Tom Robinson

In 1978, Howard Jarvis spearheaded a campaign which bore fruit. His efforts resulted in the passage of Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes by fifty-seven percent in California. Jarvis did not attach his campaign to any philosophical groundwork. The short and long of his message was, "Taxes are way too high." Should Jarvis have based the referendum on lengthy philosophical pamphlets about the concept of value, the primacy of existence, consciousness, man's survival qua man, etc.? Were Objectivists who voted for Proposition 13, immoral because the proposition was not based on Objectivist philosophy?

On the contrary, I do not think that “choosing to use speech” is equivalent to cooperating with predators at all -- any more than I consider crying “Stop, thief!” a form of cooperation with a purse snatcher. I have made it clear that openly voicing opposition to bad government is not only legitimate but often an effective means to redress grievances. Didn’t you read my post #43 above? I wrote, “. . . there is no reason why a citizen cannot both evade taxes and also use political persuasion to change the system.” I understand that some citizens cannot easily escape government coercion and must submit under pain of incarceration. On the other hand, if one has an opportunity to safely avoid coercion, he may do so morally and with a clear conscience. This is a false dilemma. I do not have to choose one over the other. I can value government police protection against burglars and at the same time value the services of an illegal, undocumented worker employed in my factory. Since man has a right to peacefully engage in production and keep what he has earned, there is no contradiction in saying that government should stop burglars from entering my home, and also saying that government should not prevent me from contracting with the employee of my choice. To cooperate with government in one instance and not the other is simply to hold moral law above state law. Well technically, as Ayn Rand has explained, governments do not have rights; “only an individual man can possess rights” (Rand,“Collectivized ‘Rights’”). And I believe I have previously answered your point about whether or not those who use coercion have a right of self-defense. Just because A aggresses against B, we cannot say that A loses her right to defend himself against C’s aggression. If a shoplifter steals a necklace from a shop owner, does she then lose the right to defend herself from a rapist? I say, no. The acts of aggression are not related. Always hold on to context: an individual who initiates force forfeits only her rights proportionate to and specific to her use of force. So the shoplifter must return the necklace and may even have to serve jail time. But she doesn’t lose the right to defend herself from other predators. The point I was making is: between 1919 and 1933 politicians did not change their minds about alcohol being unhealthy, sinful, etc. They changed their minds about the practicality of enforcing Prohibition. Specifically, they were not persuaded by words arguing that government shouldn’t ban alcohol; they were persuaded by the actions of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens engaging in daily civil disobedience that proved that government couldn’t ban alcohol. I will voluntarily surrender to government only what it is morally entitled to. I was responding to an earlier point: I had written, “First of all, I see no reason why acts of coercion, such as theft, should not be resisted just as one would resist an act of terror.” You responded, “Because you delegate your right to self-defense to the government. Although it may abuse that privelege to a degree, as long as you consider it your legitimate protector, you treat it as such.” Now since you acknowledge that government is not entitled to coerce me, and since I have shown that using government’s monopoly protection services does not constitute a contract with government to coerce us or a grant of legitimacy on anything government may do, there can be no argument left for obeying laws that violate rights -- other than the practical matter of not wanting to go to jail. As mentioned above, there are individual rights but not government rights. So let’s phrase the question another way: should an immoral government put up a defense against foreign attack? Again, we have to look at context: if the invasion and overturning of the existing government mean more freedoms for the citizens of the land, then, no, by our wishes, the government should put up no defense (although, in some cases, individual officers of the government could rightfully protect themselves from being slaughtered). On the other hand, if invasion portends no real change in freedoms for the occupied people, then, yes, we should hope the “immoral government” would put up a fight, for military invasion itself exacts huge costs in lives and property. Man's rights, including his right to himself and his property, are derived from his nature. Rights are forfeited when one violates the rights of another. But it is not all or nothing. A small rights violation does not mean one loses all rights. Even a serious violator such as a bank robber could still hold on to some of his rights -- including the right of self-defense. The people of America, being non-rights-violators for the most part, certainly have a right to defend themselves from foreign invasion. They may rightfully call on their government to protect them, provided that the invaders are no better than the existing government. But the fact that a government successfully discourages foreign invasions and potential loss of freedoms in a country, places no moral obligation on its citizenry to submit to that government when it initiates force against them.

But the point of resisting coercion is not that acquiesce to it is fatal, but rather that coercion, even of the minor sort, is still immoral and one has no moral obligation to cooperate with predators. Isn’t giving in to immoral people what Rand called “Sanction of the Victim”? Regarding my grandfather: the right to marry is extremely important to some; to others the right to hold on to one's hard-won earnings and not see them spent on those who hate the productive and successful is also extremely important. In the end, it was not arguments but actions that won the debate. Lawmakers were far more persuaded by the futility of trying to stop people from all strata of society from imbibing than they were by the eloquence of those who spoke out against Prohibition. Those who had earlier voted for Prohibition didn’t admit that they were wrong about Devil Rum; they simply admitted to the impossibility of enforcement. I have never formally delegated any rights to the government. At no point in my lifetime has government asked my permission prior to laying hands on my life and treasure. Still, even if there were some contract to that effect, I can assure you that taking on the government as protector does not entitle it to prey on me itself. To be even more precise, since far more of my money has been stolen by governments than by private sector thieves, I do not regard government as a successful protector at all. Again, I have shown there is no contradiction. A government that anoints itself as protector while engaging in more thieving than protection -- that, sir, is the party engaging in contradiction. Not me, the victim of its predatory activities. If adhering to moral law and not cooperating with predators is “contradictory,” then we must certainly live in a topsy-turvy, up is down, A is non-A world. Sure. And let me add, that I consider it the right of car thieves, check forgers, and shoplifters to defend themselves from foreign aggressors, too. (After all, just because a woman steals a purse in a store, does she deserve to get raped by a conquering soldier?) Since the government’s acts of coercion against its own populace are entirely separate from foreign aggression, I see no reason why the government of mixed economy Finland of the 1930s should not have defended itself against a Soviet invasion in the Winter War.

He broke a state law against miscegenation. Not at all. Prohibition was concocted by do-gooders and busybody reformers who mistakenly believed that the government could actually force people into abstinence. The 18th Amendment was approved because a majority of state legislatures believed the same idiotic idea. It was not the public suddenly changing its mind about alcohol being bad that ended Prohibition. People still thought alcohol was bad, but massive civil disobedience convinced them that making it illegal does not make it disappear. First of all, I see no reason why acts of coercion, such as theft, should not be resisted just as one would resist an act of terror. As I’ve asked out before, why should one wait until government has become fully totalitarian before one starts protecting oneself? First of all, tax avoidance is peaceful. No guns are fired, no noses bloodied. Secondly, there is no reason why a citizen cannot both evade taxes and also use political persuasion to change the system. That’s precisely how Prohibition came to an end. If the state’s only coercive act is to prohibit 2% milk, then all of the actions of the state’s officers are legitimate except those involving low fat milk banning. In this scenario, it would be wrong to interfere with state officials in any matter not involving milk. However, since the banning of 2% milk is clearly coercive, black market sellers and buyers would be fully justified in breaking the law. So, to answer your question, the state has the right to defend itself from the initiation of force. It does not have the right to "defend" itself from black marketeers, for they are not initiating force. It has never been my position that “America would have no right to defend herself.” If we proceed from the premise that national defense is legitimate, then I cannot see that there is any disagreement between us. What we had been discussing was coercive government actions, and I hope that at no time did I imply that national defense was to be regarded as such. I had been making the point that if a nation is fundamentally free, then citizens who deprive government of the opportunity to act coercively, are steering the government in the right direction. They should be cheered for helping to keep government honest and moral. I value respecting rights far above majority vote. In fact, I fear that majority vote is the surest means by which a poorer majority can mooch off the wealth of a richer minority.

Biologically speaking, so is everybody on birth control.

I'm not going to write an apology for Miller's politics, nor does anyone who has enjoyed Miller as a playwright need to. What I will say is that a work of art can stand on its own without an author's exegesis. An author's ideological objectives are given zero weight in my evaluation of a work's artistic merit. The Crucible deals perceptively and powerfully with the consequences of religious absolutism and paranoia. The characters are vivid, the dialogue intelligent. There is nothing in the work itself that would arouse an Objectivist's disapproval. Indeed, there is much about it, both in substance and style, that one can admire. Let’s examine another work from the same decade, the movie High Noon, which was also written as a protest against officials rooting out communists. The fact that the screenplay was an angry response to anti-communism does not in the slightest way keep the movie from being very good, and expressing values (courage, integrity, refusal to compromise) that rational people can endorse.

Anyone who has read or seen The Crucible can appreciate its indictment of religious tyranny, regardless of any parallels with the 1950s that its author might have intended. The bad guys in the play are in fact very bad. I would suggest that Death of a Salesman is about a whole lot more than capitalism.

For the record, I am not a member of the Libertarian Party, but I'm not sure that the arguments voiced here against the LP make sense. The chief complaint appears to be that the LP does not ground its political principles in some deeper philosophical structure. But I wonder if such a grounding can be practical. Politics, after all, is about mass movements and building large coalitions in a population that is highly diverse. I had the pleasure of knowing James Blanchard, who led the successful movement to legalize gold in the 1970s. Blanchard was a fan of Ayn Rand, but he did not build his movement on Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology. Blanchard made the simple argument that gold ownership offered the average citizen a means to prevent his wealth from being destroyed by rampant inflation. In his movement he enlisted individuals with widely varying philosophical principles: Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater, Murray Rothbard, Robert Bleiberg, and William F. Buckley. I can only wonder how successful Blanchard would have been if everyone working for gold legalization had been required to share the same views on, say, free will vs. determinism.

I am one of those who went to the movie knowing in advance about Kinsey's shoddy research. The movie does mention the weaknesses in Kinsey's methodology, but allows Kinsey to say that the errors were corrected in later surveys. As for the pedophile, the movie includes him, makes Kinsey's distate for him clear, but does not inform us about what happens to this character. As played by the excellent Liam Neeson, Kinsey comes across as a relentless researcher who was also a bit of a didact and a monomaniac. The film points out that in the name of "science," Kinsey and his reserach team personally engaged in a variety a sexual acts, which in turn lead to unfortunate emotional consequences. The film treats as courageous Kinsey's struggle to open up frank discussion at a time when such discussion was taboo. But it also recognizes that Kinsey was no saint, and sometimes his own worst enemy.

Politics aside, Arthur Miller was powerful and innovative playwright. I have read The Crucible several times and seen perhaps a half dozen stagings of it. The play's themes (reason vs. superstition, the individual vs. the collective, freedom vs. theocracy) should find favor with anyone who has enjoyed Rand's books. Miller was an opponent of Senator McCarthy, but The Crucible was specifically about the Salem witchcraft trials, and although it necessarily condenses events, it is in most respects an accurate account of religious hysteria in Puritan America. Some critics of Death of a Salesman dismiss it as an anti-capitalist diatribe. In fact, it is a drama about the tragedy of growing old. Certainly, it is a sad play, but it offers a fascinating portrait of a complex man, who worked hard, achieved much, but who engaged in a great deal of self-deception. The play's plot is about all those deceptions coming home to roost. Actions have consequences. Washed up? Had I written two plays that are read by millions of students each year and are performed regularly in theatres across America, I wouldn't consider myself a failure.

By what logic do you maintain that my grandfather had a right to evade coercive laws but I don't? If disobedience to bad laws was justifiable in 1920, it is no less justifiable today. Read any history of Prohibition. Amendment 18 was repealed precisely because criminalizing alcohol was a colossal failure. People in every walk of life broke the law, and the feds were helpless to stop the flow of booze. If people had meekly followed the law, there would have been no pressure (especially from police officers and prosecutors) to repeal it. This is where we need some clarification. Why does the fact that we have a representative government oblige me to comply with coercive legislation? If absolute monarchs can be in moral error, so can 51% of those who cast ballots in an election. If by the logic of Rand’s essay, “Man’s Rights,” I have a right to my body and to the property I have peacefully acquired, then that right exists regardless of the preferences of the voting majority. I never signed any document surrendering my rights to the will of the people. Great. Then why can’t we also say, nobody is obligated to follow laws that are immoral? I have a friend who is in his 40s and has never filed an income tax return. Now you can call this declaring war on the government. My friend just calls it not paying taxes. If I have an opportunity to resist successfully a coercive law, then I have accomplished two things: 1) I have acted in accordance with my own wishes, and 2) I have prevented the government from doing something immoral. To paraphrase Patrick Henry, “If this be violent revolution, make the most of it.” Well, if it is a free state, then the coercive laws it imposes on its citizens must surely be accidents. And, of course, anyone who is proud of living in a free state shouldn’t mind if their government is forced to act in a more non-coercive manner. If a law is unjust, how can there be justice in complying with it? I reject your package deal. I am not aware of any ethical principle that compels one to cooperate with a certain group of people at all times, both when their actions are moral and when they are immoral. As for whether I consider the government free. Well, it is -- except for those occasions when it is not. It would be a contradiction against justice not to break bad laws and not to use the only legal means of defense to stop criminals.

You say we should stick to “modern times,” but the sense of your paragraph above is that the relevant factor is not “modern times” or “times long ago,” but the life of the individual citizen. As it happens, the government has grown bigger and far more intrusive in my lifetime, and I have less liberty than I did ten years ago. No, it has not forbidden me to buy anything, but my taxes are higher and my ability to earn is lower due to government coercion. As for the word “fugitive,” let me point out that there are millions of Americans, probably some living in your own neighborhood, that are conscious, willing violators of U.S. laws -- but they are not, for the most part, "fugitives." You’re making this too easy. Google what Constitutional Amendment was repealed on December 5, 1933. Tell that to the Boston Tea Party. Tell that to the mobs that overthrew and executed the communist butcher Nicolae CeauSescu. In both cases, there was far more liberty as a result of your hated crowds cheering on “law-breakers.” Do you really believe that the U.S. government solves all disagreements by persuasion? Is that what you think Martha Stewart did? By breaking a ridiculous “insider trading” law, did Martha Stewart declare war on the United States government? To quote John Stossel, “Give me a break.” I refuse to accept your dichotomy, which is what Ayn Rand would disparagingly call a package deal. I can fully maintain my moral integrity by breaking a stupid, coercive, statist law, while at the same time calling for the local police when someone is firing a gun outside my window -- especially when there is no other legally allowable peace enforcer in the neighborhood. Accepting one (not being shot by a thug) does not imply acceptance of the other (giving up to politicians an obscene portion of my income). This is what intellectual precision is all about: making subtle distinctions. Once again you assert without evidence or argument. Can’t some government laws be legitimate and others not? Under the government of the Soviet Union, couldn’t a woman who objected to the theft of her food ration coupons call for official police help without endorsing the entire communist system?

Well, I think it is within the boundaries of morality that this discussion is being held, and the issue is whether it is moral to punish assaults on some persons more severely than assaults on other persons. If we agree that it is, why then shouldn’t society (or government) punish those who beat up geniuses more severely than retards, capitalists more severely than low wage workers, Objectivists more severely than statists? And just as surely there must be “practical benefits” in discouraging more strongly the killing of a skilled surgeon than a homeless man, of a 26-year old mother of three than an 86-year old on Social Security. Actually, I think your point is very much on-topic. In today’s statist milieu, clearly it does not advance the cause of liberty to call for draconian penalties for any and all using retaliatory force against law enforcers, among whom we must include tax thieves, anti-drug goons, gun confiscators and the anti-sex Gestapo. And you are right to raise the importance of context. For if proper respect is given to context, it can seen that raising the police to the status of Official Victims Group is just as misguided as taking the same action with regard to blacks, gays, women, Native Americans, etc.

So let's apply this to America today. Should citizens dutifully inform government of all of their transactions off books, in the black market etc.? Will revealing all their hidden income to the IRS save them trouble in the long run?

Of what significance is the age of the American Republic in determining whether one may rightfully violate a law? One hundred years ago, there was no federal income tax. Now, of course, there is. If the power of the government to rob its subjects has dramatically increased over the past century, then I would suggest that the right of the moral citizen to disobey his oppressor should increase accordingly. You assert this but with what argument? If our society is indeed “civilized and rights-respecting,” then surely it will not collapse if a citizen is able to thwart the government on one of its rights-violating forays. In fact, the more that citizens prevent government coercion, the more ethical our government will be. Therefore, those who believe in man’s rights should cheer every time a citizen prevents an act of coercion. Another thing: how is your insistence that breaking laws is inappropriate not the same as placing “coercive laws above [our] rights”? In we submit to laws that deprive us of what is rightfully ours, we are sacrificing ourselves to immoral government authority. Again, where is the argument behind this assertion? Why should we wait until our government has become like Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia before we start protecting ourselves? This is analogous to saying, don’t avoid a bully’s punches unless you think he’s about to kill you. False dilemma. I know many people who break laws (i.e. avoid government coercion) who are not advocates of violent revolution.

I wish you the best, officer, but I for one question the morality of applying greater penalties to assailants of police than to assailants of other citizens. This strikes me as just another version of hate crime laws, which define Official Victims Groups, who get more government protection than Non-Official Victims Groups

For this reason I put "public" in quotation marks in my post. In fact, there is no such thing as "public" property. Any lands or buildings called "public" are actually owned by the government, an entity entirely separate from the people living in a country. If any citizen thinks he has ownership in some "public" building, let him try to sell his share of it. True enough. In this connection we could also observe that nude dancing is prohibited on private property in certain localities. However, regarding the Virginia statute, it appears that no attempt at sending dress police into private homes and backyards is being proposed. The bill is clearly aimed at improperly attired individuals on public property.

I have no argument with Roark destroying Corlandt Homes and then taking the heat for it. At the same time, there is nothing immoral or irrational in the practice of insulating oneself from coercion, by government or free-lance thug. If a businessman conducts certain transactions off the books to evade taxes, he is violating no one's rights, depriving no one of what is rightfully his. If this is "faking reality," then so is having a money safe in the shape of a Pepsi can to mislead burglars. Or, for that matter, creating a mirage to hide the existence of Galt's Gulch.

Then the sales tax is no more "voluntary" than the income tax. After all, there's no reason why we couldn't all become self-sufficient farmers. No income, no tax.

Unless a citizen has voluntrarily surrendered his rights or forfeited them by violating the rights of another, each person owns the body he inhabits and may not be required to give up any part of that body.

"Get away with it" meaning, of course, to "get away" with keeping what is rightfully one's own. What is the point of sending a heads-up to the enforcers of immoral laws? So that they may, with even greater efficiency, deprive us of our liberty and property? A citizen is under no more obligation to keep busybodies in government aware of his actions than he is to tell common street muggers how much money is in his wallet.

I think the following excerpts from "The Roots of War" make it clear enough what Ayn Rand thought of U.S. intervention in both world wars: "Just as [Woodrow] Wilson, a 'liberal' reformer, led the United States into World War I 'to make the world safe for democracy' -- so Franklin D. Roosevelt, another 'liberal' reformer, led it into World War II, in the name of the 'Four Freedoms.' In both cases the 'conservatives' -- and the big business interests -- were overwhelmingly opposed to war but were silenced. In the case of World War II they were smeared as 'isolationists,' 'reactionaries,' and 'America-First'ers.' "World War I led, not to 'democracy,' but to the creation of three dictatorships: Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany. World War II led, not to 'Four Freedoms,' but to the surrender of one-third of the world's population into communist slavery." (published in THE OBJECTIVIST magazine, June 1966):

I have absolutely no qualms about breaking laws that deprive man of his natural rights. For example, post-Civil War Jim Crow laws (in both the North and the South) kept people (including my family) from engaging in free exchange and disposal of their property as they saw fit. Calling on citizens to place coercive laws above their rights and rational self-interest is just another form of state-worshipping idolatry.

That a small group of men and women can regulate the dress code of millions of people is the consequence of widespread "public" property. In a society of 100% private property, which is what Ayn Rand advocated, dress codes would be entirely at the discretion of individual property owners, as is the case now in private homes. A great many free speech issues can be put into proper perspective by asking what would be the case if sidewalks, roads, parks etc. were in private hands. Do I have the right to burn an American flag in this plaza? Ask the owner first.

Ambiguity and arbitrariness are inherent in any system that holds that some thoughts can be owned but not other thoughts, that there are objective and discernible differences between discoveries and inventions, and that patent rights should be protected for X number of years but not X + 1 year.