AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

A contract between persons in a pre-political or pre-social condition specifying the terms upon which they are prepared to enter society or submit to political authority. For many authors, the social contract ‘explained’ or illuminated a transition from a state of nature to a social and/or political existence. The ‘terms’ of such a contract depend for their plausibility upon the depiction of the gains and losses of such a transition, and thus upon the plausibility of the depiction of the state of nature. Adherents of social contract theory need not suppose the historical reality of the agreement, for they are often interested in exploring the limits of political obligation by reference to what a rational actor would be prepared to agree to, given such gains and losses. A great variety of social contract theories have been propounded, and despite the scepticism of authors like Hume, the contract tradition is still important in political theory.

Foxfyre wrote:

Predictions
1) There will be one or more snotty remarks directed at me for posting this....
4 The MACeans will read and understand the thesis.
5 If the MALs read the piece at all, most will not understand it or will intentionally misrepresent or misstate what it says....

Are all disagreements with this foolish piece considered 'snotty' by you?

Okay lets go with your opinion that the social contract authorizes forcing one person into the service of another.

Explain your rationale for that please. Leave taxes out of it for now. Williams clearly stated he has no problem with taxes.

To help you out here, this is the Answers.com definition of social contract. If you disagree with it, we need to discuss the definition.

Foxfyre,

Professor Williams' argument appears to be deliberately deceptive. He asserts the general principle that forcing one person to act in the service of another (presumably either by directly compelling his labor or by taking his property) is absolutely immoral and contrary to our laws protecting property rights. He then asserts that he is not objecting to the payment of taxes for the "the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government".

While he boldly asserts that "your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response" to his assertion of the "moral" principle he asserts, he himself equivocates on the matter of taxes, indulging in ambiguities that dwarf his original proposition.

Note that one of the constitutionally-mandated functions of our government is to provide for the common defense. I can think of no greater form of servitude than requiring a person to serve in the Armed Forced during a war - something we have done repeatedly. I wonder if Proifessor Williams believes that the military draft is unconstitutional.

I am reminded of the old saying , Those who can, do; those who can't teach. Academia is full of self-important little pipsqueaks who make a big deal out of silly little distinctions and vain academic pretenses. Many of them are on the left, but some too are on the right. Professor Williams is an example.

The military draft is an offense to the values of liberty, causes misallocation of resources, and there's a higher risk of getting a bunch of misfits. The all-volunteer military does none of this.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Walter Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, in Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario.

Dr. Walter Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980; from 1995 to 2001, he served as department chairman. Walter Williams has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia, and Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.

Dr. Walter Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. Walter Williams has authored six books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary "Good Intentions," All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, and More Liberty Means Less Government.

Walter Williams has made scores of radio and television appearances which include "Nightline," "Firing Line," "Face the Nation," Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose," "Crossfire," "MacNeil/Lehrer," "Wall Street Week" and was a regular commentator for "Nightly Business Report." He is also occasional substitute host for the "Rush Limbaugh" show. In addition Dr. Walter Williams writes a nationally syndicated weekly column that is carried by approximately 140 newspapers and several web sites.

Dr. Walter Williams serves on several boards of directors: Grove City College, Reason Foundation and Hoover Institution. He serves on numerous advisory boards including: Cato Institute, Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and Heritage Foundation.

Dr. Walter Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: Foundation for Economic Education Adam Smith Award, Hoover Institution National Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor, Veterans of Foreign Wars U.S. News Media Award, Adam Smith Award, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year, and Alpha Kappa Psi Award.

Dr. Walter Williams has participated in numerous debates, conferences and lectures in the United States and abroad. He has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending. Walter Williams is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and the American Economic Association.

Academia is full of self-important little pipsqueaks who make a big deal out of silly little distinctions and vain academic pretenses. Many of them are on the left, but some too are on the right. Professor Williams is an example.

Quote:

The question is simple.
Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another?

Williams is forced to commit Logical Fallacies to explain why 'yes' is a bad answer to those questions. However, the Social Contract clearly calls for a level of inter-connectedness in our lives which you Conservatives do not wish to accept; yet you wish to enjoy all the benefits of the social contract. It doesn't work that way.

I can accept that the Social Contract forces all of us to pay taxes for things that serve the purposes of 'another,' without accepting Slavery. This is at heart a ridiculous argument, that one cannot believe in taxation without believing in slavery.

Cycloptichorn

If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral.

Well let's talk about that concept of "takers".

Here is today's Modern American Conservative (MAC) or classical liberalism lecture on that very subject. I would appreciate comments from any who would like to actually discuss the thesis Williams presents here. (All emphasis via highlights are mine.)

Prediction: One or more of the following will occur
1) There will be one or more snotty remarks directed at me for posting this.
2) There will be one or more snotty remarks directed at Walter Williams for writing it.
3) There will be one or more snotty remarks directed at anybody who posts any agreement with it.
4 The MACeans will read and understand the thesis.
5 If the MALs read the piece at all, most will not understand it or will intentionally misrepresent or misstate what it says.
6. At least one strawman and/or non sequitur will be posted to divert from the point of the thesis

Quote:

A MINORITY VIEW
BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS
APRIL 1, 2009

Our Problem Is Immorality

Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality. You say, "That's a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You'd better be prepared to back it up with evidence!" I'll try with a few questions for you to answer.

Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him? Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions but I bet that your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response. They would be evasive and probably say that it all depends.

In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property and you are your private property. That's simple. What's complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else. If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one's private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.

The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda. A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind's most horrible injustices such as slavery. After all, what is slavery but the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another? A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget. There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft. This is not an argument against paying taxes. We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government.

Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral. People who choose to be moral and refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They'll be paying higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and lower taxes. As it stands now, close to 50 percent of income earners have no federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income taxes? In other words, once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to remain moral and self-sufficient. You might as well join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy.

I am all too afraid that a historian, a hundred years from now, will footnote America as a historical curiosity where people once enjoyed private property rights and limited government but it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs -- arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

It is kind of funny to see Williams pointing to immorality. He is the same guy who took a couple of hundred thousands from the Bush administration to write supportive columns disguised as his independent writing.

I have read so much of Williams and heard him speak, I would be thrilled if I or my kids had the privilege of sitting in on his classes. In my opinion he is a remarkable man.

But since you have assigned Dr. Williams to suspect status via this statement:

Quote:

Academia is full of self-important little pipsqueaks who make a big deal out of silly little distinctions and vain academic pretenses. Many of them are on the left, but some too are on the right. Professor Williams is an example.

. . .perhaps you would care to answer the question. "Is it moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purpose of another?" If you answer 'yes' please provide your justification for that.

Consider someone forcibly imprisioned, as a result of the due process of laws and judicial procedures that are not themselves immoral, confined and compelled to either work and/or undergo various social and behavioral therepies duly mandated to protect the society he may one day reenter. Is such a person not "forcibly used to serve the purposes of others"?

Conservatives are selective, in a hypocritical manner, in the way they apply this theory of self-ownership. After all, if an individual is indeed his/her own property, and if he/she is a homosexual and wants to share his/her life in partnership with another homosexual, then it is IMMORAL for conservatives to abuse the power of the state for the purpose of depriving these individuals of dominion over their own lives.

Conservative hypocrisy is never ending.

Foxfyre wrote:

"Is it moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purpose of another?" If you answer 'yes' please provide your justification for that.

The proposition you posed lacks any qualifications. I assume you mean to assert that it is NEVER moral for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purpose of another. In that instance I need provide only one exception to destroy the proposition....

Wal-Mart's Free Market Fallacy
Jonathan Tasini
April 21, 2005


Jonathan Tasini is president of the Economic Future Group and writes his "Working In America" columns for TomPaine.com on an occasional basis.

Conservatives run around singing the praises of Wal-Mart, proclaiming it an American success story. None other than Dick Cheney calls the Beast of Bentonville his favorite company. But what I love about Wal-Mart is the way the company highlights the phoniness of two centerpieces of the conservative movement’s sloganeering propaganda: the so-called “free market” and “local control.”

In the mythical world of the free market"for which Wal-Mart supposedly serves as a shining example"prices for goods and labor should rise and fall based on the magic of the “invisible hand” of market supply and demand. In the nirvana of the so-called free market, workers can sell themselves for whatever the market can bear.

So let me introduce you to a place called China. Wal-Mart"in its never-ending quest to promote its heartland, Arkansan family values"is a willing customer of the Chinese labor system, where people work 12- to 18-hour days, earn meager wages and have no days of rest"all for the honor of laboring inside factories full of chemical toxins and hazardous machines, leading to sickness and death at the highest rates in world history. Wal-Mart says its business with China is just a virtue of the free market.

Putting aside the morality of forcing people to work in slave-like conditions, the so-called free market does not exist in China when it comes to wages. China artificially suppresses wages by anywhere from 47 to 85 percent below what they should be,according to the AFL-CIO's complaint about China's labor policies filed with the United States Trade Representative last year. With Wal-Mart as its willing customer, an authoritarian regime ruthlessly warps the market for wages by enforcing a system that controls where people can work and imprisons and tortures people who attempt to organize real unions or strike. Maybe the rock-bottom labor costs are really behind Wal-Mart’s slogan “always low prices,” but the company is certainly not an example of how to win in a free market economy.

It’s easy to see why Wal-Mart and its conservative defenders discard ideology: money. By ignoring free market principles, the left-wing Harvard Business School estimates that Wal-Mart reduces its procurement costs by 10-20 percent, primarily by taking advantage of the artificially suppressed labor market in China. One can’t help note the delicious irony that Wal-Mart’s “free market” leadership is powered by an authoritarian regime that still refers to itself as communist.

Back at home, Wal-Mart’s free market mantra stops at the water’s edge of the public till. By one estimate, Wal-Mart has pulled in $1.5 billion dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies (see www.walmartwatch.com) . And that's at the low end, because subsidies are sometimes hard to track based on the lack of public reporting requirements. Wal-Mart is happy to cash in on government largess like property tax abatements, infrastructure support, free land and just straight-out cold cash"all of which are the antithesis of “free market” ideology.

Here’s a way to get rich, if you could collect the dough: How many of you wish you had a dollar every time you heard some conservative rant first about the evils of the federal government and, then, call for denuding the federal government and handing more control over decision making to local communities? We’d all be rich, no? Well, an odd thing has happened. Conservatives appear to be against local control.

Conservatives and their allies in the press have been bent out of shape over recent campaigns to keep Wal-Mart from opening stores. These campaigns were spearheaded by community groups nationwide from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York. Recently, The Economist , the international organ for the so-called “free market,” railed against the opposition to Wal-Mart’s entry into the New York City area. Writing in its April 2nd edition about local legislation aimed at requiring standards for workers’ pay and health care, the magazine opined that, “Municipal socialism may seem an odd strategy for the world’s capital of capitalism to embrace.”

Oh, I get it: Local control is only a lofty principle when the goal is to destroy the government’s ability to implement basic community values like fairness, equality and justice. But when people rise up to challenge the idea that a corporation shouldn’t do what it chooses with local community resources like workers, water, air and soil"oh my God, we’re teetering on the brink of rampant radicalism and a titanic battle between socialism and the free market.

Truth is, Wal-Mart could not survive in a real free market: It would, for example, have to pay Chinese workers more (which would ruin its low-wage business model) and spurn any offers of government subsidies. Indeed, it’s fitting that Wal-Mart, the business model fawned over by free-marketeers, exposes the so-called “free market” as a lie, no more than a crude"albeit effective"marketing phrase. By offering the seductive promise of prosperity through something “free,” we’re told we have to hand over control of our communities to some mystical “market” force. But that’s just an illusion conjured up to hide from us real-life actors who exploit the sweat of our brows, deplete our natural resources to make huge profits and take handouts funded by our hard-earned incomes.

Ironically, Wal-Mart’s behavior does have one redeeming factor. By puncturing the Wal-Mart-generated myths that it is good for America, by showing that its low-prices come with a heavy cost, and by revealing how the company is a leech on communities, we may begin to pull back the curtain hiding the true nature of the so-called “free market.”