As a speech (see video below), received first prize in the Young Professionals Speakdebate (Center for Strategic and International Studies), November 16, 2005. As an essay, received third prize in the Cato Institute’s intern op-ed contest, December 2005.
During his recent trip to Asia, President Bush praised Taiwan as “free and democratic and prosperous.” Why then, if the Taiwanese already have it so good, should the U.S. rock the boat?
For instance, writing in the Asian Wall Street Journal, Gary Schmitt and Dan Blumenthal recently argued that the U.S. should “encourage” Taiwanese politicians who are independence-minded. During a recent hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute protested that Taiwan spends more on defense per capita than does U.S. ally Germany. What’s more, as Justin Logan of the Cato Institute notes, these neoconservatives advocate very provocative measures, such as sending senior U.S. officers to Taiwan to coordinate with Taiwan’s military.
The problem with these proposals is that international relations is not an academic exercise. It’s not about grandiose abstractions or righteous platitudes. On the contrary, international relations is a cost-benefit analysis, behind which lie death and destruction. To wit, when China issues threats over Taiwan, as it does repeatedly, it’s not bluster. Its leaders mean it when they say that Taiwan is part of China and that reunification—as polling data invariably confirm—is the will of the Chinese people.
Why are 23 million Taiwanese so important to 1.3 billion Chinese? Beijing has invested its very identity in Taiwan. Its national destiny, its pride and its rage are inextricably bound up with this little island. On the Taiwan question, the stakes don’t get any higher for the People’s Republic, so it would be willing to incur massive economic and military losses in order to save face.
As a Chinese general told an American diplomat in 1995, “In the end you [Americans] care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei.” Indeed, ask any Chinese citizen what he thinks about Taiwan, and the overwhelming odds are that he’ll respond with deep-seated passion. By stark contrast, ask an American about Taiwan, and he’ll respond with indifference.
Moreover, in matters of national security, Americans should care more about our own freedom, fortunes and futures than those of the Taiwanese. We should be, like all countries, self-interested.
Nonetheless, suppose that we follow the advice of the Free Taiwan crowd. What then?
Militarily, Beijing has made it clear that it would launch a war if Taiwan were “separated from China in any name.” Even assuming that we would win, it is unjust to ask Americans to shed the blood and treasure that war with another nuclear power would entail.
Diplomatically, we need China’s cooperation in the United Nations, which includes not only voting with us but also abstaining. But as a permanent member of the Security Council, China can veto any resolution it wants. One example: we’re engaged in talks with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions. On this issue, China’s regional influence is indispensable. Regarding Iran, provocation would give China an excuse to abandon its restraint on selling arms to the ayatollahs.
Economically, pressuring China would destabilize Taiwan. After all, prosperity requires stability; stability gives investors the security to invest. Indeed, past conflicts between China and Taiwan have caused volatility and uncertainty. In 1996, after the U.S. issued a visa to Taiwan’s president in order for him to give a speech at Cornell University, China lobbed a series of missiles over Taiwan. One result: prices in the computer market jumped dramatically.
Finally, even if China annexed Taiwan tomorrow, reunification would not spell disaster. As various Chinese officials have said, a reunified Taiwan would enjoy even greater autonomy than Hong Kong. In theory, Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. In practice, Hong Kong retains its own legal system, currency and customs. A major international center of finance and trade, it is also an economic dynamo. For these reasons, Taiwan’s reunification would occur more in name than in substance. It would amount to new letterhead on a government memo, not serfdom.
To be sure, the U.S. should not support reunification. Instead, we should continue the current course of strategic ambiguity—which, after all, has resulted in the affluent democracy President Bush hailed two weeks ago. The status quo isn’t perfect, but it’s been painstakingly, skillfully crafted over the past 60 years. Let’s not turn statesmanship into brinksmanship.
A speech I delivered during my sophomore year of college.
There is no question more crucial to man than the question, What is man? What kind of being is he? What are his essential attributes?
Indeed, man’s nature determines that which his survival requires. And one’s view of man symbolizes one’s attitude toward life.
What is open to us is whether we discover our nature and whether we find the appropriate attitude.
Niccolò Machiavelli and Karl Marx offer us two views of and attitudes toward man, which I will describe in their fundamentals. Novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand offers us a third view and attitude—which, as we all know, is also my own—and which I will contrast with those of Machiavelli and Marx.
How one views human nature informs the entirety of one’s philosophy.
Now, Machiavelli thinks that liberty emerges only from a sly understanding of men’s passions. He thus sees man as a “wicked,” passion-ridden power seeker. “[U]ngrateful, fickle, deceptive and deceiving, avoiders of danger, [and] eager to gain,” men are so immoral as to justify the prince’s immorality. Thus, men “should either be caressed or crushed,” according to the principle that “it is much safer to be feared than loved.”
In this way, Machiavelli subordinates ethics to results; hence, we recognize the adjective Machiavellian as meaning “the ends justify the means.” Of course, this runs counter to the conventional wisdom that morality reigns supreme. So, rejecting the idea that that one must practice politics within the bounds of virtue, Machiavelli simply redefines virtue. No longer equated with righteousness, virtue becomes what he calls virtu, or the blend of ferocity and slyness.
As Machiavelli explains, “We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.” To wit, a virtuosic prince must employ the qualities of both a lion and a fox. Indeed, crafty and deceitful princes have historically defeated the prince of integrity. For morality neither keeps nor wins principalities.
Yet it is neither amoralism nor ruthlessness per se, but the acquirement of power that interests Machiavelli. Though a ruler must often acquire power via amoral means, ruthlessness has its limits: a ruler must keep the necessary cruelties to a minimum, and commit them in unison, for the purely practical reason that he will lose power otherwise. Thus, Machiavelli intends The Prince as a pragmatic manual; and so makes himself the father of realpolitik.
Realpolitik is a politics of adaptation to the existing state of affairs. In this light we can understand Machiavelli’s reasoning: not doctrinaire rhetoric, but realistic compromise leads to the attainment of objectives. As Machiavelli explains, “[O]ne cannot have all the good qualities, nor always act in a praiseworthy fashion, for we do not live in an ideal world.”
Thus, the prince must master an ability to achieve what The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy calls “effective truth.” Important, therefore, is not what is right, but what wins. Virtue and vice, rather than rigidly absolute, are relative to success. Ethics are mere provisional tools in a constantly changing world.
Now, albeit unscrupulous, a realpolitik régime is the best, Machiavelli tells us. If anyone is to benefit from government in the first place—even if the leaders are in fact Machiavellian—then that government must ensure the unity of its citizens at all costs. That unity, then, depends on the continuity of the leadership; for people see government as a source of reassurance in their dealings. If the government constantly changes leaders, then people no longer go about their daily lives with a sense of stability. After all, we sheep, according to Machiavelli, crave a status quo.
Now, “It’s only human” Machiavelli might argue in defense of human depravity. Yet here, as with virtue, Machiavelli usurps the meaning of man. Exiling from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, he renders man into prey—the fool, the weakling, the coward. After all, the prince—himself a fraud, a fake, a hypocrite—must not suffer any challenges to his authority.
Hence, Machiavelli reduces mankind to our lowest common denominator. He regards us as vulnerable rotters—and struggles never to let us discover otherwise.
But man is so much nobler, so much more important than this—and he deserves an according defense. In Hamlet’s exquisite language: “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! / how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how / express and admirable! in action how like an angel! / in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the / world!”
Do you represent this beauty—or are you the corrupt Machiavellian chump? You represent this beauty, I say, and so we should judge men by reference to the ideal world Machiavelli scorns. Political scientists should, therefore, propose their views of human nature by reference to our greatest exemplars—the Lance Armstrongs, the Bill Gates’, the history and sociology professors—rather than by our John Does. It should focus, in the immoral words of Aristotle, not on things as they are, but on things as they might be and ought to be.
Next, the problem of evil arises as a central issue for Machiavelli: a ruler reserves the right to exercise force when he deems it necessary.
But dealing with men by force, as Ayn Rand writes, is “as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.” As she elaborated: “To interpose . . . physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival. To force him to act against his own judgment is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to what purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer operating on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder—the premise to destroy man’s capacity to live. . . . Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.”
And yet Machiavelli would ask, What’s so good about being moral anyway? But the more fundamental question is, What’s so good about being alive? As Plato declares in the Republic, “We are discussing no small matter, but how we ought to live.” Indeed, morality enables you to discover your goals and values, and the way to pursue them. Morality provides you with knowledge of the conditions by which you can achieve your ultimate end: happiness.
Now we move to Karl Marx. In Marx’s view, man is a social animal; to be human is to be social. By social—and hence collective—Marx means “the cooperation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner, and to what end.”
Men are inherently social, according to Marx, because their needs—and therefore their natures—and the manner to satisfy them creates between them reciprocal links. Man’s dependence on others and how they can aid him to “cultivat[e] his gifts in all directions,” therefore, holds civil society together.
Thus, much like Aristotle and the polis, Marx holds that man cannot exist outside normal social relations; we are always and forever social beings. “[O]nly in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible.”
Indeed, the individual cannot escape his dependence on society—even when he acts on his own. A scientist, for instance, who spends his lifetime in a laboratory, may delude himself that he is a modern-day Robinson Crusoe. But the material of his activity and the apparatus and skills with which he operates are, in fact, social products. They are inerasable signs of the cooperation that Marx refers to and which binds men together. The very language in which a scientist thinks he has learned in a particular society.
Social context also determines the career and other life goals that an individual adopts, how he tries to carry out his choices, and whether he succeeds. In short, man’s consciousness of himself and of his relations with others are that of a social being, since the manner in which he conceives of anything is a function of his society.
Yet “social,” in the way Marx uses it, is a euphemism for the subordination of the individual. But man is no ant, in the sense of an anatomically specialized organism that can survive only in a colony.
Indeed, as Ayn Rand has observed, one cannot think for or through another person, any more than one can breathe or digest food for him. Each man’s brain, like his lungs and stomach, is his alone to use. The mind is an attribute of the individual. It cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. There is no such thing as a collective brain or collective thought. Only an individual qua individual can perceive, abstract, define, connect. The primary act, the process of observing, considering, passing judgment, each man must perform alone.
Nonetheless, man gains enormous benefits from dealing with others. Together, men can build on what they learn from others. Together, they can achieve feats by specialization and joint effort that no man can achieve alone. Living in society is man’s proper way of life.
Yet in any collective, each man must do his own thinking, to guide his own part of the work. If an individual reaches a new conclusion, he does it as an individual, and it is his breakthrough, not that of his peers.
And yet man is neither a social animal, as Marx contends, nor a lone wolf, neither a socialized automaton nor a solipsist. Rather, man is a contractual creature, who adjusts as circumstances warrant.
And so, being social depends on certain conditions. For in the end, in any form of association, men can achieve cooperation only by recognizing the sovereignty of the individual—that man is, as Ayn Rand writes, “self-created, self-directed, and self-responsible.”
Man is not a product of id instincts, as Freud would have us believe. He is not ruled by tradition, as Edmund Burke would have us believe. He is not an otherworldly soul trapped in a bodily prison, as Plato would have us believe. He is not an aspiring but foolish mortal, as Shakespeare would have us believe.
He is not a puppet dancing on the strings of power lust, as Machiavelli would have us believe. He not a cog of the collective, as Marx would have us believe.
Man is an individual of elevated moral stature and uncompromising individuality, as Ayn Rand—and Jon Rick—would have you believe.
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This is a speech I delivered for the Hamilton College Clark Prize. The subject, Who is in charge of the future?, was assigned.
Who is in charge of the future?
We all are—which means anybody can be. Indeed, the influence one person can command is extraordinary.
Of course, to direct the course of human events, it helps first to direct oneself. I propose a two-part method. First, identify and integrate your convictions. This way, you transcend hesitating, noncommittal language, and achieve clarity of purpose and strength of mind.
Second, make your convictions concrete, specific, and definite. This way, you can communicate them to others with ease. Take as your guide the principle to say what you mean, and to mean what you say.
But you need not launch into debates. Do not force arguments on those uninterested or unwilling. It is not your job to save everyone’s soul.
It behooves you, however, to make yourself heard on those issues that personally matter most. Opportunities abound; my favorite is e-mailing newspapers and magazines, TV and radio commentators, and my congressmen.
If you prefer talking, try the following. On any given day, note how many times people articulate ideas as if they were indisputable. Why not then challenge such comments—again, not to give a lengthy speech, but merely to register disagreement?
Moreover, never keep silent when silence implies your sanction. This is one of the tragic lessons of the 20th century: that evil flourishes by the moral agnosticism of good people—because the good is not self-sustaining, but needs eternal vigilance.
The challenge, then, consists not of opposing, but of exposing; not of denouncing, but of disproving; not of evading, but of proclaiming an alternative. Eureka moments are rare, since changing our beliefs is a process. Yet it is of such informed activism that public opinion is ultimately molded.
Some might argue that these notions are simplistic and fanciful. To the contrary, as Thomas Edison understood, genius is about 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration. So few people attend town-hall meetings, observes the filmmaker Michael Moore, that if you go with a group you can virtually institute your agenda. And in a country where only half of eligible voters exercise that sacred right, it’s increasingly evident: Decisions are made by those who show up and those who speak up.
To be sure, events greatly affect history; but it is a relative handful of humans with concrete convictions and the drive to pursue them that gives the world shape and purpose. As the anthropologist Margaret Mead reportedly said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that has.”
Who are these thoughtful, committed citizens? Who is in charge of the future? Again, anyone—regardless of color or creed, sex or sexuality—anyone who is willing to actively concern himself, who possesses both a can-do and ought-to-do attitude.
Perhaps the most famous example is that anonymous Chinese bystander, who in 1989 posted himself before and blocked a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square. In a moment, this otherwise unexceptional student may have impressed his image on the global memory more vividly, more intimately than even May Zedong did.
Then there’s Rosa Parks, whose mere refusal, in 1955, to change seats on a bus dramatically humanized the struggle to end Jim Crow.
More recently, we can point to Tim Berners-Lee. To those who don’t live in cyberspace, as we college students and our younger siblings do, you might not recognize this name. Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web.
But such obscurity only reinforces the point: To be in charge of the future, you don’t need money, you don’t need looks, you don’t need fame. What you need is an opportunity to express your preparation.
Some say greatness is a thing of the past, that there are no heroes left. I disagree. I say that heroes exist to the extent one stands guard at the gate of one’s mind, to the extent that one casts off the apathy people too often confuse for incompetence.
In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand crystallized the point:
“Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserve[], but have . . . been [un]able to reach. . . . The world you desire[] can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”
I approached this valedictory with the query, “Why swimming”? Now, it is said that one shouldn’t answer a question with a question, but I demur: why life? For me, living means vigor—awakening in the morning and flexing and fanning out the biggest muscles in my back, stepping outside and, as my great uncle Marshall has told me he does, gloriously breathing in air to my lungs. The world is bright and brimming with life itself, and I am privileged, at this juncture of opportunity in my youth, to be not only of sound mind but also of sound body.
If memory serves, I was in the eight-and-under age group when Ben Eakley, who also attended Millburn High School and in fact lives a few houses down from me, gave his Seals valedictory. As I sat spellbound by many words I did not yet know, I understood that swimming meant a great deal to this Yalie; thenceforth, I have been mentally attempting to redact what swimming means to me. What should come naturally, however, is daunting; I now stand in the company of such alumni as Bethany Karl, whose emotive words touched every Seal, and J.D. McMillan, who called Brian Greene “a father.”
Swimming has appealed to me from childhood as an ageless arcadia. Its compulsion of pure body force against resistance—without the aid of a racket or spikes—suites my physique; its coordination of grace with energy poises my movements and manner. Especially now that I’m back in training—though I did skip practice this morning—I soak up the feeling of going somewhere purposefully and rhythmically, with little to distract me en route. To watch me swim is to understand who I am.
From a spectator’s view—not the open bleachers that Mr. Lawler populates Monday through Thursday nights, but, more fondly, the defectively ventilated and lighted observation deck from which Mary and Mike Nervi, Marge Reheis, and my mother replenished us swimmers with doughnuts and orange juice—it is six lanes, each divided by two lines going and coming, in which loop concatenated bodies, some masculine, more feminine—all skimpily, snugly clad, pallid, and sinewy. From a coach’s eye—probably Marty’s—my elbow should be extended further, I am still breathing with every stroke, and why am I still on the wall? From the swimmer’s outlook, such scenes evoke the utter bliss that is vibrantly, uniquely swimming. For this is the Summit Area Y.M.C.A. natatorium in which I have grown from a diffident and clumsy freestyler, flailing his erratic laps through heavy, humid, crowded water, to an assertive two-time captain, powering through practice in a place as familiar as my home town and as comfortable as my home.
I came to Seals as a seven-year-old attired in swim trunks below my knees. My mother had heard about the program through the Y, where I played soccer in what is now the main exercise room. Having spent my summers at Jefferson Lake Day Camp, where the swimming lessons my great uncle Marshall taught me on the weekends propelled me to the highest level of water instruction, I was not unfamiliar with water but with the jargon of swimming: who knew that freestyle was the same thing as crawl?
Tryouts were held on a September weekday. My lap of choice was breaststroke, for which I simply copied the form of my nearest competitors, my only concept of the stroke being that of my mother’s summertime technique. To my mind, I paled in comparison with the other aspirants, many of whom already knew each other through previous years on the team. After I changed rapidly in the crowded locker room—in those days, I would race in any endeavor and hence often wore my wet suit home—I climbed the stairs and befriended the vending machines that would regularly supply ruin to my dinner. As my mother and I waited in the cramped lobby, Hank called the names of those accepted; finally, toward the end, he announced “Jonathan Feder,” and I was a Seal. I made my way through the crowd to receive my prized packet, and walked out of the Y that crisp night beaming. My mother hugged me; I jumped with joy—and with apprehensiveness.
Today, such joie de vivre is unqualified; like my miniature schnauzer Wyatt, practice is a panacean pleasure. On particularly stressful days, the pool is both a Nautilus and a Tylenol. Here, accolades are often redundant, since one’s stroke divulges one’s mood: is Jeff kicking so forcibly as to blur my foresight from behind; is Abby pushing off the wall before the interval? In water, be it at practice or drifting, head back, miles downstream with the ocean current, I feel free, unbounded by neither time nor space.
Swimming, also, is ideal as a social outlet, “where the troubles are all the same and everybody knows your name.” Rewarding it is to reciprocate the support of teammates and coaches—friends—in the crucible of the competitive arena. We may vie against one another, but when practice ends, we carpool home, chat online, and fall asleep energetically; the following morning, still smelling faintly of chlorine, muscles usually sore, we exude vitality. For us, this ambiance is tantamount to oxygen; and the sport and the program are simply a way of life, which they enlarge.
The weekday endurance training during Friends and Seinfeld, the weekend technique calisthenics when we should be sleeping—how does the repetitive pulling and kicking back and forth, back and forth, hour after hour, remain, after eleven years, a seven-month-season, six-day-a-week regimen? In conceptual terms, swimming is principally a function of time; we race against the clock, and measure our speed in those inestimable milliseconds only sprinters can appreciate. Thus the swimmer values orderliness. But more than disciplining, swimming alleviates loneliness; it is an isolation that is comforting. Insulated from any sight or sound other than the vague perspectives of water and the muted thunderclap of our arm strokes and breathing, we swimmers tunnel onward amid silvery bubbles. Others may swim alongside—unavoidably, magnified eyes meet via goggles or one’s toes rub up against another’s arm—but their distinctiveness tends to refract away. Often, nonswimmer friends marvel at our ease of progress through seeming crises, for we swimmers see the world through our cool, measured pace in the pool.
And so, this is swimming—a religion, the backbone of my positivity, focal point of my day, ambrosia to my soul, a passion that transcends life’s obstacles and facilitates unbridled enthusiasm, intense drive, and enduring solace. But who facilitates the opportunity for these qualities?
I first want to thank my teammates, all of whom made practice worth coming to—the power naps beforehand; the speeding to maneuver Summit’s streetlight patterns; the cherished locker-room gossip; the culminating sauna, shower and turquoise dispenser-shampoo; the sliding down the Y’s front two railings; the frigid walks to cars, without socks, with a wet head; the post-practice ravenous appetites. When, after my disappointing freshman year I was resolved to quit swimming, Hank needed only to refer to this community, for without teammates, ambitions lose import.
Indeed, the man we all know quietly as Hank is the patriarch of Seals. Having weathered changes in teammates, coaches, weight rooms, locker rooms, the record board, pools, and practice schedules, I will above all miss our abiding head coach, who himself has repeatedly weathered sickness so that he can again be with us. Kind and affable, Hank has steered me not only through athletics but also during several situations through life. His trademark humor is frequently an antidote, his gentle spirit contagious, and his devotion inspiring. When I asked him for a letter of recommendation for college swimming—although my request was but two weeks before the decisions were to be mailed—Hank knowledgeably wrote about me in terms sure to convince any coach, if not of my Olympic times, then of my Olympic personality. Perhaps my fondest memory of Hank is at the eight-and-under championship mini-meet in Pennsylvania; there I attribute my record in the fifty free to at least two things Hank: the Seal he drew on my left shoulder and his classic motto, Winning isn’t everything, but the will to win is.
Likewise, I have nothing but appreciation for the many other coaches, past and present, of Seals: Marty, whose love for the sport induces motivation and whose reminiscences of the team it was a pleasure to discuss at dinner this year in Charlotte; Dave, whose blunt approach forced me to decrease, somewhat, my lap- and wall-skipping; Laura Ridel, whose comments to me on wearing a Speedo endowed confidence in a modest eight-year-old; Greg, who wouldn’t allow me to give up on myself—lest Ellen beat me—during an afternoon weekend practice this year; Mrs. G., whose smile symbolized others’ happiness; Laura Figler, whose walking the laps I was swimming spurred me forward; Bill, whose Saturday morning practices introduced me to the famous medicine balls; Brian, whose indefatigable spirit permeated each practice and whose support, in and out of the pool, turned many tough days laughable; and Mrs. Diamond, whose coaching, because she had just finished her own workout, was continually cheery.
Finally, to my family—my mother Barbara, my late grandmother Loretta, my grandfather Sidney, and my great uncle Marshall—I give the gratitude of my very being. Upon my shoulders rests a world of appreciation to you four for your confidence in me as a son. Without your munificent love and support and time, I would be nothing.
Grandpa and grandma, thank you for your untiring encouragement and optimism. Uncle Marshall, thank you deeply for the pineapple that nourished me during mini meets and your sincere interest in my times. Mom, you spent countless hours driving me to practices and meets. We share a lack of a sense of direction, but, somehow, we always reached our destination—even that time in Princeton when I missed one of my two events. I remember how proud I felt when long ago, the bus—this was when Seals employed buses for transportation to away dual meets—never returned to collect the team; having just won the meet, we were hungry and so you treated the team to lunch. And, throughout, despite my protests, you saved every article in which my name appeared, a thankless task of which I now see the poignancy.
Never did my family pressure me—an example I hope I can one day emulate—but instead they conferred up my years of athletics a prerequisite for success and the characteristic that makes any endeavor worthwhile: fun. No child, especially with an estranged father, could ask for a more loyal and loving family.
Time will not fade the memories of Summit Area Y.M.C.A. Seals swimming; most likely, time will give rise to indelible gratefulness for the fostering environment in which I was both student and teacher. To a new generation of Seals—especially to you slackers whose cramps arise during long sets—it is with sad happiness that I wish you the best and expect to read about many of your achievements in the newspapers. Carry your team’s name with pride, in the full knowledge that you are part of something special. I sincerely hope your experiences on this team have been, and will be, as thoroughly rewarding and delightful as mine have been.
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