At The Center: June 2003

Edward Hudgins, TOC's Washington director, has been busy promoting Objectivist ideas in the nation's capital and elsewhere. In April, he took advantage of the tax deadline to discuss the moral and economic case for reducing—or even lifting entirely—the income tax burden. On April 10, Hudgins spoke at a press conference with Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (Republican of Maryland), who was promoting his bill to move tax day from April 15 to just before elections: the first Monday in November. Hudgins pointed out that "most federal expenditures are wealth transfers, handouts to special-interest groups, and uses of funds not authorized by ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8 of the Constitution." While TOC does not endorse legislation, Hudgins observed that Congressman Bartlett's reform "would remind voters that they are taxpayers who suffer under heavy burdens, and would remind taxpayers that they are voters who can remedy their situation in the ballot box—and would remind candidates who is the servant and who is the master." His remarks were quoted on the Fox News Channel Web site and in a CNSNews Web story.

On April 15 itself, Hudgins spoke at a press conference staged by a coalition of groups calling attention to the inequities of the tax system. Echoing his op-ed entitled "Tax Policy Is Moral Policy," Hudgins asked: "Why do we submit to taxation?" He observed that "in a free society, if taxes are necessary they should be used only to cover the costs incurred by governments as they protect the lives, liberties, and property of the citizens."

On April 16, Hudgins spoke at a Cato Institute forum highlighting his new book, Space: The Free-Market Frontier. It is "in our rational self-interest to become a space-faring civilization," he said, maintaining that human beings travel into space for the same reasons they climb mountains and cross oceans: because they are explorers and they seek knowledge. But space, Hudgins pointed out, also offers many economic benefits and would offer more if government regulators would get out of the way of private companies.

Also speaking at the forum were Courtney Stadd, the NASA chief of staff; Buzz Aldrin, who was the Apollo 11 lunar module pilot for the first Moon landing; and PoliSpace's James Muncy, a former science staffer for Representative Dana Rohrabacher (Republican of California). The event was broadcast live on C-SPAN and repeated a number of times in the following week.

Following up on the theme of man's achievements, Hudgins wrote an op-ed to mark Astronomy Day, "Why We Watch the Skies," in which he pointed out that man's ability to produce technology allows him to understand the universe. The article was posted on the CNSNews Web site.

In another op-ed, "Rejecting the Fetish of United Nations Consensus," Hudgins argued that the error of "social metaphysics" lies behind the idea that approval from other countries is needed to give moral sanction to American actions. Right and wrong, he said, are not determined by majority opinion but by moral principles.

Since the war in Iraq began, Hudgins has also taken the opportunity to address several issues related to the conflict. In an op-ed entitled "American Muslims: Cleaning Their Own House," he wrote about the incident in which an American Muslim sergeant allegedly murdered fellow soldiers in Kuwait. If the crime was religiously motivated, as many have speculated, Hudgins said, American Muslims who stand for tolerance have an urgent incentive to propagate an enlightened Islam that could vanquish such hatred. This article and Hudgins's longer Navigator piece on the same theme led to an appearance on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. Hudgins also appeared on the Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto TV show to discuss the creation of a free, post-war Iraq, and on the Dennis Prager radio show to discuss the war's effects on the airline industry.

Another contribution to TOC's public advocacy was David Kelley's essay in the May/June issue of the Cato Policy Report. "The Party of Modernity" is a summary statement of Kelley's "three cultures" thesis. The culture war in America today, Kelley says, is a conflict among three dominant perspectives: Enlightenment modernism versus the premodernism of the cultural Right and the postmodernism of the Left. The essay will be available online at http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-index.html.

George De Feis Departs

George De Feis, who began work at the center last fall as chief operating officer, left at the end of March. "We created the COO position," said Executive Director David Kelley, "to manage a growing staff and expand the scale of our operations. By early this year, however, it was clear that we would need to budget more conservatively and operate with a smaller staff, which eliminated the rationale for that position. It had also become clear that his particular skills and experience were not the best fit for our mission." De Feis has accepted a position as executive director of the Concrete Industry Board in New York.