I have finally received my own copy of a new book edited by Edward W. Younkins entitled Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companion, published by Ashgate.
L&P readers will note the presence in the volume of several L&P contributors: Lester H. Hunt, Steven Horwitz, Robert L. Campbell, Peter Boettke, Stephen Cox, Roderick T. Long, and yours truly.
I have not read the new Younkins anthology yet, but the range of topics, from the philosophical, political, and aesthetic to the literary, economic, and historical, is quite impressive.
See Notablog for further details.
I recently heard from Matt Jenny who, with a few of his libertarian friends, runs a small German left-libertarian groupblog named paxx:blog, which includes a webzine, paxx:zine. The webzine has already published translations of articles by my Liberty & Power Group Blog colleagues, Roderick T. Long (a German translation of"Beyond the Boss: Protection from Business in a Free Nation") and Sheldon Richman (a German translation of"U.S. Hypocrisy on Iran").
This week I join Roderick and Sheldon with a German translation of"Dialectics and Liberty" (links to the English PDF), which appeared in the September 2005 issue of The Freeman. The German translation can be found here.
Cross-posted to Notablog.
Today's NY Times article by Paul Krugman,"Not the New Deal," gave me a few chuckles.
With George W. Bush projecting a huge federal government effort to reconstruct Louisiana and Mississippi and other areas affected by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, fiscal conservatives are already murmuring. But little stands in the way of this vast projected increase in government spending.
As my colleague Mark Brady has asked:"Did You Really Expect Anything Else?"
A Bush critic such as Paul Krugman is busy objecting to a Heritage Foundation-inspired plan that would include"waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas." But he also believes that"even conservatives" must recognize that"recovery will require a lot of federal spending." Since this will have an appreciable effect on the deficit, Krugman wonders"how ... discretionary government spending [can] take place on that scale without creating equally large-scale corruption." Given the Bush administration's penchant for awarding so much pork to favored corporations in places like Iraq, Krugman is understandably concerned about" cronyism and corruption."
This, says Krugman, is in marked contrast to the efforts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose"New Deal" provided"a huge expansion of federal spending" without corruption or cronyism. The New Deal, says Krugman,"made almost a fetish out of policing its own programs against potential corruption. In particular, F.D.R. created a powerful 'division of progress investigation' to look into complaints of malfeasance in the W.P.A. That division proved so effective that a later Congressional investigation couldn't find a single serious irregularity it had missed." For Krugman, FDR was committed to"honest government," because he understood that"government activism works. But George W. Bush isn't F.D.R. Indeed, in crucial respects he's the anti-F.D.R."
Is Krugman kidding me?
Throughout his presidency, Bush has looked to such American Presidents as Woodrow Wilson and FDR for inspiration. Bush believes that FDR himself"gave his soul for the process" of taking America out of the Depression and into a world war against authoritarianism.
As for the New Deal: There are no"honest government" spending programs that don't involve some kind of structurally constituted cronyism and corruption. That's just the nature of the beast. And FDR's New Deal is no exception. It was, in many ways, a paradigmatic case, no different from the"war collectivism" policies of World War I or World War II, all of which entailed using the vastly expanding power of government to privilege certain groups at the expense of other groups. Not even Herbert Hoover's response to the government-engendered Great Depression was"laissez faire" (see Rothbard's"Herbert Hoover and the Myth of Laissez-Faire" in A New History of Leviathan, and, of course, his fine book on the subject).
A cursory look at Jim Powell's recent book, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression reveals"why so much New Deal relief and public works money [was] channeled away from the poorest people." From its inception, the New Deal was inspired by the corporatist model of Italian fascism. Even Krugman's beloved Works Progress Adminstration was constructed on the basis of patronage schemes. Citing economic historian Gavin Wright, Powell tells us that"a statistical analysis of New Deal spending purportedly aimed at helping the poor" gives us evidence that"80 percent of the state-by-state variation in per person New Deal spending could be explained by political factors."
Mainstream politics offers no genuine opposition to FDR's Old"New Deal" or Bush's New"Old Deal," not when"conservatives" and"liberals" are united in their support for massive government intervention.
Cross-posted to Notablog.
I grew up on a steady diet of Hanna-Barberacartoons, among other favorites, including"The Flintstones,""The Jetsons,""Yogi Bear,""Jonny Quest," and"Huckleberry Hound."
So when I found out about the passing of Joseph Barbera, I paused for a moment to recall all the joy his wonderful animation brought me.
And this passing comes after the recent passing of Chris Hayward, a writer responsible for many of the characters featured on"Rocky and Bullwinkle," among other timeless TV shows (hat tip to David Beito).
Cross-posted to Notablog.
The new Fall 2006 issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies has been published. The issue includes essays from contributors such as Steven H. Shmurak, Marc Champagne, Fred Seddon (two from Fred!), Algirdas Degutis, Susan Love Brown, David Graham & Nathan Nobis, Kirsti Minsaas, Greg Nyquist, Gregory M. Browne and Roderick T. Long. And I'm delighted to report that with this issue, Roderick joins the Editorial Board of JARS!
Check out the abstracts for the new issue here, and the contributor biographies here.
Read more at Notablog.
Today, the Fall 2005 issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies has been published. It begins our seventh volume, our seventh year.
Here is the Table of Contents:
The Rand Transcript, Revisited - Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Mimesis and Expression in Ayn Rand’s Theory of Art - Kirsti Minsaas
Langer and Camus: Unexpected Post-Kantian Affinities with Rand’s Aesthetics - Roger E. Bissell
The Facts of Reality: Logic and History in Objectivist Debates about Government - Nicholas Dykes
Ayn Rand versus Adam Smith - Robert White
Feser on Nozick - Peter Jaworski
Kant on Faith - Fred Seddon
Seddon on Rand - Kevin Hill
Reference and Necessity: A Rand-Kripke Synthesis - Roderick T. Long
Reply to Ari Armstrong: How to Be a Perceptual Realist - Michael Huemer
Rejoinder to Michael Huemer: Direct Realism and Causation - Ari Armstrong
Abstracts for this issue are available here; contributor biographies can be found here.
Print-out and mail-in your subscription form today! (Shameless commercialism...)
I've received a bit of email from people who were wondering why it is I have not commented on the upcoming mid-term elections."Sciabarra, you're a political scientist, for Chrissake! What do you think?"
Well, let's leave aside the question of how much science goes into politics: It's always nice to know that some people find value in what I say. But with all due respect: There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. I have not changed my views of this two-party, two-pronged attack on individual freedom by one iota: A Pox on Both Their Houses! In truth, however, the modern Democratic Party has always been honest about its Big Government agenda. But the"small-government" GOP has long embraced the politics of Big Government. As the majority party, they are a total, unmitigated disaster for individual liberty, whether they are religious rightists or so-called"progressive conservatives"—who are actually much truer to the GOP's 19th-century interventionist roots than so-called"Goldwater" or"Reagan" Republicans (those who embraced the rhetoric of limited government, while still paving the way for a growth in the scope of government intervention). You have to chuckle when even Hillary Clinton sees the hypocrisy:"The people who promised less government," she said,"have instead given us the largest and least competent government we have ever had."
Still, I must admit that my political perversity would like very much to see the Bush administration get a royal slap across the face, such that the Democrats take the House of Representatives and, at the very least, close the gap in the GOP-controlled Senate. This is purely a strategic desire: Party divisions can have utility in frustrating the power-lust on both ends. In any event, I think it's probably true that the GOP will suffer a setback, and I have been saying so for over a year.
Please understand, however: THIS WILL DO NOTHING TO CHANGE THE CURRENT DOMESTIC OR FOREIGN POLICY DISASTERS. I don't mean to shout, but with regard to foreign policy alone: The Democrats handed this administration the current foreign policy debacle on a silver platter. They will not challenge one inch of the Bush administration's Iraq policy or its ideological rationalizations for that policy: that"democracy" can be imposed on societies that have little or no appreciation of the complex cultural roots of human freedom.
Either way, I'll be watching the results of politics-as-bloodsport on Tuesday, November 7th.
Cross-posted at Notablog.
Today, I add the sixth installment of my"Remembering the World Trade Center" series. Whatever one's views of the historical and political causes and consequences of September 11, 2001, I believe it is important to"Never Forget."
As the fifth anniversary of that day approaches, I post this tribute to:
Cross-posted to Notablog.
A new book entitled Ayn Rand at 100, edited by Tibor Machan, makes its debut on Wednesday, August 16, 2006. And it is being published by the Liberty Institute in India!!! The book synopsis states:"Eminent authors discuss the impact [Ayn Rand] has had on their contribution to philosophy and, most importantly, Rand’s Indian connection."
A reprint of one of my Rand Centenary articles appears in the anthology, along with an essay by one of my L&P colleagues, Roderick Long. Here's the Table of Contents:
Preface : Tibor R. Machan: Ayn Rand at 100
Chapter 1: Bibek Debroy: Ayn Rand - The Indian Connection
Chapter 2: Tibor R. Machan: Rand and Her Significant Contributions
Chapter 3: J. E. Chesher: Ayn Rand’s Contribution to Moral Philosophy
Chapter 4: George Reisman: Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises
Chapter 5: Robert White: Ayn Rand’s Contribution to Liberal Thought
Chapter 6: Roderick T. Long: Ayn Rand and Indian Philosophy
Chapter 7: Chris Matthew Sciabarra: Ayn Rand - A Centennial Appreciation
Chapter 8: Fred Seddon: Ayn Rand - An Appreciation
Chapter 9: Elaine Sternberg: Why Ayn Rand Matters: Metaphysics, Morals, and Liberty
Chapter 10: Douglas Den Uyl : Rand's First Great Hit, The Fountainhead
Cross-posted to Notablog.
I am a bit behind in my newspaper reading, so I was particularly surprised by an article published in Thursday's New York Daily News. Written by Rabbi Michael Lerner,"The Right Way to Fight for Gay Marriage" argues that all unions should be privatized. Lerner, who is chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, writes:
... marriage ought to be taken out of the state's hands entirely. Let people be wed in the private realm with no official legal sanction. Then, religious communities that oppose gay marriage will not sanction them, and those like mine that sanction the practice will conduct it. Rather than issuing marriage certificates or divorces, the state would simply enforce civil unions as contracts between consenting adults and enforce laws imposing obligations on people who bring children into the world.
This approach is far more likely to be a winning strategy for those who wish to beat back the assault on gay rights.
I suppose what is most surprising to me is that a genuinely libertarian argument for privatizing marriage made it to the Op Ed of one of the most highly circulated daily newspapers in America.
Cross-posted to Notablog.
Throughout the years, I have met a number of libertarians who were, growing up (and, uh, are still...)"Comic Book Geeks." I don't know if there have been any statistical surveys correlating"Comic Book Geek" beginnings and libertarian ends. But you might want to take this test or this test to examine your own"Comic Book Geek Purity."
There are a few CBGs among us at L&P, including Roderick Long and Aeon Skoble, the latter of whom is the central focus of my Notablog post today:"The Comic Book Geek Revolutionaries."
It gives me great pleasure to announce the publication of the Spring 2006 issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. The issue features a dialogue on Ayn Rand's ethics, with contributions from Tibor R. Machan, Frank Bubb, Eric Mack, Douglas B. Rasmussen, Robert H. Bass, Chris Cathcart, and fellow L&P'er Robert L. Campbell. In addition, there are articles covering topics in epistemology (Merlin Jetton) and literature (Kurt Keefner and Peter Saint-Andre). Other contributors include fellow L&P'er Sheldon Richman on Thomas Szasz and Ayn Rand; Max Hocutt on postmodernism; Steven Yates on capitalism and commerce; and David M. Brown on the new Ayn Rand Q&A book.
For subscription information, see here.
Cross-posted to Notablog.
I've been super busy putting the finishing touches on the forthcoming Spring 2006 issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. But I've finally had the opportunity to publish, as a Notablog exclusive, an interview of me conducted by Jason Dixon.
Interested readers can check out that interview here. And the comments section is open here.
I just received a phone call from Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance. Sean tells me that my pal, Chris Tame, passed away at 3:37 pm, London time. Having battled cancer these many months, Chris's passing was, as Sean describes it, peaceful.
I'm very sad to hear this news, and I extend my deepest condolences to his friends and family. I was fortunate enough to speak with Chris last week; it was a"goodbye" phone call, as he knew the end was near. I will miss his almost daily"Ayn Rand Watch" postings, his warped sense of humor, and, most of all, the intellectual engagement. But I know that his legacy will live on.
A press release will follow from Sean very soon. (I've added that release at the Notablog post here. Kenneth R. Gregg has also added it to the comments section Update (23 March 2006): Sean Gabb has published an Obituary for Chris Tame here and here.
Chris Tame: 1949-2006
Today, ABC's"Good Morning America" reported on the Bush administration's claim that"negative" stories on the war in Iraq are playing right into the hands of the"enemy," and that the press is to blame for the sagging public support of the war. Bush's declining poll numbers are the result of negative publicity.
Such sagging public support, of course, has nothing to do with any erosion of the public's faith in the administration's competence, eh? Or the fact that Iraq is steeped in sectarian conflict, careening toward civil war? Nah. Nothing to do with those things.
On one level, of course, Bush is absolutely right: The press tends to focus on car bombs and murders and kidnappings as news. Well. DUH. Pick up any newspaper and the story is the same locally. Watch any local news broadcast and the story is the same there too. The news often reads or sounds like a police blotter. That has been the tendency in local news for as long as I've been alive. Why on earth would this tendency be different on a national or global level? Crime is news in this culture, and whether the criminals are local thugs or foreign ones, the play's the same.
But there is no direct correlation between news coverage and public perception, unless one believes that people are sheeple. Interestingly, even though NYC newspapers and newscasts focus on local crime all the time, it has not altered the public perception that crime is down in the Big Apple, as part of a long-term trend. And there is a good reason for this public perception: Crime is down. In reality. There were over 2,600 people murdered in NYC in 1990; that number dropped to under 600 by 2004. Whatever the continuing negative focus of the press, the reality of life in this city has inspired people's positive perceptions.
Perhaps the Bush administration needs its own reality check. The downturn in public opinion on the Iraq war is not simply the result of press brainwashing. The public perception has changed because things in reality are not going as well in Iraq as the administration claims.
I guess the administration is just frustrated with the"reality-based community." And here they thought that they created their own reality.
What is the administration's alternative? Planting positive stories in the press?Paying off journalists who ask sympathetic questions? Or maybe the press should simply be"embedded" into an official Ministry of Propaganda.
Sigh.
Cross-posted to Notablog.
Yesterday, I posted at Notablog a brief piece that cited a fine principle enunciated by GOP Senator Chuck Hagel:
You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy.
Yeah. How 'bout that?
Read more of my mini-rant here.
Steven Horwitz has tagged me for the"Meme-of-Four" (dammit indeed!)
Okay, here goes.
Four jobs I've had:
1. Bookkeeper
2. Assistant Orientation Director
3. Mobile Disc Jockey
4. Editor
Four movies I can watch over and over again:
1. Ben-Hur (1959)
2. Titanic (1997)
3. King Kong (1933)
4. War of the Worlds (1953)
Four places I've lived:
1. Brooklyn (West 5th Street)
2. Brooklyn (West 4th Street)
3. Brooklyn (West 9th Street)
4. Brooklyn (Dahill Road)
(Yeah, I have traveled a lot around this neighborhood...)
Four TV shows I love:
1. The Honeymooners
2. The Twilight Zone
3. The Fugitive
4. One Step Beyond
Four highly regarded and recommended TV shows I haven’t seen (much of):
1. The Sopranos
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. Law & Order (any of them)
4. CSI (any of them)
Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Phoenix, Arizona
2. Miami, Florida
3. Los Angeles, California
4. Peconic, Long Island
Four of my favorite dishes (only 4?!):
1. Pizza
2. Lasagna
3. Veal cutlet parmigiana
4. Spare ribs
(I could go on and on...)
Four sites I visit daily:
1. Bloglines (hehe)
2. Liberty & Power Group Blog
3. Once Upon a Time
4. Mises Economics Blog
Four places I’d rather be right now:
1. Hawaii (on a beach)
2. Las Vegas (by a pool)
3. Athens (sightseeing)
4. Rome (sightseeing)
Four albums I can't live without (today anyway):
1."Ben-Hur" (soundtrack, Miklos Rozsa composer)
2."For Django" (Joe Pass)
3."Embraceable You" (Carl and Joanne Barry, my brother and sister-in-law)
4."Boss Guitar" (Wes Montgomery)
Four new bloggers I'm tagging:
1. Sunni Maravillosa
2. Chip Gibbons
3. Sheldon Richman
4. Nick Manley
Cross-posted to Notablog.
It is no longer news that Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., passed away this week. She was 78.
An advocate and practitioner of nonviolent resistance, Martin Luther King Jr. once uttered a classic statement:"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."
While a lot of discussion has ensued over the nature of the"love thine enemy" philosophy that seems to underlie King's statement, I think there is a truth therein, which was made even more apparent by King's wife. Coretta Scott King often repeated her husband's maxim:"Hate is too great a burden to bear." But she added:"It injures the hater more than it injures the hated."
I've talked about the effects of hating in other posts dealing with everything from Yoda to my articulation of"The Rose Petal Assumption," so I won't repeat my reasoning here. Suffice it to say, there is an internal relationship between hatred, fear, anger, and suffering, and, often, the transcendence of one brings forth the transcendence of all.
I think what the Kings focused on was not"loving one's enemy" per se, but the practice of a positive alternative in one's opposition to evil. Nonviolent resistance is not equivalent to pacifism. It is not the renunciation of the retaliatory use of force; it entails, instead, the practice of a wide variety of strategies—from boycotts to strikes, which remove all sanctions of one's own victimization. One refuses to be a part of a cycle that replaces one"boss" with another. One repudiates real-world monsters, while not becoming one in the process. For as Nietzsche once said:"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
Nonviolence is not a social panacea, and sometimes it is absolutely necessary to use violence in one's response to aggression. But much can be learned about how to topple tyranny from the lessons provided by the theoreticians and practitioners of nonviolent resistance.
It's fitting that today I've marked Ayn Rand's birthday, for Atlas Shrugged is one of the grandest dramatizations in fiction of the effectiveness of fighting tyranny through nonviolent resistance. It is no coincidence that, while writing her magnum opus, Rand's working title for Atlas was"The Strike." Of course, Rand was no theorist of nonviolence, but her novel is instructive.
For further reading on the subject of nonviolence, let me suggest first and foremost the books of Gene Sharp, founder of the Albert Einstein Institution. See especially Sharp's books, The Politics of Nonviolent Action and Social Power and Political Freedom.
Cross-posted to Notablog.
