Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

[Note: An updated version of this essay is available on my other blog, Principled Perspectives. Thanks.]

In my Introduction to this blog, I wrote:

“[T]he only real guide to understanding human events, their relationships to one another, and where they may lead us, is to discover the fundamental philosophical and moral principles that drive them: hence, the title of my blog. Discovering them is not always an easy task, but with Objectivism as my frame of reference, that is what I aim to do as I analyze and opiniate on today's events.”

Ayn Rand wrote: “Abstractions as such do not exist: they are merely man’s epistemological method of perceiving that which exists—and that which exists is concrete.” Since abstractions as such do not exist but are merely mental tools for understanding reality, they must be logically relative to concrete events and facts. Otherwise, they are merely “floating” … disconnected from reality and thus useless. Since my blog is based on the premise that abstract ideas drive human events, my task is to validate my principles with reference to today’s issues.

Put another way, my blog is about concretizing abstractions. The number one abstract principle that is my driving passion is the concept of individual rights. That abstract reference point is the focus of this post’s analysis of a very controversial subject. It is also a good demonstration of why we need to make full use of our uniquely human conceptual faculty (i.e., our powers of abstraction), and why without abstractions we are essentially “flying blind”.

On January 6, 2010, the Same-Sex Marriage bill went down to a resounding defeat in my rather liberal state of New Jersey. This result should not have happened, and is a case study on the wrong way to advocate for anyone’s rights. On 1/6/10, the New Jersey Star-Ledger foresaw the defeat, pinning the blame on “political missteps”.

For a change, I agree with the Star-Ledger. The Gay Marriage ban should have been lifted in New Jersey. I agree with the Editors’ stand, but not their murky logic … the source of the cause of the defeat.

The failure was not political, but philosophical. A look at the Editors’ logic exposes the cause of the inability of so many politicians to take a firm stand – the “soft supporters [who] may run for cover”. The Editors lament this spectacle and ask: “How did this bill become such a long-shot in a state where most polls show solid support, and where the Democratic governor and leaders of both houses supported it?” It was indeed a long shot. The bill was defeated by a heavily Democratic State senate by a decisive 20-14 margin (with three abstentions). Why? We need to take a look at the Star-Ledger’s own reasoning.

I am sometimes asked a question such as: “Do you support or oppose gay marriage?” This question misses the point. The question is, does anyone have the right to employ the government’s power of legalized physical force to prohibit two people of the same sex to forge a marriage contract? I firmly and unequivocally believe the answer is no. My personal opinions are irrelevant here. Upholding the right to same-sex marriage no more indicates my support for gay marriage than my defense of a woman’s right to her own body indicates support for abortion; or my defense of the First Amendment indicates support for pornography among consenting adults; or my opposition to Affirmative Action indicates support for racial discrimination.

The basic issue is individual rights, the inalienable sanction to take the actions necessary to achieve one’s long-term goals, well-being, and happiness – so long as those actions don’t involve the violation of the same rights of others. Since rights are held equally and at all times by all people, the state’s legal sanction of a marriage contract between any two consenting adults must necessarily include same-sex couples, if the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause means anything. Of course, a private institution like the Catholic Church has every right to refuse to sanction gay marriage. But it has no right to trample the rights of others who disagree.

My opinions aside, it’s hard to see how a marriage between two gay people violates or presents a threat to the rights of anyone else, as would be the case between, say, the parties in a Mafia hit “contract” or the perpetrators of a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Since the freedom of contract is derived from the right to life and liberty, the burden of proof is on the anti-gay marriage side to validate its stand. It hasn’t - and in fact cannot, do so.

Yet, it won the day in New Jersey.

When the issue is defined properly, there are no “soft supporters”. Broad abstract principles leave out personal judgements on how one feels about the concrete issue involved. When one declares his allegiance or opposition to an abstract principle, he offers a yardstick by which others can judge his stand on a virtually unlimited number of concrete issues. The principle of individual rights, properly understood, leaves no room for “flirting with both sides”, “winks and nods”, or “hiding”. The Editors demand to “learn where each senator stands on gay marriage”. The proper question is: “Where do you stand on the principle of individual rights?” Each legislator’s answer to that question leads logically to a specific vote on the gay marriage bill, since it is essentially a vote on individual rights. But modern politicians on both sides of the ideological divide recoil against principled stands on any issue.

The idea of individual rights is much broader than any single concrete issue, and it is sometimes not readily apparent how to apply it to some particular concrete issue. Disagreements concerning practical application can and do arise among people who hold, and understand, a given principle. But first, the principle must be clearly identified. By evading it, the debate was focussed narrowly on homosexual marriage. This forced the politicians to declare whether they are for or against “gay marriage” and by implication homosexuality as such. But as I stated above, that is not the issue. It should never have come down to that. The senators should have been obliged to take a firm, either/or stand on the paramount question – Do you support or oppose the number one Founding principle of America, unalienable individual rights?

The debate wasn’t properly framed, so it went down to resounding defeat. The supporters such as the “gay rights” group Garden State Equality are partly to blame here. By basing their argument on the premise that they are fighting for “gay rights” rather than the broader principle of individual rights, they undercut their own case by in effect fighting for what one correspondent called “SPECIAL rights”. Fromexperience wrote:

“Marriage is not a right -- civil or otherwise.
In five state and DC, homosexuals have been legislatively "awarded" SPECIAL rights through SSM. Those civil unions and domestic partnerships available ONLY to ss couples are ALSO special rights.”

Marriage is a right, but it’s true that marriage is not a fundamental right. It is a derivative of the foundation of all rights – the right to life. As long as the issue is gay rights, the supporters are vulnerable to this line of attack. Fromexperience is correct that rights are not “special” or “legislatively awarded” or applicable only to gays. But he evades the fact that they are unalienable … i.e., based upon the provable metaphysical facts of reality and thus inseparable from man qua man, and possessed equally by each and every individual. That includes the right of free association, which includes contractual freedom, including marriage contracts. The government’s role is to enforce those contracts, equally. Defending the SSM bill on this proper basis explodes fromexperience’s argument, because to deny an unalienable right to anyone is to deny the same right to everyone … including the contractual right to heterosexual marriage.

It’s obvious why not only liberals but also conservatives ignore, evade, and refuse to explicitly endorse the principle of unalienable individual rights. The implications for both would expose each side to a withering critique of their entire agenda. Adherence to principle cuts through the fog of pragmatism, and obliterates any chance of having one’s cake and eating it too.

For the liberal, it becomes necessary to explain why gays should have the right to freely contract with each other in marriage but not with their health insurance company. If abortion is a medical procedure that should be decided solely between a woman and her doctor, the basic logic behind Roe v. Wade, then why shouldn’t that same line of reasoning (non-interference by government) apply to all issues regarding healthcare? If the government has no right to force a woman to bear a child or deny gays the right to marry, then why should that woman or that gay person be forced into any government-run “insurance” scheme like Medicare, or forced to buy a policy full of state-mandated coverages or submit to an “individual mandate”, or be denied the right to refuse to pay for emergency room visits by uninsured people?

Likewise, for conservatives, it becomes necessary to explain why international free trade is good with regard to material goods, but not to people (immigration). Why is it wrong to force people to fund the latest liberal welfare scheme, but OK to force them to fund Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives? And why is it wrong to restrict freedom of speech, except to demand that the FCC crack down on “obscene” material in the media?

The inconsistencies are manifest on both sides, if the principle of individual rights is the yardstick to measure the validity of one’s stand on concrete issues. But the Star-Ledger wants to have it both ways. Thus, the Editors defend the gay marriage bill with vague references to “civil” rights or “gay rights”, as if rights are privileges bestowed by society or possessions specific to some group. By evading the exact nature of rights, the advocates of this bill can uphold Gay rights but not medical rights. I offer into evidence the Star-Ledger’s support for the totalitarian "Affordable Health Care for America Act", or HR3962 (and the Senate’s incarnation of ObamaCare), a massive rights-violating monstrosity that makes a mockery of its support for NJ’s SSM bill. If the Editors were to base their call for passage of the Gay Marriage Act on the proper grounds, they would logically have to oppose those healthcare “reform” bills. Both issues are tethered to the principle of individual rights. But since the Editors don’t really support the actual rights of gays (just “gay rights”) there is no need to reconcile those contradictory positions.

“Unprincipled inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, to paraphrase Emerson, who got it exactly backwards. Of course, one must be consistent based on the right principles … i.e., ideas consistent with objective, concrete reality. And it’s not always easy and sometimes hard. Loyalty to principles often means defending or advocating that which runs contrary to one’s personal convictions. Think of Voltaire, who once said in defense of free speech: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” The preservation of freedom demands nothing less than that kind of conviction. That’s what’s been in play in my mind, as I grappled with this issue in recent years. I have always thought of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. That hasn’t really changed. But, over the years, I’ve had to rethink my stand on certain political issues in order to bring them into line with my passionate belief in the rights of the individual. Gay marriage is one. I was against its legalization, but eventually came to support NJ’s 2002 domestic partnership law and 2006 civil union legalization.

But as fromexperience notes, those laws represent “special rights” and are thus untenable. This has led me to full support of the legalization of same-sex marriage. It is the only stand consistent with the principle of individual rights and of our constitution.

Regardless of what one personally believes about it, the overriding principle relating to gay marriage points unequivocally to only one conclusion – same-sex couples have the same unalienable rights to contractual freedom as heterosexual couples. The law should recognize that fact.

It’s not always easy acting on principle. It often puts one’s political opinions at odds with one’s personal values and morals. Announcing one’s fundamental beliefs … wearing one’s moral principles on one’s sleeves, so to speak, as I do on this blog … exposes one to the judgement of others by one’s own standards. This is as it should be. One way to avoid that personal responsibility as well as the inevitable (and proper) judgements of others is to simply run from abstract principles, and declare that anything goes on the whim of any moment or issue. That’s the tactic employed by both sides in this debate, including the Star-Ledger Editors. This “pragmatic” approach enables political factions and pressure groups to battle in a domestic civil war, each vowing to grab some political or economic advantage at the expense of others based upon some newly minted group “right”.

But it should be remembered that we owe the very existence of our America to a revolutionary group of men who pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” on a radical set of political principles to forge history’s greatest and most moral country ever. Principles are crucial. That is why the principle of individual rights must be placed at the political center stage. It is the means of stemming the aggression of rights violators who seek to impose their own moral judgements on others. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. Put another way, the abstraction “individual rights” is the means of stopping anyone from taking the concrete actions of physically preventing a survivor from inheriting the pension benefits of his same-sex deceased partner or another from visiting his same-sex partner in a hospital … i.e., from signing a concrete marriage contract.

The concrete gay marriage bill failed for lack of a proper defense – the abstract moral concept of individual rights.

Individualism, Collectivism, and "the Cause of Waste"

Amit Ghate has written a terrific piece, Misconstruing the Cause of Waste, which was published on Pajamas Media. He writes:

"Once again, the president has it backwards. But in flouting economics, he reveals his stance on a much deeper issue, one which is determining the fate of the country: individualism vs. collectivism.

"Individualism — the country’s founding idea — holds that each man is a moral end in himself.

"So how does this apply to waste? Waste, by definition, means 'spending to no avail or profit.' But observe that when men are free to pursue their own values, they’re incentivized to act carefully.

"Accordingly, under individualism, waste is minimized by each person, one transaction at a time. Indeed, the 'cost discipline' which free markets are so famous for emerges from this very fact.

"Contrast this to the collectivist approach favored by our current politicians. Under their view, the individual isn’t an end in himself, but merely a cog in the machine, a means to the group’s 'good.'

"The ramifications to waste are threefold. First, by prohibiting certain activities, government eliminates competition...Next, because it can confiscate our money to pay its bills, government has little incentive to control costs...Finally, because the government has usurped their prerogatives, individuals no longer decide what is worthwhile and what isn’t. Government forcibly disconnects the decision of what’s valuable from the people who actually pay for the values."

My Commentary:

32. Mike Zemack:

Amit Ghate has done a terrific job of exploding another of the many fallacious arguments against freedom in medicine. More importantly…and I know I’m not the first to acknowledge this…Mr. Ghate identifies the basic philosophical conflict that will determine the future direction of American healthcare and of America generally. Only capitalism is consonant with the premise that the sovereign individual is the standard of value, because it alone bans predatory force in human relations. All other social systems (including welfare statism and democracy) embody collectivism to some degree, with the rulers as omnipotent representatives of the collective. This cannot be stressed too often or too strongly. Collectivism is tyranny, and the only humane antipode to it is individualism.

I also have to address correspondent #2, Anonymous. His comments bring to mind a passage from Francisco’s “money speech” in Atlas Shrugged:

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

Anonymous condemns the money earned by the people who produce the valuable products and services without which there would be no healthcare debate. He demands “government intervention in the health care market” to grab by force for himself the “benefit from the advances in medical technology” so he doesn’t have to “line the pockets of these folks”… the very folks in the “private system that does not value human beings” who produce the goods that can keep Anonymous and his ilk healthy and alive.

Read Francisco’s money speech, then draw your own conclusions about the ethical character of Anonymous.

Also relevant to his comments is Harry Binswanger’s “The Dollar and the Gun”.




Aug 25, 2009 - 4:58 pm

WF's John Mackey on Health Care Reform

A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has ignited quite a “debate” on WF’s website under the heading “Health Care Reform”. I place the term debate in quotation marks because, well, the pro-Obamacare minions have mostly remained true to form…resorting to what my daughter told me is “absolute hatred [that] is sickening”.

What warranted this vitriolic outburst against the man who runs a very successful company that heretofore had been a favorite of what my son-in-law calls the “stereotypical tree-hugger clientele”? Judge for yourself from these brief excerpts:

"While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:"

After detailing the eight free-market reforms he advocates (He does not endorse laissez faire.), he goes on:

"Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals.

"Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

"Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

"Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society."

Take responsibility for your own healthcare, and give us some freedom to do so. But you do not have the right to demand that someone else provide it. What can be more American than that? Apparently, there are plenty of people in the country that have no right to call themselves Americans.

Here is my contribution to that “debate”:

Thank you, Mr. Mackey, for advocating real reform, not more of the same old government interference masquerading as "change". The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. Real reform begins by recognizing that fact.

But, especially, thank you for recognizing the core issue, the nature of individual rights.

The fundamental question surrounding the healthcare debate is: Does the individual own his own life based upon the principle of unalienable rights, as the Founders understood? Or is he the property of the state (or "society", as represented by the state), as every dictator in world history preached?

Consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the providers (doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc.) must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs.

Rights, properly understood, are guarantees to freedom of action and place no obligation or duty on the individual save one…to respect the same rights of all. The idea of a right to material values such as health care forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Any "right" to products or services that must be produced by others obliterates our actual rights to life, liberty, and property. That is why the alleged "right" to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field…to give the state the power to loot and enslave the productive and self-reliant.

A free market based upon actual individual rights is the only moral solution to our healthcare "crisis".

Thank you again, Mr. Mackey. You have more supporters than you may know!

-Mike Zemack

And here is my rebuttal to a Canadian supporter of Obamacare who thinks he knows what our Founding documents say:

"We are Canadians and are appalled at Mr. Mackey's comments about health care in Canda. Universality of access is a basic tenet of Canada's medicare programme. Moreover, I can't believe that the president of a company that purports to have a social conscience could argue that there is no intrinisic right to health care. The American constitution guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness. Ctizens without access to medical care when needed, are deprived of their right to these constitutional guarantees."

Harvey Williams misunderstands America’s founding documents. It is not the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence that "guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The Constitution enumerates those rights, which are guarantees to freedom of action in pursuit of happiness. There is no right to healthcare, food, or any other product or service that must be provided by others.

The idea of a right to material values such as health care forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Any "right" to products or services that must be produced by others obliterates our actual rights to life, liberty, and property.

Many of us Americans are not so quick to hand over our freedom in healthcare to an elite, politically appointed gaggle of "medical experts" that we don’t know and that don’t know us, in exchange for a "free" appendectomy or cholesterol pill.

Mr. Mackey, by defending individual rights based upon their true, moral meaning, is exhibiting the real nature of a "social conscience".

"A nation / One Body" - the Enemy's Decaying Intellectual Corpse

Subsequent to my comments, another correspondent left this in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum. This discussion was the subject of my post of 8/4/09.

HSR0601 wrote, in part:

"U.S. health care consumers are usually one step removed from the cost because they are covered by employer-provided insurance, which might operate as a formula for a slow pace of transfer, along with the code of mandate.

"All free states as a nation / one body, and a fundamental human right, cover all their people. The debate about a human right, or public policy
in America is puzzling them now."

My commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/08/09 at 7:23PM

The fundamental conflict of the health care debate comes down to the age-old battle of collectivism vs. individualism. HSR0601 argues for the collectivist side:

"All free states as a nation / one body, and a fundamental human right, cover all their people."

"Slavery", in other words, "is freedom". The idea that there is a "fundamental human right" to any man-made product such as healthcare depends on the view of human beings as interchangeable cells in some super-organism, or ants in a hill colony, or "a nation / one body". The collectivist notion of "one body" is a floating abstraction with no basis in reality. Any group such as a nation, or society, or the public consists of independent, autonomous, individual human beings...each with his own stomach, heart, goals, values, character, and mind.

Collectivism serves a sinister purpose, though. Consider what the alleged "right" to health care actually means in practice.

If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person's neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs. There is no other way. That is why the alleged "right" to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field...to give the state the power to loot and enslave the people. We would all become both slaves and moochers.

HSR0601s "a nation / one body" argument is a cover to justify...on the altruist grounds that "we are our brothers', and our sisters', keepers", as the president likes to say...the grab for unearned goods and control over other people's lives. Collectivism is the doctrine by, for, and of the parasites and the power-lusters. It's incredible that, after Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China, and all of the lesser variants of collectivism, this idea can still be taken seriously.

We don't need the third-party-payer system, which empowers insurers; or the mandates and interstate trade barriers, which cripple the insurance industry; or Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, EMTALA, etc, which empower government bureaucrats and enslave all to all. We need to abolish the current semi-socialized, semi-fascist, government regulated system, in favor of the only moral alternative - freedom (the real kind), individual rights, a rights-protecting government, and free markets in medicine.

Nothing "Vague" About Freedom

The following letter and comment was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 8/4/09

Short-sighted opposition

As a patient currently in chemotherapy for an aggressive cancer, I am amazed that some people can be opposed to health care reform that includes a "public plan." Without Medicare -- the government plan that has been in operation for decades, which paid for a necessary surgical biopsy and is now paying for the therapy at the cancer center of my choice -- I would probably be destitute soon if I had to rely only on the private plan whose premiums I paid all these years.

I'm surely not alone. Anyone over 65 who has unfortunately needed health care has almost certainly blessed their access to insurance support from this "public plan." The opposition of younger people, who can safely bet they will be older someday, seems to me curiously short-sighted.

In my view, the most reasonable and effective government insurance program would be a carefully thought-out single-payer plan, which, during these long months of hearings, has been kept off the table by big insurance and big drug companies whose profits leave them lots of money to pay lots of lobbyists.

Those who complain about a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation might reflect that without a public plan, the American public will be free to get very sick indeed.

Alice Mariani, Hillsborough

Posted by patriots4u on 08/04/09 at 9:34AM

Alice Mariani, Hillsborough wrote:
Those who complain about a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation might reflect that without a public plan, the American public will be free to get very sick indeed.

It is not vaguely defined in the text of the bill itself. Yes, the bill is difficult to read, but after taking some time and going through the first 100 pages or so already, I'm finding some disturbing things.

There is a section (pg 16) on Protecting Choice, but it clearly defines that after the bill goes into affect you cannot change or re-enroll in your current coverage. How ironic.

There is a section (pg 50) on Prohibiting Discrimination in Health Care, that first states "EXCEPT as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act...".
So the Government is free to discriminate, but the rest of us aren't.

Here is another section that blatantly states if the bill is found to be Unconstitutional, too bad.
pg 53 - SEC. 155. SEVERABILITY.
"If any provision of this Act, or any application of such provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the provisions of this Act and the application of the provision to any other person or circumstance shall NOT be affected.

Try reading the bill, and let me know if your opinion still stands.

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/04/09 at 9:08PM

patriots4u is right to be concerned about the effects this bill will have on our freedom. Alice Mariani calls these kinds of objections "a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation". So, let's clear up the "vagueness" by defining our terms.

Freedom means only one thing - unalienable individual rights. As the Declaration of Independence states, we are all endowed equally with these rights. Importantly, rights are guarantees to freedom of action within a social context...such as the rights to speech, religious practice, and the earning of property through productive work and voluntary, mutually beneficial trade. A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by any other person, group, or the government.

Clearly, Medicare (and all such welfare state schemes) is a massive violation of individual rights. Medicare did not, as Ms. Mariani claims, pay for her treatment. Nor did it come from any personal-type account funded by her's or a spouse's earnings. That money was confiscated from other people through force of taxation, in clear violation of both the constitution and their individual rights. There is nothing vague about that.

The treatment she receives was made possible by the social conditions created by America's founding principles of individual rights and limited rights-protecting government...principles that are now eroding. The scientists, entrepreneurs, businessmen, inventors, and investors had the freedom to think and act on their own judgement, invest their own time and money, set their own goals, take their own risks, produce the healthcare products and services and offer them for sale to willing buyers, and profit from their achievements under the protection of a government of objective laws. There is nothing vague about that. Again, that freedom is steadily eroding.

Obamacare would wipe out the last vestiges of that freedom. Does Ms. Mariani really want the conditions that existed before the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and capitalism, which made possible the rise, in a mere 200 years, of modern medicine? That was a time when people really were "free to get very sick indeed", and suffer and die young without the hope that our freedom-spawned modern medicine gives us.

As to the healthcare "reform" bill, it is a dictatorial monstrosity. patriots4u only scratches the surface. Care will be heavily rationed. Providers will be enslaved. Innovation will be smothered in this, the last remnants of a free market. As Marc K. Siegel writes in the 8/3/09 NY Post, there will be "new committees and commissioners with undefined but far-reaching powers -- a Health Choices Commissioner, a Health Benefits Advisory Committee, a Comparative Effectiveness Committee, a Task Force on Clinical Preventative Services..."

I acknowledge that Medicare has been popular, but it is beginning to break down, with more and more doctors dropping out. Ms. Mariani is enjoying the early "workable" phase of this Ponzi scheme. But that is coming to an end. In the bill is this gem for seniors to behold:

"A prime example comes in the section starting on page 425 of the House bill. This dictates that an Advanced Care Planning Consultation must take place every five years from the age of 65 -- with the intervention of so-called counselors, trained and appointed by the government. [Many] senior citizens [will] be shortchanged or pushed prematurely to euthanasia.

Whose decision should it be to phase out such people? The government's?"

Yes, according to this bill.

I have been forced to pay into Medicare for more than four decades, and am approaching enrollment age. For that, I will be confronted with the complete loss of my freedom...my individual rights...to determine, in consultation with my doctor, the appropriate treatment and payment options. Bean-counting state bureaucrats who don't know or care about my circumstances will have complete power.

I will spend the rest of my life...whatever time the state allows me...fighting to abolish Medicare, controls and regulations on insurers and providers, and other state intrusions into medicine. For the sake of my children, grandchildren, and anyone who values freedom, I will fight for free market capitalism, individual rights, and a government that protects our rights - as a moral imperative.

More on the "Public Option"

The following letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum om 8/4/09.

Where's the freedom?

In your editorial "Making a mess of it" (July 26) regarding health care reform, you make the incredibly specious reference to free enterprise and government competition in the health insurance industry.

Since when does the government compete with the private sector? The federal government's function is to promote free commerce, not impede it. What kind of competition are we talking about where one player makes the rules for the other? The government has no entrepreneurial risk when it has the power of taxation.

The federal and state governments have already made the rules for the private sector players. This has led directly and indirectly to rising costs. These costs in turn increase the uninsured rolls. Now the public option proposes to set reimbursement at Medicare levels, while the private players must abide by reserve formulas based on loss ratios. No such regulations exist for the government plan.

From whom will patients seek remedy when the federal board refuses to pay? Who regulates the "public option"?

Competition? Please.

Jerry Kopychuk, Hackettstown

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/04/09 at 5:28PM

Jerry Kopychuk is exactly right, and I'd like to expand on this notion of "public - private" competition.

The government is a unique institution, distinguished by its legal monopoly on the use of physical force. America's great achievement was to limit that compulsive power to the protection of our inalienable individual rights. That is government's proper role. Stepping outside of those constraints invalidates government, as America's Founders understood.

The proposed "public option" is intended to destroy private health insurance, and clear the way for single-payer medical tyranny. Everyone knows it. The politicians will do whatever it takes to support their "competitor". They will use government's tax and monetary powers to keep premiums "affordable"; regulatory powers to hamper private insurers; force below-market prices on providers; harass private executives with explicit or implied "back-room" threats using the arbitrary and capricious powers of the regulatory apparatus, the IRS, or antitrust division of the Justice Department. The employment of government's unique powers of legalized physical force to destroy private businesses, industries, and livelihoods is legalized criminality.

Obama's plan is a continuation of the trend of the past 50-75 years...socialized medicine through the fascist back door. There is nothing "market-oriented" about it. There is, in fact, nothing market-oriented about our current semi-socialized, government controlled system.

Nevertheless, to allege that there can be "competition" between a government plan and private business is to equate an armed thug with his victims. The aim is to snuff out the last shreds of freedom and individual rights in American medicine. The public "option" is organized crime on a scale that relegates Al Capone to the status of a petty thief.

Health Care - Not the "Right" Thing to Do

The following two letters appeared in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 8/1/09. One is pro-socialized medicine, and the other is against. The second letter-writer is on the right track.

Health care reform

Months of debate have produced "health care" bills that need life support. They are so riddled with conditions that they are doomed to destruct. The original concept has been shot full of holes, bearing little resemblance to what I think Americans really want: a chance for them and their families to be healthy and to get reasonable treatment when not, without having to take out a second mortgage.

Why have dozens of civilized countries been able to provide health care for all, for decades, at a sensible cost, but America cannot? I believe it is because they, unlike America, do not view health care as a cash cow for private interests, but "the right thing to do", and a social investment in its own citizens.

Why is it so much easier for Congressmen to fund killing, than caring? For the last 8 years, they have ignored domestic needs while throwing over a trillion dollars to support invasive war and brutal destruction - and barely debating it. Yes, they have prioritized death, injury and displacement of over a million civilians, and have subjected our military and their families to an untenable burden.

Have they all lost their minds? Have we, to accept this from our elected officials, who are our employees?

Jo Sippie-Gora, Kinnelon.


Wrong on health rights

In a letter to the editor ("Health care is a right," July 30) a writer stated that health care was a human rights issue. Some argue that health care is a "precondition of life itself." This argument is flawed. There are other more important preconditions for life, such as food, shelter, and clothing.

If health care is a right, how did our forefathers miss that? It's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," not life, an appointment with a doctor, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The question of health care is not rights, but how best to provide health care at the lowest possible cost. The outcome would make health care more affordable.

The number of "uninsured" Americans that is thrown around, 45 million, is easily corrected when you look at the 2007 census. The truer figure is 22 million once you remove the 14 million undocumented workers, the 15 percent who choose not to have insurance for their own reasons and those 5 percent that are between jobs.

The true way to provide affordable health care to more of those 22 million citizens is to foster competition between insurers. Remove restrictions on citizens crossing state lines to seek affordable health care. Limit malpractice lawsuits. Keep your freedom to choose, don't turn health care over to a swollen, mismanaged federal government.

W. Paul Kelley, Berkeley Heights

My Commentary:

W. Paul Kelley is absolutely correct. Health care is not and can not be a right. Neither can any man-made product or service.

The fundamental principle that America was founded upon is unalienable individual rights possessed equally by all people, at all times, and protected equally and at all times by government. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action within a social context...such as the rights to speech, religious practice, and the earning of property through productive work and voluntary, mutually beneficial trade. A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others.

Consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs.

Rights, properly understood, are political and place no obligation or duty on the individual save one…to respect the same rights of all. The idea of economic rights…the right to material values such as health care…forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Economic rights...which are actually entitlements, not rights...obliterate our actual rights to life, liberty, and property. That is why the alleged “right” to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field…to give the state the power to loot and enslave the people.

This is not, as Jo Sippie-Gora claims, "the right thing to do", no matter how many other peoples and nations say so. The sacrifice of the productive and self-supporting to the parasites and the power-lusters has been the scourge of mankind that the United States of America was created to banish; by guaranteeing to each human being the rights to his own life, his own liberty, his own earned property, and the pursuit of his own goals and happiness.

All of us fighting against "universal health care" must recognize that health care is not a right…if all manifestations of socialized medicine are to be stopped and the proper free market reforms can be implemented.

The Soul of the Single Payer Advocate

The following letter appeared in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 7/30/09

Better in Canada

Canadian-style health care is much better than even insured services in New Jersey.

Americans are debating health care insurance, and they should. I can tell you that having a health care insurance system available to everyone is way better than the systems in place in New Jersey, even for those with insurance plans, and infinitely better for those who can't afford the private plans. I grew up in New Jersey and married a Canadian, and now live in Canada, but have a relative with health issues still in New Jersey, so I have a good comparison.

With a publicly organized health care insurance plan, you can concentrate on your health, instead of your bank balance. No different list of doctors depending on which plan you are in. No HMO to deal with. Find a local doctor, make an appointment, show your health card -- that's it. Specialists are covered by referral from there. Just the reduced stress in dealing with the health care system is a health benefit.

Kathleen O'Neil, Toronto

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/02/09 at 8:40AM

Kathleen O'Neil writes:

"With a publicly organized health care insurance plan, you can concentrate on your health, instead of your bank balance."

But your bank balance represents something profoundly moral...the money earned through your own productive work. Your money represents your means of purchasing the goods and services you need but that are produced by others. Your bank balance stands for your ability to earn your own keep.

By disconnecting "your bank balance" from your responsibility to "concentrate on your own health", Ms. O'Neil is in essence demanding that someone else be forced to pay for your health care.

The real soul of the advocates of a "Canadian-style", "publicly organized health care insurance plan" is the moocher.

Rights vs. Privileges

This letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 7/30/09.

Health care a right

After reading the article, "Twenty-somethings contemplate Obama's health care plan," (July 27) it became even more evident to me the national crisis we face with our health care system. As a college graduate, I have seen so many of my friends struggle to find jobs and have an even harder time getting insured after they were kicked off their parent's insurance plan.

America is one of the leading industrialized countries, and yet has one of the worst health care systems in the western world. The health care system we have now will never sustain itself, and it is time for reform.

If we reform our health care system we will also be strengthening our economy. So many Americans are left uninsured and have no other option but to go to the emergency room for even minor health problems. Because of this, taxpayers pay more.

Having private companies compete with a public health care option will bring the cost of the health care down for even the people who are already insured.

With health care reform our economy will recover and job opportunities will increase. Most importantly, the health of our nation will improve. It is not a privilege, but a human right to have health insurance.

Victoria Maione, Hamilton

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/02/09 at 8:05AM

Victoria Maione claims that health insurance (and, by implication, health care "is not a privilege, but a human right".

What, then, constitutes a right? As laid out in America’s founding documents, a right is not a grant from any politician, state, or collective such as society or a democratic majority. A right is an unalienable sanction of the freedom to take action, such as freedom of speech, association, religious practice, etc.

A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others.

So what, exactly, is a privilege? According to Webster’s, it is:

"An exceptional law made in favor of or against any individual… a right, immunity, benefit, or advantage granted to some person, group of persons, or class, not enjoyed by others and sometimes detrimental to them." (Emphasis added.)

Now, keeping in mind the definitions cited above, consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare (or health insurance) is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible are serfs. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, they are armed robbery victims.

Every person in a free society has a right to take the actions required to satisfy his own healthcare needs. He has no right to rob his neighbor to pay for them, nor force any provider to “serve” him, nor elect politicians to impose those obligations. There is no such thing as a “right” to healthcare or any other man-made product, beyond what one can pay for himself through a voluntary transaction with those who produce it.

What Ms. Maione has actually accomplished is to invert the meanings of the words privilege and right. This new privileged class of healthcare consumer is thus granted “rights” that are “detrimental to” and “against” the very people needed most…doctors and other providers. The alleged “right” to health insurance is actually a privilege granted to some by force of government, at the expense of the freedom and property of others.

Victoria Maione should learn that words have meanings because what she and her ilk advocate, whether they are honest enough or even conscious enough to acknowledge…is the right to enslave.

"National Healthcare"--Star-Ledger Reader's Forum

National health insurance

I have been reading about the various approaches being looked at in Congress to address the creation of a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans. I endorse and support that effort.

The federal government already has contracts with almost all of the insurance companies in the United States and the premiums for federal employees are lower than most companies are charged, and definitely lower than what individuals can get.

Why not simply open the federal plan to all businesses and individuals in the country? That would create a rate-base of 300 million and that rate-base would drive down costs.

The federal government can also open up existing federal programs like Medicare to all citizens as a backstop and a way of insuring that private companies do not take unfair advantage of consumers. We will also have to make provision for the indigents, because having people who are not insured is more expensive than covering them.

We can even have graduated levels of assistance for the working poor.

I want to see the current federal insurance system opened to all Americans using an actuarial rate base of all the people in the nation. This will keep the private companies alive as well as assure medical insurance and the health care for everyone.

This can be a win-win.

George N. Wells, Dover


My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 05/16/09 at 2:42PM
The basic premise underlying the idea of "universal health care" is the un-American idea that the individual has no rights and is to be subordinated to the group, as represented by the state. It is the deadly ideology of collectivism. I submit into evidence the letter by George N. Wells.

He declares that Congress should set up "a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans."

The means by which human needs (and desires) are to be met do not just occur free in nature. They must be created by productive people. There are basically only two ways to acquire the product of another man's labor--by voluntary means such as trade or private charity, or seize it by force. The first is the civilized method; the second is the criminal method. Therefor, the only way that government can guarantee any man-made product such as healthcare is to declare that the people's earnings and the productive labor of the providers belong to "society", and then exercise the totalitarian powers to loot and enslave. There is no other way. When government pays, government sets the terms...on who the money comes from, on who will get what treatment when, prices and salaries, medical technology and innovation, etc.

Mr. Wells declares that "we" should provide for "the indigents" and "the working poor". This is a tacit admission that Mr. Wells believes that the earnings and wealth of others is his to dispose of...the disposition to be carried out by the majority mob's political surrogates. The fact that universal health schemes may be administered by quasi-private companies controlled by the government is nothing more than socialism through the fascist back door.

I support the alternative, free market capitalism. This is the moral system based upon American principles...the principles of individual rights protected by a government limited to that purpose. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action, coupled with the sole obligation to respect the same rights of others...a respect distinctly missing from socialized medicine's proponents. Rights are not an automatic claim on the earnings, property, or wealth produced by others.

In a free market, all associations are voluntary. Consumers, providers, insurers, and patients are left free to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage. Each individual is free to decide for himself when, whom, and in what capacity to help others...free from the predatory, phony do-gooders seeking to practice "charity" with other people's tax money.

Government interference is the source of the problems confronting American healthcare. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem.

The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid medicine of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

Mr. Wells endorses and supports tyranny, whether he chooses to acknowledge it or not. I support capitalism and individual rights.

Tea Parties Past and Present

From the Star-Ledger Reader Forum, April 22, 2009

Letter #1

Defends tea partyers
I object vehemently to the charges by reader Lawrence Uniglicht in his letter to the Readers Forum, ("No tea for me, thank you," April 18) that all those protesting increases in taxes and an overspending government are malcontents and clowns. I suggest people look at Govs. Jim McGreevey and Jon Corzine, and Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez if they want to see clowns.

The protesters did not throw tea into Boston Harbor to start a war with England, but peacefully assembled to protest a fearful trend by a Democratic Congress and administration to take away our constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our founders fought so hard to win. Protesters were from all walks of life. They did not break store windows, overturn and set fires to cars, or fight with the police. They personified what Americans are -- hard-working, law-abiding, and moral citizens.

As for constructive ideas from the Republicans, tea party opponents should know there were many proposals that were denied by the Democrats in Congress, mainly because they would be successful in restoring the economy to the way it was before 2006. That was the year the left-wing voted in a Democratic Congress, and we have been sinking toward socialism ever since.
-- Richard A. Ketay, Newark

Letter #2

History doesn't repeat
Once again, the American people are responding like sheep. A case in point is the recent "tea parties" across the country.

Had protesters been paying attention, they would realize the tax rate on the wealthy will only increase from 36-39 percent, far below the 90 percent rate under President Dwight Eisenhower.

The nationwide tea party, which was created to oppose taxation, borrowed its name from the Boston Tea Party. As a history teacher, let me take the opportunity to remind the American public that the Boston Tea Party was not about taxes. It was staged to protest the monopoly being granted to the East India Tea Company by Prime Minster Lord North, who was a primary investor in the company.
-- James O'Brien, Bayonne

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 04/22/09 at 7:23PM
James O'Brien, the history teacher, doesn't understand the significance of today's Tea Parties, or of the philosophical common denominator linking them to the original Boston Tea Party. Richard A. Ketay does. The fundamental principle linking both across a span of centuries is a profoundly moral one...the uniquely American concept that the individual's life is his and does not belong to any "higher power" such as a king, warlord, democratic majority, state, priest, president, or ayatollah. That principle is embodied in the doctrine of unalienable individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

The concrete issues are different, but the principle is the same. Any government-imposed monopoly such as the East India Tea Company is a violation of individual rights because it forcibly bans individuals from exercising their liberty to promote their lives through the freedom of production and trade in a particular market. Today's protestors are not concerned with some narrow issue such as 3% in the income tax code. Rather, the massive confiscation of wealth through deficit spending and the forced transfer of wealth to politically connected failed corporations and irresponsible mortgage borrowers are what concern the protestors. This will be paid for either through direct, massive tax increases or through the inflationary back door...the confiscation of the purchasing power of our money through the government printing press.

Worse still is the use of the financial crisis as a cover for a breathtaking dictatorial economic power grab by government through its regulatory apparatus. This, despite the fact that it was the massive buildup over the years of government interference in the housing and mortgage markets, as well as the central bank money monopoly called the federal reserve system, that caused the crisis to begin with. The statist policies of Bush and Obama are a direct assault on America's founding principles of individual rights and a government limited to protecting those rights.

I find it fascinating that Mr. O,Brien chooses to call today's protestors "sheep" for rising to defend individual rights, which means the right and responsibility of each of us to take charge of our own lives. In contrast, President Obama constantly demands that we suspend our own judgement and our selfish concern for our rights (the "old, stale" arguments, as he puts it) in order to "come together" to solve our nations problems. This language is a euphemism for relinquishing control of our lives to central planning ideologues who seek to consolidate federal control over private contracts and corporate governance, energy, healthcare, education, food production, finance and investments, etc.

Who are the real sheep? It is certainly not the Tea Party protestors, many if not most of whom are attempting to build an individual rights coalition to push back against the rising tide of statism sweeping Washington, D.C.

No "Right" to Healthcare

The following is a letter published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on February 19, 2009, followed by my posted comments.

Affordable health care


The time is long overdue for America to catch up with most of the other industrialized nations in providing affordable quality healthcare.

When everyone can get the same kind of care that those in Congress already enjoy (on our dollars) then we will definitely be on the right track. Right now, we are paying top dollar and far too many of us are getting unsatisfactory care.

Health care is a necessity and a right for everyone and should be equally accessible to all regardless of their bank statement or social standing. That is what democracy truly looks like.
-- Diane Beeny, Westfield


My Response

Posted by Zemack on 03/06/09 at 7:59PM
The idea that healthcare is a right (Diane Beeny letter, 2/19/09) is wrong and a dangerous threat to freedom. Rights are a sanction of freedom of action...such as freedom of speech or religious practice...that are unalienable and possessed equally and at all times by all people, and which impose no unchosen obligations on others. This is one of the fundamental principles of America's founding, along with the idea that the government's proper role is to protect those rights. Rights are the natural birthright of each individual, not whimsical creations based upon need or "necessity".

Rights are not an automatic claim to the earnings, products, or services produced by others. The only way a government can guarantee a "right" to healthcare is by violating actual rights to life, liberty, and property...i.e., by assuming the totalitarian power to loot and enslave its citizens in order to pay for and make healthcare "equally accessible to all regardless of their bank statement or social standing". There is no other way. A government-guaranteed "right" to healthcare is indeed "what democracy truly looks like"...democratic fascism, that is, not the American concept of democratic republicanism limited by constitutionally protected individual rights.

Under the American concept of democracy, the natural unalienable individual rights enunciated in the Declaration of Independence are constitutionally placed outside the power of the ballot box. Those rights are considered the natural birthright of each individual, not creations based upon the whims of any state, king, politician, or "society". No democratic majority (or its elected representatives) has the power to seize the earnings or property of private citizens to pay for some arbitrarily asserted "right" to healthcare simply by assembling a large enough voting block. Nor does any voting block have the power to place an entire industry under state control in order to force doctors and other healthcare professionals to provide that service according to the dictates of bureaucratic tyrants.

Under the American concept of individual rights, a person can acquire healthcare only through voluntary means, such as paying for it with one's own earnings either directly or through a prior contractual agreement such as insurance, or by voluntary private charity.

But American principles have been all but forgotten today, which is why we are steadily evolving toward the very enemy we defeated in World War II, fascism.

Dionne on "Extreme Individualism"

Old, True and Radical

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, January 22, 2009; Page A17

President Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of personal and collective responsibility. He will honor government's role in our democracy and not degrade it. He wants America to lead the world, but as much by example as by force.

And in trying to do all these things, he will confuse a lot of people.

One of the wondrous aspects of Obama's inaugural address is the extent to which those on the left and those on the right both claimed our new president as their own.

Many conservatives were eager to argue that Obama is destined to disappoint his friends on the left because the president who now wields power will be far more careful than the candidate who deployed rhetoric so ecstatically.

Their evidence included Obama's stout defense of old-fashioned values -- "honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism."

"These things are old," Obama declared. "These things are true." It was one of the most powerfully conservative sentiments ever to pass any president's lips.

But note the nature of that list: "Tolerance and curiosity," in particular, are values notoriously associated with the adventurous, with those who seek out the new and the novel. "Hard work" and "fair play" have long been invoked by egalitarians on behalf of the salt of the earth.

And Obama told us, straight out, the ends toward which he was conscripting the old virtues: "They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history."

That emphasis on progress pervaded what was in many ways a radical speech. Obama clearly broke with the conservative past, more recently associated with George W. Bush and more distantly with Ronald Reagan.

As he has done so often, Obama pronounced debates about the size of government irrelevant. What matters is "whether it works." Quietly but purposefully, he was overturning the Reagan revolution.

He announced the repeal of the Bush-Cheney approach to domestic security with these words: "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." And while celebrating America's power, he broke with the past again by saying "that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please."

Finally, American presidents rarely ask explicitly whether "the market is a force for good or ill." Obama acknowledged its "power to generate wealth and expand freedom" but warned that without regulation, the market could "spin out of control." He also counseled against rampant inequality, insisting that "the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."

What makes Obama a radical, albeit of the careful and deliberate variety, is his effort to reverse the two kinds of extreme individualism that have permeated the American political soul for perhaps four decades.

He sets his face against the expressive individualism of the 1960s that defined "do your own thing" as the highest form of freedom. On the contrary, Obama speaks of responsibilities, of doing things for others, even of that classic bourgeois obligation, "a parent's willingness to nurture a child."

But he also rejects the economic individualism that took root in the 1980s. He specifically listed "the greed and irresponsibility on the part of some" as a cause for our economic distress. He discounted "the pleasures of riches and fame." He spoke of Americans not as consumers but as citizens. His references to freedom were glowing, but he emphasized our "duties" to preserve it far more than the rights it conveys.

This communitarian vision fits poorly with "the stale political arguments" between liberals and conservatives that Obama condemned, because they are really arguments between these two varieties of individualism. Their quarrel has been fierce not only because of how the two sides differ but also because they share so many assumptions. Family feuds and civil wars can be especially brutal.

For now, each side in the old debate can enlist aspects of Obama's rhetoric in their polemics against the other. But in associating our recent past with "childish things," in insisting that greatness is "never a given" and always "must be earned," Obama is challenging the very basis of their conflict.

It is a worthy fight. It will also be a hard fight to win because rights are so much easier to talk about than duties, and freedom's gifts are always more prized than its obligations.

My Commentary:

Zemack wrote:
President Obama's goals are much more ambitious than Mr. Dionne gives him credit for. It is not merely the Reagan Revolution that he wants to overturn, but the American Revolution.

The fundamental concept upon which America was founded is the principle of unalienable individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of each's own welfare and happiness. The term unalienable means that man's rights are inseparable from the individual person and is the standard upon which any free society must be based. It means that his rights do not have to be purchased on the installment plan of service, sacrifice, and duty imposed upon him by "ourselves" (some disembodied collective), the nation, the world, or any leader seeking the prestige of "greatness". Extreme individualism, the unfettered right to live one's life as one sees fit, is the natural consequence of the principle of unalienable rights.

The Founders sought to establish a nation in which extreme individualism can flourish. That is to say, a nation in which each individual is free to think and act on his own judgement (for better or worse), to set his own goals, to reap the rewards of his own productive work, to trade and contract freely and voluntarily with others, and to decide for himself when, whom, and in what capacity to help others.

Never mind Mr. Dionne's reference to the 1960s culture's "individualists" or "the greed and irresponsibility on the part of some". These are straw men. True individualists do not live their lives through others by, say, seeking to be different for the sake of being different. Nor does an individualist use others, through dishonesty, to advance his own interests. An individualist is someone who simply thinks for himself. The Founders recognized the individuality of each and every person, and founded a nation (despite certain flaws) to protect his right to exist.

In attacking "economic individualism", Mr. Dionne strikes directly at the heart of individual rights, particularly the right to life. If one cannot make his own decisions on personal economic matters, which concern his crucial property rights, then he is not free to work to advance his life...to pursue his happiness. The government's proper role in economic matters, as in all matters, is to protect everyone's unalienable individual rights. This means, for example, to protect against and prosecute fraud and deception, and to mediate disputes through the law courts. Otherwise, laissez-faire..."leave us alone"...is the only moral course for government to follow. Short of violating other's rights, which are rights to freedom of action, not to unearned material benefits produced or provided by others, each of us must be left free from governmental regulation (i.e., coercion).

America's founding principles, severely eroded already by decades of growing government power, will be under tremendous assault in the years to come. Barack Obama's (and his supporter’s) determination to silence the opposition by intimidation through such accusations as infantilism, dogmatism, extremism, and cynicism should not be allowed to shut down any debate.

The fundamental choice America faces is collectivism or individualism. Defenders of "extreme individualism"...or unalienable individual rights...have never been more desperately needed in America than they are right now.

Commentary 46- Mulshine on McCain

How the McCains really stick it to Joe Sixpack

Posted by Paul Mulshine October 17, 2008 12:59PM


Radley Balko of Reason Magazine has an interesting piece up on the politics of beer distributorships and how this has made John McCain a rich man.


"To be blunt, the entire industry is a farce. It's an artificial, anachronistic, government-created entity that's anti-competitive and full of lobbyists and special interests. It raises the cost of each bottle of beer you drink, though 'Joe Six Pack,' as McCain's running mate might put it, receives no value for the added cost."

Balko adds,

"What does the candidate lecturing Wall Street about greed think about the alcohol wholesaling industry? Is it fair? Should government be subsidizing (if not outright creating) an industry by forcing consumers to pay more for alcohol--for which they get little to no added value in return? And who's greedier, the family who exploits that system to amass a small fortune, or the brokers and traders McCain derides for pursuing profits in a free market?"

To which I can only add: Let us all hoist a beer in honor of Ron Paul, the only true adherent of the free market who ran for president this year and an opponent of rent-seeking behavior.

No wonder McCain hated him so much.


Other's Commentary:

Posted by hglindquist on 10/18/08 at 8:28AM
Ah so, a clear example of negative government intervention in the market ... in terms of market dynamics.

But control of the sale of alcohol is seen to be necessary for the collective good for a variety of reasons ... (there are other goods and services that are deemed to need to similar controls) ...

So the issue is the monopolistic nature of distributorships/wholesalers in those states that have the 3-tier system (explained in the articles you reference) ...

And there appears to have been some history as to why the 3-tier system was seen as a solution.

Which gets us to root of the economic problem: How do we control/pay for the costs that are directly tied to the consumption of alcohol -- for example, the devastating effect on families of alcoholism -- when they are not paid for out of the profits from the sale of alcohol for consumption? These costs are externalities like the dumping of mountaintops into fishing streams when mining. Cancer from second-hand smoke and earlier working with asbestos are other examples of externalities,

Quoting dear ol' Milton Friedman (my favorite quote of his): "'Free markets' is a very general term. There are all sorts of problems that will emerge. Free markets work best when the transaction between two individuals affects only those individuals. But that isn't the fact. The fact is that, most often, a transaction between you and me affects a third party. That is the source of all problems for government. That is the source of all pollution problems, of the inequality problem. There are some good economists like Gary Becker and Bob Lucas who are working on these issues. This reality ensures that the end of history will never come."

Aside, what it also assures is that there is no such thing as a "free market".

My personal view is that the more directly costs can be paid out of the profits that generated the costs, the more efficient (and effective) the market will be. But I am not an economist. On the other hand while Physicists can give a reasonable layperson explanation to the way atoms work, Economists have not been able to explain how free markets work ... in relation to reality ... and not even to themselves -- in my opinion.

In any case, you -- Mr. Mulshine -- are right in labeling Senator a McCain a hypocrite ... and pwc is right in questioning the Senator's character in regards to his treatment of his first wife.





My Commentary:

Mr. Mulshine's understanding of McCain as an enemy of free markets is right on. He is dangerous because he is a statist running under the free market banner...just as President Bush waved the free market banner while destroying it the last 8 years. I had decided that rather than vote for one of the two statist candidates, that I would abstain from voting for president this year...for the first time in my 4 decades as a registered voter. But maybe I'll write in Ron Paul, who Mr. Mulshine describes as "the only true adherent of the free market".

A free market is a crucial ingredient of capitalism, and of freedom. It is based on the recognition of individual rights, in which each individual is free to think and act on his own judgement, to associate and trade with others voluntarily to mutual advantage, in pursuit of his own goals, welfare, and happiness. Rights are a guide to freedom of action, not to the productive efforts of others (ex.-a home, food, health care, a job, etc.). Philosopher Ayn Rand described individual rights as "the means of subordinating society to moral law."

The concept of individual rights...including the all-important property rights, without which no other rights are possible...contains the answer to the problem of so-called "externalities". If the actions of one violates the rights of another...causes physical harm to another's person or property as objectively determined in a court of law...then the government may properly step in to require restitution to the injured party. Such would be the case of an individual or group of individuals (i.e., a corporation) polluting the property of another. In the case of second-hand smoke, as long as a non-smoker is free to leave an area occupied by smokers, his rights are not violated. It is solely the right of the property owner...ex., a restaurateur...to decide whether his establishment will allow smoking, and whether to segregate smokers from non-smokers.

The free market is not incompatible with government action to protect individual rights. Indeed, the protection of individual rights is the only proper function of government, and is vital to the functioning of a free market. The "free" in free market means to live one's life free from coercive interference (physical harm) by others, including by government officials and politicians, as well as criminals and the economic activities of others. The protection of rights, in a free society, is accomplished through objective laws against explicit types of behavior, or through the civil courts where grievances and disputes are resolved in an objective forum...and not through the arbitrary, dictatorial powers of government regulators.

Free market capitalism, properly understood, is the only practical and moral social system because it is the only system based on individual rights and a government limited to the job of protecting those rights. People can deal with each other in one of only two ways...by voluntary persuasion and logic, or by physical force. Under capitalism, rent-seeking pressure groups would not and can not exist because the government's power of economic interference on behalf of one private entity at the expense of others would not exist. The individual is protected against the predation of those seeking to trample his rights in the name of that mystic god of every power-luster...the "collective", or "common good".

It's either a free market, tyranny, or what we have today..a mixture of freedom and tyranny, in which tyranny steadily gains and freedom slowly recedes.

I choose free market capitalism.




Other's Commentary:

Posted by boobosie on 10/19/08 at 8:51AM
Free markets are responsible for the financial melt down on wall street. Tax payer protection is needed against the likes of fraudulent CEOS, bogus math gurus who eliminate risk, and unregulated credit default swaps.

Tariffs are needed to make the free market trade a level playing field.

Consumer protection is needed against the likes of "Joe the Plumber".

Free markets are great, for criminals.

Didn't your mommy ever tell you there is no 'free' lunch?




My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 10/19/08 at 9:46PM
On boobosie:

Free markets are responsible for the financial melt down on wall street.

Where do you see a free market in finances? You're committing the fallacy of equating the failures of private individuals and firms with a free market.

Who controls the money supply, the raw material of banking? The Fed

Who ended the gold standard? FDR, on the domestic front, by confiscating private gold currency and replacing it with fiat (i.e., counterfeit) paper. And Nixon, who closed the international gold window.

Who controls short-term interest rates? The Fed. (The Fed's inflationary policies and sudden tightening, based on control of money and interest rates, were largely responsible for the rampant 1920s stock market speculation and crash, as well as the recent housing boom and bust.)

The current crisis is rooted in the government's massive intervention in the housing and mortgage markets, beginning with FDR's "second bill of rights", which declared every family's "right" to own a home (which was reaffirmed in JFK's 1960 party platform.) Subsequent government policies were implemented to ensure that alleged "right." The home mortgage deduction; mortgage "insurers" (at taxpayer expense) FHA and FHLBB; the government-created quasi-private Fannie and Freddie that artificially created the mortgage resale "market."

Then when it was found that many low-income folks couldn't qualify for home loans, Carter created the CRA, to "encourage" lenders to extend loans to those folks. The government's extensive regulatory control over the banks was the club with which it enforced its "encouragement." Then when that wasn't enough, Clinton imposed "flexible" lending standards through the CRA, which led to no-doc and no-down-payment, or sub-prime, loans. But when banks that dove into these loans found that by restricting these gov.-mandated standards to just low-income folks they could run afoul of anti-discrimination laws, they had to extend these standards to all customers who wanted them. (Do not take this as a condemnation of low-income folks in general. It should be stressed that many low-income folks did purchase homes the old fashioned way...by saving for a down payment and then securing conventional loans. Many low-income, sub-prime borrowers continue to make their payments on time. And many of the defaulters are high earners.)

When it was found that Fannie and Freddie, the government-created giants with the implicit (now explicit) backing of Uncle Sam, wouldn't buy those sub-primes, Clinton, and later Bush, (and with the complicity of Congress) intervened to force them to. The flood gates were open for a virtual government-created conveyor belt of bad lending. CEOs like Mozilo of Countrywide latched on to the game with a vengeance.

It was Fannie and Freddie who pioneered the practice of bundling good and sub-prime loans together into Mortgage-Backed Securities (later emulated by many Wall Street firms) for sale to the public. The implicit taxpayer-guarantee created a false sense of safety for these securities. The "bubble mentality" of ever-rising home prices, fueled by the Fed's inflationary policies, took over from there.

The government's Federal Deposit "Insurance" and the "Too Big To Fail" bailout policy...as well as the Fed's lender of last resort status...has led to an atmosphere of reward without risk, or profit without loss. In a free market, the threat of having to face up to one's own failings is a built-in protector against the kind of system-wide catastrophe we are now seeing. The free market rewards long-term prudence and penalizes irrational, short-term lenders, investors, and borrowers (I don't let the irresponsible borrowers, which included outright speculators, off the hook. Without them, there would not have been a crisis.) When profits are privatized (as they should be), but losses are socialized (as they should not be), what kind of behavior does one expect to take hold?

The fact is that the heavily controlled and regulated financial industry was responding to the policies of its own government. The sound and prudent institutions that resisted the sub-prime mania were, for a time, placed at a competitive disadvantage, leading to a loss of business. (They are now in a very good position, once the economy turns around.) According to an article by Bloomberg's Michael Lewis (NY Post, 9/17/08), "if any of these men had behaved well and resisted the pressures and temptations of the moment, his firm would have, for several years, dramatically underperformed the competition. He probably would have lost his job." He was speaking of the Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers CEOs. What created a situation where prudence is penalized and imprudence is rewarded? The quick-buck charlatans who gained a position to bring down decades-old financial powerhouses were unleashed by market distortions created by government intervention.

I could go on and add to this already too-long post. The private lenders, borrowers, and investors that participated in this fiasco are part villain, part victim. But they are only the face of this crisis. Without government's massive interventions, the imprudent would have been weeded out by bankruptcy, foreclosure, and investment losses long before they could infect the whole system. One does not have to excuse the failures of private participants in order to understand that the government-created culture of homeownership entitlement and the policies they spawned are the real culprit here. It's a simple matter of cause and effect.

In a Money magazine interview (with Janice Revell, Sept. issue, I believe), Rep. Barney Frank made this startling statement: "But we have made a mistake in this society. The assumption that everybody can be a homeowner is wrong. We pushed and encouraged people into home ownership - people who, in some cases, weren't ready for it. You can't act on wishes that are unrealistic without having negative consequences."

That is about as close to an admission of the real cause as you will find in Washington. The free market is getting tried and convicted, where no free market exists. And along with it, our freedom.

I apologize for this long-winded post. But it was necessary. I could not let boobosie's unsubstantiated statement go unchallenged.


Other's Commentary

Posted by hglindquist on 10/19/08 at 9:53PM
OK, zemack, I am safely ensconced in my hotel room in New Haven ... the traffic backup getting onto I-95 South to NYC at I-91 was too long, so I "went to Yale" and phoned home that I was staying north for the night.

It was a gorgeous day out in Connecticut's fall foliage.

Now in rebuttal: It is common knowledge that profits have been used to avoid the payment of known externalities and to hide externalities from becoming known. The market has been able to use profit to protect itself from paying costs the profit-seeking generated. And I agree with you, it is a proper role for we the people through our government to investigate the potential for harm caused by any product and to impose laws and regulations that protect we the people from such harm.

You seem to forget that in your example of the right of a non-smoking employee to leave smoking area has only been recently established ... and that I have absolutely no protection from the concentrations of tobacco smoke that sometimes accost me as I exit a building ... and that the children of smokers are still at risk in far too many cases. It is because of the market's failure to address the issue adequately that government has had to intervene with laws and regulations, and still has a ways to go to adequately protect the non-smoker. So I am pleased that you agree that we the people through our government should continue to move in that direction ... but then you go back to the free market concept.

And we continually have examples of companies hiding the harmful side effects of their products so the cost of the harm does not have to paid out of the profits, or costs are delayed or minimized.

History has shown that here in this country we are more at risk from the active pursuit of cost suppression for profit maximization than we are from "the arbitrary, dictatorial powers of government regulators."

And "the collective or common good" is not some "mystic, undefinable god of every power-seeker" -- in my opinion. We can simply start by identifying those "things" the individual has a right to expect from his/her community, and in turn recognizes that his/her community has a right to expect participation from him/her. Or to put it another way, what do we expect to share in common as Americans?

Security may be a place to start. Do we not believe it is the roll of the collective community to defend the community -- which is its members -- from its enemies? Don't we all share in our common defense against our enemies, generally speaking?

So if I expect to be defended then I expect to participate in the defense. And if I expect to participate in the defense, then I expect to be defended. That makes sense, doesn't it?

But in any case ... I really do think this latest socialization of the losses by the market fundamentalists will put the concept of a "free market" on ice for another -- what? -- 70 years. Maybe longer if we don't turn this sucker (the meltdown) around pretty quick ... which -- I'm afraid -- is looking less and less likely every day.

In any case, Senator McCain is a hypocrite for taking his second wife's largess, and he is what we used to call a low-life for the way he treated his first wife -- in my opinion after reviewing the facts.

And yes, I believe in redemption. But apparently McCain hasn't repented.



My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 10/20/08 at 7:50PM
Hglindquist, 10/19/08

I hope you're enjoying you're trip to New England. My wife and I plan on some day making a trip up there.

I'll address one more point...the key point...to hopefully clarify my philosophical position.

And "the collective or common good" is not some "mystic, undefinable god of every power-seeker" -- in my opinion. We can simply start by identifying those "things" the individual has a right to expect from his/her community, and in turn recognizes that his/her community has a right to expect participation from him/her. Or to put it another way, what do we expect to share in common as Americans?

I reject the collectivist premise in the entire statement. I consider the notion of "The collective or common good" to be invalid for two reasons. First; human beings...every one of us...are autonomous individuals each possessing his own independent mind, or rational faculty, which is the means by which he guides his life. This is a metaphysical fact of nature. The fundamental choice that each of us faces is...to think or not. That is exclusively a choice of the individual, and only the individual. No one can do another's thinking, nor force another to think.

Second; the collectivist, or tribal, premise is un-American. A recognition of the validity of the first reason formed the basis for the Founders' creation of a nation that, for the first time in history, was based on the premise that the individual, not the group, is the supreme value upon which a society would be organized. And they recognized that certain fundamental requirements are required for such a society...the individual's unalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of one's own welfare and happiness...protected by a government which, for the first time, was explicitly deemed to be the peoples' servant rather than ruler.

Thus, there is no such thing as the "collective", or "common" good that is separate from the good of the individual...every independent individual. And since every individual possesses the same unalienable rights, equally, and at all times, and protected equally and at all times by the government, any private or public (i.e., governmental) action that violates the rights of even a single individual is not and can not be in the "common" good.

There is no such entity as a "community". The community is a number of individuals, as described above. The "community" has no right to expect anything out of any individual, and the individual has no right to expect anything out of the "community"...save one. That one "thing" that each of us owes the other individuals that make up a "community" is to respect, and to reframe from violating, their aforementioned individual rights...i.e., to avoid compelling another person to act against his own judgement and will. In a free society based on individual rights, anyone who initiates physical force against another is a criminal, and is subject to prosecution by the government. This same principle applies to government. The government is the protector of the individual's unalienable rights. Therefor, no one in the "community" may use the legalized force of government to violate the rights of other members of that community, no matter how big his majority or how small the minority. The same principles apply to a group of ten, a thousand, a million or 320 million. This is what is meant by the principle that "Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law."

The use of the term "the common or collective good" implies that the group or society or the community is the supreme value and can do whatever it wants to its individual members. It is always the justification for any rights-violating governmental action...and of all tyrannies. There is no "collective" good in a free society. There is only the necessity to ensure, via limited government, that each member is free to pursue his own good...which means to be free from human predators.

What do we... share in common as Americans? We share the right to think for ourselves, to act on our own judgement in the pursuit of our own individual well-being, to engage in voluntary and uncoerced association with one another, to engage in voluntary trade to mutual advantage, to engage in voluntary and uncoerced charity, and the obligation to respect the rights of all of our fellow community members. We share, in other words, the principles of free market capitalism. Or at least, as Americans, we should.