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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s the charge that Newsweek columnist and Slate Magazine editor Jacob Weisberg has laid against the advocates of markets in a recent..
Richard Henry Tawney (1880–1962) was a British historian who spent most of his career at the London School of Economics. He wrote widely on
March 2006 -- Some of the most frightening images from Nazi Germany can be seen in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the cinematic...
“Men and women are different,” says a frustrated soldier to a young girl who’s been questioning his authority in Jafar Panahi’s lighthearted
BOOK REVIEW: Edward W. Younkins, Editor, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot
Robert Thurman has always had a problem with his temper, he tells us in Anger, the fifth in a series of books about the seven deadly sins...
Winter 2005 -- I don’t watch TV—we’ve lived more than fifteen years without cable—and I’m not a big fan of film. My personal escape is
May 2008 -- I’m not supposed to like Americanizing Shelley, at least not according to the unwritten code of my profession. It doesn’t affect
Individualism seemed to have few accomplishments and fewer adherents, back when I first encountered it, some forty-five years ago...
A lot of my listeners will often call up and say, “I preferred you when you were a Libertarian.” I always tell them I never was a....
You’re right to point out the contrast I make between capitalism and morality.” So said New York Times columnist John Tierney in response...
There Will Be Blood. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Martin Stringer, Kevin J. O’Connor, Jacob Stringer, Matthew Braden Stringer, Ciar
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s the charge that Newsweek columnist and Slate Magazine editor Jacob Weisberg has laid against the advocates of markets in a recent..
Richard Henry Tawney (1880–1962) was a British historian who spent most of his career at the London School of Economics. He wrote widely on
March 2006 -- Some of the most frightening images from Nazi Germany can be seen in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the cinematic...
“Men and women are different,” says a frustrated soldier to a young girl who’s been questioning his authority in Jafar Panahi’s lighthearted
BOOK REVIEW: Edward W. Younkins, Editor, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot
Robert Thurman has always had a problem with his temper, he tells us in Anger, the fifth in a series of books about the seven deadly sins...
Winter 2005 -- I don’t watch TV—we’ve lived more than fifteen years without cable—and I’m not a big fan of film. My personal escape is
May 2008 -- I’m not supposed to like Americanizing Shelley, at least not according to the unwritten code of my profession. It doesn’t affect
Individualism seemed to have few accomplishments and fewer adherents, back when I first encountered it, some forty-five years ago...
A lot of my listeners will often call up and say, “I preferred you when you were a Libertarian.” I always tell them I never was a....
You’re right to point out the contrast I make between capitalism and morality.” So said New York Times columnist John Tierney in response...
There Will Be Blood. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Martin Stringer, Kevin J. O’Connor, Jacob Stringer, Matthew Braden Stringer, Ciar
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.
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.
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!
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.