Quotes of the Day - individualism

"Paradoxical as it may seem, men and women who are free to pursue individualism and material wealth turn out to be the most compassionate of all." ~ Lawrence Lindsey

"Individualism is at once an ethical-psychological concept and an ethical-political one. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that a human being should think and judge independently, respecting nothing more than the sovereignty of his or her mind; thus, it is intimately connected with the concept of autonomy. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights ..." ~ Nathaniel Branden

"The fact that most people think that being selfish means harming one's fellow man, that pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a "psychological confession" on their part. In fact it is against one's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive." ~ Wayne Dunn

Why is 'self-interest' such a bad thing?

The Blade editorial board has criticized the Take Back Toledo recall effort against Mayor Carty Finkbeiner as being nothing more than
'self-interest.'

"In short, there's nothing courageous about hiding behind the cloistered walls of the Toledo Club to plot the takeover of municipal government if the motivation is personal gain and not the greater good of this city and the proud people who actually live here."

You see, according to the liberal perspective and The Blade (but I repeat myself), it really doesn't matter if your actions have a detrimental impact, so long as your intentions are good. If you do bad things but you believe you're doing it for the greater good of the city, you're excused.

But if you want a good business-friendly environment for the city and you know the mayor's actions and decisions are negatively impacting your ability to hire people and make a profit, you are - obviously - evil and selfish.

So I have to ask - what's so bad about acting in your own self interest?

First, let me point out that I'm not talking about selfishness - there's a distinct difference between selfishness and self-interest, and Ayn Rand makes the point very well:

"Traditional ethics has always been suspicious of self interest, praising acts that are selfless in intent and calling amoral or immoral acts that are motivated by self interest. A self-interested person, on the traditional view, will not consider the interests of others and so will slight or harm those interests in the pursuit of his own.

Rand's view is that the exact opposite is true: self-interest, properly understood, is the standard of morality and selflessness is the deepest immorality.

Self interest rightly understood, according to Rand, is to see oneself as an end in oneself. That is to say that one's own life and happiness are one's highest values, and that one does not exist as a servant or slave to the interests of others. Nor do others exist as servants or slaves to one's own interests. Each person's own life and happiness is his ultimate end. Self interest rightly understood also entails self-responsibility: one's life is one's own, and so is the responsibility for sustaining and enhancing it. It is up to each of us to determine what values our lives require, how best to achieve those values, and to act to achieve those values.

Rand's ethic of self interest is integral to her advocacy of classical liberalism. Classical liberalism, more often called "libertarianism" in the 20th century, is the view that individuals should be free to pursue their own interests. This implies, politically, that governments should be limited to protecting each individual's freedom to do so. In other words, the moral legitimacy of self interest implies that individuals have rights to their lives, their liberties, their property, and the pursuit of their own happiness, and that the purpose of government is to protect those rights. Economically, leaving individuals free to pursue their own interests implies in turn that only a capitalist or free market economic system is moral: free individuals will use their time, money, and other property as they see fit, and will interact and trade voluntarily with others to mutual advantage."

What many business people object to is Carty's - and Council's - penchant for taking over private business so government can do it instead (towing, ambulance service, entertainment/hall rental). If government is supposed to protect an individual's freedom, how do the decisions to take over certain industries do that? Short answer: they don't.

Ed Nagle, one of the individuals involved with Take Back Toledo and a Toledo resident, explains why he's involved with the recall with an open letter to Carty:

"It is your role as a government leader to create an atmosphere that promotes private investment. Quite simply, you have failed miserably. When Costco announced it was making a major investment in Toledo, you immediately began interfering and making wage and benefit demands on them, sounding more like Jimmy Hoffa, than an economic development leader attracting business. By the way United Way is NOT yours or John Block’s building!

If I considered starting a successful business in Toledo, how long would you let my new company exist before you decided that the City of Toledo should enter that business and become my primary competitor using essentially interest-free taxpayer money to finance the project? How can anyone required to make a financial investment compete in that environment? More importantly, WHY would anyone choose to? Ambulances, tow lots, entertainment venues….what other non-chartered city business will you be getting us into?"

I know Ed and his wife - they are our friends. Ed, acting in his own self-interest, started a company and wants it to succeed. He has employees whom he has hired and I know he wants them to continue having a job at his company. He has customers who value the service he provides - and he provides a good service so he continues to have such customers. I also know that Ed has been very generous in 'giving back' (as liberals call it) to his community.

He is self-interested, not selfish.

But, because The Blade disagrees with what the TBT people are doing, they launch a personal attack against them, saying that acting in a self-interested way is somehow bad. Oh - and because they're not 'Toledoans' they obviously don't have the self-interest of the city at heart. Do the members of the editorial board all live in Toledo and, if not, what makes them any different than the TBT members when it comes to telling Toledo what they'd like to see happen?

Do the editors think they somehow have a better position from which to present opinions and perspectives than these other businessmen? The Blade doesn't answer that question, but they should. Their opinions are no more relevant than anyone else's, including yours and mine.

Additionally, they act in their own self-interest when they support, by way of endorsement, elected officials and candidates who agree with them on various issues. If it's wrong for TBT members to have self-interest, it is most assuredly wrong for The Blade, as well.

Perhaps they will go back to the motivation - the idea that the right or correct motivation excuses all, regardless of impact? That can be their only defense to this hypocrisy: 'we have the best interests of the city at heart, so we're right while TBT members are only interested in themselves, so that is wrong.'

But that means The Blade editors have concluded what motivates these TBT members - and as far as I can tell, they've not actually spoken to any of them, so they can't know, they can only speculate or assume ... and we all know what happens when you assume.

Since the editors feel it's somehow okay to speculate, I'm sure they won't mind the rest of us doing so. My speculation is that The Blade sees a challenge to their ability to be the opinion leader (dictator?) in the community. If a group of business people join together and start presenting a conflicting view of what's good for Toledo and the region, The Blade suddenly has competition and their opinion of what's good for Toledo and the region might decline in influence. So if they want to maintain the influence they've enjoyed for quite some time, they must discredit any potential challenge to that influence and diminish the potential impact.

Gee - it sounds as if the editors are acting in their own self-interest, don't you think?

The Blade has already started to intimate that this group is somehow acting inappropriately by calling it a cabal "...hiding behind the cloistered walls of the Toledo Club to plot..." The group will be likened to a good old boys network where a bunch of business men sit in back-room meetings, smoking cigars, and deciding the fate of all of us.

I don't want to go back to the days where a few men got to decide for all of us. But the absence of such a good old boys club just opened up space for The Blade and unions to assume the role, with candidates and elected officials making pilgrimages to Pittsburgh to get the blessing of the publisher of the paper, or promising fealty to the various political action committees of local labor organizations.

Having enjoyed such influence for such a long period of time, they don't want to let it go.

Unlike The Blade, I like the competition. I'm looking forward to the active participation of the business community in commenting on public policy and candidates' positions. I welcome their renewed interest in speaking out for what's good for the job providers in the region, knowing that they are the ones who create the jobs - not government and its elected officials.

And I'm acting in my own self-interest in doing so.

The politics of selfishness

“The state cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man.” ~ William Graham Sumner

Barack Obama, in defending his 'spread the wealth,' redistributionist tax policies, recently said:

"John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness."

Isn't just like a socialist to describe your desire to make your own decisions about how to spend the money you've earned as 'selfish'?

What could be more selfish than someone thinking you should give them your money so they can spend it instead of you? Please note - they don't want to redistribute their own funds - no, they want to take your funds and give them away.

It's also a rather popular media ploy - to attack a logical argument with - what did the Clintons call it? - the 'politics of personal destruction.' You are no longer 'good' if you think you can do a better job of spending your funds than the government. Now, you are being 'selfish' if you don't want to give your money to the government so it can give it to someone else, instead.

And this is, indeed, a media ploy, as well as a poor defense against a policy rejected by the majority of Americans. Dictionary.com defines 'selfish' as:

"devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others"

Under this definition, Obama seems to be saying that Republicans, conservatives and even many Democrats care only for themselves, without regard to our fellow man.

But then, that's in keeping with what Democrats believe. Remember the interview with Ohio Democrat Party Chairman Chris Redfern on NewsTalk 1370 WSPD?

As I wrote on August 27, 2008, the date of the interview:

"When morning show host Fred Lefebvre used his board operator, Don Zellars, as an example of someone who wants to know why he has to pay for other people's homes and food while struggling to pay for his own, Redfern's comment was that Don must feel really good inside knowing he's helping so many people.

Redfern explained that America needs to tax people to provide charitable services through the government because, without forcing people through taxation, most Americans wouldn't help take care of the 'least among us.' When Fred pointed out that Don would be happy to help 'the least among us' if government weren't taking so much of his money first, Redfern said:

"I suspect Don would, but unfortunately, most Americans would not - and if we remove that kind of support, stratagem, then you remove the entire reason for having any kind of projects, programs, initiatives..."

This is the driving philosophy behind calling us selfish - the idea that if government doesn't FORCE us, through the power of law, to 'give,' we wouldn't do it.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University and author of "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," documents that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives. Brooks found:

-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

-- Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

-- Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

-- In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

-- People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

Brooks demonstrates a correlation between charitable behavior and "the values that lie beneath" liberal and conservative labels. Two influences on charitable behavior are religion and attitudes about the proper role of government.

You see, conservatives believe the duty to help others is their own - and not something they should abdicate to the government. And because we disagree on the METHOD of caring for others, Obama calls us selfish.

What's truly selfish is that the individuals supporting Obama and this 'share the wealth' philosophy believe they should be given what other people have - just because. I don't have X, you do, therefore, I should be given part of your X. Talk about selfishness and greed!

The biggest tragedy of the politics of selfishness is the emphasis on the money and the spending. By calling conservatives 'selfish' it focuses the discussion on a personal attribute, rather than the proper role of government. The question really isn't 'is a person selfish' because they don't believe in redistributionist tax policies, the proper question we should be asking is this: Is it the proper role of government to take something from a citizen of this country in order to give it to another citizen?

This is not about jointly sharing the costs of such public infrastructures as roads, or about interstate commerce, or even mutual defense of the country and persons. This is about whether or not the property you acquire is free from confiscation by the government in order to gift it to another.

As I said in my Toledo Free Press column, our founders would be appalled:

Ben Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

And James Madison said, “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

But I suppose Obama, Democrat leaders and others would call them 'selfish' too.