Who: Full-time students seeking experience applying Objectivism to today’s world
When: 10 weeks, June- August, 2012
What: Paid internship, $1000 stipend (100 hour commitment)
How: Apply here by May 20, 2012

Editorial Internship Description

Our program allows students to participate in our writing and editing activities to communicate an Objectivist analysis of culture and politics for our blog and print formats. Selected candidates will write and publish objective, persuasive articles and blog posts for a general or college audience and receive valuable feedback and editorial guidance from our editing team.

The Undercurrent draws participants from across the country, and therefore the intern will work from home, collaborating over email and regular teleconference meetings. Work hours are flexible (average 10 hours per week) to allow the intern to combine regular writing and other tasks with normal classwork and other obligations. Candidates should be familiar with Objectivism and interested in effectively communicating those ideas to the public. Candidates must be full-time students.

Regular tasks include:

• Writing regular blog posts, Campus Media Response articles, and some longer articles
• Participation in the collaborative editorial process with other writers
• Attendance and participation at regular teleconference meetings

Past participants in the program have praised their experiences: “I enriched the persuasiveness of my ideas (both in conversation and in writing) as I learned to think more objectively. I regularly found myself asking, ‘What facts make this argument convincing’ and, ‘how do I best communicate these facts to those I’m trying to convince?’”

Administrative Internship Description

Are you looking for other ways of changing the culture besides writing? Are you interested in seeing how a grassroots newspaper and activist organization functions? Would you like experience in motivating volunteers or communicating with donors? The administrative team of The Undercurrent is responsible for all of these functions. Admin interns generally focus on one major project during the course of their internship, but may be called to assist with all aspects of managing the paper. Past projects have included the development of this website, a customer analysis of our distributors, and the testing of a new distribution channel (our TU newsstands).

The Undercurrent draws participants from across the country, and therefore the intern will work from home, collaborating over email and regular teleconference meetings. Work hours are flexible (average 10 hours per week) to allow the intern to combine their TU work with normal classwork and other obligations. Candidates should be familiar with Objectivism but need not be experts in the philosophy. Candidates must be full-time students.

Questions? Please contact Jared Seehafer.

Sandra Fluke’s testimony in favor of a mandate for contraceptive coverage by private universities and institutions—including those with moral opposition to such coverage—has sparked a national controversy. As arguments from across the ideological spectrum clash, Rush Limbaugh offered the most controversial criticism, labeling Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for expecting, in effect, that her sexual endeavors be subsidized.

Instead of critiquing her expectation that sexual endeavors be subsidized, some conservatives have repudiated her expectation that sexual endeavors be subsidized. Conservative pundit Matt Barber, for instance, recently referred to Fluke’s “fornication” as “sexually immoral,” and to her view of sex as “cheap and casual.” While then presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently dismissed Limbaugh’s comments as “absurd,” his own views on sex lend undue credence to Limbaugh. In a 2011 interview, Santorum offered the following explanation for his opposition to contraception:

[Sexual relationships] are supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal and unitive but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it, and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

Conservatives who pursue this line of criticism are focusing on the wrong issue. In fact, the kind of sexual relationship that Santorum describes is far from a “perfect sexual union.”

The primary purpose of sex is not procreation—sex is an end in itself. Consider the alternative, the idea that sex is merely a means to the end of procreation. Under the guise of spiritual piety, religious conservatives who propose this idea actually encourage a debased view of sex.  It is one that reduces people to the status of mere animals, treating them simply as necessary ingredients in the reproductive process.  Animals are slaves to their instincts and to their environment. Human beings are distinctive in their capacity to use reason to alter their environment to fit their own purposes.  We have the capacity to choose whether we intend to reproduce and to decide which criteria we use to evaluate potential partners. We are not mere animals, and it’s absurd to treat our sex lives as if we were.

Only a faith-based morality could hold that sex is good for procreation alone, and never for pleasure. But such a view of sex has no basis in reality. Should we use faith to dictate how we interact with the other sex? Timothy 2:12 proclaims: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence.” Should a woman, then, subordinate herself in the pursuit of knowledge to the authority of men, in order to follow the word of the Bible?  In regard to sex, should a man limit his sexual experiences to procreative intent? Nothing in reality tells us he should.

Two partners will typically choose to have sex to celebrate their love or affection. The pleasure they derive from this is the primary purpose of sex. It is an expression of one’s pursuit of happiness, a cherished ideal in American culture. Removing the procreative component of sex through the use of contraception does not make it any less special. In fact, contraception allows two individuals to express their love for one another without risking any unintended consequence of their passion—further securing their pursuit of happiness. Couples are thus able to focus solely on the pleasure of the sex itself. What, Mr. Santorum, is wrong with pleasure—or with the pursuit of happiness?

Conservatives who portray themselves as champions of limited government and individual liberty but who attack sex on religious grounds as “fornication” forget that individual liberty is only valuable as a necessary condition for the pursuit of happiness. Supporters of subsidized contraception are making an important moral error, but it isn’t the claim that more sex is good. Rather, it concerns the entitlement mentality—the collectivist welfare mindset of those like Fluke who expect from others what they cannot provide for themselves. To distract from this by condemning sex not only misses the point, but does so in a dangerous way.

Image via Wikimedia commons. 

The Trayvon Martin killing has been characterized by many as a “hate crime.” Hate crimes are said to be those in which a criminal’s actions are motivated by factors such as racial, religious, or gender prejudices. If convicted of a hate crime, Trayvon Martin’s alleged killer George Zimmerman would face a harsher sentence for his supposed racially prejudiced crime.

Of course we should all be opposed to racial prejudice, especially to crimes committed on the basis of such prejudice. But are such crimes worse than wrongdoings committed from some other malicious motive? Almost all crimes are motivated by disregard for the rights of others, so is there anything to justify punishing certain crimes as “hateful?”

Some people are racially prejudiced based upon certain ideas they hold toward members of a particular group. Hate crime laws, therefore, are in effect levied against ideas that the government deems undesirable. But should the state be involved in promoting or punishing certain ideological views?

The government exists to protect individual rights by outlawing the use of force against others. In cases where force is used, the justice system exists to punish and deter crimes. Only the use of physical force by one person against another should be punished as a crime. For instance, assault is punishable because it involves one person physically harming another. And by punishing people who commit assault, the court deters future assaults.

Merely thinking prejudiced thoughts about someone before harming him does not increase the degree of force itself. For example, three people could all believe that homosexuality is a sin. The first keeps the idea to himself. The second calls every gay man he finds a derogatory name. But the third person assaults a gay man. Each of these three has the same idea, but each acts on it differently, and only one physically harms another person. Ideas do not pose a threat to society; what threatens society is how people choose to act on their ideas.

It is worth noting that racist, sexist, or other prejudicial motives can be used to prove a suspect’s guilt in a criminal investigation. For example, in 2009, Allen Andrade was the first to be convicted of a hate crime against a transgendered person. The court ruled that the murderer targeted his victim because she was transgendered, which also elevated the murder to “hate crime” status. While it is correct for the court to cite Andrade’s anti-transgender beliefs to prove that he had a motive to commit the crime, he should not be punished more heavily for having these motivations. In doing so, the court punishes the idea, not the use of force.

Laws against “hate crimes” also undermine objective law. Neither the enactment nor the enforcement of laws should be based on politicians’ politically-correct whims about what is socially undesirable. For example, if an extreme sect of Christianity took over Congress and enacted harsher than usual punishments for crimes committed against a preacher, the rule of law would be undermined. As Aristotle said, we should be governed by the rule of law, not the whims of men.

By describing in plain language which crimes receive which punishments, and by punishing criminals in proportion to the crimes they commit, objective law prevents the initiation of physical force by racists and non-racists alike. Objective law promotes impartiality in the judicial system, which ensures that criminals will be properly punished for their crimes. We do not want a judge to give a criminal a harsher sentence because the judge disagreed with the criminal’s ideological motivations. For instance, we do not want Christian judges to more harshly punish atheist extremists who set fire to churches than Christian arsonists who burn abortion clinics. Such a system unfairly punishes atheists more harshly than Christians and undermines the notion that all men are equal under the law.

It is wrong for the government to outlaw ideas, for an idea by itself poses no threat to anyone. Freedom of speech rests on the same foundation. Someone can openly oppose all forms of government. He can even preach his anarchist ideas as much as he likes. However, he cannot be prosecuted unless he acts on them in a way that harms others, say by bombing a government building. In this case the bombing is the punishable crime, not the anarchist ideas that motivated it. Ideas, no matter how abhorrent, should not be censored. Those who support freedom of speech, even in the case of objectionable ideas, should not support hate crime legislation. Such legislation outlaws these ideas, and in doing so threatens freedom of speech.

Crimes that qualify as “hate crimes” are terrible and we are right to feel outraged when we learn of them, but classifying them as “hate crimes” is not the answer. Instead, we should morally condemn such crimes while simultaneously promoting a system of clearly-defined laws that punish those who engage in physical coercion.

Image courtesy Flickr user mira66.

This approach encompasses a vast array of charitable ventures, domestic and international-minded. For example, VisionSpring works to provide third-world people with affordable eyeglasses. d.Light serves India and Africa with solar-powered light devices. Pacific Community Ventures finances low-income-area start-up companies and lobbies on their behalf. There are many other examples.

Although these social entrepreneurs’ services and audiences vary greatly, they all seek to “make a difference” in the lives of low-income individuals. Compared to traditional, profit-making companies, social entrepreneurs encourage profit-giving as a crucial ingredient to global improvement. They believe that giving is the most effective way to improve the world. For example, consider Visionspring that claims:

A key characteristic of a social enterprise is that earnings are reinvested into the organization’s operations rather than distributed to shareholders.

But in believing this, social entrepreneurs fail to recognize the value of an activity that has resulted in lifting untold burdens from the backs of countless people, making their lives easier and their wallets thicker. Consider one organization engaged in this activity that allows millions of people access to affordable, life-sustaining goods every minute of every hour of every day. Groceries, clothing, toilet paper, toothpaste, batteries, Blue-rays, Xbox—tens of thousands of products—essential or desirable—are all available in one organized location.

The activity in question is business, and the exemplary organization is Wal-Mart, an idea brought into reality through the efforts of one self-interested businessman, Sam Walton. Since its founding in 1962, Walmart has expanded to over ten thousand storefronts in twenty seven countries. Over two hundred million purchases are made in those stores every week. Walton’s passion for improving his own life by trade with others resulted in a titanic achievement that dwarfs all the social entrepreneurs’ achievements combined. Social entrepreneurs ought to study Walmart’s successful business approach of wealth-generation, not redefine the formula of success to mean: charity first, earning second, if at all.

But what is wrong with an individual creating something new that has economic value to customers? Why isn’t their passion for improving their world celebrated with as much gusto as the social entrepreneurs?

For example, Walmart is routinely attacked for supposedly ruining communities and encouraging shallow materialism, rather than praised for the increased abundance it has brought to millions of customers. This ingratitude stems from a misguided belief that if someone profits, someone else must suffer in turn. But this is not true. When we buy food from a deli, it is not only the deli that benefits. We too enjoy the purchased products. Trade is mutually beneficial to all parties and provides an exchange of value for value.

Temporary handouts provided by charities do make a difference to the lives of some. And so many contend that profit-givers are the true heroes—“social entrepreneurs” who provide free products to needy people. But the very act of attaching “social” as a prefix unjustly robs traditional entrepreneurs of recognition, implying that they do not benefit society. This ignores the fact that charity is possible only if there are businesses that create the wealth to be handed out in the first place.

One cannot celebrate enough the value that profit-seeking entrepreneurs contribute to our lives. The most important “social entrepreneurs”—the problem solvers who lift up society—are the profit-makers, not the profit-givers. It is only through the ideas, the work, and the products of moneymakers that hundreds of millions of people can enjoy a life of health, happiness, and leisure in the long run. Their productiveness is a virtue that ought to be celebrated by everyone.

Image courtesy of Flikr user kozumel.

Suppose that a man walking home at night is attacked by a thug and threatened with death. The decision he has to make is simple: his life is in peril, so he should defend it to the best of his ability. But imagine that he was raised to believe he should never take decisive actions before asking others what to do. He might then think that he is obliged to call his friend or a criminals’ rights coalition to ask them what to do before acting to defend his own life.

This bizarre response is precisely what Jacob Keplar advocates in a recent article in the Daily Kansan about what Israel should do in response to the threat of Iran’s nuclear program. Keplar considers Israel—the lone oasis for individual liberty, freedom of expression, and secularism in the Middle East— to be “beating the drum of war” unacceptably when it asserts its right to protect itself by destroying Iran’s nuclear sites.

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, it has been under continual attack by hostile neighbors. From the Arab Nationalist threat in the first half of the twentieth century, to the Islamist Iran-backed threat in the second half, the people of Israel have had to fight for their very existence. To this day Israel’s borders are subject to random and brutal attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and others. So far, Israel has defended itself—with or without help from other nations.

In the Six Day War in 1967, Israel defeated a coalition of belligerent Arab nationalist forces headed by Egypt. But as Israeli forces were preparing to advance into Arab territory, it was America and the U.N. who pressured Israel to sign a “negotiated settlement.” If Israel had continued this advance, Egypt would not have been able to attack again in 1973 and win concessions.

Since Israel once again faces an enemy which has expressed a desire to “wipe them off the map,” an enemy which has taken action toward that end, what should Israel do?

Keplar contends that Israel should not be a “wild card.” He claims that Israel should consider whatever consensus a variety of governments and governmental organizations come to, before making any definitive decision on how to deal with the issue. Until then, he claims, Israel should be more patient.

It is precisely the “patience” of these organizations which has allowed Iran to aggrandize itself in the region, giving the Iranian government the time needed to accomplish its goal of becoming a nuclear power. For the past decade, Iranian leaders have been slowly working toward this end, and negotiation after negotiation has only led them closer to this goal. Israel’s use of force against nuclear threats—rather than mealy-mouthed negotiations—has worked in the past. By bombing Iraq’s nuclear sites in 1981, Israel  succeeded in stopping Saddam Hussein from becoming a nuclear power. This was also true of its mission against Syria in 2007. Just imagine what kind of threat Iraq or Syria might pose to Israel today with a nuclear weapon (both had shown no qualms about leveling their own cities).

Israel should only ask one question: what course of action is in its best interests? While it is true that Israel is not the equivalent of a man being attacked in an alley with only moments to decide what to do, its very existence is still at stake.

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect the individual rights of its citizens. Each Israeli citizen has the right to live a life free from abductions, suicide bombers, rocket attacks, and a nuclear-armed enemy hell-bent on their annihilation. This should not be open to the decision of a consensus. Under an Israeli government completely committed to protecting its citizens’ lives, it would not wait for a consensus with any state—friend or otherwise—before taking any necessary action.

Israel faces a determined enemy who does not wait for global consensus or consensus of any kind before attacking; Israel should act accordingly.

Image via Wikimedia Commons. 

Now imagine that a government in this world bans this scientific research. This government creates an agency to end the development of the life-saving cure. Instead of heralding these scientists as heroes, the agency deems them criminals.

Dopp gasped. They looked just like the dishes that held embryos prior to in vitro fertilization. Horrified, he reached for one . . . . Instead of a clump of cells bound by a spherical mass—a primitive embryo—he saw a spread of individual cells . . . . A violent roar ripped through his throat, abrasive against his vocal cords. He shook with outrage, filled with unparalleled fury: How many babies had died?”

This is an excerpt from Kira Peikoff’s debut novel, Living Proof, which was released earlier this month and tells the story of one brave scientist’s battle to continue her quest for a cure in secret, risking life and limb in doing so. Set in the near future, the Department of Embryo Preservation (DEP) seeks to enforce the protection of all embryos, whose destruction is considered first-degree murder, rather than a means of scientific progress.

Peikoff’s futuristic thriller at first glance may seem fantastical, but upon reflection it is eerily reflective of today’s political controversies about the concept of human life.  One major contender in the debate is the religious right, who advocate that a fertilized egg is a human being endowed with a soul. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination shares this premise, even though his wife, an MS patient, would benefit from embryonic stem cell research. Romney’s associates, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum, all agree. Santorum, for example, says this:

An unborn child is not just a clump of cells.  He or she is a human life, as worthy of basic dignity and respect as any one of us.  Each precious, irreplaceable human life is too infinitely valuable to permit courts to redefine its meaning away.

Embryonic stem cells, they contend, are human lives that must be protected. Granted, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich may not explicitly state a Christian perspective like Rick Santorum or Ron Paul, but the fact that they give speeches to churches about the evils of stem cell research, claiming that protoplasmic clumps of undifferentiated cells are in fact human beings, speaks volumes about the ideological perspective from which they approach the issue.

But one ought to question the claim that God “ensouls” the embryo at conception. Should the following verse really be considered as a source of wisdom-informing government policies?:

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.                                  - Jeremiah 1:5

Is there any doubt that this faith-based assertion erases rationality and scientific evidence from the discussion arena? Observation of embryos gives us no reason to believe in a floating, ethereal spirit inhabiting each clump of cells. The idea of a soul placed there by a divine being comes only from religious texts and from believers’ feelings. In other words, believers acknowledge that they might not be able to observe the soul under a microscope—just as they can’t view a God with a telescope—but they claim to know it because they have faith, because they feel it.

But no matter how intense the believers feel that something is, that doesn’t make it so. In the same way, many fifteenth-century theologians felt with all their heart that certain men and women caused cloudy weather through satanic witchcraft and therefore deserved death, but this didn’t make it true either. Christians today would probably not support the killing of Europe’s alleged “witches,” but those who rely on faith to attribute a soul to embryos are guilty of the same error. Emotions are no substitute for evidence.

There is no evidence for the existence of souls in embryos. Stem cell research ought to be commended not condemned, and more importantly, should never be forbidden by law. Living Proof is a celebration of today’s innovative scientists who are paving new roads to improving medical treatments of arthritis, strokes, as well as heart, kidney and liver diseases—treatments that could save hundreds of thousands of loved ones across the country from unnecessary pain and suffering.

Image used by permission.

In a recent piece for UC Berkeley’s The Daily Californian, Casey Given criticizes Professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich’s portrayal of poverty and inequality in America. Having enrolled last year in Reich’s popular course “Wealth and Poverty,” Given raises interesting economic and philosophic questions about Reich’s analysis.

After first encouraging students to supplement Reich’s “copious charts” with research of their own, Given offers two primary economic criticisms. One is that Reich relies exclusively on household income as an indicator of a family’s standard of living. But Given posits that perhaps household consumption is a more accurate indicator. He links to a New York Times article which shows that when comparing the latter to the former, the difference in the standard of living is far less dramatic. Second, Given explains that in his analysis of low- and high-income households, Reich simply neglects to include details such as the number of working family members, whether they work full time, and their age, details that might indicate that one’s income is proportionate to one’s productivity. This indication directly contradicts the liberal notion that all inequality is bad and unjust.

It thus seems that Reich may not provide the fullest account of these issues. Given does not limit his criticism to economics, though. Where a redistributionist such as Reich would support a state which intervenes in the economy to achieve his ends, Given is weary of such a notion. He explains:

One must ask how exactly these thieves [the rich] steal from a marketplace that functions through voluntary exchange between buyer and seller. The answer is found in the institution with the monopoly on violence—the government. Through its countless bailouts and subsidies to big business, the federal government regressively redistributes wealth from poor to rich to the tune of billions every year.

Given is correct that because government is an agency of force, it has no place interfering in the free market. Economic prosperity depends crucially on the power of the unshackled human mind, which is possible only when production and trade are given the same freedom as speech and religion. As such, it is not surprising that when the government forcibly intervenes in the economy, resources are transferred from the productive (whether rich or poor) to the unproductive (whether poor or rich), and the result is an unjust redistribution of wealth.

Unfortunately though, Given’s statement could be taken to imply a contradiction: that while it’s wrong for the government to redistribute wealth from poor to rich, it’s quite okay to do so in the opposite direction, through excessive taxation to fund the welfare state. Government programs such as Medicaid disproportionately tax those who do pay taxes to aid those who don’t, and represent a great deal of “progressive” wealth redistribution.

After his brief critique of Reich’s economic narrative, Given offers a glimpse into the proper relationship between the government and the economy—that government exists to protect the rights of its citizens, allowing true voluntary exchange to occur—but he stops short of fully condemning the kind of progressive redistributionism and welfare statism which Reich advocates. In their piece “The Entitlement State is Morally Bankrupt,” Yaron Brook and Don Watkins offer such a condemnation:

Far from offering genuine benefits, whenever the government takes people’s money and decides how that money is “best” spent, [the redistribution of the entitlement state] makes life harder for rational people. A rational person needs the freedom to plan his own life, make his own choices, and support his own existence.

In his criticism of Reich and government redistributionism, Given neglects to condemn, as morally bankrupt, the kind of welfare statism that victimizes all who aspire to create wealth.

Image via Wikimedia Commons. 

The Kony 2012 video calls for an end to Joseph Kony’s reign of terror as a warlord in Uganda. It was created by the Invisible Children charity organization and has been shared by many on Facebook, accumulating tens of millions of views on YouTube. Celebrities including Bill Gates, Rihanna and Taylor Swift have endorsed the Stop Kony campaign. Needless to say, the video is one of the most viral films in recent memory.

Joseph Kony has abducted 30,000 children and has forced them to serve in his army, which is responsible for the death, mutilation, and rape of thousands of Ugandans. He represents a war against the basis of civilization: the right of each person to pursue happiness, free from violence. The arrest of Joseph Kony is a cause that everyone can support.

Yet there are many problems throughout the world that we could concern ourselves with, so why is this issue unique among all the other problems facing Africa or the rest of the world? Robert Mugabe killed an estimated 20,000 people in an uprising against his rule in the 1980s. In 2004, Mugabe’s policies caused the death of 10,000 more people, and he still rules Zimbabwe today. A food crisis struck Eastern Africa last summer that jeopardized the lives of 9.5 million people, yet no viral campaign emerged to end that catastrophe. Humanitarian crises and wars like those in Central Africa are found around the world in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, and Burma. So why do so many people suddenly care about arresting this particular warlord?

The answer is that the Kony 2012 video succeeded in making Joseph Kony “famous”: the popularity of the video made it fashionable for young people to advocate for his arrest. Many share the video on Facebook because their friends have done so, and they care about stopping Kony because others have told them that they should. The video exploits its viewers’ feelings of guilt and pity, by contrasting the opulence of America with the hardship of Ugandan children. People who share the video believe that they have done something to stop a Ugandan warlord, and feel good that they have become a part of a movement to help others less fortunate than themselves.

Many have criticized the Kony 2012 campaign for these reasons. Some say that the campaign exemplifies “slactivism,” the cursory measures people take to feel better about themselves even though they do not create any real change. In this case, people share the Kony 2012 video but then continue on with their lives.

But should one take one’s time and money to help children in Uganda, as suggested by those who criticize Kony 2012 for its “slactivism”? And why should one be criticized for not taking time and money away from one’s life to give to Ugandan strangers, when doing so is presumably impractical?

People think that they should do more to help capture Joseph Kony because they have adopted the “help-others” moral learned from parents, religious leaders and other social authorities. From an early age, we are taught to believe that helping others is our highest priority, while doing things solely for ourselves is wrong. The same feelings of guilt and pity that inspired us to share the Kony 2012 video motivate us to heed the lessons taught to us by others. We are taught to think that those who are well-off need to help those who are less well-off, and many will help others to alleviate the guilt that they would have felt had they not helped them.

Is blindly following a moral outlook handed down to us by authority figures the best way to decide if we should think that we need to help others as our top priority? Accepting what others say without question amounts to a classic argument from authority. As The Undercurrent’s Valery Publius writes:

Nothing justifies this belief in unchosen moral bondage, which has been passed down, largely unchallenged, from our elders and our religious texts. Why should inscrutable authorities like these guide our lives and govern our societies? Should we not instead formulate our moral principles by the same method that produced past revolutions in science and technology, the method of rational demonstration based on observable, natural facts?

Before people criticize those who support Kony 2012 in response to social pressure, they should ask themselves if they adhere to their own moral principles for similar reasons. If they did so, they would realize the need for an ethics grounded in reality. We need to revolutionize our way of thinking and realize that individuals thrive when pursuing their own goals, unencumbered by the guilt imposed upon them by their Facebook peers.

When we learn of criminals like Joseph Kony, we should feel angry and recognize the need to capture them, but we should not think that an unearned guilt compels us to action. Instead, we ought to use our own independent criteria to evaluate how to respond to warlords like Joseph Kony, if at all. Whatever we do, we should do it not from social pressure but because we have decided for ourselves that it worthwhile.

Image courtesy of Flikr user Robert Raines.

Racism was and is a part of American culture. Most of us have probably heard or even said a racist quip or a derogatory comment on the street, in the locker room or at the water cooler. “Oh, he’s black, he must have voted for Obama.” “You know what they say, white men can’t dance.” “What do you expect? Asians can’t drive.” Sadly, the list goes on. Often, these racially charged aphorisms are not meant to be malicious or hurtful and usually they aren’t uttered by racial supremacists but rather by ordinary, well-meaning individuals. However, there are at least two unhealthy implications behind their words that ought to be questioned.

Foundational to these ethnically charged one-liners is the idea that race is a shortcut to knowledge. They incorrectly assume that an individual’s ideas, abilities, and choices are determined by the color of his or her skin. Unfortunately, this association of membership in a racial group with possession of certain character attributes still exists in American culture’s lingo despite a myriad of counterexamples that refute this notion.

Perhaps an even more egregious error of race-based jibes is their assumption of a collective racial identity. These phrases essentially define individuals by their particular ethnic group membership and presuppose not merely a list of character attributes but also a list of merits and demerits. For instance, a quip that claims black people collect welfare disproportionally to other races often will contain a moral judgment along with it. Unfortunately, the condemnation associates innocent individuals with the demerits of other members of a group. In this way collective racial identities erase moral responsibility from an individual and project it onto an entire race, most of whose members do not deserve such judgment.

By the same token, many of those ordinary people who innocently pronounce and accept such race-based maxims may genuinely desire to help improve race relations and correct the wrongs of their country’s racist history. Many even support certain political measures such as affirmative action policies in order to promote tolerance and harmony in the classroom and office. Good intentions aside, the question that remains is whether affirmative action is in fact the best method. One University of Texas applicant is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether or not it is the best this spring. Rather than wait for the judges’ ruling, we should explore affirmative action’s deeper implications and motives ourselves.

A company that practices affirmative action might purposefully hire a female Asian candidate on the assumption that because she is the member of an ethnic minority, she has a point of view that will benefit the business because it is different from the point of view of white males. When the company considers not just her resume or the white males’ portfolios but also her ancestral lineage and physical characteristics, diversity is achieved, but at what cost? Isn’t using race as a standard of a candidate’s value exactly the sort of thinking that affirmative action is meant to combat? Diversity-oriented policies like these depend on the same racial stereotypes and race-consciousness as the ethnic slurs that are widely condemned. They use knowledge of the candidates’ skin color as a shortcut to knowledge of their value.

Unfortunately, encouraging businesses and universities to evaluate applicants based on their respective ethnicity operates on another unhealthy premise, sometimes even more explicitly. Its supporters voice this idea when they contend that today’s white generation must pay for the sins of white generations past, by giving today’s black generation what black generations past were denied. The very idea of punishing an innocent individual for the crimes of other guilty individuals, under any other circumstances would be damned as unjust, and rightfully so, but affirmative action’s advocates blur the facts using language like “reparations for segregation,” “preventing future injustice,” or “erasing historical…inequalities” so that the concepts of unearned punishment and unearned rewards are squeezed out of the debate arena.

However, essential to their entire argument is the assumption that members of an ethnic group share a collective identity: each shares in the successes and failures of the others. This question is then swept under the rug time and time again: Is a man guilty of another man’s failures by association of race or are a man’s failures his and his alone? Affirmative action policies effectively maintain that there is no individual, only a group, and that the group’s shared achievements and faults rub off onto its members. But how can we hope to progress beyond judging individuals based on race if the alleged solution to racism detaches merits and demerits from individuals and lumps one’s moral status with a group’s average?

The antidote to our culture’s race-consciousness is not affirmative action but rather a reorienting our minds toward judging others based on their values, desires, and accomplishments. Every person has a unique, independent intellect capable of success and shortcomings. The female Asian candidate and white male candidates from the previous example ought to be judged on what they bring to the company in terms of skills and merit. When race is thought to define values and character—when ancestry and biochemistry are the criteria for an individual’s worth, not one’s thoughts and actions—racism wins. Affirmative action is merely a symptom of the problem of racism not the solution to racism.

There is no hope to diminishing the use of derogatory one-liners, ethnic profiling, and discriminatory actions of an entire society by encouraging the use of race as a standard in the corporate and educational sectors. The answer to discrimination is much deeper, yet much simpler than a political policy. By challenging our own and others’ racial stereotypes we challenge the very premise that individuals must be grouped based on physical characteristics. Instead, we must do our best to judge others as human beings who have independent ideas, desires, and accomplishments. By recognizing this philosophy of individualism, we can progress beyond skin-deep differences peacefully and productively.

Recently, Brian Shaud argued in Georgetown University’s The Hoya that a growing wealth gap in the United States is the cause of various social ills. At the root of his argument is his conception of the American dream, “that each citizen has a chance at material and personal success, independent of the condition of his or her birth.” But does this conception reflect what people really deserve? What does it mean to “deserve” something?

Suppose that two twins are born into a poor family and live under the same conditions until they become adults, when each leaves the house to live on his own. Twin A makes choices in life that are irresponsible, reckless, and unmotivated, such as neglecting his assignments at work, partying late and often, and failing to pursue opportunities which could bring him success. As a result, he remains in poverty. Unlike his brother, Twin B is responsible, thoughtful, and motivated. He makes the opposite choices, and so acquires wealth and success. One could imagine a scenario identical in every way except it involves another pair of twins (Twin C and Twin D) who are born into a rich family. One makes irresponsible choices later in life and loses his inheritance, whereas the second makes responsible choices and succeeds in expanding his fortune.

While the successful twins were born into different circumstances, they make choices—responsible, thoughtful, and motivated ones—that lead them to become productive, for which they are rewarded. In the same way, the irresponsible twins make choices that lead them to become unproductive, and miss out on rewards. Each twin’s final condition depends on the nature of his choices, not wholly on the condition of his birth.

But there are also cases where the appropriate and otherwise expected consequences of our actions are disrupted or denied by the choices and actions of others. Suppose that in another scenario, Twin A and Twin B make the same kinds of choices as in the previous example. Suppose that they both work at the same job, and that while Twin A chooses to skip work or to shirk his responsibilities when he does show up, Twin B does the opposite. Regardless of these choices, however, their boss decides to keep them both employed, and even to pay both twins the same salary for obviously different qualities of work because he is friends with their parents. Employees will typically expect a profit-driven boss to reward a responsible employee and fire a shirker, but it’s not guaranteed; in this case, the boss fails to appropriately compensate either twin, whether by reward or punishment.

What, then, do we deserve? The twins who made the responsible choices and enjoyed greater success deserved what they got, as did the twins who made the irresponsible choices and experienced less success. In the last scenario, when the normal outcome is disrupted, what each receives is undeserved. As such, what one “deserves” is what one’s choices are ordinarily productive or virtuous enough to achieve—the result or reward for those choices (and for “undeserved,” the opposite).

Note that egalitarianism, an ideology which advocates universal equality, can be seen in the vision of the American dream which Shaud presents, in that it would attempt to equalize the material success for both twins regardless of their choices. Twin A would be aided, even though he made the wrong choices, and Twin B would be taxed to help pay for that aid, even though he made the right ones. This illustrates a fundamental flaw in the egalitarian conception of what people deserve, the view that regardless of the choices we make, we all deserve a chance at an equal outcome. This flaw is also apparent when considering the rich twins, as egalitarianism would have us aid Twin C (who made the wrong choices and ended up in poverty) while taxing Twin D (who made the right ones and expanded his wealth)!

Thus, the concept of what it means to deserve something is directly contradictory to an egalitarian conception of the American dream. Egalitarianism, in fact, is profoundly unjust. Its advocates say that the poor deserve to be aided by taxing the rich, simply because of their conditions and not because of their choices. This distorts the relationship between how people choose to act and what they deserve.  As such, neither the rich nor the poor deserve the consequences of Shaud’s egalitarian American dream.

Image courtesy of Flikr user saxarocks.