John and Ansley

Ansley and I have had this idea rattling around in the back of our heads for a couple of months now that we’d focus this blog more on family life and parenting and I’d start a new blog that would focus primarily on discussing Objectivism. We both kinda felt that the dual foci (is that right?) of the blog wasn’t the best set up for it. Some folks could care less about my views and just want to see fun updates on the family! Some folks were getting linked here by other, Objectivist focused blogs and probably didn’t care too much about the little details of everyday life in the Cox household. And, hopefully, some of you enjoyed both of them.

Rather than try to continue to write for two separate audiences in one place, I’ve set up Sacred Ego as the place where I’ll be discussing Objectivism, philosophy and politics, and John & Ansley will maintain it’s focus on our family, and our views on parenting. Right now, all that’s up on Sacred Ego are all of the posts on Objectivism I’ve made over here throughout the year. I plan of adding to those at a fairly rapid pace, with more links and short discussions of items as well as the longer, heavier pieces that I’ve done in the past on this blog.

So – go check out Sacred Ego, and let me know what you think of it.

The Objectivist Roundup is up over at Noodlefood. Go check it out! My post on attacking capitalism is included. Also makes sure to read Greg Perkin’s post on Objectivist v/s Libertarian Thinking for the best explanation I’ve read in a while on why Objectivists keep their distance from libertarians.

From CNN:

During remarks to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce legal summit in Washington, (Jeb) Bush had tough words for the president in response to an audience question.

“I think President Obama has used the bully pulpit as a way to attack capitalism.”

Governor – you act like this is a surprise? Any who paid attention to his campaign should know Obama considers capitalism the enemy. The larger issue is that you, your brother and virtually the whole of the Republican establishment attack capitalism daily by your actions. Everyone knows that Democrats, and Obama in particular, are enemies of capitalism. Your side, however, has managed to con the entire nation into believing that Conservatives are its defenders. That’s the insidiousness of the Right – their Capitalist stance is, in reality, only a slower slope downward to true socialism. Despite your pro-capitalist lip service, the record shows that you are anything but. Two of the more egregious examples of this during the last administration was the passage of both Medicare Part D and TARP. Both passed with overwhelming Republican support, and both significantly undercut the free market. The country thinks we have a party interested in defending capitalism. If only that were the case. Sadly, America has no such party. A true defense of Capitalism starts with the idea that, just as there is a wall of separation between Church and State, there should be a similiar wall between State and Economics. Capitalism requires NO government involvement in the markets. Not limited, not “less than the Democrats” but NONE.

ARI has a great site that launched earlier this year called Principles of a Free Society. Here they detail exactly what is required for a free society to function, and they explain just why government intervention into the economy must be rejected, outright. The essence of a free society is individual rights. Under a free society, an individual must remain in total control of his life, liberty and property. The moment the government steps into the economic life of its country, they violate those rights. As they point out on the website (quoting Rand in The Virtue of Selfishness):

There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept “just a few controls” is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.

Once you open the door to government intervention in one area of the economy, you open the door for every well connected pull-peddler in the nation to get the same intervention where they feel it’s necessary. Eventually you’ll have government setting interest rates for the entire economy, government insuring bank deposits, government confiscating 12.4% of every individual’s income under the guise of a retirement fund, government controlling the car companies, government telling companies how much they can pay their employees, government rationing of the healthcare system, government telling you how you must operate the computer networks you’ve spent a fortune building, government telling you which apps you must accept in your online App Store, which software you must include with your operating system, which ingredients you may put in the food that you sell, and where you can smoke on your own property. Eventually you have current day America.

The Pandora’s Box of socialism is opened at the first crack, not once the box has had its lid removed and all its walls demolished.

The 120th edition of the Objectivist Roundup has been posted at 3 Ring Binder. My post, To the Precipice, is included as well as many others. Go check it out!

I’ve been meaning to mention Diana Hsieh‘s EXCELLENT new(ish) podcast, Rationally Selfish Radio for quite some time. I’ve listened to each of her episodes thus far, and could not be more delighted with what she has started. From The Philosophic Arguments for (and against) God, to relationship advice, career choices, and book reviews, Diana covers a broad spectrum of topics and does so with keen insight and knowledge. In addition, the podcast’s technical quality is superb and her delivery of the material is top notch. She has obviously spent a tremendous amount of time and effort in creating this podcast, and the results are magnificent. It is a valuable new addition of Objectivist material online. Thank you, Diana, for creating something that has added tremendous value to my life.

My favorite episode is her interview with Craig Biddle, of The Objectivist Standard discussing the morality of altruism and it’s pernicious influences on our government. The discussion of the topic between two very well spoken and intelligent Objectivist intellectuals was a breath of fresh air. I’m also looking forward to listening to her “Exploring Atlas Shrugged” series – it’s high time I reread the book again, and I plan on using these to deepen my understanding and appreciation of the novel.

Anyone interested in learning more about the ideas of Objectivism should subscribe. It’s well worth your time.

Six months ago, I would have thought that the following headline simply could not be written, yet, in America.

Fed Hits Banks With Sweeping Pay Limits

In a one-two punch at the pay culture of banks and Wall Street firms blamed for the financial crisis, the U.S. government announced plans to aggressively regulate compensation at thousands of lenders and impose steep pay cuts at seven companies that received billions in federal aid.

While the moves had been anticipated for weeks, Thursday’s separate announcements by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department represent unprecedented federal intervention in pay decisions traditionally left to boards and shareholders.

The crackdown is likely to influence how financial firms pay top executives, traders, loan officers and others whose actions could threaten the soundness of the institutions. Compensation experts said it would be hard for companies to escape the new oversight, though individuals could do so by jumping to hedge funds, private-equity funds and other financial firms beyond the reach of the new curbs.

The central bank moved to incorporate reviews of compensation into its routine regulatory process, a step that will affect large and small financial firms across the U.S. as well as American subsidiaries of non-U.S. financial companies. Some state regulators said they plan to issue similar requirements for state-regulated banks not covered by the Fed plan.

Perhaps this should be expected news (the article states that banks have been worried this was coming for some time) but, despite the litany of government intrusions into the remnants of the American private sector in the past year, I had not thought America could reach this level of depravity so rapidly.

Let’s lay out exactly what this means. These restrictions and regulations are not for firms who accepted government bailout money. Had this been limited just those firms, while such actions would still be immoral, you could at least say that those firms were all but asking for it when they took the money in the first place. No, this is not just for TARP recipients, this is for the ENTIRE industry. What’s to stop the government there? If they can do it in banking, there’s no reason they can’t go to the Telecom Industry and do the same thing. Maybe they think the manufacturers of the country are being irresponsible. Why can’t they regulate their pay too? In short, the Federal Government has now proclaimed themselves the final arbiter of compensation for every company in America. If, with one sweeping motion, the government can regulate pay across an entire industry, there’s not a company, industry, or worker across America who is outside their reach.

The protection of Individual Rights in this country is now no more than an illusion, for the government has made it clear that contractual rights mean nothing in this country if you have an ally in the government. In her essay “The Roots of War” in Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand describes the inevitable end to this state of affairs:

When individual rights are abrogated, there is no way to determine who is entitled to what; there is no way to determine the justice of anyone’s claims, desires, or interests. The criterion, therefore, reverts to the tribal concept of: one’s wishes are limited only by the power of one’s gang. In order to survive under such a system, men have no choice but to fear, hate, and destroy one another; it is a system of underground plotting, of secret conspiracies, of deals, favors, betrayals, and sudden, bloody coups

I have wondered to myself in the past few months if Obamacare was the edge of the cliff in this country for individual rights. Is that the point where, once we go past, we can’t ever come back? My deepest fear used to be that it was. Now I question if we didn’t just sail right over the edge today. At the very least, this country, the first in history founded upon an explicit defense of the individual rights of man, stands at the precipice. To keep going further in the direction of statism and collectivism is to risk the destruction of everything this country was founded upon and all that has made her great. We must reverse course – or wait to pick up the pieces after the inevitable collapse.

It’s up over at Trey Givens‘ site, which I think is the alter-ego of Flibbertigibbet.

My post, Objectivism and Constitutional Law, is there, as well as an exceptionally wide range of topics from across the Objectivist Blogosphere.

Go check it out!

I’ve always been highly interested in Constitutional Law and the Supreme Court, stretching back to when I was your run of the mill libertarian leaning conservative advocate of “Originalism”. Now, I have exactly zero formal education in law, so read the rest of this with that in mind.

Being an intellectually curious conservative, I read quite a lot about, and became pretty well versed in the various arguments the right presented to make their case for Originalism (for example, you must rely on the intent of the lawmakers at the time the law was passed to guide your decisions, or – even further – you must rely on exactly what the text of law says and nothing beyond that when deciding cases). Beyond being well versed in it, I was also very much an advocate of this type of thinking. To give one example, despite being pro-choice, I was very much an advocate of repealing Row v Wade on the grounds that the Supreme Court had to essentially make up a right to privacy to give women the right to an abortion. Never mind the fact that to do so would be an egregious violation of a woman’s individual right to her life, a right to privacy just isn’t there. I’d always follow up my discussions with people on this with the statement that I believed, once it was overturned, everyone should fight in every state to keep abortion legal, but the states should be the ones to decide.

I started thinking about this subject again recently after reading this post over on The Volokh Conspiracy about the state of the various Conservative and Liberal judicial theories.

If you look at the big constitutional issues facing the Supreme Court – federalism, property rights, criminal defendants’ rights, the death penalty, executive power in wartime, abortion, campaign finance – there is very little disagreement among liberal scholars about the question of what the Court should do; though there is some divergence about how fast the courts should go in getting from here to there.

On the other hand, there is a great deal of debate about the theoretical reasons justifying these preferred results. Big-name liberal constitutional law scholars range from originalists like Akhil Amar, to Bruce Ackerman’s “constitutional moment” approach, to “living Constitution” theories of various type (e.g. – Laurence Tribe), to representation-reinforcement theories (e.g. – the late John Hart Ely and those who have build on his ideas), to “judicial minimalism” (Cass Sunstein), and several other theories I won’t go through here…

The state of affairs on the right is almost exactly the reverse of that on the left. With rare exceptions, most conservative and libertarian constitutional theorists are originalists. Nowadays, most of them even agree that original meaning originalism is preferable to original intent. Despite this near-consensus on theory, there is enormous disagreement about its application to particular cases. Right of center originalists range from co-blogger Randy Barnett – who would urge judicial invalidation of a wide range of federal and state laws – to Robert Bork and Lino Graglia, who argue for near-total deference to the political branches.

I found this piece of insight absolutely fascinating, and very revealing. Liberals all know exactly what the Constitution should mean, they just can’t agree on how they should find rights in the Constitution that aren’t there. Conservatives, on the other hand, lack any type of unifying ideology on what the proper constitutional role of government should be, but they are all in agreement about how to argue against liberal overreach. They simply say, “But that’s not what the text says!” Nevermind the fact that the Constitution is written in some fairly broad and sweeping language. They’ll page through the Constitution all day long and won’t find one single mention of gay marriage, and declare that the Constitution can’t provide the right for homosexuals to marry because it simply isn’t in the text. They’ll do this while completely ignoring the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment that assures ALL individuals of equal protection under the law.

One of the things I was very interested in studying as I began to delve deeper into Objectivism was what the proper approach to Constitutional Law should be. I’m not so much interested in what objective law under a properly constrained government should look like, but how should one evaluate current laws and Supreme Court decisions. Should abortion really be left up to the states because there isn’t a right to privacy? Should states be able to place all sorts of silly regulations on what may be done by consenting adults in their bedroom because there’s nothing in the Constitution that specifically forbids states from doing so? Must you rely on Originalism as a defense against the Liberal idea that you start with results and then cleverly craft a way to justify it in the Constitution? Is there another way?

As I went looking for these answers, I discovered that this was an area in Objectivism where there isn’t a wide range of readily available material to delve into. There are lots of articles and essays out there about what the proper role of government and law should be, but not as many on how today’s judges should approach the law. Over the years, however, I was able to find two extremely relevant and brilliant pieces on the subject that served to clarify my views on these issues. The first is Tara Smith’s critique of Originalism in the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy entitled “Why Originalism Won’t Die — Common Mistakes in Competing Theories of Judicial Interpretation“. The second is an article in this summer’s issue of The Objective Standard by Thomas Bowden titled “Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution“. Both pieces are quite lengthy, and build, from the ground up both a truly damning case against both Originalism and the competing theories on the left, as well as a fully integrated and coherent judicial philosophy with reason and objectivity at it’s base. Because both articles are so tightly integrated, it’s tough to excerpt from them meaningfully. You really need to read the entire articles to get the full sense of their arguments, and I highly encourage anyone who’s interested in this topic to do just that. I will, however, quote Dr. Smith’s broad overview on what is required by an objective judge as a way to begin to define what a proper approach should be.

In order to be objective, a judge must be philosophical and conceptual.

No particular provision of law can be interpreted apart from philosophy — the philosophy of the legal system of which it is a part. For a law is not a free-standing, self-sufficient decree; it comes into being in order to do a job, and it gains its authority as a means of serving the larger purpose for which a government exists. Correlatively, no law can be wrenched from that context and understood apart from it.

With these two paragraphs, one can begin to see what the correct underpinnings to a judicial philosophy should be. Rather than using the text as a starting point for interpretting the law, you must delve deeper into what the underlying foundation of a particular law’s government is built upon. Here in the United States, we are particularly lucky to have two very explicit documents which lay out the ideas upon which our government was founded: the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. For those of you who failed 3rd grade social studies, I’ll quote them for you.

From the Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

And from the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In short, the Constitution of the United States of America has been established to secure the inalienable individual rights of all men, including life, liberty and property. All laws of this country should serve to advance this protection of individual rights, and those laws which impede on the rights of individuals should be overturned. Thus – it matters not that there is no explicit law which allows homosexuals to be married. That right is implicit in the very individual rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that lie at the heart of our country, and to deny people this right is to destroy the protection of their individual rights.

Unfortunately, as Bowden points out in “Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution”, this view of jurisprudence has, in the face of all evidence, been rejected by the Supreme Court for over a century. The view that has now taken hold, first enumerated in Justice Holmes’ dissent in Lochner v. New York is that the Constitution is “Empty” of any meaning beyond the words written within it, with no underlying premise of individual liberty.

In order to take this view, Holmes had to,

evade large swaths of evidence tending to show that the Constitution indeed embodies a substantive commitment to individual liberty. In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders clearly stated their intent to create a government with a single purpose—the protection of individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Consistent with the Constitution’s Preamble, which declares a desire to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” every clause in the Bill of Rights imposes a strict limit on government’s power over individual liberty and property. In addition, Article I forbids the states to pass any law “impairing the obligation of contracts.” And to prevent future generations from interpreting such clauses as an exhaustive list, the Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

This view is precisely why we have the current debate between the left and the right regarding the proper role of the judiciary. Because both sides accept the legitimacy of the Empty Constitution premise, the right argues for fealty to the text of the law and Constitution as a means to properly constrain the role of government and the left realizes that if the Constitution is not built upon a foundation of individual rights, then they are free to decide the law means whatever they want it to mean.

To restore our government to it’s legitimate purposes, the Empty Constitution premise, and the Originalism of the right and Subjectivity of the left which arose from it, must all be rejected. We must again place the protection of individual rights at the foundation of our government and evaluate all laws in that, proper, context.

Here are several links I’ve been meaning to talk about:

Net ‘Neutrality’ is Government Theft

So why the push for “Net Neutrality”? Most of the support from the private sector is from large internet content companies which used to be truly capitalist and essentially libertarian in behavior, companies like Amazon, eBay, and particularly Google. As they add more high-bandwidth content, such as movies and music, they want to prevent ISPs from being able to charge them for using such a high percentage of available bandwidth. Instead, under the guise of “neutrality”, they’re trying to use government to prevent the owners of Internet infrastructure from being able to rationally set prices for the use of that infrastructure. In other words, they are trying to steal the ISPs property rights. Is it any wonder that almost all of Google’s political contributions go to Democrats?

Let’s remember in the future when Google says “You can make money without doing evil“, they can’t be taken seriously.

Michael Moore: ‘Capitalism is anti-Jesus’
Hey – what do you know, Michael Moore finally got something right! Too bad he has no idea what capitalism really is.

Capitalism is not only an economic system that legalizes greed, it also has at its foundation a political system of capitalism that is, “We have to buy the political system because we don’t have enough votes. We’re only 1% of the votes. We have to buy the people, and we have to buy the people by convincing them if they work hard, they too can be rich one day.” [Americans] have gone along with it for the last 30 years.

Please excuse me while I go take a shower to wash any lingering “Michael Moore Filth” off. Let’s just say that anyone who thinks Hank Paulson (whom he discusses in the article) is anything close to resembling a capitalist needs their head examined. As I pointed out a while ago here, there’s a term for what Paulson and the rest of those thugs in Washington were and are, and it’s not “capitalist” – it’s “fascist”.

Intel’s “ridiculous antitrust defense”
Apparently, Intel is daring to defend the anti-trust charges leveled at them by the EU in ways that have the editorial staff at the New York Times, among others, seeing red. What is their supposedly egregious defense? As Tom Bowden of the Ayn Rand Center writes:

It is the assertion that Intel, a corporation, has a right to the same due process of law that individuals have. Intel’s argument, as summarized by the Times, is that corporations “are entitled to the due process rights that European human rights law grants in criminal cases to ensure that the accused—usually powerless individuals—are not steamrollered by the overwhelming power of the state.” Those due process rights were violated, Intel alleges, by the European Commission, which “unfairly plays the role of prosecutor, judge, and jury.”

…

In the Intel case, consider the Times’s statement that due process laws are designed to protect “powerless” individuals from being “steamrollered by the overwhelming power of the state.” What’s the implication? That businesses are not powerless and are not therefore subject to being steamrollered by the state. Thus, the Times casually refers to Intel’s “annual sales of $38 billion” and its “squadron of lawyers,” as if any rich corporation is by definition shielded from the governmental oppression that can befall a lone individual.

But this ignores the crucial difference between economic power and political power. Intel’s economic power is the power to produce desirable products for voluntary trade to mutual benefit. The EU’s political power is the power of physical force: guns, jails, and fines. Intel cannot force anyone to buy its computer chips—customers are always free to accept or reject the terms on which Intel offers its products on the market. But the EU can force Intel to hand over its profits.

Finally – Paul Hsieh has an excellent OpEd in the Denver Post today on “The Real Stakes” of the current healthcare debate.

Advocates of universal health care (like President Obama) typically claim that health care is a “right” which should be guaranteed to all Americans. But this is a serious misunderstanding of the nature of rights. Rights are freedoms of action (such as the right to free speech), not automatic claims on goods or services that must be produced by another. There is no such thing as a right to a car — or a tonsillectomy.

Individuals are legitimately entitled to any health care that they purchase with their own money, is promised by prior contract (e.g., insurance), or given to them as voluntary charity. Any attempt to otherwise guarantee an alleged “right” to health care must necessarily violate the actual rights of those compelled to provide such care and those compelled to pay for it.

Go read the entire piece. It’s fantastic.