How to disagree and still be friends

How to disagree and still be friends

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

Millions of people love Apple computers and wouldn't be caught using a PC. By contrast, there are many millions of PC users who feel the same way about Apple computers. Many men like double-breasted suits, but I wouldn't be caught dead in one. Some people swear by Cadillac cars, but my favorite is Mercedes-Benz.

Despite these strongly held preferences, there's no conflict. We never see Apple computer lovers picketing firms that serve PC lovers. Mercedes-Benz lovers don't battle Cadillac lovers. In free markets, people with strong differences in preferences get along and often are good friends. The reason is simple. If you like double-breasted suits and I like single-breasted suits, we get what we want.

Contrast the harmony that emerges when there's market allocation with the discord when there's government allocation. For example, some parents want their children to say a morning prayer in school. Other parents are offended by that idea. Both parents have a right to their tastes, but these parental differences have given rise to conflict.

Why is there conflict? The answer is simple. Schools are run by government. Thus, there are going to be either prayers in school or no prayers in school. That means parents who want their children to say prayers in school will have to enter into conflict with parents who do not want prayers in school. The stakes are high. If one parent wins, it comes at the expense of another parent. The losing parents have their preferences ignored. Or they must send their children to a private school that has morning prayers and pay that school's tuition plus property taxes to support a public school for which they have little use.

The liberty-oriented solution to the school prayer issue is simple. We should acknowledge the fact that though there is public financing of primary and secondary education, it doesn't follow that there should be public production of education. Just as there is public financing of M1 Abrams main battle tanks and F/A-18 fighter jets, it in no way follows that there should be government production of those weapons. They are produced privately. There's no government tank and fighter jet factory.

Free market allocation is conflict reducing, whereas government allocation enhances the potential for conflict.

But I'm all too afraid that most Americans want to be able to impose their preferences on others. Their vision doesn't differ from one that says, 'I don't want my children to say morning prayers, and I'm going to force you to live by my preferences.' The issue of prayers in school is just a minor example of people's taste for tyranny.

Think of the conflict that would arise if the government decreed that factories will produce either double breasted or single-breasted suits or that there will be either Cadillacs or Mercedes-Benzes built or that there will be either Apple computers or PCs built. Can you imagine how otherwise- peaceable people would be forced into conflict with one another? Government allocation is mostly a zero-sum game, in which one person's win necessarily means another person's loss. The great ignored and overlooked feature of market allocation is that it is what game theorists call a positive-sum game. 

In positive sum games, you get what you want, say an Apple computer, and I get what I want -- a PC, in this case. My win does not come at your expense, and your win doesn't come at my expense. And just as importantly, we can be friends.

Sheer lunacy on campus

Sheer lunacy on campus

Parents, taxpayers and donors have little idea of the levels of lunacy, evil and lawlessness that have become features of many of today’s institutions of higher learning. Parents, taxpayers and donors who ignore or are too lazy to find out what goes on in the name of higher education are nearly as complicit as the professors and administrators who promote or sanction the lunacy, evil and lawlessness.

As for the term “institutions of higher learning,” we might start asking: Higher than what? Let’s look at a tiny sample of academic lunacy.

During a campus debate, Purdue University professor David Sanders argued that a logical extension of pro-lifers’ belief that fetuses are human beings is that pictures of “a butt-naked body of a child” are child pornography.

Clemson University’s chief diversity officer, Lee Gill, who’s paid $185,000 a year to promote inclusion, provided a lesson claiming that to expect certain people to be on time is racist.

To reduce angst among snowflakes in its student body, the University of California, Hastings College of the Law has added a “Chill Zone.” The Chill Zone, located in its library, has, just as most nursery schools have, mats for naps and beanbag chairs. The University of Michigan Law School helped its students whether their Trump derangement syndrome – a condition resulting from Donald Trump’s election – by enlisting the services of an “embedded psychologist” in a room full of bubbles and play dough.

Today’s academic climate might be described as a mixture of infantilism, kindergarten and totalitarianism. The radicals, draft dodgers and hippies of the 1960s who are now college administrators and professors are responsible for today’s academic climate.

The infantilism should not be tolerated, but more important for the future of our nation are the totalitarianism and the hate-America lessons being taught at many of the colleges.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York University provost Ulrich Baer argued: “The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.”

That’s a vision that is increasingly being adopted on college campuses, and it’s leaking down to our primary and secondary levels of education.

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

Communism the Leftist Celebrate

Communism the Leftist Celebrate

May Day celebrations were held all across the fruited plain, with leftist radicals and unionists worshipping the ideals of communism. Communism is an ideology calling for government control over our lives. It was created by Karl Marx, who – along with his collaborator, Friedrich Engels – wrote a pamphlet called “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In 1867, Marx wrote the first volume of “Das Kapital.” The second and third volumes were published posthumously, edited by Engels. Few people who call themselves Marxists have ever even bothered to read “Das Kapital.” If one did read it, he would see that people who call themselves Marxists have little in common with Marx.

For those who see Marx as their hero, there are a few historical tidbits they might find interesting. Nathaniel Weyl, himself a former communist, dug them up for his 1979 book, “Karl Marx: Racist.” For example, Marx didn’t think much of Mexicans. When the United States annexed California after the Mexican War, Marx sarcastically asked, “Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?” Engels shared Marx’s contempt for Mexicans, explaining: “In America we have witnessed the conquest of Mexico and have rejoiced at it. It is to the interest of its own development that Mexico will be placed under the tutelage of the United States.”

Marx had a racial vision that might be interesting to his modern-day black supporters. In a letter to Engels, in reference to his socialist political competitor Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx wrote: “It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses’ exodus from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a n-----. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. The obtrusiveness of the fellow is also n----- -like.” Engels shared Marx’s racial philosophy.

In 1887, Paul Lafargue, who was Marx’s son-in-law, was a candidate for a council seat in a Paris district that contained a zoo. Engels claimed that Lafargue had “one-eighth or onetwelfth n----- blood.” In a letter to Lafargue’s wife, Engels wrote, “Being in his quality as a n-----, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district.”

Marx was also an anti-Semite, as seen in his essay titled “On the Jewish Question,” which was published in 1844. Marx asked: “What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering.

What is his worldly God? Money. ... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. ... The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. ... The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.”

Despite the fact that in the 20th century alone communism was responsible for more than 100 million murders (http://tinyurl.com/zafgs5p), much of the support for communism and socialism is among intellectuals.

The reason they do not condemn the barbarism of communism is understandable. Professor Richard Pipes explains: “Intellectuals, by the very nature of their professions, grant enormous attention to words and ideas. And they are attracted by socialist ideas. They find that the ideas of communism are praiseworthy and attractive; that, to them, is more important than the practice of communism. Now, Nazi ideals, on the other hand, were pure barbarism; nothing could be said in favor of them.” That means leftists around the world will continue to celebrate the ideas of communism.

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