Ayn Rand As Atheist: Skepticamp Talk

I delivered a twenty-minute talk August 27 at Skepticamp in Colorado Springs titled, "Ayn Rand As Atheist." I open with the American Values Network attack on Ayn Rand for her atheism, then I describe what her atheism actually entails.



Somebody pointed out that I may not set up an early quote about duty well enough; it comes from Rand's Red Pawn (in Early Ayn Rand) and it comes from a character whose views Rand criticizes as typically Communist.

September 12 Update: Following is a write-up based on the same material.

That the left attacks Ayn Rand for her capitalist politics comes as no surprise. Today's left, though, attacks Rand not only for her political conclusions, but specifically for her atheism. Decades ago, usually only the religious right employed that line of attack (and did so with a vengeance). Today's left, far from consistently defending secular values and the separation of church and state, increasingly joins the religious right in bringing religion into politics.

Rand, on the other hand, consistently defended the separation of church and state. While she eloquently defended freedom of religion and freedom of conscience more broadly, she rejected religion throughout her career and defended reason based on the evidence of the natural world and objective values based on the life and happiness of the individual.

The leftist organization American Values Network prominently attacks Rand's atheism in a web page and related video, touting residual media ranging from Time to USA Today to Fox News. The organization argues:

GOP leaders and conservative pundits have brought upon themselves a crisis of values. Many who for years have been the loudest voices invoking the language of faith and moral values are now praising the atheist philosopher Ayn Rand whose teachings stand in direct contradiction to the Bible. Rand advocates a law of selfishness over love and commands her followers to think only of themselves, not others. She said her followers had to choose between Jesus and her teachings.

GOP leaders want to argue that they are defending Christian principles. ...As conservative evangelical icon Chuck Colson recently stated, Christians can not support Rand's philosophy and Christ's teachings. The choice is simple: Ayn Rand or Jesus Christ. We must choose one and forsake the other.

In fact American Values Network grossly distorts Rand's views -- she advocated appropriate loving relationships and thoughtfulness of others -- but the organization's deeper error lies in attacking Rand's atheism while explicitly advocating a religious basis for politics (specifically a Christian basis rooted in Biblical texts). Note the enormous difference between logically or factually questioning Rand's conclusions in politics and ethics (controversies beyond the scope of this article), and rejecting Rand's ideas because she does not ground them in religion. The latter sort of attack should concern everyone who values the separation of church and state.

As a silver lining, the American Values Network campaign raises awareness of Rand's criticisms of religion and faith-based politics, provoking thoughtful observers to discover the nature of Rand's actual views. Thankfully, Rand eloquently explained and defended her views on religion. Considered on their merits, rather than filtered and stripped out of context by partisan character assassins, Rand's positions constitute an important alternative to religion and a powerful defense of the separation of church and state. Those positions richly deserve a deeper look.

To set the context for Rand's atheism, consider that she was born in pre-Soviet Russia in 1905 into a Jewish family. Thus, she never grew up with strong Christian (or even religiously Jewish) beliefs. (See Objectively Speaking, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz, page 226.) Marxism dominated many intellectual circles in Russia, with its emphasis on collectivism and antagonism toward religion. Rand moved to the United States in 1926 where, understandably, her antipathy toward Communism dominated much of her early thinking. Not until many decades later, in the mid-1970s as Rand approached the end of her life, did the religious right make serious attempts to ground politics on religious beliefs.

Yet, as Rand developed her philosophy over time and emphasized different aspects of it as the culture around her changed, she constantly advocated the same worldview of using reason to achieve life-based values in the natural world. This was true of her first professional writing in 1932 until her final public appearances in the early 1980s. By any sensible measure, Rand must be counted among the greatest atheist intellectuals of the 20th Century.

Many of the basic elements of Rand's atheism appear in the first writing she sold, a 1932 screen treatment called Red Pawn. As the name suggests, the treatment largely deals with the evils of Soviet dictatorship, yet it also criticizes religion.

Rand criticizes the notion of duty that contradicts or stands beyond reason. The Communist character Commandant Karayev describes the duty-based view: "When it's duty, you don't ask why and to whom. You don't ask any questions. When you come up against a thing about which you can't ask any questions -- then you know you're facing your duty." (The Early Ayn Rand, edited by Leonard Peikoff, page 120.) Rand rejected any attempt to act outside of reason, whether from a religious or collectivist motivation.

Rand's description of Karayev reveals much about her views of religion as well as Communism:

He stood at the door. At one side of him was a painting of a saint burning at the stake...renouncing the pleasures and tortures of the flesh for the glory of his heaven; at the other side -- a poster of a huge machine with little ant-sized men, sweating at its gigantic levers, and the inscription: "Our duty is our sacrifice to the red collective of the Communistic State!" (The Early Ayn Rand page 136.)

For Rand, Communism does not fundamentally stand opposed to religion; instead, the Communists substituted the authority of the state (with its Commisars) for the authority of a religion (with its priests and sacred texts). While the religious authorities demand individual sacrifices for God or his works, the collectivist authorities demand sacrifices for the state or some collective end. As Leonard Peikoff summarizes in his introduction to the work, "Ayn Rand saw clearly that Communism, contrary to its propaganda, is not the alternative to religion, but only a secularized version of it, with the state assuming the prerogatives once reserved to the supernatural" (The Early Ayn Rand page 108).

For Rand, then, atheism is not enough. Atheism merely states a negative, an absence or rejection of theism and its supernatural realm. People can reject God and yet advocate irrational and even evil ideas. What matters is one's positive philosophy, and Rand's philosophy of reason grounded in natural evidence and earthly values consequently precludes theism. While American Christians reacted strongly against the atheism of Communism, particularly during the Cold War, Rand saw the similarities between the two camps as more substantial than the differences.

Rand's 1936 novel We the Living, again set in Soviet Russia, addresses (at its periphery) the ethics and psychology of religion. Consider a telling exchange between two of the characters, Kira and Andrei:

"Do you believe in God, Andrei?"

"No."

"Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. It's a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do -- then, I know they don't believe in life."

"Why?"

"Because, you see, God -- whatever anyone chooses to call God -- is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it." (We the Living, by Ayn Rand, page 97-98 in the 1959 Random House edition.)

Here Rand suggests that religion tends to stand in the way of worldly values by encouraging people to place their hopes of achieving values in some afterlife. One chooses this life and the values of this life, or one neglects or denigrates this life in favor of an imagined world beyond death. (That many people in fact act on contradictory ideas and commitments would not surprise Rand.) Rand presents a highly idealistic vision of values in the sense that they are achievable in this life.

Religion drops even further to the background in Rand's 1940 novel The Fountainhead, but that book too makes some criticisms of religion. Consider an exchange between the main character Howard Roark and his early mentor:

"Why did you decide to be an architect?"

"I didn't know it then. But it's because I've never believed in God."

"Come on, talk sense."

"Because I love this earth. That's all I love. I don't like the shape of things on this earth. I want to change them." (The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, page 39 in the 1994 Plume edition.)

The dialogue again emphasizes Rand's focus on this-worldly values, as opposed to the supernatural realm.

In his famous courtroom speech, Roark adds:

That man [the creator] the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures -- because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer -- because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. (The Fountainhead page 710.)

Here Rand presents religion as backwards mysticism that stands in the way of this-wordly values.

Rand's criticisms of religion become more pronounced and developed with Atlas Shrugged in 1957.

John Galt makes a number of pointed criticisms of religion (and collectivism) in his detailed radio address, including the following:

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive -- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society -- a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a superbeing embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself. (Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, page 1027 in the 1992 Dutton edition.)

The mystics of both schools... are germs that attack you through a single sore: your fear of relying on your mind. They tell you that they possess a means of knowledge higher than the mind, a mode of consciousness superior to reason... (Atlas Shrugged page 1034.)

Here Rand emphasizes the irrationality of supernatural religious presumptions or their collectivist counterparts. Whereas, in Red Pawn, Rand revealed the psychology of turning to religion in rejection of worldly values, in Atlas Shrugged she sees as a source of mysticism the fear of relying on one's reasoning mind as the sole means of knowledge.

Following the publication of Atlas Shrugged, Rand turned more to nonfiction writing and speaking, when she continued to attack the mysticism and self-sacrifice of religion and its subversion of reason in politics.

In 1960, Rand delivered an address at Yale titled, "Faith and Force: Destroyers of the Modern World." In this talk, she again explicitly defends reason against the mysticism of religion: "Reason is the faculty which perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses. Mysticism is the claim to a non-sensory means of knowledge." (Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand, page 63 in the 1984 Signet edition.) Moreover, Rand argues that rejecting reason in favor of religious faith in politics leads inexorably to conflict, violence, and rule by brute force:

[F]aith and force are corellaries, and... mysticism will always lead to the rule of brutality. The cause of it is contained in the very nature of mysticism. Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men... But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding [is possible]. (Philosophy: Who Needs It page 70. Note that a typographical error appears in some printings of this book, corrected here with the bracketed text.)

In another talk later in 1960, Rand blasted conservatives for attempting to ground their politics in religious faith: "Politically, such a claim contradicts the fundamental principles of the United States: in America, religion is a private matter which cannot and must not be brought into political issues" (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, page 197 of the 1967 Signet edition).

Rand's warning about the inevitable strife of faith-based politics, and her resounding endorsement of the separation of church and state, should serve to jolt the rising Religious Left to its senses. Those who believe they can defeat Rand's political positions using logic and reason are free to try it. But rejecting Rand's ideas specifically because they are atheistic, and calling instead on a politics grounded on religious faith and sacred texts, invites long-term disaster in America, logically tending toward theocracy.

Over the course of her career, Rand fought for naturalism, a focus on this world, as opposed to supernaturalism. She advocated reason grounded in the evidence of the senses, not faith or mystical intuition. She advocated a morality based on the lives and well-being of real individuals, rather than some allegedly transcendent realm. She fought for a politics grounded in reason and individual rights. Rand presented these ideas in riveting novels that continue to sell hundreds of thousands of copies every year to readers hungry for Rand's idealized, value-based, story-driven "Romantic realism." Through essays, lectures, and public appearances throughout the rest of her life, Rand continued to advocate her positive philosophy as well as the rightful separation of church and state.

Despite Rand's decades of intellectual achievements, today more than any other literary figure she becomes the target of nasty and fact-challenged smears by both the left and the right. The left hates her for her capitalism, while the right hates her for her atheism -- though the left increasingly joins the right in this, as the American Values Network illustrates.

Those who reject Rand's moral and political theories would do well to take a second look at what she actually advocated and why, as her views suffer continual distortions in the popular media. Yet even those who disagree with Rand's specific conclusions should recognize her achievements and her status as a preeminent 20th Century atheist intellectual and, more fundamentally, a champion of reason and liberty.

GOP Gay Disparagement, Like Alcoholism, a Choice

I have already (tentatively) predicted that Obama will win reelection next year, and nothing coming out of the Republican Party causes me to doubt this. (Of course, it is still early, and the economy as well as the Middle East are especially volatile right now.)

Rick Perry, who I figured would rise to front-runner status, has managed to turn the religious right's social agenda into his campaign. Consider this headline from yesterday's Los Angeles Times: "Rick Perry signs anti-abortion pledge." This is the same issue, more than any other, that cost Ken Buck his senate seat last year.

Now a page of Perry's 2008 book causes Perry to follow Buck down another dead-end path: toward comparing homosexuality to alcoholism. Lynn Bartels has the details over at the Denver Post.

There is a difference between the comments of Perry and Buck, though.

In order to establish the full context, I'll quote from Perry's book On My Honor (page 70) more extensively than Bartels does:

Though I am no expert on the "nature versus nurture" debate, I can sympathize with those who believe sexual preference is genetic. It may be so, but it remains unproved. Even if it were, this does not mean we are ultimately not responsible for the active choices we make. Even if an alcoholic is powerless over alcohol once it enters his body, he still makes a choice to drink. And, even if someone is attracted to a person of the same sex, he or she still makes a choice to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same gender.

A loving, tolerant view toward those who have a different sexual preference is the ideal position -- for both the heterosexual and the homosexual. I do not believe in condemning homosexuals that I know personally. I believe in valuing their lives like any others, as our God in heaven does. Tolerance, however, should not only be asked of the proponents of traditional values. The radical homosexual movement seeks societal normalization of their sexual activity. I respect their right to engage in individual behavior of their choosing, but they must respect the right of millions in society to refuse to normalize their behavior.

The key point here that Bartels ignores is that Perry recognizes the political right of consenting adults to engage in homosexual sex. That's centrally important. Secondarily, Perry calls for "valuing" rather than "condemning" homosexuals. That's a good start.

Unfortunately, Perry's position is essentially "love the sinner, hate the sin." In comparing homosexuality to alcoholism and saying it deserves only "toleration" (as opposed to open acceptance), Perry is basically saying there's something wrong with homosexuality. And that position is wrong.

Given that Bartels (and others) have compared Perry's remarks to those of Ken Buck, it is worth returning to Buck's statements on the matter.

Here's what Buck said, extemporaneously, on Meet the Press: "I think that birth has an influence over it [homosexuality], like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically, you have a choice." As I have pointed out, Buck's remark is technically correct. It is indisputably true that "birth has an influence" over sexual orientation, but that "you have a choice" about your sexual partners. For example, some heterosexuals have gay sex or remain celibate, and some homosexuals have straight sex.

Buck's problem was two-fold. First, his comparison of homosexuality, something inherently fine, to alcoholism, something inherently bad and destructive, was a bad one. However, again his remark is technically true; there does seem to be an inborn component to alcoholism. Perry's remark is worse because it was written (as opposed to extemporaneous) and because Perry draws a tighter connection (versus Buck's remark about "some other things").

Second, Buck was an idiot for not leading with the story about how, as a prosecutor, he pursued hate-crime charges in a transgender-related crime. So here we had a prosecutor whose record was strongly pro-gay rights, being smeared by his critics and the media as some sort of knuckle-dragging troglotyte. That was very unfair toward Buck, though he's the one who set the tone of the discussion. (Note: I actually disapprove of "hate crime" legislation, because I think all crimes are hate crimes and that harming a heterosexual person is just as bad as harming a homosexual one. Plus I worry about starting down the road to thought crimes. But my motivation is much different from that of the religious right.)

Significantly, Buck quickly clarified: "I wasn't talking about being gay as a disease. I don't think that at all."

We'll see if Perry backtracks along similar lines. But, as a candidate, if you're spending your time backtracking, you're not moving forward.

It's About 'We the People,' Not Politicians

If we want to achieve liberty, we need to persuade "We the People," and then the politicians will follow.

Aurora's Gaylord Vote Illustrates Politicization of Property

A story from today's Denver Post illustrates the politicization of property in America: "The Aurora City Council on Monday voted unanimously to designate as 'blighted' 125 acres of vacant land near Denver International Airport." The vote paves the way for Gaylord Entertainment to build a hotel without paying the same property taxes as everyone else.

Of course the "blight" designation is a complete fraud. By the same standards, most any property in Colorado could be declared "blighted." And yet the statutes encourage local politicians to flagrantly lie for political gain.

When local politicians may arbitrarily declare property "blighted," that gives them an trump on private property rights. True, all levels of government have substantially eroded property rights in America, but local governments have done perhaps the most damage.

The "blight" designation is tied into a discriminatory tax scheme. Under Colorado law, some taxpayers are more equal that others. If you run a long-established family business, you get screwed with the highest possible tax rates. If you are a flashy out-of-state (or out-of-country) corporation, you can finagle special tax breaks. Not only do discriminatory taxes violate basic standards of fairness and equality under the law, they promote bureaucratic ass-kissing as the standard method of conducting business.

Politicians ought not be in the "business" of violating private property rights or playing tax favorites. Instead, they should protect property rights for everyone, establish low, even taxes for all comers, and then let businesses succeed or fail on a free market.

Of Quakes and Cultures

Thank goodness there have been no reported injuries or deaths resulting from the east-coast earthquake earlier today. I haven't checked in with anybody I know there, but I hope for the best. There has been some structural damage, apparently of a relatively minor sort.

As we breathe a sigh of relief that, apparently, the damage was limited, we may turn to some of the cultural implications of the quake.

1. I wonder how long it will take for Islamists to interpret the earthquate as Alah's displeasure with the U.S.? Or how long it will take American evangelicals to see in the quake rumblings of God's discontent?

2. An earthquake, indeed, any form of destruction, is seen as "stimulating" the economy, according to many of today's Keynesians. (Witness Paul Krugman's comments about the "stimulating" effects of a hypothetical alien invasion.) But the French economist Frederic Bastiat offered the correct economic analysis back in 1850. As common sense suggests, destruction harms economic productivity.

3. While environmentalists like to blame all sorts of natural catastrophes on human-caused "global warming," the earthquake reminds us that the planet does a fine job of threatening human life and prosperity, all on its own. As people, we should produce wealth to keep us safe from the ravages of nature, not worship nature as some sort of god.

4. Hurray, capitalism! Because we're so wealthy, we can afford to build quality structures that can withstand earthquakes.

5. I love how Americans use humor to maintain good spirits. The first image I saw of the "destruction" is this one, making light of the quake. (Of course, this is only appropriate because the quake wasn't too destructive.) On Twitter, people joked about how the left would blame the right for the quake and vice versa. One guy joked that the quake is actually the Founders finally rolling in their graves. I enjoy this "We can't be beat" attitude. (To take another example, recently David Letterman mocked the Islamist threats against him.)

So we'll keep hoping we don't hear of more substantial problems.

Don't Privatize Social Security

Recently I delivered a short talk, "Don't Privatize Social Security!" The point is that the scheme to allegedly "privatize" it would do nothing of the sort; it would instead create investment accounts mandated and managed by federal politicians and bureaucrats. The real free-market solution is to slowly phase out the program entirely.



The information about Ida May Fuller comes from the Social Security Administration.

Rights Violations, Nihilism Underlie Today's Bad News

The following article by Linn and Ari Armstrong originally was published August 19 by Grand Junction Free Press.

Bad news knows no shortage these days. What common threads underlie the brutal headlines?

In London and around England, gangs of young hooligans looted shops, set fires, brutally beat journalists, and murdered a man as he sat in his car.

As a pretext, the rioters named the police shooting of the violent gangster Mark Duggan. (The Mail's Paul Bracchi reports the officers involved specialize in "fighting black-on-black gun crime," but obviously that cannot be true because England banned most guns.) Alleged police brutality cannot justify the systematic destruction of the innocent; something deeper lies behind the rioting.

Somebody on the BBC referred to the violence as the "Blackberry Riots." The thugs organized themselves with mobile computers and social media over the internet. They used the fruits of capitalism and voluntary economic exchange to destroy shops, cars, buildings, and people.

The rioters flagrantly abused people's basic rights to life, liberty, and property; this much is obvious. Beneath this lies a fundamental nihilism: the destruction of values for the sake of destruction.

Or consider the latest craze in United States cities from Boston to Chicago to Philadelphia: gangs of pampered teens organize "flash mob" crime sprees using information technology, looting goods and in some cases brutally beating residents.

Could such troubling cultural nihilism possibly have anything to do with the fact that, throughout much of the West, the typical student learns that producing wealth manifests greed while voluntarily trading it entails exploitation?

Students also frequently learn that human beings blight the earth and immorally reshape nature for human benefit.

Consider the English soccer star David Beckham, whose family recently welcomed their fourth child. New human life creates a time for celebration and rejoicing, right? Wrong. "The birth of their fourth child make the couple bad role models and environmentally irresponsible," according to people-haters cited in a Guardian article.

But we need not focus on young rioters or anti-human environmentalists to find examples of cultural nihilism. We can find more civilized variants in the federal government.

Consider the flippant remark of Alan Greenspan on Meet the Press about the credit downgrade. (Remember that many years ago Greenspan criticized the very existence of the Federal Reserve before making himself the former head of that out-of-control monster.) He said, "This is not an issue of credit rating. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that."

In other words: "Debt problem? What debt problem? The U.S. government can legally counterfeit dollars to pay off debt!" Never mind that such inflation debases the money supply and forcibly transfers wealth from those who earn it to those first in line for the government's counterfeited dollars.

Or consider John Kerry's remark on the same show calling Standard & Poor's reevaluation of U.S. credit "the tea party downgrade" -- ludicrously blaming those who warned about the debt bomb for its explosion.

Back up and consider the underlying problem: "Government spending in the United States has steadily increased from seven percent of GDP in 1902 to 40 percent today," USGovernmentSpending.com summarizes. Last year the federal government alone spent around $3.5 trillion, more than $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

We come frighteningly close to an economic death spiral, in which increasingly high taxes and government spending further discourage productive effort. At a certain point, people simply give up and say to hell with it. As the French economist Frederic Bastiat warned, at its worst "government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

We call for a renewal of values. Each individual human life is precious; every man is an end in himself. You are right to live your life, to strive for happiness, to reshape the natural world for your prosperity and enjoyment. To define and achieve your life-promoting values constitutes the height of a moral life.

As human beings, we survive through reason (as Ayn Rand pointed out). Our capacity for reason allows us to interact with others in a peaceful, voluntary, and mutually beneficial way. We share love in marriage and friendship; we trade goods and services through the marketplace.

Every person has the right to live his own life as he judges best, consistent with the rights of others. You have the right to use your property as you want, to produce the things you need to prosper, and to voluntarily exchange the fruits of your labor with others. The government properly protects those rights.

Today's culture tolerates, even celebrates, the pervasive and systematic violation of individual rights. It devalues the individual person.

Our confidently bright future requires a reaffirmation of our nation's core values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of enlightened happiness.

Alien Invasions: Where Economic and Environmental Insanity Meet

"You're traveling to another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. ... Your next stop: the Twilight Zone."

If the Onion covered the Twilight Zone, you'd end up with the sort of actual headlines we're seeing today.

Consider the first headline, from Time: "Paul Krugman: An Alien Invasion Could Fix the Economy." What Krugman said was this: "If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack, and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months." He actually referenced the Twilight Zone.

And thus Krugman, a Nobel-winning economist, commits the simplest of economic fallacies, what Bastiat in 1850 called the broken-window fallacy, a type of the error of accounting for the seen but not the unseen.

The next headline comes from the land of environmental nuttiness, from the Guardian: "Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists: Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report." (For context, read the report from NetworkWorld.)

For any consistent leftist, this creates a paradox of unprecedented proportions. For clearly the solution is to expand CO2 production as rapidly as possible, so as to exacerbate global warming and incite an alien invasion, so that we can "stimulate" the economy and reelect Barack "The Chosen One" Obama in 2012.

(Hat tip to Aaron Bilger for blending the two stories.)

My Newspaper Paywall Plan for Dean Singleton

Today the Denver Post sent its minions to my local grocery store, and they hooked me into a discussion by offering a drawing. This reminded me that "Denver-based MediaNews Group announced... that it has launched an online subscription paywall at 23 of its newspapers in five states but not in Colorado." I figure we're next.

So if a paywall is going to happen, I'd like it to happen the right way. (And I wrote about this back in 2009.)

Obviously a monthly subscription is the most standard model. The problem with this is that many readers -- especially those who live elsewhere -- may want to read an article only occasionally. This is especially true for a big paper like the Denver Post. So a subscription-based paywall should be only part of the approach.

Ideally newspapers will offer two additional ways to read an article online: pay per view, or watch an advertisement.

Here's how I envision the pay-per-view model. The paper reveals the first bit of an article, then offers the option to read the rest by clicking a pay button (say, for anywhere from ten cents to a buck, depending on the sort of article). I purchase credits through the system (say, $30 at a time), log in, then spend my credits however I want (and they never expire). I have no idea how to work the technical side of this, but surely it's possible. Indeed, a robust system could allow other players (including bloggers) to join the same system (for a percentage).

The third option is to view a video (say, 15 seconds) advertising a specific product as "payment" for reading the article.

Readers get the content they want, they have flexible payment options, and journalists earn a living. Does that not make everyone happy?

Another Look at Education Tax Credits

Earlier this year Michael LaFerrara advocated education tax credits in an article for the Objective Standard. I criticized a number of his important assumptions. He responded. So that would seem to put me back at bat.

As much as I appreciate LaFerrara's enthusiasm for tax credits and for trying to move education in a better direction, I continue to think he overstates the potential of tax credits for advancing liberty, understates their inevitable problems, and fundamentally misunderstands the alternative.

My Position

LaFerrara claims I initially "leaned in favor of an education tax credit plan," then "moved in the opposite direction," concluding that "tax credits... must be rejected." That's not quite right.

In the February 4 article I coauthored with my dad Linn, we built on the idea of "choice" in education. We progressed from vouchers to tax credits for parents, then to more-ambitious universal tax credits.

Then we concluded that real choice consistent with individual rights means leaving people free to spend their resources however they want, consistent with other people's rights. We wrote that even a tax credit plan "falls short of the standard of individual rights and free markets, for it requires people to direct a portion of their resources to schools. Real liberty means people can spend their earnings however they wish, whether for schools, medical research, a new business, or a trip to the Bahamas." (Note that parents do have a responsibility, and a legally enforceable one at that, to provide for their children's intellectual development; however, Laferrara goes far afield in attempting to link this to possible "standardized testing.")

In my June 18 reply to LaFerrara, I did not conclude that tax credits "must be rejected;" as LaFerrara notes, I wrote, "There might be other good reasons for promoting universal tax credits for education, but tax credits will not eliminate government controls over education spending."

If it seems like I'm taking an ambiguous position on tax credits, it's because I am. My position is this. Because tax credits fundamentally presume the government's authority to forcibly transfer wealth for education, I do not believe they are worth the investment of resources necessary to achieve them. At best, tax credits threaten to muddy the ideological waters.

Am I going to morally condemn people who advocate tax credits? No. Am I going to help finance their campaigns? No. Will I endorse and vote for a decent tax-credit proposal? Yes. Am I going to point out the inherent and potential problems with tax credits? Yes. Doing so keeps the debate focussed on the fundamental issue of individual rights, and it helps ensure that, if a tax credit proposal comes about, it will be a relatively better sort.

Principles and Incrementalism

On one hand, LaFerrara suggests I want to achieve the "ideal of free market education... in a single sweeping transformation"; on the other hand he claims I support "a much more subdued reform agenda" than tax credits. Neither claim is accurate.

Advocating the complete separation of school and state may be called many things, but I do not think "subdued" makes the list. I regard the agenda as rather ambitious.

But ambitious, principled reforms can (usually) only be achieved incrementally. Contrary to popular myth, there is no inherent clash between principles and incrementalism. The enemy is unprincipled incrementalism.

In the modern American context, any deep reform of education must be achieved over a span of many years. I advocate, primarily, making the intellectual case that individual rights (including rights to one's own wealth) apply in the field of education. This involves many concrete political strategies, including fighting tax hikes for education, phasing in means testing (with lower taxes), and supporting real market alternatives. I do not advocate merely making a few marginal reforms and then giving up, as LaFerrara seems to assume, but instead systematically building on previous reforms until attaining a completely free market in education.

Tax credits in any sort of ambitious form could only be achieved through a long-term political battle as well. But my worry is that the fight for tax credits will ultimately undermine real liberty in education, precisely because they entrench the notion that government properly forces wealth transfers.

LaFerrara, then, basically misunderstands my position when he claims I seem "content to stop well short of taking the political offensive." I'm all about taking the political offensive! (I do not personally want to spend my life specifically on reforming education, though I'm pleased to spend some of my time doing that and supporting the efforts of others.) I simply wish to avoid mistaking the "political offensive" for a circular firing squad (i.e., a strategy that ultimately undermines rather than achieves individual rights and economic liberty).

Because LaFerrara confuses the relationship between principles and incrementalism, he misattributes to me positions I do not hold, and he advocates one policy that clearly violates rights. He suggests that, by the logic of my argument, I should also oppose such "incremental" reforms as Health Savings accounts and a flat[ter] tax. But that's just not so: I advocate both those reforms precisely because they unambiguously move us toward liberty. But LaFerrara also throws mandatory savings accounts in the mix of allegedly "incremental 'free market reforms'" -- even though those unambiguously move us in the direction of greater statism.

The essential in evaluating a political proposal is not whether it is incremental or far-reaching or whether it is implemented slowly or quickly. Those are contextual and strategic matters. The essential is whether it in fact advances individual rights.

So do tax credits advance individual rights? I think the answer is yes, because at least they expand the individual's control over his own resources. But they still mandate the money be spent in a very narrow way (for education). The real risk is that tax credits will become yet another tool for Republicans to basically argue, "Forced wealth transfers? Of course I'm for that! I advocate a massive welfare state! Only I do want individuals to have a bit more choice within the context of the government setting the basic terms."

The Inherent Controls of Tax Credits

LaFerrara's basic case is this: "Once the choice of how their education dollars can be spent is relegated to the taxpayer, we will be closer to the day when it will be politically feasible to question why he or she must be forced to pay any government-mandated sum."

I think that could be the case, so long as advocates of tax credits keep focused on the underlying principles. (I note merely that practically all conservatives who advocate tax credits systematically ignore those principles.) If the advocates of tax credits treat them as a means toward achieving liberty, rather than an alternative way to forcibly redistribute wealth, then they may well do some good ultimately.

Unfortunately, LaFerrara largely misunderstands my point about the inherent controls of tax credits. The whole premise of tax credits is that politicians will force you to finance education, only you get much more leeway in how to do that. But obviously there will be limits. As I've pointed out, tax credits for "My Family's Vacation to Disneyland" or "The School for Satanism and the Occult" or "The School for Shopping at the Mall" would be politically rejected. What is allowable and what is forbidden will depend on how a particular tax credit proposal works itself out in a legislature and court system. I predict that any actual tax credit system will in fact place very tight controls on how the money is spent.

LaFerrara points out that free-market elements of the economy routinely fall under increased political controls, too. But this misses the fundamental difference. In the market segment, the default is that the individual owns his own resources, and the government then overrides his rights for some alleged greater good. With tax credits, the default is that the individual does not own the resources in question, and the government is merely setting limits on how to allocate the government's money. With tax credits, the default and the inexorable condition is control.

The idea that that an actual legislature would institute a universal tax credit program with absolutely no controls is pie-in-the-sky, rationalistic, detached-from-reality, utopian thinking.

If you think advocating tax credits will open people's minds to the idea that they actually own their own wealth, then I wish you well in that endeavor. But, in the interim, let's recognize tax credits for what they are: political controls on how people spend their money.

The Rise of Envy

Given the existence of "flash mob" riots, the continued rise of the massive welfare state (which threatens to push our nation off the economic cliff), and snarling calls to further loot "the rich," I was enormously saddened to read Ayn Rand's comment from her 1971 essay, "Don't Let It Go:"

"Americans admire achievement; they know what it takes. Europeans regard achievement with cynical suspicion and envy. Envy is not a widespread emotion in America (not yet); it is an overwhelmingly dominant emotion in Europe."

Leave Breast Pumping to Contracts, Social Pressure

Did the Rocky Mountain Academy of Evergreen, a tax-funded Colorado charter school, decline to renew a teaching contract for Heather Burgbacher because she pumped breast milk at work? That's the allegation of the ACLU (and a one-sided story from 7News).

Or was Burgbacher let go for an entirely different reason? The Denver Post reports, "Jefferson County school district spokeswoman Lynn Setzer said Burgbacher was a technology teacher who worked under a yearly contract. Setzer said Burgbacher wasn't retained because her position was transformed into a technology adviser to staffers and the school didn't think she was a good fit."

We will never know for sure. The anti-discrimination laws incentivize employees to claim they were let go because of mistreatment, and they incentivize employers to claim the fault lies with the employee.

Another question we will never have answered is whether the ACLU saw the lawsuit as particularly juicy because it targets a charter school, something typically despised by the left.

The only thing crystal clear about the case is that the Colorado and federal laws on which it is based are entirely ambiguous. Consider this description from the Colorado Department of Labor:

An employer shall make reasonable efforts to provide a room or other location in close proximity to the work area, other than a toilet stall, where an employee can express breast milk in privacy.

Reasonable efforts means any effort that would not impose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business.

Undue hardship means any action that requires significant difficulty or expense when considered in relation to factors such as the size of the business, the financial resources of the business, or the nature and structure of its operation, including consideration of the special circumstances of public safety.

And who gets to decide what constitutes "reasonable," "undue," and "significant?" You guessed it... lawyers.

Now, I definitely agree that, in most contexts, employers certainly should allow employees time and space to pump breast milk. This is especially true in an educational setting, as it offers children an opportunity to learn something about childbirth, nutrition, and immunity.

But just because something is a good thing doesn't mean the legislature should get involved. Many jobs already involve an employment contract. (As a tax-funded entity, a charter school properly falls under additional rules not applicable to private businesses.) And most businesses would rapidly cave to social criticisms about lack of accommodation.

For marginal jobs, often the very jobs that poor women need, the additional risk of (perhaps groundless) lawsuits could well mean the elimination of the job. So the real impact of the Colorado law is to protect wealthier yuppie women, who don't really need protecting anyway, and make it harder for poor women to get any job at all.

New Harry Potter Essay on Religion

Are the Harry Potter novels essentially Christian works? In my new essay, "Religion In Harry Potter Revisited," I argue that, while the novels feature some religious symbolism and themes, those do not fundamentally drive the stories or motivate the heroes.

I recorded a talk based on an abbreviated version of the same material.

Denver Post Readers Reply to 'Tar Baby' Op-Ed

Today the Denver Post published several replies to my 'tar baby' op-ed. Here I briefly reply to the letters critical of my piece.

First, though, I point out that the Post piece is very short -- around 500 words -- and it draws on thousands of words I've written on the matter. So I want to summarize my previous work:

Lamborn's "Tar Baby" Saga Continues
I briefly reply to the Associated Press's assertion that Congressman Doug Lamborn used the term "tar baby" to refer to President Obama. He did not. I also briefly reply to Wayne Laugesen and Patricia Calhoun, arguing that "neither of those writers pays sufficient attention to the fact that the tar baby story arises fundamentally from African folklore. Any racist use of the term manifests ignorance of that tradition."

Yes, Let's Do Throw Lamborn In the Briar Patch
I point out the irony of a MoveOn protester a) invoking the same African folklore, and b) calling to throw Lamborn "in the briar patch," which in the story actually saves the rabbit.

More on the African Roots of the Tar Baby Motif
I offer even more evidence that the "tar baby" story came from African folklore.

MoveOn Smears Lamborn for Invoking African Tar Baby Folklore
This is my longest piece on the matter in which I offer extensive evidence for the African roots of the "tar baby" story and reply to David Sirota's hypocritical smears against Lamborn.

Lamborn Strikes the "Tar Baby" Tar Baby
In my first piece on the matter, I do two main things. First, I firmly establish that the term "tar baby" comes from African folklore, and I show that it has been commonly used in the culture to refer to a sticky situation. I offer specific examples of left-leaning writers from the Denver Post, Westword, and Salon using the term -- all without receiving so much as a breath of criticism.

So let's turn to the Denver Post letters.

Sherry Steele finds value in my historical perspective, but she thinks I fall into "blame it on the left or blame it on the right." But she misses my point, which is that the shrill left's smear campaigns against Lamborn are precisely that, which is why those critics neglect to slam left-leaners for using the same term. My point precisely is that we should debate substantive issues, not smear the opposition.

(Some people seem to mistakenly think that I am a conservative or a Lamborn supporter generally. I am neither.)

Dennis Hansen claims that my "ranting" is "narrow-minded and illogical" -- without offering a single argument to that effect.

Kenneth Valero first suggests that Lamborn used the term tar baby "against" Obama, but that's false. In his original statement, Lamborn uses the term to refer to getting "stuck" in "the problem." Those who continue to ignore that context are simply being willfully dishonest.

At least Valero recognizes that "tar baby," in fact, derives from African folklore, though he says it has fallen into "corruption." My response to this is what it was in the op-ed: "Surely we ought not let ignorant racists push us to obliterate cultural knowledge of important African folklore." Letting racists steal the term "tar baby" is letting the racists win, something I refuse to do.

Doug Sovern claims I ignore "the usage of the term in the U.S." But I have provided many references to U.S. usages of the term to refer to a sticky situation.

Sovern notes that some with the Tea Party have unfairly attacked Obama. But he misses my point, which is that the left is picking out Lamborn to smear over a make-believe offense, while ignoring many other actual insults.

(And, for the record, I have criticized those who likened Obama to a Nazi, saying, "Obama is obviously not a Nazi, so tagging him with a swastika is wrong.")

Sovern claims "context is everything," yet he ignores the context of Lamborn's original remark.

Sovern also claims "the Nazis were conservatives," which is ridiculous. The very term is an abbreviation of the National Socialist German Workers' party.

Brandon Reich-Sweet grants, "Yes, 'tar baby' does come from a legitimate African folk tale. However, the term has been used as a slur against black people." I discuss that very fact in my op-ed, yet I return to the point that we ought not let racists steal a perfectly legitimate term.

Ken Lambdin claims, despite all the evidence, that "Lamborn's comment was racist." Some people are just determined to see Republican office holders as racist, because that's a lot easier than debating them on the issues. Dehumanizing the opposition, as the left is attempting to dehumanize Lamborn, is the strategy of cowards.

In addition to these criticisms, Gary Reed and Lou Schroeder offer supportive comments of my piece.

My case holds. Using the term "tar baby" to refer to a sticky situation is perfectly legitimate. That is how Lamborn used the term, and that is how I resolve to continue using it.

This "Ethics Advocate" Calls AP's Outrageous Bias

Apparently the Denver post thinks it's perfectly fine to publish ridiculous nonsense as long as it was written by the Associated Press.

A couple of days ago, the Post published the AP's fact-devoid article about a new wind farm. Today the Post follows up by reproducing an absurdly biased article from the AP about proposed ballot changes.

The issue, according to the AP, is this: "Secretary of State Scott Gessler is proposing changes to election rules that would bar clerks from counting ballots with write-in candidates if voters fail to mark the box next to that choice."

That part is accurate. I just called Rich Coolidge from the SOS's office to verify, and he added only that the matter is "going through the rule making process." It's "a consideration that the secretary's going to have to make," he said, and "no decisions have been made at this time."

My problem arises with another sentence from the AP's story: "According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (http://bit.ly/pkZ80r), ethics advocate Jenny Flanagan says a voter's intent should rule..." (I did not read the Sentinel article as it's behind a pay wall.)

The problem is describing Jenny Flanagan, in an allegedly straight news article, as merely an "ethics advocate." Is she a moral philosopher? No. Instead, she heads the Colorado chapter of Common Cause. To describe her as a seemingly neutral "ethics advocate" in a news story is ludicrous. An equally biased but opposite description would be "shrill partisan hack," but somehow only the former occurred to the AP.

I do not doubt that Flanagan believes she advocates ethics. But so does every source cited by the AP. Can you imagine the AP describing a Tea Party activists as an "ethics advocate?" Or Jon Caldara? Or me? Gessler too thinks he is advocating ethical rules.

Let's review a couple of background items about "ethics advocate Jenny Flanagan." In a debate with me earlier this year, she said the First Amendment is "not part of the conversation right now" regarding campaign laws.

Flanagan also attended a rally a couple months ago in Aspen, joining the hard-left ProgressNow to protest the Koch brothers. You can see Flanagan in this photo holding her Common Cause Sign, joining others who want to raise taxes and toss Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court. (Also check out Kelly Maher's excellent video about the protest.)

But, hey, apparently "ethics advocate" is good enough for AP work.

Perhaps, rather than just toss up AP articles onto its web page, the Post should first check to see whether the articles are in fact worth a damn.

For what it's worth, I actually tentatively agree with Flanagan on this particular issue. If a voter does not check the box for another candidate, and actually writes in some other name, the intent seems to be pretty clearly that the voter wanted to cast a ballot for the write-in. However, I can definitely see the problem of ambiguity. It seems to me that a better solution would be a reformulated ballot that makes that particular mistake impossible.

In general, I advocate computer-assisted paper ballots. The computer assist would make them easier to cast, and the paper would remove the problem of computer glitches and hacking. (I advocate counting up the votes from the paper, rather than from the digital vote.) Surely a well-developed ballot could simply avoid the problem in question.

But just because Flanagan seems to make a good point on this particular issue doesn't mean the AP should refer to her as some sort of seemingly neutral "ethics advocate." To do so violates journalistic ethics.

Rationalizing Forced Wealth Transfers

Why do so many people who claim to advocate liberty also call for forced wealth transfers? The answer is complex, and at root it concerns the morality of rational self-interest versus self-sacrifice. But part of the answer, as I discussed August 3 at Liberty On the Rocks, is that people tend to reify "the government" and "corporations," treating them as willful entities rather than organizations of individual people. Moreover, many simply ignore the crucial distinction between voluntary and coerced giving.

Liberty In Harry Potter

I discuss the liberty themes of the Harry Potter novels in my book, Values of Harry Potter, and I summarize that material in a short talk delivered August 3 for Liberty On the Rocks.



I summarize five obviously pro-liberty themes in the novels: their anti-tyranny story arch, the heroes' opposition to slavery and oppression, the stories' acknowledgement that power tends to corrupt, their portrayal of heroes boldly standing up to abusive power, and their portrayal of government at its best as protecting people from criminal harm.

However, I point out, J. K. Rowling tends to be a typical English leftist, hardly a free-market advocate. In the talk I cite her comments about the Labour Party and the socialist Jessica Mitford.

Unsurprisingly, then, from the perspective of economic liberty or classical liberalism, several of the Potter themes are ambiguous regarding liberty. While there is no obvious welfare state in the wizard world, this may mean only that the government is not sufficiently advanced for that. The wizarding government maintains an ambitious regulatory state, controlling things from transportation to dragon breeding to cauldron thickness. Finally, the wizards enforce (limited) segregation from the non-magical Muggles, leading to more controls on wizards and Muggles alike.

Yet, on the whole, the novels are wonderfully pro-liberty, and that's a big reason I love them so much.

Why Not Signed Editorials, Denver Post?

I sent the following letter to the Denver Post:

The Denver Post's editorials fluctuate noticeably in style, tone, and ideological bent, because they're written by different members of your editorial board.

I like the fact that the Daily Camera and the Colorado Springs Gazette offer signed editorials. Ideally, the Denver Post would note the author (or authors) of each editorial and the board members in agreement. That would provide transparency, help readers track the views of particular writers, and encourage writers to offer their best work.

Polis Promotes, Decries Tax Loopholes

Yes, I'm used to members of Congress talking nonsense; that's practically their job description. But a comment that just came through from Jared Polis is so ludicrous it's worth a mention:

In this session, I have sponsored bills to help create jobs by encouraging private investment in critical sectors through tax incentives. I also strongly support tax reform to eliminate special interest loopholes, which will help balance the budget while reducing tax rates for families who don’t have high-paid Washington lobbyists rigging the tax code in their favor.

The bit about "tax incentives" links to a release about waving certain taxes for private real-estate investments "in high foreclosure areas."

So, in the same paragraph, and apparently written with a straight face, Polis simultaneously says he wants "special interest loopholes" for some, but he wants to eliminate "tax incentives" for others, depending on who has the most political sway for the moment. Only he switched the euphemisms around to fit his purposes.

Unfortunately, Polis's remark typifies the state of the American political discourse.

The Winds of Force and Taxes

The Associated Press released a (remarkably inept) article about "a 29 megawatt wind project near Pueblo" half-owned by Black Hills Energy. But at least the AP's article tipped me off to the Black Hills release, which includes more relevant details.

The company's Christopher Burke explained the real reason for the wind farm: "This approval of our wind project by the PUC is an important milestone as our utility continues to put assets and programs in place to meet the requirements of Colorado's Renewable Energy Standard..."

In other words, this project has absolutely nothing to do with economically meeting the needs of Colorado's energy consumers, and everything to do with pandering to the environmentalist fantasy of widespread wind energy.

Moreover, "The project, planned for completion in late 2012, is expected to qualify for the U.S. Department of Treasury's section 1603 cash grant program," the release states. I'd never heard of the "1603 cash grant program" before; it's part of the so-called "Recovery Act."

In other words, the U.S. government will steal wealth from wage earners across the country to subsidize an overprised wind farm boondoggle in Colorado.

And yet, given the widespread use of such force and taxes, some people still wonder why the economy is struggling.

Lamborn's "Tar Baby" Saga Continues

As of the moment of this writing, the story topping the Denver Post's "Denver & the West" section is yet another Associated Press hit piece against Congressman Doug Lamborn for saying "tar baby."

The AP repeats an outright lie and a distortion. The lie is that Lamborn called Barack Obama a tar baby. He did not. He used the term tar baby to refer to getting "stuck" in "the problem" of the debt-ceiling negotiations. The distortion is that the term is "racially denigrating" and therefore taboo. While some ignoramuses have abused the term, its origins is African folklore, and it refers to a sticky mannequin. For details, see my reviews:

"MoveOn Smears Lamborn for Invoking African Tar Baby Folklore"

"More on the African Roots of the Tar Baby Motif"

The AP's story appears in the very paper whose left-leaning writers have used the term "tar baby" on several occasions -- without receiving any of the left's manufactured outraged now directed against Lamborn.

And yet, to the leftist crusaders and their media enablers, the facts simply do not matter. This is about character assassination and partisan politics.

Thankfully, Sunday's Denver Post editorial pages published my op-ed on the matter. It begins:

The critical points to understand about the tar baby flap are these: "Tar baby" comes from African folklore. Congressman Doug Lamborn used the term to refer to the debt-ceiling negotiations, not the president. And the nationwide smear campaign against Lamborn follows the left's typical path of character assassination and guilt by association. ...

My research on the topic has been cited by other media outlets as well.

On August 4, the Colorado Springs Gazette's Wayne Laugesen mentioned my posts, and on August 3 Westword's Patricia Calhoun (who has herself used the term "tar baby" in an article) did as well. Unfortunately, neither of those writers pays sufficient attention to the fact that the tar baby story arises fundamentally from African folklore. Any racist use of the term manifests ignorance of that tradition.

On August 4 I also appeared on Peter Boyle's radio show for an hour to discuss the matter.

Though this point is obvious, it may be worth repeating here: just because I defend the use of the term "tar baby" to refer to a sticky situation, that doesn't mean anything goes. For example, if a politician called somebody "the N-word," he would be justly castigated.

But lumping together "the N-word" with the tar baby of African folklore is ludicrous. And smearing a well-intentioned politician for referencing the tar baby is grotesquely unjust.

Corporations Aren't People, So Stop Taxing Them

The following article by Linn and Ari Armstrong originally was published August 5, 2011, by Grand Junction Free Press.

Imagine if you and your spouse individually paid income tax, then you had to pay a separate tax on the same income as a family unit. That would be insanely unjust double-taxation, right?

It is equally unjust to tax corporations. If governments must resort to taxation (and frankly we're not even persuaded on that point), they should tax only individuals, not groups. Notably, eliminating corporate taxes would jumpstart the struggling economy, something none of Obama's tax-and-spend interventions has done.

We readily concede the left's tireless mantra: "Corporations aren't people." Families aren't people, either. However, both are composed of people, of individuals with rights.

In a family, two adults voluntarily agree to live together (usually), join their resources (at least partly), support each other, and possibly raise children. In a corporation, many individuals voluntarily pool some of their resources for some productive venture. You don't lose your rights (or gain new ones) by joining a corporation any more than you do by getting married.

Ironically, it is the left that actually tends to treat corporations as though they were people. According to the typical leftist smears, a corporation is some soulless monster, a will unto its own, symbolized by a sinister cigar-smoking exploiter in a black hat. The left reifies the corporation -- treats it as a concrete entity under its own motive power.

In reality, a corporation is an abstraction describing an organization of people who come together for a specific purpose. Within a business corporation, many individuals invest in a large-scale operation and hire directors to run it.

Here our focus is on the competitive business corporation. There are many other sorts of corporations; for example, the City of Grand Junction is a type of corporation. Historically, English law granted corporations the political power to forcibly block competitors, but that's not the common meaning today.

Obviously we oppose all political favoritism that lets corporations (or individuals) forcibly damage competitors, gain tax subsidies and "bailouts," or otherwise violate individual rights. (We're talking about real rights, not the made-up "rights" promoted by the left to seize or control other people's resources.)

With that background, we can turn to matters of taxation. Title 39, Article 22 of the Colorado statutes imposes a 4.63 percent tax on "C corporations," the most common type. And the federal government imposes taxes as high as 35 percent, "the world's highest corporate-tax rate," Cato's Richard Rahn recently lamented.

Among the many benefits that would result from eliminating all corporate income taxes, the most important would be to spur the American economy. Chris Edwards, another writer for Cato, summarizes, "A lower corporate rate would boost domestic investment, which in turn would generate more jobs and higher wages and incomes."

Why? Without burdensome taxes, businesses would flock to the United States and pour more money into the economy. Today U.S. politicians drive companies offshore, then demonize them for fleeing political oppression. Without politicians siphoning off their profits, businesses would invest more in building up and expanding their productive capabilities, creating more and better jobs.

And consider the resources saved in compliance costs. Today, corporations must navigate the conflicting and inherently ambiguous state tax laws, then hire lobbyists to try to protect themselves from federal tax abuse. Through so-called "loopholes," different businesses pay different net tax rates. The result is massive productive potential squandered appeasing and dodging politicians and tax bureaucrats.

Eliminating taxes on groups would hardly eliminate them on the individuals in those groups. Corporate executives would still pay income tax on their earnings, as would all the individual employees of the business and all shareholders earning dividends. The difference is they wouldn't be subject to unjust and economically damaging double-taxation.

Another benefit to eliminating corporate taxes would be to end the social engineering of the Internal Revenue Service. Today, politically favored corporations pay no income taxes. They're called 501(C)(3) corporations, or nonprofits. The problem is that politicians and tax bureaucrats get to decide which groups qualify and which do not.

The result is the absurd spectacle of partisan "nonprofit" groups, including many churches and think-tanks, pretending to be "nonpartisan" for tax purposes. The tax code promotes rampant dishonesty and political gaming within the nonprofit world. Much better would be to tax individual employees of all groups at the same rates.

The government should not be in the businesses of punishing some groups more than others with higher tax burdens. Instead, the government should treat all individuals, and all groups of individuals, equally under the law. Eliminating corporate taxes would substantially promote that goal.

Corporations aren't people. Politicians should stop taxing them as if they were. Eliminate corporate taxes to promote economic growth and basic legal fairness.

Yes, Let's Do Throw Lamborn In the Briar Patch

John Schroyer writes the following about MoveOn's protest of Congressman Doug Lamborn for saying "tar baby:" ''Let’s throw him in the briar patch!' one man yelled, to the amusement of the crowd."

Initially I was struck by the oddity of Lamborn's critics invoking the same African folklore for which they were lambasting Lamborn.

But, returning to Joel Chandler Harris's version of the stories which he picked up from the African oral tradition, it struck me that throwing Lamborn in the briar patch is precisely the right move.

Let us recall that, in the tar baby story, the fox captures the rabbit in the sticky tar-baby trap. The story ends on an ambiguous note; the audience is left wondering whether the fox eats the rabbit.

But a bit latter on we learn that the rabbit outsmarts the fox, true to the trickster form of the rabbit (often a spider in Africa). The rabbit begs the fox not to throw him in the briar patch. But in fact that's precisely where the rabbit wants to end up! When, wrongly thinking the action will greatly harm the rabbit, the fox throws him in, the rabbit runs free.

So throw Lamborn in the briar patch! That is after all the only just conclusion to this sad saga.

See also:

More on the African Roots of the Tar Baby Motif

MoveOn Smears Lamborn for Invoking African Tar Baby Folklore

Lamborn Strikes the "Tar Baby" Tar Baby

More on the African Roots of the Tar Baby Motif

Yesterday I wrote an article blasting the left for smearing Congressman Doug Lamborn for using the term "tar baby," a reference to African folklore.

This morning Peter Boyles invited me on his show (630 KHOW) for an hour to discuss the matter; see the online recording.

On the air, Boyles mentioned the African "gum baby" as a precursor to the American "tar baby." (The original sort of tar was made from pine pitch and so closely related to gum.) I thought I'd track this down.

Google pointed me to a Kansas publication The Pitch, where Gina Kaufman writes:

While coauthoring African Tales of Anansiwith her father, Mackey discovered "Anansi and the Gum Doll," the African ancestor of Joel Chandler Harris' "Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby." The dialect written into the Brer Rabbit stories is actually a remnant of the oral tradition of Ghana, and the wiley Brer Rabbit is the descendant of a trickster spider...

This tipped me off to the book, Framing Identities: Autobiography and the Politics of Pedagogy. That work (by Wendy Hesford) states the following (page 170):

The tar-baby image appropriates an African folktale. The basic elements of the tale are that a trickster approaches a figure made of tar, rubber, orj some other sticky substance. The trickster speaks to the figure and holds it until it can be apprehended. Versions of this folktale have been reported from the Guinea coast area, the Congo, and Angola, and are repeated throughout Africa. See, for example, "Anansi and the Gum Doll" and "Brer Rabbit" (Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend).

I see that book remains for sale, though I'd have to buy a bound copy to read it. But, by now, the fact that the tar baby story comes from African folklore is incontestable.

I'll Rejoin the ACLU When It Stops Promoting Tax Hikes

I used to be a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. No, I do not agree with everything the organization does, but often it does some good work in terms of sticking up for the rights of free speech and for those abused by government agents.

But when the Colorado ACLU promoted a tax hike in 2005, that was too much. Not only was the issue far outside the ACLU's mission, but forcibly transferring wealth violates people's liberty. No, I don't expect the leftists running the ACLU to defend economic liberty, but I do expect them not to attack it.

Since I dropped my membership, the ACLU has sent me numerous "final membership renewal statements." (It doesn't seem to quite get the idea of what "final" means.) I'm confident the ACLU has now spent more money mailing me these statements than I ever contributed to the organization.

I've written to the ACLU, explaining the conditions on which I will rejoin, but apparently my letters have been tossed in the trash (which is where I'll toss the latest renewal plea). Just as soon as the ACLU pledges not to support future tax hikes, I'll rejoin the group.

You guys at the ACLU obviously know how to reach me.

MoveOn Smears Lamborn for Invoking African Tar Baby Folklore

It seems that the phrase "tar baby" has become something of a tar baby for me as well. Yesterday I waded into the debate over Congressman Lamborn's use of "tar baby." Peter Boyles read the piece and invited me on to his radio show to discuss the matter tomorrow at 7 am. So, in preparation, I'll do some more poking around (despite my busy schedule).

It seems like I should be spending my time addressing our nation's crushing debt, the high unemployment rate, Lamborn's ties with the hard anti-abortion right, or any other real issue. Lamborn's use of the phrase "tar baby" is an issue only because of the pathological codependency between the left's outrage mongers and their lap dogs in the sensationalist media. In a sane world, in which the left focused on issues instead of character assassination, and the media devoted its resources to reporting real news, Lamborn's comment never would have raised a blip.

Yet I poke another limb into the "tar baby" tar baby here. In doing so, I draw inspiration from an oriental tale in the ancient tar-baby or stickfast motif about Prince Five-weapons. The story is recounted by Joseph Campbell on pages 86-88 of his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In this story the tar baby is an ogre. After failing to smite the ogre with arrows and other weapons, the prince "struck the ogre with his right hand. His hand stuck right to the ogre's hair." The prince proceeded to stick each of his limbs into the ogre, then finally the prince landed a blow with his head, getting that stuck as well.

The ogre is impressed by the prince's bravery, thinking him "some man of noble birth... [f]or although he has been caught by an ogre like me, he appears neither to tremble nor to quake!" The ogre asks the youth why he is not afraid.

The prince answers:

Ogre, why should I be afraid? for in one life one death is absolutely certain. What's more, I have in my belly a thunderbolt for weapon. If you eat me, you will not be able to digest that weapon. It will tear your insides into tatters and fragments and will kill you. In that case we'll both perish. That's why I'm not afraid!"

The ogre releases the prince. So let's see if we might find a thunderbolt or two.

David Sirota's position is that "tar baby" is "an obviously racist term." (He uses this term writing this for the publication Salon, which has also featured an article with left-leaning commentator David Corn using the term "tar baby.") But, according to Sirota, Lamborn's use of the term is especially bad "because he explicitly used the term to describe a black person."

Is Sirota's claim true? No. It is obvious from context that Lamborn is referring to the "problem" of the debt-ceiling controversy. He is definitely not saying that Obama is a "tar baby" because he is black, and to pretend otherwise is to libel Lamborn. In his original comment, Lamborn used the word "stuck," clearly invoking the historically correct (as opposed to the racist) usage of the term "tar baby."

Let us pause to note how the left is helping to destroy the very democratic openness it claims to champion by employing the tactics of smear, slander, and character assassination. If we want our elected officials and candidates to speak openly with their constituents, then we can't try to crucify them for innocently using an innocuous phrase.

As I've reviewed, the cultural origins of the tar-baby motif are very old, very widespread, and very diverse. Back in the '40s Aurelio Espinosa found the oldest examples to come from India.

Obviously "tar baby" as an English phrase originated in the English-speaking world, and it was the term first used by African slaves to describe a legend from old African folklore. The "tar baby" story originated in Africa, and it was brought to the United States by slaves. So the notion that invoking African folklore inherently reveals racism against African Americans is frankly absurd. One might as well claim that wearing African-style scarves is racist.

Here's how Peter Addo describes the origins:

Most of the Stories referred to as Brer Rabbit are actually Anasne Stories brought to the Americas by the African American Slaves introduced here Centuries ago. In an attempt to keep their Culture alive in this Strange and forbidden place they found themselves, they tried against all odds to keep alive the few songs and stories about the homeland they would never see again. It was something they could remember and so they held on to the Ananse the Wise Trickster figure they were all familiar with from the Land of their birth.

Here the act of Story Telling was a very important part of their Lives since it was by this Oral Tradition that History was kept alive and transmitted from one generation to another. Secondly all the Ananse Stories ended with Specific Messages, Morals or Advice, Proverbs or a Very Wise Saying. What they had then was an Instrument of transmitting Knowledge, Morals, Ethical Values, and an Instrument of sharing but also Preserving their Common Values in a new Land. Thus the very close similarity between the Ananse Stories of Africa and the Brer Rabbit Stories.

A review in USA Today -- another paper now lashing Lamborn -- refers to "the tar baby in Afro-American folklore."

In his autobiography, President Theodore Roosevelt writes that his uncle Robert Roosevelt wrote of the "Br'er Rabbit" story before Joel Chandler Harris popularized it with Uncle Remus. I haven't been able verify Roosevelt's claim about the publication of the work, but his comments make clear that the stories predated Harris. (I used Wikipedia to help run down some of these links.)

Even those critical of Harris's work recognize the African origins of the stories. Consider this 2009 commentary by the Associated Press:

[B]lack authors like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker -- who was born in Harris' hometown of Eatonton —- have denounced the author and say he stole the stories unjustly. ... For Curtis Richardson, who is one of several regular storytellers who perform at the Wren's Nest, being black in a museum that celebrates such a controversial body of work can be tough. Richardson said he refused to tell Harris' version of Tar Baby stories until he researched their roots back to West Africa and the Caribbean. Now he tells the older versions as a way to honor the stories' heritage and skip the modern associations with racism.

Turning to "The Wonderful Tar Baby Story," Harris himself supposes that the story originated in Africa. (We may note that in his introduction Harris uses race-loaded language properly off-limits today.)

The premise of the story (in Harris's account) is that a fox is trying to catch a rabbit. The fox mixes tar and turpentine and fashions it into a "tar baby," a sort of mannequin. Note that the important characteristic of tar is that it is sticky, not that it is black. The rabbit ambles by and, thinking the tar baby is a real person, wishes it a good morning. Of course the tar baby fails to reply. The rabbit mistakes this as rudeness and grows irritated. Incensed, the rabbit strikes the tar baby, getting entangled with it. Interestingly, the story ends on an ambiguous note; Uncle Remus says the story has no ending. Maybe somebody helped free the rabbit, but maybe not.

So what is the theme of the story? The rabbit makes two basic mistakes. First, he misconceives the nature of what he's dealing with. As a consequence, he develops totally unrealistic expectations regarding that thing. In misplaced anger, he lashes out, becoming ensnared by the thing.

Interestingly, the story is a perfect metaphor for those calling the tar baby inherently racist. They fundamentally misunderstand what a tar baby is. They lash out in anger over an innocent use of the term. And now they are ensnared in a controversy that makes them look like illiterate partisan hacks.

If we take the story as metaphor for the racist American South, then the most sensibly reading is that the rabbit represents the African American, while the tar baby represents a trick by white oppressors. (Wikipedia suggests this reading.)

How, then, did the term "tar baby" get caught up with racist overtones? Quite simply that comes from ignorant and illiterate racists fundamentally misunderstanding what a "tar baby" is. But surely we ought not let ignorant racists destroy a meaningful story from African folklore!

The basic mistake is to think that "tar baby" refers, not to a sticky and ensnaring problem, but to a black person. Consider, for example, the existence (pathetically, still on the market today) of "tar baby soap." Bernie Mac, the brilliant comedic actor who sadly died in 2008, wrote of his childhood, "Kids called me 'tar baby,' 'spooky juice.' I was scary."

There is nothing inherently racist about the African concept of the tar baby. The racist overtones arise only from sheer ignorance. Again, I decline to let ignorant bafoons ruin a perfectly good cultural symbol.

Of course, none of the background about the tar baby matters to the hysterical left. Participants with the hard-left MoveOn protested at Lamborn's office. One fellow said Lamborn should be tossed in the briar patch -- because apparently it's racist for Lamborn to invoke African folklore but perfectly acceptable for his critics to do the same.

I wonder why MoveOn declined to protest the Denver Post or Westword when left-leaning writers for those papers used the term "tar baby." (See yesterday's post for details.)

Unthinking critics have created an unfortunate feedback loop. John Kerry, Mitt Romney, and John McCain have all used the term "tar baby." The two Republicans apologized for it. But the journalists covering these stories apparently have never bothered to wonder whether they actually had anything to apologize for. But now it's a tradition: if you're a Republican and you innocently say "tar baby," that makes you a racist and you must immediately apologize. And never mind the facts.

Well, I say the true racism is to smother references to important African folklore in an attempt smear political opponents.

Lamborn Strikes the "Tar Baby" Tar Baby

What's amazing about the phrase "tar baby" (as others have noted) is that in today's world of political character assassination a politician strikes a tar baby merely by uttering the phrase.

Just ask Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn. As of the moment of this writing, the top Google hit for "tar baby" is a USA Today article, "GOP lawmaker apologizes to Obama for 'tar baby' remark."

Here's what he actually said regarding the debt-ceiling debate, reports the Denver Post's Allison Sherry: "Now, I don't even want to be associated with him. It's like touching a, a tar baby and you get it . . . you know you're stuck, and you're part of the problem now, and you can't get away."

Lamborn quickly apologized for using the phrase. But that hasn't stopped the left from blistering Lamborn.

Because she is an expert in linguistic analysis, Sherry helpfully adds, "Though the term is often defined as a sticky situation, it carries some historic usages that are racially insensitive."

According to David Sirota, "Lamborn's choice of words shows how the fringe right is mainstreaming racist language."

As Westword's Michael Roberts reviews, even the free-market Wayne Laugesen says Lamborn shouldn't have used the phrase.

But what does "tar baby" actually mean, and is it racist? Or (as usual) is the hard left manufacturing outrage to smear a Republican officeholder for partisan purposes?

The Wikipedia entry is actually useful here. It notes a tar baby entraps "Br'er Rabbit" in the classic story. But that's hardly the origin of the symbol.

Wikipedia also references Joseph Campbell, and thankfully I happen to have a copy of his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces on my desk. On page 87, Campbell describes "the celebrated and well-nigh universal tar-baby story of popular folklore." Cambell in turn references a 1930 article by Aurelio Espinosa and some other works.

Here's how Espinosa opens his 1943 follow-up article:

In my Notes on the Origin and History of the Tar-Baby Story... I examined and studied one hundred and fifty-two versions of the tale. In subsequent articles I have continued to affirm my belief in the India origins of the tale in the sense that India is as far back as we can trace it, and that it is not of African origin as some have believed. I have now in my possession two hundred and sixty-seven versions...

No doubt the term "tar baby" has been used by some with racist intent. But obviously Lamborn does not fall in that category. And lots of ordinary words and phrases have been used to convey bigotry, but that doesn't mean we must eradicate all that language. Rather, we should seek to eradicate the underlying bigotry, where it exists.

A "tar baby" in its oldest and widest use means simply something that entraps you if you start to fight or mess with it. It is now the perfect self-referential phrase.

But is Sirota right that Lamborn's use of the term "shows how the fringe right is mainstreaming racist language?"

Well, let's look at some other examples.

In 2004 John Kerry, that veritable champion of the "fringe right," used the phrase (and took flak for it).

On August 31, 2003, the Denver Post's hard-left columnist Jim Spencer wrote, "Last week, those same leaders started looking to the United Nations to pull them free of a Middle Eastern tar baby."

On July 3, 2006, the Denver Post's center-left columnist Bob Ewegen wrote, "Mighty clever fox, that Brer Owens seems to be. First, he appears to sucker Brer Romanoff into tangling with that political tar baby, 'immigration.'"

On March 9, 2002, the often-left-leaning Denver Post editorial board wrote, "When the House Civil Justice and Judiciary Committee voted 7-2 on Thursday against creating a special panel with subpoena powers to investigate Columbine, it was only the latest public agency to decline hugging this tar-baby issue." On April 14, 2002, it wrote, "Meantime, a parade of public officials has pirouetted out of the path of a tar baby they'd rather not dance with..."

Over at the left-leaning Westword, the term has been used by Alan Prendergast (and again) and editor Patricia Calhoun.

(Update: Here's another little irony: while Sirota wrote his screed for Solon, another left-leaning writer, David Corn, used the term "tar baby" in an article for Salon several years ago.)

So I'll go ahead and hold my breath waiting for Sirota to denounce Joseph Cambell, Jim Spencer, Bob Ewegen, the Denver Post, Alan Prendergast, and Patricia Calhoun for helping the "fringe right" mainstream "racist language."

Or he could just stop smearing Republicans over make-believe issues.