Posted on 12/29/2003 8:21:14 PM PST by G. Stolyarov II
For any man today who thinks and desires the capacity to unrestrictedly apply the conclusions of his mind, the scope of his current externally-imposed confinement is colossal and multifaceted. The government of this country has usurped almost every sphere of human activity, shackling creative entrepreneurial innovators through “antitrust” laws, which restrict the amount of market share a business may through its owners’ skill and the quality of its product acquire. It has erected barriers to the advancement of thoughtful freethinkers by the imposition of affirmative action initiatives that prevent many of them from acquiring education and jobs for faults not their own. It has presumed to dictate to businessmen and settlers what forms of land usage are permissible by standard of societal sanction, through laws of eminent domain and environmental preserves that force men to sacrifice their opportunities not only to their neighbors and the community, but the bureaucrats, the lobbyists, the endangered spotted slugs and numb lifeless rocks. It has imposed a quasi-prison environment on the young people of this country through the encouragement of forced volunteerism within the schools, in menial tasks that present their undertakers with few constructive skills and even their beneficiaries with few lasting gains. It has maintained a philosophical commitment to using the nation’s young men as sacrificial cannon fodder by the continuing existence of draft registration. And all disagreement is reduced to virtually naught, since the freethinkers (often prosperous, industrious men) are extorted for gargantuan sums of their income to fund this socialist behemoth. Some of this income is expended to uphold in a state of prison-like dependency hordes of welfare recipients who can be counted on to vote in their overlord incumbents and by the sheer volume of their holler overrule all dissent in the passage of the next statist subversion of liberty. And if any man who depends on no politician for his subsistence dissents by refusing to sacrifice his money for causes that will do him harm, the full weight of government retaliation is borne upon him. What can a man of independent convictions and self-reliant disposition do in such a setting, which grows more restrictive by the day?
A key notion in Objectivist thought is the withholding of the sanction of the victim, the tacit compliance of a man with the violations of his own rights. It becomes evident that today’s dismal political state, which will inevitably thrust itself into nearly every area of every man’s private life, cannot be ignored or passively endured. Yet, with the assault occurring on so many fronts, how does one select one’s battles in order to deal the enemy a critical blow, and what tactics are permissible in the undertaking of such endeavors?
One Objectivist and father of four children has run into the government behemoth in the sphere of education, as his oldest son encounters a do-or-fail forced volunteering program in the middle school that he attends. In his recent correspondences with me, he revealed to me his double-bind. “As much as I hate the notion of volunteerism, I have to balance my approach based on the amount of harm I might do to my son’s education. If he and I start a huge fight over his few hours of mandatory volunteer work, we might or might not prevail. The fight would certainly escalate and take much longer than the amount of time my son has left in his present public school. It would delay his graduation, hamper his getting into the high school he prefers, and ultimately complicate his getting into a good college. If we win this battle well after the fact, it does not profit my son, who will then be perpetually viewed as a troublemaker.”
My correspondent’s analysis exhibits considerable merit; it is, after all, in violation of Objectivist principles to sacrifice one’s present prospects for a condition less opportune or beneficial. Risking the education of one’s son is tantamount to giving a dollar in exchange for a penny. My correspondent’s solution, instead, is to “redefine what constitutes service.” He writes, “I skirt the issue by certifying that my son performed X number of hours in a (non-selfless) activity which I deem to qualify, but I play this game grudgingly.” This Objectivist recognizes that practicing selfishness in disguise is only a short-term solution, sufficient to preserve his son’s academic life while not tainting his moral integrity with wasteful volunteerism. He has, in the meantime, sought other methods of remedying this abusive function of government, endeavors that may come to fruition in time for his youngest child’s middle school years.
Being himself a writer of ample talent and profound reasoning, my correspondent seeks to address the faults of public education at their ideological roots. He has written letters to the editor of his local newspaper in which he defends the local charter schools (which function on a more meritocratic basis, not tolerating lazy or disruptive students and thereby creating an environment more conductive to learning). He describes the nature of these commentaries: “I’ve learned that asking the paper to use only my initials after my letter virtually guarantees that it will not be printed, so I sign every one with my full name. Because of this, I draft my letters to appeal to reason, to propose long-term changes to open up the education system, and to avoid incendiary rhetoric. I have to be careful because my children are in public schools, and public school teachers are not above making lessons difficult for the children of anti-public-school agitators. If there is any possibility that a letter could be taken as racist or anti-religious the following edition of the paper will be full of outraged letters to the editor citing Bible chapter and verse or the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I don’t give them this opportunity.”
The position in which this man finds himself is similar to that of John Galt in Atlas Shrugged during the final days of his presence in New York. As Galt prepares to plunge the society of his persecutors into ultimate peril, he must avoid drawing any harm toward Dagny Taggart, the woman he loves, whom he expects to be instantly targeted by the gangster bureaucrats if the latter come to suspect a connection between her and Galt. While Galt can fend for himself, he is unable at all times to be accountable for Dagny’s security and therefore urges her to avoid and feign aversion toward him so as to keep herself out of harm’s way. This tactic delays some of the advantages Galt could have gained from maintaining a present relationship with Dagny, but it, in the long term, permits the relationship to exist in a condition safe from the clutches of the bureaucrats. Alas, such subtlety and covert action are required in situations where fully open action will result in the destruction of a dearly held value, whether this value is a child’s future or a lover’s safety.
The most efficient and radical actions toward the eradication of unlawful authority can be undertaken by men with little or nothing to risk. Bill O’Reilly, for example, can with impunity denounce the education system from his news desk and even scathingly accuse particular school officials of misdemeanors. Whatever O’Reilly’s moral errors and stylistic flaws, his commentary has cast a much-needed shadow of doubt on the efficacy of the public education system. However, a student in the public schools or a parent of such a student does not have O’Reilly’s latitude even in terms of verbal expression, as schools in recent years have become notorious for distributing punishments for “offensive speech” almost as severe as those allocated for drug use, violence, or sexual harassment.
Consider the following hypothetical scenario: an Objectivist has invented an invincibility suit which no modern weapon can penetrate and which possesses attached devices for breaking through even the strongest barriers and obstacles in its way. Would this Objectivist not be able to single-handedly dismantle the entire oppressive portion of the modern government apparatus? He could walk into the Capitol and rather politely “encourage” the congressmen to revoke all invasive pieces of legislation while indicating to the police with similar tact that any attempt to arrest him would be futile. A single man who can shelter the entirety of his values against all possible harm can thereby save the world. Of course, no human being today is in any state remotely comparable to this. Even the most prominent commentators and businessmen in this country are not free from the initiation of force against them by the state, as evidenced in the recent witch-hunts against Bill Gates’ Microsoft, Martha Stewart, and Sam Waksal, as well as Howard Dean’s threats to dissolve FOX, one of the last decent news organizations in the country. Yet this does not mean that an eventual overthrow of big government cannot be managed, even within the limits that we, in our own self-interest, would wish to remain within.
Before discussing our possibilities, it is essential to analyze two of the most glaring such limits: the law and time.
The Law
Certain unjust laws can be enforced with the same vigor and stringency as proper ones. Their overt violation will result in an intelligent dissenter being thrown in prison, where his capacities for activism toward the dismantlement of such statutes would be greatly reduced. Henry David Thoreau, who offered a philosophical defense of this technique, tried the tactic of civil disobedience in defiance of a tax that was used to fund what was in his opinion an unjustified Mexican War. Thoreau was thrown in prison and, though he demonstrated considerable fortitude of conviction, he did not defeat the tax. His ideology may have been proper in the given situation, but the way in which he had approached it only resulted in a setback for Thoreau and a curtailment of his abilities to publicize his opposition to the tax.
The rational man should strive to work under the following maxim: Obey unjust laws except where you can get away with doing otherwise. Some laws are in fact not enforceable, as the government does not yet exhibit omnipresence and eternal vigilance. Laws pertaining to the realm of private life and in any manner limiting lifestyle choice or ideological orientation can be bypassed with the proper care; a ban on campaigning for a non-incumbent political candidate for 60 days prior to an election (as was imposed by a recent “campaign finance reform” bill) will not prevent a man from conversing with or holding informal assemblies of his neighbors in an attempt to explain why the incumbent should be unseated.
The worst sorts of laws are those that are selectively enforced and meant to be violated. It is possible to get away with infringements of these, unless one happens to be a prominent or challenging enough dissenter, in which case the government can employ these laws as pretexts for eliminating any “threats” to its expansion. In this case, the government would usually possess sufficient vigilance to monitor violations, but insufficient means to punish all of them. The bureaucrats could also recognize that imposing penalties on all violators of certain laws would disable much of the country. If antitrust laws, for example, were, in their fullest arbitrary breadth, applied to every large corporation, the nation’s economy would grind to a halt. Two paths are possible in regard to approaching such laws for a prominent dissenter whom the government can neutralize via selective enforcement: either creating a façade of obedience while maintaining legal forms of opposition and activism or challenging the law openly as incapable of being abided by. The latter technique was demonstrated with immense success by Henry Rearden in Atlas Shrugged, who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the law under which he was designated guilty of “illegal trading” or of the court that tried him. By baring the deepest issues at the root of the law and removing the veneer of civility from its advocates, Rearden rallied sufficient public support to render any substantial punishment impossible. Note the contrast between this technique and Thoreau’s de facto sacrifice. Rearden did not intend to go to prison or “suffer for his beliefs”; rather, he devised a plan which safeguarded every one of his values, his personal liberty as well as the closely related liberty of the economic and political system of his country. The worst and least efficient course of action in regard to resisting arbitrary laws is to state, “I am guilty; do with me what you will.” This approach removes the benefit of the doubt from the accused while retaining the sanction of the victim, since the legitimacy of the law or the punishment therefrom derived remain unchallenged. Merely going to prison reveals no philosophical essences.
Time
Our temporal limitations, as well as the cumulative blunders of the generations before us, have brought us to the point where remedying every individual harm emanating from the government behemoth is physically impossible. This means that the rational man must direct his attacks on invasive government practices in a thoroughly deliberate and strategically targeted manner. Numerous specific policies in the high schools of my correspondent’s district are glaringly unjust (such as a 50% quota of black students in one of the district’s magnet schools), yet he cannot afford to confront each of them on a case-by-case basis. He writes, “I choose to fight for alternatives to the present state school monopoly instead of agitating for minor changes in a fundamentally flawed system. If one goes to a restaurant and receives a dish prepared with rancid food, it doesn’t do any good to harangue the chef to try preparing it in a different way. The best alternative is to eat somewhere else!” The most efficient blows to big government can be dealt by disarming it philosophically and arguing why statism in every one of its incarnations is immoral, not merely somewhat impractical or unjust in a few particulars. Rand realized that only a systematic alteration of the philosophical value-premises of this country could someday bring about the age of laissez-faire. Instead of every isolated rational man fighting the school boards and town councils of his community, he should strive to coordinate with fellow thinkers throughout the country a campaign of ideological reform aimed at an entire field of government intervention (i.e. public education, environmental regulation, business regulation, the draft, welfare, Medicare, social security, etc.). He only has so much time to devote to defending his liberties, and it is not desirable that his entire life be occupied in merely warding off the State’s assaults. After all, the productive man must create values, not merely fight against intrusions on his ability to create.
The Internet has greatly shortened the time required for communication and coordination at a distance, along with hastening the spread of ideological works to a wide readership. If Objectivists should manage to exploit its full resources, the ideas of Rand could become the most significant political force in the world. Already, a Yahoo! search of “philosophy” reveals that Objectivism possesses more websites to its name than any other specific ideological movement, exceeding Utilitarianism and Logical Positivism by a factor of 8, and falling behind only the vaguely lumped-together “Eastern” category (which emphasizes that the alarming anti-Western tide of the 1960s has not yet subsided). One needs also take into account that many Objectivist websites are not specifically categorized as such on Yahoo! but nevertheless play a substantial role in propagating rational ideas on the web. Already, colossal progress has been made, as the very appearance and availability of this treatise attests to. Within the framework of available time, an individual Objectivist can undertake an aggressive publicity campaign for the ideas of Reason, Rights, and Progress by posting on online forums, maintaining correspondences and mailing lists, and interacting with allied websites. “Conventional” media are becoming increasingly too moderate, mundane, and appeasing of all possible viewpoints to attract those information consumers who seek a more direct and personal interaction, of the sort that the Internet can offer. On the Internet, only a scant few commentators can manage to insulate themselves within an elitist bubble and institutionalize a “mainstream” dogma that other analysts better follow or be ostracized from a substantial audience. Instead, readers and authors most often interact as peers and bilateral contributors of ideas, and the virtual lack of government regulation permits the free market of the spirit to prosper and rational ideology to challenge all opposition with its finest ammunition. It is almost inevitable that, if any liberalization of the political system is to come about, it will be spearheaded by men of non-elite backgrounds acting on their individual capacities and convictions from a realm where they still wield absolute liberty.
The online philosopher is, within a limited domain, the equivalent of the man in the invincibility suit; with elementary precautions, it is almost impossible for his ideas to be censored or for him to suffer material harms as a result of their release. Though his security in the tangible world is not assured in nearly the same way, it remains possible for him to work for dramatic ideological and legal reform while maintaining a secure hold over his values. A man’s private home, though more susceptible to government intrusion than a website, remains in the overwhelming majority of instances a place where expression can be without externally imposed limits. The mails are, too, not yet censored or inspected for content by the government (though the U.S. Post Office’s monopoly renders such a prospect dangerously feasible). Nor should we underestimate the immense effects that printed literature, such as the works of Rand and Peikoff, can bring about. The author of a book, no matter how controversial, has attained a prominence too substantial to be targeted for his speech in particular. When confronting the government, one must remember that it totters atop the feeble edifice of public opinion, which, however irrational and contradictory at times, maintains traces of respect for great ideals of an earlier time: free speech, free enterprise, free conscience. A too-vehement pursuit of a prominent dissenter because he has dissented risks triggering a mass backlash. Activists such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., recognized this fact and structured their campaigns so as to array mass sentiment against government reprisal. Whatever their causes, their methods, based on the harvesting of publicity and the clear enunciation of their ideological goals, had brought about far more fruitful results than Thoreau’s quiet endurance of imprisonment.
The heroes of the past have too often styled themselves as martyrs willing to suffer and even perish for their beliefs. This view has been rendered obsolete by the philosophy of Objectivism and its practical consequences for the rational man. One should vocalize one’s convictions and act upon them, but in such a manner that selfishness and the withdrawal of the sanction of the victim can coincide. As the faculty of thought is man’s most potent tool, it should be employed in order to determine not only his ideological orientation, but the methods and tools that he will use in order to actualize it.
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