing—and certainly not at the expense of people who do not volunteer to fund such efforts.

A non-profit organization is free to try to secure donations to provide these services, and those who wish to support it can do so. If Ms. Weingarten and Mr. Obama want to provide poor families with comprehensive child-raising services, they should start a charity, not pass a federal law.

Passing the Buck

With no end in sight to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, hundreds of thousands of homeowners can no longer afford their mortgage payments. Every month we hear new reports detailing how many more Americans lost their homes. In the midst of this crisis, The New York Times recently published an article critical of mortgage lenders and how they are dealing with delinquent borrowers.

Many such borrowers have been trying to convince lenders to renegotiate their mortgage agreements. The article highlights the trouble that some borrowers face in trying to save their homes from foreclosure. According to the author, many lenders seem unwilling and uncooperative in accommodating these requests.

The author observes that, “While these companies maintain that they’re doing all they can to help imperiled borrowers, critics contend that homeowners routinely meet roadblocks.” Implicit in this statement, and assumed throughout the article, is the premise that lenders are morally obliged to modify the mortgages of borrowers who are unable to meet their contractual responsibilities. The question of whether or not lenders actually have a duty to assist these borrowers is simply not raised. Deborah Goldstein, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, makes it clear that such a duty is simply assumed: “We continue to rely on lenders to fix the problems they created by making reckless loans in the first place.”

The point is not that all lenders are completely blameless. Some lenders deserve blame for being less than prudent in making certain loans. But does this mean that such lenders wronged the delinquent borrowers, or that now they have an obligation to remedy these supposed wrongs by promptly modifying any and all mortgage agreements? In certain cases it may be in a lender’s interest to modify a mortgage, but is it obligatory for them to do so?

Not in the land of the free. The only source of such obligation would be the idea that lenders exist to serve borrowers, rather than to pursue their own interests. Lenders and borrowers enter into voluntary agreements because they each believe they will gain from the proposition. And they should only renegotiate their agreements if both parties see it as being beneficial to do so. Neither has a responsibility to be his brother’s keeper. In America, each of us is presumed to have the right to pursue our own happiness.

The Next Hot Career Choice: Self-Immolation

A recent article in the New York Times (”Big paycheck or service? Students put to the test“) describes a growing trend among elite universities to push students towards careers in public service. This encouragement takes various forms, from the offering of “reflection seminars” with the stated goal of directing students away from corporate jobs, to debt relief for graduates who choose employment in the public sector. According to Amherst president Anthony Marx, the expense of such services is justified by the college’s goal of graduating students who will “make the world better in some way.” Naturally, for these universities, such world-changing careers can only be found in public service.

Students seem to be supporting this public service shift. Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust based her commencement address around the question most often asked by new students, “Why are so many of us going to Wall Street?”, while Wesleyan students celebrated their graduation by rallying around Barack Obama’s denunciation of our “money culture.” As one of the students quoted in the article recalled, the slur of “corporate whore” is commonly levied by his peers against those who waste their Ivy League degree pursuing profits.

Of course, many students and administrators do not share in the terrifically simplistic Wall Street=Evil, Adbusters mentality. But even then, the choice to pursue a profitable career is rarely defended. At best, the seeking of financial security is permissible as an amoral, practical endeavor if it will lead to a moral course of action later in life. Said Akshay Ganju, a fresh Harvard graduate beginning a job with global consulting firm Bain & Company, “I don’t think the point of our education is to make us rich. We all feel we want to do something meaningful beyond just accumulating wealth.”

The campus debate about career choices is usually couched in terms of high-paying corporate jobs versus service to the community. But this way of looking at the issue confuses the fundamental moral alternative underlying the decision: to engage in a course of self-interested action or a course of self-sacrifice. Should you choose a job you love and find rewarding, or a job that you do for some sacrificial reason—such as to please your parents, or to fulfill your duty to society?

The public service pushers undermine the validity of self-interested career choices by associating self-interest with the negative perception of wealth that is prevalent in today’s culture, especially among university students. For those who have accepted this jaded image, the terms “Wall Street”, “money culture”, and “corporate world” invoke a suited stockbroker—probably corrupt—who moonlights in hedonism, despises the poor, and works 80 hours a week to have a house in the Hamptons and drive a Mercedes. But this is a straw man. Many Wall Street businessmen thoroughly love their jobs, their families, their homes, and the range of values that their wealth makes possible.

Similarly, terms like “giving back”, “public service”, and “helping others” make self-sacrifice palatable, and sidestep the fact that careers in the public sector are predominately low-paying, emotionally straining, and offer little chance of professional advancement. Those who argue in terms of the false alternative between pursuing wealth vs. serving the community ignore the real issue: career as personal fulfillment vs. career as self-sacrificial duty.

So why would anyone advocate this false alternative? Why do university administrations and career counselors frame the issue in terms of wealth vs. service? They frame it in this way because it is precisely self-sacrifice that they want to push. The moral ideal they advocate is not to help others, but to sacrifice oneself in the helping of others.

If the good of others is truly the public service pushers’ goal, then why do they decry business as antagonistic to their mission? As evidenced by profit-seeking businessmen throughout history, an individual’s selfish pursuit of wealth in a capitalist society raises the level of prosperity of others. In any business transaction, self-interested action on the part of both parties is the driving force of mutual benefit. We pay for a product or service precisely because it benefits us, and one becomes wealthy by continuing to provide a product or service which benefits others, so that they in turn continue to buy it to benefit their lives.

For those who deny self-sacrifice is the root of the public service pushers’ morality, consider Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two giants of capitalism that have had a profoundly beneficial impact on the way we live. How many products and services remain in existence for you to enjoy because of the savvy investments of Mr. Buffett? How many jobs have been created? How much more productive is the world because of the growth of the personal computer, initiated and guided by Mr. Gates? How many lives have been saved by the technological advancements the computer has fostered? Yet at what point were Gates or Buffett ever upheld as models of moral action? Despite bettering the lives of billions through the selfish, insatiable pursuit of wealth, never was so much praise reaped upon them as when they chose to give their earnings away, when they turned away from practical action undertaken for the benefit of their own lives and chose to sacrifice that wealth for the good of others.

In philosophy, the view that maintains the existence of a seemingly irreconcilable tension between that which is right and that which benefits one’s life is known as the moral-practical dichotomy. This, the idea that there is an inherent conflict between the moral course and the practical course, is a torturous dictate which ultimately destroys morality by rendering it impossible. Because man’s survival depends on his acting in his own self-interest (e.g., he must obtain food to eat, he must seek shelter for himself), man is regarded as inherently immoral (cf., the doctrine of original sin), and the practical becomes a necessary evil that he can never fully escape. Man can at best approximate the status of a moral being by reducing practical, self-interested action to a minimum, but moral perfection is intrinsically unattainable.

The source of the moral-practical dichotomy is the view that morality equals altruism. Altruism upholds the good as that which is done for others, and in doing so defines self-sacrifice as the fundamental virtue by which that good may be obtained. The moral-practical dichotomy is a direct consequence. Even when altruists do not explicitly call for it (though they often do), sacrifice is their basic requirement of moral action. Any action partaken for the primary benefit of oneself is immoral beneath the altruist ethics, regardless of whether or not those actions benefit others. Thus all self-sustaining actions are immoral, precisely because they are undertaken in service to oneself, rather than in service to others.

It is not kindness, not generosity, not good will towards others that the public service pushers proselytize to students. It is sacrifice—the sacrifice of their goals, their dreams, their values. Students should answer these calls for self-sacrifice with a resounding “No”, and should get on with the business of choosing whichever career they find most personally rewarding.

Ending Racism through Racism

According to a recent Associated Press article, black conservatives are conflicted about whom to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. These conservatives are opposed to presidential candidate, Barack Obama’s ideology and policies, but for some reason still feel compelled to vote for him. Armstrong Williams, a black conservative talk show host, says that it will be hard to vote against Obama: “I don’t necessarily like his policies; I don’t like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it.”

But in the context of choosing whom to elect for public office, what could be more important than ideology and political policy? John McWhorter, a black conservative author and senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, answers: the goal “of getting past race for real.” According to such conservatives, in order to get past race (i.e. racism) America needs to elect a black man, Obama.

The glaring contradiction in voting for someone because of their race in order to end racism is mentioned in the AP article, but is never addressed. McWhorter even goes as far as to say that Obama’s Democratic victory “proves that while there still is some racism in the United States, there is not enough to matter in any serious manner.” But if McWhorter and Williams’ views are any indication, just the opposite is true.

Racism is making moral judgments about others based on the colour of their skin—rather than their character and actions—pure and simple. Voting for Obama because he is black is no less racist than voting against him for the same reason. In order to truly move past race, black conservatives and everyone else should ignore race full stop—not vote for Obama because of his race.

For a more in-depth analysis of racism, I refer you to Dr. Edwin Locke’s op-ed “What We Should Remember on Martin Luther King Day“

Congrats, Valedictorian! Now Get Out of Our Country

A high school valedictorian in California, whose parents fled violence in Armenia when he was two years old, is being deported. Arthur Mkoyan dreams of applying to medical school after he finishes high school next week, but instead immigration officials plan to send him back to Armenia ten days after graduation.

Arthur has petitioned California Senator Dianne Feinstein to pass a “Private Bill” which would allow his family to stay in the country. Very few such bills are ever passed, but with all the media attention this story is getting, there’s a chance. Arthur has asked the major news organizations to publish his email address (artmkoyan [at] gmail [dot] com) so that he can forward letters of support to Mrs. Feinstein. I will write such a letter to him today, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.

This story, which may soon become a tragedy, is an instance of the horribly broken immigration policy of the United States. For a rational view of immigration policy, read Rebecca Knapp’s excellent article on immigration from a 2006 issue of The Undercurrent.

–Dan Edge

Raise a Glass to the American Dream: Robert Mondavi Dies at 94

Raise a glass to the American dream today, in honor of the passing of a man who achieved it. Robert Mondavi, founder of California’s famous Robert Mondavi Vineyard, died last week at 94. I’m not an expert on the man or his wines, but the obituaries and biographies emerging in the days following his death describe a man of virtue, who selfishly pursued his values, challenged the foundations of an industry, and changed the world of wine.

Said Sarah Kemp, publishing director of Decanter Magazine: “Robert Mondavi holds a unique position in the history of wine. This extraordinary man, through his vision, relentless energy and gritty determination changed the way consumers thought about wine. By putting California wine on the map he ensured the world knew that some of the worlds great wines could be made outside Europe, at the time a revolutionary concept. He was deservedly one of the wine legends of our time.”

America-born to Italian immigrants, Mondavi joined the family winery upon graduating from Stanford in 1936, and would co-manage a second family winery with his brother until 1965, when clashes over the direction of the business came to a head. Rather than sacrifice his vision of what California wines could be to his brother’s conservative mindset, Mondavi left the family business to found the vineyard that bears his name.

Prior to the founding of the Robert Mondavi Vineyard, California was predominately the home of cheap wines sold by the jug. Mondavi alone believed the Californian climate was capable of producing wines far superior to the second-rate sweet stuff that it was known for. Against the advice of friends, family, fellow businessmen, and wine experts, Mondavi set out to realize his vision. On borrowed money and self-confidence, and at an age when many men start thinking of retirement, the 53 year-old Robert Mondavi opened his vineyard in 1966. Pioneering new winemaking techniques that would become industry standards, it took Mondavi ten years to prove his critics wrong. In 1976, at a blind tasting known as The Judgment of Paris, Mondavi’s wines beat out a number of eminent French vintages, and California wines entered the international stage.

Today, California is home to over 1200 wineries and a $20 billion per year wine industry, and is renowned the world over for producing wines on par with those of the traditional European powerhouses. This incredible growth is rooted in the vision and dedication of Robert Mondavi, a prime example of the kind of visionary that Ayn Rand espoused: men with foresight and the strength to follow it, who selfishly refuse to compromise their ideals in the pursuit of their values. Though Ayn Rand’s novels are fiction, her kind of hero is not. They exist throughout history and in every industry, though they will only continue to prosper, and the world will only continue to benefit, if they are left free to operate unchained.

I leave you with some quotes from the man himself, which capture his spirit and may serve to inspire (from www.mondavi.com):

“To succeed and have a happy life, you need common sense, a commitment to hard work and the courage to go your own way. Interest is not enough – you must be passionate about what you do. Find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

“Establish a goal just beyond what you think you can do. When you achieve that, establish another and another. This will teach you to embrace risk.”

“Out of all the rigidities and mistakes of my past, I’ve learned a lesson that I’d like to see engraved on the desk of every business leader, teacher, and parent in America: The greatest leaders don’t rule. They inspire.”

“Drink what you like, and like what you drink.”

All Plants are Created Equal?

Put down that salad! Have you considered the dignity of the vegetables you’re about to crush into easily-digestible pieces? Have you no concern for their inherent worth as living beings? Have you made sure to carefully justify the moral necessity of harming those plants for your own ends?

Those are the topics recently under serious consideration by a Swiss governmental ethics panel. Their conclusion? Plants do indeed possess “inherent worth” and must be protected “for their own sake” from human destruction. The report, replete with sympathy-evoking photos of beautiful, dignified flowers on every page, can be found (here).

The disastrous consequences of an idea like “plant rights” are easy to imagine. Put aside for now the human need to eat plants for sustenance, which would presumably be allowed by the panel given a proper application for an eating license citing an approved moral justification to feed oneself. Consider all the less-necessitated ways we use plants for our ends. How could you justify “decapitating” (the panel’s word) a beautiful rose for such a superficial human occasion as Valentines Day? Imagine the outrage of mowing one’s lawn, which amounts to severing the bodies of thousands of individuals for purely aesthetic reasons.

Clearly, this idea of respecting the “inherent worth” of plant life is utterly incompatible with human life. This raises an important question – how did a panel of Ph.D.’s, the most educated members of society, reach such an absurd conclusion after extensive and highly complex discussion?

The answer lies in the flawed view of morality accepted throughout modern academia. In their report, the panelists profess a “biocentric” view of morality which holds that ethical questions pertain to all living things. However, it is important to note that the only living things the panel is urging to exercise moral restraint are human beings – they aren’t demanding that bears consider the dignity of salmon before snatching them from the river, nor that mosquitoes observe the inherent worth of their fellow creatures before sucking their blood.

This double standard is a crucial clue to the mistake of the moral philosophy that underpins faulty ideas like animal “rights”, and now, plant “rights”. Any rational idea of morality necessarily applies only to things that have the capacity to conceive of and exercise moral choices. The reason it sounds strange to think of a rock, flower, or groundhog as moral or immoral is because such entities are incapable of thinking about or making the kinds of choices morality involves. Only one kind of being is – human beings.

Only in the works of Ayn Rand can one find a fully rational view of morality, one that shows why ideas like “plant rights” are as absurd as they sound.

The Helpless French Mind

A recent news article describes a new law in France which, if passed, will make it illegal to promote “extreme thinness.”  This ban outlaws images of excessively skinny models in the media and on websites that incite people to severely restrict the amount they eat.  The purpose of this law is to protect individuals, particularly children, from the saturation of unhealthy dietary habits in the culture.  Such regulation will purportedly reduce the prevalence of anorexia in France.

The underlying premise of this law is that people cannot help being influenced by these images and websites and so need the government to protect them.  If someone reads that “eat[ing only] an apple a day” is the key to looking thin and beautiful, he or she will helplessly eat only an apple a day.  Using this logic, if I demanded that everyone who reads this blog give me all their money, people would have no choice but to empty their wallets.

This is obviously absurd.  People are not mindless robots; they hold the capacity to think, reason, and make conscientious decisions.  Seeing an excessively thin model in a magazine does not force anyone to change their dietary habits, just as reading that I want all your money does not force you to give it to me.  Human beings have the capacity and the responsibility to think for themselves and to decide which course of action best furthers their lives.

Regulating the content in magazines and websites is an insult to human nature and will not reduce the prevalence of anorexia precisely because people have minds of their own.  If not, then the next logical step is to ban excessively thin individuals from walking the streets.

Jimmy Carter Embraces Terrorism

Former President Jimmy Carter, already famous for surrendering America’s interests to militant Islamists during the Iran Hostage Crisis in the late 70’s, is yet again betraying America. Last week, Carter met with Nasser Shaer, a senior Hamas politician, under the pretense of promoting “peace” in the region. Hamas, internationally recognized as a terrorist organization, has continued to fire rockets at Israeli towns and send suicide bombers to slaughter Israeli civilians.

During their meeting, Carter literally embraced Shaer as a friend and ally, and he later placed a wreath at the grave of life-long terrorist Yasser Arafat. Hamas, Carter says, must be engaged in any discussions to “lead to a final peace.” But the only “final peace” acceptable to Hamas is the same “final solution” proposed by the Nazis during WWII. Both the PLO and Hamas have the explicit goal of eradicating Israel and all of its civilians.

By embracing the Hamas leadership, Carter has sanctioned some of the bloodiest savages in human history. He should be vilified and damned for what he is: a traitor and an enemy of freedom.

A Tale of Two Economists

The New York Times recently published an op-ed by Paul Krugman on McCain’s healthcare plan. Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton University, describes what he sees as the ‘voodoo’ economics of healthcare:

“…the foolish claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone.” 

The alternative, of course, is that the government can provide cheap health care for everyone.  Which of these two claims has really been refuted by all available evidence?

Capitalism Magazine has just published an article on the same issue.  Richard Ralston discusses the current state of the British National Health Service, a universally available, free healthcare plan that should make Krugman swoon.  Except that the plan is failing.  The article discusses the burgeoning ‘medical tourist industry,’ as patients flee to third world countries to obtain timely care, and the British government’s attempt to integrate more market forces into their system.

The articles present a disturbing picture of America’s desire for socialized medicine, set against the backdrop of the failure of socialized medicine abroad. The irony, apparently, is lost on the New York Times.