Terror-Fried

Here are two comments made on my blog site responding to my May 27, 2010 post.

May 27, 2010 10:39 PM
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May 31, 2010 7:18 AM
???? said... ????????,?????? ..................................................

No doubt the web master censored them because they contain foul language.

Given my innocuous post, it's easy to identity what prompted these writers to make such coarse and probably illiterate remarks. They are terrified that their days of freeloading would be over should food-stamps and other so-called "entitlement" programs be ended. They are also terrified that should regulations be repealed they'll no longer be able to scream violation of this or that regulation---ignoring the employer and employee rights violated by the regulation.

Americans' universally-recognized-and-sometimes-sneered-at-generosity is a matter of choice. That choice can be withheld. The malingerer knows it. He also knows that after decades of screaming that the productive owe him for being needy, the productive are beginning to realize they owe him nothing---especially because he's needy.

Now that would indeed be very terrifying to know, if one has the soul of a malingerer, or a killer. One would surely start using a half dozen four-letter words in place of tears and sores. That's what "entitlements" have always boiled down to: when whining doesn't work, use insults and get the government to force productive workers to provide for malingerers.

It would be even more terrifying to know that no matter how loudly the grasping and the envious cry, their pleas might one day bounce off of indifferent ears. Surely indifference would be warranted---especially after a century of hearing the virtues of productivity and profit attacked as greedy blood sucking.

But more deeply, those two who posted foul-language comments on my blog site are terrified that the days of self-sacrifice as a moral good are coming to an end. Slowly Americans are beginning to recognize that government has no right to loot Paul to give to Peter, and that to do so is a vice, not a virtue.

A Comment on Rational Egoism

Rational egoism refers to an entire ethical system originated by Ayn Rand. The system rests on the recognition that man's means of survival is his mind. It identifies the ruling values a man should hold and the virtues his life requires.

In essence, rational egoism recognizes that in order to support his life, man must think. He must figure out what he needs (his values) in order to live, and how to gain them (his virtues). The rational egoist is the individual who recognizes that he must exert intellectual and physical effort in order to survive and that it is good and right for him to keep and dispose of the result of his efforts as he chooses.

An essential aspect of Ayn Rand's ethics is the nature and meaning of the self. Miss Rand's view of the self is revolutionary. For millennium all religions and all ethical systems, have viewed the self as born sinful, evil by nature and pre-determined. The self, it was asserted, must be whipped and controlled by the state or religious authorities in order to curb, if not crush, vicious thoughts and demonic actions. Such a view of the self is in essence the Nietzschean brute, the only difference being that Nietzsche said such a creature is good, while other ethical systems said such a creature is bad. In all cases, the self was commanded to live for others in order to be moral. And if one did not choose to live for others, the state and/or the church saw to it that one was forced to do so. The initiation of force, inherent in any advocacy that man must live for others, was thus made into a moral good.

Miss Rand, in contrast, showed that the self is that aspect of the individual that thinks and judges and chooses and acts, and that the self is formed by one's own choices and actions. One's choices and actions reflect the thinking one has done, or has not.

Concern with one's choices and actions is concern with one's own interests, which means one cares about one's life and its quality. To be concerned with one's own interest on a fundamental level is to be concerned with one's own estimate of the moral stature of one's self, which is egoism. To evade such concern is to be guided by other's say-so, which is anti-egoism, or as Miss Rand's coined description: the second hander.

A fascinating dramatization of the essential qualities of the rational self is Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. The abstract meaning of the self is neatly summed by Gayle Wynand, in the same novel, during the battle over Cortland Homes.

The Fairness Doctrine

Indiana Representative Mike Pence introduced a bill "to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from re-promulgating the Fairness Doctrine." In support of Mr. Pence's bill I encourage a YES vote to prevent re-instatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Access H.R. 226 at http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h226/show

The government uses the word "fairness" to mean "equal"---as in "equal treatment." However, since the Fairness Doctrine commands who shall have access to a station owner's property it violates the station owner's property rights. In forcing the owner to broadcast a view with which he disagrees it nullifies the station owner's views, violating his freedom of speech.

That's not equal treatment.

The Fairness Doctrine rests on two basic premises. The first premise is that the government owns the airwaves. But property is the result of effort exerted by an individual to discover, use and maintain a particular thing. John Locke showed the validity of this argument in Two Treatises on Government when he identified how property comes to be property.

The government did not discover the airwaves nor how to use them. It did not invent or build the equipment necessary to use them. It does not spend thought, time and money hiring the personnel and maintaining the equipment necessary to broadcast. It has merely arbitrarily asserted it owns the airwaves.

The second premise is that you must sacrifice your interests to those of others. Why? Because "you are your brothers keeper"---the "you" being anyone who produces. And the more you produce, the more you "owe" to society. This is "giving back," the neo-collectivist slogan for "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

No one can be expected to live his life for someone else. It's immoral to ask it. It's impossible to practice. You cannot digest another's food. You cannot take on another's disease. You cannot think another's thoughts. And why should you try? There's no virtue in it. And certainly no profit.

The Fairness Doctrine is a government edict that violates individual rights by forcing a man to provide venues through which others may express their opinions. Why? Those who don't share the station owner's views have the right to turn off his broadcast, or build their own station, or express their views in a different forum by writing letters or making speeches, etc. But for government to force a man betray his views for the sake of another's is tantamount to thought control.

If a station owner broadcasts messages that support Candidate X, it is not just that he be forced to support Candidate Y. If Candidate Y contracts with the station owner to run an ad, that's between them. But for the government to force the station owner to support a candidate he does not support---well, what would you call it? A form of censorship?

If a station owner broadcasts messages that support The Fairness Doctrine, would the government insist that the owner also air messages against The Fairness Doctrine? You can bet it would not, which indicates the root of what the Fairness Doctrine is all about: a device to push programs that the government favors.

The Fairness Doctrine places government dictates above station owners' rights, above your rights, and the rights of all American citizens---whether you own a radio and/or TV station or not---because it makes government the "ruler" not the servant of the people, which reverses the central intent of our Constitution. The government has no "duty" to force any views on anyone. It has only one job: to protect individual rights.

Those who argue that the Fairness Doctrine is in "the public interest" embrace two mistaken assumptions. The first assumption is that there's such a thing as "the public interest," as if 300 million Americans shared one point of view and one action alone would benefit everyone. The destructive consequences of Prohibition was one of the most graphically destructive examples of how false that notion is. The Hays Office was another.

The second assumption is that the government unerringly knows what is the public's best interest. But only the individual can judge his own best interest. Government bureaucrats can only say what they're interested in.

The Fairness Doctrine is not a doctrine that supports freedom or individual rights or free enterprise. The only way to deal fairly with it is to prevent its re-instatement, and to repeal it entirely.
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Nota Bene: The above article was originally posted May 2, 2009. I revised it last week and re-posted it June 1, 2009.