Ayn Rand

When I see condemnation of the journalistic standards of “The Times of India” filling my newsfeed, a question posed by Gail Wynand whose media empire spread like bubonic plague comes back to me: “Do you think it took no talent to create the Banner?”  Gail Wynand, the publisher of the New York Banner owned twenty-two newspapers, seven magazines, three news services and two newsreels. He burnt prodigious energy and will power to achieve perfection in serving every perverse need of his ultimate boss-the imbecile on the street who consumes news, gossip and lurid stories like drugs. It took spectacular talent for Wynand to achieve extraordinary perfection in the ordinary.

One of the most powerful scenes in “The Fountainhead” is when several newspapers cornered Gail Wynand, the publisher of New York Banner, to censure him for debasing public tastes. Gail Wynand replied in his characteristic manner: “You give them what they profess to like in public. I give them what they really like. It is not my function, to help people preserve a self-respect they haven’t got. Honesty is the best policy, gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to believe.”

In the New York Banner’s first public campaign, they appealed to the charitable sentiments of the public by displaying pictures of a pretty girl waiting for her illegitimate child, and a starving scientist side by side. The campaign raised one thousand and seventy-seven dollars for the unwed mother when the young scientist had to be content with nine dollars and forty-five cents. At the end of the campaign, Gail Wynand had decided how the Banner deserves to be run.

The Banner pandered to the envy and ignorance of the masses. The Banner strained everything from truth and taste to credibility, but not the intelligence of the reader. The pedestrian text of The Banner shot through the brains of readers. The Banner applied a philosophy that rules all newspapers on earth in as ruthlessly consistent and explicit a manner as possible: “When there’s no news, make it. News is that which will create the greatest excitement among the greatest number. The thing that will knock them silly. The sillier the better, provided there’s enough of them.” Gail Wynand once brought a man to his office whose plain face can in no way be differentiated. When Wynand told his staff, “When in doubt about your work, remembers that man’s face. You’re writing for him.” an astonished young editor replied, “But, Mr. Wynand, one can’t remember his face.” “That’s the point,” replied Wynand.

When he was asked to explain his policy, Gail Wynand said: “Men differ in their virtues, if any but they are alike in their vices. I am serving that which exists on this earth in greatest quantity. I am representing the majority–surely an act of virtue?” Gail Wynand could conceptualize and leverage the instinctively shrewd, if often unsophisticated wisdom of newspaper barons: “If you make people perform a noble duty, it bores them. If you make them indulge themselves, it shames them. But combine the two–and you’ve got them. Sex first. Tears second. Make them itch and make them cry—and you’ve got them.”

There was no day in Wynand’s adult life in which he had slept more four hours. He was no different from a slave who worked never taking anything in return save his rent and meals, when his best reporters lived in luxurious hotels. He never needed a second explanation. He never needed to read his brilliant pieces over again. After his first week in school, he walked out saying: “Should I swill everything down ten times? I know all that.” In Hell’s kitchen where he was born, no one read books, but Wynand read everything he could get his hands on. His reading branched out chaotically, in all directions. He wanted to know everything about everything. In every decision that people called crazy, he has always had the final laugh. Gail Wynand could easily grant his fellow men a lot many things they couldn’t have granted him, but respect was not one among them.

Like many of us who are drunk on drugs, whiskey, religion, literature or even philosophy, Gail Wynand was drunk on the desire to power, the only thing he had ever wanted. In the end, when Dominique Wynand says “Gail, what a great journalist you could have been.” after knowing that Gail Wynand had written much of the copy himself, many of us feel sorry for a could-have-been. No real world example illustrates the brutal honesty of Gail Wynand better than the commercial success of Times of India, the English language newspaper with the widest readership on earth, and the failure of the fake intellectuality and compassion of bleeding heart journalism.

Gail Wynand of Wynand Papers has always been my fictional hero, and always will be. The most accurate expression of a worldview I can relate to is evident when Gail speaks his mind: “I’ve never owned anything. I’ve never wanted anything. I’ve never taken much from the world. I haven’t wanted much. I’ve never really wanted anything. I’ve never known how to say ’mine’ about anything. You don’t love me. You wish to grant me nothing. I accept it and I want you to marry me. It is not the object that matters, it’s the desire. Not you, but I. The ability to desire like that.” It is a vague feeling of helplessness, a painful longing deep inside our minds that is rarely articulated in a way it ought to be. It is a complex emotional state only a master of the art can express with as much clarity.

Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon

No fiction work has ever had an effect on me that even begins to compare with that of Ayn Rand’s masterpiece, “The Fountainhead”. And one of the most fascinating stories in the history of ideas will always be that of a 21 year old Russian migrant who was yet to achieve mastery of English language later going on to become the most influential thinker in the libertarian movement.

While she evoked more passionate devotion than any libertarian thinker, she also evoked intense hatred. The reasons are not far to seek. Never did I read a writer who was as good at unmasking the ugly face of the Apostle’s of public welfare. Ayn Rand did not hesitate to say that a moral cannibal who rejects freedom should be given an arrowhead and bearskin, not a university chair of economics. In a world where humility and tolerance are considered primary virtues, Ayn Rand was the epitome of arrogance. But, it is hard to deny that hers was a voice that was heard when that of other libertarians were all but lost in the “inarticulate sounds of panic”. The great economist Ludwig Von Mises said to her in a letter praising “Atlas Shrugged”: “You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it still is the truth that had to be said in this age of the Welfare State.” Mises called her the “most courageous man in the United States”. When she heard this from Henry Hazlitt, she asked: “Oh, did he say man?”.

February 2^{nd, 2012} was her 107^th Birthday.

I came across Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” in a road side book stall in a phase when I was beginning to read Mises, Bastiat and Rothbard. One day, while travelling, I decided to read her work all the way to the end. The book radically changed my perspective on politics and economics. Ayn Rand never doubted whether socialism and slavery are any different. If you think that this is hyperbole, consider the comment of Ralph Weber, a Facebook friend of mine: “Where I live, we used to have free healthcare, free food, free education, free clothing, free shelter and it seemed to work pretty well for a while. It existed prior to 1861. It was called slavery.”

I went on to read her other works too. I loved “The Fountainhead”. Soon, the virtue of selfishness became way too obvious to me. Her philosophy started making near perfect sense. Yet, I had many disagreements in the area of psychology which became clear when I read Nathaniel Branden’s critique of her philosophy a few months after coming across her works. When Nathaniel Branden said in a speech: “Howard Roark gives out an unrealistic picture of human psychology.” he was mildly pointing to that reality.

Still, much of her philosophy sounded very true, very much obvious. How could this be wrong? I did not find clear answers to it till I read Michael Huemer’s essay and Scott Ryan’s “Objectivism and The Corruption of Rationality”. Though I still agree to many of her controversial positions, I have plenty of disagreements. So, where do I disagree?

It is beyond the scope of this article to get into it all my disagreements. Let us take a look at her ethics, which is indicative. I often hear that Rand’s biggest contribution is her ethics. I find a circular argument in her ethical framework which is so glaring that it is surprising that someone can even miss it. She argues that life is the standard of morality. Why? Rand’s answer is that it is because life makes values possible. Why are values good? She answers that the standard of value is life, which is the ultimate end. If life is the ultimate end, why does she have to justify it on the basis that it makes the concept of value possible? Further, she goes on to argue that life should be worth sustaining, which again refutes her notion that life is an end in itself or even an ultimate end. All this is nonsense. I do not think that Selfishness is a virtue, though it often is indeed, a great virtue. Russell Kirk once said that if you are willing to believe that selfishness is a virtue, you will believe anything. Selfishness is hard to sell. It goes against the instincts of the average human being. She accomplished this task by a simply procedure: She defined every act she deemed moral as selfish. Understanding her approach is crucial to understanding her and her philosophy. Her keen mind found rationalizations for her several outlandish positions. She was one of the most brilliant “rationalizers” in the whole of human history. I do not know whether it is a virtue or a vice.

Sadomasochism in Rand

Intelligent objectivists often find it way too obvious that her theory of sex is problematic and runs into obvious difficulties. Yet, sexuality and melodrama in her novels have got the least scholarly attention. We shall look into sexuality and sadomasochism in her fiction in some detail:

The Fountainhead begins with Howard Roark laughing, standing naked at the edge of a cliff. When Dominique looks at Roark’s wet shirt, she thinks about the statues of men she had always loved, and then she wonders how he would look naked. Roark looked at her as if he could read her mind so well. Dominique once told Alvah Scarret that she loves statues of naked men.

Dagny Taggart

In ‘Atlas Shrugged’, when teenaged Dagny asked “Do you suppose I should try to get D’s for a change and become the most popular girl in school?”, Francisco slapped her face hard. “She felt pleasure from the dull, hot pain in her cheek and from the taste of blood in the corner of her mouth. She felt pleasure in what she suddenly grasped about him, about herself and about his motive.” Earlier in the novel when Dagny’s brother Jim asks “You haven’t any pride at all. The way you run when he whistles and wait on him! Why don’t you shine his shoes?” Her answer was: “Because he hasn’t told me to.” She sits at Henry Rearden’s feet, pressing her face to his knees. Rearden holds her hand and kisses her wrist, fingers, and palm. She sobs in his arms, in a way she has never done in her life, burying her face in his knees in final protest.

In “The Fountainhead”, Dominique often tries to exert her power over Howard Roark. When she extends the back of her hand and says: “Kiss my hand, Roark”, he would kneel down and kiss her feet on her ankles. While saying “Kiss my feet”, a woman means that the man should bow down, show some respect and acknowledge his inferiority. Hand-kissing in which the palm is placed downward is often done by a man to his mistress-traditionally initiated by a lady who offers her hand to a man, when she is often of a higher social class, or at least the same.

Ayn Rand wanted to fulfill her own fantasy, and yet let her fictional hero keep his ego intact. Egomaniacal masochists have a difficult row to hoe. She held that he demonstrated his power by admitting that of hers. She felt owned when lying at her feet, he expresses his need for her, and her ownership over him. We see her sitting on the floor at his feet, pressing her head to his knees. She buries her face against his knees. He asks her to light his cigarette, and in turn she asks him to place his hand on her back, and hold it there for a while. He obeys her.

In the 1936 version of “We the Living”, there was a scene in which Leo whips Kira.  Kira wishes that she was lying under a whip in Leo’s hand. When Dominique, a columnist for Wynand Papers tells Alvah Scarret, the editor-in-chief that it would be terrible to have a job she enjoyed and did not want to lose, Alvah asks her why. Dominique replies: “Because I would have to depend on you–you’re a wonderful person, Alvah, but not exactly inspiring and I don’t think it would be beautiful to cringe before a whip in your hand–oh, don’t protest, it would be such a polite little whip.” When Dominique saw Howard Roark working in a granite quarry, she wondered whether they whipped convicts these days and hoped that they did.

Dominique humiliates Peter Keating by submitting to his every need with contemptuous indifference. Peter Keating would burn in humiliation, vowing to never to touch her again, soon to be back on his knees to repeat the process again when the desire comes back. It reminds me of a visual in which a man clasping the bare legs of a lady sitting stone-faced, with weary sadness. When he tries to kiss her ankles, she withdraws her feet contemptuously, and walks away, waking up.

When Peter Keating asks Dominique, Where’s your I?” She asks softly, “Where’s yours, Peter?” In shock and humiliation, he said “It is not true”, his eyes begging her to deny the fact that she had meant just that. She wakes up and stands before him, the erectness of her body judging him, reminding him of the life he had always begged for. Peter Keating gets on his knees, clutching her, his head buried against her legs saying “Dominique, it’s not true–that I never loved you. I love you, I always have, it was not just to show the others–that was not all–I loved you.” Unimpressed by him kissing her backside, she says”It’s said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that’s not true. Self-respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it.”, Peter says in shock: “Dominique, I…I don’t want to talk.” With pity, she bends down to kiss his forehead, the first kiss she had ever granted to him after marriage.

Peter Keating goes through the worst humiliation in his life when he tried to sell Dominique to the newspaper baron Gail Wynand for the Stoneridge contract. After asking “Have you heard about my descriptive style?” Gail Wynand says, “Your wife has a lovely body, Mr. Keating. Her shoulders are too thin, but admirably in scale with the rest of her. Her legs are too long, but that gives her the elegance of line you’ll find in a good yacht. Her breasts are beautiful, don’t you think?”, and then adds, “I grant you I’m behaving abominably. I’m breaking all the rules of charity. It’s extremely cruel to be honest.” Whispering “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Wynand,” Peter Keating stared at the soft, shivering tomato aspic on his salad plate that made him sick to the stomach. A man feels most humiliated when his wife’s dignity is being violated. Keating stood like he has lost a manhood he has never had, only to ask helplessly, “Why are you doing this to me?”

Atlas Shrugged Movie

In “The Husband I Bought”, Henry Stafford kisses Irene’s arms, from the fingertips to the shoulder. Irene makes Stafford listen to him by begging and imploring. He is tender at times, cold and stern at other, ordering her to leave, turning his backside to her. When she falls on her knees and kisses the back of his hands and cries, “Henry, Henry, I cannot live without you! I just cannot!”, he whispers, “Go now!”, and asks, “Will you not say something to me, for the last time?” When she replies, “I loved you, Henry.”, he tells her, “I shall be happy. But there are moments when I wish I would never have met that woman. There is nothing to do. Life is hard, sometimes, Irene.” She answers in humiliation: “Yes, Henry,” and approaches him to fall at his feet, burying her head in his knees, when he says with cold sternness, “Go home, Irene. And never come again.”, she mutters “You … you don’t love me, Henry?” She smiles when he says “There can be nothing between us, now. Can’t you understand it?” as it was too unbelievable to be true.

In “Red Pawn”, when Kareyev falls at Joan’s feet, as if all strength had gone out of him, and whisper: “You won’t go alone. You won’t go alone.” she strokes his head, smiling, kissing his hair. He buries his face in the folds of her dress, clasping her legs, holding her, in a desperate panic of fear that she would vanish from his fingers to disappear forever. He says that he will buy her little satin slippers lined with soft pink feathers and slip them himself on her bare feet.

Humiliation and Submission

As in “Red Pawn” and “The Husband I Bought”, the earlier writing of Rand tells tales of humiliation and submission. In many stories, as it later happened in her own life, women held financial power over their husband, and humiliated him further by extramarital affairs. Humiliation forms an integral part of her writings.

It reminds me of an interesting story of revenge and humiliation I had read as a child in a travelogue. The author narrates the story of a gypsy who made a spicy dish for his girlfriend. He asked her whether she enjoyed the dish. She said “Yes”. His retort leaved her shocked speechless: “I am not surprised. The dish was prepared with your boyfriend’s liver.” She was cheating on him. The humiliation was perfect when she was served a dish made at his expense. The story must be true. Gypsies are that vengeful. I think one of the most ingenious ways to humiliate ones ex-lover is to present a gift at his expense to your new target. “

In “We The Living”, Kira tells Andrei that his bills went to her lover Leo, her voice rising like a whip, lashing him on both sides:  ”All you were to me, you and your great love, and your kisses, and your body, all they meant was only a pack of crisp, white, square, ten-ruble bills with a sickle and hammer printed in the corner! Do you know where those bills went? To a tubercular sanatorium in the Crimea. Do you know what they paid for? For the life of a man I loved long before I ever saw you, for the life of a body that had possessed mine before you ever touched it.”

A similar story of humiliation is in Pierre Louÿs’ 1896 novella “Woman and Puppet.” Don Mateo Díaz falls in love with Conchita Pérez, a low class sixteen year old girl when she promised to sing a little song if he would give her a penny. He tossed a small coin and listened to her song. She said that she was a pure virgin. After he slipped her old mother a few coins, she sat on his lap and kissed him putting her arms around his neck. When he tried to return her kiss, her temper flared up. He felt guilty, and greased the palms of both the mother and daughter. She would take off her clothes and stand naked in his presence. When Don Mateo Díaz promised her mother everything they wanted, Conchita left the place after sending him a note: “You shall never see me again”.

Months later, on a spring day, she appeared in front of him and said that she was willing to be his mistress. One night, when lying on her bed, she tried to take off her innerwear, but she wanted to remain a mozita. Don Mateo Díaz saw her with many other men and felt that she was into this for money. He said that she should give him what he wants or she will never see him again. She said that she will be his lifelong mistress once he sets her up a home. He bought an expensive villa. She was supposed to receive him in the night. When she went there, she said through the bars: “Kiss my hands.” He kissed. “Now kiss the hem of my skirt and the tip of my foot in its slipper.” He did as she requested. “That is good,” she said. “Now you may go.” When she saw the shocked expression on his face, she laughed in a humiliating manner and went on to make love with another young man in his presence in the villa Don Mateo bought for her. She ridiculed him saying that she will stay in the villa with her new lover. The next day, Conchita went to Don Mateo’s house to see whether he had committed suicide. He hadn’t. He slapped her hard again and again till she screamed. After the punishment, she expressed a desire to be his soul mate.

Sexuality in her novels is quite subtle. The symbolism is elegant, exquisite and allusive. It evokes deep emotions only when we read more into it.

Consider the following passage: “She threw the jacket down on the floor. She put her bag down on a table and stood removing her gloves, slowly, as if she wished to prolong the intimacy of performing a routine gesture. She slapped her gloves softly against her palm, a small gesture of finality, like a period at the end of a sentence. She undressed indifferently, as if she were alone in her own bedroom.” The symbolism is all the more evident in a woman throwing her jacket on the floor, removing her gloves slowly, slapping them softly against her palm as a gesture of finality.

Such routine gestures are seen in unsuspecting situations. Women often tap the cane on the other hand before punishing children. I have always wondered why women in places far away and cultures far different fix their saree at the other end before meting out punishment. Boys in Junior High often used to look at female teachers holding the saree in front of their body with suspicion. I sometimes look at girls placing their hands on the back of their trousers with the same suspicion. Once when my status update read, “The best thing about winters will always be women taking off their jackets! One of my prized possessions is Nabokov’s Lolita. I love it not so much for the literary merit, as for its beautiful cover with a young girl’s legs in tiny socks and saddle shoes. Winters remind me of Lolita.” many were convinced that I am worthy of suspicion, and that they would better be careful!

There are very few fiction works that are as dedicated to the self esteem and independence of women as that of Rand’s. But, in ‘The Fountainhead’, Dominique falls in love with Roark, the man who raped her. It was of course, a rape by invitation, a symbol of humiliation and conquest. While she was an ardent supporter of careerism in women, she insisted that no woman should be greater than the highest man. Her fiction works play with this ambiguous balance throughout.

Read: Corruption In Liberty Institute

They are so clever!

A week ago, I felt that pressure was suddenly building up inside my head. There was a mild heaviness that didn’t seem to go away. I have never had a headache in my life. But, one night, I was turning back in my bed, trying to sleep. I never had sleeping problems. There was suddenly a sharp pain that never came back. I was having mild bodily disturbances on and off which I have never had before. Doctors often dismiss it telling me: “Wait, you are confusing me now.” I almost never sleep in the morning-even during Magazine production when I often have to skip sleep. But lately I am sleeping at my desk or office sofa for hours. While I was listening to a talk, I noticed that my eyes were drooping, even when I had slept six hours the night before.

When I went to a hospital nearby, the doctor asked me many questions: “Where do you work? How many hours do you work? Do you read a lot? When you read, do you read from a computer? How many hours do you sleep?” It was all true. I have averaged four hours of sleep for many years.  I am always hooked to the web. I rarely read hard copies.  He just asked me to do a vision test, brushing off everything else.

When the doctor did a test, she found nothing wrong, and said that I can wear glasses only if I want. I was sad, as I have wanted glasses since I was a child. She sent me to another doctor. After a test, she asked me “Does anyone in your family have glaucoma?” No. “Do you know what glaucoma is?” I didn’t have any hard knowledge. She said: “Intraocular pressure ranging from 5 mmHG to 21 mmHG is considered within the normal range. Yours is 22 mmHG for left eye and 24 mmHG for the right eye, which is considered highly abnormal. However abnormally higher intraocular pressure doesn’t necessarily mean that a person has glaucoma.” When I asked her whether it is serious, she said: “It is not at all serious. I simply have to rule out that possibility for record keeping. If true, you have to be under lifelong treatment and observation.” She asked me to do a visual field test the next day itself.

There is no risk factor that applies to me. I am in my 20s. There is no history of glaucoma or diabetes or any illness in my family. I am not of black ancestry. I do not have nearsightedness or farsightedness. There is no history of injury to the eye. I do not use steroids.

I wondered why it is happening to me all over again. I love myself, and whatever I do. I never had any problem that bothered me in a fundamental sense. I have never known any responsibility save that of supporting myself. I can agree with H.L Mencken here: “Millions of them have to make their livings at tasks which really do not interest them. As for me, I have had an extraordinarily pleasant life, despite the fact that I have had the usual share of woes. I never felt it as oppressive, for no one was dependent on me, and I could always make extra money by writing bad fiction and worse verse.” As much as I despise the media, as much as I hate writing within a prescribed framework, I have never known any work-related pressure. For months, I have woken up every morning thinking that this is very close to eternal bliss. I am free to do whatever I wish to do.  

The best thing about my present job is that I barely have to work. It is a joke here that I type like a mixie and finish my work like an athlete. The narcissist in me has always loved that aspect of the job. I have always idolized Gail Wynand who wrote a brilliant editorial denouncing all advocates of careers for women and threw it on the desk of the first editor in sight, and stormed out of the room. He never needed to read his pieces over. I wept when Dominique said “Gail, what a great journalist you could have been.” when she heard that Gail Wynand had written all the copy himself. My heroes were journalists like Niranjan Mazumdar who replied that only his typewriter knows what he is going to write when a frantic editor made the mistake of rushing into his room in a rush hour to know how on earth he would pull it off. Niranjan then went on to write a perfect article in twenty minutes. My favorite economists are not unreadable charlatans, but men like Murray Rothbard who wrote eight single-spaced pages an hour. His work went straight from the typewriter to the published version, with a far more stylistic prose than that of any academic one can ever hope to read.

 What if I lose my eyes?

After the visual test, the doctor said, “It could as well be physiological. You have to do an OCT and CCT.” I have the courage to do many things that most people would not even attempt, but I am a sissy when it comes to physical pain. The last thing I want is a blade in my room. I cannot even stand the prick of a needle. Nurses often chuckle. Anything that pains my body is a big “No” for me.  The doctor said: “It is painless. You are a young male. The pains in your life haven’t even begun.” After the two tests, he said: “A person might be having high intraocular pressure simply because he was born that way or because intraocular pressure appears higher than it actually is because of a higher corneal thickness. In your case, it looks like it. The tests can say that whether I will have any problem four years in advance and there is no such sign yet. The heaviness and strain are in all likelihood because of dryness. It is perhaps a computer related ailment for which there is no specific treatment except proper rest, sleep and care.”

I have been here before. There can’t be a better week to go through it all again. A year back, on this day, doctors said that it is probable that I am having cancer. There was no risk factor that applied to me. I felt as if life should have gone out of me. For long, my attitude towards life was at best expressed by these words of Nathaniel Branden: “I do not know what anyone else wants out of life, or thinks life is about, but for me, right here, right now, everything I ever wanted is in the room with me. I feel completely fulfilled. All that’s left to want is that this will go on for a very long time.”

There was one question that has always bothered me: “How long it will take for me to be a successful writer?” All that mattered was the journey. At once, the question became pointless, and now all I wanted was a painless death. It was a scary thought, but once you have accepted the reality, even death looks like the most definite one among many possibilities. I lost the desire to connect to anyone. I felt as if many things which immensely mattered to me didn’t matter to me anymore. Not even my dreams. After spending a week contemplating the odor of ether in a dissecting room, I got the biopsy report. It was only an inflammation.

What are the lessons I have learned apart from the obvious fact that doctors cannot be trusted?

“Life is not such a big deal. Many things are not as bad as you imagine. Even when I felt that my days were counted, I slept like I do on any normal day. I closed my eyes, and I soon fell asleep. The sun rose in the east and set in the west. I learned that you do not feel depressed when your actions have no bearing upon what you are going through. I read what I love to read. I laughed out reading H.L. Mencken say: “I don’t care a damn what you or anyone else calls me, just as long as you don’t call me an old dodo sneaked out of the dissecting room. I’m 66 years old, I work hard all the time, and while it is perfectly true that I may be snatched into heaven tomorrow I am still going strong today.”

I understood that people who will be with you will not be your parents or acquaintances, but people who genuinely love talking to you.

I could relate to a writer who was recently diagnosed with cancer: “I was very aware of which things in life truly mattered to me. And which things didn’t matter. First and foremost on my mind was Her. You don’t need to know who she is. It wouldn’t matter to you. I knew beyond all question that what I most wanted was to have Her with me. Why? She couldn’t have changed what was about to happen. She couldn’t have affected the diagnosis. It wasn’t pragmatic. It wasn’t something I could really explain. I just knew that if I could have relived my life, I would have changed whatever I had to change — just so she could be there.”

She just wanted to talk and has never changed the subject or judged my self-obsession or nerdy talk. We enjoy talking for hours on end on everything from libertarianism and nature vs nurture to Ayn Rand’s philosophy and the prevalence of nonsense. Certainly, this is one of the two reasons why I wrote much of what I wrote in my whole life in the last one year, and started writing my first novel. I will always cherish moments when she said: “I read your blog post. Brave. Please be safe!”, “Write a good novel, and make me proud.”, “I am irresistibly beautiful. I hope you are noting all this down. Please put that in your novel.” I like it when she says: “I will push. All of them”, when she hears of people being mean to me.

The other reason is that Steve Job’s words on cancer threat sounded all the more real to me: “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

When I wished that I could have written a lot more if I could have an untroubled existence for one more year I felt that I have little time left. I took many pledges: “I will get enough sleep. I will get published, and give more importance to money.” All the pledges quickly went by the board, but it if fine as my life seems overextended for decades.

In patience, I was not Dalai Lama, but I was very close to it. I have seen that it doesn’t work. So, I have revised my approach. In the last one year, I have shouted at people, insulted them in front of their co-workers, humiliated their wives and ruined their reputations. I might do it again. I am not ashamed of any of these, and will never apologize for anything I do or write. They have only stood silently, like they have lost a manhood they have never had! That is all they are good for! If I make any necessary compromise when it comes to work, I will never apologize for it either.

I learned a lot in the last one year. Much of what I learned were things which I have known all along. But, learning, introspection and experiences have reinforced those convictions. Some of them are:

Sanity has nothing to do with social conformity and everything to do with the functioning of one’s mind, i.e., one’s psycho-epistemology. The whole world is insane. Well, almost.  When thinking through a problem whether social or personal, a rational person would always ask the following questions among many: “What are my premises? What is my conclusion? Are my premises true? If these premises are by no means obvious, did I reach them through the right means? Do the premises themselves lead to the conclusion? Am I smuggling in a hidden assumption? Is there a rationalization involved? Am I denying the obvious? Am I worthy of suspicion?” Even the fact that such questions exist do not occur to an insane person. Contrary to what many of her critics and even fans believe, Ayn Rand was very much sane when compared to the average Joe or even the average Ivy League professor. When I read her money speech, when I read what is true in her world view, I see ruthless rationality. For all her ranting, there is sanity in her writings that is almost impossible to see elsewhere.

Nonsense is everywhere:“It is on the hoardings, in the speeches of the most powerful men, the prose of honest women, the analyses of the brightest investment bankers, and even the proverbs of your mother.” Rationalization plays a much larger role in nonsense than many believe. Lack of intelligence and originality aside, the biggest culprits are: Poor erudition, selective blindness, suspended consciousness, anecdotal reasoning, prejudice, conceit, unwarranted assumptions, bigotry, religion, and systematic biases.

“Political correctness is not a form of sophistication as people claim or imagine, it is a form of cowardice, the lowest form of human communication.” When I read politically correct literature, I feel tempted to paraphrase Linda Wachner, the toughest female boss on earth:  ”You’re eunuchs. How can your wives stand you? You’ve got nothing between your legs.”

You can sharply increase your well being by being selectively unnice. I am the biggest fan of being nice on earth, but I no longer write blank cheques to being nice. When I read in the blog of a compassionate lady that we should think thrice before extending our niceties to the average Joe, I wholeheartedly agreed. As the great Niccolo Machiavelli taught us, anyone who has ever tried being nice to monsters that are not so nice will soon find themselves crushed beneath their ugly feet.

Selective meanness has socially beneficial effects. You should only feel good for being selectively mean. Mean employers will gleefully take in low class people. Low class employees cross the boundaries the moment they sense that no one is watching over them. They are easily tempted to cheat, and are convinced that “It is all your fault” irrespective of the truth of the matter. Mean employers are capable of firmly disciplining these character disorders when they shirk their responsibilities, rob, drink or hit at female co-workers. There is no way a nice employer can profit from dealing with them. Mean employers, on the other hand profit by keeping a close tab and paying them less at the same time. The world in turn, gets some value out of the worst of its inhabitants. As low as it is on the probability scale, if there exists an employee who is low class and value driven at the same time, he gets a foot in the door. As Bryan Caplan concedes, there are such rare exceptions among poor workers like grad students and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Life can be incredibly amusing. The hollowness of this place and the world in general is obvious when we see that everyone knows what is going on and has secret contempt for each other. There is immense joy in all this, in playing on them. The best thing about seeing through manipulation is that when they feel that they are holding the whip, the whip will be right in your own hand. At the end of all the helpless complaisance, youthful naiveté and manufactured outbursts, they end up feeling whipped hard again and again when they can do nothing at all. The harm is known much after it is inflicted.

The best way to trap someone is to place the person where being nice is the most painful act, and would at most delay a catastrophe. Keep on pushing the limits. All they can do is to do their best to prevent a disaster, and accept things as they come.

Idealism and morality are overrated. In intellectual professions, intelligence, passion, and common sense are underrated. A sense of morality cannot be taught. You either have it in you or you do not. What holds true anywhere else holds true in academia, journalism and writing too.  What the writing profession needs is men with wit, talent and erudition.

Movies, fashion and gossip are underrated.  Bleeding heart stories are overrated. Original analysis, iconoclasm, literary skills and wit are underrated. Literature of all forms should be entertaining and perceptive, including journalism. There is only one unpardonable sin: incompetence.

Libertarians should learn to write well and by all means place themselves within the market where bad writing is heavily penalized. Reading Rothbard, Mencken and Rand is pure joy when their critics in the academia are often viciously dull, and for a reason.

The biggest problem on earth is low intelligence , not poverty, wars, or even corruption. Irrationality is the root of every social problem. If people were smartly selfish, the world would have been a wonderful place to live in. Political Irrationality is almost always a derivative of low intelligence, as fools and dullards are hardly capable of thinking calmly.

One evening, when I was in a restaurant, the waiter pointed his finger at a very young girl standing outside and said to me with a sly smile: “Look, she is smoking”. I looked at her, assessing the merit of the notion that a woman’s good looks will purchase indemnity for even her most grievous sin. Perhaps I should join Goethe in admitting that baseness attracts everybody.

Men and women are not expected to go beyond a certain point, when these are precisely the points they want to cross. When even the bravest man or woman tries to push these boundaries with self-righteous iconoclasm, they do it hoping against hope that the harshest judgment of the world wouldn’t be reserved for them.

Manu Joseph expresses it so well: “Sometimes I am amazed at how women in India go through life being women. No matter what they do, they can never be invisible, and it is very important to be invisible. There is a peculiar stoic expression they have when they stand out in the open and smoke. They know everybody on the street has judged them. Even on my lane in South Bombay it is true. I’ve not conducted a poll yet, but I am certain that nobody on Third Pasta Lane believes that a woman who smokes can also be a virgin.”

When a woman smokes in India, more than exploring the forbidden, she is stirring up the transgression and taboo. She is flouting the social norms of a world in which men and women are afraid to be themselves. It tells us more about those norms than about the inner conflicts which torture her mind. The conflict between what is visible to the naked eye and what is visible only to the inner eye of the mind becomes all the more clear when we see that even in the far more permissible society of South Delhi or South Bombay, there are far more social limits than it meets the eye.

When the modern man thinks that he is supposed to feel that women should be liberated, he often feels that as much as he wants to, he is simply unable to feel that way. I recently listened to the vividly graphic description of the behavior of some men in the meeting of the prospective bride and the groom. Taking her to a bar, one of them asked: “Do you drink, lady?” He was amused when she said “No” in vague apprehension. “Oh, Bharatiya Naari!” he laughed. A “workaholic” wanted a domesticated wife who cooks and cleans when he is busy turning the world upside down. One young man looked up and smiled like an imbecile when his mother was bent on knowing the dowry she can expect.

Vinod Mehta’s “Lucknow Boy” tells us his experience with the broad minded Kabir Bedi who thought that the ‘Debonair’ Magazine was celebrating naked female body and making India proud of its rich culture and heritage. Kabir Bedi was not amused when ‘Debonair’ went as far as attempting to print his wife Protima Bedi unclad. He threatened to break up with her, and the center spread was instantly pulled off the machine.

We should not think that women who flout conventions are different. A year ago, I spent my mornings talking to an exceptionally smart young girl on the internet. She was from a country where sexual mores were far more liberal. Her family had a far broader outlook, which would put the country to shame. Her favorite pastime was entertaining her virtual friends by taking her clothes off. When I asked her why, she insisted that it is a joyful experience for all concerned. But, the last thing she wanted was her mother to know it. One day, I noticed that she was depressed. She said that she feels bad for being a harlot over the Yahoo Messenger. The interesting fact is that I knew it before she had said so. Half a decade back, one of my most pleasurable hobbies was that of reading the scrapbook of a little dynamite. I was a silent spectator who enjoyed her conversations with men who enter her space with the secret hope that there is so much that is possible. She was wise beyond her years-as smart as a whip. When we once talked, she said that I should know her horrible reputation. She knew that everyone on the internet had judged her.

Seven years back, The South Indian actress Khushboo got a hard touch of reality when she said that educated men should get real by stop expecting their girlfriends to be virgins. The temple dedicated to her was razed by protestors. I remember a Television show in which the audience predominantly agreed to her. But her devotees in Tamil Nadu expected more out of their Goddess than the cool calculation of the merits and demerits of an ethical norm. I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the studio secretly agreed with her devotees.

There are of course, taboo issues and public secrets. There are things which everyone knows but no one will talk about it. Seven years back, a non-fiction book titled “Freakonomics” is said to have melded pop-culture with Economics. The book had many striking claims. One among them was that some studies “prove” that spanked children are not prone to low test scores, as parents who admit to engaging in this unenlightened practice are congenitally honest. They have to sit knee to knee with a government researcher and admit to spanking his child. It meant that deep down, other parents knew that they were doing wrong, all claims and pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding. “For your own good” is a clever rationalization. The book hadn’t mentioned it.

In an interview with Manu Joseph, producer Manoj Desai said that his film Khuda Gawah should have won nine Filmfare awards instead of seven if some pending bills in the Centaur Hotel were settled. This story had no response at all when published in Outlook because no one cared or because everyone except the reporter knew it already. When I met with corruption in a think tank, everyone asked me why I am surprised when it was a non-profit. Wasn’t it all obvious? Some of them who have been observing “Indian libertarians” said that it was for long obvious to them what stuff they are all made off. I never had a naïve view of non-profits, but as low as our expectations are, there is still a new low we all have been up against at some point in our lives.

When two years back a 13 year old boy at La Martiniere hanged himself after being caned by the Principal, many felt sorry for the Principal, including columnists in some “respectable” publications. Hearing the bail order, the Principal said: “I am relieved”. It was not said explicitly, and it was not said in so many words, but it was clear that many were fighting their inner urge to say that “it is no big deal”, that “he was a sissy”.

There is always the difference between the exoteric creed and the esoteric creed. Six years back, when the entry of women to Sabarimala temple stirred a controversy, a self-styled ‘philosopher’ claimed that anyone who bows his knee to the cult of modernity gains applause from the audience which has been hostile to him so far. The applause this comment generated dwarfed any other, and I knew that it was genuine. It didn’t matter that he cast a benevolent eye upon Sati, which of course, was often voluntary.

There are things which are intended to drive home a point which is not explicitly stated. Donald Boudreaux once wrote an article which argued that taxation and regulations though harmful, are not necessarily fatal. Statism is not necessarily fatal as the economy might be reasonably dynamic even with government regulations. If statism resulted in the death of hundreds of millions of people in the 20^th century and is still not to be considered fatal, what would amount to being fatal? He didn’t answer, though throughout the article he was being apologetic and defensive, protesting that he was not discounting the importance of freedom, but only proving that freedom is robust. Months later, he had an “admittedly idiosyncratic” ranking of top 18 economists in history. Even the title was apologetic and defensive. The collectivist planner F. A. Hayek topped the list. As many readers observed, there were two glaring omissions. Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard were missing in the long list where moderately good economists found a place. When asked whether he had read Mises’ ‘Human Action’, he answered “Yep. Snooze”.

I had similar experiences before. One article by an Indian blogger began by conceding that there can be no doubt that sectarianism is wrong and dangerous, and that killing a baby for its caste or religion can never be justified. He was emphasizing the wrongness of such acts repeatedly as if his disagreement with all this was not yet clear. After conceding this fact, the author asks an innocuous question: Is it then justified for the leaders of a nation to adopt economic policies which will result in lower development and hence more infant mortality? Obviously not. So far so good.

The author then tries to illustrate his case with some real world instances: “The murder of hundreds, at most thousands of, Kashmiri Pandits, Delhi Sikhs, Gujarati Muslims, Orissa’s Christians, Bihar’s “lower” castes, Nagaland’s natives, Jharkhand’s tribals – either by fanatics or terrorists or the state itself led to so much anger, as it absolutely must have. But what about the many more Indians who were killed – slowly but surely – by the state’s economic policies?” I cannot disagree much with the facts and analysis. It is all true. Not surprisingly, as I came to know later, the author was a young man who believed that though Manusmriti had some minor illiberal positions, Hinduism is a liberal, non-proselytizing religion which grants enough leeway to reject even the Manusmriti. A religion is liberal as long as it doesn’t have a Pope. Hinduism is non-proselytizing, and people are “free” to reject it, except when forced to jump into a pit of fire. There is of course a red herring when he started out, but a man who looks at Hinduism benevolently will any day emphasize violence on the part of other religions to strengthen his case. So, why did a Hindu fundamentalist choose instances of religious violence which were predominantly against Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and tribals (initiated by Hindu fundamentalists) to prove the point that it all pales in comparison to state violence? Your guess is as good as mine.

In most movements and philosophies, there is a glaring contrast between theory and practice. Bryan Caplan has an interesting perspective on the contrast between theory and reality in the Objectivist counter-culture. Catholics do not have to live a lie as it is obvious that the Pope is always right. Objectivists have to give lip service to independence, but deep down they know that Ayn Rand is the Boss. Her cult members loved to believe that they do whatever that is right, irrespective of what others think. Caring for others opinions, after all is a mark of wrong philosophical premises. However hard they tried, they couldn’t acquire a mastery of repression that was demanded of them.

George Carlin was right: “People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.” My experience working with an Objectivist who went overboard in stating that he didn’t rely on my opinions fit Carlin’s theory. I understood that he was humiliated to the point of sharing his secret shame in the privacy of his bedroom only when in the middle of a talk, his aging wife smuggled in some out-of-context sweet words: “Use your words carefully”.

If others opinions do not matter, only sticks and stones can be hurtful. But, sarcasm and subtle hints can play with the deep wound within people in a way explicit abuse or even swords cannot, as the humiliation is all the more real. It makes people feel that they are little, that they are nothing. Extreme acts of hatred are done by people with such a deep wound within. When Duryodhana fell into a pool of water assuming that a lake was the solid floor, Draupadi laughed at his face saying, “A blind man’s son is also blind.” It was that insult which helped to ignite the rage, envy, and vengefulness of Duryodhana. Many of us have seen that in workplace, nothing unsettles people more than being told that they are wrong, that they are not good enough. It is the hatred of the inferior, a feeling of discomfort, a state of high tension and fear, something not to be talked about, but only to be understood. The saying that “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is all but a pious fraud.

When the aging Ayn Rand had a romantic relationship with Nathaniel Branden, a 23 year old boy, both their partners were expected to be happy with the affair, as she so deserved an equal. Instead of feeling jealous, they were supposed to be flattered. She claimed to be proud of the affair, but did everything to keep it private.  When she feared that she will be humiliated in the public, she wrote: “My life is over.  He took away this earth.” But iconoclasts are not supposed to care for the society, right?

As Bryan Caplan points out, there was of course, one big problem with Rand’s amateur “psychologizing”: The fact that people care for others opinions stems from billions of years of evolution and not innate depravity. It is “deep rooted”, almost immutable. The fact that people feel jealous and care for others opinions serves the vital function of the propagation of mankind. To cut it short, the agony Ayn’s clique went through was unnecessary. Ayn Rand believed that she could root out irrational emotions by correcting the underlying wrong premises, but her feelings didn’t change when she changed her philosophy-partly because those feelings were not irrational in the first place. By denying their feelings, she and her followers were revealing their secret fascination with it, and those feelings remained hidden inside, welled up, waiting to explode and come to surface. And it did.

There are things which people like. Then there are things which they profess to like in the public. When several newspapers owners chided Gail Wynand, the publisher of New York Banner, the most vulgar publication in the country, he said: “You give them what they profess to like in public. I give them what they really like. Honesty is the best policy, gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to believe.” Nothing illustrates it better than the commercial success of Times of India. As Manu Joseph writes: “Needless to say, like in any other city, Delhi has astonishingly talented editors, journalists and writers, but there is a Delhi mental condition which is incurable—a fake intensity, a fraudulent concern for ‘issues’, the grand stand. Readers, on the other hand, have many interests today apart from democracy, policies and the perpetual misery of the poor. But the Indian media, based in Delhi, refused to see it until recently and very grudgingly, when The Times of India proved it. It is not a coincidence that The Times Group, the most profitable media organization in India, is based in Bombay. It is not a coincidence that the game changer came from here.”

There is the way we feel. Then, there is the way we are supposed to feel. The irresolvable conflict between both was evident when eight years back Manu Joseph visited the Juice Hair salon in Bombay.  Nikhil, a 25 year old stylist said something totally unexpected: “I believe in family values”. Manu Joseph was bemused and asked: “What? Family?”. He replied, “Yeah, and traditional values”. He was asked “You would say people should not have sex before marriage?”  He replied: “Yeah. It’s a good idea not to have sex before marriage. Also, I feel people should marry young and settle down. I am for joint family”. Manu Joseph writes that “It was quickly verified that by ‘joint’ he didn’t mean marijuana and by ‘family’ he was certainly referring to those loving and disturbed people.” The boy soon made things clear: “But what I believe in is very different from the way I live my life”. When asked whether he simply likes the theory of traditional values, his answer was: “Yeah, something like that”. He loved the theory of traditional values, but in practice, he loved the pleasures, comfort and freedom of modernity.

There are many things people like on an abstract level. On a high philosophical level, the man on the street is against everything which improves the quality of his life-from money to sex to markets to lurid magazines. If possible, he wants it all to be wiped out of existence by the state. In reality, he is the most shameless in pursuing all of these. We have the much enjoyable spectacle of politicians sending their own children to private English language schools, and at the same time enforcing regional language education in Government schools. The same is true of their followers who can afford to do so. They believe in clinging to their mother tongue only on a high, philosophical level. People of course, love illusions they do not live up to. And this is the reason Karan Johar includes national anthem in the middle of a movie.

The contrast between what people like on an abstract level and what they like in reality tell us a lot about people, and the society in which they live in. When self interest tells them to pursue what they really like, their “conscience” that is guided by an inverted morality often tells them to go against their instincts. In the Indian media, I have read few things as perceptive as Manu Joseph’s analysis of Arundhati Roy: “What her admirers say about her is true—that she is the conscience of the nation. What is disputable is whether it is a compliment. We know very little about conscience but what we do know is that there is an unattainable moral superiority about it, and that it usually transmits unsolicited advice, which is the opposite of what the mind really wants to do. But at the same time, it is fundamentally a creation of the mind, a creation that is meant to come in conflict with its maker. That is Roy. She is the creation of the very system that she aspires to bring down.”

In any conflict between self interest and conscience, selfishness would have inevitably won.  So, is this insight of any value? Yes, and for a reason. Though self interest directs the actions of people, politics determine the actions of self-interested individuals in a democracy. There is one space where politics succeeds in ensuring that the conscience wins out, that the conscience directs the actions of individuals: Inside the polling booth. If it is not a compliment when we say that Roy is the conscience of the nation, is there any reason for us to expect that the results would be good if people act according to their conscience? There are reasons to believe otherwise. Interestingly, Manu Joseph’s do not think that people act according to their conscience inside the polling booth. His views on voter behavior are very much close to that of the long discredited Self Interested Voter Hypothesis.  So, it could be true that both the perspectives can be reconciled.

Contra Manu Joseph and many others, the middle class and the rich do not shirk their responsibility or try to outvote the poor. The middle class is more likely to vote than the politically and economically ignorant poor. The average voter is often an above average citizen. Decades of research in public choice theory proves that people vote selflessly. Voters typically do not vote for government policies which fit in well with their financial self interest. They generally vote in the larger interest of the society. Adjusting for IQ, the rich and the poor are equally likely to vote in favor of welfare as almost everyone believes in the supremacy of the welfare state. Why? The reason is simple. Being altruistic at the polling booth is an easy way to feel “noble”, as the vote of a single person is close to irrelevant. If I can feel good about myself by pressing a button, why shouldn’t I? The evidence to support his notion that voters discipline politicians and prevent them from running roughshod over them is really weak. History is full of corrupt politicians who had immensely “successful” “careers”. Most voters do not know their representatives or their positions too well. Voters are not capable of analyzing public policy, as it is too complex a task which requires specialized and often abstract knowledge. Most voters are woefully ignorant as economics and politics are extremely complex fields of knowledge in which even experts with decades of learning can easily go wrong.

To make sense of the madness in the Indian society, we should take a good look at Indian democracy. The system so reflects the society which sustains and nurtures it. As wrong as it is, Manu Joseph’s critique of democracy is far superior to that of Indian libertarian columnists. When many libertarian columnists believe that in a democracy special interest groups see to it that people do not get what they want, this comes as a relief: “There is something hollow about Indian voters’ rage against politicians. In many ways, the average Indian politician is a natural product of Indian society and its way of doing things. But, across all classes, a majority of Indians hate politicians even though they love democracy. The adoration for the world’s greatest political idea coexists with a deep loathing for the human embodiment of that idea.”

In any case, how many public choice researchers could have begun an article this way, with the characteristic wit of India’s most stylish writer: “On Sunday, when a tired old man ended his hunger strike by consuming coconut water laced with honey, the humiliation of the Indian government was complete.”

As much as one disagrees, there is one thing which is hard to deny. If intelligence is what goes on inside the head, Manu Joseph is the rock star of Indian Journalism. To borrow an invaluable metaphor from Albert Jay Nock, he makes all other Indian Journalists look like confederate money.  It would be hard to think of anyone who unmasks the rationalizations, hypocrisy and near complete imbecility of the Indian middle class and self-styled intellectuals in as pitilessly a manner as he does. The sophistication with which he handles seemingly mundane issues, the original insights which go into every article and the stylistic manner in which each and every sentence is framed makes him stick out like a silver thumb in this vast sea of incompetence.

When John Stuart Mill proceeded to analyze Sir W. Hamilton’s philosophy, he felt that the damage to Hamilton’s reputation became far greater than he had expected at first, through the never ending array of inconsistencies which recurred in his works. We feel the same when we read Manu Joseph analyzes political correctness or other multitude of evils that so plague our society. The damage to the objects of his ridicule and criticism becomes greater and greater as we proceed through the article. After reading his article on Anand John, a Facebook friend said that she could visualize everything which she had read as if it all were happening in front of her eyes. I felt the same. For once, I can agree that good journalism is indisputably literature, and of course, the most underrated kind.

Read: Corruption In Liberty Institute

While reading biographical accounts of Murray Rothbard, one thing becomes clear to me: He was very true to himself, more than most thinkers I have ever read of. Murray Rothbard was an honorable exception in a profession where even blind idealists find themselves being tempted to play by the rules. There was of course, a terrible price for being the greatest entertainer in the history of economic thought. Because, Manu Joseph’s take on Delhi is all the more true of the Economics profession: “Delhi, often, confuses seriousness with intelligence and humour with flippancy. People will not be taken seriously here if they are not, well, serious.”

If you have to be taken seriously by fellow academics, you have to be as dry, boring and confused. Rothbard’s lectures on the contrary, as Bryan Caplan opined, might as well have been named “The joy of Econ”. One of Bryan’s blog posts had an apt title, “History + Comedy = Rothbard”, because he was “Haha funny”. Then, as someone had said, he’d rather have a good laugh than a Nobel Prize.

Rothbard believed that an individualist born in this world “marked by fraud, folly and tyranny” has three ways to deal with it: Retire into one’s own cocoon, set out to reform the world or take immense delight in the nonsense he sees around. Rothbard , it seems, was among the very few who had a driving desire to reform the world and take delight in the spectacle of folly at the same time. He lacked the pessimism of H.L. Mencken who was not too much of a reformer. Mencken knew that his barbaric fellow beings were hopeless and beyond repair and reform. Even when Rothbard writes about the worst of tyrannies, it appeared that like H.L. Mencken, he felt far more delight than indignation. As readers, we feel nothing but amusement even when he cheerfully quotes the listing of monstrosities in the diary of a slave owner who imagined himself to be a kind taskmaster.

I never understood libertarians who “want to make a difference”. If the primary motive of someone in approaching a science, philosophy or profession is reforming the world, I think it is a person who is in all likelihood unfit for the job.  The common good and the destiny of the world are way too uninspiring notions in the long run. These are motives which almost never drive a person to man the barricades to achieve the goal. The prospective benefits of liberty to the self too are hardly inspiring as the prospect for liberty in our lifetime is bleak. In conventional terms, the costs of being a libertarian intellectual are unspeakably high.

So, why be a libertarian? What is in it for me? Rothbard believed that a passion for justice will be “the armor that will sustain us in all the storms ahead, not the search for a quick buck, the playing of intellectual games or the cool calculation of general economic gains.” I have to disagree. For mere mortals, the passion for a justice which they will never reach in their lifetime is also hardly inspiring. It takes a Jihadi to go against his instincts and pay heavy penalty. Being a libertarian intellectual takes more than a love for liberty and justice. It also takes a genuine love for the intellectual game and the craft of writing. When we read Rothbard, we feel that he enjoyed every moment of the game. In a manner reminiscent of Mencken, Rothbard’s prose was “rollicking and ferocious”. It was laugh out loud funny.

I came across the works of Rothbard seven years back.  I started reading, and I was soon relishing his ridicule of conspicuous compassion: “Winter is here, and for the last few years this seasonal event has meant the sudden discovery of a brand-new category of the pitiable: the “homeless.” And what of next year? Are we to be confronted with a new category, the “unclothed,” or perhaps the “ill-shod”? And how about the “thirsty”? Or the candy-deprived? How many more millions are standing in line, waiting to be trotted out for consideration?”

To many who read such passages which are sprinkled throughout his works, Rothbard could come off as “mean”. But, as William Manchester would have it, “Sometimes words should hurt. That is why they are in the language. When terrorists slaughter innocents, when corporation executives betray the trust of shareholders, when lewd priests betray the trust of little children, it is time to mobilize the language and send it into battle.”

So, what makes reading Rothbard nothing but joy? Bryan Caplan has an explanation. Most historians are as serious as cancer. They give historical figures undeserving respect. Even when they get the facts right, they prefer to tell the story of “William, the conqueror” when there is a far more honest and entertaining story of “William, the mass murderer”. Rothbard would have none of these. He pokes fun at fools, tyrants, useful idiots and glorified criminals without any scruples. He could be harshly sarcastic. He could be mean.

Unlike establishment historians who consider the state as an innocent error, or as Mencken rightly put it, “as a benevolent father or even as a sort of jinn or god”, Rothbard did not think that the state is the “apotheosis of the society” or even that it is a “benevolent institution”. He did not hesitate to call a spade a spade. He was willing to call a criminal gang a criminal gang.  Nothing summarizes the state better than these words of Rothbard: “For centuries, the State has cloaked its criminal activity in high-sounding rhetoric. For centuries the State has committed mass murder and called it “war”; then ennobled the mass slaughter that “war” involves. For centuries the State has enslaved people into its armed battalions and called it “conscription” in the “national service.” For centuries the State has robbed people at bayonet point and called it “taxation.” I agree with Caplan that this insight is obvious and brilliant at the same time. If this is not obvious to someone with a casual acquaintance of human history, I do not know why.

Murray Rothbard said truths which most economists of even our generation (And it includes libertarian economists) hesitate to state. His take on compulsory public schooling is still considered an unspeakable truth: “True to the common hatred of individual superiority and distinction, the passion for leveling an enforced equality proclaims: this is good; let every child be forced to learn about “life” and be forced to associate with the lowest types of humanity. The envy and hatred toward the potentially better and superior child is apparent in this position.” His short book on education strengthened my position that homeschooling is a vastly superior alternative.

When he aptly summarizes Harvard Professor Edward Banfield’s “The Unheavenly city”: “Upper- and middle-class members tend to be future-oriented, purposeful, rational, and self-disciplined. Lower-class people, on the other hand, tend to have a strong present-orientation, are capricious, hedonistic, purposeless, and therefore unwilling to pursue a job or a career with any consistency.”, anyone who has observed the lower-class with a tint of honesty will have to agree, or at least admit that this is all true.

His views were eccentric. But often, at the root of it, he was by and large, right. When he writes on a wide variety of subjects from “women’s liberation” to banking, cracks like this are plenty:

“Why have men been running the culture over eons of time? Surely, this cannot be an accident. Isn’t this evidence of male superiority?”

“It is men, not women, who are more likely to be the oppressed class, or gender, in our society, and that it is far more the men who are the “blacks,” the slaves, and women their masters. In the middle-class neighborhood in which I live, I see them, these “oppressed” and hard-faced viragoes, strutting down the street in their mink stoles to the next bridge or mah-jongg game, while their husbands are working themselves into an early coronary down in the garment district to support their helpmeets. In these cases, then, who are the “niggers”: the wives or the husbands? The women’s libs claim that men are the masters because they are doing most of the world’s work. But, if we look back at the society of the slave South, who indeed did the work? It is always the slaves who do the work, while the masters live in relative idleness off the fruits of their labor. To the extent that husbands work and support the family, while wives enjoy a kept status, who then are the masters?”

“One motif now permeating the entire movement is a strident opposition to men treating women as “sex objects. Woman as “sex objects”? Of course they are sex objects and, praise the Lord, they always will be. Just as men, of course, are sex objects to women. It would seem banal even to bother mentioning this, but in todays increasingly degenerate intellectual climate no simple truths can any longer be taken for granted.”

“The Women’s Libs may claim that models are exploited, but if we consider the enormous pay that the models enjoy—as well as their access to the glamorous life—and compare it with their opportunity cost foregone in other occupations such as waitress or typist—the charge of exploitation is laughable indeed.”

Unlike most academics who play the status game, Rothbard wrote books instead of journal article. As Gary North had said, hundred years from now, people will read Rothbard for pure entertainment. We cannot, of course, say the same of the latest issue of The American Economic Review. One of the biggest wastage of the skewed incentive structure in the academia is that many academics spent their lives writing journal articles that rarely contribute anything to the world in terms of fun or intellectual excitement.  His Economics aside, one of the most important lessons of Rothbard is that reading and writing about ideas can be loads of fun. Part of the intellectual gains from reading Rothbard is to end up being convinced that even economics can be written beautifully, and that it is the way it ought to be done.

It is an inside secret of the dismal science that most economists cannot write a decent sentence. Murray Rothbard on the contrary, was a master of the art. Even intelligent laymen can enjoy and appreciate his work. So, he is considered less intellectually interesting than mediocrities who wrote incoherently. Many think that the biggest threat to the libertarian movement is the Rothbardian search for purity and extremism, not the fact that many of them have accepted the collectivist arguments lock, stock and barrel. Many feel that absolutism, persuasion and sarcasm are worse than cowardice and violence. But, as hard as it is for many to admit this obvious fact, it takes enormous talent to be an innovator and entertainer at the same time.

The world that wants its intellectuals to be serious, obscure and timid had a really difficult time admitting that with all his wit, clarity and stylistic prose, Murray Rothbard could also be one of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind. But, the same world also feels emotionally scarred when it does not see the austerity and humility that is so needed in its celebrities. Perhaps, Ayn Rand was right: “The sound perception of an ant doesn’t include thunderstorms. When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return–it is not against the swine that you feel indignation.”

Murray Rothbard died 17 years back, on this day. But, I often think that it would have been wonderful if he were blogging today.

I’d rather die than go to school!

Unlike many neurotic college-dropouts who help themselves feel better by repeatedly listening to Pink Floyd, I haven’t felt like defending myself too much. I haven’t written anything much on unschooling in the last one decade. Even if I did, I know what many of you would think: “Grapes are sour!”  I do not wish to deny that there is some rationalization involved in me liking Steve Jobs who slept on the floor, returned coke bottles to buy food, and walked several miles once in a week to get one good meal at the Hare Krishna temple after dropping out of college.

My favorite businessmen were never Mittal’s and Tata’s of the world, but men like Mahesh Murthy who dropped out of college at 19, and ended up with a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars after doing many odd jobs like being an announcer at Indian railway and selling vacuum cleaners door to door. Even though my teenage was largely wasted, my favorite fictional character is not the one-dimensional ubermensch Howard Roark, but Gail Wynand who walked into the office of a fourth-rate newspaper at sixteen, and asked “Can you spell anthropomorphology?” to the editor who inquired “Can you spell cat?” I couldn’t get through most fiction works I have read, but when I read that Howard Roark was kicked out of architecture school for insubordination, I was in seventh heaven. I went on to read it eighteen times-but wait, I am still counting.

I have always hated schooling, though in early childhood, it was a truth I would dare not admit. I was expected to say that I loved it- that the “emperor has clothes”.  When I was in school, the whole world looked like an air craft into which hordes of barbarians rushed in to press buttons at random, with self-righteous conviction that they are entitled to act on their capricious whims and fancies. Many feel that anything goes as long as they had a mushy rationalization, or an argument from authority! When I studied libertarianism, the essentials were not hard to see: What politicians and bureaucrats do to decent human beings is not much different from what adults often do to children. If we strip libertarianism down to a postcard, if we denude the abstract philosophy to its bare meanings, that is all there is to it. Once this retrospectively obvious fact is understood, the whole theory behind unschooling will fall into place.

I still remember the day I joined Lower Kindergarten. My mom came with me to school, and left me unarmed in a room of nearly fifty children, most of them crying and whining. I remember a child coming near the door of the classroom and peeping outside. Separation from their parents is a source of intense anxiety, helplessness and confusion for most post-toddlers.  My class teacher was a very young Gujarati lady. I have always wondered why she enjoyed punishing the soft child that I was. I am not lying. She actually did it for no valid reason. I am grateful to God for the fact that her behavior was far from the norm. Others at least made up some ridiculous reasons to punish kids.

When I was walking back home from school the first day, a child started crying. Some older kids were amused and said in a singsong voice: “Shame, Shame, Puppy Shame!” It all reminds me of some torture chamber now. I once stumbled upon my class teacher when I went to the beach with my parents. She gave me some cashew nuts and asked me to say “Thank You”. I, of course, said “Thank You”, with a shy smile on my face. I bent my head and stood there staring at the sands of the beach. When I occasionally looked up, behind her, I could see the tides rising and falling while the evening sun set. At that moment, all I wanted was to escape from her and the beach. Even after two decades, I cannot get over my crush on her.

In school, I was always in a state of confused bewilderment. When I was in first standard,one day I started off from home without my school bag as I was told that the school will be having an Arts festival. When I entered the classroom, my class teacher asked with a sarcastic smile: “Oh, you’ve come over here to enjoy the breeze? Where is your bag?” I looked at her with my eyelashes up, with deep sadness in my eyes-and then I looked at my empty shoulders. Somewhere those tender shoulders have failed me. I felt alienated from my school-bag and for once I grasped the intimate relationship between sarcasm and alienation. Somewhere the premises do deeply interconnect.

I was upset the whole day. I had to sit idly when other children frantically took notes like parrots. But, did I simply sit there enjoying the breeze? Did I cry like a sissy? No. I didn’t. I wouldn’t even have even been able to bring myself to write about me if I had done so! I would have been mighty ashamed of myself today if I had done so! Instead, like a good boy, I listened to each and every word she uttered and committed them to my memory. It became a life and death issue for me. “In all the cosmos nothing mattered more than this”. While traveling back home in the auto rickshaw, I tried to repeat those words to myself, lest I forget them. When I reached back home, the first thing I did was to write it all down in my note book with my sharpened HB pencil. When I was finally done, I did have my lunch.

When the classes began the next day, with uncontrollable anger, she asked me to come to her desk with my notebook. I was painfully shy, and said nothing. She opened the notebook only to see everything that was taught the last day written in clear, cold letters. She hugged me tightly. When she gave my mother the progress report that year, below everything, in the personal remarks column, it was written: “Photographic memory”. I started having a crush on her too.

I am by no means indulging in malignant self-love. My point was that I learned something that day. “When there is a will, there is a way”, or “the virtue of tireless hard work, teeth-clenched determination, and merciless devotion”. These are lessons a child will never learn in a classroom. These are lessons which a typical teacher will never even begin to understand. It should come from within. I think these are traits which are almost impossible to manufacture. Either you have it in you-or you don’t.

Conscientiousness is something which the school cannot teach. School can only signal it, and then only imperfectly. When someone tells me that he forgot something important, I think that it is hardly deserving of sober attention. I see such people everywhere. When I was in my last job, I noticed that some of them came at noon, left in the afternoon and looked here and there when tired annoying others. H.L. Mencken was certainly right about the average Joe: “The world gets nothing from him save his brute labour, and even that he tries to evade.” Yet, instead of feeling bad about themselves, they felt policed and persecuted.

As Bob Wallace writes: “A neurotic, taking too much responsibility, feels too much guilt; a character disorder, not taking enough responsibility, doesn’t feel enough guilt. A joke about this is that dogs are neurotic because they always think it’s their fault; cats are character disorders because they always think it’s your fault.”  Rana Dasgupta nails it so well: “In the Indian psyche, you dissociate yourself from the bad things you have done, and then they’re not yours anymore. This isn’t a guilt culture. That’s why you can never make any accusation stick to a businessman or a politician. They won’t even recognize the crimes you’re accusing them of. They’ll probably have you beaten up for insulting them.”

I think Delhi-ites are cats. The whole city is infested with character disorders. Schooling if anything, reinforces such character disorders.

One girl I worked with was unable to tell International Economics from Environmental Science after a Masters degree in Science Communication. I remember a girl who wanted to improve her writing skills, but was too lazy to read even Sidney Sheldon or Chetan Bhagat, as they were not “low-brow” enough for her. She had a Masters in Journalism, but didn’t know what molestation meant. After all, school shies away from such words. I said: “It is every man’s fantasy. It is something women face in buses, street, trains and crowded places. I am no different, but I keep away from such things as I will never risk my health, life or reputation.” She screamed her empty heads off that I have destroyed the reputation of South Indians. “South Indians know how to respect women. You have brought shame to them.” she said. What did I even do? I am not sure I understood. I often feel that truth is ugly! The place was incredibly amusing. Evil bosses, stupid co-workers and lies, lies, lies everywhere. In short, the place resembled a typical high school. When libertarians can be caught thinking of mandatory sterilization, it is hard to blame others.

One day, our 1^st standard class teacher left us all alone in the class room and went outside. A child made a mess near my desk by pouring a bottle of ink. When she came back, he pointed his finger at me and said cheerfully: “He did it!” In between, he leaned forward to whisper in my little ears with a chuckle: “I am a clever boy”. I wondered how such evil can even exist on earth. How could he do this to me? The upside was of course that I had come to grips with the concept of backstabbing.

Luckily, it looked like she didn’t believe his words. He was told that when he points one finger at me, three fingers are pointed at himself. So, he ended up cleaning up the mess he himself has made. I rarely had to right the scales of justice as reality often took its course. I was happy that like many who later played on me, he fell into a ditch he himself dug.  I sat there with a smug smile on my face.

School doesn’t value perseverance. If you do well, at most you will be called a good boy. When I topped my class when I was in 4^th standard, my parents noticed that I didn’t smile when I took the progress card from my class teacher. They also noticed that the class teacher didn’t smile. My mother scolded me: “There is no need for you to be too smug about it. You should know that no one else opened their text books this year!” I believed it. It felt so good.

When I was 9, my father was transferred and I moved to another school. It was completely beyond me why the teachers who interviewed me demanded that I define indefinable terms like “parrot” and “peacock”. It was obvious to me that they didn’t belong to the profession, and should never be allowed to have anything to do with little children.

My class teacher in 6^th standard hated me with some passion. She once told my mother: “I do not care whether he studies or not, but he should learn to be audible.” One day, I heard her reading a line from a short story aloud: “She was so proud that she even refused to talk to her neighbors”, with her fishy eyes fixed on me. I felt as if a lightning had suddenly struck me: “God, what is this old lady trying to tell me?” When she once threw me out of the class as my voice was not loud enough for her, I stood there listening to crows croak.

She once found my eight year old brother guilty of some mischief. His crime: He listed all the boys and girls in his class on a piece of paper and matched them up. She was fuming with anger: “What has this boy done? Oh, the horror!”. She warned in her trembling voice that he will be expelled from the school if he persists in such immoral behavior. Hearing this, a friend in Junior High said: “Your brother has a great future ahead of him: As a marriage broker.” One day, while rolling my eyes listening to her blabber, I noticed one thing: She had hearing aids. Everything suddenly fell into place. Her anger was all the more understandable to me when I recently heard a woman say: “I am fifty and deaf. Please speak a bit louder.” I had more serenity by then.

Though I was almost over religion by then, every morning I caught myself praying for her early demise. My mom was disturbed by all this. She often said: “My son, your attitude is not for your good. It will never do anyone any good. You shouldn’t hold anger in your mind. Matha, Pitha, Guru, Deivam. ” Such rationalizations lacked even the slightest plausibility to me even then. When I grew up, I learned to philosophically reject the concepts of forgiveness and unearned respect. More than a decade later, I read in an Orkut forum that she was finally taken to the graveyard. I was filled with immense delight as my childhood dream has come true. Better late than never!

After all, God will not be mocked!

To me, school was a “Hobbesian jungle”. We were punished for horrid crimes like talking to each other, not bringing the text books, and failing to memorize poems. Many of them were hypersensitive. When a nine year old boy asked a newly married teacher whether she enjoyed her first night, she wept and ran out of the classroom. I am almost certain that he didn’t know what he was talking about. I think children should go to school instead of the neighborhood candy store only if they like being scolded, smacked and ordered around by these nasty women. If there are any good aspects of schooling, it could be enjoyed without going through the whole process. Irrespective of whether it is private or public, schooling is eight hours of jail sentence a day where one is forced to learn what he doesn’t like to learn, and socialize with all those unwanted types. Fourteen years is a hell of a long time. I am still not over it.

I do not think that I should degrade myself by even debating the issue of corporal punishment. What we hear are the arguments of some brutes who lack the nerve to stand up for what they believe in. If we push on, at the end the real truth comes out of their mouth, and we realize that all the twists, obfuscations, contradictions, non sequiturs, equivocations, complexities, tricks and intellectual acrobatics were intended to hide this plain naked truth, the shabby unspeakable secret, the secret shame of savages who have never risen out of the archaic practice of doing good to children through force. If they want to hit a child, they should have the grace to admit that.

If I could press a button on my desk which would get anyone who has ever raised his hand against a child in a horror chamber, and have them tortured till death, mercilessly and brutally, the only reason I would not press that button would be that I would be starving to death in a world where most of the mankind will be missing. Otherwise I would have pushed it without hesitating a bit, with the largest grin anyone has ever seen on my face.

When I was ten, my parents decided that I needed some “help” in learning Maths. I was sent to a private tuition centre which I loathed as my reason told me that I do not need nobody’s “help”. Every day, after school, I would walk back home, and my mom would take me forcefully to the tuition classes. One day, she had to stop my bus and take me out of it to lead me through the ‘right path’. After sulking for months, I left the place never to return. The day she gave up, I heard her telling a friend: “What on earth is wrong with this boy? He thinks that it is beneath him to learn from others. He has an attitude problem!”

One day, when I was walking through the hallways of my school, a senior asked me: “How much did you score in your Maths paper ?” I said: “46/50”. “And before you took tuitions?” I reflected for a while and said: “45/50”.  His face lit up. He said: “So, that explains it. One mark is not worth all the trouble.” He was right. I was glad that I found some agreement in him, an agreement which is often hard to come by. My only regret was that I had a crush on a 13 year old girl who studied with me. I later saw her in a temple. She was praying with her eyes closed, wearing a long skirt which is not too unlike the one often seen in Malayalam movies. I looked at her folded palms and bare feet. She didn’t see me.

One of my fondest childhood memories is that of reading the travelogue of an Indian researcher in Spain. In his delightful manner, he tells us what happened when a teenaged blonde in the house he stayed was soon to be blessed with a cute baby. His landlord wanted the author to find out who shared the responsibility. I couldn’t extort any sense out of the landlord’s request. In my childish naiveté, I thought that babies were simply born. When I asked my mother what the author meant, she slapped my hand, snatched the book and said: “I have told you an indefinite number of times that this is not meant for children.” I wouldn’t see the book again for a decade. When I was in Junior High, I felt that I was beginning to understand. A classmate told me that the great Mahatma Gandhi and even our parents were guilty of this fundamental sin.

In Junior High, my classmates used words which fell harshly upon my delicate sensibilities. They were glad to be taught by teachers with well-developed bosoms. Our school was near a college. When I was 13, I used to walk through the corridors of the college with a friend who would often say with great sadness: “We stand no chance. All the good ones would be booked. But, I see nothing wrong in checking them out. Come, let us go!” He believed in flouting the norms of conventional morality, and held that Bill Clinton was a much persecuted man, unnecessarily so. On a rainy day, when we were waiting for our bus, an elderly man wanted to know which bus will take him home.  This boy showed him the way in a cheerful manner uncharacteristic of him. The moment the man boarded the bus, he started laughing uncontrollably and said: “The old man is in for some trouble. But, I do not feel bad at all.”

I was 13 when I flunked a paper for the first time. When I got the progress card, I lacked the nerve to show it to my mom. I dropped it on my desk and went out to play, hoping against hope that she would see it. What followed was unspeakable! I shall not get into all that. She started spending an extraordinary amount of time and energy teaching me. It didn’t pay off, as I have always had problems focusing while listening to someone. It was a sheer wastage of time and resulted in much anger, pain, confusion and strain. As Bryan Caplan points out, twin and adoption researches suggest that there is much merit in the “sissy” point of view that children should be treated tenderly, and largely left alone: “If your children’s future success is largely beyond your control, riding them “for their own good” is not just wasteful, but cruel.  The sentimental view that parents should simply cherish, encourage, and accept their children has science on its side.”

As much as I didn’t know it then, when I wanted to be treated tenderly and left alone, I had science on my side. I had hard research on my side. But, I was not listened to.

After Junior High, I never really went to classes. I enrolled in an Engineering college which I almost never attended. After bunking classes and flunking courses for long, I dropped out. When I started working, I didn’t have a degree, though I acquired one which demanded zero effort. It didn’t hurt me to the point that I will go back and change the decisions I have made along the way.

I often hear many argue that they value what they learned in school, and the friends they have made there. And of course, some teachers were nice. (Yes, nice. I would very much love to see all of them boarded on a flight in which the pilot is just a nice, likeable guy. It would be quite a scene.) To cut it short, their arguments amount to this: “You are such a big loser to have missed out on all the fun we had in school.” I can only paraphrase Rambo, “What you call home, I call hell.”

It should be obvious that what they like is not school as such, but the whole package which comes with schooling. A school is typically better than simply sitting at home and watching “Tom and Jerry”. If someone is stupid enough to believe that school teaches you something which you cannot learn otherwise, it is always the person whose rational faculties are not fully developed.

Whenever I ask people whether they use much of what was taught in school or college, they invariably answer: “No”. Do they remember much of what they learned in school? The answer is again, “No”. Yet, they are all convinced that without schooling, they would have been selling ladies’ socks in the Green park market. My roommate is an Assistant manager in a Dry-cleaning company. I am not sure, but, it is safe to assume that his knowledge of the dry-cleaning business is as deep as my knowledge in fluid mechanics. Someone who studied Computer Science and Marketing and finally end up barking “Citibank” will in all likelihood believe that college made him what he is. When asked to explain themselves, they will hem and haw, “I think I studied logic, reasoning and analysis at IIT. There is a lot of number-crunching and problem solving. I didn’t like it much, but at least I finished engineering. (Unlike you, loser!)” The fact that logic, reasoning and analysis can be learned elsewhere studying what really matters is some ultra-sophisticated reasoning which has never occurred to them.

Centuries of research in educational psychology and “Transfer of Learning” literature suggests that the argument that you are “learning to learn” in college is rather spurious. There is a short term effect learning has on IQ, but it fades out soon. All things considered, no one become a better banker by studying computer science in college. One can be much better off learning Banking itself. Students forget much of the Computer Science they have learned in college, if they have learned anything at all. More importantly, much of the Computer Science you learn in college is useless for any job in any case. The situation is much worse in Math, liberal arts and physical sciences for almost all students. Who seriously believes that differential calculus or business cycle theory will help a typical student who is at his best good enough for subaltern jobs?

So why are employers credentialists? Bryan Caplan answers:

“Suppose you’re interviewing a smart guy, without a college degree, and he offers you a money-back guarantee. You might think “What a great deal” and accept. But then again, you might start thinking “What a weirdo. What’s wrong with him?” And this, I propose, is the stumbling block to lots of worthwhile innovations. A person with an unconventional idea may have a point, but is also unlikely to be “normal.” He may not fit it with other people. He may have problems with authority. He may be deviant in more ways than one!

Confession: I’m one of the weirdos. I flout all kinds of social conventions. I wear shorts and flip-flops in the winter. I carry a funny cushion around wherever I go. (Don’t ask!) I laugh at inappropriate times. So outside of the best weird economics department in the world, who wants to hire me? If you hear me out, I think I’ve got some good arguments for wearing shorts and flip-flops in the winter. But even if I convinced you, you would probably hesitate to hire me, especially for a “real-world” job. My failure to conform in dress significantly raises the probability that I will fail to conform in more substantive ways. And even if you decide I can wear shorts while everyone else wears suits, what if a client sees me? He may start to think the whole firm is weird.”

I am also one of those weirdos. When I came looking for a job in this Magazine, I didn’t take my resume as I couldn’t see how it would help me. I haven’t bothered to write a proper resume. I got my previous jobs and assignments without such hassles. In any case, how does it even matter? The editor looked at me in a condescending manner and said that I should be much more sensible in my communication. I later heard that she told another editor: “He was so weird”. When I went for the interview, he asked sarcastically: “Have you taken your resume and all?”, and then said that he doesn’t need it. If I have it, I can keep it with me. I do not blame them at all, as Economics explains this phenomenon so well. She later said that she interviewed many stupid people the last day and had no reason to believe that I would be any different. Now, this is what economists call “statistical discrimination”.

I have good arguments to support almost everything I do. But even if others listen, it is highly improbable that they will even be able to see my point. As employers have limited time and resources, they rely on some “statistical discrimination”. A college dropout is less likely to be a worthy hire. The same goes for a weirdo. If someone is both (as in all likelihood he is), his resume goes into its rightful place: trash bin. So, normality and a college degree signals that you are someone smart enough to get the job done, but conformist enough to be a likeable co-worker and stay focused . In low-IQ, low-paying jobs, the person should be lazy and stupid enough to settle for it, focused enough to get it done, and at the same time willing to work for a pittance. A rare combination, indeed!

I have never had a liking to be taught-and I will be really surprised if someone genuinely likes it. I do not think this is the way children learn, or should learn. The best way to learn a subject, of course, is to pick up an entertaining book and read, branching out in all directions. Only a book can set forth a subject in a coherent, complete and systematic manner. An erudite teacher who can be of some help to students is all but a matter of mathematical probability. If a student badly needs a teacher, I think it is always the kind which cannot learn.

Bryan Caplan has an interesting question for people who believe that students are in college for learning. “Why do students rejoice whenever a teacher cancels class? From a human capital standpoint, students’ attitude is baffling.  They’ve paid good money to acquire additional skills.   Employers will judge them by the skills their teachers impart.  But when the students’ agent, their teacher, unilaterally decides to teach them less without the slightest prospect of a refund, the students cheer.  How bizarre.  Would a contractor jump for joy when his roofers tell him they’re taking short cuts on the shingles in order to go drinking?” The hard truth is that however hard they deny, deep down everyone knows that college is all about that piece of paper they will have at the end.

As Bryan writes: “The best education in the world is already free of charge. Just go to the best university in the world and start attending classes. Stay as long as you want, and study everything that interests you. No one will ever “card” you. The only problem is that, no matter how much you learn, there won’t be any record you were ever there.” So, why doesn’t anyone make use of it in the name of noble pursuit of knowledge?

One of my pet research projects is to see how brainwashing can work on people. Of all the nonsense masses believe in, nothing is more ridiculous than their unshakeable belief in schooling. To most Indians, there is only one path to success: Engineer-MBA-Anonymous. It sets the bar way too low, but like Manu Joseph, I will readily concede that the path of the average Joe at his best is far better than the path of the average Joe at his worst: Sociology-Salesman-Anonymous. There is only one path to national progress: More and more “investment” in public schools orchestrated by the Mommy state that practices tough love. Oh, like Soviet Russia’s “investment in people”?

To lovers of public schooling, the fact that “government spending” is not “investment” is completely besides the point. Compassion should wipe out the fundamentals of Economics. Economics is not exactly a science, but some bourgeoisie prejudice which should never take precedence over the feelings of the great reservoirs of wisdom: bleeding-heart intellectuals. And it is feelings alone that matter. The fact that most imbeciles cannot read, count or even write their own name in their mother tongue after years and years of public schooling is again besides the point.

You are a wicked market fundamentalist if you think that the government should get out of the “child rearing business”. After all, the “Market is not God”. It is often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. But, if someone believes that the government that has never delivered will somehow start delivering tomorrow with his magic touch, it is perfectly scientific and rational. His pure intentions are never to be questioned. When someone rehashes long-refuted bromides, It is open-minded reasoning unguided by politics. Instead of being called “The humanitarian with the guillotine”, he will be called “The human face of capitalism” and the “The Conscience and the Mother Teresa of Economics”. Ayn Rand was not far off the mark when she wrote that the moral cannibal who snarls that freedom is not required to maintain civilization should be given “an arrowhead and bearskin, not a university chair of economics.”

Does classroom learning even help? In a classroom, injustice is done to all students as no teacher can take into account the diverse needs, capabilities, preferences and future trajectories of students. If formal education doesn’t deliver when it comes to building skills, we would be better off if it doesn’t exist, or is at least not subsidized by the all-knowing state.

I am by no means some naïve libertarian who sings: “The free market will improve every school and child geniuses will become the rule. Our learning will make every nation drool when the Libertarians come to town.” In all likelihood, the free market will improve schooling, but that is not the point. I have no doubt that schooling and coercion are against the spirit of learning. It is also clear to me that most low IQ-low character types will not do well irrespective of the schooling process they go through. Unlike most libertarians who believe that the markets will make education affordable, I think that free markets will make the present-mode formal education completely unfeasible for the poor or even middle class, as it rightly should.

Read: Corruption In Liberty Institute

The rationally irrational voter

My colleague Kapil Bajaj has done some good work on the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway project, which illustrates some valid conclusions of Public Choice theory even where it goes wrong. As I do not read Newspapers much, I haven’t gone much into the details of the project Kapil has mentioned. So, I do not have any hard knowledge. But, I think I get the essentials.

As Kapil has written, many Public Choice theorists argue that individual voters have little incentive to be aware of politics, and vote accordingly. Similarly, politicians and bureaucrats try to optimize their own utility and power.  And Kapil has written, (and unfortunately so), many public choice economists believe in the Self Interested Voter Hypothesis (SIVH) which assume that individual voters vote their pocketbooks. It is all true.

The Delhi-Gurgaon expressway project

Kapil argues that contrary to the claims of Public Choice Theory, in the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway project, the public, bureaucracy and representatives have acted against their self interest: The public protested against a Government policy forgetting their narrow self interest. The elected representatives and officials have revoked a policy which led to much public outrage. So, the assumption of utility maximizing behavior doesn’t hold much water. People are after all, not as bad as cynical economists believe.

The flaw I see in this reasoning is that if bureaucrats and elected officials try to maximize their power and positions, it shouldn’t be surprising that they changed their position when there was public outrage. They do optimize their welfare, but the fact that they revoked their position only proves it. Second, as Self Interested Voter Hypothesis is long discredited, it is not at all surprising that the public protested against it, assuming that they had little incentive to protest. Moreover, the standard public choice notion that politicians give into special interests is wrong. They rarely undertake a project out of their financial self interest, when the public is largely against it. They might. But they just ‘might’. Politicians do often get around public outrage by serving special interests behind the mask of public interest. Finally, though the public might take to the streets to protest against a policy, the self interested reasons to do so are weak. But, they occasionally do.

Public Choice Theory

Public choice theorists are not a homogenous group. Their positions are varied, though there is wide agreement on many substantive issues. Alternative schools of thought are often not represented fairly in mainstream texts. Even when they are, mainstream, authors do not take in to account the fact that their positions are far more complex and varied. Truth is often a minority position.

Economists tend to believe in the Self Interested Voter Hypothesis. Political scientists tend to believe that voter behavior is aligned with the common good. Economists see Self Interested Voter Hypothesis as a good reason to have a healthy suspicion of the masses, and in rare cases, even to reject democracy altogether. Political scientists see their rejection of the Self Interested Voter Hypothesis as a reason good enough to accept democracy. Strangely, both are wrong. Economists are wrong in believing that voter behavior is self interested, but right in thinking that democracy doesn’t work well because of voter irrationality. Political scientists (Like David Sears) are right in believing that voter’s behavior is not self interested, but wrong in believing that it makes democracy work better.  Some Public Choice theorists like Bryan Caplan have accepted the reasoning of political scientists, and think that Self Interested Voter Hypothesis is horribly wrong.

People Vote Selflessly

Contra economists, voters typically do not vote for government policies which fit in well with their financial self interest. They generally vote in the larger interest of the society. The reason is simple. As Bryan Caplan puts it, “Self-interest appears to explain most of what people want and do. But at the same time, politics—with its ideologues, heartfelt appeals, and heated debates—seems to determine the “rules of the game” that self-interested individuals are playing.”  Being altruistic at the polling booth is an easy way to feel “noble”, as the vote of a single person is close to irrelevant. If I can feel good about myself by pressing a button, why shouldn’t I? It is not true that politicians and bureaucrats always maximize their positions and power, though they almost always do.

We all maximize our utility, though not in so obvious a manner. However, it doesn’t mean that Mother Teresa’s do not exist or that we all pile up money beneath our mattresses and would die rather than share it with our fellow beings.  It doesn’t mean that financial self-interest is the only motivating factor behind human behavior either. Human beings are complex and different, but there is a general pattern which is evident through introspection, analysis and empirical data: Human beings are by and large, motivated by self-interest.

When I say that voters vote according to the larger good, it only means that they virtually never do otherwise. In issues related to gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, people often vote according to their group interests even when their self interests are at harmed.  The wages of immigrants and their children will suffer the most when new immigrants with similar skills join the workforce, but they are more in favor of immigration than natives as they identify with the immigrants who have come over there to make a living, just like them or their parents. In minor issues, there is some mixed evidence. Smoking is a case in which smokers overwhelmingly prefer to vote against a ban on smoking. But, these are rare exceptions.

Selfishness Improves Political Outcome

Public choice theorists often believe that their belief that voters vote according to their self interest is reason enough to think that democracy doesn’t work well. Strangely, democracy wouldn’t be as bad as it is, if voters voted their pocketbooks. It is a surprising conclusion, even for people who loathe democracy.

I think this needs explanation. Consider minimum wages. There is much dispute, and many do not quite put it quite that way, but economists tend to believe that minimum wage laws lead to unemployment. The common public, and of course, most intellectuals tends to believe that minimum wage laws help workers, especially the poorest among workers. Economists on the other hand, think that when the Government imposes a minimum wage, employees tend to fire or refuse to hire workers who are less productive as it makes no economic sense. Workers who are fired or are having a hard time finding a job will be the least productive, and often the most poor. It is hard to argue against the fact that if the Indian government imposes a minimum wage of Rs. 1000 a day and strictly enforces it, most unskilled laborers will be out of work. I find it retrospectively obvious. So, what if voters are not self-interested, and vote according to the larger good of the society? As they wrongly believe that minimum wage laws help the poor, they will vote in favor of it. Not just the low skilled workers, the middle class and the rich too will vote in favor of the minimum wage legislation. What if voters are self interested? The low skilled workers might vote in favor of it, but the middle class and rich mostly won’t. So, instead of utter chaos, we get what many economists call a “consensus of folly”. If voters are economically and politically aware, it would be better if they vote for the larger good. But, when they are ignorant and have “systematic biases” (In more honest terms, stupid), the results will not be pretty.

Most voters in the United States (I am not aware of, or have gone deep into such studies in India, though I am sure that the situation is in all likelihood worse.) do not know their senators. In cases they know them, they do not know their positions too well. In cases they know the positions, they are not capable of analyzing them, as it is too complex a task which requires specialized and often abstract knowledge. It is a fact that most voters, even highly educated voters are ignorant as these are highly specialized fields of knowledge in which even experts with decades of learning can easily go wrong.

The political outcome will be better if voters are selfish, apathetic or even mean. Not because meanness, selfishness and apathy are intrinsically good, but given the fact that they have systematic biases, it all helps improving the political outcome. An analogy might help: If all mothers believe that placing a hot iron on their babies will give them superhuman powers, the best mother on earth would be the mother who is too lazy to do it. But, we will still be far from proving that laziness is splendid.

References

Bryan Caplan-The Myth of the Rational Voter
Mencken-Notes on Democracy
Etienne de La Boetie-The Politics of Obedience
Gordon Tullock-The Vote Motive
Hoppe-Democracy, the god that failed
Gordon Tullock-Public Goods, Redistribution And Rent Seeking
Jasay-Against Politics
Rick-Shenkman- Just How Stupid Are We?
Farber & Frickley-Law and Public Choice
Lecky-Democracy and Liberty
Peter J Boettke (Ed.)-Public Choice and the Challenges to Democracy
Richard Posner – Law, Pragmatism & Democracy
Richard Posner-Public Intellectuals
Loren J Samons II- What’s Wrong With Democracy?
Edward Stringham-Anarchy, State and Public Choice
Buchanan-The Calculus of Consent
Gordon Tullock-Government failure
Murray.N.Rothbard-Power & the Market
Ludwig Von Mises-Bureaucracy
David Gordon-Secession, State and Liberty

Abstractions aside, we have come so far from the schoolyard!

Truth might be a bitter pill to swallow, but we are all better off with it. There are truths which many of us do not feel compelled to go overboard in stating, while some others state it cheerfully, as these are brutal facts their taste wouldn’t conceal. The economist David Friedman called the former ‘wimps’ and the latter ‘boors’. Or bullies and sissies. While wimps keep away from stating truths like that of the high rate of teenage pregnancy and criminal tendencies among blacks, boors state it with much enthusiasm and delight.

Like Friedman, I too have mixed feelings. It must be obvious that if rightly analyzed and interpreted, knowing all the Non-Politically Correct (Non-PC) facts will have a positive impact on the way many people look at economic policy in particular and the world in general. But, an incurable obsession with such issues is more often than not a sign of bigotry.

An excessive focus on gender, race, sexuality and nationality, whether legitimate or not, while turning a blind eye to war and immigration restrictions is like complaining of one’s mother-in-law’s nagging when someone is raping your wife and mugging your children. Needless to mention, it only means that your hatred for your mother in law trumps your hatred for explicit violence by a wide margin.

The white supremacist

Unlike many who love to read, I rarely read blogs. But, I enjoy Bob Wallace’s blog. He is full of opinions, the craziness of which would put even Ayn Rand to shame. All of them are pronounced as if they are self-evident absolutes, which are obvious to him, and should have been equally obvious to others if only they weren’t so stupid, stupid to the point that they needed him to point it out to them. The biggest plus of his writings is his Politically Incorrect stance on everything under the sun.

It is quite well known that Bob Wallace was fired from the libertarian portal Lewrockwell.com for stating some “unpleasant truths”-like the one given below:

“Most ‘bigotry’ is the act of noticing the truth. Blacks are genetically intellectually inferior, always have been, always will be. Except for music and sports, they will always be on the bottom. They’ve never had a culture worthy of the name, never will. Asians have an ages-old group mentality that I doubt can be eradicated. They have no creativity, and I doubt anything can be done about that, either. There never was a Muslim Golden Age. Most of it consisted of stealing from Christians and Jews. Islam was, and always will be, an intellectually and morally dead obscenity. It is the worst thing that has happened to the world. Jews will always be ostracized because of their attempts to destroy every culture that admits them. Whites will always be on top, Asians right underneath them, Mexicans far below, and blacks’ right at the bottom. Nearly everything in the world has been created by Western Christian civilization, especially in America since 1776.”

No sight as pleasant as that of an eccentric blogger!

The Randroid

“That Randroid keeps telling everyone how great he is by being “true to himself.” Bah.”-Urban Dictionary

The most obnoxious libertarian nut job is the Randroid.  What makes him even more obnoxious is his knee-jerk denial when faced with the epithet “libertarian”. “An objectivist is not a libertarian. Duh!”, he would hysterically rant before stomping off. It is highly doubtful whether a Randroid even has a mind. Like many who are drunk on religion, the Randroid is drunk on Rand’s melodrama and pseudo philosophy.

If you are very much into the libertarian movement, it is impossible to not be harangued by the pseudo-rational bullying of Randroids every now and then. They are quite an amusing bunch to watch. When cornered in a Facebook debate, a septuagenarian Objectivist was not willing to admit that Ayn Rand could err. A young boy wondered: “How could she be wrong?” An “activist” argued: “It is not at all rational to argue that immigration restrictions unfairly hurt the poor at the expense of the well-off. Altruistic pity is not a virtue, but an unpardonable sin.” One young girl claimed that being a born rationalist, she could see through religion at the age of one, and never budged since then. A blogger told a libertarian friend that rationality flows through his veins, and that he uses phrases like “Man qua man” because he believes in “precision of language”. Many of them claim to be lifelong capitalists, and to have held the philosophy as far as they remember, though I find it highly improbable that such a clustering of incompatible positions would have ever happened if a creature named Ayn Rand was never born in Saint Petersburg in 1905. Their whole problem lies where that most of them do not know how the theorem-proof system works or even the difference between an assertion and a proof. The difference between the insufferable Randroid and misguided Objectivist is only a matter of degree than principle, all claims and pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding. When a Randroid thinks she was always right, an Objectivist thinks  she was the second greatest philosopher of all times and hence by and large right. Still the hard truth remains that she hadn’t read more than a couple of books on philosophy in her whole life.

Recently I got a taste of their bitter medicine when two obnoxious ladies started a campaign against me for betraying the noble ideal of Objectivism by insulting their Goddess at every chance while working for an Ayn Rand Institute funded think tank at the same time. As it often happens with them, these psychotic women barely knew their object of hatred. They wanted to report my wickedness to the Ayn Rand Institute.

One girl was fuming with anger: “When I talked to him, as it was not in the virtual world, I couldn’t document anything. In my anger, I forgot everything.” But, I do remember everything she talked about the whole evening. She talked of her dog which was cute, and her defunct father who, not surprisingly, happened to be a wonderful person like her. He was as persecuted by this irrational society. And of course, on how she intends to be the Objectivist Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy marketing the virtue of selfishness. Later I heard that reality-the most punitive teacher-finally brought her down. She no longer nurtures such grandiose ambitions, but then it is only because this country doesn’t deserve anyone as pure, noble and brilliant. She was pure to the point of not being willing to discuss philosophy with anyone depraved enough to not toe the party line. She once said in an online forum: “You are implying that Ayn Rand could lie. It is not acceptable at all here. Go away!” And: “I can prove each and every statement of Ayn Rand, including that it is immoral for a woman to aspire to be the United States President.”

The Misogynist

Despite his endorsement of a never ending list of monstrous positions, a misogynist libertarian friend of mine is the epitome of interpersonal nicety. He spends much of his waking hours on internet forums fighting the state oppression of long-suffering Alpha-males. Anyone who displays so much as a tendency to identify with the ‘plight’ of women is branded as a wimp who is frantically looking for easy ways to get laid. I do not disagree with him if his point was just that the effect of the feminist movement is decidedly negative. But, my dictionary says that feminism means nothing more than the economic, political and social equality of women.

I was not taken in by his argument that the misuse of laws against domestic violence poses a severe threat to me. “Why am I supposed to lose my sleep over something which has the likelihood of affecting me as much as that of a helicopter falling over my apartment and taking my life off? Aren’t there more important things to worry about?” I wondered.

He chided me for not being enough of a libertarian and argued that the existence of the law itself is proof enough that rights of men like us are sacrificed at the altar of ‘victimology’. Given the existence of the law, we are always at the mercy of “feminazis”, he reminded me. I didn’t disagree. But how the existence of a domestic violence act by itself would mean that the laws are predominantly anti-male was totally beyond me! I needed broader evidence which never quite seemed to emerge from his side.  “If we look at the larger picture isn’t it true that women typically get a pretty raw deal?”, I asked, as if I am not sure. He protested that it is not at all true, arguing that men have always protected women from nature and taken care of them, only to get scorn and ingratitude in return. Soon I was harangued by a series of questions which were craftily designed to ferret out hidden leftist tendencies inside me. He was thoroughly convinced that I was born a leftist and in spite of my education, I will inevitably come around to my natural inclinations.

One among many of his bizarre claims is that women in the Middle East have a better deal than the pampered women in the western world. Moreover, men in the Middle East gain far most respect from their spouses than the spineless wimps in the West who yield to even their most irrational demands. With legitimized wife beating and a lot many other oppressive legislations, I didn’t find much plausibility in this notion. He went to the extent of claiming that consensual wife beating will be acceptable and far more prevalent in a libertarian society. Hearing this, another libertarian friend of mine was puzzled and asked him: “Why do you even want the freedom to beat your wife?” “It should be used sparingly and after a point, it becomes hardly necessary. The government has no right to interfere with our sacrosanct family structure.” was his reply. This was too much, way too much, far too much for even men who roughly sympathized with his cause.

One evening he called me up eagerly to share the latest petty injustice against men: Voluntary paternity acknowledgment, with which comes the responsibility to financially support a child and at the same time being denied the right to have genetic testing later to show whether or not one is the child’s biological father. I could easily see his point, as despite its pretensions to being voluntary, it is a deal in which the government draws up the default contract. Again, it is irrelevant to most of us who have rather stable lives. And why does he always have just one subject? It is definitely not worthy of a significant part of our time. I dismissed it saying it is not such a big deal. He was shocked: “What? How can it not be an important issue? There can be no bigger problem on earth than not knowing one’s own father!” I chuckled, but let it pass.

Another cause dear to his heart is the right to accept dowry. I of course, agree that the government has no right whatsoever to prevent voluntary deals between individuals. I also see a lot of hypocrisy in the case against dowry when most women search for deep pockets before tying the nuptial knot, and in many cases, permanently live off them without scruples. Some libertarian thinkers have made a case to the effect that marriage and dating are cases of glorified prostitution. I completely agree. All said, I think it is still despicable. It is not such an inspiring cause to fight for. I asked him: “Why do you spend so much time and effort on this when most people go on with their lives not caring much for the law? In any case, no one is going to stop you!”  “How can I even advertise my dowry rate when the law is against it? I am at a severe disadvantage in the marriage market.” was his instant retort. Sadly, I missed it.

One common trait I find among misogynists is that almost always they need stay at home wives. “I hate arrogant career oriented woman. There are many things more important on earth than having a “rewarding” career.” one of them told me. “Like say, changing diapers?”

“How can you live all your life with someone when you cannot even have a meaningful conversation? Won’t you go insane?” I asked this misogynist friend. He had a not-so-surprising answer: “Stupidity in girls is such a big turn-on. I am more comfortable with a pretty girl who makes crisp Dosa’s and loves cute little kittens than someone who talks of the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Intelligence and erudition are so un-feminine. It is about time we respect our natural inclinations.” I pray to God that he gets such a wonderful, domesticated wife. Another one answered: “I like naïve girls, for the same reason I like toddlers. They are as cute and gullible.” He liked a girl like Chulbuli!

The Compassionate Conservative

Some conservative libertarians are as interesting as misogynists. No social problem melts their heart, but their heart bleeds for unborn babies. They are almost always the most passionate advocates of spanking. They “feel” that all a naughty toddler needs is a much deserved smack on the bottom. They scream that the government should take its ugly hands out of the interactions between parents and children however abusive it is, because it so weakens the family structure. But, nothing is more unthinkable to them than the ejection of an “unborn baby”.  Their attitude was accurately expressed by these words in a Barry Deutsch cartoon: “Take the government out of everything except women’s uteruses, because that is where the government rightly belongs.”

Pro-lifers often feel that it is only they who are an exception in a world which is terribly selfish. Their theory is that none of the supporters of abortion were aborted, and hence look at the world through the narrow prism of selfish beings privileged to walk on the earth. “You support abortion as you were never aborted or have gone through such suffering!”  I find the theory ridiculous on the face of it, as the same could be said of the anti-abortion bunch too.

The Hapless Victim

In the eyes of the “politically incorrect” libertarian, the most oppressed, suppressed and marginalized section of the society is the white, middle-aged heterosexual male. Their saner peers sneer that it is not a coincidence that the typical attendee of a libertarian conference is “a middle-aged, white, straight male.”

Libertarian self-centeredness can at best be illustrated by the widespread notion that the United States was much freer in the 19^th Century (when black slavery existed and gays were routinely persecuted), and in course of time, the freedom eroded bit by bit. David Boaz of the Cato Institute points out that “it is a historical argument that doesn’t ring true to an awful lot of Jewish, black, female, and gay Americans” who formed the majority of the population in the United States. (Bryan Caplan agrees with Boaz, but argues that unlike blacks and gays, Women and Jews were freer in the gilded age) Few libertarians if any go to the extent of supporting slavery, but it is quite true that many downplay its significance through intention or ignorance.

Boaz clearly makes the distinction between the size of the government and its power, much similar to the differentiation between scale and scope of the state, made by Robert Higgs in “Crisis and Leviathan”. Though the scale of government was small in terms of the size of total expenditures and regulations in the 19^th century, it must be true that the power of the government was huge. Black slavery is a case in which the Government exerted immense power over its citizens, when its size was minimal. While libertarians and conservatives look at the size of the government as a severe threat to liberty, its power is looked at benignly.

Whatever the merit of their claims, I never understood how heterosexuals are oppressed and sacrificed. Whenever I hear of persecution and marginalization, I often wonder why I always hear so much from the persecuted side-whether it is from women, bleeding-heart journalists, heterosexuals or whites. Many bleeding heart journalists claim that they are being marginalized by evil capitalists. I cannot help wondering why there is no extreme capitalist in the Indian media when many left liberals are in really powerful positions. But then, it could be my prejudice.

The Establishment Libertarian

You can see that he has arrived when you see continuous status updates announcing his secret pride: “Having beer in Singapore.” “I will be in the United States next week. New York City only!” “Anyone knows splendid cottages in Munnar?” He jumps from one international conference to another. Recently I heard of a great stride towards liberty: the legislation of a common schedule for School Admissions in Delhi, a scheme which emerged from the supposedly “realistic” and “sophisticated”, if rather grubby world of “establishment libertarianism”. The dark hands behind it was that of a “libertarian” somewhere on Facebook who patronizingly chided me for not stepping out of my Ivory Tower and asking parents and children whether they needed it. It reminded me of the “bleeding-heart liberal” cry for the Welfare State: “Ask the poor! They all need welfare!”.

A middle aged bloke I worked with was happy with even Marx being quoted on his portal, but not Hans-Hermann Hoppe. When I was annoyed by his continuous sneers at Hoppe who destroys the party of establishmentarians, I asked naively: “I am not a fan and have more disagreements, but why do you hate Hoppe so much?” Pat came the reply: “I do not hate Hoppe. I just think that he is irrelevant.” “But why?”, I pushed on. “No. He thinks that think tank guys and politicians are corrupt idiots. All these are rationalizations to get marginalized.” I smiled: “Gee, the cat is finally out of the bag!” Hoppe had once said that all economic ignoramuses and allies of the state should be kicked out of the movement. I later found out that he had real reasons to hate the spoilsports. Like a petulant child, he asked: “Well, these guys want to think that they are iconoclastic geniuses when all others are idiots. These Professors go once in a year to Somalia and say: ‘God, what a paradise Somalia is.’ If you are an anarchist, why don’t you pack your bags and go to Somalia?”. The minarchist stock answer to anarchy: “Why don’t you pack your bags and go to Somalia?” reminds me of an analogy someone pointed out: “If you are for legalizing prostitution, why don’t you send your pretty sister to my home?”.

The Hindu Fundamentalist

Many Indian libertarians continuously post status updates claiming “Arabs are dangerous.”, and “Pakistani schools teach Hindu hatred.” They quote, analyze and reject scriptures written by barefoot bums and semi-literate Muslim fundamentalists. They occasionally wonder: “Can’t I even say that Muslims are terrorists? Am I not allowed to speak the unspeakable truth?” and finally express their shock in being persecuted: “But, tell me how am I a Hindu fundamentalist? I am not sure I even understood what you mean!” There is a tendency among intellectuals, even libertarians to think that we should never say that Muslims can be dangerous. Religious nuts have a tendency to state things which fit in so well with your prejudices and call anyone who disagrees as a politically correct wimp. Such tendencies as such do not tell us a lot about the issue.

Manu Joseph puts Anti-Islamic mentality in perspective: “God is the problem. Not just the Islamic God, but gods of all types. If you really think there is a connection between Islam and the nefarious mind, go to Shirdi. If you stand long enough in Shirdi, you will meet all the top criminals of India. Many of them will be in whites.”

The Bigot

Nevada's very own mad professor is inimitably kooky.

Gary North is said to be a very humble man, but there are few scholars who are as entertaining. In “Honest Money”, he expatiates on the problems when women were used as money. The single biggest problem was that of divisibility. Half a woman, he tells us, is worse than none. The rationalist in me is compelled to admit that I was filled with enlightenment after reading his exposition of Christian monetary economics. He warns us: “God is serious about his orders-eternally serious. God will not be mocked!” He once wondered: “If God’s law is true, how could Gresham’s law be true? How could bad money drive out good money?” He had an answer. “Economists are brilliant. They figured out the answer for this centuries old puzzle which turns our God against market competition. It happens only when the Government enforces equality of money.” So, a God in fact exists. It is only that the Government distorts his signals.

Gary North’s “The Coase Theorem”, is a passionate attack on the “dirty secret” of Economic Analysis of Law and Value-Free Economics. It prods me to take God’s word and actions more seriously, which is revealed through Bible, of course. It would mean that I have to undertake the mind-boggling task of mastering Christian Ethics, Epistemology and Economics in and out! However, it is hard to be amused when he “calls for the death penalty for apostasy, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, “unchastity before marriage.”

Hoppe can be as amusing: “There can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with [a libertarian order]. They — the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism — will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.”

Good enough?

If some of them wonder why few are convinced of the merits of libertarianism, they should reach for a mirror.

Read: Corruption In Liberty Institute

A YouTube video of a woman who has 15 children and does not feel like looking after them is doing rounds on Facebook.  She claims that someone else should really take the responsibility of taking care of her brats. Unlike the street bum who slyly asks for a cent, she thinks that she deserves to get it good and hard. Many libertarians are pointing out some facts: She grew up poor, with the implicit notion that the “Mommy state” has always been there, and will always be there to feed and clothe not just her, but also the long line of babies behind her. She is black, and the state has kept her poor. It all makes them feel terrible for her and her welfare babies, as most libertarians who would rather party and play poker than feel for her.

The response it elicited from the libertarian community was amusing. Someone drew up a feasible business plan: “In a libertarian society this would be easily dealt with. Since prostitution would be legal, it would be the perfect job for her to support her mob of children!” Someone else had a more ingenious one: “Her husband was a drug dealer. Now, she can be a baby dealer!  They should force her to sell some of those kids to willing rich families, and with that money she could care for the rest. Hey, Mrs. 15 kids has found her niche in the market!” Many were suddenly reminded of the iron fist of the paternal state: “Two words: Mandatory sterilization.” Social Darwinists were even more honest: “So now that they are here, and she obviously can’t take care of them. What should we do? I say let them all starve to death. It is what would happen if natural biological processes were to be at work. It feels bad to be her kids, but I don’t feel bad. She should. She is the one who brought them to the world to starve.” The rest turned their face: “Pathetic. That lady is disgusting”

My position is rather complicated than black and white. Quick points: 1) I sympathize more with welfare mothers than oldies on welfare, but it doesn’t entitle anyone to breed like rabbits. 2) The state is bad. 3) Given the fact that many feel terrible for her, I have mixed feelings about even private charity. 4) I feel really bad for her children and think that they need help. They have a pretty raw deal, and it is none of their fault. But, I doubt whether their trajectory would be any different, as adult promiscuity is largely innate. 5) It is obvious to me that we are not obliged to help strangers. But, it is hard to convince me that it is entirely the fault of blacks that they are behind and remain so. Likewise, in India, tribals who form 9% of the population are the victims of 40% of the land acquisitions. So, in reality, things are more complicated than they are in ‘Atlas Shrugged’. It is also disturbing that the fact that she is black is part of reason she angers many. To sum it all up, I can only paraphrase the great Murray Rothbard: “Left-liberals might try to evade the truth by charging that this is the old conservative tack of “blaming the victim.” They’re wrong. No one is blaming the babies. “

Manu Joseph makes an interesting observation on bleeding-heart liberals. The iniquitous social system which persists in stuck-up countries like India strengthen a minority elite which leverages the unfair privileges, and before long slowly turns against the system which made their wealth and self-righteous indignation possible. They are, like Arundhati Roy, “an anomaly that completes the system”. Their heart of course, lies with the real India waiting to get in, but is still kept out by the elitist middle class. With misty eyes, they tell us that the dull masses will never go away. It might be their only hope, but they have something called vote which will humiliate their betters. When the middle class and the rich are busy partying, they will doggedly march to the polling booth in hordes once in every five years and press the button with glee, throwing all the rascals out. It would be quite an inspiring sight!

The great 20th century polemicist H.L. Mencken had hinted that democracy originated in the poetic fancies of refined men who felt like putting the donkey into the cart to revolutionalize transport, saddened by the fact that it is over-laden.

There was no mass movement which was different. The Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises had pointed out that behind all socialistic ideas we see the dark, ugly hands of the wicked scion of one of the prominent aristocratic families of royal France. Marx never did a honest day’s work, and lived off Engels, who was a wealthy industrialist and a much more original thinker. The anti capitalist ideas were by no means an achievement of the masses, but of that of much pampered intellectuals and artists who never had to wonder where the next meal would come from. Rustic poetry on the pleasures of country life was never written by shepherds or village idiots, but by urban poets. Murray Rothbard was one among the many who noticed that most that complain about the ugliness of cities and worship primitivism were firmly ensconced in these crowded cities.

In Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’, we see that the socialist Ellsworth Toohey didn’t get along with poor boys slogging hard at Harvard, but the second and third generation millionaires flocked to him. He granted them a self-respect which they couldn’t have themselves earned. Toohey pointed at something interesting. The college professors, the newspaper editors, the respectable mothers and the Chambers of Commerce did not come flying to the defense of the ubermensch Howard Roark when he was facing trial. But, some proletarians did.

Mises tells us that the socialistic ranting of proletarian writers were nothing but trash when compared to that of their bourgeoisie counterparts-and for a reason. Bourgeoisie writers were more successful in describing the sad plight of workers, their cute babies and pretty daughters as they knew not what they were talking about and were hence more honest. Leave aside the claims of polylogism. How many proletarians had their share in the body of “proletarian literature”? What was lacking in these all wise men-refined sensibilities or plain intelligence? Perhaps I am heartless, but the reason could be genetic? God! The truth to be not said!

The Exoteric And Esoteric

Murray Rothbard, one of the greatest polymaths of all times made an interesting observation of religious cults: “Every religious cult has two sets of differing and distinctive creeds: the exoteric and the esoteric. The exoteric creed is the official, public doctrine, the creed which attracts the acolyte in the first place and brings him into the movement as a rank-and-file member. The quite different creed is the unknown, hidden agenda, a creed which is only known to its full extent by the top leadership, the “high priests” of the cult.” Murray Rothbard is said to have had some stubborn heterodox tendencies, but when he feels something is awry, you’d better take him seriously.

The glaring contradiction between the open and hidden agenda of religious cults is quite illuminating. It is true not just of religious cults, but of social movements, ideologies and of course, the most complex and ridiculous of all: human beings. Socialists and Objectivists swear by reason, science and logic, but beneath all their pretensions, we find nothing but the corpse of irrationality-of subjectivity, of feelings. We shall call this the exoteric-esoteric dichotomy.

I have always looked at self-styled humanitarians with amusement. There is always the spurious, condescending concern about the sad plight of the poor who are, of course, trapped by bewildering circumstances beyond their control. In the eyes of the sophisticated humanitarian, the poor are oppressed, suppressed and marginalized by the elitist middle class that is bent on having the ‘India Fashion Week’ covered than on partying with the ‘milk-and-honey good’ tribals in Attapady. But, nothing makes him more uncomfortable than the ‘nouveau rich’-the arrogant barbarians who have found their way out of the very “hopeless poverty” over which the humanitarian often drools with compassion.Their exoteric agenda is deep compassion for the low IQ/low character masses. Their esoteric agenda is demagoguery and power lust. Our eccentric novelist-philosopher was not far off the mark when she wrote “A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind ends with a sea of blood.”

Objectivists’ often snarl that they are not second-handers concerned about others opinions. I know that there is always the appeal of the ubermensch Howard Roark telling Ellsworth Toohey: “I don’t even think of you!” But, nothing bothers them more than the fact that others do not “worship them as much as they worship Ayn Rand.” To an Objectivist, independence is the supreme value. However, this ‘supreme value’ is always (Yes, always) sacrificed at the altar of Randroidism. Here we again see the exoteric-esoteric dichotomy.

Mom Scolding a toddler. But, is he worthy of our suspicion?

Wherever we look, we see the blatant contradiction between the exoteric and esoteric.  Teenagers enter college in the name of noble pursuit of knowledge, but in the end all they have is that almighty-piece-of-paper after years of “partying, football games, and sorority dances”. They step into the world with imbecilic stares and incommunicable confusion. We all know it, but few can escape the lure of a college education subsidized by the innocent taxpayer. Professors have life and death control over students, and feel that these silly teenagers who snatch a far better deal when they get out should be harshly disciplined and shown their rightful place. If we bunked classes, skipped exams or failed to kowtow to those grumpy old ladies and old bozos, we were sent home (Home, sweet home) for 6 months to cool our heels for the next semester. All in the name of education! In school, toddlers who commit the grave sin of crossing the boundaries of ascetic discipline are firmly smacked. Little do they know that the lady who spanks them is either venting her frustration over her “long-standing virginity” or dealing with mother-in-law’s nagging! As it often happens, they all have an incurable fetish! A 13 year old friend of mine was suspended from school after trying her sarcasm on such a punitive teacher.Her mock: “I can of course understand the frustrations of a forty five year old virgin.”, was soon rewarded with a suspension. But, she was a naughty child, and her long-suffering mother lived in continuous fear that she will hit her back. She once said rolling her eyes: “My mom thinks that I need counseling. Bah.” I was the only kid I knew who indulged in such wicked psychologizing. Others were convinced that it was all ‘for their own good.’ Whenever I caught myself thinking along such lines, I consciously diverted my attention to better things-like Tom Sawyer, only to end up wondering “transgressively”: “What if Tom hadn’t been noble?”. It wouldn’t have been a pretty picture for Becky Thatcher, right? There  was no escape from my own innate depravity. I often hear that I must be reading too much Freud. I hadn’t read much of him, and when I initially heard his name, I wondered whether they were misspelling ‘fraud’.

Offices are not an exception when it comes to the exoteric-esoteric dichotomy. Like schools and colleges, here too we see bullies, sissies and other nut jobs. What marks a typical office is the utter chaos which ensues when balloons of pomposity are punctured. Yes, I am talking of fragile egos.

When I started working, what filled me with helpless bewilderment was that the unspeakably bizarre manner in which some men who were all grown up behaved. Like H.L. Mencken, I noticed that they sprout beards and political delusions, but not always the insatiable desire to propagate their evil genes. My hopeless naiveté stood in the way of leaning back in my little chair and enjoying this monstrous spectacle with a chuckle. I lacked serenity.

We often feel that we are in the office to get a job done, and in the end, collect adequate monetary compensation for our hard toil. It is supposed to be a voluntary contractual deal in which we should set our priorities right. Of course, this is an important aspect of the whole process, but this is the exoteric agenda. There is a lot more to it. Once a person feels that he need not worry where the next meal would come from, he wants his ego to be massaged. As time progresses, the aim of having ones ego inflated trumps the desire to think, learn, work or co-operate. Now, this is the esoteric agenda.

Volumes could be written on my own experiences with this dichotomy. But, I will spare Stalin, Hitler and Mao here. They are on an entirely different level altogether, and not even worthy of my rigorous analysis. I should think of harmless ones which buzz around our head like fleas, and die down instantly when we smash.

Some time back, I was working on a climate change project, which leaned towards the unsophisticated, ‘global warming skeptic’ side. In the eyes of doomsayers, only ideologues deluded enough to imagine that they are too good for science would look at the scientific consensus with suspicion, but that is another matter and we will not even get into all that.

One day an older bloke dropped in and started working on it. To avoid sounding bored, I asked him: “What do you think of our position on this issue?” It never occurred to him that someone can have a position. He believed that everything is a point of view, and that we should choose whichever point of view that helps us fill our pockets best. Once my Ex-Boss wondered: “How can I even talk to him?” He was by no means exaggerating or trying to make me feel like a genius. This chap had a largely underdeveloped brain, or in other words, his brain had a huge scope for development. I felt smug, condescending sympathy, only to regret it later. And then there was the great weasel word: “But”. Murray Rothbard was not alone in noticing that such weasel words are used when one is intending to convey a message which has a meaning contrary to ones pretensions. His favorite conversation starter was: “I am not your boss, but…” When he used to rub it in,I started feeling that there is much wisdom in the old-fashioned cynicism. “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.” I am far from being a shrewd judge of human nature or anything else for that matter, but after faltering here and there, a toddler finally learns to walk.

I was not mistaken. I never was. Soon, I started noticing some retarded, dominating tendencies. I rarely tell someone when I move out to have lunch, but one day he decided to let everyone know that he is no longer amused. The scene he created for such a silly matter was not at all pretty. It was not lame at all, and we all understood that he possessed immense self-esteem. It was purely a work related matter. But, then, in silent understanding, I caught myself thinking of the abstract concepts of ‘hopeless insecurity’ and ‘inferiority complex’. At that phase I didn’t mind letting things go. Why do people have to spoil things for nothing? I wondered. He was abysmally read, was neither here nor there, and often couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he came across. There was no rubbish he didn’t believe in, and there was no bromide which didn’t come out of his mouth. He was the quintessential dud.

I considered him too small an object to be worthy of my anger. I started doubting my shallow judgment only when he succeeded in convincing me that I was largely responsible for all the screw-ups in this organization. I wanted to pay up for it and leave the job. But, I couldn’t help wondering: “How could that be true? How is it even possible?” Each and every statement of his contradicted another, and the last thing he wanted was me to look into the Excel sheet and see things for myself. By evening, I sensed that his claims were largely exaggerated. Months later, I heard that it turned out to be an outright lie. In between I heard nonsense to this effect: “You think you know everything.” “You never give up.”

I dismissed his blabbering, but as much as we love to think it to be endless, we all have known that there are limits to our patience. At the end I shouted in a way the whole office was shocked into dreadful silence. I justified myself: “Brothers, you asked for it!” He walked out of the room, and was down with fever for two days. Others heard only that I shouted at this poor guy. “Mommy yelled at me today”. Yes, but Mommy yelled for a reason. But as it was known that I was a saint who had long attained Nirvana, virtually no one took him seriously. He never co-operated in work matters later, and did everything to prevent me from working. When found out, he sat there simply punching the clock. Not surprisingly, he was soon asked to pack his bags and leave the place never to return.

One day our IT consultant came to me and said: “He will not be with us from today onwards. We cannot afford him anymore.” Being a perfect gentleman who wouldn’t hurt a fly publicly, the IT guy was being sensitive. I wondered: “He was fired or what?” and enjoyed the subtleties in the way his sentences were framed. I felt that I should also learn to tell things in such a charming, pleasant manner.  I have a lot to learn. There was an expression of childish delight and amusement on my face, which I struggled to hide in embarrassment, and everyone who noticed it was appalled. I remember cheerfully writing a mail to my Ex-Boss: “I can only hope that a person who wondered why we can’t indulge in intellectual depravity when “everything is a point of view” is now hoping against hope that reality is flexible after all, and what happened to him is just another “point of view” that could be bent according to his whims and fancies. Gosh, what a wicked child I must be to take delight and amusement when my fellow human beings fall by the wayside? Where does discretion fit into all this-or tactfulness-or norms of civilized discourse-or common decency? I am really appalled by my own immorality. Hopefully, before it is too late, reality will be my most punitive teacher and teach the much-needed lesson that all this helps a long way when it comes to things one shouldn’t speak, or even think!”

When I caught him with a Google talk status message: “I am not in denial. I am just selective about the reality I accept.”, I set mine accordingly: “Ha! The selective blindness of two bit whores!”. He instantly blocked me. I was a mean, mean boy who believed in revenge and made a fetish out of such petty amusements. In short, I was kiddish.

Aww, it hurts so much!

One day when I was at my evil Ex-Boss’ house, he came to say Goodbye. I felt that he had really ‘good manners’, and an almost non-existent spine. But, he was quite practical. He said “Thanks” to my Ex-Boss who looked at him as if he was saying:”Go away”. He turned to me, his mortal enemy, and said “Thank you.” I was not much responsive either. There were tears in his eyes. In hindsight, I feel sick to the core when I think of what he had become, and the humiliation he went through.

His exoteric agenda was work, and esoteric agenda was domination and getting his ego massaged. I think the exoteric-esoteric dichotomy is an interesting prism through which we should look at workplace relationships. I have never noticed a work related mistake leading to a mess. But a minor blow to their ego is enough to drive people insane. When they approach you with a task, their primary concern would be control, and the fear of being rejected. The task at hand plays a minor, supportive role. Of course, there are people who need their work to get done, and little more. They do not look at each and every word they hear, and each and every gesture they see with a fear that it could be a dreadful blow to their fragile ego. They are more concerned about not offending others than being offended. But, they are rare exceptions and end up receiving genuine respect.

Recently, a girl came to insist that I should send my work soon. I had seen her walking around shaking her head. I often hear of the characteristic “Ready ReckOner”. I also heard that it is a public secret here that I poke fun at her on Facebook. But, it was all in good taste.  I barely knew her. It was not that I didn’t hear that people say mean things about me when I am not around. Like: “He talks in a condescending manner and makes fun of us on Facebook. He has read ‘The Fountainhead’ 18 times. After leaving the office at 8 30 in the morning after production, he was back to the office in an hour.” The little girl next to me sneered: “Whenever I tell him something, he would look at me and say: ‘I didn’t get you!’ Because of his “attitude problem”, I don’t even look at him these days!” That head shaking doll was also appalled : “He wrote on Facebook that I shake my head like an obedient high school girl and all. It was too much for me, Yaar.” Someone in the next room stopped to wonder: “I mean, What is his problem? He doesn’t have a girl friend or what?” In the end, they all passed the final judgment: “He is a complete weirdo.” And took a collective decision: “We should make him sit near the new Assistant Editor so that both can debate with each other. They will make a wonderful pair!” I was laughing out loud after hearing all this!

I agreed that I will finish the work as soon as possible. She popped up a couple of times to see to it that I am not shirking. When such things happen, I know at the back of my mind that the esoteric agenda is something else. But, I dismissed the thought inwardly and bent over backwards not to sound dismissive. I was asked by another person to work on an article on an immediate basis. In between, she again appeared and said with a twinkle in her eyes: “I will report.” I was amused, and was suddenly reminded of how a classmate sulked in LKG: “I will complain to the class teacher.” The three year old me ended up crying. I wondered why I was turning all misty eyed and reaching for those rose tinted glasses. But, I soon forgot the whole incident.

Many days later, I wanted to know something and went ahead to ask her. I heard her mumble hysterically, as if she was spitting venom. I was always slow to grasp. I was taken aback, but later things fell into place. She was burning in humiliation for the last ten days, waiting eagerly for an opportunity to strike back. Her hidden agenda hadn’t worked out that well. It is understandable. The dichotomy became visible. I understood everything.

This exoteric-esoteric dichotomy teaches us of man’s never ending desire for the unearned. Human beings have a great need for respect, attention and appreciation. When they find it impossible to get enough supply through legitimate means, they turn helpless and neurotic. But, why is it so hard to bring in some genuine competence, and treat people with fairness and respect? Why is it so hard to live by the old-fashioned code of common sense, common honesty and common decency? I often wonder whether I should just laugh at their faces and ask gently: “Oh, but were you hurt?” But, then again, I am a mean, mean boy.

Read: Corruption In Liberty Institute