Culture


Your children are not community property

In light of the controversy over MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry’s comments questioning parents’ private right to raise their children, I want to highlight some remarks I made a few years ago on the same subject.

Harris-Perry’s comments came in the context of a promotion for her show, “Lean Forward”: “We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘these are our children,’” Harris-Perry said, “so part of it is we have to kind of break through our private idea of ‘kids belong to their parents’ or ‘kids belong to their families’ and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

That is pure collectivism and requires rebuttal. A few years ago, in the context of a court decision that outlawed home schooling, I wrote an op-ed called “Your Child Is Not State Property” (print version here). Although the narrow political issue was not the subject of Harris-Perry’s comments, the fundamental principles at stake are the same, and worth repeating:

Neither the state nor “society as a whole” has any interests of its own in your child’s education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the government’s only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, including yours and your children’s, against physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can override your rights.

. . . Parents are sovereign individuals whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness includes the right to control their child’s upbringing. Other citizens, however numerous or politically powerful, have no moral right to substitute their views on child-raising for those of the father and mother who created that child.

Instead, a proper legal system recognizes and protects parents’ moral right to pursue the personal rewards and joys of child-raising. At every stage, you have a right to set your own standards and act on them without government permission. This parental right to control your child’s upbringing includes the right to manage his education, by choosing an appropriate school or personally educating him at home.

This is the video version of the same op-ed:


A Thatcher-Rand connection?

Thatcher_reviews_troopsIn 1976, at the age of 71, Ayn Rand closed down her periodical “The Ayn Rand Letter” with a short essay called “A Last Survey.” Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Margaret Thatcher was leader of the Conservative Party and three years away from becoming prime minister of the United Kingdom. The two women never met, but Rand’s article indicates a possible intellectual connection.

The Thatcher mention came in the context of Rand’s discussion of a July 19, 1975 New Republic column entitled “The Ayn Rand Factor”:

I laughed when I read that column, because the columnist’s fear was obvious. I said to my friends: “If he thinks there’s an ‘Ayn Rand factor’ around, let him think it.” Today, I am beginning to wonder whether there might not be an “Ayn Rand factor” in the world . . . .

A story on Margaret Thatcher, the new leader of the British Conservative party (The New York Times Magazine, June 1, 1975), stated that her “‘think tank’ of intellectuals” is studying and popularizing “the theories of”—and there followed a hodgepodge of so-called rightist names, ending on “Ayn Rand.” I did not pay much attention to that story—but, later, I was told privately that my ideas actually do have an influence on Mrs. Thatcher’s group.

Today, thirty-seven years later, there is most definitely an “Ayn Rand factor” at work in the world. The passing of Margaret Thatcher gives us occasion to pause and reflect on the time required for genuinely new ideas, such as those of Ayn Rand, to percolate through a culture.

Image: Wikimedia Commons


Opposing Walmart For Its Virtues

a Walmart storeBy offering a cornucopia of affordable goods in stores nationwide, Walmart has possibly done more to raise standard of living than any other company in the 20th and 21st centuries. It has driven down prices on consumer goods, appliances, groceries, toys, clothing, electronics, home entertainment, and outdoor equipment, allowing individuals to spend less on basics and have more savings for luxuries. Even the poorest of Americans now have access to a king’s ransom of products thanks to their local Walmart—allowing them to enjoy a standard of living that some of the wealthiest Americans could not obtain over a hundred years ago.

And yet, there are local activists—city politicians, union locals, alliances of local retailers, “Occupy Wall Street” type groups—who oppose the construction of new Walmarts. New York City officials have fought to block Walmart, and there is now recent indication that the company is backing off its efforts to introduce stores in the Big Apple. Walmart has faced similar albeit less successful opposition in many other cities over the past few years, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.

One of the main reasons such people give for opposing Walmart is that, when the retailer comes to town, many competing mom-and-pop shops will be driven out of business. And so, they argue, Walmart should be prevented from constructing locations within city limits so as to protect all of the local businesses that have been operating for decades.

But this attitude amounts to objecting to Walmart because it is too good at offering people what they want. It amounts to condemning Walmart for the “crime” of being so beloved by consumers that they will all want to shop at Walmart, instead of the local mom-and-pops they used to patronize. That Walmart is so effective at attracting customers that many of these small businesses—even ones that have been local favorites for decades—may have to close down because most of their customers would much rather shop at Walmart. And so, as a solution, city officials should ban Walmart from purchasing land that developers are willing to sell to it, prevent the construction of the store that tens of thousands of residents would eagerly patronize, and force shoppers to continue to pay more for goods at stores that they no longer prefer to go to.

We should never oppose something for being too good.


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Dr. Peikoff in Huffington Post: Abortion Rights Are Pro-life

At Huffington Post, Dr. Leonard Peikoff writes:

On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade 40 years ago, there is still no one defending the right to abortion in fundamental terms, which is why the pro-abortion rights forces are on the defensive.

Read the essay here.


Roe v. Wade: Forty Years Later [podcast episode #01]

On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down the decision on the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. With a 7-to-2 majority vote, the court struck down state bans on abortion, prompting a national debate that continues forty years later.

That decision — as well the subject of abortion itself — remains divisive. Activists on both sides debate whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, how the Supreme Court shapes the law on issues of constitutionality, and the role of morality and religious views in the political sphere.

On this episode of Eye to Eye, ARI’s new podcast, hosts Jordan McGillis and Amanda Maxham sit down with Dr. Onkar Ghate, ARI’s senior fellow, and Tom Bowden, legal analyst, to discuss the political, legal and moral questions surrounding abortion.

Some of the topics covered include:

  • Ayn Rand’s view on abortion and the Roe v. Wade ruling
  • The legal basis for the Roe v. Wade decision
  • The state-level attempts to undermine Roe v. Wade
  • Abortion and individual rights
  • The labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice”
  • “Personhood” amendments
  • Ayn Rand’s view on the nature of sex
  • Health care, abortion, and contraception
  • Abortion and the Tea Party movement
  • The separation of church and state
  • The morality of abortion
  • Objective legal interpretation
  • The future of the Roe v. Wade decision

Listen to or download this episode (Duration: 44:16 — 20.3MB)


A holiday dedicated to ending racism

Martin Luther KingThe Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. offers Americans an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to eradicating racism in all its forms.

In a famous speech, Dr. King eloquently envisioned a world free of racism: “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Americans should be proud of their nation’s historical achievements in ending slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregated schools, and other forms of institutionalized racism. On this holiday, we should embrace the challenge contained in Dr. King’s powerful remarks and recommit ourselves to the task of fully eradicating racism from this nation’s public policies.

If we are going to achieve a truly color-blind society, it will not be enough for private individuals to reject racism in thought and deed—although that is obviously essential. In addition, government policies and programs must cease favoring some citizens over others on the basis of skin color.

A model of good government policy is President Truman’s executive order ending segregation in America’s military services. Issued almost sixty-five years ago, Executive Order 9981 declared “that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”

This official policy exemplifies a government’s proper attitude toward employing its citizens. Every law-abiding adult has an equal right to serve in government, provided he or she can satisfy the position’s objective requirements. In setting standards, government agencies must be forbidden by law from making irrational distinctions among citizens, as by favoring some soldiers over others on the irrelevant basis of skin color or ancestry.

The principle of racial equality before the law should be upheld throughout government. The solution to official racism does not lie in further race-conscious, affirmative action programs that generate de facto quotas, nor in multicultural education that locates personal identity in one’s ethnicity. Because such approaches are themselves racist, they are part of the problem.

In 1963, Ayn Rand wrote:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. . . . Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

On the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., let us pause and ask whether our public policies are fully consistent with the wider goal of ending racism in America.

Image: Wikimedia Commons


Obama’s Inversion of What Makes America Great

Recently, I appeared on PJTV’s Front Page with Allen Barton to discuss President Obama’s victory speech. What should be infamous about this speech is the section on what Obama thinks makes America exceptional:

“This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.

The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.”

What are these obligations that we must accept? If the kind of welfare programs that Obama champions is any indication, he surely means that we must be content in paying other people’s mortgages, student loans, medical bills, retirement pensions, unemployment benefits, or child care costs.

But the view that America is a land where we have innumerable, unspecified obligations towards each other is the complete opposite of what makes America great. What makes America great is the country’s founding spirit: that this is a land of opportunity where every individual has the right to his life, his liberty, and the pursuit of his happiness.

But can you really pursue your happiness in the fullest sense of the expression if your happiness must come second to paying for your unchosen obligations to provide others with a home, health care, or a retirement pension?

To hear me speak to this, and to how our Founding Fathers would never stand for today’s regulatory state, you can watch the full segment below.


PJTV: Plymouth Colony Commune

If you are interested in advocating for free market capitalism, it is important to know history. In this recent appearance on PJTV’s Front Page with Allen Barton, I discuss what I consider to be an interesting and illustrative episode in U.S. history: the Plymouth Colony commune. You can watch the video here.

In 1620, Pilgrims settled in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts and lived in an arrangement where all property was commonly owned. Key architects of this arrangement thought that this would “foster communion” amongst the colonists. But the opposite happened. What actually resulted was a colony where inhabitants felt resentment and envy towards one another, and were still barely able to feed themselves over a year after they arrived. You can read more about this episode, along with a similar episode regarding the settlers of Jamestown in 1607, in Tom Bethell’s The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages.

When thinking about why communism breeds poverty, misery, and resentment, it is worth reading (or re-reading) Ayn Rand’s “From Each According to His Ability, to Each According to His Need.” This is an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged in which a survivor describes what happened when his former employer—a once thriving automotive company—attempted to run its business according to this principle. This excerpt can also be found in Ayn Rand’s book For the New Intellectual.

Here is a passage:

Love of our brothers? That’s when we learned to hate our brothers for the first time in our lives. We began to hate them for every meal they swallowed, for every small pleasure they enjoyed, for one man’s new shirt, for another’s wife’s hat, for an outing with their family, for a paint job on their house—it was taken from us, it was paid for by our privations, our denials, our hunger. We began to spy on one another, each hoping to catch the others lying about their needs, so as to cut their ‘allowance’ at the next meeting. We began to have stool pigeons who informed on people, who reported that somebody had bootlegged a turkey to his family on some Sunday—which he’d paid for by gambling, most likely. We began to meddle into one another’s lives. We provoked family quarrels, to get somebody’s relatives thrown out. Any time we saw a man starting to go steady with a girl, we made life miserable for him. We broke-up many engagements. We didn’t want anyone to marry, we didn’t want any more dependents to feed.

The whole tale is worth re-reading.

 


Huffington Post: A Liberal Ayn Rand?

ARI senior fellow Onkar Ghate has a new article published in the Huffington Post.

In it he asks: “Here’s a radical thought. Instead of liberals dismissing Rand’s appeal to the American spirit of individualism and independence, as President Obama recently did in his Rolling Stone interview, why don’t liberals make Rand part of a new canon? Why let conservatives monopolize her?”

Read his answer here.