Guest Lecture

Kerry Herndon

My MBA program is rapidly coming to its end. While I’ll miss my classmates, I won’t miss the Saturday classes and the endless hours of study each week. At the end of the program they bring in guest lecturers that are supposed to be of extraordinary character and value to the students. This is called “special topics” because the topic will be whatever the guest is most expert about.

The speaker on one particular Saturday was not so good. He was a devoted libertarian in the most extreme sense. I have many libertarian friends. They tend to be people who have worked very hard and made a fortune for themselves. I give these people a complete pass on their ideas as it’s natural self-interest. This guy is a long term State University professor. He has, for most of his life, been suckling on the public payroll while condemning the hand that feeds him.

Perhaps I’m feeling more sensitive these days, but the hypocrisy was more than I could stand and I did lash out at him more than once during the day. The underlying requirement to follow his twisted logic is the concept of self-ownership. That is, we alone are responsible for ourselves and our fate in the world. Two of my classmates are involved in social work. One finds long-term, low-cost housing for the chronically homeless and has proven for the great majority of these people that getting them basic housing greatly reduces the cost to society for their maintenance. According to our guest, these people chose to be homeless and we should do nothing to interfere with that decision. The other has a more difficult job. She places handicapped orphans with families that are willing to take on the burden. It’s hard for me to imagine that the 6-year-old in the wheel chair chose that fate, but our professor was adamant.

I did tell the professor the fundamental basis of self-ownership had real limits and that I don’t feel that I have complete ownership of myself. My wife and children have very considerable claims on me, as well as my employees and my community and society. Apparently, this just proved that I’m a brainless drooling dolt. I did state with a bit of animation that humans and other animals have from the beginning come together in social groups for mutual survival and protection. I did offer to provide the professor with a sharp stick (no charge) and a one-way trip to the Serengeti plains to see just how well he would do with his individual self-ownership. I also reminded him that everything he spoke so hatefully about was the only reason he could say those things at all. The depth of his anti-government and anti-law (he was very in favor of polygamy, blissfully unaware of horrendous social damage to the young people growing up in those communities) had no limits.

He went on record to state the FDA has done far more harm than good. This ignores a sad history of dangerous food and drugs sold to the American people for a long time. At the end of the day, the only way for this guy to be right is to suspend reality in favor of an ideal fantasy where people of power and privilege maintain that status and have perfect blinders to prevent them from seeing beyond their own immediate needs and comforts.

While the guest really got under my skin and I was flat out angry at this display at my direct expense of a narcissistic sociopath mentality, he’s not alone. Some people feel that they’re not a part of the greater society and don’t need to contribute beyond what the law forces them to do. Fortunately, these people are in the minority and act as reminders of what pure self-interest can do to damage a working social order. This person truly believes that he is what he makes of himself, while I believe society is what we all make of it. I would rather be me than him. GP

Kerry Herndon owns and operates Kerry’s Bromeliad Nursery in Homestead, Florida. He can be reached at kherndon@kerrys.com.