 Suffice it to say that Professor Hospiz is really one of the biggest names that we've got here. When Hospiz said yes, that was great rejoicing. Lots of others, it was very nice that they could come but Hospiz is a bit special. So I'm going to ask him to start and then we'll have Jeffrey Sampson and finally Nigel Ashford who promises to talk in English. I hope I can say this without any criticism of the previous speaker. It was entirely the fault of the organisers and the technologists who have yet to sort everything out I think. The general comment was that it was a tremendously interesting paper but that quite apart from the technical problems, all speakers should bear in mind that there are also many people at this conference whose first language is not English. Let me put it like that. And to take in what's been said, turn it into precise English, translate it into Norwegian and then think about it is a considerable activity and by the time you've done it you're liable to be into the third sentence after what you've just been processing. So if you can combine saying a great deal but with a few words, all speakers from now on it would be greatly appreciated and I hope that Norman is not too angry with me for saying it after only one speech and that was his. Professor John Hospes. Okay, is this alright? Can you hear this way? Since it's our appointed duty to speak slowly and also for not more than ten minutes and since the implications of what the previous speaker had to say are enormous and would take hours in the unpacking one is left with a rather uncomfortable sense of what to do and what not to do. When the subject was announced, of course I had not seen the paper, I thought it was going to be about things that really divide libertarians from one another, gradualism, anarchism and so on and so on but happily it wasn't that. It has to do with the matter of foundations which is an entirely different matter but also if one wants to pursue it extremely complex and one could take one small passage of what was said and talk about that for hours. The theory of human nature, one thing that was prominent, I'm not exactly clear what this means. First of all it's not very clear what's meant by nature. Let me say a word about that. I don't mean nature as opposed to man, I mean the nature of something. One here is this sort of thing. I used to think that his tendency toward violence was an aberration but now I think it's part of his nature. By a nature I think we mean something like this, so it's vague, a recurring set of dispositional traits, of the dispositional traits being disposed to behave regularly in a certain manner. Thus Aristotle spoke of cat nature as being the nature of cats to meow and purr, dog nature, tendency to bark and wag tail and excited and so on. Those are all recurring features and it's still dog nature to do this even though some dogs don't bark and some dogs don't wag their tails. It's a pervasive feature but it need not always be a universal one. Now the question, if you ask that question what is the nature of man, there are a number of different kinds of answers, all of which have some plausibility. The one that's been seized on historically by Aristotle as man is a rational animal and of course this is the one that's taken up in considerable detail behind rent. Unfortunately it's not exactly clear what that one means, not only because the word nature is somewhat vague but also because of other vaguenesses in the same in the same sentence formulation. Is man by nature selfish, is man by nature altruistic, isn't it? Well human beings are all of these things but human beings vary a good deal from one another so one person has much more of the mix than another person does but probably they all have some of it. I mean the true answer is really fairly unexciting. The truth is seldom exciting, it's just the exciting statements are very seldom true. People differ from one another but you could say this is all a part of their nature that is a general tendency to behave in certain ways. To say that man is rational, well word rational is vague because it doesn't refer simply to reasoning though that's part of it, refers rancest to the ability to interpret the data of one senses and so on, that's all integrate, that's all a part of it. I mean it's really a long job in unpacking to understand or to explain what is meant in detail by the term rational. Nevertheless it would be equally correct say man is a rational animal, man is an emotional animal, man is a volitional animal. These are all aspects, all would be equally true. For example when a mother rescues her own child from the fire in preference to a stranger's child it's difficult to say that she's doing it on the basis of rational considerations clearly they're emotional, she's also quite correct and right in doing it that way but if you stick to one fairly narrow formula at least a very narrow rather narrow interpretation of rational then you say well most of ethics is not based on anything rational you see. There's a lot more to be said about that but let me suggest this one, man is a volitional animal that's usually the one that's been neglected but it also has its source in Aristotle though it's not as famous as the first formula about man being a rational animal but if you want a basis for libertarian thought I think there it is. Man is a volitional animal, it is the nature of man to will that is one is presented with alternatives, one deliberates about the alternatives that's reasoning then one decides chooses what to do on the basis of alternatives and then acts in accordance with one's choices. That pattern of things that's man's or human being's volitional nature as far as we know no other creature in the world does this the dog doesn't present itself with alternatives then decide think I'll do this no I on the contrary there's reasons against that so I think on the end I'll just sit down and so on and so on there's no evidence that any other creature except human beings do that man is a volitional animal moreover man here comes the basis of libertarian thought man flourishes best man is in general happier man is in general better off when he or she is free to do things in accordance with his or her own choices which are not always wise choices but then presumably the only way to get wise choices is to have unwise choices at the beginning and then learn from experience that's also a part of human development to be permitted to do just that and to have nothing stand in the way of doing that as Bertrand Russell once said if the human being tried to live the life of a pig he would find that his own unfulfilled potential as a human being would make him miserable and I think in general that's right that's that's when the man is fundamentally and essentially a volitional being who goes through this pattern of confronting alternatives choosing deciding deliberating that's that's as close to the essence of human nature as anything as anything is now from that we get though the steps will be much longer than I can indicate here to this conclusion the more men are human beings are left free to decide for themselves what to do rather than have other people make that decision for them the better off they are the more prosperous they are the happier they are even though they often make wrong decisions compare a socialist any socialist society with virtually any free enterprise society and compared the standard of living and the general and the the amount of laughter and so on and so just for by way of general comparison so it's just an empirical fact that when people are left free to choose their own destinies they are well they often make mistakes in general better off than when they're not permitted to do so in other words the more freedom the better and hence we get Spencer's Herbert Spencer's law of human freedom put out in man versus state in 1884 that human beings should be free to do everything they choose to do to act in accordance with their own choices except in those situations where they by acting they forcibly interfere with the equally free choices of other human beings that was Herbert Spencer's law of equal freedom and it could well be a motto for libertarian thought in general it is of course like all general formulas somewhat they that is clearly in their clear cases and murder robbery rape and theft and so on people are forcibly interfering with the choices of others making them do things that they would not freely or voluntarily have done on their own but some to take a great kind of case some would say that libeling someone else is something anybody else is free to do because they got freedom of speech on the other hand others would say that this isn't just as much of a forcible interference with other people's freedom and would harm them even just as much humming their reputation as doing harm to their physical body see that's an area on which libertarians themselves disagree among one another even though they can both agree on the general formula everybody should act in accordance with his or her own choices and be free to do so as long as he does not thereby interfere forcibly with the choices of other people now just to conclude one side of the coin is liberty as I've all too briefly explained it the other side of that coin is rights the notion of rights is the notion of a no trespassing sign with regard to the behavior of somebody some people with relation to other people that is the no trespassing sign says so far but no further you may go in interfering with my life now of course as the scene in libertarianism rights are primary they are more important than general utility greatest happiness of the greatest number and so on but I would add a concluding writer to this there are sometimes phony dilemmas posed the phony at one level but not at another it's posed that there's a crime wave and the question is here should we take someone we know is probably innocent but it will restore law and order and people will think they're being protected and it'll be for the public good etc etc and you could make a utilitarian style calculation to say well yes you should sacrifice the innocent person even though it means violating his rights it's done in the name of the public good and of course the advocate of rights will categorically deny all of that and say that this is just this this is as wrong as anything could be I would just add that in the long run even from the point of utility it isn't the best policy that is from even if you take long-run utility the system with the highest utility is precisely one that respects individual rights and so the libertarians are correct in putting the emphasis where they do on the rights on the one hand and on the vast importance of freedom on the other I'm afraid that's about all I have time for thank you very much professor hospice those of you who are tantalized by the brevity of the comments are reminded that all three speakers of this event will be speaking at greater length on other subjects later in the week so we will be hearing again from John hospice on Thursday morning and as you've heard that'll be something to look forward to the second commentator on Norman Barry's paper is Jeffrey Samson and I'll hand over to him now well Norman Barry distinguished various brands of liberal or libertarian for those who prefer that word in terms of what fundamental principles they derive the the obligation to to construct a free form of society from and I think two of his three main varieties were liberals who derive liberalism from a concept of human rights which is in turn in one case derived from a concept of human nature but in the other case he talked about liberals who derive their political principles from what's called a pure side constraints view this is a term that I only know elsewhere from nosy cannot not quite sure that I know what nosy means by it but the point was that these people don't commit themselves to any particular view of human nature anyway both of these kinds of liberal the ones who derive political particular doctrines of what a decent legal system ought to be what a decent political constitutional to be from an idea of human rights are distinguished from utilitarians among whom I guess I would have to count myself because I'm really rather suspicious of the idea of deriving the very particular quirky systems of law and political constitution that any of us here would be likely to regard as reasonably acceptable I mean any real ones any real legal systems any real political constitutions that might come into being that we would regard as reasonably good ones better than ones that exist now they're all going to be very complicated quirky particular I'm very suspicious of attempts to derive these from a notion of some sort of simple polluted human rights which are universal to mankind and can in some sense be directly perceived by intuitive contemplation of what human beings are or what human beings are entitled to and let me give an analogy legal and political systems conducive to freedom are one or two kinds of very good thing that to some extent exist I mean certainly our own society here in Britain is not as free as most of us would like it to be but it's very much freer than many other systems that have existed or do exist okay so so this is one category of good things that exist another kind of good thing that exists and from the sublime to not altogether ridiculous is the motor car okay I mean I think many of us would feel that life without the motor car would be a significantly less commodious thing than it is now one could imagine in the case of the car to somebody saying that well man has although it's not often very easy for many individual men to to perceive this to become conscious of it but nevertheless in some abstract sense man has a direct perception that it is the the proper fate of hydrocarbons to be projected for a narrow nozzle into a large chamber and the carburetor on my Ford escort is a particular manifestation in the in the actual world of complicated physical and and commercial realities of this natural fate of hydrocarbons if you want to put it that way but of course I give this example because it's a ridiculous example nobody would think of saying that kind of thing about motor cars we're all perfectly well aware that the motor car is an invention a new thing not something that can be derived from pre-existing principles things that go far back in human history something that we had no concept of up until fairly recently in human history now people feel I think about matters like law and politics that these things are so much more fundamental to our lives there's so much more important significant noble that it's not satisfying for them to be new inventions in quite the same way it's not we can't feel happy with advocating particular kinds of legal or political system unless we can claim deep roots for them but that feeling of ours seems to be something not well founded and a point that I think is worth making is that among people who discuss human rights there is often an assumption that everybody understands the concept of rights the difficulty is only to decide what particular things are in fact rights of human beings or whether in fact there are no things which are rights of human beings the concept of right is not in itself particularly controversial because it's it's more or less a universal concept well it's not a universal concept it happens that in the European languages the term right can be translated fairly easily I mean we say human rights in English in French one can say led while alone and so on I would guess in all the other European languages that's only because Europe is as a matter of historical fact a fairly homogeneous cultural area if one moves outside the areas of the world whose thinking is derivative from classical Rome and Greece these concepts don't necessarily crop up at all I mean the part of the non-European world with which I have some familiarity is China and the term right in Chinese which is China as it happens is very much a neologism a word that was pressed into service in order to translate a Western concept in the 19th century when so many Western ideas suddenly became interesting to the Chinese because Western technology and commerce was coming into contact with China it's not even universal to humankind by any means to think in terms of the category right therefore how can it possibly how can we possibly hope to find some particular set of human rights which universally mankind can recognize as yes the rights that we do that do indeed in here in us irrespective of the particular culture that we happen to be born into and I think if one looks at some of the examples that Professor Barry quoted I'm no kind of expert on the philosophers that he quoted but simply based on the quotations that or the illusions that Norman Barry made he mentioned for instance that grotesque talked about a right to not aggress on one another and a right to a fairly large measure of liberty well it seems to me it's very easy to find societies in which that right is by no means recognized and you don't have to go actually very far away either boarding schools in our own country I've never attended one myself I went to a day school but from everything that one hears about them the society of boys I don't know whether it's as true of mixed or girls boarding schools but certainly boys boarding schools seem to be societies which find natural a high degree of authoritarianism a highly hierarchical society in which it would appear a joke to suggest that there was a natural right to non-aggression and our high degree of liberty of the individual now I'm not saying that the fact that that we can find groups that regard these things as natural makes them good I don't I am a liberal I think that a high degree of freedom non-aggression are thoroughly desirable things but in order to sum up because I think I've used about as much time as I ought to what I want to stress is that these things the fact that these things are very good things and the fact that they are very fundamental good things shouldn't make us feel that they are not inventions novel innovations of the human spirit as much as the motor car is not as new as the motor car of course but nevertheless in the enormously long stream of human history really rather recent products of the creative innovative human spirit that to my mind doesn't in any way demean them make make them less than they are most good things are novel innovations what's important is for us when good new things are invented is to recognize that they're good try to make sure that everybody else recognizes that they're good try to make sure that they're not let go of again as freedom has been coming into great danger of being let go of again having been invented only really rather recently well I think I'll stop there thank you Jeffrey may I remind you that he will be speaking again this afternoon at 3 o'clock and also that there's a book he's written called liberty and language a title that will not surprise you in the light of the way he approached this particular topic on sale at the back our final commentator is Nigel Ashford I'll hand over to him now Norman Barry finished his presentation I'm saying that libertarians are faced with a choice of whether they seek the basis of their ideas on an empirical common sense view of human nature or whether they turn to a rationalistic construction conception of human nature as an academic I live in a profession where common sense is not something that's highly valued people make their fortunes by taking an idea that is generally considered common sense wrapping it up in a certain language so that people don't understand it and that's how you establish an academic reputation an even more successful way is to take an idea that's based on common sense and show exactly the opposite for example a bit further away is it that's better is it right sorry where they try and take an idea based on common sense and demonstrate exactly the opposite so the way in which economists have managed to create a reputation demonstrating that if you want people to be more productive then the way to do it is to tax them more even though that goes against the basic common senses that we understand so my my immediate reaction is always is well let's see if the common sense way works if it doesn't then perhaps we may consider looking at other directions but let's see if we can and what I want to do is to take the the three ideas that Norman Barry attributed to Hume on common sense views of human nature and see whether these create some problems for us as libertarians so the first one was that man is partial to his own interest to his own self-interest here I think it's very important for libertarians to make a clear distinction between self-interest and selfishness and I think Ayn Rand made a very unfortunate error in describing her view as the virtue of selfishness I wouldn't want to make a distinction that self-interest is concerned with pursuing your own interests while recognizing and respecting the interests of other people when you use the term selfishness that implies in common sense language that that person does not have respect for other people and I don't think that's always very clear to people that Rand in fact does believe when she talks about selfishness she does believe it show that that includes respect for the self-interest of others but the way in which she expresses it I think is very confusing and moves away from the common sense use of the term selfishness now here we have a problem if people are concerned with the pursuit of their self-interest then they will pursue their self-interest within the system as it currently works and that means that if you can organize a powerful interest group if you can lobby the politicians if you can bribe a bureaucrat to get what you want then you will work the system and for many people the way in which the political system works does their self-interest the hell of a lot of good now what do we say to those people how do we convince those interest groups on those individuals who benefit from the current corrupt system of the state how can we convince them that they ought to pursue a libertarian view reducing the role of the state or do we just have to accept that because it isn't their immediate self-interest that we give them up as a lost cause another problem is nicely created I think by illustrated by the argument of a man called Munker Orson who argued about the irrationality of voting he was saying it doesn't make any rational sense whatsoever for anybody to vote because the chances of one individual making any difference in a particular election is so small the waste of time there's no rational basis for exercising your vote of course that also applies more broadly what do we say to a libertarian a libertarian may well say the chances of me having any impact on the political system of me reducing the role of the state even a little bit is virtually non-existent it's very marginal it's far better for me to try and achieve instant gratification direct gratification going to the cinema watching films I want to see playing with my children why the hell should I go to your libertarian meeting why should I go out in canvas for your for your candidate even though I think you're right but my direct self-interest would suggest I'd be better off enjoying myself at home so how can we encourage people to be they are self-interested how can we encourage them to actually involve themselves in the libertarian movement the second principle that you talked about was that people will choose their immediate interests before their remote interests seems once again seems very common sense for you of course this is a justification that is used by statists what they say is well if we have the time to explain to the people what was involved they would realize that these policies are the sensible ones it's in their enlightened self-interest and fortunately it takes a hell of a long time and some people are very difficult to convince therefore in order to protect their long-term self-interest it's necessary for the state to do this to do that and do the other well of course the weakness of that argument is that those who are making the decisions also will choose their immediate self-interests over those of their remote interests so that's why we can be very skeptical of these arguments but suppose it was possible suppose it was possible as Plato suggested to have the the philosophic guardians the people who weren't concerned with their own immediate self- interest but was concerned with the interests of the community and looking forward to the future would libertarians have to accept that people who had a better understanding of the long-term self-interest ought to have the right to make some decisions clearly I don't believe that libertarians would but you do have a problem there about what do you do with people who are not like most of us very often not so concerned about our long-term self-interest and that is the problem that that Norman Barry raised about the fact that we certainly believe that a liberal order is in the interests of everyone but suppose that's not the way in which some people are perceived it there's a conservative political scientist called Edward Banfield who argued that if you wanted to understand the differences between classes you should understand it in terms of differences of time horizons I to what extent immediate interests came before remote interests so what he said was was that lower class people ghetto people tended to have a very very short time horizon they were concerned with instant gratification surviving from one minute to the next working class people tended to have a short time horizon middle class people a longer time horizon and upper class people having a very long term time horizon well if this is true is this an explanation for why libertarianism has been very unsuccessful in my opinion at attracting much support from working class people if it's true that middle class people are more likely educated people are more likely to have a long term a longer term anyway time horizon they may be able to see that a liberal order might be in their disadvantage in the immediate short term but would be in the advantage of everyone in the long term they may be able to perceive that but it might be difficult for those people with short time horizons to be able to perceive that as we might be forced with the situation that libertarianism might be might become simply a middle class ghetto and able to make a successful appeal to a broader working class base and I'll try and keep it short I'll in that case I'll leave the third point about human nature about the existence of scarcity and just make three just sort of odd comments one is that this debate about rationalistic and spontaneous order may appear to be very remote to immediate concerns I want to give an example where I think it is of some concern and that is the question of what do you do about constitutions and constitutional reform at the moment in the United States there is a big debate about the question of a balanced budget amendment the idea the Constitution should be amended in some way in order to ensure a balanced budget now my concern is not here with the pros and cons and the difficulties of doing that although they are very great but you have one set of people particularly led by the public choice theorists who argue that you need to reconstruct the Constitution because the way in which the political system works has certain biases in favor of the growth of the state but those people who support the the first view the first view the emphasis on spontaneous order will be very skeptical indeed of any attempt to try and reorganize the Constitution they're very skeptical towards that attempt at trying to achieve a balanced budget amendment so what I'm saying is that depending on which view you take on these two different views may have an important impact on your view of the question of constitutional reform two final points and related to the discussions we're having later with Dr. Peter Bragg in on the psychology of freedom and that is is it innate in people for them to identify right this and Adam Smith's talks about the sympathy that people have a sense of what is right the sense of propriety well that's an interesting question for psychologists is there an innate sense of of rightness that people have or does it need to be developed and what about those people who do not have that sense of rightness what should we do with those sorts of people and of course also talked about children being born with a sense of rightness where Francis Kendall is going to be talking about the freedom of the of the child and I've not had the experience of having to bring up a child but my experience with my my nephews and my God children does not suggest that they have an inborn sense of rightness so where did this come from how do they achieve this sense of rightness so to conclude my sympathies is to try and see as if this common sense of you will be satisfactory clearly there are problems I've identified some there are many others but I would prefer to try and see if we can resolve these problems looking at the first tradition before and I'd be reluctant although not totally excluding it before turning to this rationalistic view thank you thank you very much Nigel it's very interesting that Nigel's derived from what Professor Barry was saying a whole lot of questions some of which I'm sure he was well aware we're going to be treated in detail in later talks and others of which I think are going to be even though he may not realize it I think I suspect that especially Dr. Madsen Piri's talk tomorrow which I hadn't thought I was being especially relevant to today's proceedings actually does deal with quite a lot of the questions of how you turn libertarianism as an ideal and delightful abstraction into something that actually suits people to do so that's something to look forward to but finally I'd like to ask Norman Barry to give us some further thoughts about the comments on what he said to begin with and I expect there are quite a lot of us who'd be interested to not only to hear what others have said which is what he concentrated on in his opening speech but but also what he himself feels about these issues that might be of interest I don't know Norman Barry thank you I'm not sure it will be of any great interest I'd like to thank the three speakers for giving you some evidence that at least three people heard me I don't really know how to summarize a 500-year debate plus an hour and a half in about five minutes but I will just discuss one or two things that I found interesting from the three comments professor hospice began by suggesting that well perhaps the ultimate foundation of liberalism lies in the notion of man as being a volitional creature capable of choosing not being driven by deterministic laws unlike dogs who wag their tails perhaps according to certain sorts of laws and we see evidence for the volitional nature of man through choice choice between alternatives I fully concur with that view of man but I'm not absolutely convinced it can derive libertarian from it what about people who make the choices not to have a libertarian society there are certain people who are behaving quite consistently with the volitional model of man and it on fact indulging in actions destructing with destructive of a free society well possibly rightly added to that metaphysical concept of man a kind of a science constraints notion that I'd myself mentioned that these rights that do derive from man being different are enjoyed by us all but that is a moral statement really rather than a descriptive statement about the volitional nature of man I think it's impurity true that men do choose but whether we all ought to have equal liberties is a moral statement which I think that David Hume would have leapt in there on the professor hospice and said yet prove it or show me and it is just problems like that that drive me I suppose towards the position of a of Jeffrey Samson that one has doubts about the universal compelling nature of these rights and therefore I do I'm asked my opinions I am driven towards a spontaneity view but I was concerned to stress the difficulty in that which I think Nigel draw very well that there is actually unfortunately a public good trap in liberalism in a sense that it isn't in our interest to produce it and if we have a concept of man as Hume describes it then there can be no certainty that the liberal order will be anything more than a transitional period of human history which is doomed to extinction of course we can take the view that ideas are ultimately determine determining factors in the course of history and try and persuade each other out of these public good traps but once again we have a problem here to do with consent if we are to remain liberal you have to ask people to consent to certain things we don't want to coerce them to do certain sorts of things are we entitled to coerce people who are in receipt of inflation proof pensions or is there agreement to be sought if you're a complete subjectivist you have to in a sense ask the agreement because you can't prove it subjectively wrong to finance public service it's a value that some hold and some don't hold if we take the Jim Buchanan view of consent then we're trapped forever because since there are no real values only consent then every person's consent is required to bring about the transition to a free society that does follow on from the Hume tradition and it I find it's extremely disturbing even though I find the description spontaneous orders of Smith Hume Huyg beautiful elegant convincing and in every respect ought to be followed I think that if we are to use coercion to persuade people to abandon whatever government privilege they might have that coercion must be backed up by a more convincing moral theory than we have at the moment and if Brian's comments about my opinions were designed for me to construct that theory in the next 30 seconds he's extremely unfortunate because I won't I'd like just to mention a point raised by Nigel one is to do with elitism now we don't like to think of a liberal libertarian society as being an elitist society and yet we are in a sense an elite otherwise some sorts of people whose views of social processes are such that they don't really regard these interest group problems as being that important they don't really regard the Olson and the Downes type explanations of democratic systems as being important they think right Lord Cain's if only people can get the right ideas then the masses are passive and an intellectual elite being able to determine public opinion will of course change that opinion and I suspect that this was the view expressed by if I hike in the road to serfdom if about five percent of the country's graduates had read it in 1944 and seen the truth of the message then that elite which controls civil service the large industries and the various governmental organizations would have seen the error of statism and changed it and it is a long tradition in classical liberal thought that the masses are indeed passive there's nothing illiberal about saying that the masses are past if you're not coercing them or something them we're saying they're passive and that may indeed be true and when people such as higher quote Cain's in approval the only quotation the effort dig up is that one about you know mad scribblers mad economists are defunct economists are dominant and they can be replaced by new ideas I think that is a very very optimistic view I do tend to think that we do face this enormous problem of sectional group interests who are able to use machines of state and yet to coerce those people involves us with similar problems of of justification this brings me to a last point raised in connection with Nigel comment and that is about constitutionalism I do tend to take the view that constitutionalism is extremely important and I will try and briefly combine the idea of there being certain sorts of natural moral values with the idea of there being a spontaneous order now I think the most important thing is that a constitution constrains government and it's not important that government do the right thing or the wrong thing but just do as little as possible and therefore it is less important to argue about what will be the perfect economic model or what we the perfect system of rules of law and so on but rather spontaneity will occur spontaneity will occur and produce things that we will tend to like a hospital the hospital says you to turn sense will be happier and laugh more often if government does less less government does the opportunities there will be for these spontaneous processes to come in and it may be the case that if that kind of agreement about a constitution of a really strict kind to come about we wouldn't have to worry that much about the vexed notion of right because our natural moral values will be protected merely because the government wasn't doing anything and or at least extremely small amounts of activity and I think the high standards that that miss Rand has set us most of us could never reach the standard set by her characters would not seem to be the kind of burdens that they've appeared to me every time I open the pages about the shrugged I could never be a John Colt now the moralistic view of libertism always does in fact frighten me a little my own view is to come more down to the spontaneity view except that I have a streak of rationalism I want us to sit down and plan this constitution that stops government doing anything or very little well