Christ Wasn't a Christian

In a piece posted in The Atlantic today, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend manages to directly strike a nerve with me - and not in a good way. She joins a list of many well-intentioned Leftists who, I believe, understand the implicit lesson(s) of Christianity on one level, but then proceed to turn it upside down before beating their political opposition with it. No, Kathleen - supporting government social programs is not inherently entailed in being "Christian." In fact, properly understood, I think being against said programs might actually be entailed in being "Christian." More on that in a minute...

First, I'd like to point out what a ridiculously low blow this is...even in the political sphere. It seems like at least part of what might have been a legitimate criticism regarding Perry's binding of the religious and the political within his platform turned into something like accidentally shooting the guy you're scolding for bringing a gun to the party. So a big congratulations to her for, instead of taking the higher path, managing to demonize political factions of many different stripes through the lens of religion. Fantastic.

Secondly, I'd like to point out that I don't know much about Perry. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Christian. I don't believe the two mix. I don't believe religion should be pulled into the sphere of government either. So, for anyone who may be reading, I'm not exactly on the opposite side of the political aisle from our author here.

What really just crawls under my skin is the supposition (which Christian Progressives seem to be fond of) that Jesus was a socialist. Now, of course, this is a loaded term. If you mean "socialist" in the more generic way (think 17th and 18th centuries), then I might agree. But in the context of people who generally support a modern welfare-state, absolutely not. So where do modern Leftists go wrong? Well, like so many other things, they seem to be content with stopping at being only halfway-right; which turns out to be a pretty horrible mistake in this context.

How could I possibly say they are only half-right? I mean, look at the mountain of evidence they have to offer - hundreds if not thousands of passages with Jesus calling for people to care for others in need, to sacrifice, and even to submit to government authority...where could they possibly go wrong in interpreting that? I'll tell you precisely where they go wrong; in bridging the gap between the call to personal sacrifice and supporting systemic theft and violence. Jesus did indeed call us to sacrifice. But it doesn't take the most keen theologian to divorce that from an actual call to take, with physical force, from your brethren to give to those in need. That, my friends, constitutes a world of difference between my own familiarity of the Bible and the lesson(s) that Progressives seem to draw from it.

But what about the talk of rich men not being able to enter heaven, submitting to taxation, or even submitting to government more generally? Well, besides the more obvious reasons that some of this seems like a steaming sack of shit (I suppose German citizens who helped their government round up Jews were just being really Christian!), it still doesn't follow that this falls outside of the sphere of personal sacrifice. Sure, maybe Christians are called to give into taxation and other forms of theft. Much like the proverbial "turning of the cheek", it would seem as though we are all called upon to acquiesce in the face of aggression. But surely all those Christian Progressives out there don't take that to mean it's alright to run around hitting people in the face, do they?!?

I spent about twelve years of my most informative years being beaten over the head with Bible passages (with something like a catechistic mallet). I've read quite a bit about helping and loving others, giving up our material possessions, even giving into aggression to the point of pacifism. But I remember, in all those years, only one passage where Jesus called on his apostles to help him steal from the wealthy. As the story goes, they would hide out in the forest and besiege the wealthy as they were passing thr...oh wait, that's one of the versions of the Robin Hood story. I'm sorry. Actually I can't think of a single passage where Jesus steals from anyone, or tells his followers that it's OK to steal from people for that matter. In fact, he has to talk his apostles into not drawing swords against Roman guards who are ultimately leading their Savior to His death!!

You know, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not some kind of theological scholar, but, then again, neither is the author of the article. I guess neither of us can really be held to the grindstone on account of being wrong on what God/Jesus does/would want us to do. But, nevertheless, it kind of strikes me that so little thought is put into claims of this kind. "Jesus calls us to sacrifice, therefore aggression is sanctioned!" Walla! Beautiful. Shouldn't we reflect on the (in)consistency of supporting aggression to appease the wishes of the ultimate pacifist? What's that? "No!" you say?

If Christians are supposed to support aggressive means to their ends, then maybe Christ wasn't a Christian after all.

Vulgar Libertarians: Left Edition

I was just recently listening to a Thinking Liberty interview with the infamous Kevin Carson. Having never heard him speak, while having read several of his pieces at C4SS, I found the interview pretty interesting. For one, the calibre of questions provided by the hosts and the listeners seemed to be quite high given the subjects. It was a nice departure from my frequent audio stomping ground, Free Talk Live.

Part of what I found particularly fascinating were his critiques of right-leaning libertarians; a group he more broadly has termed as "vulgar libertarians." His claim is that the supposed "vulgar libertarian" defense of free-markets tends to give way to an ipso facto defense of the business structure that has been established in our current not-so-free-market. I actually agree with a good deal of this proposition as far as it goes. But I think it ironically, and conversely, describes another form of vulgar libertarianism that forms on the left portion of that spectrum.

It's worth noting that there are plenty of people both on the right and also within the libertarian ranks who simply do not realize how many corporations operate at an advantage, in some aspects, because of the absence of a free market. Of course, on the other hand, they operate at a disadvantage under the current regime in other respects, but that may be a discussion for a different day. In any case, Carson is right to call such people out. And he is right that many libertarians are too quick to defend the corporate beneficiaries of the state while attacking beneficiaries among the lower classes (I won't delve into the class-analysis here). But I would like to say something in defense of ANCAPS, propertarians, thin libertarians, and even some paleo-conservatives out there...

I think, perhaps, that the left-leaning libertarian belief that a freer state of affairs will result in a more equitable state of affairs has led them, paradoxically, to engage in a similar kind of vulgarism when they defend lower-class privilege (at the behest of the state) from right-leaning critics. Of course, a lot of this does depend on who you believe is benefiting from the state and who is not, and it's even more tenuous when you break advantage down to an individual level (on net) instead of an aggregate at the class level - a lazy analysis which I believe is woefully inappropriate. I think this creates a mutual distrust and misunderstanding between the two groups more generally. Left-libertarians often end up defending various forms of welfare, or at least its recipients, public employees, state-regulated unions, and other privileged groups within the lower class in precisely the same way their detractors often unwittingly defend the upper classes.

My basic thought on this is that those on the left have a political thrust centered primarily in at least a somewhat consequentialist social-egalitarianism. There are plenty of exceptions, but many believe that free markets are good precisely because their results are more equitable. Those on the right (within the libertarian spectrum) have a thrust grounded in a deontological view of property rights and justice. The right-leaning side sees massive expropriation born out of redistributive social programs to help the lower class. They sympathize with the perceived victims of expropriation. The left-leaning side sees a class of people they sympathize with at the start (because of their egalitarian beliefs) and consequentially (that is important to note) they believe in a system that will help those who need it. The difference between this group and normal leftists seems to be largely that they see free markets as a vehicle to move in that direction while their political brethren don't.

So while it is certainly true that many "vulgar libertarians" do not consider the many advantages higher classes receive at the hand of government, I think many left-libertarians are so wrapped up in their consequential egalitarianism that they fail to see the many rights-violations that the more "Randian" among us so vociferously object to. It's not even, necessarily, that those on the left are wrong - I'm sure there are countless instances where they are right. However, if their support for various political advantages enabled by the lower class is simply that the upper classes, on net, take far more from the poor than the poor take from them, then they must engage in an effort far more empirical (sorting through all effective taxes and subsidies of all natures) and on an individual level in order to make wildly general claims about the relative feast or famine of entire classes of people. It's the least I would expect from anyone wanting to call themselves a "libertarian."

Many other people have certainly tried to sort through this confusion among left and right with regards to free markets (Roderick long denotes something he calls conflationism). I have a feeling there's much more to story - and I'm not really aware of too many people taking what I would consider a neutral look at the problem (on both sides). But I think a good start would be for those more oriented on the right side of the spectrum to question their wayward support of specific corporations should an argument move in that direction. But I also call upon those on the left to recognize the deontological arguments at hand and to question the line of thought that leads them to believe that every low man on the totem pole is worse off than he'd be in a truly free society - my guess is that it's often not the case.

The Tale of the Slave(s)

Alex Tabarrok has seemingly stirred up a hornets' nest over at Marginal Revolution by leveling a blow at bloggers on the left for their use of the following data which seem to indicate that people who consume tax credit/sheltering don't believe they're the beneficiaries of government subsidies:

Alex's contention? Well, they aren't subsidies.

It's an interesting question that highlights some of the opposing biases between the left and the right, generally speaking. I have many sympathies that fall in line with those of Alex it would seem. If we start from the general proposition that taxes represent previously owned wealth, at least nominally, I think it's a hard conclusion to escape. If someone walks up to you and your friends in the middle of the street and demands your wallets, but tells you (and just you) to keep $20 of what's in your wallet, does that $20 represent a subsidy?

My inclination is to say, "No, of course not." After all, if you had $100 in your wallet then you've net -$80 from the "transaction." The net beneficiary of interaction at the individual level is the thief. On the other hand, and more broadly speaking, if we use subsidy to loosely describe comparative advantage, well now we have something for the left to rally around. So, much to our shared chagrin I'm sure, we're back to a perspective of inequity on an individual basis vs. inequity more relatively speaking. In a sense, maybe both sides are right to the extent that they use their own definitions for "subsidy."

Ironically, it's debates like this that have mellowed me a bit while still holding fairly radical political conclusions. To figure out if someone is a beneficiary of government "subsidy", in any form, I think it depends on a number of factors. We have to look at all the direct cuts and subsidies against all the direct forms of taxation. Then we need to weigh that against any indirect subsidies or protections an individual might receive and also any indirect taxation they might be shouldering. Once we've gotten to that point, we'd have to figure out how many tax dollars, through public programs and services, they actually consume. Then, and only then, could you safely declare that the next/last X dollars credited to that individual would qualify as a subsidy - on net. I think that basic test would apply to all individuals, rich or poor, regardless of the subsidy in question. Seeing as how difficult in practice it might be to even determine if any individual is a tax-feeder or tax-eater, you can imagine my lack of enthusiasm for even attempting to make the same assessment regarding entire groups or classes of people. I don't think the analysis is quite as useful as the proponents on all sides think it is.

Nevertheless, I found something quite disturbing about a good deal of the comments following the post in question. Almost all of the objections had a tinge of one or both of the following assessments:

1. Taxation is not slavery - someone has to pay for the programs.

2. If we have to pay, then withholding your pay is stealing from others.

The first objection, I believe, is probably the most blatant (and common) form of cognitive dissonance I see in the political realm. To call it a non sequitur would be a bit of an understatement. Whether something be necessary or not has little to do with if it is, in fact, slavery. If you believe the expropriation of labor or its product is needed, then that only grants you that slavery is needed, not that it isn't slavery.

The first objection also keenly reminded me of Nozick's Tale of the Slave - which continues to throw a lot of progressives into a tizzy. Nozick's classic setup is a better refutation of the first objection than my own, but it doesn't really handle the second objection directly. However, it made me wonder, in that framework, if we had postulated at any step that the slave-owner should let a slave work an hour less, would those on the left call that refunded labor/time a subsidy to that slave? Would they collectively decry the slave as a net beneficiary of the slave-master? Would we think him silly to not consider his singular hour a freedom a subsidy? If you you would, then you don't understand Alex's point.

Callahan Finds His Inner Singer, Part II

Over at Crash Landing, and coincidentally enough while I was on vacation, Gene Callahan deconstructed one of my previous posts concerning his piece about obligations.

Before I respond, let me first be a little candid. I have no academic background in political theory or philosophy more generally. My knowledge extends only as far as my personal interest and passion takes me - and that will not begin to touch the lot of knowledge that Dr. Callahan has at his disposal. So, even though I disagree with him fairly often, I want to note that I have nothing but respect for him, as he affords his readers a privilege that too few of the dissenters of the liberty movement do; arguing from first principles.

All of that being said, although we'll ultimately still disagree to a large degree, I'd like to clarify a couple of the points that Callahan finds contentious.

Ryan begins by accusing me of misunderstanding the scope of libertarianism: "Libertarianism, in the strictly political sense, is concerned with justice and the (property) rights that govern it."

Ryan here is stating the very problem I was noting as though it were something I had overlooked! The problem with libertarianism, I was suggesting, is precisely that it thinks justice is only about property rights. They are a part of justice, but just a part.

For me, I think this most clearly elucidates the ideological division in question. And I think, from an argumentative point, he's right to press on this as I do believe that this is actually the crux of the conversation that should be had. If you believe in positive liberty then, of course, such positive obligations are a matter of "justice". Of course, by the same token, if that sense of positive rights, say, extends to the ownership of other individuals for example (chattel slavery) then detaining and returning runaway slaves is also a matter of "justice." My guess is that Dr. Callahan would not defend it as such. In my view, the very real "injustice" of that situation does and must spring from the right of self-ownership exclusively. The relevant exclusivity of the matter may become more apparent after addressing his next point.

"While I'll offer that, in order to claim ANY rights outside of property rights you must dismantle property rights altogether..."

Well, what can one say to this other than, "You're political ideology has made you somewhat mad"? (Ryan, I don't doubt you're as sane as most -- and saner than me! -- when it comes to not seeing purple elephants, holding down a job, etc. This is a very specific madness.) If we say someone has a legal obligation to help someone in mortal danger when the person is right in front of them, there is no one better positioned to help, and there is no risk to the rescuer, then... That's it? That person no longer owns their home or their car?

Not to be snarky here, but my honest answer is, "No, absolutely not." Or at least not in the sense that he may claim a "right" to it any longer - and this is precisely the problem. At least from my conceptual viewpoint, saying that you have a "right" to something is saying that you have a de-coupled, autonomous, exclusive, and authoritative power over something; control and ownership that is absolute, as such, specifically because it emanates from self-ownership and more generally the concept of homesteading (which I won't go at lengths to defend here for brevity). If I say that I have a right to a home or a car then I am, in a classic liberal fashion, likely referring to negative rights - saying that I have a right for no one else to cede authority over such property away from me. When and if that "right" to the car or house is conditional, and particularly when that conditional nature falls outside of the boundaries of consent (on behalf of myself or others whose negative rights I may have violated) then there is a very real sense in which it's not a right at all - but rather a privilege. To put it more simply, if I have acquired the right to object X and, because of some condition that I may have no control over, you are allowed to "justly" confiscate object X, then what real "right" did I ever have to it? If we're going to dilute the conception of "rights" down to conditional default-level possession of some sort, then it would seem we should drop the pretense of "rights" altogether - as that seems to be what would delineate a right from a privilege in the first place.

Again, we have madness posing as thought. ALL rights anywhere ever have had stipulations and conditions on them, as they always must.

This is true if you view rights in one of two ways (which libertarians, apparently, do not):

1. Rights are defined by positive law.

2. Rights refer to something other that property rights or the "negative rights" framework that follows from property rights.

Barring those important (and reciprocally idiosyncratic) stipulations, rights are not conditional.

The right to free speech famously does not extend to the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But to Ryan, that condition "throws that right out the window": not being able to start a stampede that might kill people is exactly the same as the total censorship that existed in the USSR.

Here I must remind Dr. Callahan that if he's going to pigeon-hole me and others for our supposedly idiosyncratic views of justice then he could probably extend a similar courtesy by not assuming away certain rights based on what has or has not been incorporated into positive law. That such legislation exists certainly does not settle, at least in the context of this conversation, whether such a right does or does not exist and more explicitly whether such legislation should exist. To invoke a previously used example, and in the vein of this particular point, the right of self-ownership famously did not extend (for a time) to certain human beings in this country. Even federal legislation, such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, would seem to indicate that no such right (as an absolute) existed at all. But I would be surprised to hear Dr. Callahan argue that such a right, nevertheless, did not or does not exist.

But, more explicitly, as far as absolute rights are concerned (ie: to the extent that they aren't privileges) then yes - you have every "right" to yell "fire". Whether you have a right to yell it in a movie theater is a different question altogether. I think the way the question is being framed is actually indicative of the problem I'm trying to point out. The premise actually tries to bind a right (free speech) with a non-right (using someone else's property). You have a right to speak freely anywhere at anytime (after all, we still agree that we own our physical bodies, do we not?). You don't, however, have a right to use the property of others. I think this causes a lot of confusion - and admittedly I think it's particularly confusing among libertarians.

Libertarians often seem to act like you simply concede all your rights once you are on someone else's property. This is a particularly common contention for non-libertarians and I think libertarians are often simply incorrect regarding this proposition. Take for instance a dinner at your house to which you have invited several neighbors to attend. At the door you tell them that there will be no talking, whatsoever, once in the house. Do the guests still have the right to speak? Many libertarians would say that they don't. I disagree. What is actually taking place, from a rights perspective, is that the owner of said property is laying out conditions for which he will revoke user-privileges regarding his property; this is the sole extent of his power over the guests.

In this context, movie-goers at a theater have no "right" to be in the theater at all. However they have a very real right to speak (in any and every context). The owner of the theater, however, retains the right to remove them if they speak (in any and every context) if they make such a stipulation. In that way, I have no problem with the private prohibition of speech upon one's own property - no one's rights have been violated at all. Contrast this with a third party who tries exert authority over the property rights of business owners or patrons and we have a different matter altogether. Of course, the practical answer to the worry of the ever impending threat of theater-stampede is to simply patron the theaters which have stricter private policies concerning such instigating behavior - but Dr. Callahan, being familiar with libertarian ideas, is quite aware of this.

I'd like to also note that that one need not be completely oblivious to the spectrum of difference in consequence to note that principles don't simply evaporate in the face of such consequence. Matter has a gravitational property whether in the context of a feather falling to earth or a plane filled with passengers. Preventing people from yelling "fire" in a theater is clearly not the same as censorship in the Soviet Union. However, claiming it's different in principle is another story altogether.

"then extrapolate the drowning child analogy into its intended application through the polity."

Intended by whom? By the strawman builder, that's whom.

If the drowning child analogy is not meant to apply a particular ethical or political view to political theory more generally (or reality as it may be) then what is the point of invoking it in a political context? Are we not talking about justifications for and exceptions to rights? Are we, perhaps then, only exclusively actually talking only about drowning people with no particular political implications? I would guess not. I'm building no "strawman" here.

"It seems like such a principle would call us to give as long as one needs. But the world isn't a pond with a single drowning child. The world is a pond with hundreds of millions of "drowning children" and we are billions of passersby. As I type this, thousands upon thousands of people are dying from starvation and disease. I could be using this time, marginally, to save them. Am I guilty of injustice? Should I be punished? Should I be locked away in a cage?

"And this is where things stop making sense..."

Well, all-or-nothing thinking makes it very hard to make sense of much of the real world, I grant you. For instance, it can make you believe nutty things like having a very limited obligation to help very specific people in very specific circumstances is exactly the same as having an unlimited obligation to help all people in all circumstances.

I'm not contending that they are the same - in the same way that I'm not contending that stopping someone from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is the same as censorship in the Soviet Union; and in the same way that I'm not contending that a feather falling to the ground is the same as a plane falling to the ground. I'm asking you to deconstruct gravity. I'm asking you how principles, as such, are circumvented, delineated, navigated and ultimately contradicted without being broken altogether. Poking an unsuspecting woman with a pencil doesn't make you a rapist. But the same principle that leads you to determine that rape is wrong also leads you to believe that poking her with the pencil is wrong. Pointing out the difference in severity of the two situations or merely trying to wave the matter away with the ambiguities of "prudence" doesn't make the principle of the matter disappear. And that is largely my point.

I think it's perfectly consistent to have a world with positive rights or negative rights, but not both. The concepts conflict in almost the most diametrically opposing sense. A claim as a right in one sense NECESSARILY detracts from a right in the other sense; so that in at least one of the two senses, it cannot truly be a "right" at all. That is the primary contention - that, logically, you cannot have a party with a positive "right" to X and another party with a negative "right" to X. The extent to which one party has a right in one fashion is exactly the extent to which the adjacent party does not have a right in the other fashion. And without that exclusivity of authority (ownership) then, again, it is no "right" at all - merely a privilege.

Rand, the Myth, the Legend

The following is a response to an article posted on FaceBook:

Alright, firstly, I'm not an Objectivist, but I feel like I know a good amount about Rand and her philosophy - or at least I feel confident enough to say I know more than the author of the article. That being said, there are plenty of things I disagree with her on both politically and philosophically. I think she was a worthy intellectual, but she said and did a lot of things, particularly later in her life, that I don't agree with to be certain.

All that being said, my biggest problems with the piece revolve around a combination of question-begging and appeals to fear. Many times people try to deflect discussion by rhetorically employing what Rand called "anti-concepts" - where you infuse antagonistic or confusing properties into a given idea or person to make its invocation unpalatable. In that way it's easy to put a wedge between what a person really means and what another person might interpret them to mean. It's not unlike what conservatives have effectively done with terms like "Marxist", "communist", and "socialist." They are not mutually inclusive terms, but there is a conflationary usage of them as such.

Take, for example, a word like "capitalism". There's a contentious and conflationary usage of that word too. When I use the word "capitalism" I mean it in the classical way in which Marx coined it; a system where capital is allowed to be privately owned. When many people today use that word, they usually either mean a system of "profits over all" or more generally "corporatism." It's certainly true that Marx believed capitalism would invite the former (and subsequently the latter), but it's not precisely what is meant, economically, by the term. In any case, what happens is that we end up with somewhat antithetical ideas being rolled up into the same term, and that creates stigma and confusion along with killing honest debate.

Some people now use capitalism to describe an ideal free-market that they strive for, and others use it to describe the corporatist system they see today. They essentially start talking past each other. Supporters of free markets end up defending corporate interests and attacking egalitarian ideology. Supporters of egalitarianism end up defending the state and attacking free-market ideology (Roderick Long writes a good deal on this). I think this is part of what's happening with this article regarding Rand's ideas.

Take the first sentence:

"Some say that maybe it is a bad idea to base a political party's ideology on a belief that altruism, democracy and Christianity are "evil.""

Let's put aside the fact that, in all honesty, the Republican party, however more Randian they are than Democrats, are about as Objectivist as Paul Krugman. She was economically to the "right" by most peoples' conception, no doubt. But being an avant-garde feminist, atheist, pro-abortion, anti-war, anti-war-on-drugs swinger, as well as a habitual kicker-to-the-curb of conservative heroes (Reagan, Goldwater, etc.), there's just as much for most conservatives to not like about her. Contrast that description with the people you might see at a Republican rally and I think that assertion becomes questionable. In fact, my guess is that most Republicans who claim to admire her simply haven't read any of her works, or have only been exposed to snippets of it.

But the last part of the comment is what I really take issue with, and that's where I believe "anti-concepts" come into play for at least one of the terms; leading to misunderstandings, I think, of her subsequent positions.

Altruism.

Simply put, what she meant by altruism is not what most people who condemn her mean by it - and thus they usually fail to understand her point. Altruism was a word she employed as a concept roughly antonymous to psychological egoism - which would be closely associated to her conception of self-interest or "selfishness." When she claimed, as she did, that altruism was "evil" she meant purely, in an ethical sense, selfless acts - acting upon the values of others and not your own. Conversely, by self-interest she meant acting upon your own values. She also had an "Objective" system to help determine those values (which is something I largely reject).

So, in the way she employs these terms, giving your life for your children is not a selfless act in the strict sense - because you are appealing to self-interest in abiding by personal values. Feeding and clothing those in need whom you wish to help is also, in that way, not selfless as you are acting upon your own values. This, along with Objectivist parameters for determining said values (which, again, I personally reject), is how she comes to regard "selfishness" as a virtue in itself (rhetorically speaking, she would have been better off sticking to "self-interest"). By this (her) measure, doing things that conflict with your values, or doing things merely because you are being forced or asked to, is what is truly selfless. To her, this is not virtuous. This is what she believes is the underlying current of "altruism" as the Western World knows it.

This plays largely into why she finds Christianity to be "evil." For one, it, at least in dogma, endorses altruism - as such she sees Christianity as an abrogation of personal values as opposed to an augmentation of it (I think she might have a point scripturally but not as most Christians practice it). It's that abrogation of personal values and the embrace of "accepted" values which leads her to believe Christianity is dangerous. She believed that calls for the embrace of Christian values turned into demands backed by force and violence, which she spurned as an anathema to reason. Not only does that call to violently enforce Christian ideals conflict with the morality of the ideals themselves, ironically, but she felt that, even on the most individual basis, self-proclaimed Christian altruists were not altruists by any means - as many if not most don't share a completely selfless relationship with their actions. Rather they are often motivated, even subconsciously, by self-adulation, pride, righteousness, and ultimately the promise of reward or punishment in the afterlife. It would be easy to understand why people are so confused about Rand's position. She pulls a lot of her ideas and terminology from Greek philosophers. In fact, Aristotle explored the exact same idea (the contradictions of selflessness) in his own deliberations on virtue.

I think that it's worth noting that I differ from Rand in finding irredeemable qualities in Christianity. I think that sacrifice on behalf of total strangers, for instance, can fit more cleanly into a consistent system of personal values than she seemed to think. On the other hand, I think that Rand's criticisms of Christianity can, quite consistently, be used by Christians on the Right to point out the moral difference between helping those in need, being forced to help those in need, and forcing others to help those in need; the last two of which are arguably not virtuous nor Christian-like respectively.

All of this plays into the third accusation of her contempt for democracy. It needs to first be said that she was attacking, more clearly, unbridled democracy - the general concept of "majority rules." And she was generally attacking it for all the classically liberal reasons that most people on the Left (if they are not completely detached from their political heritage) should be able to identify with. She felt it a lesser evil than other forms of government, but a system that should be extremely over-checked and burdened so that it carries out only its purpose in protecting us from one another. So, she was in favor of democracy but only in the context of negative justice. Probably, more precisely, she would have been labeled a constitutionalist if anything. She admired the American system and infamously proposed that the Bill of Rights be extended with additional amendments to limit government power. But it was precisely the largely Christian populace's preoccupation with moralization and enforcing their "selfless" values which infused her with a great distrust of democracy in general. She felt that people had rights that weren't subject to popular approval, and that part of the polity had been employed, at least since the late 19th century, in undermining some of those rights under the banner of "democracy."

You can see how these basic misconceptions are laden with already-accepted premises that are designed to lead you to the authors conclusion(s) without even knowing what she really thought at all. That's bad enough. And then you see a phrase like:

"while saying people with tons of cash are "producers" who should govern."

That's just disconcerting altogether. It's true that Rand was partial to capitalists and conceptual producers (and with fairly good reason in the context of her beliefs), but saying that she believed that "producers" with tons of cash should govern isn't just laughable - it's dishonest. Firstly her core political predisposition is against force, coercion, dishonesty, etc. As such, she's quite opposed to pretty much anyone "governing" anyone in that respect...be they rich or poor. Secondly, the larger part of her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, sets out vilifying MOST "producers" as incompetent if not malicious beneficiaries of government favor! In a conceptual argument between labor at capital, she falls towards capital every time. But in the context of the system we have, or the approximation of it in the case of her novels, she rails as hard as anyone against crony capitalism and corporatism. Most of the antagonists in Atlas Shrugged are greedy businessmen!

There's plenty more to dissect in the rest of the article, but I'll spare you that. It's one thing to be critical of Ayn Rand's ideas. Hell, I don't think much of her stories as far as stories go. But it irks me that those critiquing her have either clearly not read (not to mention understood) almost anything she's put forth or are they are being intentionally misleading in order to lead other people who are ignorant of her and her ideas to pre-packaged conclusions.

Callahan Finds His Inner Singer

...Peter Singer, that is.

If there were ever an instructive argument that outlined the foundation of positive rights, Peter Singer has what is probably the best approximation with his "drowning child" hypothetical. Over at Crash Landing, Gene Callahan alludes to this popular question, and contrasts what he feels should be done with what would/should happen under libertarianism to prove the silliness of the latter:

Let's say you are walking along the road on a cold winter night, on your way to an opera you very much want to see. Halfway there, you hear a cry. You look down, and there is a baby lying there, shivering in the cold. Otherwise, the road is deserted.

The baby needs medical care. The problem is that the hospital is in the opposite direction from the opera house. If you take the baby there, you will miss your opera and your ticket will be worthless.

Do you have an obligation to take the baby to the hospital?

There are two problems with this attack on libertarianism (from my point of view) - one is merely a partial issue, while the other I would consider a flagship rebuttal from the Rothbardian viewpoint.

The first issue is that I feel this is either a categorical mistake on the one hand, or begging the question on the other. The scope of the systems or constructs he's trying to compare are intrinsically different. Libertarianism, in the strictly political sense, is concerned with justice and the (property) rights that govern it. Therefore, much like a priest having nothing contextually important important to say regarding high-level theoretical mathematical axioms, so does libertarianism, in itself, have little to say outside of the realm of justice.

Of course, the clear way to refute such a claim is to say that libertarians are begging the question by assuming that being saved isn't a right. This brings me to my second issue. While I'll offer that, in order to claim ANY rights outside of property rights you must dismantle property rights altogether, I would probably do well to simply remind my detractor that he too, although appealing to cultural and moral sympathies, is begging the question. As long as we accept a clear difference between vice and harm, under the rubric of justice - legitimate force, then the line being drawn in categorization is precisely what's in question.

In any case, it's still seemingly true that property rights (the basis for negative liberty) and positive rights cannot, without contradiction, co-exist.

Let's take the "drowning child" problem for instance. The libertarian response is that, although in other spheres of human interaction we have every right to deride or disassociate with such a person who would let the child drown, we have no inherent "right"to either force him to save the child or to punish him for not doing so. Clearly we'd look upon such a person as immoral, amoral, or more generally just a "bad" person. After all, the point of the example is to bring emotion and moral sentiment to bear upon what might otherwise be a weak case for the establishment of arbitrary positive obligations. Nevertheless, of all the spheres within which an individual might persue his animus towards such a person, the libertarian keeps the blade of justice sheathed.

It does, indeed, sound quite grim.

But let's take a look at what we can draw from the opposite conclusion. Let's say that we all have a positive right to be saved. Well, we can go ahead and throw self-ownership and property rights in general out the window at that point - as clearly if there are stipulations and conditions to such rights, then they are not truly rights at all in any real sense, but rather individual privileges bestowed upon us by some exogenous authority.

If the prospect of single-handedly dispensing of any coherent sense of property rights with the introduction of positive rights doesn't give you pause, then extrapolate the drowning child analogy into its intended application through the polity. Analogies like these lead us to believe, in principle, that violations of property rights are justified in order to help those in need. Let's put aside the obvious consistency issues laid out and move into the practical. Where is the line?

If need is the genesis of rights and positive rights (as "rights" imply) are socially binding then when do we stop being guilty of injustice? It seems like such a principle would call us to give as long as one needs. But the world isn't a pond with a single drowning child. The world is a pond with hundreds of millions of "drowning children" and we are billions of passersby. As I type this, thousands upon thousands of people are dying from starvation and disease. I could be using this time, marginally, to save them. Am I guilty of injustice? Should I be punished? Should I be locked away in a cage?

And this is where things stop making sense.....

Faced with the insurmountable task of saving these countless children, and conceding my obligations nonetheless, how much of my wealth and assets must go to help said children? What of my time, my labor? This is precisely the problem with the "drowning child" argument - it has no constraining values. And, in fact, it would seem any such constraining values (in the realm of justice) would prove quickly inconsistent with this utilitarian sense of positive obligation.

While being hypocritical of one's beliefs certainly does not prove one's beliefs to be wrong, I can't help but observe the action (or inaction) of the proponents of positive rights as a social litmus test for the weakness of such a principle. Little to none live 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, in absolute poverty for the sake of their fellow man, yet they would compel the rest of the populace to live by their piecemeal attempts to legislate those very ideals. The world entailed by such a principle is apparently one which they feel is unfit for living in.

Everything - the Unknown Ideal

In mulling over some recent commentary in the blogosphere it's never been so apparent to me that such a large source of contention or disagreement is illusory - or at least that we're often not arguing over what we believe we're arguing over when we engage others.

Take the word "theft" for instance; what does it mean? What does it imply? How is it used? How is it properly used? People like Gene Callahan contend that when libertarians say that taxation is "theft" it's justified only via some form of circular argument in which we have to already assume the premise that it is theft. In other words, he believe that if what taxation takes is rightfully owned by others, then it's not theft - and certainly not wrong in the criminal sense. He also points to what he sees as a somewhat lacking consideration of how we use the terms "force" and "violence" when we allow for those things as a matter of justice.

This brings up an interesting point - one that I'm agreeing with more and more over time - but one that certainly doesn't overturn the libertarian argument. When libertarians use "theft," "force," and "violence" they mean something very specific - the wrongful violation of one's property rights. So more specifically we should talk in terms of property rights if we'd like to make the conversation(s) less confusing or contestable.

That being said, I think it's perfectly OK for libertarians to use such terms (particularly "theft" and "aggression" among others) because I believe that, properly understood, these terms approximate the meanings libertarians give them even in much of their everyday usage. In other words, if you break the terms down into their more literal implications, it turns out the libertarian usage is the common use - with a few exceptions (taxation being one of them). The implication of theft is a violation of property rights. A violation of property rights presupposes property rights. To talk of theft, in any capacity, is to refer to a system of property rights. Therefore, in order to justifiably, and forcibly, take something from someone you must establish that you already own it somehow.

Now, some like Callahan might contend that you could have such a view about taxation - that government really does own the quite literal property rights to the product of your labor and trade. But, without getting into the philosophical framework of property itself, I'd contend that most people don't see it that way. I think that people wholeheartedly believe in positive obligations of all sorts, but I think very few of them view the first X hours of your labor as actual property of government per se - rather they feel you have a positive obligation to sacrifice some of your property to the greater good.

Again, I think the conversation might be even further confused in the conflated usage of terms like "rights" to begin with, but I think it's interesting that so many of our deepest quarrels seem to be over semantics in some real way. I think that's my queue to start diving into philosophers that focus on linguistics. I'm thinking Wittgenstein isn't a bad start...