“Great minds talk about ideas; mediocre minds talk about events; small minds talk about people.” — Unknown
Whatever one might think about that well-known quote, it certainly describes the vast majority of Ayn Rand’s critics, ever incapable of dealing with her actual ideas. Instead, they talk about the *person*, jumping on minor aspects of her personality or conduct, or isolated passages of her writing, looking for excuses to justify their scared evasions. Two recent ones are the “speed freak” meme (the comments at that link actually do a good bit of fisking that one), and the “serial-killer fan” meme.
One of the smaller minds at BoingBoing.net, Mark Frauenfelder, brings us another example, sourced from Michael Ford at that paragon of journalism, the CessPit. This one recycles an old argument, often directed at small-government advocates of all kinds, to accuse Ayn Rand of “hypocrisy” for taking Medicare and Social Security assistance while opposing the existence of such programs.
Other examples often used include: driving on the government roads, sending one’s kids to the public schools, using a government student loan program, using a public park, or (in Canada) using the government health care system. (I even had someone deploy it when I commented about Objectivists going to the Clark County Shooting Park in Las Vegas, funded in part courtesy of Harry Reid. He did not yet know that I was one of them, and hilarity ensued.)
Is it hypocrisy to utilize these services while opposing them? Remember that this accusation obviously operates on the premise that hypocrisy is a moral failing. Objectivism agrees with this, as hypocrisy entails a contradiction, a disconnect, between what one professes to believe ought to be, versus what one’s actions actually are. If you are careful not too look too closely or think overlong about the issue, Ayn Rand’s application for Social Security and Medicare benefits does indeed appear to contradict her normative claims; for Fraunfelder, Ford and their ilk, that is sufficient to establish the fact.
Ah, what a relief for them to find something vaguely white with feathers that they can call a duck and scurry away with their conclusions, eh? Who needs to wait around and see if it actually quacks, has a bill rather than a beak, and swims in water?
There is one very, very large fact evaded in this argument, that is completely fatal to it: that is the fact that while we are free to “choose” not to use the services we oppose, we are not free to opt out of paying for such things in the first place. Where was this concern for morality and choice at the moment of the initial theft (taxation) which pays for these services?
Morality ends where a gun begins. If we were to speak out against such things at the outset and then opt in, then it would be hypocrisy… but that choice was never ours!
An Objectivist approaches the issue of using government services in that context — as the victim of a theft. As such, he now retains the moral (if not legal) right of the use of force — retaliatory force — against the aggressor, in the same way and for the same reason as a mugging victim has the right to retaliate.
Of course, the government is a really big and well-armed thief, and worse: they are in charge of the law. Trying to defend oneself by subterfuge (e.g. via tax evasion) is highly impractical and very risky, a poor tactical choice (as Wesley Snipes found out). However, the government is an unusual thief; it occasionally offers to give back some of the loot. Sometimes, it says that you are “entitled” to it, for reasons that have nothing to do with justice (i.e. that it was yours in the first place; see the implicit Marxist premise behind all commentary that speak of tax cuts as a “cost” to government) . Should we care about such details? Notwithstanding our preference for getting and keeping our own money on the grounds that it’s ours, it is morally proper (if not an imperative) to take one’s own money back from a thief at every opportunity, regardless of the thief’s motives.
This “hypocrisy” charge fails to account for these facts; it rests on the premise that government theft is a given, the absolute and not-to-be-questioned (but our right to our property is contingent, subject to how much the government decides we can keep), and that morality only applies *after* the theft — when it’s convenient for the thieves and their pilot fish, but not for the victims of course.
The only alternative left to us in this little racket of theirs, is to openly applaud and sanction the theft in the name of “consistency” (as they do) — or to passively surrender and leave all the loot taken from us to them. By their logic, the only ones who have a moral claim to the loot are the ones who applaud the theft.
The reality is this: Thieves have no moral right to their loot — and neither do those who aid and abet them, physically or morally. That’s pretty clear by itself. But consider this: after you eliminate the thieves and their sanctioners, who is left? All that remains after that, are those victims who did NOT sanction the theft.
In other words, the only ones who can plausibly be said to have a moral claim on the right of use and disposal of the loot — so long as there is any left to reclaim — are those who morally oppose the theft in the first place, the so-called “hypocrites”.
“Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others—the advocates and supporters of the welfare state are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it . . . .”
– Ayn Rand, from The Objectivist, June 1966, 11 (Via the Ayn Rand Lexicon).
It is a basic application of honesty that one should be familiar with what an ideology or a person actually says and believes, before criticizing them. If Frauenfelder and Ford had met this minimum standard, they would know that Ayn Rand had already answered their sorry little gambit over forty years ago.
But hey, it’s Ayn Rand, so anything is permissible as far as they are concerned. What trifle is honesty as compared to the circle-jerk of their adoring, Rand-fearing sycophants?
Postscript 1/30/2011: Frauenfelder posts a response to an article over at Reason that makes the same key point I do. Of course, it’s “Reason”, where Tim Cavanaugh loads up his article with the usual “cultist” smear, allowing Frauenfelder to cover his ass on the key point while still maintaining his cred with his sycophants… a nice little reminder why men of actual reason must be careful to keep libertarianism per se at arms length.
Jim,
Great response. I don’t know who said it but it fits. “Blaming limited government exponents for using public services they’ve (perforce) already paid for is like blaming Russians in breadlines for Soviet Communism.”
I’ve heard people call Objectivist intellectuals hypocrites for working at publicly funded universities. I work for the Canadian public health care system, but I’m very vocal about my opposition to it. I may get fired someday for being a malcontent, but we’ll see.
Great, great post. “Don’t use roads then LOL! etc” is a very popular leftist meme these days for anyone who opposes expropriation or redistributive taxation. The answer is simple, but it’s not like the parasites care to hear it. Perhaps by spreading the word as you have done here, we can get enough legitimate victims to claim their restitution that the aggregate effect hastens the collapse of the immoral scheme.
Or blaming prisoners for eating the meals fed to them.
With smog control laws and regulations concerning CO2, the government concerns itself in the quality of the atmosphere. Are those of us who oppose such regulations hypocrites for continuing to breathe?
This is another example of the “Gorgon’s head” phenomenon. The Left (and to a lesser extent Conservatives) will attack Ayn Rand relentlessly and forever (until they are destroyed). They must. She represents a complete repudiation of their worldview. But more, to a Leftist whose psychology is totally second-handerism, any challenge to their worldview is a challenge to their fragile pseudo egos. This is a challenge to their very psychological stability and thus to their very lives. Leftists must seek to destroy Ayn Rand. In one very real sense, their lives depend on it.
Religious Conservative can always retreat to god and Jeebus. But what can a nihilist, skeptic Leftist retreat too? That is why they will always hate Ayn Rand (and any value worshiper) and why we will get a never ending stream of simple-minded bullshit like this from here on out.
doesn’t homeschooling or private schools negate your argument though. you can opt out of public education and choose home-schooling instead, or am I missing something here?
Heck yeah she could have opted out, she could’ve gone to live at Galt’s Gultch and let the world’s motor wind down.
She could have invented her own alphabet to write her books on paper she hand made from trees she felled by her own sweat and then sold the books to the other people who lived there.
But she still wouldn’t have saved enough in taxes to treat the cancer incurred from the cigarettes she chose to smoke. (from the tobacco she grew herself)
doesn’t homeschooling or private schools negate your argument though. you can opt out of public education and choose home-schooling instead, or am I missing something here?
Both private schools and home-schools are regulated by the government. But how could the existence of private schools negate the argument that the welfare-state is evil? The existence of private schools and even of private businesses just means that there are elements of freedom remaining. It doesn’t mean that the system is not heavily corrupted by government intervention, intervention which is so destructive that it threatens to collapse the whole civilization.
The Modern Method of Philosophical Discourse: The Smear « Psycosmic Emanations // Jan 31, 2011 at 2:56 am
[…] at the New Clarion, three links are available for each of the three […]
I like some of Rand’s ideas but not all. (I find the extreme devotion to her to be almost religious, something I think she’d find disgusting). I see nothing wrong with her using government assistance especially since she was already paying for it.
It is a bit hypocritical though as she always had the choice of moving to another country. So this “we aren’t free to opt out of paying for the services” argument is invalid as well. The US government is not forcing you to live here. If one is deeply happy with the way the country operates and has huge objections to it’s practices then one can try and find a country with the same standards of living and quality of medicine but with vastly lower taxes and move there. Ideas for where she could have moved?
erratum – meant to says “deeply unhappy”.
“doesn’t homeschooling or private schools negate your argument though. you can opt out of public education and choose home-schooling instead, or am I missing something here?”
His argument is not contingent on the choice of opting out of receiving the stolen loot back via government services. It is contingent on the choice of opting out of being robbed of the stolen loot in the first place.
With home schooling, you still pay the taxes for the public school system.
What he is saying is that you have the moral right to get some of your stolen money back by receiving the services that it created.
RTJ –
The whole point of offering a theory of proper government is to prescribe what the government should do, and what it should not do. To say that one can move to another country is an attempt to sidestep this crucial issue, and I should add, also a disgusting attempt to blame the victims of government coercion for their own failure to magically find a better country. What should one do in that new country if that government is also unjust?
AD-
I’m not disagreeing about government theory. I am disagreeing with the premise that we are forced to pay US taxes. We are not.
Just as Ayn Rand did, we are free to, in the face of horrible government coercion, move elsewhere. In fact it is probably easier for us to do so than it was for her, yet so few of us will actually take those “first steps down new roads armed only with our vision”.
I am concerned about unjust government coercion, period. Whether it is labeled “US taxes,” “US regulation,” etc. is laughably irrelevant.
Again, I reiterate that you are sidestepping the unavoidable normative questions of politics, in order to score a rhetorical “gotcha” against people with whom you disagree. There is really no point to continuing this conversation.
Being quickly dismissive doesn’t lead to much understanding.
Keep in mind this post that we are commenting on is discussing hypocrisy in use of the US tax/welfare system. So isn’t the author sidestepping the fact that we have freedom to choose not to be a part of that system? That is my point.
RTJ
Where would Ayn Rand, or any other freedom loving individual move to? Canada? Western Europe? China? Be subjected to the same, and most likely worse and more corrupt systems of tax and welfare? Not to mention the sacrifice involved in abandoning the country and culture that, at least by historical precedent and implicit in the constitution, is the freest country in the world.
I find it difficult to fathom how one could drop the aforementioned context in making the argument to move elsewhere. Further context dropping seems to be in equating Soviet Russia’s brutality with the injustice of the US which, as bad as it may be, is nowhere near the point of making it imperative to get the hell out (as Rand did).
Drew,
What RTJ is doing is resurrecting that old zombie response from the Statists of the ’60’s. Love it or Leave it. But for Chrissakes, don’t you dare criticize it.
“So isn’t the author sidestepping the fact that we have freedom to choose not to be a part of that system?”
Uh-huh, and people censored by a government have the freedom to move to another country that respects their rights, so they have no right to complain about the state shutting them up–in other words, they should shut up or shut up.
“What RTJ is doing is resurrecting that old zombie response from the Statists of the ’60′s. Love it or Leave it.”
Yep, further proof that the conservatives and liberals are the same at heart, they just want the state to control different spheres of human life.
Incidentally, I commented at one of the many leftist parrot choirhalls propagating this agitprop, so I apologize to anyone irritated by any incoming traffic therefrom:
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/ayn_rand_was_a_hypocrite/
or more accurately a “we own everything cause we say so, and if you don’t like what we say, get the hell out†argument, with the goal of pronouncing state force-initiations as voluntary. Which is to say, it’s an argument for feudalism: the government owns everything, we are merely its tenants, who can leave after paying our expatriation taxes.
I have seen some say this:
“Sure, she can get her money back; but did she document all of the taxes that were taken away from her and use only that much (i.e., if she paid 20,000$ in taxes, did she only use 20,000$ in Medicaid to pay for her surgery)? Taking more than she paid into the system is wrong.”
I’m not sure whether this argument is legitimate or not. Could someone please address this point for me, so that I have clarity on the issue? Thank you.
Drew found my point. Where would she move to that’s doing it right Ayn Rand-style?
Hong Kong has a more free market and similar standards of living to the US. They also have a form of state-sponsred health care and education though. I would say Ireland as well but their free market was more recent and they aren’t doing so hot right now. Other ideas?
Looks like this “hypocrisy” approach is the New Left’s New Bludgeon. Although, as Radley Balko points out, they might oughta swing it at their own heads, on occasion.
http://www.theagitator.com/2011/01/31/our-donations-are-different/#comments
“I’m not sure whether this argument is legitimate or not. Could someone please address this point for me, so that I have clarity on the issue? Thank you.”
It’s my thinking that the amount expropriated from you by the state is in fact incalculable, since it steals not only literal sums, but also priceless intangibles such as blocking the development of crucial medicines or technologies, regulating out of existence businesses you might have been employed by or used the services of, increasing the prices of goods and services you’ve bought through both taxation and regulation, etc, etc, etc. I could go on for pages.
The point is, what they’ve taken isn’t limited to whatever sum you could immediately trace to your bank account, and therefore neither is the sum you have a right to take back, if they offer it.
That’s how I’ve always looked at it.
Inspector –
I agree. There is no way to acquiesce to the welfare-state status quo and to keep a principled, quantitative account of how much government-dispensed money is “yours.” The only moral choice is to advocate repeal, while minimizing the harm to oneself by taking back whatever government loot the law allows you to have.
Someone might object that if everyone followed this policy, there wouldn’t be enough government money to go around. This is true, but this problem is inherent in the welfare state, and it cannot be blamed on individual citizens who are forced to deal with existing laws. The only long-term solution is to end the government’s cash transfer schemes.
You would have to calculate, not just the amount you have paid in taxes, but the wealth you could have built had you been able to keep it. This is a crucial point. The government leaves you enough of your income to survive on; it is your seed corn that is being drained away and consumed by others.
If you pay $10,000 in taxes in one year when you start out in your career at 25, that money could have grown to more than $400,000 by the time you reach 65 if you had been able to invest it at a 10% return. That is based on just one year of taxes.
Substitute your own numbers, do your own math. There is no way to actually calculate the impoverishment you are experiencing as a result of taxation. And because the government takes your investment money and spends it on consumption, the potential wealth is never realized. The government doesn’t control that $400,000 now; it just burned your $10,000 on feeding a street bum — or building a turtle tunnel.
The government is actively destroying future wealth in the name of present consumption. No matter how much money you might be able to get “refunded” via social programs, it would never be more than a fraction of what was taken away from you.
“The only long-term solution is to end the government’s cash transfer schemes.”
Indeed, and there’s a point in here somewhere about spending cuts.
Thank you for the responses.
North Bridge,
Well said. I really enjoy your comments.
Madmax,
Thank you for your comment.
speaking of HK, they already instituted a minimum equivalent to $ NZ 4.50. It will take effect in May I believe.
*minimum wage sorry
“if she paid 20,000$ in taxes, did she only use 20,000$ in Medicaid to pay for her surgery)? Taking more than she paid into the system is wrong.â€
This argument attempts to substitute force for thought and then call it even. Ayn Rand and many other taxpayers never got a chance to use their $20000 the way they wanted to. That renders the notion that those $20k were all there was ever going to be, false, since government is an agent of destruction.
There is a semi-jocular graph that plots the advancement of science over the last 2000 years. It shows a standstill during the Dark Ages and then a rapid acceleration, with a comparison that suggests “we’d have been exploring the galaxy by now” if not for the religious medieval times.
It gets the gist of it right. One of the most horrible consequences of the unfathomable extent of force initiated during statism is the total erasure, but for imagination, of what could have been. But that quote gives you a rough idea. Our lives could’ve been to ours, what ours are to the sick, tortured wretches of the 1300’s. 150 year lifespans free of disease, blindness, deafness and paralysis cured as a matter of routine, who knows.
Well, no one knows because force was substituted for thought.
This one recycles an old argument, often directed at small-government advocates of all kinds, to accuse Ayn Rand of “hypocrisy†for taking Medicare and Social Security assistance while opposing the existence of such programs.
Here’s some food for thought. By the same line of argument, AR’s attackers are hypocrites because they oppose capitalism while consuming food, clothing, shoes, and shelter. They are engaged in the same behavior that they are attempting to mock AR for, only starting from opposite premises. They are benefitting from the very system they are denouncing, just as they claim she did.
AR’s attackers are in fact exponentially greater hypocrites, because their consumption of privately produced goods through a lifetime is exponentially greater than AR’s consumption of Medicare. They are engaged in this hypocritical behavior every single day of their lives. If hypocrisy can be quantified in this way, then they are jeering about a presumed splinter in her eye while evading the pole in their own.
And they are hypocrites about hypocrisy itself, because they engage in this hypocritical behavior while denouncing its hypocrisy.
Intellectually, their contradiction is so vast that it consumes even the pretense of an argument. Or, putting it differently, there is so little consistency, common sense, or intellectual dignity to this kind of attack that it is pointless to debate it. It is nothing but a dishonest smear.
However, the fact that the attackers are engaging in the very behavior they denounce is interesting. The point is not that “they are doing it too,” but that the two cases are not actually parallel. In reality there was nothing hypocritical about AR seeking to get her money back from the government, whereas the anti-capitalists are true hypocrites in exactly the way they denounce.
AR’s attackers have got it 180 degrees in reverse because they are inverting the concepts of production and force. On their premises the government is the producer and private businesses are the thieves. The government “produces” social programs out of nothing and is capable of providing for our every need. On the other hand, the products of capitalism represent theft from the planet and profits represent theft from other people. Government is the provider, capitalists are the parasites.
The attacks on AR imply that by partaking in the value government produces, you lose the right to oppose it. This would be true if the government were the actual source of the benefits it doles out. But the reality is that the government is incapable of “producing” anything; it expropriates money, then offers some of it back to the victims. As others have pointed out, it is completely moral to oppose the theft while doing what you can to recover your money.
The only hypocrisy is on the side of the anti-capitalists who, by building their whole survival on the products created by private businesses, do in fact lose the moral right to oppose capitalism.
Wow, NorthBridge: very well put. Brilliantly put. A lot of great ammunition in there.
“In reality there was nothing hypocritical about AR seeking to get her money back from the government, whereas the anti-capitalists are true hypocrites in exactly the way they denounce.”
An astute observation. I’ve noticed that the Left does a lot of this – their hyperbolic, untruthful, and frankly fantastical, criticisms of their enemies are actually projections of their own souls.
Also, yeah: that’s a really good point about them being the actual hypocrites.
Good ones Inspector and North Bridge. However, the counterpoint I came up with after I wrote this, was that every Democrat who favors tax increases is a hypocrite for cashing their tax returns.
Incidentally, I commented at one of the many leftist parrot choirhalls propagating this agitprop, so I apologize to anyone irritated by any incoming traffic therefrom:
Au contraire, Adrian — that’s the entire point of these posts: ammunition. Fire away. Incidentally, for anyone who uses this ammunition: feel free to come back and post information should the enemy come up with a good riposte. I mean, something that is at least somewhat original, or for which you couldn’t come up with a good countershot. If the enemy comes up with some good countermeasures (unlikely, for very fundamental reasons, but possible) I want to know so I can adapt.
Drew found my point. Where would she move to that’s doing it right Ayn Rand-style?
RTJ: It’s interesting that you should ask that question, since I am in fact someone who did “vote with my feet” (I am an expat Canadian).
Strictly speaking, remember my line where I wrote that every victim of the State may morally proceed as “a victim of theft”. Morally, that means that retaliation is his right, because he is in the moral right. The looters are not.
So, while moving may be a good tactical decision — I don’t regret mine — it is not morally necessitated. It is the victims who have the right to remain, and the perpetrators who ought to be exiled.
Someone might object that if everyone followed this policy, there wouldn’t be enough government money to go around. This is true, but this problem is inherent in the welfare state, and it cannot be blamed on individual citizens who are forced to deal with existing laws. The only long-term solution is to end the government’s cash transfer schemes.
Exactly correct, and a point I omitted strictly for brevity. The government does not confiscate and then redistribute every dollar to where it can be retrieved. Every bit of wealth consumed by the non-productive is necessarily gone, unretrievable. That loss is going to come out of someone’s pocket.
Whose will it be? Who gets left holding the bag? Me? Inspector? This is one of those questions that cannot be answered clearly, because the wrong cannot be undone. You can’t get back a murder victim, and you can’t retrieve your Twinkie if someone grabs and eats it. The best that is possible would be to collect it from those who ate it — but there are some who are not capable of doing so, and much wealth is now frozen into unproductive forms (e.g. you can’t turn a million dollar piece of “art” outside a government building back into a million dollars without finding an even bigger sucker).
In the great reckoning that must occur before we can return to a proper laissez-faire republic, the losses will have to be accounted for.
Should that happy day come, however, I am quite happy to relinquish any and all moral claims against the erstwhile State thief, as that’s the best deal I’ll ever make.
“Incidentally, for anyone who uses this ammunition: feel free to come back and post information should the enemy come up with a good riposte.”
Not a *good* riposte, but here’s another lefty hive-mind virus starting to replicate itself. Apparently Ayn Rand has been added to quote sites for saying, “Evil requires the sanction of the victim.”
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/aynrand136297.html
Apparently lefties are taking this to mean that Rand believed that the victim of evil was asking for it.