TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective
Author: Ari Armstrong
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Education “Stimulus” Thwarts Education
In an extraordinary set of reports for the Denver Post, Jennifer Brown reveals some of the problems not only with the federal government’s “stimulus” spending but also with government financing of education.
In her first article of the series, Brown reports that some of the 5,000 “worst schools in America” were chosen to receive some “$5 billion in federal tax dollars” to implement reforms. The money was allocated as part of the so-called “stimulus” spending of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In Colorado, Brown reports, $9.5 million of the $26.6 million fund has gone to “consultants.”
As Brown reports, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute said that the program “is likely to go down in the annals as one more pretty expensive, failed initiative.” Even worse than the waste is the pretense that it’s promoting education when it’s in fact thwarting it.
Brown reports in a second article that, of $12.4 million sent through the program to Pueblo City Schools, $7.4 million “will go to its contracted partner,” Global Partnership Schools out of New York. Yet, notes Brown, “after the first year of a three-year contract with the company,” performance in one school stayed the same while in five other schools it dropped.
In terms of “stimulus” spending, this is but one more indication that such money is spent for political reasons, not to improve the economy or, in this case, education. The economy would have been “stimulated” much more effectively if those resources had been left in the hands of the people who earned the wealth, rather than forcibly taken from them and spent on “education” (i.e., political projects).
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Journal for People of ReasonRegarding education, the fundamental problem is that the government has cut parents out of the matter—except insofar as they are forced to fund it. Rather than leave people free to finance their own children’s education, and to voluntarily donate to schools and scholarships if they so choose, the government forcibly confiscates people’s wealth regardless of whether they use the funded schools or even approve of them. And then the government runs the schools with reckless abandon. The fact that teachers’ unions, administrators, and “consultants” feeding at the tax-funded trough often get paid more the worse they do is just a symptom of the deeper problem, which is the systematic violation of the rights of everyone who is forced to fund this monstrosity.
Until the government respects and protects people’s moral right to finance education (or not) in accordance with their own judgment, there can be no fundamental reform of education.
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Related:
- The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools
- Government School Steams Parents Over Lunch Controls
Image: iStockPhoto
Posted in: Education
Monday, February 20, 2012
Washington Guided the Constitutional Convention
Perhaps less well-known than George Washington’s astounding military victories is his steadying influence at the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787.
In her work Miracle at Philadelphia, Catherine Drinker Bowen notes that “Washington was unanimously elected president of the Convention” on May 25. She describes his demeanor over the course of the months that followed:
Washington showed himself firm, courteous, inflexible. When he approved a measure, delegates reported that his face showed it. Yet it was hard to tell what the General was thinking and impossible to inquire. In his silence lay his strength. His presence kept the Federal Convention together, kept it going, just as his presence had kept a straggling, ill-conditioned army together throughout the terrible years of war.
Thank you, General, not only for pursuing the military campaigns that made the Convention possible, but for guiding the Convention itself in the creation of our nation’s founding legal document. The greatest monument we can offer to Washington is to preserve and expand the Blessings of Liberty for which he so valiantly fought.
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Related:
- Immigration and Individual Rights
- The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Posted in: History
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Mysticism Claims More Victims
CNN reports two recent atrocities:
In central Nepal, a “40-year-old mother of two was burned alive . . . after she was accused of being a witch.” The woman “was attacked and set on fire by family members and others after a shaman allegedly accused her of casting a spell to make one of her relatives sick.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Court threatens a Canadian citizen with execution because the man “wrote a program to upload photos to the Internet.” That became a legal issue when a different party used the program “to upload pornography,” which, the court found, resulted in “insulting and desecrating Islam.”
What enables such atrocities to happen in the 21st century, an era in which science and technology enable people to fly around the world, bounce television and communication signals off of satellites, and perform complex heart surgeries? How is it possible, in this day and age, that people still set family members on fire for being “witches”—and that governments still threaten to kill people over sex or nudity? What permits such utter terror, depravity, injustice, and barbarism?
The answer is mysticism, which Ayn Rand described as “the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason.” Those who seriously believe that a shaman reveals secret knowledge, or that an ancient book prescribes the will of a “deity,” willfully turn their eyes and their minds from reality to embrace the unproved and unprovable, the arbitrary, and, consequently, the horrific.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- The Tragedy of Theology: How Religion Caused and Extended the Dark Ages
- The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Posted in: Religion
Friday, February 17, 2012
The Problem of Gary Johnson’s Libertarian Affiliation
Why won’t I support Gary Johnson as a Libertarian even though I might have supported him as a Republican? Last month I argued that “it is impossible to support Johnson as a Libertarian candidate without promoting the Libertarian Party itself,” and that the party promotes moral subjectivism and anarchism. Several readers replied that the Republican Party is a disaster, too, so why is it any better to support Johnson as a Republican?
I readily concede that the GOP is a complete disaster. It is, after all, the party that in recent years has given us Bailout Bush, First-Amendment-Shredder John McCain, Mandate Mitt Romney, and Big-Government Theocrat Rick Santorum.
But the Libertarian Party is a disaster of a different order. Supporting any Libertarian candidate unavoidably undermines the principles of liberty in a way that supporting a Republican candidate does not.
The central problem is that, unlike the major parties, the Libertarian Party (LP) is explicitly built on a core ideology, an ideology of subjectivism and hostility toward government, logically tending toward anarchism. (The Socialist Party too is based on an explicit ideology, that of collectivism and forced wealth transfers, and for that reason Johnson would never think of running with that party.) While I cannot demonstrate this fact in a short blog post, I have done so in a previous article and in thousands of other words I’ve written elsewhere on the topic. (For a lengthy expose of Libertarianism, see Peter Schwartz’s “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty.”)
Because some Libertarian goals are superficially similar to those required for a free society, promoting Libertarianism packages together some seemingly positive policy prescriptions (e.g., tax cuts) with philosophically corrupt fundamentals. Thus, promoting a Libertarian candidate blurs the lines between the objective moral basis for freedom and moral subjectivism, and between a rights-respecting government and no government at all.
When a Libertarian candidate pronounces his endorsement of “smaller government”—and the notion that the smaller the better—critics rightly point out that the logic of Libertarianism, and very often the explicit pronouncements of Libertarians, leads to anarchy. Recall that Libertarians twice ran an avowed anarchist for president; that in 2008 the LP selected Bob Barr only after casting multiple tied votes for Mary Ruwart, the anarchist who advocates (among other insanities) legalizing child pornography; and that the work of anarchist Murray Rothbard, widely known as “Mr. Libertarian,” has always been and continues to be a major influence on the party.
Although libertarians often claim to be inspired by the ideas of Ayn Rand, Rand denounced the movement precisely because of its amoralism and anarchism. There is simply no getting around the fact that these elements open the gates to all sorts of insanity. To take but one example from my own experience (when I was an LP activist), one Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Colorado distributed emails promoting racism and violence; later he earned a felony conviction for threatening a judge.
Whereas the LP is based on an ideology of subjectivism and anarchism, the GOP is not. Initially the GOP was driven by anti-slavery activism, but once slavery was outlawed the GOP morphed into a coalition party, electing such ideologically diverse presidents as Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. The party is still without an ideology and in search of one. Thus, the promotion of a Republican candidate does not necessarily entail the promotion of a corrupt ideology in the way that the promotion of a Libertarian candidate does—and the possibility remains that advocates of liberty could, over time, establish a sound philosophical underpinning for the GOP. This possibility does not exist with the Libertarian Party.
If Gary Johnson had remained a Republican or run as an independent or with some coalition party, he might have been worth continued support. As it is, Johnson has thrown in his lot with the subjectivists, anarchists, advocates of legalizing child pornography, and clownish incompetents of the LP. America needs the real case for liberty, not the Libertarian perversion of liberty.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty
- An Interview with Governor Gary Johnson on What He Would Do as President
Image: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons
Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Presidential Candidates
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Government School Steams Parents Over Lunch Controls
How much control should government bureaucrats have over your children?
Two days ago, Sara Burrows wrote a story for the Carolina Journal (a publication of the free-market John Locke Foundation) reporting that North Carolina officials deemed a preschool girl’s packed lunch inadequate, so they fed her chicken nuggets instead. That story (as revised yesterday) states:
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
Understandably, the story has provoked furor across the nation, prompting reports by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Fox’s Dr. Manny Alvarez, The Blaze, and numerous other writers and publications.
Two of North Carolina’s members of Congress wrote a letter to Tom Vilsack of the U.S. Department of Agriculture stating: “This unfortunate and absolutely unnecessary event exemplifies the very definition of ‘government overreach’ and further perpetuates a growing reason of why the American people continue to hold less and less faith in our government.”
When I spoke with Burrows’s editor Rick Henderson by phone this afternoon, he said details about the story continue to emerge; “It’s evolving as we speak,” he said. But regardless of the additional details that eventually come to light, it is already clear that the story represents ridiculous overreach by bureaucrats.
Just from the perspective of diet, the action was ludicrous. According to Burrows, state officials require that school lunches meet “USDA guidelines,” meaning that “lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.” Such guidelines totally disregard parental concern over types of meat offered, how various dishes are prepared and with what fats, possible health issues regarding dairy and grain, times of day when a child eats different types of food, and so on.
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Journal for People of ReasonHowever, the story should prompt a broader rethinking of government schools as such. While many parents are justifiably upset that bureaucrats try to shove the “right” kinds of foods down their children’s throats, often those same parents allow the same bureaucrats to fill their children’s heads with the “right” kinds of ideas.
If we care about the physical and intellectual well-being of children, we should fundamentally rethink the practice of turning over the care of our children to government bureaucrats.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools
- Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?
Image: iStockPhoto
Posted in: Education
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
‘Keep Your Eyelids Up,’ Dr. Seuss Implores
“Dad always says to me, / ‘Marco, keep your eyelids up / And see what you can see.’” This advice remains as good now as it was in 1937, when it appeared in Dr. Seuss’s first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
The story is a wonderful tale about the difference between imagination and facts. The young Marco sees “a plain horse and wagon on Mulberry Street,” but, wanting to make it more exciting, he soon envisions not a horse and cart but an elephant pulling along a brass band, with various other astonishing things and people along for the ride. The story celebrates a vibrant imagination but encourages the reader not to confuse reality with “outlandish tales.”
The story of the book’s publication 75 years ago is as insightful as the tale itself, as NPR recounts. After facing rejection by publishers 27 times, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) had nearly given up hope. But, while walking home, he ran into an old friend who happened to work as an editor at a publishing house. The editor saw a friend with a manuscript, but he envisioned the beginning of a publishing sensation. Dr. Seuss went on to bring his visions of the fantastic into publishing reality.
So, as the editor did when he imagined the possibilities in a stack of crinkled old papers, keep your eyelids up, and see what you can see. Then imagine all that you can accomplish with what you see and set out to realize your goals.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- The Power of Observation: From Art to Literature to Life
- Transfiguring the Novel: The Literary Revolution in Atlas Shrugged
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Posted in: The Arts
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Ignore Santorum’s Depraved Prescription: Have Sex for Pleasure this Valentine’s Day
According to Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, using contraception is “not okay” because it is somehow “counter to how things are supposed to be”; sex, according to this would-be leader of the free world, should be “for purposes of procreation,” not “simply [for] pleasure.” (Thanks to blogger Ace of Spades for commenting on this yesterday.)
But Santorum’s view is totally corrupt. Sure, couples who want to have children engage in sex partly in hopes of conceiving. But romantic couples rightly have sex for the sheer pleasure of it, even if they don’t want or are unable to conceive a child. And if they don’t want a child, they properly use birth control to prevent pregnancy. Contra Santorum, the primary purpose of sex is not procreation (an optional value) but pleasure (a requirement of human life), which corresponds to the fact that the latter purpose is far more widely embraced.
As Ayn Rand pointed out, pleasurable sex is not the surrender to some lowly animalistic impulse; it is instead the pinnacle of a thriving life appropriate to a rational being. In her essay condemning the Catholic renunciation of birth control, Rand writes, “To a rational man, sex is an expression of self-esteem—a celebration of himself and of existence.”
Valentine’s Day is a great time to commit to celebrating life as it should be—full of spiritual joy and sensual pleasure. Santorum and his wife can do as they please tonight, but we who love life should feel free to indulge in lovers’ bodies—just for the pleasure of it.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- A Vital Truth for Valentine’s Day: Say’s Law and Romantic Love
- In Birth-Control Insurance Fight, Planned Parenthood is Anti-Choice
- Santorum Stands for Big Government because He Stands for Collectivism
Image: iStockPhoto
Posted in: Presidential Candidates, Romance
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Facebook Provides an Enormous Value
“Facebook Inc. filed for an initial public offering [IPO] that could value the company at between $75 billion to $100 billion,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The scope of the company is extraordinary: It “had 483 million daily active users on average in December 2011.” People use Facebook because it helps them pursue and share their values, and the company should be commended for creating such an enormous enhancement to people’s lives.
One recent event poignantly clarified to me the value of the company. When a family friend and his coworker were reported missing in Utah, the friends and family of the missing men used Facebook to help organize the search, collect donations for the search effort, and convey news to other friends as well as to the media. Although this story had a sad ending—both men had died when their car crashed off a cliff—Facebook was invaluable in helping people organize the search for the vehicle and share messages of comfort.
In an extraordinary letter, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg explained the goals of his company as it pursues its IPO. He writes, “At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.” Thank you for that, Mr. Zuckerberg.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- Democrats Further Entrench Rights-Violating Net Neutrality Regulations
- Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet
- As Kodak Exits Camera Business, Remember the Genius of George Eastman
Image: Wikimedia Commons by Guillaume Paumier
Posted in: Productivity, Science and Technology
Monday, February 13, 2012
Modern Greeks Destroy ‘Foundations of Justice’
The Greek riots this past weekend have been sickening. “At least 45 buildings were burned, including one of [Athens’s] oldest cinemas, while dozens of stores and cafes were smashed and looted,” reports the AP.
Why are the rioters upset? “More than 100,000 protesters marched to parliament to rally against drastic austerity cuts that will force firings in the civil service and slash the minimum wage,” explains the Christian Science Monitor.
But “austerity” is the wrong name for these reforms that only slightly reduce the government controls of Greece’s largely socialized economy. The Heritage Foundation explains the underlying problems, calling the Greek economy “mostly unfree” and noting the nation suffers from “acute problems in labor freedom, monetary freedom…the control of government spending…and endemic corruption.”
The Greeks should know better; after all, Athens is the birthplace of the Western legal tradition. In his book Solon the Thinker, historian John David Lewis argues that Solon, “selected as chief official of Athens around 594 BC,” offers important truths in support of justice and the rule of law. Indeed, Solon’s ancient poems should serve as a warning to modern Greeks:
The citizens themselves by their foolishness desire
to destroy the great city, persuaded by material goods…
They grow rich, persuaded by their unjust deeds. …
Sparing the wealth of neither public nor sacred treasuries
with rapaciousness they rob from one another,
and fail to guard the sacred foundations of Justice
who silently knows what is and what was.
But, in time, retribution certainly comes.
Modern Greeks have instituted a government that systematically violates individual rights, one that engages in large-scale looting under color of law. The rioters merely do away with the legal pretense.
Rather than pass trivial “austerity” measures, beg for handouts from other European nations, and riot in the streets, the Greeks should establish a just government that protects people’s rights to property and contract and thus enables them to create wealth and prosper.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens
- The Rise and Fall of Ancient Greek Justice: Homer to the Sermon on the Mount
Image: Christophe Meneboeuf, Wikimedia Commons
Posted in: Business and Economics, History, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, February 13, 2012
Oil Shale Politics Points to Problems of Federal Land Ownership
Why is energy production in the United States subject to so much political oversight? Public News Service reports the latest news about oil shale: “Two competing plans for the development of oil shale in the West are making their way through Washington, D.C.” Both plans involve government-owned lands, and both are subject to extensive political wrangling.
The Reason Foundation’s Leonard Gilroy summarizes a major reason why federal politicians exert so much control over energy production: “The federal government owns nearly 30 percent of all the land in the country,” including “more than 84 percent of the land in Nevada” and large chunks the land of various other states.
The fact that the government has socialized so much land necessarily involves federal politicians in the management of that land and of any economic activity thereon.
Those federal lands should be converted to private property for Constitutional, economic, and (most importantly) moral reasons.
Regarding the Constitution, as legal scholar Rob Natelson points out in his book The Original Constitution, permanent federal land ownership for unenumerated purposes is contrary to the intent of the Constitution. Natelson points out that “Founding-Era records disclose a universal belief that most federal lands would be sold promptly.”
In terms of economic incentives, private owners, whether individuals, for-profit businesses, or conservation groups, tend to manage their property (whether by developing it, preserving it, selling it, or leasing it) to best achieve their values. Politicians tend to manage lands to the advantage of those with the most political pull.
More fundamentally, the government’s proper role is to protect individual rights, including rights to develop and gain title to property; the government has no moral business managing lands or their development. Property owners, not political fiat, should determine the development of oil shale, natural gas, outdoor recreation, and every other land use.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Posted in: Environmentalism, Individual Rights and Law
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