Commentary

One of the most effective tricks of the anti-business culture is to hold capitalists to a standard that they cannot possibly meet. For example, in the Martha Stewart case, U.S. Attorney James Comey declared: “This case is about lying.” Can you imagine what Mark Twain would have said if you’d told him that businessmen in the twenty-first century would be sent to jail for making inaccurate statements? He would have written an uproarious short story about a twenty-first century America in which prison sentences were visited upon lovers who made inaccurate statements to each other. “This is a case about lying,” his prosecutor would scream to the mob. Waving before the press a billet-doux that read 'I shall adore you forever,' the prosecutor would yell: "No mortal can adore another mortal forever. That is plain deceit. That is outright fraud."

Sep 9, 2010

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Fall 2010 -- A full three-quarters of American voters are “angry” over current federal policies and believe “neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today,” according to a February 2010 poll by Rasmussen Reports. “Americans are united in the belief that the political system is broken, that most politicians are corrupt, and that neither major political party has the answers,” Rasmussen explains.

Sep 9, 2010

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June 2000 -- DAVID N. MAYER is Professor of Law and History at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches courses in American constitutional history, English and American legal history, and intellectual property (copyright and unfair trade practices law), as well as a seminar in Libertarianism and the Law. Before teaching at Capital, Professor Mayer taught at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law in Chicago, Illinois; held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia; and was an attorney with the firm of Pierson Semmes and Finley in Washington, D.C. He has received degrees from the University of Virginia (Ph.D. in History, 1988, and M.A. in History, 1982) and the University of Michigan (J.D. in 1980 and A.B. in 1977). He has written The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994, paperback 1995), Liberty of Contract: Rediscovering a Lost Constitutional Right (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2011), and several articles in law reviews, history and political science journals.

Sep 8, 2010

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Last week, I wrote about my concept of malum insanum , behavior that is illegal only because some idiot in authority has issued an edict that makes it illegal. One of the most vivid examples of a mala insana has to be APBO No. 25, the edict that gave rise to the “crime” of failing to treat backdated options as a compensation expense. It is the “crime” for which Brocade’s former CEO, Greg Reyes, now faces prison.

Sep 8, 2010

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Spring 2009 -- Individual, objective liberty rights make possible a society based on the principle of trade. One basic kind of interaction would be banned: initiating force against others. Force could only be permitted to be used defensively against others who had already initiated it. In other words, all your interactions with others would respect their freedom to choose. Interactions would also aim to be of benefit all the parties involved. Such a system would only be possible—and moral—if human interests did not fundamentally conflict. After all, if our interests conflicted, you could not seek your own benefit except through harming me, and vice versa. It would be self-sacrifice for the loser to accept trades in that circumstance. Objectivism holds that your own life is your ultimate value. Real self-sacrifice is what one should never do.

Sep 8, 2010

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William Thomas

Spring 2009 -- Editor’s Note: In an interview conducted some 12 years ago with Navigator magazine (the predecessor of this publication), David N. Mayer, the author of " Completing the American Revolution " discussed specific institutional changes he would like to see enacted by a new American constitution. We asked Mayer if and how his beliefs have changed on these issues.

Sep 8, 2010

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On September 10, former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes is scheduled to report to prison, facing a sentence of eighteen months. The crime alleged against him was something called “backdating options.” Viewed in its worst possible light, that amounted to a minor sort of bookkeeping chicanery. Viewed more favorably, Reyes brushed aside a regulation universally acknowledged to be idiotic. And that is accepting the government’s allegations. According to Reyes’s own version of events, he simply relied on his financial department. No matter. He is being sent to prison.

Sep 7, 2010

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February 2002 -- Pierre Boulez (1925– ), perhaps the most highly esteemed postwar composer, has finally achieved what he wanted. Throughout his long career, Boulez has done his best to provoke and intimidate the bourgeois establishment. Unfortunately for him, the general public has contentedly ignored him, and his influence has been significant only among the most abstruse composers and theorists of the ivory tower. Consequently, his cultural power has been largely limited to a circle of French art institutions (such as the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique) that would perish faster than a Peugeot in a Minnesota winter without generous government subsidies.

Sep 7, 2010

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December 2004 -- I have grown to think that life is a cosmic whack-a-mole game, where we are the moles and reality is the whackor. We make subterranean thought tunnels, mazes of connections, deep caverns of speculation, but sooner or later we must stick our heads up out of a hole. Reality whacks us or it does not, depending on whether our conclusions are right or wrong. If we do not get whacked, we should continue to enjoy the sunshine of being right. If we do get whacked, we should retreat to our tunnels, recompute our plans, and stick our heads up again. We should not assume that a whack is a moral judgment—it is only the result of an error. We should not resign ourselves to life in darkness. Being wrong is a human condition, not a cosmic judgment. We must always stick our heads out because how else can Charles Tomlinsonwe discover the judgment of reality? We learn by observing the effect of reality on our actions. Is it a good idea to pick a fight with the big guy? Whack! Does she lust for me? Whack! There is no need to think about the possible reaction to this proposal. Whack! Is this a good way to make money? Whack! No need to think about anything. Whack! Whack! Whack!

Sep 7, 2010

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December 2004 -- The world is covered with OPS. It is the detritus of thousands of years of human activity. It is the leavings of the billions of people who have lived before us on this planet—the ideas that work hidden in the muck of those that don't, the religions, the political principles, the edicts of kings, and the propositions of tyrants. Everything in our world is covered with a thick, gooey atmosphere of Other People's Stuff. Everything needed for survival is included in OPS, and most people choose to stay there for their entire lives. It is comfortable in OPS, because the essential work of life—thinking—is taken care of by other people. The OPS rules are such things as: have faith; from Charles Tomlinsoneach according to ability, to each according to need; follow the rules; don't make waves; and sit down and hush.

Sep 7, 2010

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Jan/Feb 2005 -- The United States Supreme Court announced the much-anticipated federal sentencing law decisions in early January. The line of cases that started with Apprendi v. New Jersey and continued through Blakely v. Washington reached its culmination in the decision of United States v. Booker. But just when you'd think that there aren't any surprises left, the Court took another bizarre turn. There has been a consistent split of 5-4 in all but one of these cases. (The exception is Ring v. Arizona, for reasons involving particular death penalty issues.) The lines are not conservative-liberal: Justices Scalia, Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, and Thomas have been on one side, while Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor, Breyer, and Kennedy have been on the other.

Sep 7, 2010

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October 2007 -- This summer, as Ayn Rand ’s Atlas Shrugged approaches its fiftieth anniversary, I have just passed my forty-fifth year of living with that astonishing book. Thinking back across the decades, I find I am most surprised by how little progress has been made in advancing her philosophy of Objectivism . When I first encountered Atlas Shrugged , it struck me as a work so emotionally inspiring and theoretically lucid that I imagined a thousand pens must leap to defend it. But of course they didn’t.

Sep 7, 2010

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March 2008 -- Recently I was talking to a prominent local businessman about how hectic our respective schedules are. Toward the end of the conversation he said, with an air of frustrated exhaustion, “And on top of my daily business doings, there’s also all of the groups calling for charitable contributions.” He added: “You have to help them, of course.” In no way was he being resentful; he was just stating what was, to him, a truism. I took his comment to mean: “Yes, I’m selfish during the day making my own living—so therefore I must also give time, effort, and money to those who help others.”

Sep 7, 2010

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March 2008 -- Over the years, I have discovered that many of my fellow individualists habitually connect ideas that to me seem quite unconnected. For example, I have no sooner agreed with them as to the necessity of a free society than they expect me to advocate a free-wheeling society. I have no sooner concurred with them on getting judges out of the bedroom than they assume I want to get judgment out of the bedroom. I can’t see why. As an individualist, I believe that man’s mind is radically independent. I assert that a person’s moral purpose is his own self-realization. I hold that the proper political condition is freedom. But, as a Tory, I also believe in the necessity of hierarchy, the objectivity of morality, and the desirability of tradition.

Sep 7, 2010

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July/August 2008 -- Business columnists for the New York Times have been denouncing the pursuit of riches for at least a generation—the twenty-eight years since Ronald Reagan’s election supposedly ushered in a Decade of Greed. Now, several Times columnists seem to have discovered the bright side of capitalism. Columnist Joe Nocera, after visiting China, wrote (April 26, 2008): “Modern China surely shows that trickle-down economics is not just supply-side propaganda. . . . Motivated by the prospect of wealth, people started companies. And as those companies succeeded, millions of new jobs were created.” President Reagan, thou shouldst be living at this hour. A columnist for the New York Times has announced, not as a possibility but as a certainty, that the route to national wealth lies in offering entrepreneurs the chance to get fabulously rich.

Sep 7, 2010

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BOOK REVIEW: Matthew Yglesias, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008), 272 pages, $25.95 (hardcover). Fall 2008 -- Matthew Yglesias, a rising young star in liberal journalism, has written a superb and well-documented history of the problems the Democratic Party has had in recent years with selling itself to the American public as credible on national-security issues. His new book is an informative and enjoyable critique not only of cowardly spinmeisters but also the strategic viewpoints of neoconservatives and liberal hawks alike.

Sep 7, 2010

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In the medieval list of deadly sins, lust and greed were the two characterized by an excessive appetite for worldly pleasure. After the Renaissance and Enlightenment, attachment to this world was no longer considered sinful, but it took time for the guilt-ridden morality to wear off. By the 19th century, the pursuit of profit and wealth had become respectable, but sex was still encrusted with Victorian morality. The 20th century brought sexual liberation, especially since the '60s, but it also brought anti-capitalism. So we now have the inverted situation in which sexual desire is fine and open, but the profit motive is the dirty secret: everyone does it but no one wants to say so. Perhaps you will find this “Facts of Life” conversation a helpful guide for navigating this sensitive topic.

Sep 7, 2010

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David Kelley, Ph.D.

Fall 2008 -- Speaking at the University of Colorado on July 2, Senator Barack Obama declared that “just as we must value and encourage military service across our society, we must honor and expand other opportunities to serve. Because the future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson, but it also depends on the teacher in East LA, the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans, the Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, and the Foreign Service officer in Indonesia.”

Sep 7, 2010

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"Government spending on benefits will top $2 trillion this year—an average of $17,000 provided to each household,” USA Today reported in June. According to the newspaper’s review of state and federal data, about half of the increase can be attributed to the recession, the other half to policies enacted during President George W. Bush’s first term.

Sep 7, 2010

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April 2002 -- As the United States and the rest of the Western world help members of the Afghan coalition rebuild their nation, and as we pressure them to implement democratic reforms, perhaps we should stop to ask ourselves if democracy really is the best policy. The Taliban certainly brought terror and tyranny, but democracy may not be much better. After all, terror is terror, whether it is imposed by dictatorial fiat or popular election. And while it is comforting to believe that democracies don't produce tyrannies, that's not always true. Nigeria is a case in point.

Sep 7, 2010

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