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Category: Philosophy

Malcolm Wallop Dies

14 September 2011

Associated Press reports from Cheyenne, Wyoming, that Western pioneer descendant and former Wyoming U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop has died at age 78. The anti-Communist Republican, who served in the Senate for 18 years, is the first elected official to propose space-based missile defense, which became part of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

But I remember Sen. Wallop, an advocate for property rights, as one of only two U.S. senators during the historic Clinton health care plan debate of 1993-1994 to proclaim (rightly) that health care is not a right. During this crucial national debate, which preceded America’s socialized medicine, ObamaCare, Sen. Wallop named the flawed premise of government-dictated medicine by standing on the Senate floor and declaring that health care is not a right (Texas Sen. Phil Gramm was the only other senator to say it). Despite Republican attempts to compromise and pass the Clinton health care plan, socialized medicine was defeated; the Clinton administration’s widely unpopular concept never became a piece of legislation.

According to his official bio, Wallop was also the first non-lawyer in U.S. Senate history to serve on the Judiciary Committee and, as ranking Republican member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee from 1990 to 1994, Sen. Wallop was an outspoken advocate for development of domestic energy supplies of coal, oil and natural gas. Wallop pushed for an amendment to the 1980 Clean Water Act, barring federal usurpation of state control of water, authored the Sunset of the Carter Era Windfall Profits Tax, the first sunsetted tax in history, and he sponsored the 1977 Wallop Amendment to the Surface Mining Control Act, which directed the federal government to compensate, through purchase or exchange, owners of mineral rights whose right to mine had been denied by government regulation. In 1981, Congress enacted his legislation to cut inheritance and gift taxes. He later founded his own grass-roots organization, Frontiers of Freedom, whose agenda includes “preservation of property rights and reform of the Endangered Species Act, the privatization of Social Security, protection of civil liberties and the defeat of such big government initiatives as the antiterrorism bill and the national ID card legislation, and reform of the Food and Drug Administration.”

In 1996, Steve Forbes asked Wallop to be general chairman and executive director of his presidential bid, leading to changes which led to primary victories in both Delaware and Arizona. The Yale University graduate served in the U.S. Army as a First Lieutenant from 1955 to 1957 and was a member of the Wyoming Legislature from 1969 to 1976. His extensive business career includes management of the Wyoming ranch holdings he owned and the self-described rancher, businessman, real estate developer and investor jointly ventured oil and gas development projects in Nebraska, Montana and Wyoming. Mr. Wallop died Wednesday afternoon at his home near Big Horn, Wyoming.

Permalink | Posted in Health Care, News, Obituaries, Politics

Interview with John David Lewis

3 September 2011

The goal of a war is to defeat an enemy’s will to fight. So argues the author of Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton University Press, 2010), who makes the case that a strong military offense can win a war and establish lasting peace while playing defense often leads to destruction. This study of six major wars, from the Second Punic War to World War 2, by historian John David Lewis, contrasts the use of overwhelming force, such as the Greek victory over Xerxes’ army and navy, with a lack of reason, purpose, and commitment to fight. On the eve of the 10th year since the worst attack in American history, I turned to my friend John Lewis, a visiting associate professor of philosophy, politics, and economics at Duke University and teacher at Objectivist Conferences (OCON), to discuss today’s war from an historical perspective. Dr. Lewis is the author of Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens and Early Greek Lawgivers.

Scott Holleran: What is the theme of Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History?

John David Lewis: That wars are driven and caused by people’s decisions to fight and that those decisions are based on the ideas they hold. This has enormous implications for what victory means, because it means discrediting the ideas we’re trying to defeat. For example, one could never explain Germany’s massive attacks [against other countries] or Japan’s massive attack on America, in which they launched into intercontinental warfare, without understanding the ideals that they held. The theme of Nothing Less Than Victory is that one must defeat the enemy by discrediting his ideas.

Scott Holleran: How was Nothing Less Than Victory suggested by your students?

John David Lewis: I was teaching a class on ancient and modern warfare and it became clear that a comparative history would be useful. My students posed good questions.

Scott Holleran: While writing about the rise of the Nazis, did The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America by Leonard Peikoff help your understanding?

John David Lewis: Yes, because it’s the only book I know of that places philosophical ideas as the lesson of history. It’s not only an explanation of Nazi Germany in terms of ideas but, much more deeply and widely, it demonstrates how ideas move history.

Scott Holleran: The current administration supports military involvements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as other underreported incursions in nations such as Yemen and Pakistan, with something other than, or less than, a purpose let alone a victory. The Oxford English Dictionary defines warmonger as “a person who seeks to bring about or promote war.” As a commander-in-chief who supports and initiates militarism with no purpose or end, is President Obama a warmonger?

John David Lewis: I think he’s incompetent but I don’t think Obama is a warmonger. He inherited those wars but he’s simply unable to bring those wars to a decisive end. His main goal is to bring about a fundamental restructuring of the relationship of every American to the government, which is why ObamaCare was among his top three initiatives, because there’s no better way to define that relationship than through health care. So, his major initiative is to change us from the inside out and I think foreign policy is a distraction to him. It’s a symptom of his incompetence, not warmongering. One other aspect of this is that, unlike Bush, with regard to rules of engagement, he generally lets the generals do as they want but this slight improvement [over Bush] is not because Obama is driven to victory.

Scott Holleran: Are the U.S. military interventions in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan properly described as wars?

John David Lewis: When you have combatants you have a war. As Ayn Rand said about the Vietnam War, and I’m paraphrasing, when foreign soldiers are killing Americans, it’s a war and nothing but a war. Certainly, these are wars, but they’re wars in which one side knows it’s fighting a war and the other side is desperately avoiding using that term.

Scott Holleran: You have publicly discussed your cancer diagnosis with regard to domestic health policy and compared your battle against cancer with the themes in Nothing Less Than Victory. Has your condition affected your thoughts on war?

John David Lewis: It has sharpened something—that my battle against cancer is a metaphor, not a war. There’s intelligence gathering in the first stage, nuclear warfare—chemicals and radiation—in the second stage and then we send in the Marines—with doctors and nurses. In a war, you’re dealing with other human beings, who have free will. With cancer, the disease does not have a mind of its own; beating it is a matter of biological causality.

Scott Holleran: Are you primarily a teacher, a writer or an historian?

John David Lewis: It depends on what day it is. Tomorrow, I start teaching two courses at Duke, so tomorrow I’m a teacher. I don’t see any kind of exclusivity—I think they’re mutually supportive. I would not want to be only a historian or writer, because I need the stimulation of teaching.

Scott Holleran: If the U.S. continues to deteriorate, with, for example, an economic collapse or major Islamic terrorist attack, historically speaking, which is more likely: anarchy, civil war, or religious dictatorship?

John David Lewis: Probably some form of religious dictatorship. The two events you name, economic collapse from inside and an attack from outside, are very different. In the case of an attack, I think the American people would look for a leader to unite them and the chances are much greater that they’ll look to a religious leader and we’ll end up with a fascist dictatorship. It depends on the attack, too; obviously, if there are 20 nuclear bombs detonated at once, we may lose our infrastructure and descend into some form of anarchy, but I think we’re more likely to have a single nuclear attack. With an economic collapse, the public would [be more likely to] look for a leader who would seek centralization of power. The infrastructure—the command structure—the equipment—for a police state is already in place at our airports with the TSA. The American people are already habituated to accept it.

Scott Holleran: What is your most controversial point in Nothing Less Than Victory?

John David Lewis: That ideas drive history. Two things are necessary in war; the capacity to fight and the will to fight. During the so-called Cold War, the two great powers were the Soviet Union and the United States, but a third power with capacity was England—and no one went after them because they posed no threat. So, in fact, the most controversial idea is the most obvious; that ideas are the drivers of history. Among readers, the most controversial idea is my point that it was moral to drop the atom bomb on Japan.

Scott Holleran: We now know that the Soviets had infiltrated the United States government and U.S. industries, including motion pictures, and society. Is jihadist Moslem infiltration—including takeover—of the U.S. government possible?

John David Lewis: I don’t think takeover was the kind of thing the Communists were after. What they were going to do is [try to] elect people who would be sympathetic to the Soviet cause. I think that, in a certain sense, there’s a strong parallel, because those who want a radical Islamic war culminating in a one-world government are just as overt in pursuing their goals as were the Communists. But the Soviets were less interested in a one-world government [than jihadists]. The Iranians may be less focused on one-world government than the Saudis. The Iranians act more like the Soviets—they want to have nukes to play like the big boys, whereas the Saudis are more like the Trotskyites. They want this worldwide evolution [toward Islamic statism] and are more patient about infiltrating [Western civilization]. The Saudis have built thousands of mosques and [radical Islamic group] CAIR has directly said that Sharia law imposed over the United States will come. To actually take over the U.S. government in the sense that they impose Sharia law? We’re a long way from that. But if you mean creating sympathies and bringing about a radical Islamic-influenced government…

Scott Holleran: Certain presidential candidates have recently been linked to campaign donors who may be connected, directly or indirectly, to groups that support Islamic jihadist aims. Are you concerned that the enemy could shape and influence American government through a Manchurian candidate?

John David Lewis: Yes. It’s part of the insidiousness of these groups. Today, any candidate knows that accepting money from jihadist groups for influence would kill the campaign—you can’t keep that kind of thing a secret. So that would be less likely than the threat of covert multiculturalist ideas being spread and accepted throughout the culture.

Scott Holleran: What is the central lesson of each war discussed in Nothing Less Than Victory as it relates to today’s war?

John David Lewis: The need to name the enemy, identify him as an enemy and develop a strategy that defeats him at his center—an elusive concept—or close to a center of gravity of economic, social, political support for the [jihadist] war [against the West]. [Carl von] Clausewitz writes about this—that Americans have a strong moral center, so that, by attacking our moral center, the enemy imposes guilt. We saw this in the Vietnam War when we were criticized for distinguishing between [Communist] North and [non-Communist] South Vietnam. After the war ended, one of our generals went to a former North Vietnamese military general and said, “you never defeated us in the battlefield.” And his North Vietnamese counterpart said that was irrelevant. You need to be right in what you’re doing and you need to know that you’re right in what you’re doing.

Scott Holleran: You write about the citizens of ancient Carthage and those in South Carolina and Georgia during the Civil War not facing the consequences of war. Are today’s Americans disconnected from war?

John David Lewis: Yes. In a certain sense, they’re very disconnected from the war because they’re not facing an attack on their soil right now, so I don’t think they know what’s going on. When I talk to soldiers, I get a very different sense about what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan than what I see in the media. But, in another sense, we are more connected because we live in the age of technology, and people can get news from the battlefield. What would Americans at home have said had images from Iwo Jima been sent back home?

Scott Holleran: You write about Union General Sherman’s remarkably low casualties during the Civil War. Why is that fact not widely taught or known?

John David Lewis: Because people today are caught up in the myth of Sherman as the Attila from the North. Southerners created that myth.

Scott Holleran: How did the myth become so widely accepted in the North?

John David Lewis: That’s a good question. The intellectuals, historians and the press are all complicit in this—it strikes their morality that Sherman specifically targeted civilians—and once they accept that that’s what Sherman did, they move on rather than examine the facts of what happened. Why are Hiroshima and Nagasaki held up as moral evils while failing to consider what alternatives the United States had? Facts are forgotten and subordinated for moral reasons.

Scott Holleran: You also write about Confederates hiding behind civilians like today’s Moslem jihadists. Are there other examples in history of using civilians as covers for combatants during war?

John David Lewis: That happens all the time in war. Any time an army backs up into a city and defends against its walls, the civilians are being held hostage in some way. So there’s certainly a precedent in history. I don’t think the Confederates were necessarily worse even than the Union. Palestinian snipers look for Israeli troops where they are facing civilians and what they want is to get the Israelis to return gunfire against civilians to get publicity—they want the enemy to kill civilians as a pretext. That’s worse.

Scott Holleran: Is the mass death of freed slaves at Ebeneezer Creek in any way indicative that the Union army was racist, too, and does the tragedy diminish the moral righteousness of the Union cause?

John David Lewis: Racist? Of course. Everyone was a racist back then. Does it diminish the moral status of the Union’s cause? Absolutely not! Many freed slaves wanted to be with Sherman’s army. As Union armies were moving ahead under Union General Jefferson C. Davis’s command, freed slaves followed. Coming to the creek, with Confederates behind them, Davis ordered pontoons brought up, leaving the freed slaves behind, and then they were attacked by Southern armies. Davis may have been racist but who caused the dangers to the freed slaves? It was the Southern army. Davis is given moral criticism for failing to rescue blacks from Southerners. But it’s the Southerners that were to blame. They were the ones attacking. They were ones who’d enslaved them.

Scott Holleran: Coming to the 20^th century wars, you write that President Woodrow Wilson sought “peace without victors.” Who is the last president who didn’t?

John David Lewis: Franklin Roosevelt.

Scott Holleran: You trace President Wilson’s ideals to philosopher Thomas Hobbes and, centrally, to philosopher Immanuel Kant. Is Wilson America’s first Kantian president?

John David Lewis: I don’t know enough about the intellectual history of American presidents to say whether he’s the first but he’s heavily influenced by Kant because the basis of his education was German. It’s Kant’s 1795 essay on Perpetual Peace that calls for the establishment of a worldwide state. Kant calls for “a league of nations”. Kant directly influenced the League of Nations. People forget that Kant said that all nations of the world should be republics and he rejected democracy—but he blanked out the fact that all nations in the world are not republics. The influence of Kant in education that was German-based clearly influenced Woodrow Wilson.

Scott Holleran: Why do liberals condemn Nazi Germany but drop the context of the Nazis’ government-controlled economics?

John David Lewis: I don’t know. I think the inference takes them down a road that they don’t want to go. They don’t want to face the fact that being an advocate of a government-controlled economy makes them tyrannical. It’s forgotten that these fascist states were woefully inefficient. I have evidence that Mussolini did not make the trains run on time, yet this notion that fascism is efficient persists. Last night, I saw a Star Trek episode in which Spock tells Kirk that Nazi Germany was the world’s most efficient society. That’s not true.

Scott Holleran: You report that the media aided and abetted the rise of the Nazis. Is today’s press complicit in aiding the rise of fascism, too?

John David Lewis: Oh, sure, though they wouldn’t say it that way. The press itself is almost always solidly on the side of greater and bigger government programs, except for the Wall Street Journal and some conservative outlets. They don’t want to call themselves fascists but in effect that is what they are supporting.

Scott Holleran: Did the West drive Italian dictator Benito Mussolini into an alliance with Nazi Germany?

John David Lewis: I don’t know—I don’t have a good answer for that. If it’s true that Mussolini was afraid of Nazi Germany, there certainly were times, especially when the Germans moved into the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia, when all offers and opportunities might have stopped the Nazi flood. I think the West was instrumental—and complicit—in driving Mussolini into an alliance with Nazi Germany in the same way we did with [Cuban dictator] Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union, but I would never place primary blame or cause on the West because both probably would have happened anyway. They shared a basic philosophy.

Scott Holleran: Was Imperial Japan as racist as Nazi Germany?

John David Lewis: In its own way, yes. The more I read about Japan, the more I realize what a truly foreign nation it is—in their morals, in their writing, you see now that, when something goes wrong in a company, the executives have to bow down and apologize. Japan was as racist as Germany in the sense that they saw themselves as racially superior and destined to rule Asia.

Scott Holleran: Is General Douglas MacArthur underestimated as leader and thinker in occupied Japan?

John David Lewis: Yes. In terms of the occupation of Japan, which MacArthur was put in charge of, it resulted in zero deaths and there were no insurrections. What he did was a monumental task and it went as benevolently and well as any occupation in history. He is greatly underestimated.

Scott Holleran: Is it possible for the U.S. public to come to worship a leader, such as Texas Governor Perry, Minnesota Congresswoman Bachmann, or President Obama, as a deity as people did in Japan?

John David Lewis: We’re a long way from that, especially the way it was done in Japan. But the way people treat Barack Obama—as if he’s the divine one, his word is oracle and he can do everything—has parallels.

Scott Holleran: There are a number of war movies in recent years, from 300 and The Alamo remake to recent war-themed pictures such as Stop-Loss, Jarhead and The Lucky Ones—even The King’s Speech hinges upon an understanding of what’s at stake in war. Do you recommend any movies as effective dramatizations of war and/or a proper historical perspective?

John David Lewis: I don’t have a recommendation. I did see one war movie recently—Escape from Sobibor [British made for television, which aired on CBS in 1987] with Alan Arkin. It’s about a German concentration camp—a death camp—in Poland. Like all these camps, there were some prisoners who were not killed; they were out in barracks. Sobibor was where the only full-scale revolt by camp prisoners took place. They ran into the woods and escaped—it’s the one case where everyone, especially the Jews but also the Poles, fought back. They killed the Germans, and then they rushed the main gate and hundreds escaped. That’s worth seeing. I stopped seeing a lot of modern war movies. I have not seen 300. I’ve got the graphic novel and it looks awful. A much better movie about the historic battle is The 300 Spartans [starring Richard Egan, 1962].

Scott Holleran: Any other classic movie recommendations?

John David Lewis: I still like to see Battle of the Bulge [starring Robert Shaw, 1965], which is about reversing the wills to fight. In the beginning, the Americans are demoralized and the Germans are motivated. In the end it’s the opposite. There are some good classic war movies set in World War 2. Even a movie like A Bridge Too Far [1977] has a certain point to it.

Scott Holleran: You write that President Franklin Roosevelt wrote about “the destruction of a philosophy” in achieving victory in World War 2. Does the planned construction of an Islamic mosque near where the Twin Towers once stood—before Islamic jihadists destroyed them on 9/11—represent a victory to the enemy?

John David Lewis: I think it does. It’s not because the people who want to build the mosque are on the side of those who want to destroy the U.S. but they chose to build it near the World Trade Center site for sympathetic reasons and those reasons—for building a $100 million cultural center—are the same reasons that make me want to oppose it. In the plans, there are separate places for men and women, so it’s clearly a place to enforce certain political ideas, which are not consistent with the ideals of the United States. That they choose to build it there is why I oppose building it there.

Scott Holleran: You contrast the Japanese with the Americans in terms of motive, demonstrating that the Japanese, like today’s jihadists, were motivated by death while the Americans fighting in World War 2 were motivated by life. We have been fighting and appeasing jihadists for over 10 years with thousands of U.S. casualties and no progress toward victory. Are Americans losing the will to live?

John David Lewis: That’s a difficult question. If one sees an enemy as out to destroy you and does not act against him, and instead builds bridges to him, then certainly Americans are losing the will to live. Certainly, if we don’t demand a nation that defends itself, that’s true.

Scott Holleran: You write about dropping napalm and atom bombs, not food, on civilians during war. What is the primary reason why we drop food packages not bombs on our enemy?

John David Lewis: On one level, we don’t want to destroy and kill people that way—Americans are very benevolent—and we fail to make the connection between dropping bombs and saving our lives. American intelligence in Japan looked at what was happening inside the country of Japan—inside the houses. When they found out that civilians were being trained to kill Americans, they realized that within those houses were weapons and that civilians were an active part of the war effort and an American intelligence officer made a direct connection; he reported there were no civilians in Japan as far as the war effort was concerned. Recently, we saw a Navy SEAL team come across a group of shepherds that were hostile to the U.S.—and they let them go, knowing the shepherds would turn them over to the enemy if given a chance. It goes back to your question about the will to live, and, in that sense, it’s gone.

Scott Holleran: Which is the greater threat to the United States—Iran, which openly declares its intent to destroy America—or Saudi Arabia, which sponsors Islamic jihadism while claiming to do otherwise?

John David Lewis: They’re both threats. I can’t elevate one above the other.

Scott Holleran: The Nazis were appeased by the West and swept into power, exterminating millions of Jews. The Soviets were allied with and appeased by the West and subsequently conquered much of the civilized world, exterminating millions of people, enslaving tens of millions and fighting a proxy war with the U.S. that funded the forces that created jihadist Islam. Islamic jihadists, too, were allied with and appeased by the West and are fighting a proxy war with the U.S. through subversive terrorism. What horror awaits civilization should jihadists prevail?

John David Lewis: The first thing we would see is the entire Middle East given to Islamic government and all-out war—we would see Islamic rule in the south of France, Spain, and Indonesia, and the predominantly Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. I do not think that we would see a single caliphate against the United States. I think we would see Iran and Syria against Saudi Arabia and Egypt and whatever would come out of that would push out against the West. European nations are already failing by internal rot. But how far are we from France becoming an Islamic state? Probably far off. The war would spread like a plague through Africa and South America, where they would come to regret the alliance that [Venezuelan dictator] Hugo Chavez made with Iran. And if Iran gets nuclear weapons—and then the Saudis do, too—that would be very bad for the rest of the world.

Scott Holleran: Is America’s current predicament with regard to the unacknowledged war with jihadist Islam fundamentally comparable to either the 300 Spartans or the Alamo?

John David Lewis: [Pauses] No. I don’t think so. In neither Greece nor the Alamo was it denied that there was a problem. Today, we are evading the fact that there’s a problem—that this politicized Islam [jihad, which means holy war] is what motivates the enemy. In that sense, it’s not comparable. The Greeks made a stand against the Persians and it became a rallying cry—the men at the Alamo made a stand against the Mexicans and it became a rallying cry—but when the passengers of United [Air Lines flight] 93 made a stand against the radical Moslems, there should have been a rallying cry, and there wasn’t. Throughout history, we’ve heard “Remember the 300 [Spartans]!” “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember the Maine!” No one cries “Let’s Roll” to remember United 93.

Scott Holleran: What’s your favorite war memorial?

John David Lewis: It makes me sad to think of that. [Pauses] There is one that comes to mind, though I haven’t been there—the U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The [sunken] ship [destroyed with her 1,777 crewmen by the Japanese] was left there and a memorial was built over it. Some of the Confederate war memorials, such as the memorial at Shiloh, are very moving. But the one that seems most moving to me is the Arizona memorial. [Pauses] I do not think it’s time to build a memorial to the victims of 9/11. There’s a line about building a war memorial during a war that may be attributable to, of all people, Eleanor Roosevelt: We’ll win the war—then we’ll have a memorial.

Scott Holleran: What one idea, more than any other idea, must be accepted in our culture for the West to achieve victory over jihadist Islam?

John David Lewis: Knowledge of our own good. Most of all, we must realize that we stand for the values of freedom, the sanctity of the individual, and reason.

Permalink | Posted in Books, History, Interviews, Philosophy, Princeton University Press, War

Interview with Gary Johnson

21 August 2011

American businessman Gary Johnson, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2012, served two terms as governor of New Mexico, from 1995 to 2003. The 58-year-old North Dakota native, whose mother worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and whose father was a public school teacher, is best known for having vetoed over 750 bills during his tenure as governor, more than all other 49 governors combined, earning him the nickname “Governor Veto.”

In a state with 2 to 1 Democrat voter registration, he cut the rate of government growth in half and oversaw the elimination of the state’s budget deficit without once raising taxes. In fact, Johnson cut taxes 14 times as governor, and by the time he left after term limits forced him out of office, New Mexico was one of only four states with a balanced budget. Additionally, he pushed school choice reform, which the New York Times described as “the most ambitious voucher program in the country.” In 1999, Gov. Johnson became the highest-ranking public official to speak out against America’s so-called war on drugs, arguing that prohibition of marijuana in particular is the chief cause of violence along the U.S.’s southern border. He favors a reassessment of the nation’s drug laws, and he recently endorsed Proposition 19, California’s campaign to legalize marijuana in the state.

Working his way through college as a handyman, Gary Johnson later founded one of the largest construction companies in New Mexico, with over 1,000 employees. The athlete and outdoorsman is an avid skier, cyclist, and mountain climber and he has reached the top of Mt. Everest, which he climbed with a partially broken leg. The divorced father, who announced his candidacy for president in Concord, New Hampshire, earlier this year, spoke with me during a nine-day swing through the Granite State.

Scott Holleran: You told the Wall Street Journal last year that you support means testing for Medicare and Social Security, for which you said you would raise the eligibility age. In what specific ways would you cut entitlement programs to balance the budget?

Gary Johnson: Specifically, and this is waving the magic wand, because I recognize that there are three branches of government, I would have the federal government cut Medicare and Medicaid by 43 percent and block grant the programs [to the states] with no strings. Instead of giving the states one dollar—and it’s not really giving because there are strings attached—the federal government needs to give the states 57 cents, take away the strings and give the states carte blanche for how to give health care to the poor. I reformed Medicaid as governor of New Mexico and, in that context, even with strings attached, I believe I could have delivered health care to the poor. I believe I could have done the same thing with Medicare. Also, I would cut military spending by 43 percent believing that we can provide a strong national defense as opposed to what I would call an offense and nation building. I would cut Social Security by raising the retirement age and have common sense means testing that’s fair. I would scrap the entire federal tax system and replace it with the fair tax—a one time consumption tax, with no more Medicare and unemployment payroll deductions—so we’d have one national consumption tax to replace all federal taxes, abolishing the IRS.

Scott Holleran: Which programs will you terminate?

Gary Johnson: There are currently two that I advocate abolishing: the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Scott Holleran: Do you favor a balanced budget amendment?

Gary Johnson: I do—but the problem is that passing balanced budgets for future years is what we do and it takes away the immediate problem and kicks it down the road.

Scott Holleran: Is it your position that we should audit, not end, the Federal Reserve—that ending the Fed may be desirable but not immediately realistic?

Gary Johnson: I think ending the Federal Reserve would be positive but if we end the Fed it’s important to point out that that’s not the end of the solution. A lot of the central banking function would have to be taken up by regional banks.

Scott Holleran: Will you issue an executive order to repeal ObamaCare as unconstitutional?

Gary Johnson: Yes, if it’s possible. I would do the same for [President Bush’s Medicare] prescription [drug subsidies]. Two parties can take responsibility for where we’re at right now.

Scott Holleran: You’ve said that you would not have raised the debt ceiling and that it would have still been possible to avoid default. How?

Gary Johnson: I believe that we would have still brought in $200 billion a month and [control] how we make payments and whether we default on any bills. But obviously going forward, we have to put the brakes on spending. I just argue that it will never be easier than now. In the bond market, if no one was buying our debt, that would mean the Federal Reserve printing money as opposed to individuals or countries loaning us money; that’s the bond market collapsing—so when that happens, that is a whole lot of money and it has to result in inflation. Russia is the most recent example. As frightening as that scenario is, that’s what going to happen. But we can fix this—there’s going to be a lot of hardship and pain, but that’s better than killing the patient and, the way we’re going, we’re going to kill the patient in a monetary collapse. But I am an optimist because I think it can be fixed.

Scott Holleran: You write that “[m]aintaining a strong national defense is the most basic of the federal government’s responsibilities. However, building schools, roads, and hospitals in other countries are not among those basic obligations. Yet that is exactly what we have been doing for much of the past 10 years.” Do you oppose current U.S. military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya and, if so, on what moral grounds?

Gary Johnson: I do. In all three cases, I don’t see a military threat. I initially thought the intervention in Afghanistan was warranted—we were attacked and we attacked back—but we’ve wiped out Al Qaeda and here we are; we’re still there.

Scott Holleran: Isn’t there evidence that we merely drove Al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan?

Gary Johnson: Sure.

Scott Holleran: Each of those interventions was partially and eventually justified by the morality of altruism—with helping others as the primary purpose—not on the principle that our nation’s self-interest comes first. Which one is your criteria for foreign policy?

Gary Johnson: I think we should act in our self-interest. As I understand it, I think Eisenhower was a pretty good role model for that. Morally, you can justify almost anything we do by saying that we’re doing it for the sake of others. I would point to past realities that have unintended consequences. For example, by taking out [the secular regime in] Iraq, we removed a threat to [religious totalitarian regime] Iran—by the way, I don’t think Iran’s a military threat, though it might prove to be, but we [have the military capacity to] deal with that threat.

Scott Holleran: It’s a fact that Iran in several instances has stated its intention to destroy the United States, which Iran calls “the Great Satan.” If, as president, you had information that Iran was preparing an attack—either through sponsorship of terrorism or by nuclear strike against one of our military bases or cities—how would you respond?

Gary Johnson: I’d meet with the military experts and ask a lot of questions. We have airborne lasers that can knock out incoming missiles in the launch phase.

Scott Holleran: You state that “[n]o criminal or terrorist suspect captured by the U.S. should be subject to physical or psychological torture.” On what moral grounds should our government be precluded from using torture to protect our nation from foreign enemies that seek to destroy the United States through subversive terrorist activity?

Gary Johnson: I just think that there’s no end to that. Let’s say we know there’s a bomb ticking, so we have to torture this guy—that’s the argument for the death penalty—but the law that gets written also is public policy which allows us to put someone who’s innocent to death. The basis of our country is that we protect the innocent. Are we going to torture people to prevent nuclear briefcase bombs? It amounts to the ends justify the means.

Scott Holleran: You oppose the death penalty. Why?

Gary Johnson: As governor of New Mexico, I was a bit naïve and I did not think the government made mistakes with regard to the death penalty. I came to realize that they do. I don’t want to put one innocent person to death to punish 99 who are guilty.

Scott Holleran: You propose to let the so-called Patriot Act—which arguably violates individual rights—expire, yet you have not said you would abolish the invasive TSA, which arguably violates the Constitutional right to travel. Why not abolish the TSA?

Gary Johnson: I would abolish the TSA.

Scott Holleran: Do you support separation of religion and state?

Gary Johnson: Yes.

Scott Holleran: You oppose gay marriage, though you favor civil unions. Why?

Gary Johnson: I wouldn’t say I oppose gay marriage as a matter of public policy. The government shouldn’t be in the marriage business. I would not be opposed to belonging to a church that supports gay marriage.

Scott Holleran: You claim to advocate capitalism. So, who in America is your favorite businessman?

Gary Johnson: [Pauses, thinking] My favorite businessman. [Apple founder] Steve Jobs comes to mind—he represents incredible innovation. Maybe Bill Gates. I didn’t have any business heroes growing up. One of the realities of my life is that those I thought were heroes were not.

Scott Holleran: Who is your favorite political philosopher?

Gary Johnson: [Chicago economist and Free to Choose author] Milton Friedman.

Scott Holleran: Do you favor nuclear power?

Gary Johnson: Yes.

Scott Holleran: If Ron Paul ran as an independent or third party candidate for the presidency, would you support the Republican nominee?

Gary Johnson: Not necessarily.

Scott Holleran: You refused the Libertarian Party nomination in 2000. Why?

Gary Johnson: I refused to run as a Libertarian. I don’t see myself getting elected as a Libertarian Party or independent candidate.

Scott Holleran: You endorsed Ron Paul in 2008 for president. Why?

Gary Johnson: I thought he was saying the things I was.

Scott Holleran: You told a libertarian publication that you disagree with Ron Paul on aid to Israel; that you think “it’s important to distinguish between foreign aid and foreign alliances” and support an alliance with Israel. But you agree with Ron Paul that Iran—a religious totalitarian regime that sponsors Islamic terrorism and has threatened to wipe out the United States—is not a threat. Do you share Ron Paul’s view on foreign policy?

Gary Johnson: I’m not sure I can say whether I support or oppose Ron Paul’s positions because I am not completely versed in them. I think Israel is an important military ally and I support that alliance. I think Iran gets dealt with by Israel, which is likely to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. I think it’s wrong for our government to presume to tell Israel what to do.

Scott Holleran: Are you aware that Ron Paul is anti-abortion?

Gary Johnson: Yes.

Scott Holleran: With Congressman Paul denouncing a woman’s right to an abortion, and Mitt Romney emphasizing his newly proclaimed support for capitalism, are you more likely to gain support from Romney supporters than from Ron Paul supporters?

Gary Johnson: I don’t know. I support a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.

Scott Holleran: On April 21, 2011, you announced via Twitter that you were running for president. You followed the announcement with a speech at the New Hampshire state house in Concord, New Hampshire. Why is New Hampshire at the forefront of your campaign?

Gary Johnson: I am being outspent over 300 to one in this race—I’m not complaining about it—so New Hampshire is a place where I can come out as a top tier candidate.

Scott Holleran: Do you support mandated government nutrition labels, such as calorie counts, on all foods?

Gary Johnson: Yes—I think that’s a good idea. It’s just labeling food we consume so we can make intelligent choices.

Scott Holleran: Do you support First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign?

Gary Johnson: Yes, I think it’s terrific.

Scott Holleran: Wearing combat boots and a 35-pound backpack, you completed the Bataan Memorial Death March, commemorating Japan’s historic death march during World War 2. Why was that important to you?

Gary Johnson: For one thing, I’m an athlete and I love doing athletic competitions and it was a commemorative event, so the Bataan Memorial Death March accomplished two important things at once.

Scott Holleran: You’ve been injured with frostbite, bone fractures and a broken knee while mountain climbing, skiing, and paragliding. Are you a thrillseeker and will you continue these extreme sports during your presidency?

Gary Johnson: I like to think I live a full life. I wouldn’t say I’m a thrillseeker, I would say I like to have fun. Yes, I’m going to continue my adventures as president.

Scott Holleran: What criteria do you seek in a vice-presidential running mate?

Gary Johnson: Compatibility first. Also, support, and the notion that he could be president and best carry on my vision.

Scott Holleran: Why is The Fountainhead your favorite novel?

Gary Johnson: I think Ayn Rand put into words that the best thing I can do for my fellow citizen is to be the best I can be. I think that’s how I can impact other people’s lives—not by having government give to them but by being my best and leading by example.

Scott Holleran: Have you read all of her novels?

Gary Johnson: No. I’ve read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Scott Holleran: Do you agree with Rand’s philosophy?

Gary Johnson: Yes, I do.

Scott Holleran: Let’s talk about movies. According to your Facebook fan page, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of your favorite movies. Why?

Gary Johnson: I enjoyed it very much when I saw it. I also like Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. Doctor Zhivago is my all-time favorite film. The scene where Dr. Zhivago [played by Omar Sharif] comes back to his house in Moscow after the [Communist] revolution to find all these strangers living in his home—and the whole love story—is powerful. I think it’s because my great-grandparents emigrated from Russia at the time of the Communist Revolution.

Scott Holleran: Is it true that you built your own home in Taos, New Mexico?

Gary Johnson: Yes—for two and a half years. It’s my dream home in northern New Mexico. Skiing is my biggest passion and it’s as good there as anywhere else on the planet.

Scott Holleran: Why did you sell your construction company?

Gary Johnson: We weren’t getting the work we should have gotten while I was governor. When I sold the company, no one lost their jobs.

Scott Holleran: According to a recent report, most of your donors live in California, which means you could conceivably beat expectations in New Hampshire and gain momentum coming into the California primary. Is that your campaign strategy?

Gary Johnson: It’s a possibility. We could have a breakout.

Scott Holleran: In a sentence, what is the proper role for government?

Gary Johnson: To protect you and I as individuals from harm whether to one’s property or from a foreign government. Government has a role to provide.

Permalink | Posted in Interviews, Politics

The 2012 Republicans

15 August 2011

With the 2012 presidential campaign well underway, I thought I’d size up each major contender from my perspective as an Objectivist. As for the President, Democrat Barack Obama, I think Leonard Peikoff is right that he’s an anti-American nihilist. Obama’s been a disaster for America. I took an early interest in his 2008 candidacy, long before his campaign took root, writing in my online column in February 2007 that he was worth watching, and I considered voting for him in this long post, which I amended a few weeks later (see postscript to that post) when I gave my comments a second thought and totally rejected his candidacy.

I think it’s pretty clear, and I’ve stated many times, that religious fundamentalist President George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans for selfless war (Iraq, Afghanistan) and the welfare state (socialized medicine, TARP, bailouts) all but made Barack Obama inevitable and, with conservatives contaminating the Tea Party, the Obama administration’s nonstop assault on capitalism is making the spread of religious totalitarianism more likely, too. In his final public course last year in Las Vegas, which I wrote about here, Dr. Peikoff warned about some of these developments while addressing a cultural hypothesis which is the subject of his forthcoming book.

Here’s my take on the pathetic GOP field, including undeclared but often discussed possible candidates:

Obamney is a term that suits Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor and son of pragmatist Michigan Governor George Romney enacted socialized medicine, a mandatory scheme created by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which was the blueprint for ObamaCare. Dubbed ObamneyCare by an early 2012 opponent, Mormon faith-based Romney’s insistence on defending government-run medicine fits with his agenda for government-controlled private lives, making Mitt Romney unacceptable for advocates for individual rights.

The folksy Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is the worst of everything. Apparently, Rep. Bachmann believes that America was founded as a Christian theocracy and should become one again, and her views on everything from banning a woman’s right to an abortion to her work as an attorney for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) show that she seeks total government control of people’s lives. As a devout Christian, Bachmann, who campaigned for “born-again” Christian Democrat Jimmy Carter for president in 1976, stalked patients at abortion clinics. Whatever good positions she takes are taken as matters of faith and her entire approach is based on faith, not reason. Her campaign has been accused by CNN anchor Don Lemon of initiation of the use of force during the Iowa campaign, a charge which should be taken seriously, and Rep. Bachmann is the second most dangerous major candidate currently in the race.

Self-described Christian “champion of conservative principles” Rick Perry prays and fasts in the face of the worst economy since the 1930s depression. The Texas governor, a former Democrat who once worked for Al Gore, announced his candidacy for president with a wild-eyed look that suggests a lust for power. He opposes a woman’s right to an abortion, supports a Texas law, later struck down by the state’s Supreme Court, that criminalizes sex between consenting adults, and his first major foray into presidential politics, an utterly improper prayer event that mixed religion and state, is telling. Anti-capitalist former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani (non-candidate) is known chiefly for doing his job during the jihadist attack on September 11, 2001, and saying good things about America, and tough things about our enemies, in its aftermath. Before that, Mayor Giuliani was known for dabbling in fascism as he violated free speech rights and, previously, for crusading against capitalism in New York. He’s also anti-abortion. Sarah Palin (non-candidate) is, politically, a loser, quitter, and opportunist. The Christian conservative once reportedly sought to ban books and imposed a gag order on town departments as a village mayor. She was governor of Alaska for about a year and a half before she quit to be a full-time celebrity after losing by a wide margin in her campaign for the vice-presidency. Sarah Palin, who supported Bush’s bailouts, has since exploited her children and family repeatedly in public, in social media, and on her so-called reality television program, which was cancelled.

Ron Paul, an obstetrician who once ran for president as the nominee of the anarchist Libertarian Party, would stand by while the United States is attacked by jihadist Iran. The Texas congressman, whose son, Rand Paul, is a senator from Kentucky, is an anti-abortion Christian libertarian whom the media repeatedly, erroneously, and maliciously tries to link to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, often through his son (see post here). Rep. Paul opposes any military action by the United States of America under any circumstances, unless the U.S. is physically attacked first. So, for example, Ron Paul would not pre-emptively attack Iran if he had knowledge that Iran was preparing to strike the United States with a nuclear missile. An American city would have to be nuked first before he would even consider striking back. In fact, Rep. Paul stated in a recent Iowa debate that Iran should be free to develop nuclear weapons; he is, practically speaking, pro-Iran. For this reason alone, and because he fraudulently claims to advocate man’s rights and capitalism, he is the most dangerous candidate for president.

Unfortunately, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, also a libertarian Republican, comes to the same conclusion as Ron Paul toward Iran; that the jihadist state is not a threat. The rest, including Newt Gingrich, one of the worst and most ineffective speakers of the House of Representatives, because he fraudulently claimed to advance capitalism and instead set it back years, possibly decades, seek more religion in government and/or more government in economics. Gingrich single-handedly sabotaged the 1994 Republican revolution, squandering the biggest electoral repudiation of the welfare state of the 20th century. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is not a candidate, as he proclaims loudly and often, which is good because he supports building a mosque in Manhattan near Ground Zero where jihadists attacked America.

This raises an interesting point; the influence of Islamism or jihadism in American politics and government. Amid various rumors or reports of jihadist or jihadist-allied connections to, or sponsorship of, certain candidates, such as Gov. Christie and Gov. Perry, it is important to remember that we are a nation at war with Islamic totalitarianism and its state sponsors. As an advocate for capitalism and individual rights, I support no one candidate at this stage of the campaign, for the above reasons, though, lacking a secular candidate to run against President Obama, who is destroying the United States of America, I am open to rational arguments. But our crippled country is especially vulnerable to jihadist Moslem infiltration and, just as Communist Soviets infiltrated our highest levels of government in the 20th century, it can happen again. Americans in the press, writing blogs, using social media and in the public should be vigilant about enemies within and this includes the GOP candidates and President Obama, his campaign and his administration. Religious soldiers of God blended into American culture ten years ago next month to launch the worst assault in U.S. history, still unavenged, and, because Bush and Obama failed to crush the enemy, jihadist Islam will almost certainly try to strike from within again. Because every major candidate opposes capitalism and individual rights, and seeks government control of our lives, and because Americans have allowed politicians to bring our nation closer to the brink of dictatorship, we should reject the ways of the past, demand a secular candidate who will roll back Obama’s fascist laws and respect separation of religion and state. And we should treat every candidate with suspicion.

Permalink | Posted in News, Politics

Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield, 1922-2011

8 August 2011

Former Oregon Sen. Mark O. Hatfield, 89, died yesterday. The Portland Oregonian posted an excellent obituary about the World War 2 veteran’s long career. Read the article here. The piece by Jeff Mapes makes me realize me how influential the evangelical Christian Senator Hatfield, the son of two deeply religious Baptists, was in shaping conservative Republican politics. Hatfield was anti-war, deeply religious, and a serious advocate of environmentalism. In other words, he was an early trailblazer, pardon the Oregon pun, in fusing fundamentalist religion with a liberal, welfare-statist approach to government. Though he was considered a maverick, out-of-step liberal anomaly in Republican circles during most of his 30-year career in the United States Senate, and he had also served as Oregon’s governor, Mark Hatfield was a forerunner to today’s dogmatic Big Government advocates on the left and on the right. Mark Hatfield paved the way for faith-based liberals and Big Government conservatives. In a sad coincidence, according to the Oregonian obituary, Senator Hatfield’s grandson, a U.S. Marine who had served in Iraq also named Mark, died of an undisclosed cause in Connecticut at the age of 25 four weeks ago. I wrote about military suicides over two years ago, and I wonder if Sen. Hatfield’s grandson, like so many soldiers enlisted in America’s asinine wars of self-sacrifice, killed himself. While I disagreed with Sen. Hatfield on nearly every issue, when I met the late senator and his son Mark during a political campaign, I personally found both gentlemen to be as kind and cordial as the article suggests. He certainly made an impact on American government.

Permalink | Posted in News, Obituaries, Politics

Conservatives and the Tea Party

6 August 2011

Fact: the Tea Party was founded by trader, financial executive and TV reporter Rick Santelli, a grandson of Italian immigrants, on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Watch his original burst of moral outrage in this YouTube clip here.

Mr. Santelli did not invoke faith, God, religion, prayer or fasting. During his Tea Party comments, he did not advocate appeasing those who seek to mix religion and government. He did not denounce gays, stem cell research and the right to an abortion. He did not propose that Americans rally behind TARP, bailouts, stimulus, ObamaCare or debt limit increases. He invoked Ayn Rand and held up a copy of her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, calling for Americans to rally for free market capitalism. Making references to specific laws that destroy one’s ability to create, Mr. Santelli, a member of the mainstream media, it must be noted, urged Americans to oppose government control of the economy and fight for individual rights.

So, to hell with Palin, Perry and other conservatives that graft themselves on to the essentially secular, pro-capitalist, pro-individual rights Tea Party movement. Conservatives in government, including every major conservative today, have aided and abetted the rise of the omnipotent state by enacting every major new government control for the past 40 years.

Conservatives who betray the principles of both the original Tea Party in Boston and today’s movement don’t belong in the Tea Party and those self-identified conservatives who don’t betray America’s founding ideals are not conservatives. They’re what Ayn Rand called radicals for capitalism. So, on this day of a faith-based Texas governor praying and fasting and failing to remember the Alamo, let the radicals be heard. Let’s flush out conservatives, pledge to save the republic from totalitarianism, and turn the Tea Party on.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, Politics, Television

MSNBC Gets Ayn Rand Wrong

21 July 2011

Microsoft’s media venture with NBC Universal’s NBC News, MSNBC, is at it again, propagandizing for the Obama administration and distorting the news, which it does nearly full-time with its roster of former Democratic Party operatives (Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell), most favored former government spouses (Mrs. Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, who never discloses that fact), and lying Christian preachers such as its new host, the Reverend Al Sharpton. Now, they’re lying about Ayn Rand.

In yesterday’s broadcast of the cable news channel’s Rachel Maddow program, the hostess, who had railed against Tea Party Republicans for refusing to compromise with the Obama administration, calling the nation’s imminent so-called default an “apocalyptic deadline”, interviewed an old Washington Post journalist named E.J. Dionne and promptly missed her cue by mispronouncing the name Ayn Rand. The pompous hostess makes a habit of snorting and sniffing her way through all sorts of other people’s mistakes, so one would think she would be more careful. It’s Ayn, pronounced like the word mine, not Ann as she stated. Then Ms. Maddow proceeded to let her guest completely misrepresent Rand and her famous novel, The Fountainhead. In the video segment, linked here in its entirety with the errors contained at approximately 14:00, Dionne falsely stated that the 1943 novel by Ayn Rand is her first. The Fountainhead is not her first novel. That was We the Living.

Dionne, in a set-up segment which was clearly discussed if not rehearsed in advance, proceeded to falsely assert that, in The Fountainhead, when the main character doesn’t get his way, he “blows up a building”. Wrong, E.J. Dionne. Not only is the insinuation that the novel’s protagonist, architect Howard Roark, cavalierly acts on a whim when he doesn’t get what he wants, a total misrepresentation of the novel; to state that Roark “blows up a building” is to distort the plot and theme of Rand’s literary masterpiece, a bestseller still in print which has sold millions of copies and is taught in schools across the country. What E.J. Dionne (and Ms. Maddow and MSNBC by refusing to correct these errors) fail to grasp is that it’s his building, in every sense, and that’s the point of the novel. Roark created the building, contracted for its exact design and construction on simple, narrowly defined terms and one basic condition, and it is essentially his to destroy.

Expecting the lowest standards of journalism from this corrupt media outlet, which I have defended, even praised, in the past, is too much. Errors and distortions are routine in MSNBC programming (Dionne’s error originates in his commentary in the similarly slanted Washington Post), though welfare state and status quo advocate Dionne’s failure to grasp the concept of property ownership comes with the territory. It took eight months for Newsweek to correct MSNBC pundit Howard Fineman’s smear against Ayn Rand following my blog post about his mistake. With any luck and the help of an MSNBC or Post intern or executive with integrity and a mind of his or her own, Maddow’s and Dionne’s attempt to disparage Ayn Rand and the Tea Party movement won’t stand uncorrected that long. Don’t count on it and get used to the lies and distortions. The rich and powerful intellectual fusion of the press and the state, best exemplified by MSNBC, more than state-sponsored NPR and PBS, knows that they’re fighting the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The contest is just getting started.

[7/24/2011 Update: No response to my request for a correction from E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post]

[12/08/2011 Update: Still no response to my request for a correction from E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post]

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Journalism, Literature, News, Politics, Television

Interview: Randy Barnett on ObamaCare

23 June 2011

Law professor Randy Barnett, who has argued before the Supreme Court, is described by Forbes as the legal scholar “who laid the intellectual groundwork for the surprisingly effective legal attacks on ObamaCare by state attorneys general.” Barnett, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches contracts and Constitutional law, has also taught torts, criminal law, evidence, agency and partnership, and jurisprudence. He graduated from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, tried felony cases as a prosecutor in the Cook County States’ Attorney’s Office in Chicago and, in 2008, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies. Professor Barnett, who lectures internationally and has appeared on the CBS Evening News, The News Hour (PBS), and National Public Radio, offered his thoughts on America’s sweeping new socialized medicine—ObamaCare—during a recent interview.

Scott Holleran: In terms of American law, is health care a right?

Randy Barnett: Health care is not a Constitutional right. There are a lot of spending programs that create various entitlements, such as Medicare, but these are statutory rights not fundamental or Constitutional rights.

Scott Holleran: Is ObamaCare Constitutional?

Randy Barnett: ObamaCare, or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is unconstitutional for at least two reasons. One is that the individual mandate requires every American to purchase [health] insurance or face a penalty, which is an extension of Congressional power that goes beyond anything that has previously been authorized by the Supreme Court. From its inception, the substantial effects doctrine, though commonly conceived as a Commerce Clause doctrine, has been grounded in the Necessary and Proper Clause. The Supreme Court developed a judicially administrable test for whether it is “necessary” for Congress to reach intrastate activity that substantially affects interstate commerce: the distinction between economic and non-economic intrastate activity. Because [ObamaCare’s] individual mandate [forcing people to “buy” health insurance] fails to satisfy the requirements of this test, it exceeds the power granted to Congress by the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses as currently construed by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has said that Congress could not reach non-economic activity and Congress, in this case, is trying to reach non-economic activity, mandating that people engage in economic activity. The other problem is that, as certain states are contesting, Congress is using its spending power coercively.

Scott Holleran: Is ObamaCare legally inevitable?

Randy Barnett: Absolutely not—it is not inevitable that legal challenges will fail or succeed. Neither side has an argument that can dictate or mandate or require the Supreme Court to decide this issue for or against their side.

Scott Holleran: Is the Constitutional case against ObamaCare an originalist perspective?

Randy Barnett: I am an originalist who advocates interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning, but nothing in the legal challenge to ObamaCare is based on the original meaning of the Constitution—we’re just following the opinions on the Supreme Court, applying what they have previously said to this statute. I would describe our arguments as doctrinal, not originalist.

Scott Holleran: What are the legal options for opposing ObamaCare?

Randy Barnett: There are more lawsuits than I can keep track of, but, of the five district court judges who have ruled on the Constitutionality of the law, two struck it down and all five are on appeal, and we’ve so far had three appellate arguments, in Richmond, Cincinnati, and Atlanta, involving four of the lower court decisions. There may be other options that arise but I don’t want to express an opinion at this point and I don’t want to be overly optimistic. We expect decisions in the cases that have already been argued by the end of the summer, or possibly by September [2011] and, if the Supreme Court takes a petition for appeal, there could be a decision by June 2012. That would be the earliest. I have a high opinion of the lawyers in the Virginia case, and the lawyering in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals was excellent.

Scott Holleran: Have you read Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s address to Hillsdale College arguing against ObamaCare?

Randy Barnett: I have not seen that speech but I’ve testified to Congress with him. This guy is smart but what really amazed me was his press conference in Richmond. He was amazing—he got up there and gave one of the most knowledgeable, careful, legal analyses of his case [against ObamaCare] and he was crystal clear and completely on top of the case. I thought it was a masterful performance. I was really, really impressed.

Scott Holleran: What are the legislative options for opposing ObamaCare?

Randy Barnett: It would be helpful if the Republicans in Congress would pass a law that is Constitutional and market-based—I don’t think anybody wants to go back to [the mixed health care system of] 2008—and I have discussed this with several people and I get the sense that there is interest. If the GOP were to pass the [Rep. Paul] Ryan plan, it would be very beneficial [to killing ObamaCare] because it would show that there are alternatives [to ObamaCare]. It would offer something identifiable as an alternative—not just a think tank proposal—something worked out of a legislative body and that would be important. Ultimately, the people will have to elect a president who will sign a repeal bill and, if the court upholds the [ObamaCare] law, that will fuel the fires. I think any Republican who gets the nomination will have to pledge to repeal ObamaCare. I do think it’s going to be a challenge for people on the Hill to come up with something that’s not ObamaCare-lite because that’s the way they think. But the need for health care for poor people does not deprive other people of the right to choose their health care. A government takeover and distortion of the health care market is not the way to go.

Scott Holleran: Are there executive options for opposing ObamaCare, in case Congress buckles in favor of the law?

Randy Barnett: [Former Massachusetts] Governor [Mitt] Romney says he’ll give a waiver to everyone. But I’m a Constitutional lawyer and, when you’re talking about something so far down the road, a lot can happen.

Scott Holleran: Are there state law options for opposing ObamaCare?

Randy Barnett: Some states have enacted health care freedom [from ObamaCare] acts and the Constitutionality of those acts are at issue in the lawsuits. If we lose [and ObamaCare is upheld], those acts will be inoperative. States can try to resist the Medicaid part, if they can afford to—and they generally can’t—but the idea that 27 or 28 state attorneys general are suing is significant and it’s going to be noticed by the Supreme Court.

Scott Holleran: Are there opt-out provisions that a single individual can exercise in compliance with U.S. law to get out of ObamaCare?

Randy Barnett: I don’t want to comment on that.

Permalink | Posted in Health Care, Interviews, Law, Medicine, Politics

Spring Note

28 April 2011

I haven’t posted since last month because I have been traveling, writing small projects, and finishing this year’s studies at the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC), instructed by Onkar Ghate, Ph.D., whose short commentary on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was posted on FoxNews.com earlier this week. Studying Objectivism, including Leonard Peikoff’s insightful Understanding Objectivism course, gives me a better perspective on my knowledge of philosophy and improves my thinking. So, I’m taking time, working harder, and strengthening my skills. I am working on certain writing projects in various stages of development, and I plan to focus on those goals while catching up on my reading list about sports, horses, and war. I may also post thoughts on recent visits to Chicago, Seattle, and an old movie star ranch north of Los Angeles. Speaking of movies, incidentally, I recently learned that my 2005 interview with Batman Begins director Chris Nolan is quoted in War, Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film by Marc Dipaolo (April 2011). I’m looking forward to seeing comics-based pictures such as Thor (May 6) The Green Lantern (June 17), and Captain America (July 22), among others. Thank you for reading.

Permalink | Posted in Movies, Philosophy, Politics

State of the Union, 2011

26 January 2011

Following President Obama’s latest snowjob of a speech to the nation, Republicans offered a Wisconsin congressman, Rep. Paul Ryan, another Judeo-Christian libertarian type posing as a defender of capitalism, which he is not, in a televised response. Congressman Ryan, speaking down to the American people and looking ridiculous with a gigantic red, white and blue ribbon pinned below his American flag pin, delivered praise for the dreadful Obama, Bible quotes, “reasonable regulations”, helping the poor and some nonsense about “tipping points”. What tripe. Pledging replacement, not repeal, of socialized medicine, he hardly mentioned individual rights and instead merely droned about limiting government control, which is like promising a kinder, gentler form of dictatorship, to paraphrase one of the godfathers of Republican welfare statism. If Paul Ryan’s the opposition, boy, do we need an opposition. In contrast, a Minnesota Republican congresswoman, Michelle Bachmann, another cheerful and attractive brunette like Sarah Palin, was invited by Tea Party Express to respond to the President’s speech. Rep. Bachmann, expressing the spirit if not the substance required for political opposition to Obama’s agenda, said: “unless we fully repeal ObamaCare, a nation that currently enjoys the world’s best health care may be forced to rely on government-run coverage that will have a devastating impact on our national debt for generations to come.” That’s true. Unfortunately, Bachmann, like Ryan, did not make a moral case for capitalism and individual rights, an argument for egoism, so the Tea Party movement should look elsewhere for those qualified, such as banker John Allison or someone suggested by the Ayn Rand Center, to argue for reason, individual rights, and capitalism. Time, and this Rep. Ryan got right, is running out.