William Marina
I once had a student years ago who did much the same thing and blamed it on the Jewish Student Union. To read the story from La La Land, click here.
William Marina
John Pilger discusses Israel and the Neocon Connection.
William Marina
Steven Horwitz
Two quick things this morning:
1. William Marina's link to the anti-Israel screed on antiwar.com reminds me why I always go to that site with great trepidation. One can be opposed, even strongly opposed, to the war in Iraq and the US presence in the Middle-East more generally (not to mention critical of some/many Israeli policies) without turning Israel into the Great Satan, and without imagining the Jewish-Republican-neoconservative conspirators lurking around every corner and under every bed. Pieces like Pilger's are a good example of giving a good cause a bad name.
2. With a hat tip to Hit & Run, here's an interesting piece from Slate on the domestic economic policy views of the victorious Socialists in Spain. All I can say is "where's a platform like that in the US?!" Viva la revolution!!!
Of course it only goes to show that, at the end of the day, Mises and Hayek were indeed right.
Wendy McElroy
Meanwhile, only foreign media seem to be raising any question about whether the beseiged are really al-Qaida. Perhaps they are. But the area being destroyed by the Pakistan military is populated by warlike tribes and leaders who have never recognized Musharraf's authority, and who may well have had a hand in the two recent attempts on his life. When Diem destroyed all his political opponents in Vietnam, he did so under the guise that they were Communists which was patently untrue. US officials readily believed Diem because they wished to see"progress" and, frankly, they didn't know any better. According to CNN and the Pakistan military, the so-called al-Qaida captured so far" could be Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens or members of local tribes." If they don't know their nationalities or affiliations, how do they know the captured are al-Qaida?
For more commentary, please see McBlog.
William Marina
All of the Martha Stewart folks who have weighed in at this site, may want to go to Jeffrey Toobin's extensive piece in The New Yorker this week. While touching on some of the poor decision's by the defense lawyers, it notes again that Stewart's repeated rejections of a deal meant the prosecutors would have to go into court. They didn't make these entrapment laws, but do have to carry out the law. She ought to have taken into account the larger losses possible for herself, her company, its employees and investors.
Sheldon Richman
"Correction: In Tuesday's column I quoted the European Commission's president, Romano Prodi, telling the Italian newspaper La Stampa that force was not the answer to terrorism. I was relying on an Agence France-Presse translation, which was incorrect. Prodi actually said force should not be the only answer to terrorism. He said terrorism would not abate until the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was resolved."
In other words, as Emily Latella would say,"Never mind."
He trusted the French for the translation? What kind of neocon is he?
Sheldon Richman
Think about what they dragged this guy through, including adultery and pornography charges. No doubt about it: the government is out of control.
William Marina
Some additional comments to Keith Halderman.
Helmut Schoeck’s Envy discusses various kinds of Envy such as Vulgar and Indignation varieties.
With respect to the State, a major point in my “Egalitarianism and Empire,” is that with Equality there is always a great deal of human differentiation. Empires tend to offer massive Egalitarian redistribution welfare systems (today we call them “entitlements” as if they were rights), based precisely on the appeal of Envy.
See the article in today's NYT"Entitlement Costs Expected to Soar," which indicates the costs of Social Security and Medicare are expected to double shortly. But not to worry! I am assured by the Neocons, that after our nation-building is completed in Iraq, Haiti, Kosovo and elsewhere, these nations will all band together in gratitude to offer us a kind of Marshall Plan to help us stay afloat.
Wendy McElroy
The manhunt comes on the heels of another interesting shift: the Bush administration is beginning to downplay the importance of capturing Osama or other high-level al-Qaida. (Remember when that was the goal? Remember Tora Bora?) The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as stating,"They [terrorist groups] are very decentralized operations ... so you've got to go after them one by one. U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice also stressed that even if al-Zawahiri were captured, it wouldn't end the terror." A recent headline in the Richmond Times-Dispatch read,"Rumsfeld: Bin Laden Irrelevant". The story:"Capturing or killing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden would not 'change the problem' of international terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday?in an interview at the Pentagon with WTN radio in Nashville." Given its embarrassing failure at the endeavor, it is undoubtedly prudent for the Bush spokespeople to make like a Wurlitzer and change their tune. If al-Zawahiri is actually captured, expect another dime to drop into the music machine.
For more commentary, please visit McBlog
David T. Beito
Much as I dislike the Faculty Senate of the University of Alabama (of which I am a member), it roused itself sufficiently to pass a resolution supporting the USM faculty members. Other faculty senates need to follow suit.
William Marina
The Afghan’s resistance plan to the American Spring Offensive, “Mountain Storm,” which began around March 15th in Pakistan, has been revealed to Asia Times.
To read that article, with map, Click Here.
Steven Horwitz
Well, at some great risk, I'm going to try my hand at constitutional law for a few minutes. Those of you who read The Corner and Andrew Sullivan's blog may have seen today's discussion of the constitutional status of the right to marry (Andrew affirming it as a constitutional right and the Cornerites being significantly more skeptical). The issue here boils down to whether or not all constitutional rights are actually in the Constitution. The conservatives are, of course, insisting that if it's not in the text, then it's not a right (the ghost of Roe hovers in the air). Not surprisingly, I am not convinced.
I've emailed the participants with an argument something like the following: both conservatives and libertarians presumably agree that parents have constitutional rights with respect to their ability to raise their children as they see fit. Both groups (and many liberals as well) would want to see those rights protected against state intervention on some number of issues. (It's worth noting that liberals and conservatives will defend those rights for some things and not others, while libertarians are generally more willing to defend them across the board.) But the question is: where do those rights come from? Like marriage, parenting is not mentioned in the document itself. Nonetheless, there is a history of Supreme Court decisions defending those parental rights. A useful list can be found here. I call your attention specifically to the 1922 case Pierce v. Society of Sisters where Justice McReynolds wrote:
Under the doctrine of Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 , 43 S. Ct. 625, 29 A. L. R. 1146, we think it entirely plain that the Act of 1922 unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children [268 U.S. 510, 535] under their control. As often heretofore pointed out, rights guaranteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the state. The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.
Subsequent case law has upheld this formulation, althoughPrince v. Massachusetts in 1944 attenuated it with a recognition of what today we'd call a "best interest of the child" exception.
The Lawrence case from last year cited these parental rights cases as examples of "broad statements of the substantive reach of liberty under the Due Process Clause," and then suggested that the most pertinent recent case was Griswold v. Connecticut. So there is a clear line in Kennedy's mind from parental rights through contraceptive rights and perhaps to the right to abortion in Roe that recognizes that there are some fundamental liberties that are constitutionally protect that are not explicitly described in the document itself. As I understand it, this is more or less Randy Barnett's approach to constitutional interpretation and the "presumption of liberty." It also seems consistent with the sort of Lochner revisionism that David Bernstein has engaged in. (And the arguments in Pierce would make a great starting point for the constitutionality of school vouchers and other choice programs.)
So, coming back to my original point, if one believes there is a constitutionally protected set of parental rights, which includes the right to raise one's children as one sees fit, then the same logic should lead one to believe there is, or at least could be, a constitutionally protected right to marry the person of one's choice. If you don't believe me, read Scalia's dissent in Lawrence, as he saw the line from the court's logic there to the legalization of same-sex marriage. Scalia finds that a bad outcome of course, and I don't, but he understood the line of thought.
The question for conservatives is how they can rescue any notion of a constitutionally protected set of parental rights yet deny a completely analogous constitutionally protected right of marriage. Whether the latter right extends to person's of the same gender is another question, but establishing the right to marry at the constitutional level (which I believe one can under the line from Meyer to Pierce to Lawrence) should be the starting point.
May libertarian law professors everywhere have mercy on my soul if this makes no sense whatsoever.
David T. Beito
Robert L. Campbell
Yesterday the attempt by Shelby Thames, President of the University of Southern Mississippi, to fire two tenured professors for investigating the credentials of a Vice President was on the agenda of the Mississippi College Board. After the Board discussed the matter in executive session, College Board President Thomas Brandon announced that the state Attorney General’s office was being asked to monitor the fairness of the dismissal process. The AG’s office selected an outside counsel to participate in organizing the university-level hearings for Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer.
According to a source who attended the meeting, the College Board President clearly intended the decision as a signal to Thames to follow proper procedure and refrain from further arbitrary actions or posturing in front of the media. Whether this will have any effect on an administrator with a proven record of ignoring stop signs remains to be seen.
The hearings are supposed to take place between April 5 and April 9. Even if they are delayed, we’ll know soon enough whether the College Board was being prudent—or merely temporizing. Stay tuned.
Keith Halderman
Kenny
What happened to Martha Stewart was totally wrong, and we are never going to get anywhere politically in this country until people stop envying the rich. Do you know how many people were able to put bread on their tables because of her? They canceled her TV show; all those people are out of work. Her stock tanked, all those pension funds lost money. If you read the article below you will see that she really did not do anything wrong, nothing that you or I would not have done under the same circumstances. When injustice happens to someone, whether they are rich or poor, it happens to all of us. All of this harm just to serve the ambition of a government lawyer. That is why I believe that while government may be necessary, it is also by its very nature evil.
Keith
William Marina
While I also believe Martha Stewart has been bashed unfairly by the government, I hope that, as suggested by Keith Halderman, political progress in America does not depend upon a decline among the poor envying the rich.
First of all, anyone who has read much on envy, see my essay Egalitarianism and Empire, or more importantly, H. Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, or has taught school, or even watched a little human action, ought to recognize that the really destructive envy, for the"A," for example, comes from the"A-," or"B+," and not from those lower down, the"C"s etc., the so-called masses. Ever try to explain to a"B" student, who claims to have studied twice as many hours as the"A," why that person received a"B"? The"C"s seldom bother to argue.
The same is true with respect to status and wealth! It is those just lower down who most envy those at the top.
American politicians like to use envy for their own ends, and it is highly unlikely they would try to devise ways to use it more creatively for society. Envy is inherent in Hierarchy, which is evident in nature throughout the animal world -- and isn't going away. As I have noted elsewhere, Tocqueville believed the engine driving Democracy was Envy.
The Cartheginians, to appease envy appear to have burned about 20,000 first- born males children of the upper classes, offered to the God, Molach-Baal, to appease the envy in the society. We are fortunate, that society lost to Rome.
On the other hand, in victory, the Romans borrowed crucifixion from the Cartheginians, and that appears much in vogue these days, at least among movie fans who like their blood and gore on celluloid. Or is it DVD now?
In the interaction of civilizations, much more important than Huntington's so-called" clashes," who knows what weird idea to appease envy might be adopted in the West. Certainly our new immigrants bring with them an interesting pile of cultural baggage! That's what the Romans thought about a new, strange, eastern religion called Christianity.
Pat Lynch
One of the biggest complaints I've had in following the Iraq war has been a constant emphasis by the press on the political changes in the country. Every news outlet focuses obsessively on the new Iraqi Constitution, the Governing Council, or the caucus process. It's not unusual to have the media ignore the role of free markets, particularly since most journalists lean to the left, but in a country that had virtually no private sector economy before the invasion I thought even folk as anti-market as journalists might consider how to create jobs and enforce stability without relying on government.
There is however one way governments can help economic growth - they can promote it by staying the hell out of markets. Fred Barnes piece today in the Weekly Standard provides a nice list of new government policies that are surprisingly pro business, including free trade, low tax rates, and no price controls. So maybe the neo-cons have it right after all?
Well I'm still pretty skeptical, and not just because lap dogs like Barnes want to make Iraq seem all fine and well except for those pesky"foreigners" causing problems. Setting aside the issue of exactly who is killing all these civilians and the clear credibility problems our intelligence agencies have on this matter, I'd like to know what value these institutions alone have.
Fossilized Marxists who still populate American universities often dismiss the failure of the Soviet Union on the fallacy that the Russians just weren't"ready" for the utopia Marx had in mind. They implicitly make an important point. Can the simple installation of a set of institutions be enough in a country with no recent memory of markets or the rule of law? Experimental economics research of the type done by Nobel Prize winner Vernon Smith at George Mason University's ICES, suggest that it's as natural for humans to trade as it is for them to walk upright and raise families.
Are institutions enough? Will nature take hold? History suggests that overcoming Saddam's legacy will be tough. The Neo-cons backing it makes me very skeptical. But people tend to take to commerce like fish to water. The important question is how calm and safe the swimming pool will be for the Iraqi people.
David T. Beito
