The Claremont Independent - April 2012 by Claremont Independent

CLAREMONT INDEPENDENT VOLUME XXI, NUMBER 3 APRIL 2012

Robert Gates on NATO at the Ath page

CLAREMONT INDEPENDENT table of contents. Publisher Michael Koenig Layout Editors Lynsey Chediak Tess Sewell Managing Editor Will Mitchell Associate Editors Marina Giloi Christina Noriega Editors Emeriti Hannah Burak John-Clark Levin Publisher Emerita Justine Desmond Web Editor Parth Padgoankar Illustrators Heidi Carlson Aliza Kellerman

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

IT’S UP TO US: DR. ROBERT GATES AT THE ATH

INTRODUCING THE ALEXANDER HAMILTON SOCIETY

NATO, BUDGETS AND WORLD WAR III

YEAR 4: THE DASHED HOPE

CONCEPTUALIZING INDIVIDUALISM

THE RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY

Michael Koenig, PO ‘12 William Mitchell, CMC ‘14

Christina Noriega, SC ‘13

Martin Sartorius, CMC ‘15 Chris Gaarder, CMC ‘15

Cathering Tung, CMC ‘14

Julio Sharp-Wasserman, PO ‘13

Staff Writers Eliot Adams, Janet Alexander, Travis Athougies, Joanna Chavez, Breanna Deutsch, Amelia Evrigenis, Aiden Fahnestock, Chris Gaarder, Paul Jeffrey, Martin Sartorius, Linden Schult, Julio Sharp-Wasserman, Jason Soll, Colin Spence, Matt Taylor, Catherine Tung

editorial

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

by Michael Koenig Publisher

Reading through The Student Life a few weeks ago, I learned about a rather disgraceful incident that had occurred on Pomona’s campus. A derogatory slur against Caucasians, the text of which can be found in TSL’s back-issues, was chalked onto an exterior wall of one of Pomona’s dorms. While the graffiti was visible enough to warrant a discussion in the school newspaper, I had neither seen nor heard of it until after it was removed. The response of Pomona College to this incident, however, warrants discussion. A week after the chalking, the student body received an email from Pomona’s Incidence Response Team. The IRT, using the Pomona Student Handbook’s policy on bias, concluded that the anti-white slur that had been written was a “bias-related incident.” The IRT condemned the graffiti, and reminded us that “offensive, hateful speech violates our community standards.” While most would agree that offensive language doesn’t typically help any sort of discourse, Pomona recognizes that it has a legal obligation (under the free speech clause of the Bill of Rights) to protect such language anyway. Instead of censoring speech directly, the IRT publishes letters condemning everything about the speech except for our right to make it. This is not news; it is the normal operating procedure at Pomona and (I imagine) most top private colleges. What was unique about this incident were a few sentences tucked into the back of the letter: While discussing this particular bias-incident, the IRT also thought it was important to place it in the context of the social environment at Pomona and the other Claremont Colleges where students experience real, and sometimes racialized, divisions in social spaces. Discourse on this social environment shouldn’t take place through graffiti on a building or side walk. We believe the Pomona College com-

munity has the capacity for genuine reflection and conversation about these issues. This was a first for my four year relationship with the “bias-related incident” email. I had never seen the IRT try to place a slur in context. Like most students, I would think that no slur could possibly further campus discourse. However, the IRT referred to that specific, racist graffiti as legitimate discourse (condemning only that it took the form of graffiti). If that were true, if that graffiti was a genuine—albeit juvenile— piece of discourse taking place on college architecture, then it should not have been condemned as unacceptable. Pomona seems to have slipped and revealed its curious doublethink on racist talk. The committee condemned the racist speech act, but acknowledged it as a piece of discourse on our social environment. While I disagree that the slur was a piece of discourse, I believe that anyone who recognizes it as such, and still condemns it, has stepped into dangerous territory by censuring a legitimate—if imprecisely and insensitively worded—position. Racist talk is unacceptable and wrong, except when it makes a point. Who is to say which racist slurs qualify as discourse, and which (if any) are empty of meaning? Would a more precisely worded blanket criticism of whites and their past and present racial sins have qualified as a bias-related incident? Or would it have simply been discourse? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know that once the IRT moves from condemning slurs to contextualizing them, it is only a matter of time until some slurs become less bad than others. What is the point of having a speech code if it doesn’t fairly condemn all racist speech anyway? CI

The Claremont Independent is an independent journal of campus affairs and political thought serving the colleges of the Claremont Consortium. The magazine receives no funding from any of the colleges and is distributed free of charge on campus. All costs of production are covered by the generous support of private foundations and individuals. The Claremont Independent is dedicated to using journalism and reasoned discourse to advance its ongoing mission of Upholding Truth and Excellence at the Claremont Colleges.

campus news

IT’S UP TO US: DR. ROBERT GATES AT THE ATH

by William Mitchell Managing Editor Once a semester, the Athenaeum brings a headliner to campus. Whether we’re star-struck or jaded by this parade of luminaries, they can always teach us something. Dr. Robert Gates’ message is one to remember. Speaking at the Ath on April 4th, Dr. Gates reflected upon a lifetime of public service under eight presidents, the turmoil in the Middle East, the outlook for Afghanistan, and the future of US-China relations. Gates’ greatest concern, though, was with Washington.

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There is no fundamental reason for the US and China to become enemies. But if we treat them as one, they will become one.

A self-described “ultimate insider” who worked for six presidents in the CIA and the Pentagon and served five years as Secretary of Defense, Gates is no stranger to Beltway politics. He’s also one of Washington’s strongest critics and keenest observers. According to Gates, the task ahead of the United States has three parts. First, we need to get our finances in order. Not only does fiscal irresponsibility cost us respect on the world stage, it deprives us of options in the future. Second, the United States must build and maintain strong defense forces. “Everyone wants to cut defense,” Gates said, “but we need to consider the cost of doing so.” Third, the United States must maintain a confident, credible, stable international presence backed by a consistent foreign policy agenda. Fulfilling these goals will not be easy or pleasant, Gates warned. “It will take lots of tough decisions in the short-run for the long-term payoffs.” Unfortunately, Washington has a poor track record when it comes to making these tough decisions. According to Gates, the root of the problem is right in

our backyards. Thanks to partisan redistricting, congressional races favor more extremist candidates. The result is a more politicized, less effective Congress. Non-partisan redistricting (much like the one CMC’s Rose Institute helped design for California) can solve some of the problem; but bigger changes are still need. “Compromise isn’t a dirty word,” Gates asserted, “The Founding Fathers built our nation on compromise.” Lawmakers need to step outside of their “ideological cocoons,” seek bipartisanship and ignore the inanities and extremities of our national discourse. But ultimately, the responsibility for change lies with us. “At the end of the day, the solution is in the mirror,” said Gates. As Americans, we choose our representatives. It’s up to us to vote, to challenge our elected leaders to pursue bipartisanship. But our responsibility doesn’t end at the ballot box. Gates issued a challenge to students. “Public service can be immensely rewarding,” Gates suggested. And even for those not destined for Capitol Hill or the Pentagon, there remains a responsibility to be informed and “learn to differentiate between sensible opinions and BS.” The stakes of our actions are high, Gates reminded us, turning to world affairs. In Afghanistan, Gates saw reason for cautious optimism. “Two years ago, we finally got the strategy right,” referring to the US troop surge, “and we’re on track to transition to Afghan responsibility in 2014.” Leave any earlier, Gates warned, and the fragile nation would collapse, leading to renewed civil war and an Afghanistan that once again harbors Al Qaeda. Gates was less optimistic about the Middle East. “With the Arab Spring, forces have been unlocked that cannot be let back in,” Gates observed. The former Secretary of Defense saw two possible outcomes for the region. One was democracy and freedom, an outcome Gates considered unlikely given the region’s lack of a democratic tradition. The other, more worrying possibility was what he described as “Sunni versions of revolutionary Iran,” Middle Eastern states who are no friends of the US and no supporters of the already uneasy peace with Israel. Iran, on the other hand, offered more certainty. “Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons,” Gates claimed. However, he cautioned against a hawkish response. While an attack might set the Iranian nuclear program back by two or

CONTINUED ON PAGE 5

campus news

INTRODUCING THE ALEXANDER HAMILTON SOCIETY by Christina Noriega

Associate Editor

Joining an already wide variety of clubs, academic societies, and research institutes, the Alexander Hamilton Society marks the first organization of its kind at the Colleges. Founded in March 2010 by Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University, Daniel Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute, and Roy Katzovicz of Pershing Square Capital Management, the Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS) is a national organization that aims to foster dialogue about foreign, economic, and national security policies by instituting individual chapters across American college campuses. Regardless of one’s politics, the new Claremont chapter is sure to enrich the intellectual thought on foreign policy and national security at the Colleges. In addition to its inaugural Annual National Symposium this summer, the Alexander Hamilton Society provides students with the means to host a variety of different on-campus events each year. In the 2010-2011 academic year, AHS sponsored 45 events at 15 different top-tier colleges across the country. Members at established chapters are given the funds to invite prominent figures in the field of foreign policy to argue opposing sides of debates that are increasingly relevant in our post-9/11 world. These have included such topics as America’s role in the world, Guantanamo Bay, and nuclear deterrence. Despite the increasing relevance of such issues, however, the founders of AHS were motivated to form this society on the basis that these delicate issues of diplomacy and defense have gone neglected too long. As the ultimate goal is to foster dialogue, debates have figured prominently into the schema of AHS events organized

by students in its first two years. Speakers are brought to campus and debates are organized to reintroduce certain arguments on foreign policy as well as reinvigorate debate in general. The Society is self-described as independent and nonpartisan. Still, there are certain principles that underlie their effort. AHS admits a “measured pride in the success of the American experiment”—that the principles our nation professes would be valuable for other nations to adopt as well. Seeking long-term solutions for global problems of violence and conflict, AHS looks to create vigorous public discussion by involving current leaders and equipping future ones. The topic of this year’s AHS National Symposium is: “Is U.S. Global Leadership Worth the Price?” It is a question that is both timely and controversial, and potentially carries great repercussions for our nation’s progress. AHS hopes to bring this and other foreign policy questions back to the forefront of the relatively unvaried intellectual environment of the modern University. In responding to a void in the study of U.S. foreign and security policy, this is an organization for which many students have been waiting. As Alexander Hamilton himself put it at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, “No government could give us tranquility and happiness at home which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.” Indeed, there is no better time to begin taking a critical look at our past and present stakes abroad—whether or not you study politics or international relations in the classroom, your very tranquility and happiness are what is in question. CI

Dr. Robert Gates at the Ath, cont. from page 4 three years, Gates observed, it would unify Iran’s populace against the aggressor. The effect on the world economy and regional stability would be devastating, since Iran’s response would be to attack oil tankers in the Gulf of Hormuz and spark proxy conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon. In Gates’ mind, the best option for Iran is firm sanctions. Only by persuading Iranian leaders that a nuclear weapon would cost them far more than they would gain, does the international community have any hope of preventing an Iranian bomb. Furthermore, Gates suggested, the US must maintain a robust presence in the Middle East, building partnerships to counter Iran. Looking further East, Gates considered China. He characterized China as increasingly assertive, using its growing

military to expand into South China, and its economic connections to exploit resources in Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. At home, China faces unique challenges, grappling with an aging populace, a restless rural population, and an emerging, politically-engaged middle class. Gates stressed the importance of intelligent China policy. “There is no fundamental reason for the US and China to become enemies. But if we treat them as one, they will become one. What happens will determine on what we decide.” “It’s up to us,” Gates concluded. Our future depends not on others, but on ourselves. If we remember anything from Dr. Gates’ talk, it should be this: that the course the United States plots for itself will impact our future far more than the currents other countries may create. CI

world news

NATO, BUDGETS AND WORLD WAR III

by Martin Sartorius

Staff Writer

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” - Albert Einstein.

If nuclear conflict engulfed this earth, it would be the end of civilization as we know it. In a bid to stop such a grim future, we have created multilateral institutions like the UN and non-proliferation treaties to make sure that the world does not blow itself up. So, in an age of such protective institutions and such destructive weapons, why do we bother with conventional militaries? If you went to the Robert Gates Ath talk, I can imagine that you were also disappointed with the quality of some of the questions posed to a man that worked in government for over half a century. The one question that did raise some interest though, was about falling NATO spending and its implications for world security. Although NATO spending might be an issue far from the mind of the ordinary American voter, it is an issue that has very far-reaching implications for all of us who call the United States home. NATO helped win the Cold War, and it also has provided troops for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. On paper, the military alliance of NATO serves as a deterrent against any nation considering towage war on a member state. Because of its preventative nature and organized military potential, NATO has arguably been a more effective diplomatic and peacekeeping force in the last half century for the Western world than the UN. In spite of all this, many NATO states (particularly those in Europe) are cutting back on military spending as they go through heavy, but necessary, austerity measures. They see military spending as extraneous, and voters confirm this belief, as they seem to only want the government to continue funding their already bloated welfare states. The outcome? According to The Economist, only five out of the twenty-eight NATO countries currently fulfill the NATO-mandated commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defense: that they initially agreed to: the US, Britain, France, Greece, and Albania. You will probably agree with me that Greece and Albania making up 40% of the list does not exactly give the image of a strong, binding alliance within NATO. With wealthy countries like Germany and Turkey ignoring their commitments, what hope is there for

NATO in the future? The intervention in Libya powerfully demonstrated that Europe’s militaries do not have the capacity to wage wars on multiple fronts, unable to balance their commitments in Afghanistan with a meaningful contribution to the air campaign against Gaddafi. Multiple NATO members ran out of precisionguided munitions just weeks into a minor bombing campaign. Imagine what would happen if a major war were to happen tomorrow. To be blunt, NATO would not be ready. Although Europe has been able to ride on the coattails of the USA’s military superpower status for the past decades, the US’s increasing emphasis on the Pacific means that Europe will not be able to always have the US come to the rescue. While the military might be an unpopular drain on public funds, a functional fighting force is still necessary in the modern world. With the growing nuclear threat of Iran looming over Europe’s horizon and the Middle East’s increasingly volatile politics, Europe needs the military capacity to protect itself from future dangers that are close to home. Then there is Russia, widely forgotten as a military has-been. Political discontent within the country makes Putin’s newest term his most unpredictable yet, and we cannot forget that this country still has a strong military, the capacity to produce large amounts of weapons, and with the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world after the US. These potential threats are not scaremongering; they are realistic problems that European countries might have to deal with militarily. And we have to remember, if one rogue state goes to war with any member country in NATO, it will affect everyone in NATO. This includes the United States and every American resident, be they a soldier or a student at the Claremont Colleges. Europe’s flagging NATO commitments are of importance to every one of us here. As Dr. Gates said, American voters must push their leadership to make strong security commitments. As American voters we must make sure out leaders ensure European NATO member states to maintain, or potentially increase, their military capacities. If we do not, we risk World War III, the war no one can win. CI

opinion

YEAR 4: THE DASHED HOPE by Chris Gaarder

Staff Writer

Apologies for forcing my nerdiness on the reader, but I cannot help but start with an unorthodox, though valid, analogy. There were plenty of comparisons of Dick Cheney to Darth Vader in the last decade, but I can’t help but think of President Obama as Anakin Skywalker at the end of Star Wars Episode III. As Anakin laid mortally wounded on the surface of Mustafar, Obi-Wan cried out, “You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them. You were to bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness.” Liberals, independents, and even some conservatives today are like ObiWan, disappointed in their apprentice, who had the potential to unite Americans and improve politics, but failed. Obama held Washington in the palm of his hand in 2008. He had the political capital necessary to reshape the role of the executive in a way all Americans could ultimately appreciate. But since he had operated at the national level for only a couple of years, he misjudged the potentially useful nature of the Force at his disposal - the goodwill of the populace. In the midterm elections, however, he witnessed the might of their ire. Obama could have been one for whom hardened Republicans would harbor a soft spot by coming to the middle for the good of the nation. Unfortunately, he took the expedient but lesser path, to the political dark side of ridiculing one’s opponents without undertaking a genuine, serious effort at compromise for cheap political points, as Congressman Kevin McCarthy described at Claremont McKenna’s Athenaeum event on April 12. Obama’s reelection is based on a weak platform. Obamacare, his signature bill, scares Americans. It is 2,700 pages of legalese no lay citizen could read and understand. According to a recent Gallup poll, 72 percent of all Americans, including 56 percent of Democrats, think the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and only 24 percent think Obamacare will improve their healthcare. The Stimulus also polls poorly; a recent Pew Center poll shows that only 38 percent of Americans support the 2009 Stimulus package. So what will he campaign on? Osama bin Laden was killed, but that wasn’t a new policy objective. The Obama foreign policy on the whole is more agreeable to conservatives than expected, as it often continues his predecessor’s policies (Obama even kept Bob Gates), but issues like drone attacks and Guantanamo Bay aren’t strong points for his liberal base. He’ll campaign on making all Americans insured (something that doesn’t kick in until after the election, if it makes it past the Supreme Court), but voters are now concerned about the economy and deficit. The president is not showing a deep com-

mitment to enabling economic growth, but rather a commitment to getting reelected. Speaker Boehner recently said in an interview with Charlie Rose, “the President checked out last Labor Day… All he’s done is campaign full-time for the last six months. He’s not been engaged in the legislative process at all… it’s shameful… He lost his courage.” Congressman Kevin McCarthy spent much of his time at the Ath outlining the state of politics. He described working with the President on the greatest political issue since he became the Majority Whip, the debt debate. McCarthy claimed, as other reports have corroborated, that last summer, the President and Speaker Boehner were in secret talks to handle the deficit and help the economy, but that the pressure from within the administration to use their talks as a political opportunity became too great. McCarthy spoke of Boehner’s patience in dealing with the president as “a little like Job,” as Boehner gave concession after concession to the President. However, Obama proposed his own plan, seeming to think that the American People would coalesce behind him, even though they had just thrown his party out of the House by an incredible margin. He missed the opportunity to strike a landmark deal like those struck between Reagan and O’Neill, or Clinton and Newt Gingrich. McCarthy was disappointed, because, as he put it, there are two types of leaders when they face political heat, the Thermometer and the Thermostat. The Thermometer tells you the temperature of the room is 96 degrees but that’s it. The Thermostat, however, a “Ronald Reagan, a Bill Clinton, a Winston Churchill” will see that it is 96 degrees and change the temperature, if not all the way down to 70 right away, then at least to 94, then 90, and on down. He was saying that Obama has recently been the Thermometer, describing but not fighting the economic problems we face. Given that three of the last four presidents held two terms, Obama realized that he needed to position himself early for 2012 to have more than a fleeting reference in American history. As neither the left nor the center embraces his policies, he has decided to go to the dark side, making his policy and his campaign about attacking the fools who get in his way, without first trying to work with them, in order to stay in office. Obama is not evil in any sense, that is not the point I am making. However, after treating himself as the nation’s savior, one who would not put politics before the public good, he has fallen from his pedestal. CI

opinion

CONCEPTUALIZING INDIVIDUALISM

by Catherine Tung

Staff Writer

“You cannot have a universe without a mind entering it.” - Fred Alan Wolf Growing up in Asia, I always detested the concept of “community first.” It was all about what everyone else in the community would say if you did this or chose that, and how each of us had a role in living up to society’s demands (this would explain why the cram school industry in Asia is believed to take up more funding than public schools in the States). Perceived respect is a good that earns you points, and reputation is the metric for those accumulated points. I looked at Western societies and admired the focus on individualism, and working on the self instead of social harmony. However, upon further consideration of the philosophy on which Eastern society is built, I’ve found that it is meant to foster a version of individualism, despite the outcome in most cases.

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A forest’s beauty is essentially meaningless if no man ever sets foot in it.

Western philosophy is grounded in the concept of man against everything else. This dichotomy creates a need for separation, where man has a distinct identity from everyone and everything else, hence cultivating a strong sense of individualism. This individualistic philosophy gives rise to a lot of the cultural aspects of Western society, such as taking responsibility for one’s own life and respecting liberty. Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, is grounded in the concept that man is one with, and therefore responsible for, everything else. Some people see this in terms of energy: on the subatomic level, we all consist of energy, our atoms vibrating at different frequencies beyond our discernible sensory perception. But since we are all essentially made of the same material, each of us participates in the creation of one another

(and everything else in the universe) by simply being. For example, in a way we participate in the creation of a sunrise by simply witnessing it. This concept was best illustrated to me in the idea that a forest’s beauty is essentially meaningless if no man ever sets foot in it. This is where the strong sense of social harmony and community comes in, and the concept that the extent of the universe is defined by the highest level of consciousness that can perceive it. It is a fundamentally different way of thinking than Western society. The idea is that we are one with nature and everything else because of an intrinsic quality we all have (some call it energy, others have a more spiritual understanding of it). Each of us partakes in the happening of each other by perceiving each other’s value, and hence, validating each other’s worth. I had always been a fan of individualism growing up, but upon deeper investigation, I noticed a lack of introspective evaluation with this focus of thinking. When one is so focused on the individual, it can be hard to see any other forms of thinking as legitimate. Individualism is a breeding ground for a lot of possible intolerance and, in turn, subject to limitations because of the focus on the individual alone. Attempting to impose democracy on other countries is one of many examples of the egocentric nature of individualism that can lead to intolerance. Although the places where I’ve lived and visited fall short in application, the concepts of Eastern philosophy are actually concepts of individualism. That each individual plays a role in the universe because he/she is a part of this universe, that fate is really just uncovering that role which will manifest in harmony when everyone executes his/her role properly, are ways to conceptualize individualism while grounding the human experience in coexistence. In the States, coexistence is something I hear of often, but always as a tool or a mechanism, whereas in Asia it is a representation of the way things are. As I mentioned before, Eastern society doesn’t apply this concept as a way of conceptualizing individualism. But I believe that understanding the way each and every one of us affects the lives of others simply by being, and the randomness of events in our lives as arranged in a way that unfolds perfectly by virtue of being as they are, will allow us to fully accept what is, shifting our focus inwards on our true selves to discover what it is we truly desire as individuals. CI

opinion

THE RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY

by Julio Sharp-Wasserman Staff Writer In sporting the historical “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, Tea Partiers, in cooperation with the Ron Paul movement, aim to appear passionately patriotic. They mean to suggest, by evoking the memory of colonial resistance to tyrannical government, , that the abuses of the Obama administration are analogous to those of King George III and thus anti-American in some sense. But this slogan, in light of the fact that these movements arose in reaction to what they perceive as various specifically economic encroachments by the state, also seems to hint at a particular type of defense of the right to private property--one that is negative in form and, in my opinion, empty in content. Because it is empty in content, it is a defense of private property that a pro-property rights movement should be careful not to imply or expressly articulate. This argument, as we will discuss, amounts to “you can’t have it because it’s mine”. While private property is an invaluable institution to a free society, not all arguments in favor of the institution are equally good. Private property, an institution that can only be said to be respected when a significant degree of economic freedom is permitted, is worth defending with arguments that both correctly identify the virtues of the institution and avoid vague absolutist declarations regarding the legitimacy of limits placed upon its reign. To achieve both of these things it is necessary to advocate for individual economic freedom in a manner that emphasizes the ways in which it enables crucial functions of the individual life and benefits society generally. It is better to give arguments that enumerate the positive qualities of a society in which property is owned privately, than to emphasize the intrinsic importance of particular individuals’ entitlements to particular things. As I discussed in last issue’s article about the problematic nature of the libertarian response to global warming, there is an influential strain in modern right-of-center thinking and activism property that is called “natural rights libertarianism” that is responsible for articulating this negative strain of property rights advocacy. Let me summarize this position by restating the description I gave in last week’s article. According to modern libertarian natural rights philosophy, as developed by philosophers such as Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, and Murray Rothbard, there are two fundamental natural rights: a right to control one’s body and a right to one’s private property. In Locke’s words, one can use one’s body to “mix one’s labor” with some unowned piece of nature, and thus acquire this thing for one’s self, almost as it if were an

extension of one’s body. As Nozick argues in his discussion of what he calls “historical justice”, once one has acquired some piece of the world for one’s self, he can voluntarily gift or exchange it away, and so can the person who receives it, creating a chain of just property holdings beginning with the original acquisition and leading up to the last person who receives a piece of property in some type of voluntary transaction.

While private property is an invaluable institution to a free society, not all arguments in favor of the institution are equally good.

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With this line of thinking, the only injustice that calls for coercion from the state to punish perpetrators or compensate victims, is when this sacred chain of property acquisition is violently broken, by “[physical] force or fraud”, against some legitimate property holder. We are only justified in interfering with someone’s right to their body or property if they use them to damage another person’s body or property, damage in the latter case being a matter of harming the physical integrity of or stealing owned material things.State actions such as compelling citizens to purchase health insurance, according to this philosophy, are unjust because they abridge our economic freedom for some purpose other than redressing the violation of someone’s natural rights. The money the government compels me to pay to insurance providers or the business capital that I am compelled to sacrifice for the purpose of paying licensing fees or meeting wage requirements, is justly acquired property that can not justly be taken from me by the state. This money is, as a matter of moral fact and not simply of who happens to be in possession of it, “mine.” What I happen to be doing

opinion

with the property, within the limitation imposed by the natural rights of others, or whether my owning the property benefits me or society generally, or at least not enough to demand any attention from the state. All that matters is that it is mine and that for this reason no one else can use it unless I say so. There are many good objections to this philosophy, including the fact that, there are in the real world few, if any, immaculate chains of property transfers through purely voluntary exchanges, rarely or never such thing as a legitimate property holding; this is true, among many other reasons, because most modern nation states were founded on conquest, and the large-scale violence and theft that this entails. But instead of elaborating that objection, I want to make another argument, regarding what I would call the hollowness of the natural rights argument. The natural rights advocate defends an impenetrable ethical shell around private property without ever justifying the thing around which this shell is constructed, leaving a vacant core in his argument. Why should anyone want to own private property or to live in a society which has it? Why do we make claims to material things at all, and why do we become indignant when someone interrupts our continuous, long-term possession of them? Is this just an irrational or destructive fetish? This seems like the same thing asking what exactly the point is of economic freedom, a question not really answered thoughtfully by natural rights advocates. To clarify, a private property right is an exclusive entitlement to own a thing, and to use it according to one’s own wishes, as long as one doesn’t violate the private property rights of others. (In my opinion, a private property right can still deserve the name without these entitlements being absolute, a point I will revisit shortly.) Private property isn’t necessarily held by a single individual, but it is held by whoever holds it with an accompanying right to exclude whoever does not hold the thing from using it. By contrast, if something is common property, this means that everyone has an equal right to use everything designated as common, but that no one has an exclusive right to use it . Resources are used by each for various individual purposes, but in a way that permits the enjoyment of those resources by everybody, a qualification that implies temporary or periodic usage by each individual. Why not, entirely voluntarily, with no state requirement or otherwise coercive influence to do so, and thus without violation of even strict libertarian property rights, hold everything in common? Couldn’t we, without violating natural rights philosophy, so long as everyone involved agrees to do so, squat in a different home every day, and treat every inch of the material world as a pasture open to all, used by everyone and possessed and taken responsibility for by no individual in particular for an extended period of time? All of society would be a pub-

lic park, and the responsibility of government would be nothing more than to enable its continued enjoyment by all people equally. As the political philosopher Jeremy Waldron asks, what if you stumbled upon a society—and such societies have existed—in which it had never occurred to anyone to, in the words of John Locke, claim something for himself that he had “mixed his labor with.” Everything is held in common in this way, and possession is not a concept in anyone’s vocabulary. This society, Waldron imagines, has a council meeting, and you, a libertarian consultant from Private-Property Land, have to convince the council that people should start owning things on a private basis. Any good argument for private property would be one that you could make convincingly at this meeting. The natural rights argument is literally useless in this hypothetical context, because there are no existing property rights to defend. So what arguments could one offer? A likely difference between an environment of common and one of private ownership, is that it is more difficult for individuals in an atmosphere of common ownership to develop a sense of commitment to the maintenance of particular material things through sustained possession and continuous use of them. Such sustained commitment to material things is made possible only in an environment of predictable, consistent freedom from state or other interference with private holdings. Such freedom makes possible, among other things, the disciplined pursuit of particular chosen life goals and the autonomy and dignity that this entails. The value of private property in this respect was made concrete for me while working at a union and legal organization for New York City street vendors, and observing the difference that a little bit of property means to someone who is threatened with the danger of propertylessness. The difference between being able to own and operate a food cart or food truck in peace and on a regular basis, and being prohibited from doing or frustrated by egregious police harassment, means for people on the bottom of the economic ladder the difference between a life of relative independence and structure and a disordered existence as a homeless person or a life of total dependence on the state dole. An important purpose of government is to abstain from placing unnecessary barriers to private ownership, and, I believe, to enact moderate policies of wealth distribution that as a practical matter can be demonstrated to have the effect of facilitating the economic self-sufficiency of individual citizens. Even if there is no such thing as absolute natural right to never have one’s property interfered, the dignity of owning private property, particularly for those for whom ownership marks a short step above propertylessness, is important enough to be

opinion worthy of political attention. To restate and clarify, by attention I mean both negative attention—that is, not interfering with economic activity and more generally ensuring the security of property rights—and active attention, in the form of positive state assistance, and these two forms of attention in a wise and cautious balance. A libertarian however, who by the demands of doctrines in concerned single-mindedly and to an absolutist extent with the legitimacy of particular individuals’ titles to particular things, can acknowledge only the value of the negative measures mentioned, if he bothers, as is unnecessary for him to do from a doctrinal point of view, to venture at all into defending private property as an institution in a positive way. To return to the alternative of common property, some leftists, following in the tradition of, among others, the communitarian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, romanticize the pre-modern life of the commune, on which there is no private property. From what I have come to understand from stories from family members and friends who have worked on Israeli Kibutzim or other forms of communes, such an experience can be fulfilling in many ways, but one thing it does not provide to its participants is individual autonomy self-sufficiency, or often privacy. A society structured entirely along these lines, with no alternative life possible outside the commune, would not be the type of place to permit a Bill of Rights or to give rise to the American slogan “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” understood, as it must be, in an individualistic way, and necessarily associated in practice with some significant degree of economic freedom. Another important virtue of economic freedom is one that has its first acknowledgment, to my knowledge, in Montesqieu, and which was re-articulated in the post-war Conser-

vative classic, Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.” This is that the free exchange of goods and services under a system of rules safeguarding property rights, and the complex division of labor that this tends to require, facilitates peaceful cooperation among individuals who otherwise would be prone to mutual distrust or to conflict. In a complex modern capitalist economy, people of different religions, races, national origins, and languages exchange goods peacefully without caring about the differences among themselves.. This is far from perfect utopian harmony, but it is a major achievement of commerce that it assists in, the elevation of society above the uglier human realities of barbarism and war. And Without private property, obviously, commerce cannot happen to any measurable degree. In short, it is better to argue for private property by identifying its virtues than by stubbornly defending property titles as something sacred in themselves, as do some people on the right end of the political spectrum. Something noticeable, though, about these two examples of positive defenses of property rights that I have offered, is that they do not imply any kind of absolutism with regard to the right to private property. They merely state that it has some important positive qualities as an institution. I believe that private property is in balance a good institution and better than any alternative, especially in the context of modern complex economy. But I would not bother to argue that it is perfect, and certainly would not defend it in,a dogmatic way denying the legitimacy of all social services and almost all regulations. And neither should anybody who really cares about economic freedom and understands why and to what extent it is valuable. CI

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