Summer 2014 • Vol. 9, No. 2

Addresses various claims of Lincoln-bashing libertarians and conservatives; presents crucial and oft-ignored facts about Lincoln, about the Founders he revered, about the state of the Union during his time, and about the Civil War; and provides the context necessary to judge Lincoln and his actions objectively.

Zeros in on the nature and importance of purpose in good living, discusses how to organize and prioritize your values and goals with respect to their relative importance to your life and happiness, and offers tips and standing orders for making your life the best it can be.

Discusses the essential purpose of the Constitution, the crucial role of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence in understanding that purpose, and related matters.

In terms of politics, the fundamental issue is not whether and in what ways individuals are willing to voluntarily share their wealth. The fundamental issue is whether individuals have a moral right to decide how to use their wealth. Real (classical) liberals hold that individuals have such a right; modern (leftist) “liberals” hold that individuals have no such right.

The Obama administration is “putting off its decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, likely until after the November elections,” the Associated Press reports, illustrating how leftist political maneuvering continues to delay this vital project. The developers have a moral right to use their minds, to develop technologies, and to offer their products in the marketplace.

"Deeply held" irrational beliefs are still irrational, whether those beliefs call for handling dangerous snakes or burning “witches” or flying airplanes into buildings. Integrity does not consist in loyalty to irrational principles or beliefs; it consists in loyalty to rational principles—principles based in observation and logic and in service of human life.

Especially encouraging is that George Will attempts to come to grips with the question of why individuals have rights. As Craig Biddle and Stephen Bourque write in response to an earlier article by Will in which he wrestles with the issue of rights, “rights are recognitions of certain factual requirements of human life and prosperity on earth.”

The fundamental problem is that the government is unlawfully maintaining possession of the lands in question and failing to recognize legitimate property rights over those lands. Because the federal government “owns” the wilderness lands in question, in practice no one truly owns them; their control is at the mercy of political factions.

As a chapter of the NAACP once concluded, “the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today.” The same holds for the related problems usually associated with high-crime neighborhoods, including high rates of absentee fathers, rampant drug abuse, gang violence, and the like.

Pharmacist Philip Hall is suing Walgreens, alleging that the company violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act when it fired him for refusing, on religious grounds, to sell the birth-control drug Plan B. But Walgreens is a pharmacy; the notion that it should be forbidden to require its employees who are hired to sell pharmaceuticals to actually sell pharmaceuticals is absurd.

Government funds its schools by forcibly confiscating wealth from individuals, in violation of their moral right to decide for themselves how to use their money. An inevitable consequence is that government seizes wealth from many people who do not benefit from or approve of the government schools they are forced to finance.

Inequality of resources per se is neither good nor bad. When government protects people’s rights and some people earn more wealth than others do by their own productive effort, the outcome is just. When government (or a criminal) violates people’s rights, the outcome (not to mention the act) is unjust—whether the result is more inequality or less.

Adults have a moral right to spend their money as they see fit, and gambling companies have a moral right to offer their services as they see fit. So long as those gambling or offering gambling services do not violate rights, government has no moral right to interfere.

The solution consistent with individual rights is neither to force students to pledge allegiance to a nation “under God” nor to forbid them to do so. Rather, the solution is to get government out of education altogether and leave private schools to establish their own policies on such matters.

Whereas in the United States owners of resources have a strong incentive to contract with frackers—development of Eagle Ford shale in Texas generated some $2.4 billion in leases in 2010 alone—European politicians and bureaucrats, who control the resources in question there, have little to no incentive (and likely negative incentive) to enable fracking.

Rather than humbly seek God’s guidance through prayer, we should proudly uphold the value of reason as our only means of achieving rational guidance in politics or any other area of life. And we should demand that our political leaders go, not by faith, feelings, or popular opinion, but by rational, rights-respecting principles.

Some things are seemingly so mundane, and we use them so routinely, that we scarcely notice how important they are to our lives. Take, for example, common kitchen supplies. Pause for a moment to consider how businesses developed four essential products—and how important those products are to our daily food preparation.

Minimum wage laws are immoral because, like all government price controls, they violate the moral rights of individuals to act on their own judgment for their own purposes. In order to live and flourish, people need to think rationally, make judgments about what is and is not best for their lives, and act accordingly.

The fundamental debate is not whether the costs of prohibiting marijuana outweigh the benefits. The fundamental debate is whether consenting adults have a right to decide what to do with their own bodies and property, and whether government has a right to violate individual rights in the name of “public health” (or anything else).

Rowe is right that “happiness does not come from a job,” in the sense that getting an idealized job will not automatically make you happy. But, in a deeper sense, happiness does come from a job, in that working in a productive career you love is a fundamental source of joy in life. Rowe’s own approach to work demonstrates this.

Rights are objective (fact-based) principles, so the Bill of Rights is properly understood to protect man’s objective rights. Only a legal theory based on objective meaning can explain, for example, why laws forbidding blasphemy violated rights two centuries ago and why laws restricting political speech violate rights today.

Although it is not surprising that a thug such as Putin would want forcibly to silence speech he opposes, it may surprise some that a revered “gentle” Christian such as Graham seeks to do so too. However, Graham’s support for censorship is consistent with the tenets of his religion.

Because human beings survive fundamentally by using their reasoning minds to produce values, they need the freedom to act in accordance with their judgment; therefore they need a government that protects them from the only thing that can stop them from acting on their judgment: initiatory force.

Was American evangelist Franklin Graham an outlier when, because of this Christian faith, he endorsed the Russian government’s censorship of speech (in his case speech pertaining to homosexuality)? Unfortunately, no. Russia has, under Putin, vastly expanded government censorship of speech—and more American Christians have endorsed Russia’s censorship.

Daniel Wahl reviews Seven Pleasures, by Willard Spiegelman.

Daniel Wahl reviews So Good They Can't Ignore You, by Cal Newport.