A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders, Rasmussen Reports, 6/20/10

When activists (who are not necessarily students) were able to delay construction of a UC Berkeley sports center by living in trees for 21 months, there was no review of what went wrong.

When protesters with torches vandalized UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s home, there was no review. But when UC police arrested 46 people demonstrating against higher-education cuts by occupying Wheeler Hall on Nov. 20, there were complaints that police overreacted. And so — with authorities, not anarchists in the sights — a review was born.

Last week, UC Berkeley released the 128-page report. In academic fashion, it notes two forces that converted “an animated but essentially non-violent protest into a raw power struggle between demonstrators and police” — without overtly taking sides.

There were officers, who in a “series of over-reactions by insufficiently supervised police” at moments overreacted, intensifying fears among students. Then there were demonstrators, mostly “young, sincere, and emotionally mobile” students, but also “a smaller group” that “set out to instigate confrontations with police” and provoke them “into high-visibility over-reactions that could be used to inflame the crowd and escalate its aggressiveness.”

The review served a useful purpose in that it details the need for campus police to prepare for the worst and, when it occurs, to communicate with demonstrators and other law enforcement personnel who come to their aid.

There are also some heroes in the review, like Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard, who took the initiative to advise Wheeler Hall occupiers via megaphone that if they wanted to leave peacefully, they should sit down before the police came in. “As it turned out,” the report notes, “all the occupiers followed this wise advice.”

Two aspects of the report stand out for me.

First, there’s this dubious theory on the use of riot gear by officers from UC and other departments called to aid the scene: “If the police had not worn riot gear, there never would have been a need for it.”

While the review purports not to take a side on this theory, the review board continues, “We wonder whether it was wise to have some of the mutual aid squads try to move through the crowd in rigid, formal, militaristic formation.”

I object.

For nearly two years, UC delivered energy bars and water to trespassing tree sitters lest activists get hungry or thirsty and fall from a tree. Do not tell me that the university is supposed to take every precaution coddling activists breaking the law, then risk the safety of men and women dispatched to ensure the peace in dangerous hot spots.

Which leads to the other issue — that student protest is practically a major at Berkeley. UC police arrested a professor for cutting the crime scene tape outside Wheeler Hall. Some students told the review board that they ended up at the Nov. 20 protest simply because they wanted to be part of “the Berkeley experience.”

Unfortunately, this means, the review notes, “many students reportedly do not understand that disobedience of campus rules (even quite ‘civil’ disobedience) can affect their academic standing, that it can jeopardize their ability to continue their education here, permanently mar their record, perhaps even prevent them from receiving a degree whose other requirements have been satisfied.

“Moreover, the rules as written are not enforced consistently.”

Not enforced consistently? Hey, it’s news to learn that the rules are enforced at all. University spokesman Dan Mogulof told me that the Center for Student Conduct adjudicates these cases, but the majority of Nov. 20 “cases are still unresolved.”

Please observe: The academic year is over.

What is the penalty for occupying a building? Associated Students President Noah Stern told me, “It is not clear what the penalties are for a violation.” He added that due-process options slow down the system.

Student advocate Kelly Fabian explained in an e-mail that punishment for student violations could range from a “warning with community service to suspensions of varying lengths.” Alas, that doesn’t tell students much. If there is punishment, it is veiled.

I want to make this clear: I support all students’ rights to protest and exercise their First Amendment rights. But students and activists do not have the right to take over an institution that is supposed to be dedicated not to protest, but to higher learning.

If students want to engage in civil disobedience that trespasses on the university’s vital education function, they should be ready to pay a penalty — like cleaning bathrooms for an afternoon. They’re adults. They should know this. Yet the occupiers of Wheeler Hall included a general amnesty for civil disobedience as one of their “demands.” They must think they have a right to dodge consequences.

Mogulof noted that the school wants to “communicate early and often with students about the time, place and manner rules that govern protest demonstrations and expression, to explain the consequences of violating those rules.”

He’s right, but there is a rub: If there are no consequences or no consequences within a meaningful timeframe, there’s not much to explain, is there?

http://capoliticalnews.com/blog_post/show/5453

State Senator Leland Yee, a liberal San Francisco Democrat, wants to bar California from adopting any new material from curriculum changes in Texas, which he and other critics view as right-wing revisionism. Though much publicized, the charge fails to stand up, but some textbooks do need correction. Those would be California textbooks, and this is not a new problem.

“They’re all horrors, and there is no reason for them.” State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said that in 1988 about California’s watered-down texts. Honig, a liberal San Francisco Democrat, duly invited scholar Diane Ravitch to revise California’s history curriculum, which had been tasked to instill pride in accredited victim groups.

“Telling publishers that their books must instill pride only guarantees a phony version of feel-good history,” Ravitch wrote. “Publishers, as a result, bend over backward to be positive, whether writing about the genocidal reign of Mao Tse-tung (presumably to avoid offending his admirers) or the unequal treatment of women in Islamic societies (to avoid offending Muslims).”

Texts should be accurate, Ravitch wrote, “but to impose contemporary political requirements on how the events are portrayed only ensures that the history we teach our students is inaccurate and dishonest.” In California, it certainly has been that.

The textbook An Age of Voyages: 1350-1600 showed Sikh founder Guru Nanak wearing a crown instead of a turban, and a beard that was trimmed instead of long, as alert Sikhs pointed out. At the time, the California Department of Education had no mechanism for ensuring that textbooks were “factually accurate.” Little wonder that errors became commonplace.

“Studies have found hundreds of errors in California textbooks,” says the website of the Textbook Trust, a watchdog group. The mistakes include geography, such as the notion that California’s southern border is the Rio Grande. It isn’t, and that river ventures nowhere near the Golden State, whose textbooks also fail to get math right.

A second-grade math text used in 79 schools in California’s capital city of Sacramento contends that five times three equals five. The book, fully approved by the state, is part of a series published by MacMillan/McGraw-Hill and used through the sixth grade. In the nearby Folsom Cordova district teachers have students hunting for errors as part of a learning exercise. The eager fourth-grade students documented 90 errors in the math series, for which the district paid $1.9 million.

So the kids shape up as smarter than the publisher’s fact-checkers and anyone in what the Sacramento Bee calls the “labyrinthian process” of approving the books for the classroom. So do the teachers who are correcting the errors with red pen. Many other state-approved California textbooks could be marked up.

Meanwhile, the “Texas Curriculum Massacre,” (Newsweek ) that so disturbed Sen. Yee and other liberals, is overblown. As David Upton, assistant professor of politics at the University of Dallas, noted, this may not be the best curriculum, but “no one has pointed to a particular significant error of fact.” And contrary to accusations, Upton writes, “the curriculum is replete with specific references to Jefferson, religious freedom, the civil rights movement, and the achievements and struggles of women and minorities.”

These will never be enough to assuage critics on the left, argues Amity Shlaes, of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. “Whatever lines it inserts about church, state, hip-hop or the Alamo,” writes Shlaes, “the board will not restore true balance. It will merely manage to make the curriculum a little less skewed to the left.” In a more general way, she adds, “the left also hijacked American culture” so the Texas social studies issue makes sense as a “small check on a larger problem.”

Yet another problem lurks in the background, the government education system itself, an unreformable collective farm of ignorance and mediocrity. This system encourages mass purchase of textbooks, with large states like Texas and California setting the pace. The books may be politically correct, and instill pride in Maoists and Muslims, but that is not the same as accurate. That is why Guru Nanak gets a crown instead of a turban, the Rio Grande gets misplaced, and five times three equals five. Call it the stupidity inherent in the system.

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd.

A December 18 Washington Post poll, released on the final day of the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit, reported “four in ten Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.” Nor is the poll an outlier. Several recent polls have found “climate change” skepticism rising faster than sea levels on Planet Algore (not to be confused with Planet Earth, where sea levels remain relatively stable).

Many of the doubt-inducing climate scientists and their media acolytes attribute this rising skepticism to the stupidity of Americans, philistines unable to appreciate that there is “a scientific consensus on climate change.” One of the benefits of the recent Climategate scandal, which revealed leading climate scientists manipulating data, methods, and peer review to exaggerate the evidence of significant global warming, may be to permanently deflate the rhetorical value of the phrase “scientific consensus.”

More:

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/when-to-doubt-a-scientific-consensus/

Artwork as a form of imitation can be used as learning tool for mankind to further its understanding of itself and the world around it, or so thought Aristotle. This conception of the utility of art is best revealed in the Classical sculpture of the Greeks; the human form was shown to be divinely perfect, not out of merely a love of physical beauty, but to reveal the potential of moral excellence in humanity. The perfection of the body was used to allegorically display the beauty of moral virtue. To ennoble the human form then was to show the best at what humanity could be, or to follow the philosophy of Aristotle, to pursue its Arête. This is a common trend that influenced the content of art all the way up to the Victorian age.

If we follow this line of thinking, what is revealed about the philosophical of content of post modern (post Marxist?) art?

Plato in his famous Republic correctly believed that art in all its forms had a direct bearing on the condition of its society, and in turn was a reflection of the condition of that society. What does it say then to depict humanity is such crude caricature; is not the debasement of the human form a judgment of its spiritual condition? And if you view humanity in such cynical terms, why then would you aspire to give such wretched creatures liberty to dictate the course of their own lives? Perhaps instead of being a reflection on the world and its inhabitants, this warped picture we are given of reality indicates instead a warped mind on the part of the artist.

Since childhood I remember reading about how “horrible” the art of the Nineteenth Century was and about the “great” pioneers of “Modern” Art who destroyed the age old traditions Europe Art. Marxist scholar Georg Lukács asked “Who will save us from Western civilization?” And decided to create “a culture of pessimism” and “a world that has been abandoned by God.” The fruits of Cultural Marxism ugly “art” made to drive people to despair. Remember if you like the second picture better you are “hateful,” a “Racist,” and a “Neo-fascist.”

The goal of Victorian Art as stated by Burne-Jones:
“I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be — in a better light than any light that ever shone — in a land no one can define or remember, only desire — and from forms divinely beautiful.”

Staircase:

Harvard’s Warriors
Honoring the Medal of Honor recipients.
BY Jules Crittenden
November 23, 2009, Vol. 15, No. 10

Cambridge, Mass.

It was like a fleeting glimpse of an alternative world: the greatness of the past and what might be in the future, brought together for a moment at Harvard University last week.

It was the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month at Harvard’s Memorial Church, built to commemorate students lost in the First World War. Decorated with eagles, crosses, and the sculpted form of a woman weeping over a fallen crusader, walls inscribed with the names of Harvard’s war dead, the church was filled with martial music, the solemn tramp of a color guard, the echoing notes of “Taps,” and the slow tolling of a bell in honor of 16 dead American heroes–Harvard’s own Medal of Honor recipients, recognized as a group for the first time.

The Reverend Peter Gomes, Harvard’s chaplain, addressed the gathering of generals, admirals, active-duty servicemen, cadets, and grizzled combat veterans, welcoming them to the sanctum of Harvard’s illustrious military tradition. He reminded them that the university’s association with service and sacrifice is older than the nation, dating back more than 350 years.

More: http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/218pyowq.asp

My high school history teacher used to say: “You think I am conservative; I am really an old-fashioned liberal.” We thought he was just making a joke, but the fact is, he was right on target. This article was written in 1955…before most of you ever had a chance to be liberal.

Liberalism

By Milton Friedman

Liberalism, as it developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and flowered in the nineteenth, puts major emphasis on the freedom of individuals to control their own destinies. Individualism is its creed; collectivism and tyranny its enemy. The state exists to protect individuals from coercion by other individuals or groups and to widen the range within which individuals can exercise their freedom; it is purely instrumental and has no significance in and of itself. Society is a collection of individuals and the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts. The ultimate values are the values of the individuals who form the society; there are no super-individual values or ends. Nations may be convenient administrative units; nationalism is an alien creed.

In politics, liberalism expressed itself as a reaction against authoritarian regimes. Liberals favored limiting the rights of hereditary rulers, establishing democratic parliamentary institutions, extending the franchise, and guaranteeing civil rights. They favored such measures both for their own sake, as a direct expression of essential political freedoms, and as a means of facilitating the adoption of liberal economic measures.

In economic policy, liberalism expressed itself as a reaction against government intervention in economic affairs. Liberals favored free competition at home and free trade among nations. They regarded the organization of economic activity through free private enterprise operating in a competitive market as a direct expression of essential economic freedoms and as important also in facilitating the preservation of political liberty. They regarded free trade among nations as a means of eliminating conflicts that might otherwise produce war. Just as within a country, individuals following their own interests under the pressures of competition indirectly promote the interests of the whole; so, between countries, individuals following their own interests under conditions of free trade, indirectly promote the interests of the world as a whole. By providing free access to goods, services, and resources on the same terms to all, free trade would knit the world into a single economic community.

‘Liberalism’ has taken on a very different meaning in the twentieth century and particularly in the United States. This difference is least in the concrete political forms favored: both the nineteenth century liberal and the twentieth century liberal favor or profess to favor parliamentary forms, nearly universal adult franchise, and the protection of civil rights. But even in politics there are some not unimportant differences: in any issue involving a choice between centralization or decentralization of political responsibility, the nineteenth century liberal will resolve any doubt in favor of strengthening the importance of local governments at the expense of the central government; for, to him, the main desideratum is to strengthen the defenses against arbitrary government and to protect individual freedom as much as possible; the twentieth century liberal will resolve the same doubt in favor of increasing the power of the central government at the expense of local government; for, to him, the main desideratum is to strengthen the power of the government to do ‘good’ ‘for’ the people.

The difference is much sharper in economic policy where ‘liberalism’ now stands for almost the opposite of its earlier meaning. Nineteenth century liberalism favors private enterprise and a minimum of government intervention. Twentieth century liberalism distrusts the market in all its manifestations and favors widespread government intervention in and control over, economic activity. Nineteenth century liberalism favors individualist means to foster its individualist objectives. Twentieth century liberalism favors collectivist means while professing individualist objectives. And its objectives are individualist in a different sense; its keynote is welfare, not freedom. As [Austrian-American economist Joseph] Schumpeter remarks, ‘as a supreme, if unintended, compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label.’ The rest of this article is devoted entirely to ‘liberalism’ in its original meaning; and the term will be used throughout in that sense.

Political liberalism and economic liberalism derive from a single philosophy. Yet they have frequently led independent lives in application, which suggests that their relation to one another deserves examination in the realm of ideas as well. During the nineteenth century, many countries adopted large elements of economic liberalism, yet maintained political forms that were neither liberal nor developing at any rapid pace in a liberal direction. Russia and Japan are perhaps the outstanding examples. During the twentieth century, countries that have achieved and maintained most of the concrete elements of the liberal political program have been moving away from liberal and toward collectivist economic policies. Great Britain is the most striking example; certainly for the first half of this century, the general drift of British economic policies has been toward greater direct intervention and control by the state; this drift has been checked in the past few years but whether the check is more than transitory remains to be seen. Norway, Sweden, and, with a lag of several decades, the United States, exhibit much the same tendencies.

As already noted, liberal thinkers and writers in the nineteenth century regarded political reforms as in large part a means of achieving economic liberalism. The earlier political forms concentrated political power in the hands of groups whose special interests were opposed to such measures of economic liberalism as free trade. Let all the people have a vote, and there would be, so liberals like [British economist] James Mill argued, no special interest. And since the general interest was simply the interest of all the individuals composing the society, and these in turn would be furthered most effectively by economic liberalism, democracy could be expected to rid itself of the dead hand of government and to give maximum scope to the invisible hand of self-interest.

In the twentieth century, a group of liberal thinkers, especially [American economist] Henry Simons, [Austrian-born economist] Ludwig von Mises, and [Austrian-born economist] Friedrich von Hayek, have emphasized that this relation also runs in reverse: that economic liberalism is a means of achieving political freedom. Economic liberalism alone does not guarantee political freedom—witness the examples of Russia and Japan cited earlier. But economic liberalism is, it is argued, an indispensable prerequisite for political freedom. Historically, there are no countries that enjoyed any substantial measure of political freedom that did not also practice a substantial measure of economic liberalism. Analytically, the preservation of political freedom requires protection against the concentration of power; it requires the existence of largely independent loci of power. Political power by its nature tends to be concentrated; economic power can be highly deconcentrated if it is organized by means of an impersonal market; economic power can thus be an independent offset to political power. Let both economic and political power be in the same hands and the only protection of political freedom is the good will of those in power—a frail recourse particularly in view of the corrupting influence of power and the talents that make for political survival.

A few examples may clarify the asserted relation between economic and political freedom, though they cannot of course demonstrate it. A characteristic of a politically free society is that proponents of radical reform in the structure of the society are permitted to express their views and to seek to persuade their fellows. It is a testimonial to the freedom of the United States that socialist and communist magazines and papers are published. Suppose a change to a collectivist economic society with government control of the bulk of economic activity. How could the proponents of a return to capitalism secure the resources with which to publish a magazine urging their point of view? Through a government fund for dissidents? Through the collection of small sums from millions of government employees? If they had the resources in the form of funds, what guarantee could they have that the government would sell them paper on the same terms as it does to others? In an economically liberal society, it is possible to get the general resources with which to spread dissenting views either by subsidies from a small number of individuals or by selling a magazine or other publication to many; and if there is a reasonable chance that enough people will want to buy a magazine expressing the minority view to make it profitable, even people who disagree fundamentally with the view will in their own self-interest provide the resources to make its establishment possible. In effect, there are thousands or millions of independent loci of power to decide whether an idea is worth trying to promote, rather than the few or one in a political structure. And given the general resources, there is no further obstacle: in a thoroughly free market, the sellers of paper do not know whether the paper is going to the Daily Worker or the Foundation for Economic Education. Perhaps some similar impersonal and effective guarantees of freedom to promote dissenting views could be contrived for a collectivist society; certainly no proponents of such a society have yet suggested any or even faced this problem squarely.

As another example, consider those individuals who have lost or resigned government jobs in the United States in recent years because they were or were accused of being Communists. Government employment in our society is not a right and it is entirely appropriate that at least certain governmental positions should not be open to actual or suspected Communists. It is easy also to see how strong public feeling can lead to a closing of all government posts to Communists. Yet, the maintenance of political freedom surely requires that people be free not only to believe in but also to advocate Communism; those of us who abhor Communism do so in part precisely because we know it would not grant us freedom to express contrary views; our defense against Communism is to persuade our fellow citizens of its evil, not to suppress its advocates. But if government employment were the only employment, nominal freedom to express extreme views would be a mockery. The exercise of this freedom would be at a prohibitive price—namely, giving up the possibility of earning a living. By contrast, in the existing society, those who have left government employment have had a wide variety of other opportunities. The way a private market economy protects these opportunities is revealed most clearly by considering an individual who goes into farming and produces, say, wheat. The purchasers of the wheat do not know whether it has been produced by a Communist or a Fascist, a white man or a Negro; they could hardly discriminate if they wanted to. The competitive market in this way separates economic activity from intellectual or political activity and the more competitive the market, the more sharply it does so. It is a paradox that minorities who have in this way the most to gain from a competitive society have contributed unduly large numbers to the ranks of its opponents.

Many writers who emphasize the importance of economic liberalism as a prerequisite for political freedom have interpreted tendencies toward collectivism in recent decades as betokening a trend toward political ’serfdom.’ They may yet be proved right. So far, however, the relation they stress has manifested itself mostly in a very different way: namely, the collectivist tendencies have been checked because they tended to interfere with civil and political freedom; when the conflict has been reasonably clear, the collectivist policy has frequently given way. Perhaps the most striking example is British experience with the compulsory allocation of labor. Socialist economic thinking in the postwar period called for compulsory allocation of labor to achieve ’social priorities’; though some compulsory powers were provided by law, they were never widely used; the powers themselves were permitted to lapse; and the whole character of attempted economic policy changed because compulsory allocation of labor so clearly interfered with widely and deeply cherished civil rights.

We turn now to a more detailed examination of the content of liberalism, particularly economic liberalism, and of the role it assigns to the state. This examination deals primarily with the principles that liberalism provides for judging social action. Any set of concrete proposals that these principles lead liberals to favor will vary with the particular circumstances of time and place, and consequently are less fundamental and invariant than the principles themselves. There is some possibility of being reasonably comprehensive with respect to principles; none, with respect to concrete proposals.

Principles for social action must be based on both ultimate values and a conception of the nature of man and the world. Liberalism takes freedom of the individual—really, of the family—as its ultimate value. It conceives of man as a responsible individual who is egocentric, in the sense not of being selfish or self-centered but rather of placing greater reliance on his own values than on those of his neighbors. It takes as the major problem of modern society the achievement of liberty and individual responsibility in a world that requires the co-ordination of many millions of people in production to make full use of modern knowledge and technology. The challenge is to reconcile individual freedom with widespread interdependence.

The liberal answer derives from the elementary—yet even today little understood—proposition that both sides to an economic transaction can benefit from it; that a gain to a purchaser need not be at the expense of a loss to the seller. If the transaction is voluntary and informed, both sides benefit; the buyer gets something he values more than whatever he gives up, and so does the seller. In consequence, voluntary exchange is a way to get cooperation among individuals without coercion. The reliance on voluntary exchange, which means on a free market mechanism, is thus central to the liberal creed.

The working model which embodies this vision of a society organized through voluntary exchange is a free private enterprise exchange economy. The elementary social unit—the family or household—is generally too small for efficient use of modern productive techniques. Accordingly, the productive unit takes the form of an enterprise which purchases productive services—labor, the use of capital, and so on—from households and other enterprises and sells the goods or services it produces to households and other enterprises. The introduction of such enterprises does not change the strictly voluntary and individual character of the cooperation, provided two conditions are satisfied: first, the enterprises are private, which means that the ultimate locus of authority and responsibility is an individual or a group of individuals; second, individuals are free to sell or not sell their services or to buy or not buy products from particular enterprises, which means, also, that they are free to establish new enterprises.

The final point deserves special emphasis in view of widespread misunderstanding of it. ‘Free’ in the liberal conception of free enterprise means freedom to establish enterprises, not freedom of established enterprises to do whatever they want. This is one of those familiar cases in which absolute freedom is impossible because the freedom of some limits the freedom of others: the freedom of existing enterprises to do whatever they want, including combining to keep new entrants out or to fix prices and divide markets, may limit the freedom of others to establish new enterprises or to make the best bargain they can. When such a conflict arises, the liberal tradition regards freedom of entry and of competition as basic; it therefore justifies state action to preserve competition and to make selling a product of higher quality or at a lower price the only means whereby existing enterprises can prevent new enterprises from being established. The most difficult practical problem in this area and one on which liberals have spoken with many tongues is combinations among laborers—the trade union problem.

In the free enterprise exchange economy envisaged by liberalism, the primary role of government is to preserve the rules of the game by enforcing contracts, preventing coercion, providing a stable monetary framework, and, as just noted, keeping markets free. Beyond this there are only three major grounds on which government intervention is justified: (1) ‘natural monopoly’ or similar market imperfections; (2) the existence of substantial ‘neighborhood effects’; (3) protection of children and other irresponsible individuals.

An exchange is ‘voluntary’ only when essentially equivalent alternatives exist; when an individual can choose whether to buy from one enterprise or another, to work for one enterprise or another. Monopoly means the absence of alternatives and thus is incompatible with strictly voluntary exchange. Monopoly may arise from combinations among enterprises in circumstances where competition is entirely feasible, and, as already noted, liberal tradition justifies state intervention to preserve competition in such cases. But monopoly may also be ‘natural,’ as in the textbook examples of a single spring providing drinking water, or of a product subject to such large economies of scale that the most efficient productive unit is large enough to serve the whole market. The only available alternatives are then all bad: government regulation, government ownership, or private monopoly, and the problem is to choose the least of these evils. As might be expected, liberals have no clear-cut answer. Henry Simons, after observing in the United States the consequences of government regulation of such alleged natural monopolies as the railroads, concluded that government ownership was the least of the evils when monopoly was inevitable. [German economist] Walter Eucken, after observing in Germany the consequences of government ownership, concluded that government control was the least of the evils. And some have argued that in a dynamic world private monopoly may well be, citing the case of the regulation of transportation in the United States as their prime example. The Interstate Commerce Commission was established to protect the public against the railroads when railroads probably did have a large element of natural monopoly. The development of highway and air transport has largely eliminated any natural monopoly element in railroads, yet instead of the abolition of the Interstate Commerce Commission, government control has been extended to these other transportation media. The ICC has become a means of protecting the railroads from the competition of trucks instead of the public from the absence of competition. Fortunately for the possibility of a liberal society, the area within which natural monopoly is a serious problem is exceedingly limited, so that no large amount of government intervention is called for on this score. In practice, the claim of natural monopoly is more often an excuse for intervention desired on other grounds than a valid justification for intervention.

A different kind of threat to strictly voluntary exchange arises from the so-called ‘neighborhood effect.’ This occurs when the action of one individual imposes significant costs on other individuals for which it is not feasible to make him compensate them or yields significant gains to other individuals for which it is not feasible to make them compensate him. A simple example is that of an individual polluting a stream. He has in effect forced other individuals further down the stream to exchange good water for bad; they clearly would have been willing to do so for a price; but it is not feasible to make this exchange the subject of voluntary agreement. Another, rather different example, is education. The education of a child is regarded as benefiting not only the child and his parents but also other members of society, since some minimum level of education is a prerequisite for a stable and democratic society. Yet it is not feasible to identify the particular individuals benefited by the education of any particular child, much less the money value of the benefit, and so to charge for the services rendered. In consequence there is justification on liberal grounds for the state requiring some minimum amount of education for all children, even though this is above the amount parents would otherwise provide, and for meeting some of the cost of education from taxes imposed on all members of society.

Of course, all actions of an individual involve some ‘unborne costs’ and ‘inappropriable benefits’ to third parties. It is always a question of judgment whether these are sufficiently great in any particular case to justify state intervention: the state too will be plagued by the difficulties of identifying costs and benefits that prevent voluntary exchange and there are other costs of state action. The liberal philosophy thus gives no hard and fast line separating appropriate from inappropriate state action in this area. But it does emphasize that, in deciding any particular case, one general cost of state action—one general neighborhood effect, as it were—must always be taken into account; namely, that the extension of state action involves an encroachment on individual freedom. The liberal regards this as a count against any proposal for state action, though by no means a fatal obstacle to it, and hence requires a clear net balance of gains over other costs before regarding the state action as justified.

The third ground on which liberalism justifies state intervention derives from an ambiguity in the ultimate objective rather than from the difficulty of achieving fully voluntary exchange. The belief in freedom is for ‘responsible’ individuals; and children and insane people cannot be regarded as ‘responsible.’ In general, this problem is avoided for children by treating the family as the basic unit of society and so regarding the parents as responsible for their children. In considerable measure, however, this procedure rests on expediency rather than principle. The problem of drawing a reasonable line between action justified on these paternalistic grounds and action that conflicts with the freedom of responsible individuals is clearly one to which no fully satisfactory—and certainly no simple—answer can be given.

A few additional examples may clarify the bearing of these principles in judging particular acts of social policy. Consider first a group of measures that clearly conflict with liberal principles: tariffs, direct controls of imports and exports, exchange control, general price controls. None of these can be justified on any of the grounds for state intervention that we have listed. Each represents an interference with the freedom of individuals to engage in any transactions that they want to, which do not have substantial effects on third parties, and thus involve a direct interference with essential freedoms. An extreme case which brings out this feature strikingly is the ‘tourist allowance’ incorporated in the exchange control regulations of a number of countries; as the Economist puts it, ‘it sets a limit on the length of time that even the most economical British resident can choose to spend abroad without asking the permission of some bureaucrat.’ Finally, most of these measures prevent the market from operating effectively and thus threaten the heart of the liberal system. For example, if a legal maximum price is established below the level that would otherwise prevail, a ’shortage’ will inevitably follow (as in housing under rent control); some method other than the free market will have to be used to ‘ration’ the available amount; and further government intervention replacing the market is set in train.

A second rather different example is medicine. As already noted, significant neighborhood effects justify substantial ‘public health’ activities: maintaining the purity of water, assuring proper sewage disposal, controlling contagious diseases. There is little or no justification on these grounds for state intervention into private medicine—the care and treatment of individuals. Under liberal principles, this is a function the market can and should perform. To the argument of the proponent of socialized medicine that there is great uncertainty about possible medical bills, the liberal will reply that the market is perfectly capable of providing private insurance; if people don’t want to pay the premium, that is their free choice. To the argument that people don’t get as much medical service as is ‘good’ for them, the liberal will reply that each man should judge for himself—not that he is necessarily the best judge but that he should make his own mistakes; insofar as we think he is making the wrong decision, there is no objection to telling him what we think and trying to persuade him, but there is no justification for making his decision.

A third example is public housing. It may be that certain types of housing, e.g., dense slum districts, impose higher costs of police and fire protection on the community. This literal ‘neighborhood effect,’ since its source can be identified, would justify higher taxes on such property than on others to meet these extra costs; it hardly justifies subsidies to housing. The main argument for public subsidy to housing is surely paternalistic: people ‘need’ or ‘deserve’ better housing, and it is appropriate to use public funds to provide housing. The liberal will object on two different levels. Given that some people are to be subsidized, why not give them the subsidy in general purchasing power and let them spend it as they will? Why say to them, we will give you a gift if you take it in the form of housing but not otherwise? Does this not involve an unnecessary restriction on their freedom? Second, he will question the redistribution of income itself that is involved in such a program—and, indeed, one advantage of making the subsidy explicit is that it would make clear what groups are being subsidized. Government relief of poverty, the liberal will support and welcome, primarily on the explicitly paternalistic ground of taking care of the irresponsible. But the more or less indiscriminate transfer of income involved in large scale public housing schemes, he will regard as undermining individual responsibility. The way to reduce inequality, he will urge, is not by the misleading palliative of sharing the wealth, but by improving the workings of the market, strengthening competition, and widening opportunities for individuals to make the most of their own qualities.

These two final examples illustrate how the central virtue of a liberal society is at the same time a major source of the objections to it: a liberal society gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want or thinks is ‘good’ for them; it makes it equally difficult for the benevolent and the malevolent to shape other people in their own image. At bottom of most arguments against the market is lack of belief in freedom—at least for other people—as an end.

[British philosopher] Adam Smith provides an excellent summary of the preceding discussion of the role of the state in a liberal society: ‘Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understanding: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.’

Noam Chomsky

The Anti-military Bias On Campus
November 23, 2005
By Jerry Coffee

Historically, college campuses have been the lightening rod for anti-military sentiment and violence. This has ranged from peaceful candlelight vigils to the occupation of administrative buildings, from the torching of ROTC facilities to the tragic deaths of students at Kent State during the Vietnam war. Even now there is strife on America’s campuses between academia and the military.

Now pending on the Supreme Court’s docket is the issue of campus recruiting by the military. Some “elite” East Coast universities showed their anti-military bias by banning military recruiters from their campuses alongside corporate recruiters. The Feds said fine, no recruiting, no federal funding. Since most campuses have reasonable nondiscrimination (equal opportunity) requirements for corporations recruiting on them, the American Taliban (aka the ACLU) jumped in and has tried to justify the ban on military recruiters based upon “the military’s discrimination against homosexuals” – a reference to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which basically means that homosexuals are welcome to serve in the military so long as they keep their sexual lives private. Many join and do.

Our own University of Hawaii is certainly no exception to this phenomenon.

I recently spent a couple of days on the Manoa campus attending sessions of the four-day symposium on “Literature and Film of the Vietnam War,” a potentially useful and enriching experience sponsored and very effectively organized by the English Department. Presenters included Denby Fawcett of KITV and Tad Bartimus of Hana, both of whom gave excellent teaching examples of how even much of their current writing is informed by their experiences as news correspondents in Vietnam. Unfortunately, they were more the exception than the rule as presenter after presenter drifted into angry and faithless anti-war/anti-military politicization of their presentations, if not by diatribe, then by constant innuendo.

The obvious “darling” of the symposium was Tim O’Brien, the prolific author of several Vietnam-based novels. He is talented and had much to teach in his keynote address, “Thirty Years After.” But, sadly, he frequently couldn’t resist politicizing his material with irrelevant anti-Iraq and anti-Bush rhetoric. And even when he did resist, fawning students or faculty in the audience would draw it out of him with their leading questions to which they already knew his answers.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, U.S. Army (Ret.) spoke one evening to an overflow crowd at the Campus Center. He spoke of his upbringing on Kauai and his Army career which culminated as the Chief of Staff of the Army. Apparently, his speech was not partisan enough for the audience comprised mostly of students and faculty, who had obviously expected him to air his well-publicized differences with the Bush administration on appropriate troop levels in Iraq. After his formal remarks, a long line formed for Q&A. Most of the questions were preceded by mini “speeches of opportunity” with anti-military undertones. But try as they may, the general refused to be sucked in – a form of diplomacy well-honed in a long, successful military career.

The current point of contention at Manoa is the pending establishment of the University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), a formal University-Navy research partnership with “win-win” written all over it. The partnership would facilitate joint projects with national security applications, most of which would have civilian applications as well. Nevertheless, the UARC was the catalyst for the illegal, weeklong student-faculty occupation of the president’s office last spring, and is still being portrayed as an evil monster octopus with tentacles probing and encircling every aspect of Manoa’s academic life.

Anti-UARC articles by Beverly Keever, professor of journalism at UH-Manoa, were passed out at the Shinseki event. After misrepresenting later emerging details of the UH-Navy contract as a diabolical coverup, she concludes, “These surprises … are likely to stoke rising tensions on UH’s flagship campus” – a prophecy she no doubt intends to help come true.

Granted, college is the time for idealism and hope, the time we enjoy before having to actually deal with the real world. But that doesn’t excuse university faculty – who are supposed to already be in the real world, and wiser than their students – from making and teaching the connection between academic freedom and the source of that freedom – our Constitution – which our military is sworn to “protect and defend.”

Find this article at: http://www.midweek.com/content/columns/coffeebreak_article/the_anti_military_bias_on_campus/