Unrestricted Violence and Oppression

Below is a repost from April 14, 2017. The title is new, replacing the lengthy original: “Brains or Blood? Take Your Pick—The Choice Is Not New but the Threat Is Worse.” The post is about 1960s violence and oppression on university campuses that made blood, rather than brains, the preferred method of settling disputes. The first quotation from Ludwig von Mises about Vladimir Lenin states the premise of today’s, and yesterday’s, leftists, while the second from chancellor Mitchell demonstrates the proper response. Today, if I were rewriting this, I would have to extend the violence and oppression beyond universities to public and private venues, parks, buildings, and streets and highways, with Mitchell’s courageous expel-and-arrest solution expanded to prompt arrest and deportation.
 
Recall that Lenin urged his generals to use “ruthless terror” in the establishment of his workers’ paradise called socialism. Today, random violence on streets and subways, plus assassinations, are not just called for but cheered when they occur. Recall also F. A. Hayek’s chapter 10 of The Road to Serfdom, “Why the Worst Get on Top,” in which he explained why so-called democratic socialism always gives rise to dictators: their policies require coercion and sooner or later the democrats lack the ruthlessness to carry out the necessary physical force. Hence, the rise of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot, among others, to take the steps to establish socialism.
 
Are we there yet?

Allow me to begin this post with a couple of quotations.

The real significance of the Lenin revolution is to be seen in the fact that it was the bursting forth of the principle of unrestricted violence and oppression. It was the negation of all the political ideals that had for three thousand years guided the evolution of Western civilization.

This letter is to inform you that this university has dismissed more than 40 students on this day. . . . [The] university will not be run by threats and intimidation. It will not respond to ultimatums from students, and it will not be intimidated by the pressures of groups who are dedicated to the disruption of institutions of higher learning or seek disorganization to the point where such institutions can be controlled by violence and run under constant threat of disruption.

The first quote is from Planned Chaos (chapter 6) by Ludwig von Mises, referencing the Russian Revolution of 1917. The second is a rare statement of courage by a college administrator; it is from a letter to friends of the University of Denver (my alma mater), dated April 30,1968, by Chancellor Maurice B. Mitchell.*

The connection between the two is the “principle of unrestricted violence and oppression” practiced by the Bolshevists in the early twentieth century, then later by the New Left “revolutionaries” of the 1960s. Today, we see the same unrestricted violence and oppression on college campuses the aim of which is to shut down free speech and its consequent diversity of ideas.

Violence does not require the use of a gun or the laying on of hands. Criminal assault is a threat that does not involve touching. Preventing patrons from voluntarily entering a lecture hall to listen to a speaker, regardless of the nature of the ideas presented, is as much the initiation of the use of physical force as a pistol whip to the head.

In recent months, the violence, in addition to blocking patron entrance, has been quite physical: setting a food cart on fire and breaking windows of the venue (UC Berkeley), grabbing the hair of a sponsoring professor and sending her to the hospital (Middlebury College), and shouting and banging on the venue windows to disrupt the speaker, even when the presentation was being live streamed in an empty auditorium (Claremont McKenna College).

In the past I have referred to college administrators as spineless (Applying Principles, pp. 101-105) for their lack of courage to stand up to the belligerents and for their refusal to expel all participants from their universities, as did Chancellor Mitchell.

Subsequent criminal prosecution is the only way to dampen and stop campus violence and oppression.

“Complicit,” however, is the more correct word to describe our present-day college administrators. A brigade of police to protect the patrons and round up all perpetrators of rights violations is all that would be required. Some administrators in the 1960s were complicit, but it seems more common that colleges today order police to stand down when violence erupts.

Brains or blood, college administrators.** It’s your choice and you seem to have made it for the latter. Respect for brains, freedom of speech and expression, and diversity of ideas have disappeared from your citadels of reason.

“Bolshevists set the precedent,” as Mises pointed out in Omnipotent Government (p. 178). “The success of the Lenin clique encouraged the Mussolini gang and the Hitler troops. Both Italian Fascism and German Nazism adopted the political methods of Soviet Russia.”

And no one stood up to Lenin to dampen or stop his violence and oppression. Indeed, he was seen by many as a hero and liberator, but it is a straight line from Lenin to Hitler and Mussolini to the New Left to the violent Progressive (or Post-Modern—call it what you want) Left of the present.

It all comes from the same source. Marx and Engels made no distinction between communism and socialism, except to say that there was a lower and higher phase of communist society. Social democrats called themselves socialists to distinguish themselves from Lenin’s communism, but they shared the same goal (Planned Chaos, chapter 3). Social democracy is what the American Progressives (Applying Principles, pp. 110-13) learned in Prussian universities in the late nineteenth century.

British guild socialism of the Fabian Society is what Hitler and Mussolini took as their models of the modern fascist state (Omnipotent Government, p. 178). And Bismarck’s Prussia was modeled on the medieval guilds. Thus, communism, socialism, and social democracy, at root, are all essentially medieval ideas, premised on the illiberal notion of initiating physical force to achieve one’s goals, which is to say based on the premise of unrestricted violence and oppression.

Governments hold the monopoly on the use of physical force and when they use it for anything other than retaliation against aggressors, they themselves become the aggressors. Thus, taxation, regulation, and involuntary anything, whether the military draft or public domain laws, as well as non-objective law—vague and overly broad statutes, many of which we have today, including the deliberate nebulousness of Title IX that terrorizes college campuses—are descendants of the medieval guilds and the Marx-Engels-Lenin axis of violence and oppression.

It is time to choose brains over blood, to check our premises and adopt the true liberalism of freedom of speech, property rights, voluntary trade and association, and most importantly, tolerance for a diversity of ideas.


* The students had presented the university with “non-negotiable demands” and staged a sit-in at the Registrar’s and Chancellor’s offices. By 1960s standards this was mild when compared to the wanton destruction of research and records at other universities, among other criminal activity.

** “Brains or Blood?” was the [not so] subtle title of a one-page document co-authored by yours truly and four classmates at the University of Denver, distributed on campus a year after Chancellor Mitchell’s letter. It was a response to and refutation of non-negotiable demands presented to the university by a cabal of New Leftists. Children of the sixties? Yes, we were, but we defended our chancellor! [The document was presented to chancellor Mitchell and published as a letter to the editor in The Denver Post.]

 

Postscript (11/13/2025). An anecdote about chancellor Mitchell. He did not possess even a bachelor’s degree, let alone a PhD—which made him my kind of chancellor! His extensive executive experience culminated in positions as director of Britannica Films and, before accepting the job in Denver, as president of Encyclopedia Britannica. The story goes that he was a member of the school’s board of trustees, so when it came time to select a new chancellor, one board member turned to Mitchell and said, “Why don’t you do it?”

The Fascist Left

Below is a repost from October 8, 2017, that discusses the origin and meaning of fascism as a form of socialism, which means it belongs on the left side of the left-right political and economic continuum. Following this repost, I have added a postscript on racism. For a detailed presentation of why the German form of fascism, Nazism, was totalitarian socialism, see George Reisman’s essay, “Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian.” 

 

Slinging unfriendly epithets today has become sport, so I thought I’d throw out a few myself.

Political leftists can be described as intellectually bankrupt, hate-filled, envy-ridden fascists. They’re also postmodern progressives, but, unfortunately, they don't consider those terms to be insulting. I do.

Let me start with the left-right political spectrum. It goes back to the 1789 French National Assembly. Aristocrats and churchmen, supporters of the king, sat on the right, while the revolutionaries, some of whom were legitimate classical liberals, sat on the left.

In the ensuing two hundred years, the terms have varied in nuanced ways, but essentially the left has been understood as home of the good guys (socialists, statists, progressives) and the right as home of the bad guys, especially fascists, reactionaries and other conservatives, and thanks to the communists, capitalists.*

In my undergraduate school days of the late ‘60s, the spectrum was described as a horseshoe. At the top of the curve, in the middle, was democracy, so all of us good guys were middle-of-the-roaders who, of course, believed in voting and compromise. After all, there is and can be no perfectly free society and extremists, especially those who stick to principle, were dangerous.

No distinction between the compromise of principles and options was made (1, 2).
   
As some have pointed out, and I agree, the spectrum is best thought of as a straight-line continuum from the left—total control of life and economy by the state—to the right—laissez-faire capitalism (or liberalism in the classical tradition). In the middle is the so-called mixed economy, a mixture of freedom and dictatorship.

Statism is the general term that identifies the left with its two inconsequential variants, socialism and fascism. This means that fascism is “right” only in the sense that it is on the “right side of the left.”

Socialism, though, is not just control, but ownership, of life and economy. Lenin’s metaphor of the socialist state was that it would be a giant post office and we would all work for and be controlled by, or rather, belong to, the postal service, aka the state, “under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat.” (State and Revolution, p. 44, emphasis added.)

Though its roots go back earlier, fascism came about when Mussolini broke off from the socialist party and had to come up with something different. (Mussolini and Hitler were socialists to their core.) Unlike Lenin, Mussolini, and later, Hitler, inherited an industrial economy with large degrees of private life and property.

The Italian word fascio means workers’ league, which is consistent with Mussolini’s socialism, so Mussolini used it in 1914 and ‘15 and eventually adapted it to fascismo in 1921 to describe his “vision.” The private sector was allowed to continue in name only—he would have destroyed it, as Lenin nearly did, if he had nationalized everything—but it was controlled and regulated by a large and militant “deep state,” i.e., government bureaucracy.

Initially, Mussolini and the fascists adopted guild socialism, modeled on the Fabianism of Beatrice and Sidney Webb. Syndicalism and corporativism were other terms used. All three differ only in who is going to control and regulate the economy, and how the control is to be exercised. None worked, so Mussolini increasingly adopted the Nazi approach to control, as well as Nazi tactics. Both Mussolini and Hitler copied the tactics of Lenin and Stalin.**

Entrepreneurs, as a result, ceased to exist. “In the terminology of the Nazi legislation,” says Ludwig von Mises, they became shop managers. (Human Action, p. 717. See also Planned Chaos, chap. 1, 7, and 8 and Günter Reimann, The Vampire Economy). Fascism, as Mises identified, is socialism of the German pattern, differing only superficially from the Russian version.

Nominal private control and ownership of life and economy is what we have today in the United States, and have had increasingly since the 1890s with the beginnings of the early progressive era (Applying Principles, pp. 110-13).

It is therefore not a stretch to describe our political and economic system as fascistic. It is not a system of liberty, classical liberalism, or laissez-faire capitalism.

Now I say the left is intellectually bankrupt because it has no new ideas to offer. It relies on the postmodern abandonment of reason and logic (Marx’s polylogism updated) to brand anyone who disagrees with them a hate-filled racist, misogynist, and homophobe. No arguments or facts are given. Only the shouting of collectivist clichés.

The louder and longer the shouting goes on, the assumption apparently is, the more their falsehoods will be believed.

But it is the leftists who are hate-filled—because of their seething, hostile yelling. They also are envy-ridden. This last has been well-documented in Helmut Schoeck’s thorough analysis of envy and the motivations for statism. (Redistributionism, after all, means taking wealth from those who have earned it and giving it to those who have not.)

I have a recommendation for the more sincere Democrats who feel uncomfortable with our current Weimar-like culture and are in search of new ideas to promote: look at Grover Cleveland.

A Democrat, Cleveland was the last US president who advocated classical liberalism. He served two unconnected terms, 1885-89 and 1893-97. In 1888 he won the popular election against Benjamin Harrison, but lost the electoral vote. (His supporters, interestingly, did not whine about having the election stolen!)

Cleveland was a strict constitutionalist who vetoed more bills than any president until Franklin Roosevelt’s determined efforts to protect his progressive-inspired welfare state. Cleveland’s vetoes slowed the early progressives’ juggernaut toward statism.

The fascist left is nearly indistinguishable from its socialist and communist brethren. All use state-initiated coercion to achieve their ends.

The liberal right—the liberalism of the classical tradition—repudiates state-initiated coercion of any kind and guarantees protection for those freedoms to take action called individual rights.

The social and economic theory of liberty is a free society of laissez-faire capitalism.


* Recall that communists and fascists in the United States were bosom buddies until Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. At that point, communists equated fascism with capitalism and started calling anyone who disagreed with them a fascist. Recall also that Marx, Engels, and Lenin considered communism and socialism to be synonyms.

**And anyone today who wears black clothing and calls themselves “anti-fascists” are, by their apparel and tactics, mimicking Mussolini’s blackshirted goons.

 

Postscript (10/8/2025). “Racism,” Ayn Rand writes, “is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage . . . . Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.” As a form of collectivism, racism will be found in some form in all dictatorships, whether communism, fascism, or socialism. Why? Because dictators need scapegoats, to blame for the country’s problems and “to use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers.”
 
In other words, racism is not an essential distinguishing characteristic of Nazism. It is an essential trait of dictatorship. In today’s postmodern, nihilistic world, the wannabe dictators, without knowledge of or care about history, or of any care of or understanding for the concepts they are using, freely sling the words “racist” and “fascist” at their chosen scapegoats, white males in particular, or anyone who works in or runs a business.

Hatred, the Leftist Emotion?

Below is a repost from May 15, 2018, lightly edited. Two months later I posted “Is the Next Step for the Left to Liquidate Its Enemies?” July 11, 2018, in which I ask three times, “Are We There Yet?” A year earlier, October 8, 2017, I posted “The Fascist Left,” explaining the left-right continuum and arguing that fascism belongs on the left, as it is a form of socialism, “socialism of the German pattern,” as Ludwig von Mises wrote (Human Action, p. 759).   

 ------

You’re a white racist.

This is one of the lovely epithets being slung around today. If I were on the receiving end of such hostility, I would have to respond by saying that I do not believe in turning the other cheek. Therefore . . .

You’re a totalitarian, postmodern progressive irrationalist, which means you are a communist/socialist/fascist/Nazi polylogist leftist and wannabe dictator whose only method of accomplishing anything is through physical force masked by governmentally initiated coercion and legal plunder called laws and regulations.

Other comments could be added, such as, “you’re a racist against whites, a misandrist, and a heterophobe,” but let’s just say, for short, that you are a communist/fascist leftist.* Your motivation is envy and hatred.

Envy has been covered by Helmet Schoeck and Ayn Rand, though Rand said envy is not the right word. Hatred of the good for being the good is more correct. So, let’s look at the psychology of hatred.

“Hatred of the good” is not envy because bad students who express this emotion do not want to be good students. They want the good students to fail, or at least be dragged down to their level. The same can be said for today’s entitlement poor. They do not want to work hard to become rich like successful business people. They want the rich to suffer (ignoring the history of rags-to-riches stories) and become like them.

Hatred, according to psychologist Edith Packer (Lectures on Psychology, chap. 4), is an emotion that begins with anger and resentment. If unchecked, that is, if underlying evaluations of the emotions are not examined for truth or falsity, and when false, not corrected, anger and resentment can develop into rage, hostility, and aggression.

Underlying anger, says Packer, is the universal evaluation that “an injustice has been done to me,” the word “universal” meaning all instances of anger express the same evaluation. That evaluation in any specific instance, however, may be valid or true, as when someone rudely cuts in front of us in a movie line, or invalid or false when it turns out that the cutter was joining his wife who was holding his place, or the cutting was inadvertent.

Anger expresses an injustice resulting from a specific action. Resentment expresses stored-up anger, stemming from a belief (valid or invalid) of long-term unjust treatment that has been neither confronted nor resolved. This can then lead to hatred.

Hatred says the target of the emotion is totally contemptible, that the person’s character, not just his or her specific action, is despised. To quote Packer, “an individual who feels hatred usually also feels helpless to correct the injustices committed by the person he hates. While hatred can be justified in some rare cases, almost always it is neurotic or pathological”** (pp. 103-04).

Rage, an out-of-control fury deriving from the conviction that somehow I am the cause of this injustice, often follows from hatred and is pathological. As is hostility, although hostility is a defense mechanism [or habit] that only looks like anger. Deriving from self-doubt that is projected outward at an alleged injustice, the aim of hostility is to make the target suffer. Aggression, finally, is the behavioral manifestation of hostility, verbal or physical actions to deliver the intended injuries.

Hatred of the good that we see today is rage, hostility, and aggression, by way of shouting down speakers or banging on windows to disturb them, blocking street intersections or entrances to venues, and, in the worst cases, hurling rocks and other missiles at the targets and destroying their property.

Such hostile behaviors are criminal, driven by frail egos filled with self-doubt, and are not new.

Recall the decidedly un-civil-disobedient student demonstrations of the 1960s, the seizures of property, kidnappings of college deans . . . and bombings and killings. Or recall 1920s Weimar Germany and its street clashes between red-coated communists and brown-shirted Nazis, not to mention Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch.

The pathological and contemptibly immoral goal in both time periods was to tear down and destroy the accomplishments of capitalism and, ultimately, replace it with some form of totalitarianism. The same is occurring today.

Marx and Engels advocated violent revolution. Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler were just carrying out the communist/fascist founder’s wishes.

Marx’s method of argument was to declare to his opponents, “you’re just a bourgeoisie.” We can’t reason with you, he would say, because you don’t understand proletarian logic. That’s the meaning of “polylogism.”

Today’s Marxists, that is, the postmodern progressive Leninist, Mussolinian, Stalinist, Hitlerian leftists, do not even pretend to offer arguments. They smear opponents—people of prominent positions in universities, business, entertainment, and, especially, the media—by calling them names: “You’re a white racist, misogynist, homophobe.”

And they intimidate and threaten them, by pouring money into campaigns of vilification. If the targets do not toe the politically correct party line, or apologize grovelingly when they cross it, the leftists step up their campaigns to have them removed and their careers destroyed.

If this is not hatred—hatred of the good, the competent, the able—I don’t know what is.

(By the way, communist/fascist leftists, all crimes are hate crimes. That pickpocket who relieves you of your wallet is not doing it out of warm, fuzzy love.)

Postmodernism, and its leftist activists, reject the Enlightenment’s values of objective reality, reason, logic, individual rights, and capitalism. Stephen Hicks, in his book Explaining Postmodernism (1; Applying Principles, pp. 33-36), eloquently dubs postmodernists the Iagos to the Enlightenment’s Othellos. Their goal is to inject doubt into modernity’s values and, as Iago did with Othello, “let that doubt work like a slow poison” (Hicks, p. 200).

Or, as Hicks elsewhere describes the activists on college campuses (whom he denies the epithets “snowflakes” and “delicate flowers” because their tears, he says, are a tactic): the “grievances are not meant to be resolved. They are meant to fester and be used in the service of power-politics strategy. . . . The protesters’ point is to make unreasonable demands, and their goal is to see how much they can get away with.”

Calculated hate? How can it not be!

The antidote to this festering poison is a rational psychology that the Iagos do not possess, but if they did, it would consist of independence and a commitment to facts and truth.

In particular, it would be a commitment to the Enlightenment’s values that there really is an objective reality “out there,” that we can identify it through reason and logic, that we each individually possess rights deriving from our nature as human beings and applying universally to every person on earth, and that laissez-faire capitalism, or the closest thing we have ever come to it, has cured, and continues to cure, dread diseases, and has abolished, and continues to abolish, poverty in cultures worldwide by providing abundant opportunities for all to rise above their original stations in life.


* I’ve been struggling for some time to come up with an appropriate sobriquet to describe the far leftists. “Communist/fascist” works because differences between the two systems are superficial and Marx, Engels, and Lenin considered communism and socialism to be synonyms. “Left” on the political spectrum means total control of life and economy—this includes fascism—so “totalitarian" becomes redundant when talking about leftism.

** A justified emotion of hatred, for example, might be that of a victim of the Holocaust whose hatred is directed at the Nazis and their modern-day sympathizers.

Delusion or Lie? Which Is It?

Two prominent and accomplished conservative-leaning news analysts with decades of experience disagree in their assessments of today’s mainstream media. Bernard Goldberg says they are delusional, while Bill O’Reilly says they are lying.
 
Take your pick of the issues. The media, whether print “reporter” or cable news talking head, frequently say things that are not true about our current president, our previous president, the previous president before our previous president, our adventure in covid totalitarianism, and so on ad nauseam.
 
The difference between delusion and lie raises epistemological questions about the nature of these concepts and their referents, and, especially, about their place in the continuum from moral to immoral behavior.
 
Both concepts entail falsehoods or incorrect perceptions. “Lying” usually means the falsehood is intentional or deliberate. Delusion may or may not mean that. Let us take delusion first.
 
In previous posts (1, 2), I have used “delusion” broadly to include false perceptions caused by psychological problems, whether neurotic or psychotic. A young man, for example, who on the same day is fired from his job and jilted by his lover suffers neurotic depression and concludes, “I’ll never find another job or lover.” This is not true, but the young man strongly feels it.
 
Typical psychotic delusions include hearing voices, seeing false images, or concluding things like “I am Jesus.” Psychotic delusion is a belief completely cut off from reality with the subconscious taking over. Neurotic delusion is an exaggerated belief based on an exaggerated emotional reaction to something, but an overall connection to reality still exists.
 
In both neurosis and psychosis, the delusion is fixed and impervious to change. The Oxford English Dictionary says it is “a form of mental derangement,” which makes us think of a certain derangement syndrome in response to our previous and now current president. “Fixed and impervious to change” means the person is motivated by the subconscious and is not aware of the mistaken perception. Such a person is motivated by a defensive habit that says, “I am correct in what I have written or spoken and that content is right, noble, and moral.” Self-reflection—introspection—does not often occur.
 
Honest and healthy people who are simply mistaken, on the other hand, are not “fixed and impervious to change,” because they do change when they realize their mistake or when it is pointed out to them. They are not driven by the subconscious premise that their frail ego depends on always being right, noble, and moral—albeit “moral” in a superficial way, usually steeped in “looking good to others” or just rationalization. Honest and healthy people are committed to facts and truth, which means they are committed to reason and reality, with no major defensive habits or subconscious motivations controlling them.
 
Lying is an easier case to discuss, at least on the surface, as liars are deliberate and intentional. They know that what they are writing or speaking is false. They know the facts but state the opposite.
 
This, however, is the dilemma I have been writing about for some time: how do we judge other people, especially others we do not know but who, working in the public arena, namely the media and politicians, affect our lives. How do we know whether they are lying? Or are delusional?
 
In previous posts, I have drawn the line with the criminal personality who lies, cheats, and steals as a way of life and enjoys getting away with the forbidden. The criminal is clearly immoral and many are attracted to law enforcement, the military, and politics. As Yochelson and Samenow point out, there also exists what they call “non-arrestable” criminals who do not overtly violate laws, but nonetheless enjoy manipulating and cheating relatives, co-workers, and citizens of our country. Are such people delusional or lying?
 
I stand by my earlier conclusion that to judge others who are not criminal personalities, we must know the persons well. Judging people from a distance, meaning not knowing them or knowing them well, is nearly impossible because they, particularly reporters, cable TV talking heads, and politicians, can have so many different motivations.
 
Many who work in business, for example, follow the dictum, “Business is business and ethics is ethics,” which means what we do in business has nothing to do with ethics, thus endorsing such dubious practices as cutting corners and BS-ing. Others just follow the money, meaning they choose to work for the highest bidder. Sales representatives, for example, sometimes cynically say this about an unprincipled co-worker: “He’s just whoring himself for a sale.” It seems this unprincipled motivation of “whoring oneself” is present in many professions, as well as, or especially, in politics.
 
A certain presidential administration in the recent past repeatedly ignored the law—immigration, student loan repayment, covid totalitarianism, and so on ad nauseam—and the media supported the moves. Is that not explicit lying? The problem here is that we are, or should be, attempting to judge individual human beings, not a collective called “the administration” or “the media.” The problem is we do not personally know the individuals in the administration who executed the unlawful orders or the members of the press who promoted the actions.
 
This does not mean that we cannot speak up and yell about the violations of law. If someone steps on my foot while standing in line, I will yell whether the act was intentional or accidental. What about the person who ordered the violations of law? Such a person likely justifies the orders and actions as variations on Plato’s so-called noble lie: “It’s for a good cause and, besides, the law itself is immoral.” Is this not the rationalization of a criminal personality? Maybe, but we still do not know the person.
 
This last, the morality or immorality of law, is a complication in making moral judgments. If the law itself can be demonstrated as immoral, violation of it can be the moral thing to do, hiding Jews from the Nazis, for example, or helping them escape Nazi rule. Or evading the military draft. In the late 1960s, one of my roommates quit school, which at the time meant you were almost immediately drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam. He immediately moved to Canada. I wholeheartedly condoned his actions—and hoped I would not have to make the same decision. (I didn’t have to.)
 
What about an Adolf Hitler and other dictators who often isolate and label a group of people as scapegoats, by saying such things as “Jews are vermin,” then jailing or killing them? Yes, of course, this type of person, for which there is plenty of evidence in writing, speech, and action is a psychopathically criminal personality.
 
Delusional or lying? Both. The defensive habit of compulsively perceiving reality falsely and reporting it as such does not seem terribly different from what is called the bald-faced lie. The behaviors can be plotted along a continuum, from knowing something is false and saying it anyway to saying something is false but believing it to be true, unaware that it is false.* 
 
The delusional neurotic—the young man fired and jilted on the same day—still probably has some vague sense or glimmer that what he is saying is not true but does not know what to do about it and, perhaps, does not care to find out. Liars, on the other hand, clearly know what they are doing.
 
So who is right, Goldberg or O’Reilly? Both are, but lacking personal knowledge of particular players in the media market, how can we know whether any of them are delusional or lying? Presumably, some are delusional, some are lying, and the rest are somewhere in between the two extremes.
 
 
* These two personality types on a continuum are similar to the two continuums I wrote about in a paper on BS’ers and liars. The continuums range, on the one hand, from the BS-er who talks for show (facts don’t matter) to the liar who is concerned about facts to state the opposite and, on the other hand, from the deliberate motivation to BS or lie to a motivation from carelessness, ignorance, or unthought-about habit.

On the Nature of Human Nature

Theories of human nature underly theories of political and economic systems.
 
Some people attempt to justify capitalism with the Calvinist theory that says, because of Original Sin, the inherent tendency to evil, we should do our duty by working hard to absolve those sins and ensure acceptance into Heaven. This is the gist of the Protestant Ethic. 
 
Others attack capitalism by saying it assumes an inherent goodness in human beings, at which point they cry hypocrisy and list all the evil that goes on in the world.
 
Sigmund Freud’s theory of human nature is more sophisticated, albeit based on determinism. It says we have two fundamental drives, analogous to hunger or sex, that determine our behavior, namely the life or positive self-assertion drive and the death or destruction drive. The latter gives some of us a strongly aggressive personality that culture—civilization—must control. Hence, our “discontent” that results from living in civilization.
 
The theory of human nature best representing a free society holds that human beings possess free will, are self-responsible, and possess the ability, if they so choose to exert the effort, to raise themselves up from their original stations in life, that is, for example, to achieve and enjoy a higher standard of living than that of their parents.*
 
The theory does not describe human beings as inherently evil or inherently good, or as helpless victims of genes and environment—those theories deny free will.
 
Freedom of the will means that a person’s choices are the essential source of both good and evil, though culture—the environment we were reared in, especially family and education—are also important sources of our thoughts and behaviors. (See my post “On the Nature of Evil.”)
 
This free-will theory is sometimes said to be neutral, meaning we are born neither good nor evil. We have the equal potential for both. Nevertheless, we can challenge this complete neutrality by considering whether humans by nature have a stronger tendency to do good than to do evil. How so?
 
Just as the human body has a tendency to heal itself, so also does the human consciousness.
 
A minor cut on the finger or hand, for example, in most people clots and heals itself in a few days. The tendency to heal ourselves psychologically derives from the biological function of consciousness to use reason to perceive our selves and environment correctly, then choose values and take actions necessary to sustain and enhance our lives.
 
This tendency to goodness can be called, with qualifications, the will to do the right thing. We see this desire in children from their earliest years, depending on parental influence, eagerly seeking to live their lives in a healthy and happy way, and often continuing through adolescence and adulthood even after being confronted with major unpleasant environmental obstacles.
 
This will gives most people in a civilized society a benevolent intention in their lives and slants the theory of human nature more toward an inherent goodness.
 
What precisely do I mean by “the will to do the right thing”? Fundamentally, it is a psychological requirement for our consciousness to function. We have a need to feel right before taking an action. Does this mean we are always right? No. It is a theory based on free will, which means we can make mistakes or do evil things.
 
Psychologically, however, we must believe that we are right each time we select what to do; it is a perception of being right. Otherwise, we will not be able to act.
 
This perception of rightness, that I am calling the will to do the right thing, is analogous to the psychological concept of perceived risk. Just as risk perception varies from person to person, so also does “rightness” vary from person to person. **
 
“Being right” applies to everyone, both good and evil, with a continuum of “rightness” and multiple meanings of the word. Let us now look at some examples along that continuum.
 
The most common usage of the concept “right,” when talking about “doing the right thing,” means doing the morally right thing. It means especially being honest in thought, communication with others, and action. Most people, I submit, at least in American culture, do strive to be honest, so this statement probably can be applied to most Americans.
 
The “right thing,” however, within the science of ethics depends on the moral theory and standard of value one is assuming, though it usually means what we were taught as children.
 
A significant influence on American culture is the ethics of Immanuel Kant, who insists that telling the truth is an unconditional principle that is consistent with his categorical imperative of always acting in accordance with duty, never from inclination. This means it is one’s unconditional duty to tell the truth to a homicidal maniac who comes to your door looking for his or her victim. Kant says there is a difference between doing what is right versus what avoids harm to another person. Telling the truth in this situation is not wrong.
 
Ayn Rand, however, disagrees with Kant and says that both physical and moral principles can and do have qualifications. The statement that water boils at 212º Fahrenheit is not the end of the story. The qualification, varying by air pressure and purity of water, must be added.
 
Similarly, telling the truth does not mean qualifications or consequences be damned (as Kant’s theory says). Honesty means telling the truth unless confronted by direct or indirect initiated coercion, threatened with invasion of privacy, or when a blunt truth might be unnecessarily hurtful to another person.
 
Thus, doing the right thing varies by underlying moral theory, but most people today, I would add (again, in our present culture), are uncomfortable with the strict Kantian ethics of duty over inclination and to a great extent with the concept of Original Sin.
 
Hence, as I continue to say, most people try to do the right thing, however they may understand it, at least on a practical level. None probably have ever had a homicidal maniac come to their door and many likely have fibbed to avoid unduly hurting a friend or relative.
 
My father, for example, seems to have been a good Kantian in ethics, though I am certain he had never heard of Immanuel Kant. He said to me once, “You do your work because it is your duty, not because you enjoy it.” He was raised Protestant on a farm and worked most of his life as a clerk in the post office. His intentions and honesty were decidedly right—and I do think he enjoyed his work.
 
Some people with psychological problems may, to an outside observer, appear not to be honest. Usually, however, such problems are not moral failings.
 
Psychological problems—typically involving self-doubt and the emotion of anxiety—trigger the strong need in us to allay, reduce, or blot out that feeling by adopting defensive habits, such as withdrawal, hostility, or a compulsive behavior. Often, as children, we develop defensive symptoms subconsciously, not knowing how we got them. Nevertheless, the purpose of a defensive habit is to give us the feeling of doing right while also assuaging our anxiety.
 
The psychological need to feel right is the source of what I am calling the tendency to do the right thing—however one might define “right.”
 
The extreme example on the negative end of the continuum of “rightness” is the criminal personality. Rationalization—excuse-making to feel right—seems to be the primary defensive habit of criminals whose self-esteem is low. As one put it, “I am a nothing. If I thought about it, I would have to kill myself.” Thus, the rapist says, “She really wanted me” and the murderer says, “He deserved it.”
 
Rationalization also describes dictators, as they are criminal personalities who must believe (rationalize) they are right in every action they take. See Ayn Rand’s comment, 246, on Nikita Khrushchev’s need to justify his behavior by reciting the mantra of dialectical materialism, and my use of Rand’s comment in Applying Principles, 314, where I attempt to explain why facts don’t matter to many people, including, or especially, dictators.
 
Doing the “right thing” for the criminal is definitely not the objectively moral thing to do, nor is this statement a justification or exoneration of criminal or immoral behavior. It is a psychological observation that criminal behavior feels right to the criminal and explains his or her actions.
 
Surely, then, one might assert, there are people who knowingly do the wrong thing. Yes, as a double standard. This is the criminal personality who enjoys getting away with the forbidden. Yes, the criminal says, I know it is illegal, but that is who I am. The criminal’s identity is such that he or she feels right to rob banks, and worse. 
 
Or, as one criminal said incredulously to a psychologist, “You expect me to get a job to buy what I want when I can just go into the store and take it?” Paying for goods in a store is for suckers, he said. He believed or felt, as his rationalization, that he was doing the right thing.
 
Only suckers, according to the criminal, obey the law. What he does is right, according to his rationalization-infested mind. (See Stanton Samenow, Inside the Criminal Mind.)
 
Most people, as I continue to maintain, exhibit a will to do the morally right thing, indicating that human nature has built into it a tendency to do good, meaning most people can and do exhibit varying degrees of good intentions.
 
According to the theory of human nature presented here, I put most people on the scale of honesty and goodness.
 
Both values are required for a lasting free society.
 
 
* Psychiatrist William Glasser (chap. 1) assumed a similar theory when treating his patients. He said, “We choose our own misery. Thus, we can choose our own happiness.” His goal as therapist was to work with patients to help them choose healthier and happier behaviors.
 
** Perceived risk, also called subjective risk, means, for example, that some people need alcoholic beverages before getting on an airplane, while others like to walk on wings for a living. Risk perception exists along a continuum, which means we can now draw an analogy between epistemology where there is a difference between what we perceive or believe to be true­—and what is true, and ethics where there is a difference between what we perceive or believe to be right—and what is right. In both cases, people vary considerably according to what they believe to be true and right—and what is true and right.

Masculinity and Femininity: The Differences Are Not Arbitrary “Social Constructs”

Following is a repost from August 8, 2018. The issue today needs to be restated.

 

Masculinity and femininity are emotional styles that express our sexual self-confidence as a male or female person in relation to the opposite sex.*

They are psychological achievements that derive from our different anatomies and physiologies. Deficiencies in masculinity and femininity, that is, diminished confidence in oneself as a male or female person, are signs of an arrested development.

At birth, our minds are tabula rasa, which means our minds have no cognitive content. At birth, we begin processing the world we live in, which produces an initial cognitive content. As we grow, especially when we begin to talk, cognitive processing escalates.

Our character and personality, in other words, are self-created; genes and environment can influence us, but they do not create us (Applying Principles, pp. 315-18). How well we cognitively process the world in which we live, that is, how objective and rational are the conclusions we draw, determines how psychologically healthy we will be in adulthood.

How well we process the world depends, in large part, on how well we have been taught by our parents and teachers about psychology, especially about how to introspect our developing psychologies to catch and correct errors in the processing.

Throughout history, and especially in today’s culture, the answer to the question “How well have we been taught?” must be: “not very well, if at all.” Thus, most of us reach adulthood with mental inhibitions, that is, deficiencies in self-esteem, often expressed as anxiety and defensive habits (defense mechanisms) to cope with the anxiety, for example, depression, obsessions, compulsions, projection, rationalization, hostility, and so on.

In today’s culture, consequently, most of us reach adulthood with arrested development in many areas of our psychologies, in varying degrees, not necessarily extreme. An arrested development, nonetheless, combined with mistaken ideas in the culture, may lead us to conclude that we are controlled by genes and environment.

To be sure, environment influences us in both helpful and hurtful ways, but we remain the ones who must process the events of the environment, draw conclusions about ourselves in relation to them, then act to deal with the situations.

This applies to the development of our masculinity and femininity. Thus, depending on our upbringing and schooling, we may conclude that masculinity means to be a “macho man,” with big biceps, and that femininity means to be a “clinging vine” or a fashion model.

Behavioral manifestations can and do express our masculinity and femininity, but they do not define them.

The essence of masculinity and femininity, according to psychologist Nathaniel Branden, derives from our respective sexual roles in a heterosexual relationship, and that, in turn, derives from our respective anatomies and physiologies. Men, says Branden, in addition to the obvious sexual differences, are bigger and stronger—they have stronger upper-body muscle, while women have broader hips. Geneticists, indeed, say there are over 6500 genetic expressions that differentiate men from women, and the differences begin in the womb. “Society” has nothing to say about these differences.

In the romantic-sexual relationship (and only in the romantic-sexual relationship), Branden goes on to say that the man is more active and dominant. “He has the greater measure of control over his own pleasure and that of his partner; it is he who penetrates and the woman who is penetrated (with everything this entails, physically and psychologically” (The Psychology of Self-Esteem, p. 206).

Healthy—fearless and guiltless—self-assertiveness, strength, and self-confidence, says Branden, are desirable in both men and women. Pride in oneself and one’s achievements and admiration of one’s partner are prerequisite to a healthy romantic-sexual relationship.

The difference is that the man feels his masculinity as romantic initiator and, more generally, as protector of the woman, while the woman feels her femininity as challenger and responder.**

To put this difference in the vernacular, the man’s job is to make the woman feel “real good.” In this process, the man also feels, or should also feel, if psychologically healthy, “real good” in performing the role. The woman’s job is to feel sufficiently free and confident to accept and experience the man’s offer of total trust and security, not to mention the pleasure he is giving her (and the reciprocal pleasure she gives him).

The romantic-sexual act of intercourse between a man and a woman truly in love becomes a feeling of total integration, an experience of being one, a union. Branden describes this as “the most intense union” and highest form of pleasure available to human beings (p. 136).

Behavioral manifestations of a confident masculinity and femininity become highly desirable, for example, to “look nice” for the opposite sex, and for men to hold the door open for a woman and for the woman to look up to and admire the man by saying “thank you.”***

Size of biceps, length of hair, and whether or not a man or a woman wears a skirt or pants do not define masculinity and femininity. These are just socially arbitrary conventions.

It is not unfeminine for a woman to run a railroad (as does Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged), nor is it unmasculine for a man to wear tight pants and excel as a world-class ballet dancer (as did Mikhail Baryshnikov).

Masculinity and femininity are objective, reality-based psychological achievements. An arrested development means self-doubt about our sex in relation to the opposite. A young man scared to death to talk to girls, let alone ask one for a date, is one example. A young woman who is afraid to respond to a young man’s rational advances, a man the young woman might actually admire, is another.

The objective, reality-based meaning of masculinity and femininity raises a question that will have to be deferred to another post. Is same-sex attraction and behavior psychologically healthy? [Posted September 7, 2018] I immediately hasten to add that such attraction or behavior is not in any way immoral or a sin.

But is it healthy?


* “Sexual self-confidence” is the term used by psychologist Edith Packer (Lectures on Psychology, chap. 6, section 2). Other psychologists have used the words “gender esteem,” an interesting narrowing of the broader “self-esteem.”

** Branden uses the terms “romantic dominance” and “romantic surrender,” but by using the above concepts I am trying to avoid the older, historical connotations of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. “Initiator,” “challenger,” and “responder” are words used by Branden.

*** Tradition says a man walking on the outside of the woman, nearer to the street, originated in the days of chamber pots being emptied into the roadway. The man, as a gentleman, eagerly sought to protect his lady. Today, it is simply a pleasant gesture for the man to perform—and for the lady to accept.

Democracy. Democracy. We’re All for Democracy!

Communists, socialists, and fascists, as well as the usual American political suspects, Democrats and Republicans, have all advocated, and today still advocate, democracy.
 
The notion of a “soviet,” let me point out, was a locally elected communist council or committee, common in the USSR. Similar “elections” occurred in Maoist China. In World War II, the German people were “advised” to vote for the Nazi Party. And elections were also held in Mussolini’s Italy.*
 
Then, there are the “democratic socialists,” who seek to vote socialism into power. The problem with these “democrats,” as F. A. Hayek pointed out in 1944 (chap. 10), is that coercion, sometimes severe coercion, is required to implement the democrats’ policies, and lacking the will to coerce its unwilling citizens, ruthless dictators step in to put the Garden of Eden called socialism into practice.
 
The amount of blather today spoken and written about democracy approaches infinity. The word “blather,” according to the unabridged dictionary, means “to talk [or write] foolishly or nonsensically.” Somehow that word doesn’t seem accurate, and perhaps it is too kind. How about BS? Which means to talk or write in a way that sounds good to others, while not knowing or caring about the facts. You know, “Facts don’t matter, so I’ll just BS my way through.”
 
In today’s political context, BS is Goebbelsian propaganda. Say it loud and say it a lot, said Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief. After a while, even though there may be no factual basis for the blather—I mean, BS—uncritical readers and listeners will begin to believe it.**
 
I could go on but probably should stop here to talk about the real (accurate, objective) meaning of democracy.
 
Fundamentally, democracy means unlimited majority rule, and entails voting that the king’s subjects in the days of monarchy were not allowed to do. The empowerment that voting gave citizens was a significant appeal to the classical liberals.
 
In ancient Greece and Rome, there was voting, but no concept of rights. Citizens, meaning adult males, did possess certain legal protections. So, in 399 BC, Socrates, as an adult male citizen of Athens, was entitled to a trial after being accused of impiety and corruption of the youth. Conviction and condemnation to death was by majority vote.
 
Women, children, slaves, and resident aliens possessed no such protections.
 
The Greeks and Romans, as well as the founding fathers of the United States, viewed democracy as a form of tyranny—dictatorship of the many, as opposed to a dictatorship of the one or few. The many, as the founding fathers also believed, quickly degenerates into factions vying for power.
 
“Direct democracy,” a term bandied about sometimes today, means everyone votes on every issue and delegate in the government, which is impossible in any sizeable country, though the state of California attempts it every election with its nearly infinite list of propositions that clutter the ballot.
 
The original US form of government was a constitutional republic, a considerably limited authority constrained by a Bill of Rights. The House of Representatives, one from each district, was and still is elected by the citizens of those districts, but the Senate was elected or chosen by the respective state legislatures. This provided a balance of power between the national government and the states.
 
The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, approved in 1913 at the insistence of the early progressives, established the election of senators by statewide plebiscite, making most of the federal government popularly elected. Only the election of president, via the electoral college, retains a small semblance of the original balance of powers.
 
The Bill of Rights prohibits the government (and criminals) from taking certain actions. Most importantly, it prevents the majority from voting away our rights. The problem today is that blather, or rather BS, reigns supreme in discussions of rights. Does anyone in public life know what the concept means? No, they don’t care. They only say what sounds good.
 
Rights are freedoms of action, that is, the freedom to take any action I choose to sustain and enhance my life, which includes the acquisition, use, and disposal of property, without being coerced one way or another by the government (or by a criminal), dealing with others through voluntary cooperation. “One way or another” means the government cannot force me to do what I do not want to do, such as get a vaccine or serve in the military, or force a woman to get an abortion. Nor can it forcibly prevent me from doing what I do want to do, such as raise my prices or increase the water pressure in my shower, or forcibly prevent a woman from getting an abortion.
 
Freedoms of action also especially include speaking and writing as I see fit, such as criticizing the government, providing one understands the presuppositions and complications I discussed last month.
 
Today’s “democracy” is in fact an oligarchy of unelected bureaucrats, many of whom are totalitarians both in spirit and practice. The system has also been described as “government by lobby,” because big businesses spend enormous amounts of money to influence congress and the bureaucrats to pass laws and regulatory rules in favor of the lobbyists.
 
Our de facto system is fascism: nominal—meaning "in name only"—private ownership of business and personal property, as well as of each of our lives, but extensive government regulation and control of it all. The system is a mixture of freedom and dictatorship, ruled by the despotic elites in power. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out (esp. chap. 1 and 2), any mixed system, unless corrected, must move inexorably to full dictatorship, a system we came close to enduring over the past five years.
 
Sometimes, one will hear the words “liberal democracy” or “constitutional democracy,” but the meaning of both depends on what is understood as “liberal” and “constitutional.” If, respectively, classical liberalism and the US Bill of Rights are meant by the adjectives, they are accurate. Voting is then used essentially to select new leaders thus ensuring a peaceful transition of power.
 
“Democratic republic” is also heard. When used and understood as Thomas Jefferson understood it—voting under a constitution and bill of rights to select leaders—it is accurate. If not, it is likely more BS.
 
Today, the blather and BS are so common in political discussions that the concept of democracy becomes whatever the speaker wants it to mean, which makes it a buzzword to scare the ignorant and unthinking into going along with the speaker and to disparage his or her opponents.
 
Democracy in fact is a form of dictatorship.
 
 
* Aristotle tells us (1295a11–12) that barbarians even elected their despotic monarchs.
 
** On BS, think of your local used car sales rep, no offense intended to those reps who shoot straight and are honest. There are many.

Freedom of Speech Presupposes Private Property Rights

The right to free speech does not mean you can say or write anything anytime, anywhere. Private property rights have primacy over speech rights.
 
This means you may not say anything in my house if I dislike it. I may ask you to leave and if you don’t, I can have you arrested for trespass. If you make a vocal fuss, say, on my front lawn, I can press the additional charge of disturbing the peace. Your speech right has not been violated. My property right has.
 
What did Ayn Rand say? “Without property rights, no others are possible.” Why don’t we hear about property rights in today’s environment? Because leftists—socialists—deny the right to property. Free speech has been hung in the air, so to speak, without connection to its foundation in property.
 
After all, “Property is theft,” said the nineteenth century socialist Proudhon.
 
When free speech is disconnected from property rights, what is left? The irrational assertion that anyone who prevents me from talking or writing is violating my free speech rights.
 
Let us take a few problems.
 
Falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is not free speech. It is criminal assault. Epistemologically, assault is the fundamental concept providing the dividing line between free speech and criminality.
 
Practically speaking, unfortunately, assault laws vary from state to state, but epistemologically it means an overt verbal threat to harm you—“I’m going to hurt or kill you.”* It does not require touching—that would be battery. Thus, hate speech, “I hate you,” is not a verbal threat, and is protected speech.
 
The problem today is that we do not have a lot of private property. Streets, sidewalks, universities, and the White House press room, for example, are either completely or partially owned by a government entity.
 
The adage, “whoever pays the bills calls the shots,” is relevant here. It means the city, state, and federal government can impose rules on what can be done or said on their property, provided the rules do not violate other rights. So, a city can control parade rights on its streets by requiring permits, but if you lie down in the street to block traffic or stage your own, unpermitted parade (protest), you are breaking the law, violating the rights of the other citizens, their rights of free passage. The same is true with blocking students’ entry to class and shouting down speakers. The acts are criminal, and arrest is called for. **
 
The refusal to clear the streets and protect the rights of students and audiences is governmental assault on person and property and de facto censorship of speech.
 
In 1977, the Nazi Party of America was allowed by the US Supreme Court to march in the city streets of the heavily Jewish Skokie, IL, on grounds that they were expressing their right to free speech. I disagree, because streets are made for driving and walking, as sidewalks are made for walking, not for giving speeches (protests alleged to being a form of speech). If the city does not provide a specific location for such speeches, then the Nazi Party should be obliged to rent its own venue from a private party or buy its own venue.***
 
Protests on city streets are essentially free advertising for an ideology. To allow it is to say that I must allow interlopers on my front lawn to preach ideas I disagree with.

 
Current “Hot” Issues
 
The White House Press Corps. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has said that once any members of the press are invited into the White House briefing room, the First Amendment walks in also, meaning the White House cannot exclude any media organization on the basis of its viewpoint. The White House can dictate decorum and protocol for visitors, but not content of speech.
 
Visa and green card holders (1, 2). Both have the same rights as citizens, with certain restrictions, and do not have to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. Green card holders who seek citizenship must take the oath. Both, however, are subject to immigration and other laws, such as the one representing threats to US foreign policy. This last is particularly fuzzy, striking me as falling into the vague and overly broad category, though the US government is the “owner.” Students expressing disagreement with US foreign policy are not posing a threat. Blocking Jewish students from attending their classes, interrupting classes, shouting down speakers, and physically threatening and striking other students are acts of assault and battery, a deporting offense for visa and green card holders.
 
Israel. A note on the Jewish state of Israel and the recent toleration of antisemitism. The current climate is about as disgusting as one can think, far worse than most of the actions of the left in the 1960s. Apologists use the moral equivalence argument, saying that Israel is no better morally than the terrorists. And many actually insinuate, or state explicitly, that Israel is worse. Israel, however, is the most civilized state in the area, with many Arab people willing to live in Israel rather than anywhere else. By far, Israel is morally superior to the terrorists who hide behind women and children. See philosopher Jason Hill on the disingenuous accusations of genocide that are made against Israel.
 
Yes, the conservatives should not pass laws forbidding speech criticizing Israel. That is censorship.
 
Universities. If universities do not like having the US government telling them what to do, they should be obliged to adopt the policies of Hillsdale College in Michigan. In 1984, Hillsdale stopped accepting federal student loans and in 2007 stopped all Michigan state aid. Private universities today, because of the federal and state aid they receive, are hybrid institutions. Whoever pays the bills, calls the shots, and, as far as I am concerned, no so-called non-profit institution should be tax exempt. This is not an issue of free speech. If you make a deal with the devil—the government, federal or state—you must accept the consequences.
 
The fact that certain prestigious universities with multi-, multi-billion dollar endowments are whining over the government’s withdrawal of a couple of billion dollars, claiming it is a free-speech issue, is beyond farce.
 
 
* You can advocate the violent overthrow of the US government, as did the Communist Party of America in the 1950s, but you cannot talk about and recommend specific methods of doing so. The Smith Act, governing this was amended several times before it became more aligned with the “overt act” notion of the First Amendment.
 
** This does not differ from the 1960s students who staged an alleged protest by sitting down in the registrar’s office. The better chancellors and presidents, such as mine at the University of Denver, expelled and arrested the students.

*** Ayn Rand discusses this in the June 1977 issue of “The Objectivist Calendar” and says it is a “complex issue.” She addresses and dismisses as nonsense the notion, popular at the time, of “symbolic speech,” but more importantly, points out that advocacy of genocide of the Jewish people, as the Nazi Party advocates, is not a violation of free speech. The content of speech, she says, is irrelevant when discussing the right of free speech. Freedom of assembly, however, presupposes private property rights. (Excerpt here.)

Positivism

The philosophy of positivism—also called logical positivism and logical empiricism—has for decades been the bane of science, especially the human sciences.
 
The concept “positivism” that I am using is broader than the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle in the1920s–1930s, which attempted, but failed, to find Immanuel Kant’s noumenal world through symbolic logic applied to sense data. Positivism (495–98), as it is still used today and derives from the work of August Comte, means the use of the so-called scientific methods of physics and chemistry to attempt to discover laws of human behavior and events.
 
All science, that is to say, must be quantitative, and if it is not quantitative, it is not science. The post-Kantian premises of positivists, in their attempt to defend science, are the following: the entire branch of philosophy called metaphysics is meaningless—that is, the concept cannot be “empirically verified”—and universals, facts, values, and, especially, truth are similarly unknowable and therefore meaningless. Awareness of reality is restricted to directly perceived concretes. At best, say the positivists, we can try to come up with “successive approximations” of statistical probabilities, but we will never reach “absolute” certainty or “eternal” truth, and, of course, all science must be “value-free.”
 
Thus, an endless parade of statistical studies to incrementally—and slowly—pretend to develop science, never achieving the status of universality because universals, well, as stated above, are metaphysically meaningless. This method, or epistemology, is gospel in the so-called social sciences today, which I prefer to call human sciences, the sciences of homo sapiens that emphasize and study the animal that possesses a volitional consciousness. The human sciences, in other words, study human nature as the being who exercises, or does not exercise, the capacity to reason.
 
The two fundamental special sciences of human nature are psychology and economics, that is, respectively, the science of the motivation and behavior of individual human beings, healthy or unhealthy, and the science of cooperating individuals in a social setting the aim of which is to generate and produce peace and prosperity.
 
Austrian economists do not agree with the positivist mantra, preferring the method of logical reasoning, the process of identifying correct concepts and integrating them into principles, then integrating principles into theories—leaving Newtonian-type algebraic equations to the physicists and chemists. Sigmund Freud essentially did the same thing in the development of psychoanalysis.
 
Austrian economist F. A. Hayek in his 1974 Nobel laureate address did not use the word “positivism,” but did say that scientism and the scientistic attitude of insisting on using the methods of physical science in the social sciences “quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.” Scientism is a close synonym of positivism and is defined by Hayek as a pretense of knowledge.
 
Positivism over the years has been criticized, notably for its contradiction that metaphysics is meaningless—because that statement itself is a metaphysical assertion.
 
What positivism in particular lacks, among its many other faults, is a sound theory of universals and theory of abstraction from abstractions, which I have written about in previous posts (1, 2, 3).
 
According to Ayn Rand, universal concepts are formed by omitting the measurable differences of the concept’s referents—length, width, and height, for example, of several perceived, concrete objects we come to identify and label as “tables.” After identifying other similar but, in some respects, different perceived concretes—such as chairs and beds—we omit the measurements of size and focus on, but also omit, the different purposes of tables, chairs, and beds, retaining their use in a human household to form the concept “furniture,” which is an abstraction from abstractions.
 
When we move to broad abstractions in psychology and economics, such as depression and the business cycle, we require focused attention on the chain of abstractions from perceived concrete to broad abstraction—and back to the perceptual level. This mental effort—and it is mental effort—is precisely what is lacking in positivism because, as they say, the abstractions are “analytic,” arbitrary constructs, subjectively defined. Only “synthetic” perceived concretes can be true or false.
 
The mental effort in forming and correcting our abstractions from abstractions is precisely what led Ayn Rand (67–68) to say, rather pointedly:
 
Like a spoiled, disillusioned child, who had expected predigested capsules of automatic knowledge, a logical positivist stamps his foot at reality and cries that context, integration, mental effort and first-hand inquiry are too much to expect of him, that he rejects so demanding a method of cognition, and that he will manufacture his own “constructs” from now on.
 
Karl Popper (chap. 1) denied that he was a positivist though his premises are positivistic. He attempted to defend science by proposing the still widely accepted criterion of “falsifiability,” that is, the notion that a concept is valid only if it can be falsified.
 
Meaning precisely what? In the human sciences, the answer to this question is that concepts, or rather “constructs,” must be “operationalized” in order to test them using the experimental-statistical methods of the physical sciences. If that cannot be done, the concept cannot be falsified.
 
Operationalization means to make measurable. What is the measuring instrument to be used in the human sciences, where volition is the fundamental premise? Well, first of all, volition is not relevant because it cannot be “falsified” and, besides, real science does not acknowledge such “pseudoscience,” which, as Popper might say, is akin to astrology.
 
Therefore, following the Popperian method, such constructs as “attitude” from psychology and “utility” from economics must be measured by administering a “paper and pencil” instrument called a questionnaire to a sample of five hundred or more people. The collected data is then analyzed, perhaps using sophisticated multivariate statistics. Probability estimates and confidence intervals are calculated. Universals are never discussed or considered relevant or possible.
 
If a concept cannot be measured using this method, it cannot be falsified. It is therefore meaningless and invalid.
 
Popper states that science begins with highly informed guesses” (conjectures) and then attempts to falsify or refute them (chap. 3; my italics). Similarly, economist Milton Friedman (14) says that economic research, in the positivist-Popper tradition, begins with “wildly inaccurate” assumptions that we test and attempt to “empirically verify,” or rather “falsify.”*
 
The problem here is that the terms “guess” and “hypothesis” do not have the same referents. A hypothesis begins with significant evidence about what we are studying, but not enough to draw a definite conclusion. A guess has little or no evidence.
 
 “Empirical verifiability” of the positivists and Popper’s alternative of “falsification” are not essentially different. They both constrict science—all science, not just the human sciences—to perceived concretes and the experimental-positivistic-behavioristic methodology, essentially dismissing broad abstractions and logical reasoning.**
 
As Rand’s theory indicates, the essence of science is measurement omission, not measurement, and the proper method of doing science is conceptualization. The criterion of what is true or false, that is, the correct identification of reality, is Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction. Whatever violates the law in the name of science should be called pseudoscience.
 
Which seems to be an appropriate descriptive of positivism.
 
 
* Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” Friedman, however, apparently regretted writing this essay.
 
** The experimental-positivistic-behavioristic terminology is psychologist Abraham Maslow’s disapproving description of positivist epistemology (xlvi).

On the Nature of Evil

“Evil” is a strong word.
 
The Oxford English Dictionary says it derives from Old English and, when applied to a person, is “the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike, or disparagement.” It means the person is “bad, wicked, vicious” and causes harm.
 
The concept is on the extreme end of the continuum of immorality. Ayn Rand says that evil people are a small minority in any culture, though their evil is often unleashed by appeasers. Let us take a look at the source and meaning of the concept of evil.
 
Ayn Rand’s moral values and virtues (16) are those that sustain and enhance our lives as rational beings. We are the animals that possess a volitional consciousness and therefore must choose to exercise our rational faculty to successfully live our lives. Some of her derivative values are honesty, courage, integrity, and justice.
 
Most decent people, I would say, think of morality in terms of telling the truth (honesty) and being fair to oneself and others (justice). Lying and unfairness are immoral. What is this continuum of immorality and where does evil lie?
 
Every concept, according to Rand’s epistemology, identifies a range of referents that are similar to each other, such as large and small tables, but different from others, such as beds and couches. The concept table identifies a range, or continuum, of measurements, specifying its essential distinguishing characteristics without the measurements—flat surface with supports designed to hold smaller objects.
 
The continuum of immorality ranges from someone who occasionally tells minor fibs and sometimes treats oneself and others unfairly to the seriously wicked and vicious person who might be justifiably called evil. I put the criminal personality in this evil classification, though the concept of evil is itself a continuum, ranging from the bungling burglar who leaves his identity behind to the murderer who enjoys watching the blood ooze from his victim’s body.
 
The criminal personality, as identified by Yochelson and Samenow, is someone who lies, cheats, and steals as a way of life and enjoys getting away with the forbidden (348–57). It is the criminals’ way of thinking—their thinking errors—that causes them to become criminals.
 
Working for the courts, Yochelson and Samenow for years interviewed criminals who had claimed the insanity defense.* They found few who were psychotic, especially when committing crimes. Interestingly, the criminal’s departure from reality was often a psychosis of conscience (voices and delusions) that prevented them from committing crimes. When the psychosis lifted, they returned to crime (476–81).
 
Also, the authors reviewed the literature on the notion of “psychopath,” concluding that the research is confusing and fails to describe a separate personality that is psychopathic (89–106). They even quote one investigator who says the research is a “wastebasket of psychiatric classification” (99).
 
Yet, the range of evilness that is wicked and vicious, I submit, can reliably be called psychopathic, as long as we do not call them psychotic. They are people, for example, who really believe, as does the rapist, “She really wanted me” and the murderer, “He deserved it.” The beliefs are rationalizations, but that is what constitutes the criminal’s way of thinking.
 
On the less extreme side of evilness, though still talking about people who are decidedly not nice, are what Yochelson and Samenow call the “non-arrestable criminal” (chap. 7). Such behavior is not illegal but often leads to illegal activity.
 
The authors call this behavior “criminal equivalent.” The criminally equivalent person seeks power for its own sake at the expense of others, enjoying the excitement of manipulating, bullying, and giving orders (not always cordially). They exist in all walks of life, at home, school, and work. Some are attracted to law enforcement, the military, fire prevention, and politics.
 
Crossing the line of legality, for example, the non-arrestable firefighter may start a fire, then help to put it out.
 
Ayn Rand says that the root of immorality is evasion of thought, the refusal to exercise one’s reason before acting. And one can readily say that there is likely evasion going on in the criminal’s mind, from an early age. But a question I have raised before, is how does one know that someone else is evading? How do we, or can we, judge others without making the hasty-generalization mistake?
 
My answer in the past has been, “Not easily” (1, 2, 3). I question whether we can judge someone as immoral unless we know that person well. Throw in the fact that many criminals are con artists, pretending to be an honest person, and add hyperbole and BS that many honest people like to use in conversation. You can have difficulty drawing conclusions about your conversant.
 
Indeed, I question whether Ayn Rand could readily make the judgment of thought evasion about another person—because psychology plays such a big part in the determination of our behavior, and Rand acknowledged that she did not know much about psychology. She did allow for errors in knowledge, which is where we can classify psychological defenses.
 
What about public figures—politicians and journalists, for example—who seem to lie as a way of life? They may be “criminal equivalents,” but how would we know without personal contact? I would say that targeting one person or organization with what seems like repeated falsehoods is moving in that direction, while frivolous lawsuits and unjust fines and imprisonments have moved across the line, the latter two the legal line.
 
Can we know these persons’ motivations with certainty? I don’t think so, and, to put a point on it, what does it matter to our personal lives, unless we are the target?
 
If we are the target of harmful and seemingly immoral or evil behavior, we must call out that behavior as wrong. But condemning the person as immoral or evil is a serious charge. With incomplete knowledge, I recommend giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. They have psychologies, after all, just as we do.
 
The most frivolous of frivolous discussions today in ethics is what I call the fallacy of moralizing concretes: red meat is immorally unhealthy, drinking water out of plastic bottles immorally harms the environment, and owning a gun means you want to kill people. The appropriate response here, after an exasperated exhale, would be, “Seriously?” Concretes—red meat, plastic bottles, guns—are neither moral nor immoral. The truth of the first two statements is doubtful, though your doctor may recommend a different diet. The moralizer of concretes is possibly a criminal equivalent who wants the power—and excitement—of banning the concretes.
 
Moral values and principles are broad abstractions that each of us must apply to our own lives. Honesty is not Immanuel Kant’s dictum of never lying. It is the principle of telling the truth, unless under duress, threatened with invasion of privacy, or when a blunt truth might be unnecessarily hurtful to another person. And justice means judging oneself and others correctly and, when appropriate, praising or denouncing.
 
The criminal suffers a deep character flaw of enjoying lying, cheating, and getting away with the forbidden. Crossing the legal line makes criminals easier to judge, though even here, one must ask, “Is the law valid that is being violated?” Am I immoral if I refuse to pay my taxes? No, but it is a practical issue. Ayn Rand paid her taxes because she did not want to go to jail. I certainly pay mine.
 
Most laws that criminals violate are crimes against person and property. This makes it easier to judge criminals as falling into the evil classification. Though even here, I am tempted to say that the really bad, wicked, and vicious ones are more on the psychopathic end of the scale, the types who enjoy watching blood oozing from their victim’s body.**

* Yochelson died at age 70 in 1976, but his co-author Stanton Samenow continued their work, and still continues today. Samenow has several books. I recommend Inside the Criminal Mind, The Myth of the Out of Character Crime, and Before It’s Too Late (advice to parents). I have cited this work on the criminal mind in earlier posts. See especially these two in Applying Principles (267–69, 280–83).
 
** Can ideologies and historical figures—such as communism and Hitler—be judged as evil? Yes, but extensive fact-finding must be done before condemning. A topic, perhaps for another blog.
 
Follow-up to last month’s post “On Writing”: I forgot to mention an important form of short writing in business: the conference memo. Say, you and your boss attend a meeting with the client. You, the junior person, will likely be the note taker and writer of the subsequent conference memo. The memo itself is no more than one page and summarizes the essence of the meeting, such as purpose, problem and suggested solutions, and, as the final section, next steps, which states who will do what, when, with a specific deadline for the project.
 
Speaking of deadlines, they do exist, whether for term papers and exams in school or for manuscript submission of books and articles (or, to go one further, for payment of taxes and credit card bills). My advice to students and myself: do the work ahead of time, allowing a chance for reflection on what might also need to be done. This is the subconscious “percolation” I mentioned last month, the process of filtering and integrating the knowledge you presently have. (And the deadline I give myself for these blogs is that it be posted sometime during the month.)