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aaron ross powell: welcome to free thoughtsfrom libertarianism.org and the cato institute. i’m aaron powell. trevor burrus: and i’m trevor burrus. aaron ross powell: and joining us today istim sandefur. he’s a principal attorney at the pacific legal foundation and headsthe foundation’s economic liberty project, which protects entrepreneurs against intrusivegovernment regulation. he’s also a cato institute adjunct scholar. today though, we’regoing to be talking about the politics of america’s second best sci-fi media franchisenamely star trek. in a recent article on this topic that youwrote in the claremont review of books, you

make the provocative claim that “the developmentof star trek’s moral and political tone over 50 years traces the strange decline ofamerican liberalism since the kennedy era.” so i guess let’s begin at the beginning.the original star trek was a product of cold war america. so did that or how did that influenceits political outlook? tim sandefur: well, i think it wasn’t justa product of cold war america. it was also the product of world war two. world war twoobviously was the worst catastrophe that the human race has ever experienced and it dramaticallyaffected the way that people thought about politics and about justice and those thoughtsi think are found throughout star trek in the original series, which of course began– in 1966, the brainchild of a world war

two veteran gene roddenberry and many of thestars themselves and the writers were veterans. jimmy doohan who played scotty was himselfa decorated war veteran. so what you see throughout the show are discussionsof ideas about human liberty, about justice and freedom that are rooted in what i thinkthat the liberal west thought was the post-war consensus about justice, about human rights,about the role of the state, about technological progress and reason. i think what you see during the three yearsof the show, the rise of the new left, that rejected that consensus in large part andyou can see that permeating some of the episodes. the example i give in my article is in theepisode the way to eden, which is an episode

in which the starship enterprise encountersa group of space age hippies who are looking for some paradise planet of their own withoutany technology and it’s obviously the satire of the hippie phenomenon that was going onat the time the episode aired. you can see the writers and the producersof the show who are from that world war two generation really struggling with how to dealwith this new wave of thought that rejected the idea of technological progress, universalhuman rights, of basic liberalism that the older generation thought was well-foundedat the end of world war two. i mean here’s the end of this war. they thought that theidea that all human beings have rights, that no government may justly interfere with it.the united nations was going to lead a – to

a worldwide liberalism rooted in technologyand humanist values and here comes this wave of opponents and they really didn’t knowhow to deal with that, i think. trevor burrus: so is it accurate to say – sortof to boil it down to say that absolutism was something that kind of animated earlierstar trek, that there were principles about freedom and rights, that after confrontingthe nazis who had been very bad, that these were principles that were not relative andso they were fighting for something in a way that was somewhat influenced by world wartwo? tim sandefur: yes, that’s right. i thinka good example of that is one of the better episodes the conscience of the king, whichis an episode that’s sort of a play on nazi

hunting because throughout the 1960s, yousaw these prosecutions of former nazi war criminals, most notably adolf eichmann, butactually quite a few. some of them were going on while this series was on the air and thisis an episode in which captain kirk encounters a character who’s basically like a naziwar criminal and he’s asked to track him down and punish him for his crimes. the whole point of this episode if who areyou to judge and a character actually asked captain kirk, “who are you to judge?”and kirk responds, “who do i have to be?” and that’s the theme of the episode is thateverybody is subject to judgment. nobody can escape by saying, “well, it’s just myculture. it’s my society. it’s a different

time. it’s a different place. you can’tjudge me.” i think the post world war two generationthat had seen the nuremberg trials and so forth were very committed to the idea thatall human beings have inalienable rights and that no power including religion has any legitimatebasis for trampling those rights or ignoring them. that idea permeates the original startrek. aaron ross powell: was that idea at the timeunique to star trek and science fiction or was this something that was just generallygoing on in the genre? tim sandefur: i think it was going on throughouttelevision at the time. you see it in more sometimes cloying ways and some of the moretedious television shows of the time.

trevor burrus: like leave it to beaver. tim sandefur: yeah, that’s what i’m thinkingis – shows like mayberry and so forth, they all have these very obvious morals but themorals to them were things like everybody deserves a fair trial when they’re accusedof wrongdoing and that sort of – the very ordinary by our standards principles but neverthelessthey were very committed to them. star trek tried to take those principles and twist thema little bit and gene roddenberry actually consciously modeled star trek on gulliver’stravels which obviously was written as a way of talking about contemporary society andsatirizing it or indicting it in different guise. star trek did the same thing.

trevor burrus: and the hopefulness too, that’sanother big element that star trek sort of – that permeates star trek i would say evencurrently that there’s a lot of hope in the future and possibly in that post-war periodthe hope – as opposed to any sort of dystopian type of future, like the idea that a bunchof people working together can fight for what’s right and win. tim sandefur: that’s right. it was verymuch an optimistic sort of welfare status, humanist broadly speaking liberal perspective.my favorite gene roddenberry quote, i remember he said in an interview ones, “aliens inspace didn’t build the pyramids. human beings built the pyramids because they’re smartand they work hard.” that was his perspective.

he thought human beings really could get pastall the bad things in the world and could accomplish great things. now sometimes, i think that has sabotagedsome of the dramatic possibilities of star trek. the writers of the next generation oftenfound themselves having a lot of difficulty coming up with good scripts because roddenberrykept vetoing ideas saying, “no, no, human beings won’t have conflicts among themselvesin the future utopia,” and that made it very hard to come up with good stories fortelevision. so roddenberry at times went too far in his– yeah, he often went too far in his utopianism. but when it was sprinkled in there, it gaveit a real positive cast that i think contemporary

star trek and a lot of contemporary sciencefiction is lacking. trevor burrus: now there’s an episode thatyou talk about in your essay called the apple, which you think is the quintessential episodeof the original star trek. can you tell us about that episode and why it is quintessential? tim sandefur: yes. so the episode concerns– the enterprise crew encounters a planet in which the people on this planet live ina sort of tropical paradise but they’re also deeply ignorant. they’ve never heardof farming. they don’t know anything about technology. they don’t even have sex becauseit turns out that the planet is ruled over by this god called vaal who controls everythingthat the people do. there was a sort of totalitarian

mind control system and he requires everyday to be fed and the people of vaal have to gather food and bring it to him. he controlsall of their thoughts and has reduced them to a complete lack of individual initiative. the idea is, well, they don’t have any kindof conflicts among themselves. everybody gets the law and everybody is placid and peaceful.so isn’t this a good thing? captain kirk says, “no, this is a bad thing because itdeprives the people of the capacity for thinking for themselves, living on their own, for theirown ideals,” and yeah, the idea of freedom leads to conflict. you aren’t going to havethat placid quality of peace as a result of freedom. you are going to have bustling conflict,disagreement, dynamism, creative destruction.

that’s going to be part – that’s goingto be what freedom is like, but that is what every sentient being in the universe deservesis the right to try their hands at freedom. so he orders the enterprise to destroy vaal,which is in fact a sort of super computer that has been controlling all these people,and he leads them to their freedom. now, this episode seems to me the quintessential episodeof star trek because the whole point of this series was about freedom and individualismand liberating ourselves from the dead traditions of the past and recognizing that that meanswe will have – there’s a downside to that. we will have conflict. we will have troubleand strife amongst us. but the rewards of that freedom are worth the struggle.

i think a lot of people criticize that episodebecause kirk blatantly violates the so-called prime directive which is the rule that instar trek, the enterprise crew, is never supposed to interfere with the native culture. but in fact, the point of star trek is thatthe prime directive is wrong and that a native culture that oppresses its own people hasno rights to do so and that liberty takes precedence over these antique traditions. aaron ross powell: so does that set up then– if the prime directive is, call it, the core values of starfleet … trevor burrus: the prime …

aaron ross powell: yes, and it’s wrong.does that make starfleet the kind of organization that star trek the show is antagonistic towards? tim sandefur: well, no. i think what happenedis if you watch the original series episodes in order, you see that the prime directivewas kind of introduced subtly in a couple of episodes. it was introduced as a foil.it’s introduced for the dramatic purpose of breaking it in these original screenplays. the idea being that to sort of satirize orcriticize the idea of cultural relativism or the hands-off who-are-we-to-judge kindof attitude, that is introduced purely for the purpose of criticizing it in the originalstar trek.

now it grows in importance as the franchisecontinued its life in the 80s and the 90s. it grew in importance in the episodes untila point where in the next generation it becomes this mindless dogma where we’re never supposedto interfere. in a section of my essay that was actualy cut out before it was published,i criticized an episode of the next generation in which captain picard encounters a raceof aliens who have been kept in a drug-induced stupor by another group of aliens. they’veactually kept this one race addicted to a drug in order to keep them as servants, asslaves. when the doctor on the ship, dr. crusher,when she discovers this, she’s horrified by it and says, “well, surely you’re goingto do something to put a stop to it.” in

one of the low points of the entire show,captain picard refuses to do so. he says, “no. who are we to judge? it’s the primedirective. i had no right to interfere.” he gives this ridiculous speech in which hesays that in the past, anytime that we’ve interfered with an alien culture, it has endedup badly for everybody. well, that’s completely false. in fact, it’s contrary to the entirebasis of the original series, which was rooted again in this united nations effort to bringfreedom and modernism and liberalism and technology advancement to the people of the world. now here’s picard saying, “no, no. ifone man wishes to enslave another, no third man should object,” to quote lincoln on– that’s picard’s attitude, hands-off.

aaron ross powell: how does that play in – i’mcurious in the – the original star trek is exceedingly episodic. there are not a lotof these – so one of the things that tends to turn me off a bit about star trek in termsof the world-building aspect of it is that it always – it doesn’t feel to me likea universe that people live in and has a continuity. it’s instead – you know, each episodeis we’re going to visit this thought experiment and then the next week, we’re going to goto another thought experiment. so do we have evidence that like the interventions thatsay kirk did turned out well or does he intervene, smashed the computer and then we never goback to that planet again? tim sandefur: well, you’re right. it’sthat way and remember, star trek was the first

science fiction series that was not an anthology.that’s one of the reasons why it was such a world-changing thing when it comes to televisiondrama. it was the first time that a science fiction show had ever been put on televisionthat was not an – every episode is different. but it did still have – because it was thefirst one, it still had a lot of the qualities of like the twilight zone or x minus one aboutit because that was what the writers were familiar with from their past. so each episode does have this sort of standalonequality. but again, i think that the show was conscious in trying to be like gulliver’stravels or something where every episode was making a statement more than trying to createan alternative world. so they weren’t really

particularly concerned with that. now, as the show went on, of course it developedcertain back story and certain story arcs. but that’s true even of a show like i lovelucy has story arcs to it. we don’t remember that now, but it does. so they introduced spock’s father and weget this idea that he’s half-human, half-vulcan, all that and yeah, that stuff is there. butreally the show is – the writers were more interested in every episode standing on itsown. it’s next generation and that series in – the shows that followed it, that triedto get into universe building. i would actually argue that that was one ofthe things that ruined star trek was that

it lost that surrealist quality that was keyto the original show’s longevity. the reason that people still watch and enjoy the originalseries and don’t so much see the next generation as iconic in the same way, that it’s familiarto them because they grew up with it, but it doesn’t stand out 50 years from now theway the original star trek does, the reason why is because next generation was more interestedin its own authenticity whereas the original series was more interested in discussing importanttimeless questions of philosophy. trevor burrus: now, i’m not sure i willgrant you your premise that – as i had mentioned before we started recording that your preferencefor the old star trek is merely a product of when you grew up with that and i grow morewith next generation and i think that that’s

pretty timeless too. but i want to get backto as opposed to like the world building aspects and that kind of thing, that the problem withnext generation is the relativism of the prime directive, the kind of relativism that thatengenders. is that basically what the prime directive is? it’s a sort of a statementof relativism? tim sandefur: definitely. i think what happenedwas by the time the 80s and 90s came along, we had gone through the vietnam experienceand vietnam in many ways was the direct opposite of world war two. in world war two, we wentout and literally saved the world and in vietnam, there was a lot more self-criticism goingalong and it ended up with ignominy instead of america setting the terms for a new waveof worldwide liberal freedom and human rights,

the way that world war two had. so even though next generation was still overseenby gene roddenberry in its initial stages, it was a lot more of the relativist styleof a liberalism, particularly post-1968 liberalism. to me, it symbolizes – very well by the1968 democratic convention. you had the lyndon johnson generation of democrats who were thisgene roddenberry post world war two anti-totalitarian liberalism and on the other hand, you hadthis rising generation, the new left, that was fundamentally anti-technology, fundamentallyanti-capitalist, deeply relativists, tune in, tune out – turn on, tune out liberalismand the clash between those two occurred during the hiatus after the original show and beforethe next generation came on.

so then by the time next generation comesup, you have this more relativist version of liberalism. aaron ross powell: but does this – thisstarts showing up in the star trek movies before next generation comes on the air, right? tim sandefur: yeah, i guess a little bit.the star trek movies are very – in one way, they’re fundamentally different from theoriginal series in that the original series was always about going out there and discovering.the movies are much less about that, especially the trilogy 2, 3 and 4 are really centeredabout these main characters. it still has the same spirit of the originalstar trek i think, but there’s a lot less

of the inquiry into universal morality thanyou see in the original series. on that point, i will say another deeply importantpoint of star trek, one of the crucially important points of star trek that everybody seems tomiss is that the point of star trek is that spock is wrong. spock is wrong! he’s alwayswrong! the reason is because roddenberry introduced spock as a way – as sort of a foil to humans.he was supposed to be standing outside of humanity, sort of criticizing humanity, tryingto understand humanity. he was this other character who was pointing fingers at humanityand commenting on humanity. roddenberry loved humanity. he didn’t lovethe vulcans. he was interested in talking about why human beings are special. so throughoutthe original series, the vulcans are very

admirable for all sorts of reasons, but basicallythe humans are the good guys and the reason why is because they had this special qualityof curiosity and innovation and commitment that vulcans don’t really have. i thinkthat shows up in the episode the apple when spock is perfectly willing to let the peopleof vaal remain enslaved on the planet, whereas kirk says, “no, these human values are universalof the ability to think for yourself and so forth.” when you get to star trek 2, spock is sacrificinghis life for the ship because the needs of the many outweigh the good of the few. everybodythinks that line is so noble and great, but the point of that line is that spock is wrong.that’s why in star trek 3, he gets corrected

and when he asks at the end, “why did yougive up everything to come rescue me?” kirk answers, “because the needs of the one outweighthe needs of the many.” the climax i think of all of star trek is actually in star trek4. trevor burrus: is that with the whales? tim sandefur: spock – the one with the whaleswhen spock says – they have to go rescue chekov. chekov has been injured in his effortto restore the power to the spaceship so that they can escape earth. he’s now in a hospitalin san francisco and they have to go liberate him and kirk turns to them and says, “isthat the logical thing to do?” and spock says, “no, but it is the human thing todo.”

at that moment, spock becomes human and reallythe curtain on star trek, i think the original vision of star trek, the curtain falls therebecause that is when we see the culmination of everything spock has learned up to thispoint. he has died and been reborn and discovers human values are his values. trevor burrus: now i would say that a lotof people would think that – you mentioned something about the morality of the next generation.but it strikes us as a deeply moral show for most people. it’s almost proselytizing tothe point of picard’s nobility and you do have things like – there’s an episodein the next generation – his name escapes me. something about drum. it’s about criminalprocedure. so they accused this guy of a crime

… tim sandefur: yeah. trevor burrus: of being a terrorist and he– we’re going to get a bunch of tweets telling me what the name of it is i’m sure.but accusing him of being a terrorist and they want to torture him and give him guiltby association and picard gives a speech about how this is not what we do. we’re betterthan this. tim sandefur: right. trevor burrus: that’s pretty common. it’snot an immoral or definitely not an amoral show.

tim sandefur: that’s right and the evolutionof star trek is very gradual. the first seasons of the next generation on many of the episodesactually were written for the original star trek crew and were kept on hand for many yearsand then recycled into next generation episodes. so the evolution of the show is very gradual.roddenberry oversaw it and he got older and he died while the show was on the air andhis successors very gradually i think moved away from what he was trying to do until youhave shows like deep space nine that are really not the original star trek. now, some of them are great. i think deepspace nine has some of the best episodes in the history of star trek and next generationhas some great episodes. i mean, oh gosh,

the episode the nth degree for instance isone of my favorites or – what’s the episode where worf kills duras? an excellent episodedirected by jonathan frakes. so there are some really good shows there. but i think what you see is next generationgradually turns away from commentary on universal themes and becomes much more distinctly political.a lot of the episodes are centered on specific issues, specific political issues of the dayand they have to send a message about environmentalism or send a message about some other currentcontroversy. it gets a lot less literary and a lot more propagandistic. i think that the growth of relativism is gradualalso until the show really ends on relativistic

notes where it did not start out that way.remember, one of the first episodes is one where they have to prove that data is human.i mean that’s a classic episode. that could have been an original series episode. so i don’t mean that there’s a point whereyou can just draw a line and say, “after this, everything is bad.” but i do thinkthat you saw that distinct change during next generation, so that by the time that showwent off the air, star trek had become something that it was very much not at the offset. trevor burrus: i just looked it up. the nameof that episode is the drumhead. that’s the name of the episode.

aaron ross powell: does that trend of relativismcontinue into the post next generation series? i mean i – i haven’t watched deep spacenine since it was on the air but my recollection of it was not that it was relativistic, butthat it was more morally murky. tim sandefur: yeah. that’s true. i thinkit gets a lot more into the gray areas and i think it’s – some of it is really gooddrama, very tightly written, but it’s a different universe really. i think it’snot the mission of the original show and honestly, i like deep space nine better when it wascalled babylon 5. but that show and some of the other shows i think – they just haddrifted so much, which is fine. that’s what happens over time. it’s just – i thinkit’s a different show.

there’s an episode here – i don’t rememberthe title of the episode. but there’s an episode where sisko explains to the camerahow it was that he got the romulans into – to enter the war that’s going on. i mean that’scrackerjack episode but it’s not. it’s not star trek. trevor burrus: so how would you describe – wekind of touched on it a little bit. but if you were to sort of overview the morality,the liberal morality – and i’m not sure if you’re using that entirely for the leftor just general bigger liberalism, but from the post-war period to now and how that moralityhas changed. tim sandefur: i am using that word in thebroadest sense. i mean liberal in the sense

of broad liberal values, because obviouslyroddenberry himself was some variety of socialist and the show at many times strikes certainsocialist notes, which i find it amusing. they were unable to sustain the idea of aworld where there was no really capitalist exchange going on. by the time deep space nine comes along, thewriters have given up on even trying to write drama in that world because it’s so absurdand they end up in an ordinary trading post sort of society. but anyway, i think whatyou see is the show – star trek begins with a commitment to universal liberal values.all human beings have certain rights. all human beings should use their reason, shouldnot be devoted to blind faith, should not

be devoted to mindless tradition and the answersare out there, but they will raise more questions and that’s a good thing. that sort of commitment to what virginia postrelhas called dynamism over stasis, that’s the core of the original show. by the timeyou get to the – well, the end of the first line, by which i mean the end of next – thenext generation feature films, by the end of that, what you have is a complete reversal,a gradual but completer reversal of those priorities. so that by the end of the next generationfilms, picard is content to no longer be exploring and seeks instead – instead he is satisfiedwith the idea of a rural village that lacks

technology. what i mean by that is the ba’kupeople in the star trek next generation film insurrection who are presented to the audienceas being this idealic people who know about technology but have consciously rejected technologybecause they say technology takes something important away from them and that it’s betterto garden by hand and be satisfied with looking down at the dirt instead of up at the stars. well, i think roddenberry would have beenhorrified by this notion but that is the star trek that we’re left with at the end andit’s really – it’s like it’s going gently into that good night. it’s what thatis. aaron ross powell: i was curious about thatcriticism because you – i mean it’s pretty

clear that – at least i think that you thinkthat star trek insurrection is the low point, that that’s – like your heaviest criticismcomes for when you’re discussing that movie and so tell me if i’m getting the plot pointswrong. but my sense from your description of it was yes, these people want to farm andwant to live this simple agrarian life. but it’s not that they lack technology entirely.it’s like a background thing that they have access to. so they’re not – it’s notlike they’re living in poverty as we would think about it. they have – they’re not sick. they’renot really wanting or destitute. they’re more just living say the ideal life of a williamsburg,brooklyn resident.

tim sandefur: yeah, well, that’s – yeah,that’s a good way of putting it because the film never bothers to explain to us howit is that they don’t have sickness because according to the film, this race of aliensknows about things like warp technology and so forth, but have chosen not to take advantageof it because they prefer to live like the amish. this is presented to us as a good thing. now,the morality, the moral, liberal, universal perspective of the original star trek wasexactly the reverse of that. it was the idea that for all of its frailties and all of itssins, humanity will triumph in the end by the application of reason and by discoveryand by science and progress.

this is a fundamentally anti-progress movie.now i do think it’s the low point of star trek before the jj abrams films which arean awfulness all of their own. but it’s the low point in the sense that – not inthe sense of badly written or anything. i mean there are some really lousy – justin terms of production moments in star trek. i mean spock’s brain of the original seriesis typically pointed to as one of the worst episodes of all time. i don’t disagree withthat. trevor burrus: what’s the green guy thatkirk fights in the very famous … tim sandefur: oh, the gorn. yeah, in the episodearena which is – and see the episode arena is a good example of sort of the pattern ofstar trek. it’s not a particularly good

episode but it’s a good illustration ofwhat star trek does a lot of the time. so kirk is kidnapped and put on this planetwith this hostile alien creature and is forced to fight against him, against his will, bysome alien being. kirk using his reason, puts together a cannon – he finds sulfur andsaltpeter and he makes gunpowder and builds a cannon with which he defeats the gorn. but he chooses not to kill the gorn. he refusesto kill the gorn when he can and the reason is because that’s not what humanity standsfor. when he makes that choice, the alien beings reveal themselves and say, “surprise!it was all just a test. we were just doing all this to determine whether you people areworthy of surviving and prevailing in the

universe and because you have these commitmentsto these liberal values, you are worthy of surviving.” now, it’s a silly episode. but the moralthemes are quintessentially the original series star trek. now, an interesting contrast tothat is the second generation version of battlestar galactica. the revived battlestar galacticawas put together by a former star trek writer who consciously sought a way of creating ananti-star trek. the second version of battlestar galacticawas created purposely as an anti-star trek and the first episode of it, adama is confrontedwith this question. he says at the memorial service, he says, “are human beings worthyof surviving against the cylon onslaught?”

and that’s the theme of the series. thetheme of the second generation battlestar galactica is, “is humanity worthy of survival?”to which the series answers a resounding no. humanity is so awful for so many reasons thatthe cylons are actually the good guys and humanity deserves to suffer and die. the seriesis extremely dark for that reason. it gets most of the questions wrong that it presentsto the audience and it’s relentlessly naturalistic. so it’s sort of a complete opposite of theoriginal star trek series. trevor burrus: now i derailed you for a secondbecause you’re talking about insurrection as being the low point. we talked about thegorn and this idea of these people, these – you said naturalistic. on that point,i mean you mentioned the amish. do you think

that we should be really critical of the amishas being anti-progress and they shouldn’t be living the lives the way they should andwe should violate our version of a prime directive and go into amish villages and teach themthe ways of liberal values and rights and rationality? aaron ross powell: and snapchat and instagram. trevor burrus: and snapchat and instagram,yeah. tim sandefur: yeah. to some degree, my answeris yes. as a libertarian, of course i believe they have the right to make whatever consciousdecision they choose about how they live their lives and if they do choose to live a primitiveexistence, then that’s their choice and

they have that right. but i think it’s immoraland wrong and i think incidentally that americans have this sense of the amish as being quaint,harmless, little people who are cute and wonderful tourist attractions and so forth. but in fact, they are a radical cult thatis devoted to the opposite of technological progress and devoted to conscious ignorance.there’s no surprise that if you scan the newspapers, you find lots of incidents ofhorrific exploitation, sexual exploitation and so forth that goes on in the amish community.a lot of people don’t pay much attention to it because they think of the amish as beingcute when in fact, as i said, they’re a radical religious cult.

trevor burrus: but we have – on some level,we have a prime directive in this. i mean there’s some sort of non-interference thatwe practice. trevor burrus: i mean i don’t go … tim sandefur: that’s right, but that non-interferenceis still cabined by universal liberal values so that if an amish person is discovered sexuallyexploiting a child for example, that they are brought up on charges in an ordinary civilcriminal court and tried for violations of laws that are rooted in every human being’sright to be free from those kinds of violations. that’s rightly so. so i think a captainkirk in today’s society would say, “yes, the amish, of course, they have the rightto live their lives as they please within

the limits of the rights that universal liberalismrecognizes on behalf of every other individual.” aaron ross powell: i’m curious about wherewe draw lines specifically in your criticism of star trek insurrection. it seemed that– so let’s accept that like they didn’t have sickness. however, they managed to nothave sickness and they weren’t – they didn’t appear to be exploiting the rightsof their fellow members. this was simply a choice that they made to not embrace certainlevels of technology, to not fly off to the stars or have computers or whatever else andit seemed it wasn’t – they were capable of thinking about the alternative and simplyrejected it for their way of life. you were extremely critical of that on principle.you called that lifestyle immoral and i’m

wondering how we decide where that line is.so we talked about – we kind of make fun of wealthy people today who are wealthy enoughto live like they’re poor. so they – it takes a lot of money in order to be able tojust grow your own food and super reduce your carbon footprint and all of that sort of stuff. but there doesn’t seem to be anything – imean if wealth and technology are there to ultimately enable us to live the kinds oflives that we want to, then what’s wrong with living the kind of life that we wantto? i mean is it bad to go camping? tim sandefur: oh, yeah, of course not andof course kirk would not have had any objection to that sort of thing. but see here, we – toanswer that question, i think you have to

– aaron ross powell: well, he goes camping,doesn’t he? tim sandefur: that’s right. he does in startrek 5. i think you would have to take a step back though and think in meta terms abouthow the show was written to answer that question. that is in the original series, whenever youencounter an alien race that’s anything like the ba’ku people, in the original series,there’s always something wrong beneath the surface. so a good episode – a good illustration,that is the episode plato’s stepchildren. the crew encounters this race of godlike beingswho live in a very sort of greco-roman society

and they all have these super telekineticpowers and everything. they are all happy of course. they don’t suffer any illnessor anything, right? except it turns out that they abuse and mistreat one of the characterswho’s a dwarf and in order to demonstrate their strength, they come to later abuse andmistreat the enterprise crew. in fact, the episode is most famous for having television’sfirst interracial kiss between captain kirk and lieutenant uhura. now, that is a good example of how in theoriginal series, whenever you encountered an alien race that lived in what appearedto be a technology-free ideal in a sort of a quaint village setting, there’s alwayssomething bad beneath the scenes or behind

the scenes. in the next generation though, the next generationwriters are content to present us with this cartoonish utopia that doesn’t answer questionslike, “how do these people avoid getting sick?” and so forth. i mean that would have been the first questioncaptain kirk would have asked if he had beamed into a planet populated by the ba’ku people.how is it that you people manage to feed each other if you don’t use modern agriculturaltechnologies for instance? the next generation authors were content topresent us with this kind of silly cartoonish situation that would not have withstood anykind of probing or anything and the reason

why is because the next generation writerswere themselves wedded to this notion of idealic, technology-free, somehow or another organickale is going to make us all healthy stuff. i mean that’s the attitude behind the writingof the show. so i don’t think that the show can withstand the kind of question you askprecisely because it’s written in a way that represents a silly commitment to an ideathat you can have a society without technology and still feed everybody and still not getsick and so forth. so i think the original series was fundamentallyanti-utopian and by the end of next generation, it’s fundamentally utopian. trevor burrus: that’s a fascinating thingbecause the – they may encounter utopias

that have some sort of fatal flaw behind themin the original series. but the people themselves on the enterprise are living in a pretty godutopia without capitalism and all this kind of things that roddenberry is – from a socialistsort of leanings that they themselves are living in a utopia. trevor burrus: that itself is socialist inits own way. tim sandefur: that’s a good point and ithink it’s a solid criticism of star trek that almost all of the conflict takes placeoutside of the bounds of the starship enterprise. as i said before the original – the nextgeneration writers often found themselves handicapped by the fact that roddenberry wouldnot let them have conflict between the characters

who are members of the crew and the enterprise. roddenberry always wanted the crew of theenterprise to get along and not have conflict amongst themselves and it made it difficultto write good drama. now, for the original series, i think it kind of works because ifwhat you’re trying to do is comment on issues or broad themes, it’s helpful for the dramathat the crew all get a long. but even so, there is a little bit of tensionnow and then. i mean mccoy and spock have this sort of funny relationship where theytease each other a lot but in – you know, sometimes it’s not funny. sometimes mccoyreally appears not to like spock and spock appears really not to like mccoy.

trevor burrus: are you out of your vulcanmind? yeah, exactly. trevor burrus: so the prime directive though,it’s interesting. i’m still not sure i’m totally on with your thesis to some extent.but i also think that some of that relativism, what we’re kind of calling relativism, thatthe next generation kind of exhibits. some of it would be a backlash to i thinklet’s say 19th century anthropology kind of thing, the sort of, well, we met some savageracists out there in the boondocks and then – so very, very paternalistic without anysort of understanding of different ways people can do things that are still acceptable undercertain circumstances. but also the prime directive seems pretty useful for non-interferencesof principle is something i might prefer because

– i don’t know if i can endorse that asa principle of power because there might be people who want to interfere with me or withmy people who think we’re not doing things correctly. so i’m thinking of for example internationalhuman rights lawyers who would love to violate the prime directive to put labor laws, whothink that it’s a right to a vacation, a right to healthcare, a right to all thesethings that are the things that they would like to use, forced to put on to us. so maybethe best sort of compromise is something where you say, “i’m not going to get involvedin your affairs. i’m not going to force things on you if you don’t force thingson me,” and that creates a more livable

situation. tim sandefur: maybe. and i think these – someof this is stuff that’s too complicated to have presented in a television drama ofone hour a week in the 60s. so at some point, the show is too broad to get into some ofthat depth. but i would say the point that the original series is making in criticizingthe prime directive is precisely the fact that there are certain universal human truthsand that the idea that culture – or a hands-off practicality shouldn’t trump those truthsis expressly rejected in the original series. so that in today’s parlance, people oftenbring up the example of female – genital circumcision as being a cultural practice.should the west just look the other way about

genital circumcision of little girls in thethird world? and i think the original star trek writers would emphatically say, “no,we should not look the other way,” that all human beings have certain rights and nosociety can legitimately violate those rights and that we are in the right to go into anothercountry and say, “no, you may not mistreat people in this way.” i think that is whatthe original series is saying. personally, i’m on board with that. butthe – you are right to say that one of the reasons why next generation pushes that awayis because of sort of the anti-colonialism movement that was just getting underway whilethe original series was on the air. so you don’t see a lot of it in the original seriesjust because it really wasn’t a cultural

– as big a cultural phenomenon as it becamein the years after the show went off the air. but the sort of anti-colonialism notion thata society has a right to govern itself without entering interference from outside graduallytakes root and is a real infection in the side of the next generation. it makes it veryhard for the next generation to stay true to those principles of universal human rightswhile simultaneously believing that a society has the right to govern itself however itwants. if that includes violating individual freedom, then that’s ok. that’s why you have such awful episodesas when the card says yes, if there – these people are being kept in a drug-induced slavery,then that’s ok with me.

trevor burrus: but would you rather live ina world where interference was generally ok or people who believed themselves to be – sortof the – think about the religious wars of the 15th – you know, the 16th and 17thcentury where everyone sort of thought they could interfere in everyone’s lives. thatcreated a really bad 30-year war, that they kind of decided with the [indiscernible] compromisethat we’re just going to let – that we’re not going to interfere because a bunch ofpeople are thinking that they have principles that are universal, who think they have theright to interfere in people’s lives. it’s actually fundamentally dangerous. aaron ross powell: well, this is excellent,i mean the fact – and quickly interject

that as we’re discussing this and as we’rediscussing the notion of – the original star trek is very much this post-war notionof liberalism plus moral absolutism and a strong sense of who the good guys and badguys are that – and then that we should intervene to stop people who were doing thingsthat run counter to this, that you end up seeing a possible like mere image of the originalseries of star trek and say the day the earth stood still which is the enlightened alienscoming in and saying, “look, this america of the post-war moral consensus of absolutismis actually going to destroy …” whatever. i don’t know … trevor burrus: the world …

aaron ross powell: the world, yeah, that thisis really bad and unless you knock it off and get past this kind of moral belief, we’regoing to destroy you. tim sandefur: yeah. no, it’s a good pointand i think that the question about – well, the earlier question about, “would you ratherlive in a world where …” the difference between the religious warsof the 15th century and what we’re talking about here is that religion is nonsense. imean that’s the fundamental difference between the two and something very important to roddenberrywho is deeply anti-religion and the show shows that repeatedly in the episode the apple andin many other episodes – the one episode in particular in which they – the god apolloappears to the enterprise and in this case,

it actually is the god apollo. it’s notsome fake and the enterprise makes it impossible – ends up basically destroying his powersource and kirk gives a speech saying, “we have outgrown the need for gods.” so the show is fundamentally humanist in thatsense. but the difference between the liberals that i’m talking about and the religiouswars of the 15th century is that the principles of universal human rights are true and theproposition that three gods and one god are the same thing is simply an arbitrary nonsenseand that’s the most important point. if one disagrees with that, that’s finebut that’s not what the original star trek was committed to. the original star trek wascommitted to this idea of universal human

rights being true and the reason why thissort of rings all our libertarian bells is because the original – because libertarianismis a species of liberals, that’s why, and because the universal human rights that we’retalking about are basically a right to be let alone. it’s basically a right to befree from interference from others. now, in today’s political culture, you veryoften hear people say, “who are we to impose democracy on other countries?” to whichthe right answer is democracy is not imposed. tyranny is imposed. democracy or universalhuman freedom is the natural state of man because mankind is born free. it’s tyrannythat’s imposed. so if one person comes and tries to enslaveanother person and i pull out a gun and i

stop him from doing that, i’m not interferingwith his rights. a slave owner can’t complain when i liberate his slaves because he hadno right to enslave the man to begin with. that’s the perspective of the original seriesstar trek and it’s a perspective within libertarianism that within libertarianismyou also have this hands-off non-interference notion and a lot of libertarians or – sothey call themselves, believe that non-interference trumps the principles of human rights becausethe principles of human rights are just our own cultural myth and that’s interchangeablewith the cultural myths of the other societies. therefore the clash between libertarian freedomand authoritarianism is no more universally valid than the religious wars of the 15thand 16th centuries because we’re all just

basically making it up. that’s a propositionthat i and the original series emphatically reject. trevor burrus: again, the other alternative– i mean aside from practicality concerns is the fear that if you do preach intervention– if i were to live in a world and i could get them to believe in the prime directiveand follow it religiously, which of course half of star trek is about them breaking itconstantly, i probably would prefer that overall as a way of maintaining freedom because ithink that generally the violations of the prime directive are going to be done by peoplewho do not agree with universal values that are true throughout because the violationof the prime directive was to be based off

of those who have power. sort of like i say that i don’t want todo a lot of international interference in human rights stuff because a lot of timesi will do – agree with it for egregious circumstances but a lot of times it’s goingto be taken over by international law professors who want to intervene for decidedly non-liberalreasons such as to make better labor laws or have universal healthcare or right to abortionor things like this. so there’s a practicality to this. trevor burrus: and that doesn’t concernyou – tim sandefur: yeah, i agree. that is – andwhat’s interesting here is there’s an

episode of the original series star trek thatkind of touches on these things and it doesn’t go too deeply into it. but you can see inthere and that is the episode space seed where we first are introduced to khan who latercomes back in star trek 2 and then later in one of the jj abrams films. what makes khanparticularly interesting is that he actualy is a superior being and … trevor burrus: yeah, he’s genetically superior,right? tim sandefur: that’s right. a lot of startrek – the crew encounters allegedly superior beings and it turns out that they’re notactually superior, that they have some sort of trick up their sleeve. but here you havea guy who actually is superior and all the

crew acknowledges it. so this is a real challenge to the principleof fundamental equality that is the basis of all human rights theories. i mean the declarationof independence starts with equality, not with liberty and that’s realistic becauseit is because we are all equal that we are all free. it is because you have no rightto – it is because you are the same essentially as i am. that means you have no inherent rightto control my life and therefore you have to ask permission from me if you propose tocontrol my life and that’s what we call the “social compact”. we have governmentby consent. but here you have khan who actually is a superiorbeing. he stands in a position relative to

the crew of the enterprise in the same waythat i stand to my pet dog. i don’t have to ask my dog’s consent when i tell himto get off the couch. he is an inferior being and i tell him to get off the couch and that– it’s as simple as that. so what does the crew do when they encounterkhan? khan tries to take over the enterprise and kill the crew in order to become the rulerof the starship enterprise. the crew defeats his plans but they don’tkill him. they put him on trial but they don’t convict him. what captain kirk does is hesays, “look, you have all the strength. you really are a powerful, unique creaturewith special gifts. so what we’re going to do is we’re going to put on an unpopulatedplanet and give you the chance to create a

society and make you a pioneer to put yourgreat energies to work in a constructive way that’s a good thing.” now of course 20 years later, it turns outthat that experiment failed and that’s why we have star trek 2. but at the time the episodewas filmed, nobody knew that that was coming. so you have to take it on its own terms. here you have libertarianism in the broadsense i think. libertarianism’s answer to that question, which is within the boundariesof respecting individual rights, yes, you can do what you like hands-off. we are non-negotiableon the principle that every being has the right to live their lives on their own terms.but within those boundaries, yeah, you can

have all sorts of cultural variation and differentpractices and so forth. but we’re not going to erase those boundaries. once you do, once you get into a completelyrelativistic sense, where every society has the right to govern itself – or even todepict the idea of human rights in a different way, which means overriding it and saying,well, in our society – like in borat when he says, “she has no name because she hasgirl.” we’re not going to go that far. we’renot going to take our relativism to that extent. aaron ross powell: so speaking of khan, iwant to turn the new movies which – i mean you are on record as being let’s say nota fan of jj abrams’ work on star trek and

i’m not terribly either, but it largelyhas to do with concern about why anyone would ever let damon lindelof write a script. butthose … tim sandefur: wait a minute. there were scriptsto those … aaron ross powell: questionably. but – sowhat’s outside of problems with characterization or problems with enormous plot holes and nonsensicaldecision-making? from the political standpoint, what’s wrong with the new star trek movies? tim sandefur: oh, i don’t think we haveenough time for all of it. so the problem is – begins basically with jj abrams acknowledgingthat he’s neither a fan of star trek nor has he actually watched star trek. he acknowledgedin an interview that he found star trek boring

and really wasn’t a fan of it. well, if you don’t like your material, youhave no business making the movie. contrast that for example with the director of therecent film of les miserables that won so many oscars and deservedly so. it’s an amazingmasterpiece of film. he in an interview about the same time saidthat he basically ate, breathed and slept victor hugo for years before making that film.so you have a – if you don’t like your material, you shouldn’t be making the movie.that’s the basic problem. now what abrams’ films come out doing isbeing basically just sort of a pastiche and a really bad pastiche of the original startrek where kirk is all about having sex with

the girls and he’s all about emotional impulsesand so forth and he has no reasoning. now the original captain kirk is a very intelligentguy. he’s a competent scientist for one thing. he was modeled on captain james cook,the great 18th century explorer who was – who rose from – he was not a nobleman. he wasan average commoner and he rose to become a fellow of the royal society and the greatestexplorer in the history of the earth. so he was modeled on that and he’s a veryintelligent, thoughtful leader. yeah, he’s a ladies’ man but he respects women in away that the new kirk does not. what you end up with when you have a drama that’s centeredaround these emotional impulses and things is they have no real reason for respectingcaptain kirk. why should kirk be captain of

the enterprise instead of say spock? the answerswere given in a weird sort of deus ex machina way when leonard nimoy appears as spock fromanother dimension to tell them that captain kirk should be captain of the enterprise justbecause. and that’s it! he just says that’s the one rule you must not break. why? i don’t know. it’s just because.even though in one of the abrams’ movies, captain kirk has this monologue where he explainsit. he has no idea what he’s doing. he doesn’t know why he’s captain of the enterpriseand he shouldn’t be running things. i mean it’s truly a chaos that does not withstandany kind of intellectual scrutiny. it’s presented as this – and the problem withthat is if that is correct, if kirk should

be the ruler just because, well, then whyshouldn’t khan be the ruler? if khan is a superior being, genetically-engineeredsuperman as we’re told, then why shouldn’t he be the captain of the enterprise? and we’renever given an answer to that. the only time that they even approached giving an answerto that in star trek into darkness is in the very last moment when captain kirk gives thisspeech at starfleet academy and he says, “you know, there are these bad guys out there,but we’re not like them because that’s not who we are.” that’s it! the phrase,“that’s not who we are,” is invoked as a cover, as an explanation for the entiremovie. we’re never told why that’s not how weare or why it shouldn’t be. i mean it makes

no sense and in order to cover up the factthat it makes no sense, jj abrams’ films long for a strong man to come and impose hiswill because he’s stronger, which again is the opposite of what the original startrek stood for. trevor burrus: so now to the most importantfinal question from someone who’s qualified to talk about star trek as you is, “whatis the correct solution to the kobayashi maru test?” tim sandefur: so the kobayashi maru test isan unwinnable test in which – it’s to evaluate starfleet candidates for commandand test their command abilities before they go out into space and actually run a starship.it’s unwinnable. so the idea behind it is

to – just to see what you would do if youwere in a situation where there is no escape. it’s revealed in star trek 2 that kirk tookthe test three times and failed and finally just figured out a way to reprogram the computerso that the test could be won. he got a commendation for original thinkingin doing so and that’s the right answer is to reprogram the simulation. that i thinkis what roddenberry would say. roddenberry would say life is a no-win scenario. everybodyis doing to die and if you’re looking for some utopian fairy tale solution to that conundrum,you’re not going to find one. so the solution is to reprogram the scenario.the solution is to think about what it is that you want from life. you’re here onearth and you have all these great potentials

because you’re a human being. so find away to do some good with it. find a way to pursue happiness, to make some great scientificdiscovery, to become the best writer or thinker that you can be or to be the best marathonrunner or even – or to be the best parent you can be or some way to use the specialfire that you have as a human being to light up the world because otherwise, the worldis just darkness. there’s a line in edmond rostand’s play chantecler, which is abouta rooster who is persuaded that his crowing causes the sun to rise and all the other animalsmake fun of him for it. until one moment when he says, “the reason i knew that my crowingcaused the sun to rise is that the darkness celebrated my silence.”

that’s what the universe is going to doif we don’t devote ourselves to the principles of civilization and progress that the originalstar trek stood for. so i think that’s the solution to the kobayashi maru scenario isto reject the premise that life is a no-win scenario. that’s why captain kirk is a herobecause he does that and that’s why he says in star trek 2, “i don’t believe in theno-win scenario,” and he’s right. aaron ross powell: free thoughts is producedby evan banks and mark mcdaniel. to learn more about libertarianism and the ideas thatinfluence it, visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org.