Speak for Yourself: Letters to the Editor
“Death of the Grown-Up”
TNI continues to be great and only get better. Every month there are things I'd like to write about, but I just don't get the time to get around to it.
Diana West’s “Death of the Grown-Up” line of analysis (May) hits home on so many levels and dovetails with many of my recent observations of the American character from my vantage point in solidly middle-class suburban Utah. To point out two:
* In November of 2007, a school voucher initiative here in Utah was soundly defeated at the polls. I campaigned for it vocally among my circle of neighbors, associates, and co-workers, and tried to get a feel for why people were against it, as many to whom I spoke were. Their arguments on the surface didn’t make sense: Most were just mouthing undigested slogans (to use a perfect Randian phrase!) from the latest ad they’d heard from the teachers’ unions. As I dug deeper in conversations with people, I began to realize (with mounting horror) that the real reason they were against vouchers was that they simply didn’t want the responsibility of deciding how their children would be educated. Most had no idea how they would go about making such a big decision and were frightened of it. What if they chose wrong? By sending their kids to public schools, allowing the government to take the decision out of their hands, they have done all that could be expected of them. Of course, they have their various gripes about the public schools, but there’s nothing more comfortable than being able to criticize the decisions of others while not being held responsible for coming up with an alternative. I was struck by this simple unwillingness to accept this grown-up responsibility and the willingness with which they would seize on any excuse to get out of it.
* My neighbors and co-workers spend hundreds of dollars a month on cell phones, internet service, and cable television. Most own ATVs, boats, vacation homes, or timeshares which they use regularly, spending additional thousands of dollars a year. Yet these same people find spending any money at all on healthcare—even a $50 co-pay for a doctor visit or a $100/month prescription (which is unusually expensive)—an intolerable outrage against which the full might of the federal government must be deployed. They also feel they shouldn’t have to put away money for their children’s college education and feel that the amount they pay for their own student loans is a horrible burden. I found this attitude bewildering until I heard Ms. West’s phrase “the death of the grown-up.” Of course: Mom and dad (or the government) are supposed to pay for all that boring stuff like medicine and school, so that the adolescent’s allowance can be spent on the fun stuff like iPhones and ATV’s.
Thus it is that the government acquires vast powers through the infantilization of the citizenry.
Chris Brown
North Ogden, Utah
Not in His World, Either
I continue to cherish the arrival of each month’s TNI. Your June “Soliloquy,” “Not in My World,” should be read by everyone, especially by those who are quick to either praise (or purloin) the “sacrifices” made by our soldiers and other heroes. Your “sense of life”—shared by tens of millions of Americans—is Objectivism’s greatest unidentified (until now) weapon of mass instruction.
Michael D. Harvey
Chairman, Family Wealth Management, L.L.C.
Winfield, Kansas
It’s Not That Open
I read Roger Donway’s (June) article “Planning for Liberty” with incredulity. I am glad this was published, however, because it brings up the interesting question of how best to make philosophical progress.
As an “open-system” advocate of Objectivism, I agree that there are many things Objectivists will disagree about, but the source and validation of man’s rights is not one of them. The source of rights is not self-ownership, a la David Boaz, or maximum benefit, as Roger argues. It is the metaphysical requirements of man’s life as a man. I cannot believe that five decades after “The Objectivist Ethics,” “Man’s Rights,” and “What is Capitalism?” that this is really a point of contention among Objectivists.
The notion of Objectivism as an open system is important, but standards of argument still apply and this article fails miserably at its task. Why? Because it purports to overturn one of the main pillars of the Objectivist system, the source of rights, with a vague Burkean nod to acquiescence to vagaries of social construction that exist at any particular point in time. Man’s rights exist even if they are not politically realized in any given era.
This brings me to Objectivism as an open system. It has long troubled me that open system has come to mean that vast swaths of Rand’s carefully constructed arguments are open to casual bull-session review. The purpose of an open system is to apply Objectivist methodology to questions where there is new data, such as philosophy of history or the process of thought and epistemology in light of modern neuroscience. Any other analysis where Objectivist arguments are supposedly found wanting should be accompanied by standards of argument that are at least as exacting as Ayn Rand’s. That barrier is very high indeed.
This should not squelch debate, but focus it. Of course, we should not accept arguments on authority or at face value but seek to validate them. However, maturity as a movement will mean that Objectivism’s professional advocates understand the system and why it is critical to establish the principle of an objective basis for rights based on man’s requirements for life.
James Heaps-Nelson
Chandler, Arizona