A liberty lesson delivered by Dan Sanchez from 'the slap heard round the world.'

Ayn Rand

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What John Galt Would Say to Will Smith

Guest post by Dan Sanchez

I'm not an avid follower of celebrity news -- truth be told I'm barely aware of who all these alleged celebrities are, or how they achieved this so-called status -- but there was an altercation at the Academy Awards last night that is not only consuming the attention of the media and the public, but is actually quite relevant to the ideas that this blog promotes. Call it a short hard lesson in liberty.

I'll let you look up the night's details if you haven't heard them yet, but this is what happened in brief. After the host Chris Rock delivered a joke about actress Jada Pinkett Smith, her husband Will Smith—the A-list actor—walked on stage and literally slapped Rock on live television. Smith then walked back and cursed the host from his seat.

As it turned out, later that night, Will Smith won the Oscar for Best Actor. In his acceptance speech, Smith tearfully apologised (although not to the person he struck).

Now, in a sense, this is a tempest in a teacup. In a world in which governments around the globe are waging wars on liberty, and in the Russian government's case even waging literal war on a civilian population, one highly-paid entertainer striking another in a public meltdown may be considered a distraction. But given that it is (appropriately or not) commanding public attention, we may as well try to extract lessons from it: especially for the benefit of teens and kids.

For most people, it is plain as day who was in the wrong on that stage. But it can be illuminating to reflect on exactly why.

Any young person would do well to frame what happened last night by reading "Galt's speech" from the best-selling novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. In that famous speech, Rand's character John Galt proclaims:

"So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others."

This has been referred to by many others since as the "non-initiation of force" principle. The "initiation" part is key, because it establishes that forceful self-defense is legitimate. Understanding this principle is fundamental to understanding liberty and justice.

When judging any violent conflict, people naturally ask an important question -- and that important question is: "Who started it?" But a more precise phrasing would be: who started the violence? Who kicked off the force? Who initially violated someone else's person or property? In short (as you mother might have asked when you'd made your kid brother cry) who swung their fist first?

Will Smith clearly felt Chris Rock's joke was offensive and disrespectful. He may have thought it impugned his wife's honour. He may have regarded it as damaging to his family's reputation (although it can hardly be more damaging than how he responded).

But as Murray Rothbard wrote in The Ethics of Liberty, nobody has a property right in their reputation, because a reputation "is purely a function of the subjective attitudes and beliefs about him contained in the minds of other people." And a person, "can have no property right in the beliefs and minds of other people."

So, Rock's joke, whether it was funny or not, or all in good fun or even needlessly cruel, violated nobody's rights, and the one who initiated force was Smith, and was in the wrong.

It may seem silly to litigate a celebrity slap, but it is worthwhile to clarify these principles when they do come up because, however commonsensical they may seem, people reject them all the time (or misunderstand them, or ignore them... ), and we all suffer for that. For example, the way people frequently use the term "microaggression" threatens speech rights by blurring the line between non-violent behaviour and initiatory force. ("She microagressed me; that's hate speech!") And the bulk of public policy today uses government force to counter non-violent behaviour that some people find objectionable.

Liberty is constantly endangered because most people don't clearly see the line that separates just from unjust force. To save liberty, we need to educate the public (young people especially) about the ideas of liberty, especially the non-initiation of force.

To do that best, put down your phone replaying the slap, and pick up that book called Atlas Shrugged. Worst comes to worst, you can always use its weight in self-defence.

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DAN SANCHEZ

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org, where a version of this article previously appeared.