Skepticblog

Liberty and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

This is the third essay in a series on the relationship between rules, freedom, and prosperity.
Read part 1 on Skepticblog.org and part 2 over at True/Slant.

I believe that the following commentary on the necessity of law and order has some bearing on what is unfolding in Arizona—when the rules are not clearly written or consistently enforced, people will take the law into their own hands because society cannot run smoothly without law and order.

In Part 3 in my essay series on the relationship between rules, freedom, and prosperity, I want to turn to one of my favorite films, John Ford’s 1962 classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in which a clash of moralities unfolds in the wild-west frontier town of Shinbone, Arizona. There in the dusty streets and ramshackle buildings two self-contained and self-consistent moral codes come into conflict. One moral code is the Cowboy Ethic, where trust is established through courage, loyalty, and personal allegiance to friends and family, and where disputes are settled and justice is served between individuals who have taken the law into their own hands. The other moral code is the Law Ethic, where trust is established through the transparent and mutually-agreed upon rule of law, and where disputes are settled and justice is served between all members of the society who, by virtue of living there, have tacitly agreed to obey the rules. Only one of these moral codes can prevail. Continue reading…

image via Wikipedia

As the SEC prepares its case against Goldman Sachs for allegedly intentionally defrauding the public with toxic securities that it created, sold, then bet against, I want to reflect for a moment on the need for rules in a free market society. Critics of capitalism believe that we libertarians want an essentially lawless society in which people are free to do whatever they want. That may be true for some libertarians, but I have come to believe through experience and science that free markets operate best within a system of clearly defined and strictly enforced rules and laws. Within the system itself markets should be as free as possible and people should be free to trade with whomever they want without interference from the state (think Chinese citizens trading ideas about democracy with each other and outsiders), but good rules make good capitalists.

Consider a sports analogy: In 1982, three other men and I founded the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental bicycle Race Across America (RAAM) from L.A. to New York, sponsored by Budweiser and televised on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. The rules were simple: each cyclist takes the same route, has a support vehicle and crew that follows behind providing food, drink, and equipment, and no drafting behind or hanging onto a vehicle is allowed. The race started on the Santa Monica Pier in California. The first cyclist to reach the Empire State Building in New York City would be declared the winner. That was the entire set of rules, which we didn’t even bother to write down. Continue reading…

Michael Moore is the Leni Riefenstahl of our time. Or, perhaps he would be better characterized as a Bizzaro World Leni Riefenstahl, because while she propped up with propaganda the political powers of her time, Moore uses the same techniques to bring down the powers of our time, be it GM (Roger and Me), the gun lobby (Bowling for Columbine), the government (Fahrenheit 911), the health care industry (Sicko), or free enterprise (Capitalism: A Love Story).

In this latest installment in his continuing series of what’s wrong with America, Michael Moore takes aim at his biggest target to date, and the result is a disaster. The documentary is not nearly as funny as his previous films, the music selections seem contrived and flat, and the edits and transitions are clumsy, wooden, and not nearly as effective as what we’ve come to expect from the premiere documentarian (Ken Burns notwithstanding) of our time. And, most importantly, the film’s central thesis is so bad that it’s not even wrong. Continue reading…

So many of you have taken the time to respond to my blogs thoughtfully that I feel I should comment in kind. In looking through the many comments, however, I see that most of what I would say has already been said by people who responded to my critics. Nevertheless…

First of all, why is it okay to mix science and religion (with atheists eagerly do in debunking religious claims) but not okay to mix science and politics/economics? Why is it okay for liberal atheists to stick it to religious believers and twist the knife slowly, but when it comes to getting your own (political/economic) beliefs challenged, that’s off limits — NOMA (nonoverlapping magisterial) for science and politics? I don’t see how they are different in principle. Skeptic is a science magazine, not an “atheist” magazine; nevertheless, we routinely deal with religious claims and no one ever complains about that. The closest we have come to political/economic issues is environmentalism (Vol. 9, No. 2 — sold out), overpopulation (Vol. 5, No. 1), and global warming Vol. 14, No. 1). For all three we published several articles; in Vol. 14, No. 1, for example, we published articles both skeptical of global warming and accepting of global warming. So I don’t see what would be wrong with publishing articles pro, con, and neutral on political and economic claims. Continue reading…