The Role of Fiction in Promoting a Free Society

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A woman sat down with some paper, pen in hand, and started to write. Line by line she wrote out in longhand the plot she had devised. The characters she would invent would become known to a large percentage of the public.

She had a message, something she wanted to say. And, when she was finished, she had written a novel that helped spawn a political movement that changed the face of America.

Many viciously attacked her. The literary elite would pan the novel, claiming it was too melodramatic, yet in the century it was written its influence was only second to the Bible. The novel created a firestorm, with many praising it highly, while others seemed obsessed with attacking it. In the first years it sold some 300,000 copies. Some years later, during a time of national crisis, it suddenly became a best seller once again.

The woman was Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the novel was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe was appalled at the existence of slavery, and wrote in a white heat, trying to show the world the evil of this thing called slavery.

Many antislavery books had previously been written. Serious books discussing the detrimental effects of slavery were not uncommon. Theological treatises, for and against, were published and barely read. But, within one year of publication, Stowe’s little book had sold 300,000 copies. Although, only published in book form in 1852, no other book, except the Bible, sold more copies during the entire 19th century.

At Their Own Liberty: Individual Initiative and Destruction

Visitors from around the world flock to San Francisco and often find the city too cold. Residents laugh at that. The tourists come at the height of summer. Yet San Francisco seems warmest in the autumn.  That October day was no different; perfect weather for game three of the World Series. The Series was entirely a Bay area event that year with San Francisco’s Giants playing their rivals, the Oakland Athletics. The A’s had won the first two games, but game three was being played in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park and the Giants were hoping for a home-team advantage.

I was sitting at my desk in my bookstore when the computer screen flickered briefly. I tried to hit the two keys on the keyboard that would save my document, but the keyboard wouldn’t hold still long enough. The screen went dark and the lights inside the bookstore went out.

A roar drowned out the sound of the rush-hour traffic. At four minutes past five the afternoon traffic was always heavy, but this wasn’t traffic; it was the city itself—the entire city—groaning as it was lurched from side to side. Waves moved under my feet, I was surfing on land. The waves clearly came from the south hitting the front of the shop and flowing through it. Books on the shelves lurched first toward me, sprang back and then jerked in the opposite direction.

How many more minutes would go by before it would stop? What seemed so endless at the time was just 15 seconds in duration.

The Logical Contradictions of Left and Right.

Some people still fall for the idea that conservatives are for "limited government." I've been arguing for years that they are not. My view is that they are socialists of the soul to remake man morally. In this sense they are like our socialist comrades who want to use the state to achieve the goals they lay out. They only differ on the ends, not on the means.

We classical liberals talk about the means. We argue that the means must be considered and that it wrong to use force against peaceful individuals who are not violating the rights of others. We might disagree over times when such use might be necessary but our assumption, at the beginning of the debate, is that such a thing is wrong on the face of it, and if done must be justified by reams of evidence.

The conservative and the progressive doesn't have this problem. They don't worry about the means, only about the ends.

Many people have assumed that conservatives actually do support small, limited government. They make that mistake because some people identified as conservatives actually had a liberal streak and supported such ideas. Goldwater and Reagan were two prominent examples. Both men understood the basic liberal principles and were liberals to varying degrees’ though I think they were convinced too easily on when to make the exceptions.

The Libertarian wants small government across the board—at least the real libertarians do (I exclude the racists, the nationalists, and such from this category). The Socialists, both of the Conservative stripe and the Progressive one, sometimes want limited government and sometimes don't. They appear inconsistent. They are inconsistent if you look at the means only. If you look at the ends they usually aren't inconsistent. Where the libertarian differs is that he is not only consistent when it comes to ends, but to means as well.

Michael Medved, who used to write mediocre film reviews, and now writes bad conservative columns, realizes that conservatives look inconsistent. At the rabies-infested Townhall.com site he writes:

And how do we resolve some of the apparent conservative contradictions? -We want smaller government and fewer public employees at the same time we want to hire more soldiers, cops and border patrol agents. -We favor choice in education, but oppose choice in abortion policy. -We emphatically support the institution of marriage, but don't want government backing for gays and lesbians who seek to get married.

Marriage Equality Does Expand Liberty

The Foundation for Economic Education presented a debate on marriage equality. Richard Lorenc, from FEE, argued that marriage equality expands liberty. His opponent, Richard Esposito spends a lot of time spewing out "facts" that are half-truths and often out of context. FEE asks people to vote for the best one at the cost of $1 each, which says nothing about quality of arguments, only intensity of feelings about gay marriage.

Gay people and their supporters are passionate about this and so are anti-gay people. Most fall into neither camp and don't feel strongly. Those at the extreme "anti" side of the spectrum tend to be religious and obsessed with this. They outnumber gay people by about 4 to 1. In that sense, the FEE debate asking for $1.00 per vote is more likely to favor the anti-gay marriage side of the debate.

Let me first comment on Mr. Lorenc's case. His arguments are sound in theory, though short on fact, choosing to focus on the principles alone. Esposito, however, makes a lot of factual claims, but is weak on theory and his factual claims are often taken out of context, or are at best half truths.

Lorenc notices the argument for same-sex marriage has "distinct Hayekian undertones." He is correct about this and we present a more-in depth Hayekian analysis at the link.

Lorenc says "legalizing gay marriage simply expands the number of potential marriage licenses, removing the arbitrary limit that an opposite-sex definition creates." It does expand the number of people who may marry, but does much more than that as well. Currently, the state can deny marriage contracts—at least those of legal consequence—from gay couples. When we pass marriage equality, we remove that power from the state. Marriage, when one looks at what it does, also reduces the amount of control the state has over a couple. The amount of revenue it can extract from them is significantly reduced. In fact, anti-gay conservatives actually raised this issue before the Iowa Supreme Court, complaining that allowing gays to marry would reduce tax collections, and thus reduce their subsidies to straight couples. The Court mentioned this argument in their ruling in Varnum v. Brien: "due to our laws granting tax benefits to married couples the State of Iowa would reap less tax revenue if individual taxpaying gay and lesbian people were allowed to obtain a civil marriage." (p. 60.)

First Account for Me: Libertarianism and Facts

There is a monologue toward the end of Peter Schaffer’s play Equus which I find fascinating. Dr. Martin Dysart is a psychologist dealing with a case he finds particularly disturbing. It forces him to rethink the entire foundation of his life’s work. He says of the case:

“It asks questions I've avoided all my professional life. A child is born into a world of phenomena, all equal in their power to enslave. It sniffs, it sucks, it strokes its eyes over the whole, uncountable range. Suddenly, one strikes. Then another. Then another. Why? Moments snap together,like magnets forging a chain of shackles. Why? I can trace them. I can, with time, pull them apart again. But why, at the start, they were ever magnetized at all...just those particular moments of experience and no others—I do not know. And nor does anybody else! If I don't know—if I can never know -what am I doing here? I don't mean clinically or socially doing, but fundamentally. These whys, these questions, are fundamental. Yet they have no place in a consulting room. So then, do I? Do any of us? This is the feeling, more and more within me—No Place. Displacement. ‘Account for me’...says staring Equus. ‘First, account for me!’"

I use this as an introduction to a particular kind of libertarian. Libertarians like to think in terms of principles—which is important. Some assume, however, that once a principle is adopted it is immune to facts and they need not consider them. I had one libertarian argue that “principles” exist so we don’t have to think about facts. I’m sorry, but they seem to have confused fundamentalist Christianity with libertarianism.

First, it is damn difficult to get principles right if facts are wrong. Principles are derived from facts. Add wrong facts together and the principle is not just in error, but could be damn lethal. There are many principles that are deadly and being a libertarian doesn’t make your principles automatically beneficial.

Second, all principles are tested by facts. If new facts seem to contradict your principles, you have to consider whether the principle needs adjusting. Facts test theories. If the theories don’t hold up against the facts, the rational conclusion is that the theories are wrong. Fundamentalists just dismiss inconvenient facts.

The “fact” ought to be inside your head screaming, “Account for me! First account for me!”

It is fine to use principles to make decisions when existing facts are consistent with them. Adding new facts changes nothing unless they contradict the principle. A principle, once accepted, is not set in cement, it is always open to question if new evidence contradicts it.

Fundamentalist libertarians go wrong when they think their principles are set in cement and ignore facts to their beliefs. They have ceased to be rational libertarians and have become faith-based libertarians.

The Day Ayn Rand Died

This original Rand photo is for sale.

Ayn Rand was dead.

 My heart sank. I was living in the small town of Willimantic, Connecticut, not far from New York City. The newspaper said that the funeral would be at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home.

 I knew that I had to be there. I needed to say good bye and to say thank you.

In high school I was ashamed of my intellect and abilities. Throughout junior high I was pretty much a straight A student. I was the youngest member of the National Honour Society at the school, all the others were finishing their studies while I had barely just begun.

At my 8th grade graduation I listened to a millionaire motivational speaker tell us about possibility thinking. I always knew that more was possible but it was the “more” that frightened me.

 Each year the school gave an award to a student who exemplified intellect and maturity. The thought of winning terrified me. As we approached the moment that the award winner would be announced my heart raced. There was a horrid terror gripping my emotions.

The last thing I wanted was to win. The last thing I wanted was to be ridiculed for achieving something. The ethos of the other students was one that despised intelligence and accomplishment except that which was achieved by brute force. 

Playing God & Why Somebody Has To Do It

Prince Charles warned of the “disastrous consequences” of biotechnology. The precise dangers were never revealed. But according to Reuters he said, “tampering with nature is an affront to God.”

Conservative historian Paul Johnson called biotechnology a “new, infant monster.” Gertrude Himmelfarb has written that such research is contra naturn (against nature) and laments that this alone is not longer sufficient to put the fear of God into scientists.

But throughout human history each new scientific discovery was subjected to the same assault.