There is Nothing Noble About Sacrifice

With the conjunction of Easter and ANZAC in the same week, the word "sacrifice" is being sickeningly over-used.

"Sickeningly" because so few users of the work are fully aware of just how barbaric the ethic of sacrifice is. As I say in this repost of a blog from 2019:

There is Nothing Noble About Sacrifice.

Since so many have used the word so often, let's define it:

"Slaughter." "Surrendering..." "Immolation." Nothing noble about any of that. 

Let's examine it further:

“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, [the ethic of] altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less 'selfish,' than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one. [Emphasis added.]

And further:

“Sacrifice” does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious.
“Sacrifice” does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. “Sacrifice” is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.
    If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then renounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbour’s child and let your own die, it is.
    If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to a worthless stranger, it is. If you give your friend a sum you can afford, it is not a sacrifice; if you give him money at the cost of your own discomfort, it is only a partial virtue, according to this sort of moral standard; if you give him money at the cost of disaster to yourself—that is the virtue of sacrifice in full.
    If you renounce all personal desires and dedicate your life to those you love, you do not achieve full virtue [by this moral standard]: you still retain a value of your own, which is your love. If you devote your life to random strangers, it is an act of greater virtue. If you devote your life to serving men you hate—[by this depraved moral standard] that is the greatest of the virtues you can practice.
    A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values.

"The surrender of all values." There is nothing, nothing at all, that is noble about that.

'Sacrifice,' by sculptor Rayner Hoff, inside the Australian War Memorial in Sydney's Hyde Park

Does that mean you should never fight at all? Never fight for those you love? No:

Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one’s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a “sacrifice” for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.
    Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. In the above example, his wife’s survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.
    But suppose he let her die in order to spend his money on saving the lives of ten other women, none of whom meant anything to him—as the ethics of altruism would require. That would be a sacrifice. Here the difference between Objectivism and altruism can be seen most clearly: if sacrifice is the moral principle of action, then that husband shouldsacrifice his wife for the sake of ten other women. What distinguishes the wife from the ten others? Nothing but her value to the husband who has to make the choice—nothing but the fact that his happiness requires her survival.
    The Objectivist ethics would tell him: your highest moral purpose is the achievement of your own happiness, your money is yours, use it to save your wife, that is your moral right and your rational, moral choice.

Fighting for your values, fighting for those you love, these are acts of integrity. Not of sacrifice.

We may honour a man acting in support of his values, even at the risk of his life. We should neither honour, nor call it, a sacrifice.

Why?

First, because honouring their memory demands it. That's a question of our integrity.

Second, there is a very practical reason; one of self-defence:

It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

Such people exist in every age. 

They called men to war in 1914 in the name of, says one historian, "an altruistic willingness to sacrifice oneself for the cause of righteousness." They call people now, Great Leaders of every description seeking sacrifice to a "higher cause" -- to the State, to the Climate, to any Great Cause selected by the Great Leaders, expunging the sin of selfishness in their answer to the call of "Duty."

But as a great writer once observed: "Under a morality of sacrifice, the first value you sacrifice is morality itself."

There is nothing noble about sacrifice. 

Ludwig von Mises: Capitalism's great defender

When Ludwig von Mises appeared on the economic scene, Marxism and the other socialist sects enjoyed a virtual intellectual monopoly — there was virtually no systematic intellectual opposition to socialism or defence of capitalism. Quite literally, the intellectual ramparts of civilization were undefended. What von Mises undertook, and which summarises the essence of his greatness, was to build an intellectual defence of capitalism and thus of civilisation.

On the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1881, his student George Reisman penned this tribute to one of capitalism's greatest defenders. . .

A Tribute to Ludwig von Mises on the Anniversary of his Birth

by George Reisman

September 29, 2024, is the one-hundred-and-forty-third anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, economist and social philosopher, who passed away in 1973. Von Mises was my teacher and mentor and the source or inspiration for most of what I know and consider to be important and worthwhile in these fields of what enables me to understand the events shaping the world in which we live. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to him, because I believe that he deserves to occupy a major place in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.

Von Mises is important because his teachings are necessary to the preservation of material civilization. As he showed, the base of material civilisation is the division of labour. Without the higher productivity of labour made possible by the division of labour, the great majority of mankind would simply die of starvation. The existence and successful functioning of the division of labour, however, vitally depends on the institutions of a capitalist society — that is, on limited government and economic freedom; on private ownership of land and all other property; on exchange and money; on saving and investment; on economic inequality and economic competition; and on the profit motive that institutions everywhere under attack for several generations.

When von Mises appeared on the scene, Marxism and the other socialist sects enjoyed a virtual intellectual monopoly. Major flaws and inconsistencies in the writings of Adam Smith and Ricardo and their followers enabled the socialists to claim classical economics as their actual ally. The writings of Jevons and the earlier Austrian economists Menger and Böhm-Bawerk were insufficiently comprehensive to provide an effective counter to the socialists. Bastiat had tried to provide one, but died too soon, and probably lacked the necessary theoretical depth in any case.

Thus, when von Mises appeared, there was virtually no systematic intellectual opposition to socialism or defense of capitalism. Quite literally, the intellectual ramparts of civilisation were undefended. What von Mises undertook, and which summarises the essence of his greatness, was to build an intellectual defence of capitalism and thus of civilisation.

Capitalism operates to the material self-interests of all

THE LEADING ARGUMENT OF the socialists was that the institutions of capitalism served the interests merely of a handful of rugged exploiters and monopolists, and operated against the interests of the great majority of mankind, which socialism would serve. While the only answer others could give was to devise plans to take away somewhat less of the capitalists’ wealth than the socialists were demanding, or to urge that property rights nevertheless be respected despite their incompatibility with most people’s well-being, von Mises challenged everyone’s basic assumption. He showed that capitalism operates to the material self-interests of all, including the non-capitalists the so-called proletarians. In a capitalist society, von Mises showed, privately-owned means of production serve the market. The physical beneficiaries of the factories and mills therefore are all who buy their products. And, together with the incentive of profit and loss, and the freedom of competition that it implies, the existence of private ownership ensures an ever-growing supply of products for all.

Thus, von Mises showed to be absolute nonsense such clichés as poverty causes communism. Not poverty, but poverty plus the mistaken belief that communism is the cure for poverty, causes communism. If the misguided revolutionaries of the backward countries and of impoverished slums understood economics, any desire they might have to fight poverty would make them advocates of capitalism.

Socialism means chaos

Socialism, von Mises showed, in his greatest original contribution to economic thought, not only abolishes the incentive of profit and loss and the freedom of competition along with private ownership of the means of production, but makes economic calculation, economic coordination, and economic planning impossible, and therefore results in chaos — because socialism means the abolition of the price system and the intellectual division of labour; it means the concentration and centralisation of all decision-making in the hands of one agency: the Central Planning Board or the Supreme Dictator.

Yet the planning of an economic system is beyond the power of any one consciousness: the number, variety and locations of the different factors of production, the various technological possibilities that are open to them, and the different possible permutations and combinations of what might be produced from them, are far beyond the power even of the greatest genius to keep in mind. Economic planning, von Mises showed, requires the cooperation of all who participate in the economic system. It can exist only under capitalism, where, every day, businessmen plan on the basis of calculations of profit and loss; workers, on the basis of wages; and consumers, on the basis of the prices of consumers’ goods.

Von Mises’s contributions to the debate between capitalism and socialism the leading issue of modern times are overwhelming. Before he wrote, people did not realise that capitalism has economic planning. They uncritically accepted the Marxian dogma that capitalism is an anarchy of production and that socialism represents rational economic planning. People were (and most still are) in the position of Moliere’s M. Jourdan, who never realized that what he was speaking all his life was prose. For, living in a capitalist society, people are literally surrounded by economic planning, and yet do not realise that it exists. Every day, there are countless businessmen who are planning to expand or contract their firms, who are planning to introduce new products or discontinue old ones, planning to open new branches or close down existing ones, planning to change their methods of production or continue with their present methods, planning to hire additional workers or let some of their present ones go. And every day, there are countless workers planning to improve their skills, change their occupations or places of work, or to continue with things as they are; and consumers, planning to buy homes, cars, stereos, steak or hamburger, and how to use the goods they already have for example, to drive to work or to take the train, instead.

Yet people deny the name planning to all this activity and reserve it for the feeble efforts of a handful of government officials, who, having prohibited the planning of everyone else, presume to substitute their knowledge and intelligence for the knowledge and intelligence of tens of millions. Von Mises identified the existence of planning under capitalism, the fact that it is based on prices ( economic calculations ), and the fact that the prices serve to coordinate and harmonise the activities of all the millions of separate, independent planners.

He showed that each individual, in being concerned with earning a revenue or income and with limiting his expenses, is led to adjust his particular plans to the plans of all others. For example, the worker who decides to become an accountant rather than an artist, because he values the higher income to be made as an accountant, changes his career plan in response to the plans of others to purchase accounting services rather than paintings. The individual who decides that a house in a particular neighborhood is too expensive and who therefore gives up his plan to live in that neighborhood, is similarly engaged in a process of adjusting his plans to the plans of others; because what makes the house too expensive is the plans of others to buy it who are able and willing to pay more. And, above all, von Mises showed, every business, in seeking to make profits and avoid losses, is led to plan its activities in a way that not only serves the plans of its own customers, but takes into account the plans of all other users of the same factors of production throughout the economic system.

Thus, von Mises demonstrated that capitalism is an economic system rationally planned by the combined, self-interested efforts of all who participate in it. The failure of socialism, he showed, results from the fact that it represents not economic planning, but the destruction of economic planning, which exists only under capitalism and the price system.

Competition under capitalism is of an entirely different character than competition in the animal kingdom

VON MISES WAS NOT primarily anti-socialist. He was pro-capitalist. His opposition to socialism, and to all forms of government intervention, stemmed from his support for capitalism and from his underlying love of individual freedom, and his conviction that the self-interests of free men are harmonious indeed, that one man’s gain under capitalism is not only not another’s loss, but is actually others’ gain. Von Mises was a consistent champion of the self-made man, of the intellectual and business pioneer, whose activities are the source of progress for all mankind and who, he showed, can flourish only under capitalism.

Von Mises demonstrated that competition under capitalism is of an entirely different character than competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition for scarce, nature-given means of subsistence, but a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth, from which all gain. For example, the effect of the competition between farmers using horses and those using tractors was not that the former group died of starvation, but that everyone had more food and the income available to purchase additional quantities of other goods as well. This was true even of the farmers who lost the competition, as soon as they relocated in other areas of the economic system, which were enabled to expand precisely by virtue of the improvements in agriculture. Similarly, the effect of the automobile’s supplanting the horse and buggy was to benefit even the former horse breeders and blacksmiths, once they made the necessary relocations.

In a major elaboration of Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage, von Mises showed that there is room for all in the competition of capitalism, even those of the most modest abilities. Such people need only concentrate on the areas in which their relative productive inferiority is least. For example, an individual capable of being no more than a janitor does not have to fear the competition of the rest of society, almost all of whose members could be better janitors than he, if that is what they chose to be. Because however much better janitors other people might make, their advantage in other lines is even greater. And so long as the person of limited ability is willing to work for less as a janitor than other people can earn in other lines, he has nothing to worry about from their competition. He, in fact, outcompetes them for the job of janitor by being willing to accept a lower income than they. Von Mises showed that a harmony of interests prevails in this case, too. For the existence of the janitor enables more talented people to devote their time to more demanding tasks, while their existence enables him to obtain goods and services that would otherwise be altogether impossible for him to obtain.

He showed that the foundation of world peace is a policy of laissez-faire both domestically and internationally

ON THE BASIS OF such facts, von Mises argued against the possibility of inherent conflicts of interest among races and nations, as well as among individuals. For even if some races or nations were superior (or inferior) to others in every aspect of productive ability, mutual cooperation in the division of labour would still be advantageous to all. Thus, he showed that all doctrines alleging inherent conflicts rest on an ignorance of economics.

He argued with unanswerable logic that the economic causes of war are the result of government interference, in the form of trade and migration barriers, and that such interference restricting foreign economic relations is the product of other government interference, restricting domestic economic activity. For example, tariffs become necessary as a means of preventing unemployment only because of the existence of minimum wage laws and pro-union legislation, which prevent the domestic labor force from meeting foreign competition by means of the acceptance of lower wages when necessary. He showed that the foundation of world peace is a policy of laissez-faire both domestically and internationally.

In answer to the vicious and widely believed accusation of the Marxists that Nazism was an expression of capitalism, he showed, in addition to all the above, that Nazism was actually a form of socialism. Any system characterised by price and wage controls, and thus by shortages and government controls over production and distribution, as was Nazism, is a system in which the government is the de-facto owner of the means of production. Because, in such circumstances, the government decides not only the prices and wages charged and paid, but also what is to be produced, in what quantities, by what methods, and where it is to be sent. These are all the fundamental prerogatives of ownership. This identification of socialism on the German pattern, as he called it, is of immense value in understanding the nature of present demands for price controls.

Von Mises showed that all of the accusations made against capitalism were either altogether unfounded or should be directed against government intervention

VON MISES SHOWED THAT all of the accusations made against capitalism were either altogether unfounded or should be directed against government intervention, which destroys the workings of capitalism. He was among the first to point out that the poverty of the early years of the Industrial Revolution was the heritage of all previous history that it existed because the productivity of labour was still pitifully low; because scientists, inventors, businessmen, savers and investors could only step by step create the advances and accumulate the capital necessary to raise it. He showed that all the policies of so-called labour and social legislation were actually contrary to the interests of the masses of workers they were designed to help — that their effect was to cause unemployment, retard capital accumulation, and thus hold down the productivity of labour and the standard of living of all. 

In yet another major original contribution to economic thought, he showed that depressions were the result of government-sponsored policies of credit expansion designed to lower the market rate of interest. Such policies, he showed, created large-scale malinvestments, which deprived the economic system of liquid capital and brought on credit contractions and thus depressions. Von Mises was a leading supporter of the gold standard and of laissez-faire in banking, which, he believed, would virtually achieve a 100% reserve gold standard and thus make impossible both inflation and deflation.

I do not believe that anyone can claim to be really educated who has not absorbed a substantial measure of the immense wisdom present in his works

WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN of von Mises provides only the barest indication of the intellectual content that is to be found in his writings. He authored over a dozen volumes. And I venture to say that I cannot recall reading a single paragraph in any of them that did not contain one or more profound thoughts or observations. Even on the occasions when I found it necessary to disagree with him (for example, on his view that monopoly can exist under capitalism, his advocacy of the military draft, and certain aspects of his views on epistemology, the nature of value judgments, and the proper starting point for economics), I always found what he had to say to be extremely valuable and a powerful stimulus to my own thinking. I do not believe that anyone can claim to be really educated who has not absorbed a substantial measure of the immense wisdom present in his works.

Von Mises’s two most important books are Human Action and Socialism, which best represents the breadth and depth of his thought. These are not for beginners, however. They should be preceded by some of von Mises’s popular writings, such as Bureaucracy and Planning For Freedom.

The Theory of Money and Credit, Theory and History, Epistemological Problems of Economics, and The Ultimate Foundations of Economic Science are more specialised works that should probably be read only after Human Action. Von Mises’s other popular writings in English include Omnipotent Government, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Liberalism, Critique of Interventionism, Economic Policy, and The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics. For anyone seriously interested in economics, social philosophy, or modern history, the entire list should be considered required reading. [All titles of von Mises currently in print can be ordered on this web site, or downloaded free here.]

Courage

VON MISES MUST BE JUDGED not only as a remarkably brilliant thinker but also as a remarkably courageous human being. He held the truth of his convictions above all else and was prepared to stand alone in their defence. He cared nothing for personal fame, position, or financial gain, if it meant having to purchase them at the sacrifice of principle. In his lifetime, he was shunned and ignored by the intellectual establishment, because the truth of his views and the sincerity and power with which he advanced them shattered the tissues of fallacies and lies on which most intellectuals then built, and even now continue to build, their professional careers.

It was my great privilege to have known von Mises personally over a period of twenty years. I met him for the first time when I was sixteen years old. Because he recognised the seriousness of my interest in economics, he invited me to attend his graduate seminar at New York University, which I did almost every week thereafter for the next seven years, stopping only when the start of my own teaching career made it no longer possible for me to continue in regular attendance.

His seminar, like his writings, was characterised by the highest level of scholarship and erudition, and always by the most profound respect for ideas. Von Mises was never concerned with the personal motivation or character of an author, but only with the question of whether the man’s ideas were true or false. In the same way, his personal manner was at all times highly respectful, reserved, and a source of friendly encouragement. He constantly strove to bring out the best in his students. This, combined with his stress on the importance of knowing foreign languages, led in my own case to using some of my time in college to learn German and then to undertaking the translation of his Epistemological Problems of Economics, something that has always been one of my proudest accomplishments.

Today, von Mises’s ideas at long last appear to be gaining in influence. His teachings about the nature of socialism have been confirmed in the first-hand observations of honest news reporters with extensive experience in Soviet Russia, such as Robert Kaiser, Hedrick Smith, John Dornberg, and Henry Kamm. They are being confirmed at this very moment by the actions of millions of angry workers in Poland.

Some of von Mises’s ideas are being propounded by the Nobel prizewinners F.A. Hayek (himself a former student of von Mises) and Milton Friedman. They exert a major influence on the writings of Henry Hazlitt and the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education, as well as such prominent former students as Hans Sennholz. Von Mises’s monetary theories permeate the pages of recent best-selling books on personal investments, such as those by Harry Browne and Jerome Smith. And last, but certainly not least, they appear to be exerting an important influence on the present President of the United States [Ronald Reagan], who has acknowledged reading Human Action and has expressed his admiration for it.

Von Mises’s books deserve to be required reading in every college and university curriculum not just in departments of economics, but also in departments of philosophy, history, government, sociology, law, business, journalism, education, and the humanities. He himself should be awarded an immediate posthumous Nobel Prize indeed, more than one. He deserves to receive every token of recognition and memorial that our society can bestow. For as much as anyone in history, he laboured to preserve it. If he is widely enough read, his labours may actually succeed in helping to save it.

* * * * 

Economist George Reisman was a student of Ludwig Von Mises, Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics, and the author of Government Against the Economy and Capitalism: An Economic Treatise [free download here, or buy it here or here]. His blog is here, his website here, and all his publications here. This essay originally appeared in 1981, on the occasion of Mises’s one-hundredth birthday, and appeared recently at the Mises Institute blog.

The Martyrdom of Jimmy Lai [updated]

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong's greatest freedom advocate is the political hero whose plight you didn't know about. As Jon Miltmore explains in this Guest Post, in his quest to save Hong Kong’s rapidly fading freedom, Jimmy Lai has sacrificed his own. The entrepreneur and media mogul currently sits in a Chinese prison, charged with “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and “conspiracy to publish seditious publications.”

Jimmy Lai addresses the camera in a still from the documentary: “Anything I have is this place.” 2023.

The Martyrdom of Jimmy Lai

by Jon Miltimore

When Jimmy Lai was a child working the streets of Canton (Guangzhou), China, in the 1950s, he received a bar of chocolate as a tip for carrying a man’s bags at a train station.

Poor and hungry, he immediately bit into the treat. He had never tasted anything like it, and he asked the traveller where he was from.

“Hong Kong,” the man replied.

Lai had never heard of Hong Kong, but he knew it was a place he wanted to be. So a few years later, at age 12, he stowed away on a fishing vessel and escaped mainland China for Hong Kong.

Lai immediately realised there was something different about the territory. He had never seen so much food or wealth before, and he quickly found work at a factory. Over several years, he worked, saved, and invested, and eventually as a young man Lai scraped up enough money to purchase a bankrupt clothing company and started manufacturing sweaters.

Lai’s entrepreneurship paid off. He prospered and diversified. He bought properties in Canada, and in the early 1980s launched the popular clothing brand Giordano (a name he picked up from a napkin from a New York City pizza joint). He later started newspapers, including the popular Next Magazine, which he founded in 1990, and the Apple Daily, which for years was the only pro-democracy daily newspaper printed in Chinese.

By 2008, Lai had become a billionaire and was on Forbes’s list of the wealthiest entrepreneurs. But at some point in his rags-to-riches story, Lai realised that wealth was not his ultimate goal.

Preserving the freedom of Hong Kong had become his life’s mission. “Without freedom, we have nothing,” Lai has often said.

In his quest to save Hong Kong’s rapidly fading freedom, however, Lai has sacrificed his own. The entrepreneur and media mogul currently sits in a Chinese prison, charged with “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and “conspiracy to publish seditious publications.”

Lai’s story was the subject of a 2023 documentary produced by the Acton Institute. How it will end remains unclear.

A Brief History of Hong Kong

To understand the political persecution of Jimmy Lai, one must first understand the history of Hong Kong.

In 1898, following years of colonial rule under the British Empire that began after the First Opium War (1839–1842), China leased Hong Kong to Great Britain for 99 years. For the next century, the small peninsula and islands that jutted into the South China Sea operated under British rule.

This changed in 1997, when the United Kingdom’s claim on the territory came to an end. But during its 156 years under British rule, Hong Kong developed a distinctly Western character. Property rights, free speech, and free markets helped turn Hong Kong into one of the most prosperous places on earth, a land far wealthier than neighbouring Communist China.

“In 1987, Hong Kong…had a per capita income of $8,260,” author Robert A. Peterson observed prior to the handover. “Just a few miles away, across the Sham Chun River — in Communist China — people of the same racial stock, living in the same subtropical climate on shores washed by the same South China Sea, were able to produce a per capita income of only $300.”

As Jimmy Lai would say, the British didn’t give Hong Kong democracy. But they did give Hong Kongers valuable institutions of freedom: free markets, the rule of law, free speech, and other human rights. And much like West Germany became a destination for immigrants seeking to flee the yoke of socialism following World War II, Hong Kong became a destination for Chinese immigrants following Mao’s takeover of China in 1949.

From Freedom to Authoritarianism

Because of how diametrically different these two systems were, there was always some uncertainty about what would happen to Hong Kong when the British handed it back over to China. Technically, the agreement made Hong Kong a special administrative region (SAR) of China, which came with certain guarantees, including a democratically-elected legislative system, constitutional rights, and the promise of Hong Kong autonomy for the next 50 years.

The idea was “One country, two systems,” a concept that stretched back to the 1980s, that granted Hong Kong would its own economic and administrative system separate from Communist China. But even as the ink on the handover agreement dried, China began to encroach on Hong Kong’s autonomy. And in 2012, following the rise of Xi Jinping, Communist officials began to secretly circulate a policy known as Document No. 9 (the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere), which said the Chinese government must wage war against “Western values,” including free speech, media freedom, and judicial independence.

This did not bode well for Hong Kongers.

“Hong Kong’s bad luck was that it exemplifies all those Western values in a Chinese form,” said Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong.

As if to demonstrate its commitment to this war on “Western values,” the government in Beijing soon arrested Gao Yu, a female journalist who was accused of publishing Document No. 9. She was found guilty in a secret trial and sentenced to seven years in prison for “leaking state secrets” to a Hong Kong media organization.

The crackdown on freedom in Hong Kong continued, eventually prompting the Umbrella Protests of 2014. Further protests in 2019–2020 were sparked by a bill that would allow Beijing to extradite to mainland China Hong Kongers accused of crimes.

The state’s violent crackdown on the 2019 protests garnered international attention and spawned the National Security Law that criminalized what the Chinese government defined as secession, subversion, and collusion. This included “subversive” messages suggesting that Hong Kong is a separate system from China that should be ruled democratically.

“The law was really about ensuring Beijing’s authority over Hong Kong and making sure it wasn’t subject to the same threats it was during the 2019 protests,” Michael Cunningham, a Research Fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center who lived in mainland China when the 2019 protests erupted, told me.

‘Hong Kong Is Dying’

As Hong Kong slipped slowly into authoritarianism, Jimmy Lai did something extraordinary: he continued to resist Beijing.

Wealthy and politically connected, Lai could have continued to speak out against Communist tyranny from London or New York or some other city with strong free speech protections. But he refused to abandon his fellow Hong Kongers, and remained committed to peaceful resistance.

“If we use violence, we’ll lose the moral authority we have,” Lai said.

While many Hong Kongers were scrubbing their online profiles of pro-democracy sentiments, Lai and journalists at the Chinese-language Apple Daily continued to publish and speak out against the Chinese government’s encroachments.

“He did all this knowing he was in the crosshairs,” said Cunningham.

Amid the global chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party saw its opportunity to take down the face of Hong Kong’s freedom movement.

On August 10, 2020, Hong Kong Police raided the headquarters of the Apple Daily. Some 200 officers wearing masks searched the offices of the popular pro-democracy tabloid, collecting journalists’ documents, and arresting several people, including Lai.

Lai, whose arrest was live-streamed, was frog-marched out of the office by police in plain clothes. He was charged with colluding with a foreign country and then released on bail. Several months later, he was arrested again.

Even with Lai behind bars, the Apple Daily continued to print, and the newspapers flew off newsstands. In response, Beijing seized the newspaper’s funds (and Lai’s), and on June 23, 2021, the Apple Dailyprinted its last newspaper.

There’s no question that Lai’s imprisonment and the collapse of a free press in Hong Kong mark a turning point in a territory once noteworthy for its prosperity and commitment to classical liberalism.

“It feels like Hong Kong is dying,” one anonymous Hong Kong resident says in the documentary.

To make matters worse, many of the leaders who might help lead resistance against Beijing have fled, since they are now targets of the state.

“I was wanted by the Hong Kong court for joining the June 4 candlelight vigil,” said Sunny Cheung, a Hong Kong activist now in exile.

Cheung has no intention of returning. If found guilty, he would face a maximum sentence of life in prison for attending that vigil.

“This isn’t a legal system in any sense that we understand,” said David Alton, a member of the British House of Lords and human rights advocate, “because it’s a foregone conclusion you’re going to be convicted.”

‘The Rest of His Life in Prison’?

Jimmy Lai’s future is unknown.

The 76-year-old freedom fighter remains in solitary confinement in a Chinese prison after receiving a nearly 6-year sentence in December 2022 on various charges. But he is still awaiting trial on charges related to China’s National Security Law, and a Hong Kong appellate court recently upheld a ban that prevents his British counsel from participating in the trial.

As I watched the Acton Institute’s incredible documentary on Lai — first once and then a second time — I felt a wave of emotions. And the same thought kept hitting me. How hadn’t I heard about this before?

Lai’s life and dedication to freedom is one of the most powerful stories I’ve watched in years, yet somehow it was a story I knew nothing about. The lack of international outcry over Lai’s political persecution is something I can’t get my mind around, and I’m not the only one. Many of Lai’s supporters expressed similar sentiments.

“Why haven’t the United Kingdom and the United States tabled resolutions in the United Nations?” asked Alton.

George Weigel, a senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, was also perplexed.

“It’s a great puzzle to me why the Vatican [for example], which is constantly emphasising the rule of law in international affairs, is not more vocally concerned,” said Weigel.

The lack of attention Lai’s imprisonment is receiving is troubling. Lai’s words make it clear that he is risking his life to save Hong Kong based at least in part on his belief that others care as much about liberty as he does, and they would be spurred to action by his persecution.

“[Hong Kong] gave me freedom. I owe freedom my life,” says Lai. “The more pressure I have, the greater the voice I should have so the world will pay notice.”

Lai has done his part. After suffering years of intimidation, state spies, and attacks that included a Molotov cocktail thrown at his home, he is currently a political prisoner in a Chinese cell. But the world is not doing its part. We are not doing our part.

No groundswell movement demanding freedom for Jimmy has managed to take hold. No social media campaign has gone viral. As someone who follows the news and works for an organisation dedicated to economic freedom, I feel embarrassed and convicted that I knew so little of Lai, who in 2021 received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Cunningham told me that Lai’s imprisonment is receiving more international attention than it is in the US, but there are some doubts about what exactly the international community can do regarding China’s Lai’s imprisonment and encroachment on the rule of law in Hong Kong.

“They need to be held to account for violating the British sign-over agreement,” he said.

Whatever political leverage or groundswell movement that can bemustered to influence China must be found quickly. If not, Jimmy Lai could end up paying the ultimate price for the West’s ambivalence.

“He may very well spend the rest of his life in prison,” says Benedict Rogers, the founder of Hong Kong Watch.

‘The Book Changed My Life’

Anyone who watches the documentary on Lai’s life is likely to find himself asking a question: Would I have the courage to do what Jimmy Lai is doing?

The answer is likely no, if we’re being honest. This is not so much an indictment of our own courage, but the recognition that the world is witnessing martyr-like bravery from Lai, who became a Christian in 1997.

The Bible was not the only book that shaped Lai, however. He credits another: F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

“The book changed my life,” Lai says of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s magnum opus.

This should perhaps come as no surprise. In a sense, Lai didn’t just read The Road to Serfdom. He lived it.

As a child, Lai saw the poverty and cruelty of the Communist system that took everything from his once-wealthy father after Mao claimed power in October 1949. Lai was able to flee that system and prosper in a free-market economy, only to watch, in a cruel twist, the CCP usher in its policies of serfdom into his adopted land.

This, I think, is what fortified Lai with such rare courage. He isn’t just fighting for freedom in an abstract sense. He’s fighting for freedom in the most practical of senses, the freedom that allows a poor child in China to reach a nearby land of opportunity — just like Lai did when he escaped to Hong Kong aboard a fishing boat after tasting a bar of chocolate.

“By saving Hong Kong, you are saving the value of the free world,” Lai says.

Lai doesn’t just believe these words are true. He knows them to be true. This is why he’s risking his life for freedom. And his remarkable life shows that heroes still walk among us.

The world right now isn’t paying attention to his sacrifice. But I believe it will. And CCP officials who think they can lock Jimmy Lai up and throw away the key would do well to remember a bit of wisdom the Apple Daily shared in its final printing:

“When an apple is buried beneath the soil, its seeds will 

become a tree filled with bigger and more beautiful apples.”

* * * * * 

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org and a Senior Writer at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). 

His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

His article first appeared at the AIER blog.

UPDATE: For updates on Jimmy Lai's plight you can follow the Support Jimmy Lai website and the Support Jimmy Lai #FreeJimmyLai account on Twitter, run by his son Sebastian, who has not seen his father for over 3 years. Asked by interviewer Christian Amanpour  Sebastien Lai , 

what he would say if he could see him tomorrow, Sebastien replies: "That I'm immensely proud of him." 

"The COVID vaccines were a triumph of globalisation." [update 2]

"This week Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries that led to the development of mRNA vaccines used against COVID-19. Moderna and Pfizer‐​BioNTech produced those vaccines, saving millions of lives and helping to reopen the world. According to the Nobel Assembly, the awardees “contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”
    "[Writing] in December of 2020 just as the vaccines were about to come online[, t]he COVID vaccines, Scott Lincicome rightly pointed out, were a triumph of globalisation.
    "The much‐​deserved Nobel Prize to Karikó and Weissman highlights that truth.
    "It was the flow of people, ideas, capital, goods and services that made it possible to discover and produce a vaccine in record time…
    "First, [this is a story] about immigrants. Karikó is Hungarian and went to work in Philadelphia ... Moderna’s co‐​founder and chairman of the board, meanwhile, is of Armenian descent, born in Lebanon and immigrated first to Canada and then to the United States. The company’s other executives, like those at Pfizer, hail from numerous countries.
    "Global capital markets also played a role by providing the massive funding needed ... The production and distribution of the vaccine required complex international collaboration in terms of logistics, shipping, storage, and supply chains ...
    "None of the above could have been accomplished by a preconceived government plan. The production and distribution of the vaccines really were a triumph of globalisation."

~ Ian Vásquez from his post 'A Nobel Prize for Globalisation'

UPDATE 1: Ian's original post flushed out more opponents of globalisation, and gives greater definition to what it is opponents means when they use the term. Here, for example, is a US Republican Congressman showing his ignorance:

Other responses are similarly revealing, i.e., confused, about what this term "globalisation" actually stands for in their heads:

It looks increasingly that for most people it's simply a floating label, defined by non-essentials. So instead of arguing about essentials, people end up arguing instead about what the label means to them.

Which is hardly the ideal basis either for communication, or clear thought.

UPDATE 2: To just add to the confusion, after Saturday's election ...

“The man who manufactured weather.”

"The heat wave of 1901 was brutal across the eastern United States, setting some records that persist to this day. One of these occurred in St. Louis were, according to a recent retrospective in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 'For nearly seven weeks, temperatures were above 90 on all but three days. It was 100 or hotter on 15 days, including a terrible four-day run of at least 106.”
    "At a time when the electric ceiling fan was a new invention, there was little hope for relief. To mitigate the suffering, the Post-Dispatch raised funds from its readers to distribute ice to the poor from refrigeration plants at the city’s breweries. Still, hundreds died in St. Louis. It is estimated that 9,500 people died of the heat across the country. Crops withered, and factories closed to prevent workers from collapsing.
    "There is a lot of talk about the summer of 2023 being unusually hot due to global warming, though it is also thanks to the naturally recurring 'El Niño' weather pattern. But as the heat wave of 1901 indicates, dangerously hot summers are an old problem, particularly in the American South. And one man gave us the solution, making civilized life in the summer possible: Willis Carrier, the inventor of modern air-conditioning...
    
"He patented his device in 1906 and made continual improvements to its mechanical operation.
    "But he went beyond that, developing a whole sub-science to support his discoveries. In 1911, he presented to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers his paper, 'Rational Psychrometric Formulae,' which described the relationships of temperature, humidity, relative humidity and dew-point that provide the theoretical basis for air-conditioning. 'Psychrometrics' comes from the Ancient Greek word for 'cold': 'psuchron.' You could call it the science of comfort.
    "In 1915, Carrier partnered with a group of young engineers to found the Carrier Engineering Corporation devoted to manufacturing and improving air-conditioning systems.
    "Carrier’s achievement made him, as I put it, 'the man who manufactured weather'."

~ Robert Tracinski, from his post 'The Man Who Manufactured Weather'

“Why Do Heroes Always Have Theme Songs?"

"The chapter is called “Why Do Heroes Always Have Theme Songs?” And it’s true, they do. That was the rule in ancient times—the most famous lyric poet of the classical world, Pindar, specialized in songs for heroes—and it’s still true today. In fact, songs of heroes seem to outlast other kinds of music.
    "Just consider the defining literary works of antiquity—such 'Gilgamesh,' the 'Iliad,' the 'Odyssey,' the 'Aeneid,' and other towering works of this sort. They, too, are very much songs of heroes, and have survived for thousands of years.
    "Hollywood can’t match that long lineage. But in its own way, the movie themes of heroes are surprisingly durable.
    "Every screen hero has a theme song, and these possess remarkable staying power. The iconic theme song composed for superspy James Bond in his first film appearance in 1962 is still propelling the franchise forward more than sixty year later. The multibillion dollar 'Mission Impossible' franchise absolutely requires the incantatory appearance of the familiar 5/4 theme song launched with the original TV show back in 1966, which hasn’t lost its mojo despite a half-century of changing musical trends and tastes. Indiana Jones and Harry Potter enjoy endless reboots in movies, games, and TV shows—but the audience would refuse to accept these brand extensions without these heroes’ special songs.

"Strange as it may seem, the songs have actually proven more enduring than the actors, plots, directors, or settings in these films. This runs against everything we’re told about the music business, where an instrumental track from 1962 would have very little significance in any other sphere of pop culture. But when it comes to heroes, different rules apply. These larger-than-life figures need their special songs and—as in the traditional quest stories—the melodies that have proven their magic in the past are the most potent of all....

 "Hollywood stardom is fleeting, but heroes and their songs live forever."

~ Ted Gioia, from his post 'Why Do Heroes Always Have Theme Songs?'

 

"When it comes to rights, *deserve* has got nothing to do with it."

"When it comes to rights, deserve’s got nothing to do with it....
    "Rights protect awful totalitarian people all the time. There are many philosophical reasons for this; one is the recognition that we can’t be trusted to decide who should or shouldn’t get rights, and that arrogating such power to ourselves will inevitably favor the powerful and popular over the powerless and unpopular.
    "That’s why the whole notion of 'free speech heroes' is dicey. Plenty of people who stand up for their own free speech rights would cheerfully infringe on the rights of others given a chance....
    "We all constantly struggle against the tide of the instinctual human position “speech I like should be protected and speech I hate should be punished.” But we like simple stories, and we like heroes, so when someone’s speech is wrongly suppressed, we battle a cultural inclination to make them into noble, admirable victims.
    "Usually they’re not, and wanting them to be heroic clouds our thinking."

~ Ken White from his post 'Hating Everyone Everywhere All At Once At Stanford'

Sidney Poitier (1927 - 2022) [updated]

 

One of my heroes has just died, at the age of 94. In every role he played, actor Sidney Poitier was the very model of dignity, intelligence and resolve. And he invariably had a twinkle in his eye too. 

If you haven't before, I strongly recommend you catch up with my three favourites of all his films:

1. In the Heat of the Night
2. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and
3. Raisin in the Sun.

It's literally true to say that they don't make them like this anymore. Neither the films, nor the man.

UPDATE:

Sidney Poitier on the press's reductive focus on his 'blackness' [hat tip @FreeBlackThought]: 

"You ask me one-dimensional questions about...the Negro-ness of my life. I am artist, man, American, contemporary. I am an awful lot of things, so I wish you would pay me the respect due."

Context: 

"Why is it that you guys are hounds for bad news? At this moment, you could ask me many questions about many positive & wonderful things that are happening in this country. But we gather here to pay court to sensationalism... to negativism."

Julie Burchill on 'The Beauty and Importance of Sidney Poitier':

As Martin Scorsese put it, ‘He had a vocal precision and physical power and grace that at moments seemed almost supernatural’....

He played men of science and of academia and of action. Virgil Tibbs, from In the Heat of the Night, was a detective and expert in forensic deduction who insisted on being called Mr Tibbs. In To Sir, With Love, Poitier tells his delinquent, mainly white, teenage pupils, ‘You will show respect to me and each other at all times. You will address me as “Sir” or “Mr Thackeray”. Boys will be addressed by their last names; the girls will be likewise addressed, and as “Miss”.’ ...

Poitier was a man of immense self-possession... At a time when the segregation and fetishisation of race is being pushed as a radical act, we have lost a shining example of the fact that the colour of our skin is one of the least interesting aspects of our fascinating humanity.

 

Congratulations Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic

"Congratulations Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic for your great achievement, opening a new era in the quest to make space part of the human domain! 

    "Branson is the entrepreneur at its best; he created Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Virgin Rail and now, becomes an astronaut on the spacecraft of his company, Virgin Galactic, establishing a viable space tourism enterprise. The soon-to-be 71 yr young Branson has even bigger aspirations as well. 

    "With Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others of their vision and creative competence, he is a space pioneer and humanity at its best."

~ Ed Hudgins, from his post in Objectivist Inventors, Scientists and Engineers and Friends!

Genius(es)

"It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader.
    "Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing 'compassion' for the poor, but those who found [new things to make, new] ways to make industry more productive, and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about."

          ~ Thomas Sowell, from his book Wealth, Poverty & Politics

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Heroes everywhere

"Let us in education always call the attention of children to the hosts of men and women who are hidden from the light of fame, so kindling a love of humanity; not the vague and anaemic sentiment preached today as brotherhood, nor the political sentiment that the working classes should be redeemed and uplifted. What is most wanted is no patronising charity for humanity, but a reverent consciousness of its dignity and worth." 

        ~ Maria Montessori, from To Educate the Human Potential

[Hat tip Carrie-Ann Biondi] 

,

"There is no future for the world except through a rebirth of the Aristotelian approach to philosophy...."

"There is no future for the world except through a rebirth of the Aristotelian approach to philosophy. This would require an Aristotelian affirmation of the reality of existence, of the sovereignty of reason, of life on earth — and of the splendor of man.
    "Aristotle and Objectivism agree on fundamentals and, as a result, on this last point, also. Both hold that man can deal with reality, can achieve values, can live non-tragically. Neither believes in man the worm or man the monster; each upholds man the thinker and therefore man the hero. Aristotle calls him 'the great-souled man.' Ayn Rand calls him Howard Roark, or John Galt."
          ~ Leonard Peikoff, from 'The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, 311'
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The ongoing Captain Cook korero

James Cook (1728-1779), painted by Nathaniel Dance-Holland [public domain]

The insanity has come to New Zealand. At the very time that the number of students studying history are showing a rapid decline, the politicising of history is on the way up.

So it starts with tearing down statues of slave traders and it ends with a school in Sussex ditching its plan to name one of its houses after JK Rowling because she has dared to criticise the cult of transgenderism. What a deranged week this has been. Statues toppled or defaced by middle-class mobs haughtily taking offence on behalf of all black people. Classic comedy shows erased from streaming services. People cancelled for wrongthink on everything from white privilege to genderfluidity. Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with George Floyd needs to give their head a shake. This is the zeitgeist of intolerance intensifying. Enough. Institutions under pressure to censor need to start showing some backbone [says Spiked's Brendan O'Neill], and the rest of us need to offer solidarity to all victims of the woke witch-hunt. Freedom depends on it.

No backbone was shown in Dunedin, where the owner of the Captain Cook pub -- where many a Flying Nun band got their start -- announced that it will be changing its name from The Captain Cook -- one of many reactions worldwide to Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in the United States. That link is as tenuous as the reason for the change: "For some people," said the owner, "Captain Cook is as offensive as a Nazi flag."

It's the owner's perfect right to change the name. It's our's to wonder how a death in the United States ends up with one of the Enlightenment's greatest explorers linked with the Nazi flag. A man who in "ten years, in three voyages of discovery of high risk and prodigious burden, ... achieved what surely ranks as one of the greatest expansions of the known world (superbly chronicled in J.C. Beaglehole’s edition of Cook’s journals)."

The other marker which emerges from the journals is Cook’s humanity.  For a man of initially-limited horizons and trammelled with great responsibility, Cook often showed keen understanding, a remarkably non-judgemental attitude and a willingness to see things from the other person’s point of view.  It made him a shrewd and scientific observer, and gave him a claim to fineness of character.

"Fineness of character." I recommend you read the entire post at that link, to consider whether equating this fine man with a foul flag says more about today's protests (and protestors) than it does about Cook and his achievements.

You would think from reading continuing media reports here about reactions to James Cook however that he did little more in his long life but come to New Zealand to commit "hara or atrocities" -- two words used recently on Radio New Zealand to discuss this man's contribution to history.

The commemoration last year of Cook's first visit here threw up the "worst" of what Cook allegedly did here. In October last year, RNZ recounted how an "expression of regret" on the part of the Crown is to be given, as part of the 250-year commemorations of Cook's arrival to these shores, to "leaders of Gisborne iwi." This is accompanied on the RNZ website (our "public broadcaster") by "related stories" with a headline "He Was a Barbarian," and another recounting how graffiti on a James Cook statue in Gisborne is "an act of activism that prompts debate about New Zealand's history" inciting a "hard but necessary korero.".

If this is a "debate" over Cook's legacy then, if this sort of media coverage were any sort of guide, it began as a very one-sided one -- and it has continued that way.

Acknowledge as you must that the killing of any innocent is a tragedy. And indeed that is just how Cook saw these five deaths, as we will see. But all such incidents happen within a context that, if our "korero" is to be an honest one, must be part of every account.

That First Encounter

It may surprise readers to learn that Cook was down here in the Pacific not to rape and pillage but to carry out astronomical measurements and, while down here, to explore the botany and geography and to map the coastline of this country -- a place of whom the rest of the world knew little about the inhabitants other than that four of Abel Tasman's crew had been killed by them in 1642. This being the main reason for Tasman spending little more time here, scarpering as soon as the slaughter started.

And as fearful as Cook's crew must have been of their imminent first encounter, imagine how it must have appeared to those on land:

To picture how those undreamed-of strangers must have appeared to the Maori, we must imagine what our reactions would be if we suffered a Martian invasion. According to one Maori chief, Te Horeta Taniwha, who as a small boy was present when Cook came to Mercury Bay, the Maori at first thought the white men were goblins and their ship a god. Eighty years later, the old man recalled their astonishment when one of the goblins pointed a walking-stick at a shag and, amidst thunder and lightning, the bird fell down dead. "There was one supreme man in that ship. We knew that was the lord of the whole by his perfect gentlemanly and noble demeanour.' [1]

A startling and wholly unexpected encounter for the locals! So how did this noble and gentlemanly figure oversee the death of (what is said to be) nine men at Poverty Bay? Recall that this was Cook's first encounter with a people of whom little was known other than a slaughter. He had come prepared, inviting on the voyage a friendly Tahitian called Tupia to help with interpretation. Cook's Endeavour arrived in Poverty Bay after first sighting East Cape two days earlier, anchoring "in a deep bay where it was hoped to find wood, water and fresh provisions."

The natives were numerous -- "a strong raw-boned, well-made active people..." as Cook described them -- and their speech was near enough to Tahitian for Tupia to be able to talk with them. Far from being friendly, however, they were insolent and aggressive, and showed little wish to trade. This was their first contact with white men, and they had yet to learn the chastening power of firearms. There were minor skirmishes ashore in which two Maori were killed and several wounded.
    When a fishing canoe came near the ship's boats Cook ordered those in it to be brought aboard, forcibly if need be, so that Tupia could explain to them the visitor's desire for peace and friendship. Not surprisingly the natives resisted. A volley was fired and four were killed. Cook's conscience about the affair was uneasy, and his excuse that otherwise he and his companions would have been "knocked on the head" must have sounded thin even to himself.
    [Ships Botanist Joseph] Banks was shocked. He wrote that it was the most disagreeable day his life had yet seen, and added: "Black be the mark for it." In their brief time ashore he and [his assistant] Solander collected a meagre forty plants, and they were glad to get away from the place. So was Cook. 
    He named it Poverty Bay, "because it afforded us no one thing we wanted," and the unhappy name has stuck. On its shores now stands the town of Gisborne. [2]

So now you have some wider context on which to judge this debate, and the beginning of some context to deduce whether commemorating Cook should be more celebration or commiseration.

An impression by naturalist Alexander Sporing of Endeavour's  1769 

encounter with the defiant occupants of a Maori war canoe,

Could It Have Been Better?

Could things have happened differently? Could that first encounter have been beeter? Of course -- as both Cook and Banks agreed at the time. Indeed, they had hoped fervently it would be so -- and in many later landings on this voyage it was so, especially as Cook discovered (as many rugby-playing nations have since discovered too) that, despite their obvious love of fighting, "the main purpose of the Maori [haka] was to demonstrate their courage by insulting the white man rather than actually to attack them."[3]

And it could have been a whole lot worse -- as it had been for those local inhabitants who had encountered Cortez in Mexico, Pizarro in Peru, or the Belgians in the Congo - or for those Maori who almost at the same time, encountered the likes of French sea captain Jean-Francois Marie De Surville -- or for the crew of Tobias Furneaux, or Marion du Fresne and his crew.

First contacts between two entirely unknown cultures invite trouble. There is no reason to believe Cook wished to kill anyone, and every reason to believe he intended only peace and fervently regretted what happened.

Cook's Legacy

If this is a debate, then let us make a case for this man and his legacy. He is much, much more than the cartoon figure appearing on NZ websites in recent days. To paraphrase George Reisman, "Those who do not understand the place of Cook have been intellectually barbarized by corrupt education."

Cook left New Zealand on this first voyage having observed a people mired in war, slavery and human sacrifice, yet still "deeply impressed with what he had seen of New Zeland and its people." [4]  With this voyage, and his mapping and reports -- and those of Banks and other scientists accompanying him on this voyage -- he left behind a people now connected, through the small amount of trade conducted and the great amounts to come, to the international division of labour. And with it Western Civilisation.

Whatever the accomplishments of Maori in their eight centuries here, what Cook and other explorers brought with them was this link to this wider accomplishment grafted out over many millennia. Over those millennia, savagery was steadily (if irregularly) diminished around the globe. As it has here in New Zealand.

This is not trivial. Without it, human progress on the scale we all now take for granted would not be possible.

To further paraphrase George Reisman,

Those who deny [this] demonstrate that they have not made the knowledge and values that constitute Western Civilization their own. They are self-confessed and self-made aliens living in the midst of Western Civilization yet preferring to all of the knowledge and values that constitute it, the meagre, primitive state of knowledge and values constituting the culture of “indigenous peoples,” who are at a level comparable to that of people who lived many thousands of years ago, with no knowledge of reading or writing, and hardly any knowledge of science, mathematics, philosophy, music, or art.
    Whoever, in the words of Ludwig von Mises, prefers life to death, health to disease, and wealth to poverty, is logically obliged to prefer Western Civilization and its offshoots of individual freedom and capitalism to all other civilisations and cultures that have ever existed.

'The Death of Cook,' 1785, by Francesco Bartolozzi, William Byrne, John Webber [public domain]

Correcting the Debate

Cook himself was killed at Kealakakua Bay, Hawaii, murdered by another misunderstanding, "sacrificed by the priests of Hawaii. They had made a living god of him and had then realised their error, and the only way to prove him mortal in the sight of the people was to kill him. Many great men have died for the same reason." [5] The man known as to Britons as "the ablest and most renowned navigator this or any other country has produced" was dead. It was said that on hearing the news "all Britain mourned,"

and not only Britain but her friends and her enemies and the whole western world. No-one could be sure how the people of his favourite island, Tahiti, would have reacted, for in their eyes he was a demi-god and presumably immportal ...
Cook was essentially a man of peace. He never commanded a ship of the line, and he never fought in a major naval engagement; yet apart from Nelson he remains today the most famous of all Britain's captains ... 
He was a natural leader of men, a peerless seaman and navigator, a superb cartographer, an acute and accurate observer, and the foremost explorer os his own age. He died knowing that his acheivements in three historic voyages made between 1768 and 1779 could never be surpassed or even again be equalled, for he had left comparatively little for others to do.

"It is almost impossible," say the authors of The Voyages of Captain Cook, "to overstate Cook's contribution to geographical knowledge":

On the negative side, he silenced forever those theorists ... who insisted that there must be a great southern continent to counterbalance the land mass of the northern hemisphere, and he disproveed the theory that there existed a practical north-west passage around the top of America...
    On the positive side, he discovered and charted much of the Pacific that we know today, from the west coast of Canada and the Hawaiian islands to New Caledonia; he established, by sailing around it, that New Zealand was no part of a mythical continent but two large, narrowly separated islands; he disproved the Dutch belief that "New Holland" was entirely barren by traversing the whole length of its fertile eastern coast, thus paving the way for British settlement there eighteen years later; and he confirmed that a strait separated New Guinea from what is now Australia.
    He did much more however. He pioneered and perfected the use of the chronometer to determine longitude, and so took a lot of the guesswork out of navigation. He showed by practical example how scurvy, the greatest single scourge of seafarers, could be controlle and conquered. He wrote simply and informatively about the places he visited and with humanity and insight about the people he met and how they lived. His accounts of his voyages, illustrated by the various artists who accompanied him, became best-selling books which not only broadened the knowledge and mental horizons of the many who read them but lent such apparent weight to the theories of Rousseau and other philosophers of teh back-tonature school that it took several decades of earnest missionary propaganda to tarnish the poppular image of the 'noble savage.' And as father of modern marine surveying he esatablished a tradition and fouded a line that extended through Vancouver, Bligh, Broughton, Flinders, Owen, Fitzroy and others far into the nineteenth century.
    It is remarkable enough that any one man could have achieved so much, but in Cook's case it is even more remarkable ... for he came into the world with no advantage at all save his own intelligence and will.[6]

He was a great man, an Enlightenment-era hero,  and a world-historical figure. That an apology is now possible for what he himself abundantly regretted in that first encounter is a measure of how the world and New Zealand's place in it has changed since then, not least because of him and the values he both represented and helped bring here.

And since we can all now share a similar sense of humour, here's Billy T. James' own reconstructions of those historic "first contacts" ...

[1] Keith Sinclair, A History of New Zealand (1991), p. 32-3
[2] Rex & Thea Rienits, The Voyages of Captain Cook (1968), p.43
[3] Ibid, p. 45
[4] Ibid, p. 50-51
[5] Ibid, p. 152
[6] Ibid, p. 12-14

[NB: This post is based on one made last year at the time of commemorations for Cook's first visit.]meaMeaw
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