Steven Horwitz
David T. Beito
Grimshaw also touches on a greatly understudied topic: the GOP's campaign in the 1950s to win back the lost black vote. In 1956, Ike may have won as high as 40 percent of the black vote and key black leaders including King and Adam Clayton Powell gave him their vote. This success was not a tribute to Ike, however, as much as it was a repudiation of Stevenson who was even worse on civil rights. Only in 1960 did the black vote begin to swing back as Nixon ran an inept campaign which tried to please both blacks and Southern whites and lost them both.
Could the GOP have continued the gains of the 1950s without compromising free market principles? I think that it could if it had more aggressively pressed for application of the 15th Amendment to the South. Had it done this, it could have not ony have garnered more black votes (especially in the South) but possibly taken the steam out of later efforts to enact more intrusive federal legislation on other issues. Unfortunately, both Nixon and Ike dropped the ball.
Robert L. Campbell
I will join Steven Horwitz in giving a thumbs-down to this piece by Arnold Kling–and a thumbs-up to this piece by Tim Burke.
In claiming that academics lean Leftward, because the Left craves freedom without responsibility, and professorial life exemplifies the desired condition, Kling engages in the same caricaturing that one finds in Charles Sykes’ book ProfScam. (Sykes is a lot more fun to read, though, because he did real research, and has colorful details to offer.)
Here are the essentials of the ProfScam portrayal:
- All professors are tenured
- All professors work at flagship research universities
- All professors flee undergraduate teaching
- All administrators are helpless puppets who carry out the will of the professors
First: Since at the present time 43% of college and university instructors are not on the tenure track at all, the first assumption is blatantly unrepresentative of the profession as a whole.
Second, as Steven points out, flagship research universities aren’t that common. We’d have to talk precise criteria if we wanted to do better, but a ballpark estimate would put the number around 100 (out of over 3000 colleges and universities in the United States). By the way, the Carnegie Foundation has dropped its old Research I category because, as one of its reports stated a few years ago, the statistics that CF was using did not track total grant and contract funding of research all that accurately–and too many university presidents were announcing that Research I status was a goal for their institutions. At present, what used to be called Research I and Research II are being lumped together, while they try to figure out a better way to classify universities.
Third, the flight from teaching is a reality at research universities. But even at research universities, a lot of undergraduate teaching is still happening, and elsewhere, it is a responsibility that professors neither can nor (for the most part) want to dodge. As state universities in the research sector charge more and more for tuition, they are beginning to discover that students and their parents want better service–which means that undergraduate teaching will be making a comeback, at some institutions that thought the path to prestige lay in shorting it.
Finally, my posts, and those of some other contributors here, have made it clear that administrators are a long way from being subservient to the faculty. Quite the contrary: they have their own agenda, often regard themselves as superior to mere professors, and are frequently in a position to spend more on themselves and their fellow administrators. Administrators often behave as though the university exists for the sake of its administration, and faculty are increasingly subservient to them–not the other way around.
A further difficulty attends the ProfScam model: if valid, it applies across all disciplines. Consequently, any political bias that follows from enjoying “freedom without responsibility” should prevail across disciplines. Indeed, the flight from undergraduate teaching is often more in evidence among science and engineering professors, because they are by far the most likely to be doing big-ticket grant-funded research. But science and engineering professors are not the ones that people usually complain about when they object to Left-wing bias in the department or in the classroom. So Kling has to write as though all professors are in the humanities, plus perhaps sociology, education, and psychology. And that assumption is as blatantly unrepresentative as any of Sykes’.
Kling’s diatribe is indicative of the way a lot of conservatives and libertarians think. (I’ve encountered the same kind of attitude, many times, in discussions with Objectivists.) That is, academia is reducible to its most politically obnoxious features, and no one really needs it for any legitimate purpose anyway...so tear it all down, or let it rot, or something. We can certainly debate whether all of the functions colleges and universities are presently expected to perform are truly vital, and I certainly hope more consideration will be given to ways in which they might carry out their core missions more effectively. And what about separating higher education from the State? That issue doesn’t come up very much, when this type of complaint is made. But then, current trends suggest that keeping the State involved might be the best way to insure that the whole system will rot...
Burke’s essay I heartily recommend to everyone with the slightest interest in these issues. He understands how complex the internal politics of universities can be, and how weakly the internal politics of various faculty members may correlate with their external politics. My own experience indicates that some faculty who favor the free market will reliably suck up to the administration of a state university, and some far-Left types will reliably take on that same administration when it strives to crush dissent, railroad a faculty member, or cover up academic malfeasance.
Burke could have developed one of his points a little further... namely that while universities do compete with one another in certain ways, they are basically non-market institutions with a severely hampered labor market. It’s not fair, though, to ask him to do everything, and contributors to Liberty and Power are certainly in a position to address the non-market nature of most higher education.
Pat Lynch
My own reasons for not voting since 1992 were largely practical. Living in the District of Columbia until 2001 meant that any act of political participation legitimized a system I saw as blatantly illegal - taxation without representation. Since the District is overwhelming Democratic my vote truly would have been a colossal waste of my time. I didn't vote in local elections here in Indy last year because I was not able to for health reasons on election day. Hopefully this year that won't be the case.
However I have no problem with people voting for just the reasons Rod and David articulated. Like any intelligent political scientist I used to teach Downs to my undergraduates at GU to try to at least get them to see why lots of folks rationally choose not to vote. Regarding vote choice, I think Rod made the straightforward case for libertarians not supporting Bush, but I will argue, once the Democratic front runner is set, that it's a bit more complicated then that. However I lean towards his assessment of the Bush presidency as one that has certainly been a huge disappointment for fans of liberty.
Pat Lynch
William Marina
Now it turns out that the Prez and his advisor, Condi Rice, didn’t quite read through the entire Intelligence Report last year which contained a number of reservations about WMD’s, and all of that good stuff.
Maybe the Prez’s educational program should be expanded to “No President or Advisors Left Behind,” to help increase his reading speed and comprehension.
To his sporadic attendance at Yale has now been added his apparent absence in the Alabama National Guard. Has anybody checked on whether he attended any classes at Harvard while obtaining an MBA? Even GeoII/43, whose whole career has been an exercise in family influence and coat tail riding, ought to understand that a participant who doesn’t show up for the race, cannot, by definition, be “left behind.”
Over the years, several friends have chided me for seemingly nasty to flippant remarks about our Imperial leaders. But, historically, a number of writers in several civilizations, especially an old English teacher of mine, have pointed out that the best way to deal with the arrogance and pomposity of Power, which is an essential characteristic of Empire, is Satire.
The Media in America is so busy flattering the Prez that it has seldom had time to check on whether our Leader has any clothes on, or not. But, our Imp is a stylish guy, with a outfit for every occasion! Maybe he has an old flight suit from his Alabama days, just loaded with old cleaner’s labels that will prove conclusively he literally wore out the seat of his pants flying around that state.
The Romans used “bread and circuses” to keep the population appeased, and once when there was only enough welfare money for one of the two, one of the Emperors instinctively chose another circus.
For many years I used to think sports -- even with rape these days thrown in -- and TV were our circuses, but clearly our politicians, and, especially, Washington, DC, within the Beltway, now provide us with an ongoing circus of circuses.
We have, however, even less regard for human life than did the Ancient Romans in their bestial circuses. The Imp has talked a bit about our losses in Iraq, but apart from a human rights groups or two, Americans don’t even mention the over 10,000 Iraqi civilians thus far killed in our “Liberation” of their nation.
David T. Beito
Roderick Long has peaked my interested about Aaron Russo, the Libertarian candidate. Is he a credible? I have heard some claim that he could be tarred with the"nut factor." Does Professor Long, the anarchist, intend to vote for him?
Pat Lynch
Pat Lynch
The problem is not just that this stuff sounds bad, it's that political demagogues like Pat Buchanan pick up this stuff and twist it around. I was thinking this morning how I would have responded to the question about outsourcing as someone who's a bit more sensitive to politics. I suppose I would have said that short-term losses are tough, especially for those lossing their jobs. But I also would have pointed out that the U.S. economy has benefitted tremendously from the increases in efficiency that have accompanied economic changes for hundreds of years. George Will makes the case much more eloquently than I could in this New York Post op-ed this morning.
Still I wonder about how easy it is to make the long-term case in politics at all. We know that social spending comes back to haunt us, that Social Security is a lead weight around the neck of future generations, that all sorts of things have long term costs. Can we ever hope voters will look past the short-term?
Gene Healy
Richard Perle, a chief proponent of last year's U.S. invasion of Iraq, yesterday called for the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency to step down because of their faulty conclusions that Saddam Hussein possessed mass-killing weapons.
Roderick T. Long
I don't think voting is terribly important as a strategy for libertarians, at least in comparison with education and the like. However, I do vote.
I don't think voting is immoral, since I accept Lysander Spooner's argument that voting counts as self-defense rather than as a sanction of the system. (See also Herbert Spencer's discussion, as well as my critique of voluntaryist anti-voting arguments.)
Nor do I think voting is irrational; if the rational-choice argument against voting worked, it would also prove that it's irrational to try to walk across the room, because no individual step is of any use unless it is followed by all the other steps, and no step by itself can guarantee that it will in fact be followed by other steps.
I always vote for the Libertarian candidate when there is one, not as a means to the end of electing him or her (since that has not been a realistic goal in any election in which I've voted) but as a means toward enhancing the prominence of the movement. (And the smaller the number of people voting for a particular candidate, the larger the difference each of those individual votes makes.)
Is Russo the ideal person to represent the LP? Does he have the professionalism and credibility of a Harry Browne or a Ron Paul? In my judgment, no. Browne and Paul came across like statesmen; Russo comes across like a Hollywood producer -- unsurprisingly, since that's what he is. Not knowing much about the other candidates for the nomination, I don't know who I would support if I were a delegate to the nominating convention. But I'm not a delegate, so that choice isn't mine to make.
In the upcoming election I currently prefer Kerry to Bush, but since the odds of Kerry's losing by a single vote are effectively zero, I'm not worried about splitting the anti-Bush vote by voting for a third-party candidate; and I'm more interested in making a tiny contribution to the long-term growth of the libertarian movement than in making a much much tinier contribution to the short-term victory of a lesser evil. Thus I expect to vote for the Libertarian candidate, whether it's Russo or someone else. But I certainly have no quarrel with any libertarian who chooses to vote for Kerry, or not to vote at all.
I do have a quarrel with any libertarian who votes for Bush. What could be the libertarian case for Bush? Even if we leave aside his warmongering, and his horrendous record on civil liberties -- he's not even a fiscal conservative! He may favour slightly lower taxes in the short term than do most Democrats, but his massive explosion in Federal spending can only mean higher taxes in the long term.
Arthur Silber
Well, isn't this just lovely:
An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited, had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator.Yeah, Ahmad, I just bet you are.Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence."We are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.
"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
See? That's how the New Fascism works. Isn't it keen?
David T. Beito
Why do I bother to turn out especially since my single vote has never mattered in these elections? In part, it is because it makes me"feel good" to express my views on people and issues, even in a small way. I have also have a more opportunistic reason. I have found that many defenders of voting will not even entertain a defense of non-voters and non-voting unless they know that I performed my" civic duty."
I think, however, that Roderick underestimates the validity of the self-defense argument for voting. The strength of the self-defense justification is especially clear if viewed from the perspective of certain politically repressed groups in history, even if we assume that no individual vote from a member of that group ever determines an election.
A case in point is the political history of Mississippi during the 1950s (a subject of my recent research). Although blacks constituted nearly half the state's population, fewer than two percent had the franchise. The end result is that both their property and lives were much less secure.
A well-known specific example from the period was killing of Emmett Till in Tallahatchie County in 1955. Like some other counties, it had a black majority but not a single black voter. Despite overwhelming evidence against the white defendants, an all-white jury acquitted them after less than an hour of deliberation. The jurors did this even though it is pretty clear that they recognized the guilt of the defendants. Had blacks been able to vote, they could have also served on this jury and better defended their rights. They could have also checked the power of the extremely racist sheriff in the county who blocked the investigation of the case. The fact that the entire group did not have the franchise undermined the rights of each individual in the group whether or not he or she ever cast a determining vote.
I have often found that black friends have an almost emotional attachment to the importance of voting and voting rights and have little interest in my"one vote doesn't matter" objections. Given the history of this period, I can see why they feel this way while, at the same time, appreciating the broader philosophical case against voting.
Gene Healy
Roderick T. Long
Roderick T. Long
Aaron Russo, the current frontrunner for U.S. Libertarian Party presidential candidate nominee, spoke at Auburn University tonight. I went to listen.
Since 1972 the LP has run seven candidates for president, of whom I've met four. If Russo wins the nomination, he'll be the fifth. Here are some first impressions:
Russo's campaign, should he be nominated, will be very different from that of Harry Browne, the LP's candidate for the last two presidential elections. Where Browne focused on the economic case for liberty, Russo focuses on the moral case. (My ideal candidate would focus equally on both, but she's not running.) Browne's delivery was always polished, professional, and dignified -- presidential, in fact -- while Russo is more rough-hewn, with a rambling, inflammatory, and self-dramatising style that I initially found off-putting, though I warmed to him considerably by the time the session was over. I was particularly pleased that he seemed like someone that left-wingers and right-wingers could equally relate to.
Judging on presentational style alone, however, I think the press would find Russo easier than Browne to justify not taking seriously; and given his rights-focused approach, I also wasn’t able to judge how well prepared Russo is to handle the hard questions about economic policy. On the other hand, Russo's colourful personal style, along with his status as a nationally prominent Hollywood producer, could work to his advantage with the press. Russo also said that he plans to draw on his own considerable financial assets to raise the profile of his campaign, though he declined to offer a ballpark figure.
Where does Russo stand on issues that divide libertarians? Some answers that emerged:
Why this last isn't an equally good -- or bad -- case for deporting native-born welfare recipients (who surely outnumber immigrant recipients) wasn't clear. But to his credit, Russo did acknowledge that it would be difficult to conduct a war on immigration without thereby fueling the police state still further, and admitted he wasn't sure how to address the problem. (Still, why not just focus on privatising welfare, or at least on making immigrants ineligible to receive it, rather than harassing peaceful immigrants because they might apply for assistance? And for a decentralist like Russo, why is this a Federal rather than a state issue anyway?)
For the most part Russo's libertarianism seemed fairly hardcore, though he did suggest that drug prohibition, while"ignorant," would have been"legal and proper" if achieved through constitutional amendment. I also wasn’t sure precisely what he meant in saying that public schools should be run"like" private schools.
The centerpiece of Russo's campaign is opposition to the military draft; he offered some disturbingly persuasive evidence that a reintroduction of the draft is quietly in the works, and Russo plans to use his campaign to win publicity for this issue.
Pat Lynch
There are growing calls among fiscal conservatives for Bush to veto the 350 billion dollar plus highway bill that is being sorted through the Congress. Failure to do so may completely undercut Bush's credentials as any fan of a smaller government.
Pat Lynch
Pat Lynch
R. Reid McKee
Francis Wheen's latest book is deliciously entitled, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions.
The book does not appear to be presently available in the U.S. Thankfully though, Wheen's former employer The Guardian has recently published a good review along with some piquant excerpts from the book (excerpt one, excerpt two). Looks like good reading.
Interestingly enough, The Guardian also reports that Wheen is involved in a project to launch a new 'highbrow' national newspaper in the UK.
Hmm...I must be a philistine. I thought all British broadsheets were 'highbrow.' Maybe that's because I'm comparing them to U.S. newspapers?
