Sightings, November/December 2002

Camp Indecon Prepares for 2003

In 1999, entrepreneur and longtime TOC supporter Hannelore Bugby founded Camp Indecon, a summer camp for children (ages 9 to 12) and adolescents (ages 13 to 16) that is designed to foster independence and confidence through an educational curriculum based on Objectivist and Montessori principles. By any measure, the camp has been a tremendous success. From its beginning with 17 campers, Indecon grew to 40 campers plus a waiting list in 2002.

Currently, Camp Indecon is gearing up for its 2003 season, which will be held at a campsite near Colorado Springs, Colorado, from July 19 to July 26, 2003. In order to accommodate the continued growth of the camp, it will expand from one lodge to two. In addition, at the insistent request of last year's "graduating" 16-year-olds who wanted an additional year of the Indecon experience, Camp Indecon will add a third age-group, 17-year-old "young adults."

The heart of Camp Indecon is its Montessori-based curriculum developed by Marsha Enright, Mark Berger, Wayne and Julie Anderson and Damian Moskovitz who are also TOC supporters and most of whom are Montessori School owners. The Indecon curriculum, in keeping with the camp's name, stresses the development of independence and confidence.

This year, a curriculum for the seventeen-year-old cohort will be developed and taught by Diana Hsieh, who has developed and taught the Objectivism 101 course at the TOC Summer Seminar. Hsieh has watched the progress of Camp Indecon since its inception and last July spent several days observing the sessions at camp. Her advanced curriculum will include basic philosophy, life planning, and independent thinking, as well as debating and public speaking and other topics necessary for campers to continue to grow into confident adults. Of course, young adult campers will also enjoy regular camp and recreational activities.

Further information about the curriculum, recreational activities, lodging, and other details are available at www.campindecon.org. Inquiries regarding staff position, both instructors and counselors, are welcome.

ALEC Advocate Uses Rand's Arguments

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) advances the principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty among America's state legislators. Better still, when the director of ALEC's Health and Human Services Task Force, James Frogue, discusses the problems of socialized medicine, he draws a major argument from Atlas Shrugged. Indeed, in recent testimony before the American Medical Association's Council on Medical Services he quoted extensively from Dr. Hendrick's speech explaining that he quit his practice because the one person whose concerns are not taken into account under a socialized system is the physician who works years to learn how to heal. Frogue tells Navigator that this appeal has been met with great enthusiasm from all audiences.

We Hold with Those Who Favor FIRE

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which strives to bring free speech and due process to the nation's campuses, has had some remarkable victories during the past fall. Among the most impressive were those at West Virginia University and at Washington University Law School in St. Louis.

At West Virginia, a policy that restricted free speech to two small areas of campus has been replaced with a policy that declares the entire campus to be a free-speech zone. Alan Charles Kors, president of FIRE, said: "At a time when Harvard Law School is considering a new speech code, and other colleges and universities continue to enforce these 'censorship zones,' to call them by their right name, it is encouraging to see a university step back and correct an injustice."

The matter at Washington University was not so easily resolved. At the university's School of Law, the Student Bar Association (SBA) twice denied Law Students Pro-Life status as an official campus organization, thus making it ineligible for funding, office space, a campus mail address, and listing in the admissions brochure. In a September 9 letter of rejection, the SBA termed "the catching issue" what they labeled "the narrowness of your group's interests and goals." The SBA "felt that the organization was not touching on all possible Pro Life issues" because it did not have an "anti-death penalty" position in its constitution. The second rejection was delivered to Law Students Pro-Life on September 23 without comment. Shortly after that second decision, Law Students Pro-Life was informed that the administration would not overrule the SBA or take any corrective action.

On September 30, FIRE wrote to the chancellor of Washington University and to the dean of the Law School, urging them to do the right thing and spare themselves the embarrassment of fighting publicly against freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. FIRE pointed out that the SBA had rightly recognized other organizations whose missions some might find "narrow," demonstrating an abusive double standard. FIRE also reminded Washington University of its own published statement that it was "committed to the principles of freedom of religion and speech."

When the University neither acted nor replied, FIRE began a campaign of public exposure. Law School Dean Joel Seligman, receiving numerous calls from national media and hundreds of emails from concerned individuals, instructed the SBA to hold an extraordinary session to discuss the recognition of Law Students Pro-Life. A majority of the SBA members who spoke at this meeting voiced objections to recognizing the group. The meeting was adjourned and a follow-up meeting set for Monday, October 14, 2002.

In advance of that meeting, FIRE circulated a national petition calling called on the SBA and the administration to preserve "freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of speech" by recognizing Law Students Pro-Life. "A great university," the petition urged, "does not impose a dreary uniformity of beliefs." In just forty-eight hours, more than 200 professors, law students, undergraduates, and private citizens from around the country signed the petition.

On October 14, the SBA voted 27-6, with 4 abstentions, to recognize Law Students Pro-Life as "We are relieved and gratified that pro-life students at Washington University now enjoy the same rights as all other students," said FIRE president Kors. "The university and the law school," he added, "were unable to defend in public what they practiced in private. I wish that they had acted, at the beginning, from moral principle rather than from expedience."

A Toast to IJ

TOC's friends at the Institute for Justice (IJ) recently won a resounding victory for economic liberty in New York State, of all places. On November 12, a judge in the Southern District of New York declared that the State's ban on direct shipments by out-of-state wineries violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. On December 10, he ordered that the state allow shipments by out-of-state wineries. Specifically, he issued an injunction prohibiting the state from enforcing its ban on direct shipments of wine to consumers by out-of-state wineries. Noting that New York is the nation's second-largest wine market, IJ vice-president Clint Bolick said: "The wholesaler monopoly that stands between small wineries and consumers is crumbling. This is the most important win yet in the national effort to strike down government-imposed trade barriers because the wholesalers mounted their strongest stand to preserve their monopoly in New York."

The Blogs' Chorus

With the multiplicity of Web logs now available, a person could only too easily spend his entire day wandering from conversation to conversation in the Internet agora. Even picking favorites is difficult, though Navigator would be remiss not to mention Diana Hsieh's NoodleFood and Arthur Silber's Light of Reason as prime sites for Objectivists in search of philosophical observations.

More political is WorldView by Brink Lindsey (at BrinkLindsey.com). Lindsey, of course, is the Cato Institute scholar who recently published, Against the Dead Hand, and whose article "The New Totalitarians" was reprinted in the December 2001 Navigator. Objectivists will find much to disagree with in Lindsey's writings, but they may learn a great deal also. The following is a small but typical excerpt from a recent posting at WorldView:

"Libertarians who advocate a 'noninterventionist' foreign policy claim that such a policy is part and parcel of, and indeed inseparable from, the broader commitment to individual liberty. I don't buy it.

"Of course, anyone who treasures liberty will prefer peace to war, will regard war as a tragedy, will consider peaceful coexistence and interdependence among nations as the proper and desired state of international relations.

"But does that general aversion to war mean that it is never appropriate to go to war unless first attacked? Why is the territorial integrity of any state, no matter how loathsome its rulers, an absolute bar to action that could liberate the people who suffer under those rulers? Why is it an absolute bar to action that could preserve the liberty of a third country under attack? . . . "Let me be clear: I'm not arguing for a general rule of attacking despotic governments and liberating their people. Such a general rule would, as a practical matter, be profoundly unwise. Rather, I am questioning the validity of a general rule against attacking despotic governments that tyrannize their own people and make war on third countries. I am arguing that, sometimes, attacking such despotic regimes can serve the cause of liberty.

"Current state boundaries über alles is a curiously statist principle for libertarians. It reifies states - treats them as if they were actual persons rather than political abstractions. 'Don't take a swing at the other guy unless he swings at you first' is a sound principle when you're talking about individual human beings, but extending that same principle mechanically to inter-state relations ignores the fact that states aren't persons - they're political organizations that include millions of persons. 'Iraq never did anything to us' is put forward as a principled basis for opposing war. But Iraq isn't a person; it's just an abstraction. And the reality is that Iraq's rulers have done monstrous things to Iraq's people - and the people of Iran and Kuwait as well. If it's OK, and even commendable, for us as individuals to come to the rescue of someone being pummeled by a bully, why is it wrong - not imprudent, but wrong - to come to the aid of oppressed Iraqis?"