by Caleb Nelson
If we believe that individual rights can be overridden sometimes for the “good of the public” when need requires it, then we concede that rights are not unalienable, but may be removed in favor of some supposed higher cause. In other words, we believe rights are not actually rights, but merely permissions granted by government.
The source of this idea of holy compromise being held at unquestionable god-like status—its apotheosis—is the philosophy that “there is no black and white” and “no good or evil” in the realm of morality and ideas. It comes from the idea that morality is always found in a gray area.
THE ZEAL FOR MORAL GRAYNESS
To assert that in morality there are “no blacks or whites” is the assertion that there is no “good or evil”—in principle, in action, or in people.
The first problem with this view is that in order to define gray, one must recognize the existence of black and white, since every shade of gray is merely a mixture of the two in some degree. Before one can even identify anything as gray one must know how to identify black and white—or in morality, what is evil or good. And if one can determine what is good and evil in morality, one then has no excuse for choosing the evil. The evil generally arrives in the pretense that one’s actions are not black, merely gray.
If a man’s moral code (such as altruism) contains contradictions, is inapplicable to reality, and offers no guidance for determining his choices, then it is the moral code itself which must be evil. If a choice confronting a man is complex and he makes an honest error, he is still morally good since errors of knowledge are not evil. However, if the man avoids the necessity of having to know, if he refuses to know the facts, then he is guilty. Ayn Rand named the refusal to think as the worst sin and the source of all other evils.
Some people use their zeal for moral grayness to assert that “nobody is perfect,” that all men make mistakes and are thus in the “gray area.” Morality only deals with issues that involves man’s agency to choose. Even if a million people choose poorly in one instance, such a thing is no guarantee that the next man won’t. Collective action has no unique moral authority. In this case, that principle means that the “rightness” of something is not determined by how many people choose to do it or not. The reason many people are morally “gray” is because they hold contradictory and conflicting values, making it impossible to act in consistent accordance with true principles. The fact that people are not perfect does not invalidate the need for man to be morally good, but makes it all the more important.
Others get their zeal for moral grayness from the belief that there are two sides to every issue—and that thereby both sides are equally valid, and nobody is ever completely right or wrong. Yes, one should give a hearing to all sides of an issue, but it doesn’t mean that all sides are equal in their claims to justice.
Some issues are so complex that people give up searching for a “right” answer. However, it is in these issues that extreme attention is required. Delicate and intense effort is needed to view the issue according to principle.
There is a right and wrong to every question. The challenge is learning how to find it beyond the false choices offered to us.
In the natural realm, principles are still held inviolate. Almost everyone recognizes that in any compromise between poison and food, the poison will win. Then why is it that such a compromise between good and evil is demanded today in the realm of ideas? It is for the same reason: in any compromise of morality, evil wins.
POLARIZATION THROUGH FALSE DICHOTOMY
Democrat or Republican? Upper or lower class? Working families or businessmen? Liberal or conservative? Left or Right? Atheist or Religionist? Communist or Fascist?
A dichotomy is a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.
A false dichotomy is one in which both choices presented are false, or misleading. The false dichotomy tactic can involve the use of presenting a choice which removes facts from proper context, distorts the meaning of the terms used, and evades any mention of the actual principle at stake. The result is increased polarization in public discourse, as well as an overall guiding of that discourse away from the actual issues.
Let’s take an example from the beginnings of the Progressive movement from Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. “There are two ideas of government,” he said. “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”
[337]
The two polar opposites he presents here are that government must either legislate prosperity to the rich or legislate prosperity to the poor. He intentionally leaves no room for any other view of government or its proper role or even the question of if the government can legislate prosperity at all. The problem here is that these are not opposites at all but share the same false premises: 1) that government can or should legislate prosperity to anyone; 2) that no other valid view of the concept of government can or does exist.
The goal of such a tactic is: 1) to remove the possibility of any third choice or questioning of these premises; 2) to gain power through deception.
As long as we think we must debate the effectiveness of the Common Core curriculum rather than the moral issue of government involvement in education, or that we must debate morality or merits of stem-cell research, for example, rather than stepping back and debating the morality of taxing someone to fund such research, we are following the collectivist lead nicely. This is because we have already conceded the view that the government may tax and regulate for any purpose and to any extent as long as we think it is merited, or needed, or a public service.
OPPOSITE DAY
“We dispute their numbers. We don’t have hard, concrete numbers, but we dispute them.”
[338]
– White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Obamacare enrollments
What was once a game for children to gleefully bewilder their peers is now one of the most insidious tools of evil. It is very simple: whatever the truth is, just say the opposite. It is one of the variations of the attack on man’s conceptual faculty. If ambiguity is impossible, just supplant the truth with the error, especially with access to the machinery of propaganda. Justice becomes a right to the unearned, equality becomes racist, democracy becomes freedom, fascism becomes capitalism, a President’s promises become his actual record, and socialism becomes the American Way.
This strategy is not new; more than 2,500 years ago the biblical prophet Isaiah said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
[339] Can there be any better way to win an argument? Both parties can say “freedom” and mean completely different things while actually advocating tyranny.
WEALTH “CONTROL”
At a rally around the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Lee Saunders of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) said, “The richest 1 percent of Americans controls 40 percent of this country’s wealth. Our work, brothers and sisters, is not done.”[340]
Take special note of the word choice used here to distort the truth. To “control” wealth implies a couple of things. Notice that he offers no definition of wealth, and leads us to believe that it is some limited and predetermined quantity or entity. No mention of earning wealth, working for wealth, or creating it; it is to be controlled. This is the language of primal brutes, fighting tribe against tribe to dominate the other and “control” the limited “resources.”
To the statist, wealth is a finite pie that should be divided equally (i.e. based on need). They have not ever questioned where wealth comes from; they do not understand that there is no limit to how much wealth can be produced. They see e
verything through the lens of collectivism with all products and resources claimed as property of the whole. Rather than seeing individuals creating wealth, they see a community chest to be divided up.
So one percent of Americans are extremely rich, relatively—how did that happen? Did they go door to door and rob every house at gunpoint? Did they rob a bank? No, they started or engaged in trade and business. Bill Gates wrote some software, and we all thought it was so great we bought enough copies to make him one of the richest men in the world. Having billions of dollars (and a trampoline room in his house!) didn’t cause any children in Africa to starve. In fact, charities that help children in Africa often use his products to be more effective and efficient. The prosperity of one doesn’t mean someone else will have to be less prosperous. He created a product; he created something of value and thus added to the aggregate value of the entire world. The principle is that more production means more prosperity.
We’ve discussed in this chapter some of the tactics used by the collectivists in their crusade to obliterate individual rights. They can be obvious or insidiously subtle, but as you grow accustomed to identifying them, they lose their power. The following chapter addresses what the strategy of defense must be in order to succeed against such a foe.
Review
Q1: What is the definition of a tyrant?
Q2: What is an anti-concept?
Q3: Describe the tyranny of need.
Q4: Why is “extremism” a dangerous and meaningless concept as used today?
Q5: In a compromise between good and evil, who wins?
Q6: Explain the difference between a good compromise and an evil compromise.
Q7: What is a dichotomy? Give an example of a false one.
Q8: What is the difference between discrimination by individuals and discrimination by the government?
Chapter 14: The Best Defense
“The battle of human history is fought and determined by those who are predominantly consistent.”
[341] - Ayn Rand
This chapter will discuss understanding and implementing an effective defense of freedom. In practice, this means a defense of capitalism, the only social system which recognizes and protects individual rights.
There have been many well-meaning and misguided attempts to defend capitalism by conservatives, economists, philosophers, and statesmen. But the majority of these defenses have done worse than fail. The unfortunate results are that these defenses have helped the statist attacks and conceded ground in the most vital arena—morality.
ISSUES vs. PRINCIPLES
The first failed defense that we must understand is the inability or unwillingness to identify or discuss principles, and instead a fixation on issues. Recall that a principle is a general truth that describes an aspect of reality. Because principles are general truths, they can be applied to and help guide answers to a wide range of specific problems or questions. They provide a consistent foundation for decision-making and are not dependent on or changed by circumstance. See Appendix B for a list of some principles discussed in this book.
To focus on an issue is to have a limited perspective and typically accept the premise as a given. For example, an “issue” would be the Supreme Court debating the constitutionality of the individual mandate found in the Affordable Care Act. The Court focused on whether the commerce clause of the Constitution had bearing on the issue, while the real principle at question should have been whether the government forcing people to purchase a product was within the proper role of government or not.
To discuss only issues may be exciting and controversial, but it is also futile, even harmful, if done without preliminary work in understanding the principles upon which any discussion of issues should be based. It is like trying to safely drive a car without first having knowledge of how to steer, stop, start, signal, park, or obey traffic laws. We have left discussion of issues such as immigration, welfare, education, war, and the environment until the end of this book for this reason.
To think according to principles is a skill that can be learned with practice. It may be strange at first, but is the only way to bring our decision-making in line with natural law. Simply loving or studying the Constitution is not enough to save it. If we do not know how to live by principle, we will be helping to destroy our country because we will accidentally push for solutions that threaten it.
Once we can identify principles being obeyed or violated in our own actions and in the world around us, we are ready to begin our defense of capitalism in an effective manner and with the most powerful moral reasoning to support us.
FAILED DEFENSES
Over the last two hundred years, aspects of laissez-faire capitalism have been advocated and defended in varying degrees by a wide variety of individuals, from Adam Smith to Ludwig von Mises to Henry Hazlitt. They have described and illustrated, in varying degrees, the mechanics of a free market and the general perfection of capitalism. Yet, such defenses have failed to convince the world to accept capitalism. Other individuals and organizations, in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, have also attempted to defend economic freedom. They have done worse than fail—they have helped the collectivist cause in their efforts, and today the assault on private property and individual rights is still escalating. Here are a few of those viewpoints and why they failed:
ARGUMENT FROM PRACTICALITY
“I am a conservative Republican, a firm believer in free market capitalism. A free market system allows all parties to compete, which ensures the best and most competitive project emerges, and ensures a fair, democratic process.”
[342] - Sarah Palin
One defense of capitalism comes from a “practical” perspective. Those who use this argument claim that capitalism may not be moral, but it is the best system to have in place because of its enormously good “practical” results. They claim that capitalism creates more wealth, goods, services, and inventions than any other system. They say it’s more efficient than central planning and recovers faster from bumps in the economy. They say that it ensures a competitive marketplace.
All this is true, but has failed to stem the statist tide that continues to sweep capitalism away. Why? Because that tide is not fueled by cost/benefit analysis or any other practical concepts. Instead, a swelling of moral indignation has overrun the ground lost by capitalists by asking, “How can you care about profit while people are suffering?”
The pragmatic defenders of capitalism will argue for tax cuts as the best way to optimize revenue for the government and to stimulate the economy. They will not argue that it is the right of individuals to keep what they earn. They offer no principle or morality to back up their defense, and so continue to bicker endlessly about statistics and percentages. Competition is not a good reason to support capitalism. Competition is not the purpose of a free-market, but a by-product.
The practical defense is a failure for three reasons:
An argument by cost/benefit analysis will always invite a rebuttal by another Pragmatic “expert” whose “facts” are different from yours, or who will simply lie in contradiction;
Even if your facts are unassailable, the fall-back position of the collectivists is that your facts may be true, but that’s not how things “should” be morally—that you only care about numbers and don’t care about people;
You concede the altruist ethic that morality is found in providing goods and services to others, rather than in the protection of man’s unalienable rights.
ARGUMENT FROM THE GREATEST GOOD
“The genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make self-interest serve the wider interest.”
[343] - Bill Gates
This argues for capitalism on the grounds that it will provide the greatest good and the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. The argument claims that because capitalism is so productive, it is the best way to provide for the needs of everyone and achieve the common good. Steven Landsburg argued that capitalism was the
best way to lift large populations out of poverty. General economic growth, he said, is most effectively fostered by capitalism, and that “the primary cause of poverty is insufficient capitalism.”
[344] This is true, but as a defense it is ineffective.
As economist Walter Williams observed, the goodness of capitalism lies in its respect of “the sanctity of the individual” and how it is “rooted in voluntary relationships rather than force and coercion.”
[345] This is closer to what the best defense should be.
The argument that capitalism is good because it helps the most people prosper is a failure because it concedes the collectivist ethic as the ideal. It argues that providing for the needs of others is the justification for such a social system. It is an argument to defend capitalism by using the idea that the happiness of the majority is more important and a higher moral value than the happiness of an individual.
As George Gilder mistakenly put it, “Altruism is the essence of capitalism . . . . Capitalism begins with giving . . . . The deepest truths of capitalism are faith, hope, and love.”
[346] Craig Biddle rightly rejects this defense as completely wrong, “Capitalism begins not with giving but with producing—and then moves on to keeping, using, and trading the product of one’s efforts for other values in the marketplace. Nor is capitalism based on faith or hope; rather, it is based on reason and long-term planning, which are the means by which businessmen succeed and grow rich.”[347]