Pat Lynch
Pat Lynch
Now I must admit I initially wasn't excited about going to this show, and I have to thank my cousin Jimmy for both convincing me it'd be good and getting myself and Paula great seats. I think part of me had feared that any post-Jerry touring would be more likely to resemble the New Main Street Singers from the film"A Mighty Wind" than it would the Grateful Dead, but I'm pleased (and very surprised) to report that they are probably better then they sounded in the 18 months leading up to Garcia's passing. In retrospect this makes sense, but it's a testament to these guys that they still have the energy and passion to play as well as they still do.
The"scene" or circus looks remarkably similar to the one I left in 1994, although one of my favorite characters in Dead parking lots, a fellow named Norm who would do a sort of hippie rap performance he'd call"deviations" for a small fee, was nowhere to be found. He probably left the road somewhere in the middle of the dot-com boom and is now the head of Cisco or Intel right now.
There's even a healthy dose of intelligent thinking about markets and intellectual property rights on this tour. It's now possible to buy sound board CD's of each show on the tour (eventually through MP3 download) directly from the band. Fans can also get copies of shows using the traditional method of trading recordings of tapers. For a bunch of old geezers, the Dead continue to think well ahead of their times when it comes to business and fairness.
So for anyone who's felt a small part of their lives missing since 1995 I'd urge you to check out the Dead if they are touring near you this summer. The long strange trip continues.......
Common Sense
I will post on occasion as I carry out my term in Purgatory. God is still upset about my book, The Age of Reason, and as punishment for that and my other sins has forced me to be that most miserable of all human beings, a blogger. Luckily, God is merciful, and he has allowed me to join what I think is the best blog on the net. Similarly, David Beito is merciful (and wise), and has required me to make only occasional entries as a Contributing Editor.
I’m using a pseudonym to remind readers that I am no longer the Tom Paine of 200 years ago. I am, rather, Tom Paine with 200 years of hindsight. I will not always say what old Tom would have said because I have changed some of my views. For instance, I now see that Edmund Burke had a better grasp of the French Revolution than I. I have come to greatly admire the work of F. A. Hayek and must admit that I see a bit of Burke in him. I greatly regret my support for that warmongering dictator Napoleon. One can spread liberal institutions best by example, not by force.
My general outlook still holds. Although my libertarianism has grown more conservative with age, I still believe that there is some wisdom in the view I expressed in The Rights of Man that
“A great part of the order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origins in the principles of society and the national constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has made upon man, and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other, create the great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interests regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government.”
That’s enough for now. I must complete my primary task for the day (rolling a boulder up a hill over and over again) in time to watch my favorite TV show, Six Feet Under.
David T. Beito
Joseph Stromberg has a long and thoughtful response . I have already answered our critics here, here , and here but let me take time to address a couple of his points.
Stromberg: In aid of trivializing the ideas of Southern multiculturalists, so-called, the authors adduce a (white) female professor caught in the act of defending Kwanzaa. The less said of this" comparison," the better. Just in terms of sheer time-depth, Southern culture is a few centuries older than Kwanzaa and might, therefore, have more standing. Southern culture, like it or not, is"older than the Union," so to speak, and thus has had time to develop a good many cultural features with no small claim to authenticity, even as the word is understood by social scientists.
The whole American experience itself is not very old in historical terms, and it is not immediately self-evident that the repackaging of that experience by New England scribes, self-appointed to define the truly"American," settles such questions for all time. There is a Virginia-centric reading of Southern – and American – history, and there has been for a long, long time.1 It is not entirely idle for people who find themselves in possession of a particular inheritance at the end of several centuries, to wish to preserve some of it, especially when they find that inheritance under constant attack.
Beito: Many readers have interpreted our article as a general attack on Southern culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. Speaking for myself, I rather like living in the South. Particularly refreshing is the friendliness, the easy going outlook and, of course, the skepticism of big government. Moreover, in a generally sense, I agree with David Hackett Fischer and other historians who trace much of this distinctiveness to the Celtic background of many Southerners.
A key problem with the Confederate multiculturalists is that they try to make the four-year interlude of the CSA into *the* defining aspect of Southern culture. Hence, my Kwanzaa example. The focus on the short-lived CSA, of course, is problematic in other respects. It ignores (and actually diminishes) the significant African contribution to Southern culture and has nothing to say about the role played by many white Southerners who refused to support secession. Interestingly, the Celtic influence was often especially strong in the Unionist areas! What about their contribution to Southern culture? Why should their memory be forever chained to the legacy of the same CSA which may of them opposed?
Stromberg: Beito and Nuckolls adduce the League’s call for"reparations for the South" as further evidence of Southern multiculturalism. Here, I fear they are – for all their formal training in the sciences of human action – a bit tone-deaf. I don’t think anyone calling for"reparations for the South" really expects to get them. What we have here is a talking point, an attempt at reminding people that Mr. Lincoln’s Union-saving armies did burn Atlanta, did burn Columbia, did shell Charleston for a year and a half, and so on.
Beito: Talking point? If so, it is a wrong-headed talking point that is contradictory, purely reactive, and morally dubious. It reminds me of David Horowitz's misguided attempt to embrace"ideological diversity" as a ploy to defeat the advocates of racial diversity. A better solution, in my view, is to promote the good old fashioned and beleaguered ideal of merit. It is an ideal that has far too few defenders today.
Stromberg: I have not argued the details of the late war. Let those who cling to it, as the glorious Second Founding, do so. My only question – and it is a purely hypothetical one for purposes of discussion – is this: Now that the South has been so profoundly reformed and improved by armed exophilanthropists, what objection can there possibly be, especially from self-named classical liberals, to substantial local autonomy for the South, or indeed, full political independence?
Beito: I have no objection at all. In fact, one of my quibbles with current advocates of states rights is that they they don't go far enough in their decentralism. I much prefer the Swiss model e.g. the main unit of government should be no larger than a canton.
Such a system, if adopted today in both North and South, would have the virtue of equally empowering people in the black belt and hill country. Had we adopted such a Swiss model in 1787, slavery (which depended heavily on subsidies from a large federal and large state Leviathans) would have probably ended much sooner.
Charles W. Nuckolls
What interests me, however, is not their whipped-dog snivelling, but the legacy of ambiguity they claim for their own. Why is it, one wonders, the debate on Southerness always turns on the question of why the South left the Union? And more to the point, why is this question always so hard to answer?
The reason is that the South itself decided long ago that this question should not be answered, at least not definitively. I do not mean the decision was a conscious one. It was more like a cultural consensus, motivated by group defensiveness. Because if Southern identity could be maintained as an always moving target, it was less likely to take a mortal hit from its adversaries.
I have heard"the South" spoken of as a political entity, a religious cause, a cultural bulwark against the intrusions of industrialism, and so on. Try to attack one and"the South" immediately changes shape and turns into something else. Beito and I tried to show that one of these"Souths," the one that considered slavery central to its existence, did figure more largely than the others in the debates of the 1850's. And as it always has,"the South" shifted its ground, saying, in essence,"but that's not the South we mean."
It has been that way for a long time. Indeed, it is one of the most successful political shape-shifting stories we historians have ever seen. Southerners will never define who they are, and will never let you do so, either -- and so the debate will never permit itelf to end. And, for what it's worth, that is what the South means to me.
William Marina
Between them, these two links mention “Anglo-Celtic civilization” no less than five times as forming the basis of Southern culture. I was reminded of my own Celtic background, albeit somewhat different than that envisaged by the League.
At some point in the evening, after a few glasses of wine at dinner during a Liberty Fund seminar in Houston some years ago, the historian Forrest McDonald of the University of Alabama asked me if anyone had ever mentioned to me that I had a purely “Celtic” face? I replied, “Well, yes, but the Celticness was probably more from my Spanish ancestors than from those who had matriculated to Florida from southern Alabama.” He looked very puzzled by my answer.
He had apparently not realized the heavy Celtic background of Asturias and other areas in northern Spain, where even today, on a Sunday afternoon one might find the natives dancing in kilts to the music of bagpipes. I doubt, although the League may inform me otherwise, that there is any such Celtic “kultur” around in towns in today’s American South.
The Anglo-Celts in my family were not exactly big on multi-cultural diversity. When my Father proposed to my Mother in 1936, her brothers, all members of the Klan beat up my Father, dumping him on the edge of the Everglades, with the threat that they would not stand for their sister being married to some “Spanish-Nigger.” Well, my Mother had other ideas!
Their ignorance was exceeded perhaps only by the anti-nativist Klan members in North Carolina, who in the early 1960s staged a rally in the county that had the largest Indian population east of the Mississippi. The Klanners were chased into the woods by hundreds of Indian-American war veterans.
So, League of the Southers, what is the real cultural basis of this “Anglo” version of the Celtic heritage, other than a propensity to try to bully others? As McDonald learned, much of what Anglo-Celts think of as “theirs,” is common to Celtics around other parts of Europe.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
I've just secured a copy of the 9/11 Commission report, but have not had the opportunity to read it. Still, I was intrigued by David Brooks' comments today in the NY Times about how the commission asserts that this is not only a war on terror, but an"ideological conflict." In his article,"War of Ideology," Brooks maintains:
It seems like a small distinction—emphasizing ideology instead of terror—but it makes all the difference, because if you don't define your problem correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.
When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own.
Yes, indeed. The problem is, of course, that in an ideological battle, one must define a fundamentally different ideology in order to fight that which one abhors. If the"ideological counteroffensive" consists of a synthesis of fundamentalist Christianity with a neocon welfare-warfare statist mentality, then America is not offering any radical alternative to Islamic fundamentalism.
Brooks is certainly right to commend the commission for its belief that"the U.S. should be much more critical of autocratic regimes, even friendly ones, simply to demonstrate our principles." It would help if the US were not in bed with so many of these autocracies; it would also help if US politicians could actually demonstrate and live up to the principles upon which America was founded: reason, productiveness, individualism, and liberty.
In the end, however, giving"an international platform to modernist Muslims" and"introduc[ing] them to Western intellectuals" would be terribly counterproductive, especially since so many Western intellectuals have been at war with such American principles for decades. (It is no coincidence that some of today's"radical" Muslims have been taught in Western, including American, educational institutions.)
We need an ideological revolution within the United States before exporting it abroad.
David T. Beito
Hummel does have this to say, however:
"the claim by one individual that 75 percent of the national government's antebellum revenue came from the South is simply laughable. Southerner's may have paid a disproportionate SHARE on a per capita or more likely per income basis, but since there were far fewer of them and the region was poorer, the North generated far more revenue in absolute terms."
Roderick T. Long
I just today (well, yesterday by the time I'm writing this) came across the website of Lance Brown, who's already running for the LP nomination in 2008 (the first presidential election in which he'll be old enough to be eligible). It's the first I'd heard of him, but then I don't generally follow LP politics terribly closely (apart from my one stint as a delegate in '96) so I'm probably behind the curve.
In any case, after spending some time perusing his website (actually a vast network of websites) I'm favourably impressed; on the basis of what I've read so far, he seems more like"my" kind of libertarian than were any of the three candidates for the LP nomination this year. In other words, he's a Rand-reading computer geek with a left-friendly, feminist-friendly, labour-friendly, Green-friendly approach.
That's basically the approach that characterised the libertarian movement in the glorious 19th century, before the rise of state socialism scared libertarians into their long and ugly 20th-century alliance with conservatives. One of Brown's many websites is called GreenLiberty.org, advertised as being dedicated to"pursuing Green values using Libertarian principles"; I was particularly curious to have a look at it, but it seems to be out of service for now. However, for Brown's general outlook see his article The Essential Hurdle for Libertarians, which says the things that libertarians should be saying more often.
I'm a bit grumpy, though, over his admission that he isn't"very well-read" in Austrian economics. Come 2008, he'd better have read up on the Austrians if he's going to be answering the hard economics questions. That's especially true if he wants to reach out to the left; those constituents will be wanting to know why they should vote for a free-marketer like Brown rather than for Nader or the Green candidate. Perhaps he should start with Gene Callahan's Economics for Real People. (As long as I'm grumping: Brown also has a fondness for keeping pronouns in the subjective case regardless of what this does to the grammar of the sentence. Argh! Still, I bet he can pronounce"nuclear" correctly.)
Anyway, Brown looks like a breath of fresh air, at least to us bleeding-heart libertarians who would like to see the movement lose its right-wing image and extend its appeal to the anti-authoritarian left. He's definitely a candidate worth watching.
Deborah Katz Hunt
My first problem, one that nagged me throughout the movie, was why the newspaper editor hated Spider-Man so much. I'd heard the reason was there was a secret subtext that compared the super hero to Bush and his own problems with the press. So, the editor is unmotivated because the real national and international press are unmotivated in their hatred of Bush?
Actually, that is not a rhetorical question. If anyone out there has an explanation, please send it along.
Also, I got a bit tired of the back and forth, dilly-dallying about what sort of life the super hero will decide to lead. The" choice" is a great device. Universal in literature and in life. But I don't think when presented in fiction it should become tedious. (I'm not even that tolerant with my own friends indecisiveness.
I very much liked Dr. Octopus and good bad guys aren't that easy to invent.
Alfred Molina was a great casting choice-and a daring one I thought for Hollywood, given his paunchiness- an actor who gave true gravitas to the part. Here is where the writing shone (as I'd heard it did throughout the movie). His character was cleverly developed and provided with substantial motivation. I always looked forward to his appearances. I'm expecting he'll return in a next installment given his fishy death (sorry).
At this point, I'm telling my friends to see the movie if they need a break from the summer heat and some distraction from everyday life. Otherwise, wait for it to come out on video/dvd.
Radley Balko
That's almost $130 million in public funds so politicians already on the public payroll can dine on cavier and hookers in Boston and New York, and throw two gauche parties to celebrate...themselves.
Oh yes, and so they can"nominate" their candidates for president and vice president -- candidates who sealed up their respective party's endorsements months (in W.'s case, years) ago. That I guess is the intoxicating"democracy" part of the scam that's supposed to get me all dumb, drunk, and oblivious to the fact that I paid for all those damned balloons.
Talk about adding insult to injury.
It's not enough that I have to tolerate the policies of these two nauseating parties and their candidates.
I have to pay for their nationally-televised group masturbation sessions, too.
Radley Balko
On you.
Radley Balko
Guest blogging at Overlawyered, University of Chicago economist Jim Leitzen says raising excise taxes on alcohol would be a panacea for all sorts of social ills.
I take issue over at my site.
I'd post the entire response here, but it's rather lengthy, and I don't want to hoard L&P real estate.
Roderick T. Long
The lies about Herbert Spencer just won't die. Like creatures in a horror movie, no matter how many times you kill them they just keep coming back. The latest recycled slander against the valiant old libertarian turns up in Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism; for one more try with the mallet and stake, see my reply here.
In other news: on LRC today, Pat Buchanan writes:"Since Henry Wallace, then, 60 years ago, no vice president has been dumped." Um ... what about Gerald Ford dumping Rockefeller for Dole in 1976?
David T. Beito
At LRC blog, Thomas DiLorenzo writes "Beito and Nuckolls do not understand what states' rights is. States' rights never meant opposition to all federal legislation, as they assert. Consequently, they unfairly and inaccurately smear the Confederate secessionists. The clearest statement of the states' rights philosophy is Jefferson's 1798 Kentucky Resolve, where he wrote,"Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government . . ." He goes on to say that each state reserves for itself the equal right to judge for itself matters of consitutionality with regard to federal legislation. It's not that all federal legislation is illegitimate; only that the federal government itself is not the sole arbiter of constitutionality. The citizens of the states have just as valid a voice, and the Southern secessionists expressed that voice."
Beito: We never claimed that states rights"meant opposition to all federal legislation." I am not sure what point DiLorenzo is trying to make here. Perhaps he could be more explicit. Is he alluding to any particular example of federal legislation?
DiLorenzo: [Agreeing with Jefferson]"each state reserves for itself the equal right to judge for itself matters of constitutionality with regard to federal legislation."
Beito: When did we say otherwise in our article? In fact, we criticized the pro-slave states for their reliance on federal coercion to undermine state personal liberty laws during the 1850s. If we had the space, we could have also faulted them for their efforts to ram through the admission of Kansas as a slave state against the clear wishes of the inhabitants.
DiLorenzo:"Second, they are wrong on slavery and the war despite all their politically correct bloviating about it. There would never have been a war if Lincoln had not invaded the South after manipulating the Confederates into firing on Fort Sumter (where no one was even hurt, let alone killed). The notion that they invaded to liberate the slaves is nonsense and every historian should know this. (The reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade was tariff collection)."
Beito: Of course! When did we say otherwise? Again, Lincoln was a tyrant, an imperialist and a racist. He did not invade the South to liberate the slaves. Instead, his goal was to encircle and contain the slave states with a ring of free states and free territory. For this reason, the deal breaker for the Deep South was Lincoln's refusal to allow the extension of slavery into the territories. The upper South was willing to stay in even under these circumstances (at least prior to Lincoln's invasion after Fort Sumter).
Had I been president in March 1861, I would have let the South (actually the Gulf States and South Carolina) leave peacefully."Politically correct bloviating." Good line, Tom! I'll have to tell my leftist colleagues about that.
DiLorenzo:"Third, the authors' smear of the Confederate government for inflation, conscription, etc. is a red herring argument. None of this would have happened had Lincoln not invaded with the largest and best equipped army in the history of the world up to that point.
Beito: A valid point.....though I must say that Confederate War Socialism proved to be a poor way to fight a successful defensive war. They might have won had they used the same defensive/guerrilla methods as the rebels of '76.
DiLorenzo:"Fourth, they cannot invoke Lysander Spooner in defense of their smear of the South. In his essay,"No Treason," published in 1870, Spooner wrote that"all these cries" of having abolished slavery, saved the country, preserved the union, and establishing a government of consent with the war are"gross, shameless, transparent cheats" that"ought to deceive no one."
Beito: I agree with Spooner’s statement. I'm glad to hear that DiLorenzo is a fellow fan. Does this also mean that he agrees with s Spooner's plan to kidnap the governor of Virginia and hold him for ransom until John Brown was released?
DiLorenzo:"How ironic that Reason magazine libertarians who quote Spooner are Exhibit A of people who have in fact been deceived by all the"shameless, transparent cheats" of revisionist, politically-correct history."
Beito: Ouch! Tom: You really know how to hurt a guy.
David T. Beito
On a related matter, in the last few days, I have been repeatedly asked why the South seceded even though Lincoln favored colonization of blacks and repeatedly stated that he would not interfere with slavery in those states where it currently existed.
It is a good question and deserves serious consideration. William W. Freehling's domino theory, as expressed in such works as The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War, provides the best answer: "Disunionists knew that Lincoln's anti-slavery methods were not Garrison's. They acknowledged that the President-elect sought slow emancipation by incremental advances in public opinion, perhaps taking
a hundred years....The secessionists' reasoning: Border South residents, owning relatively few slaves and harboring great devotion to the Union, might consent to Lincoln's antislavery (and anti-black)
overtures, might even vote for Lincoln's party in the next election.
Most borderites, the secessionists rightly saw, preferred to rid their region of blacks if they could rid their region of blacks; and Lincoln's program included national help to remove blacks from
America. Lincoln's party might also help border fugitive slaves to escape. Such turmoil would lead insecure Border South masters to sell their slaves to the more secure Lower South. Because of the same fear
for the security of slavery at the edges of the South, southern precipitators of the Texas, Kansas, and Fugitive Slave Controversies had considered these issues not at all absurd-had called these issues
precisely the ones that must be raises. Despite the difficulties of safeguarding the border between slavery and freedom, protection of southern outposts was crucial, or slavery would sink down to the
tropical fraction of the nation. Or to use the modern metaphor, the top tier of slave states would fall like a row of dominoes." (Freehling, The Reintegration of American History, p. 142-43).
Addendum: Of course, this does not fully answer the question of why the Upper South left. As Freehling and others argue, it had much to do with resentment against Lincoln for his invasion of the Lower South states which had already left before Fort Sumter. In this limited sense, I do think that those who stress the importance of states rights have a valid point.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
In a Not a Blog Exclusive, I take a look at the publication of the Japanese translation of The Fountainhead. As I explain in the essay, I was approached by Kayoko Fujimori, who was translating Rand's 1943 classic, to help explain certain idiomatic expressions that might facilitate the Japanese translation.
The publication of this volume is interesting on many levels. For fans of great illustrators, the cover art is by Nobuyuki Ohnishi, a Japanese artist famous for his anime works. And for those who see an essential opposition between Ayn Rand and neoconservatism, there is this information reproduced in the promotional"blue belt" enveloping the book:
Ayn Rand is the fountainhead of Libertarianism, a grass-roots American people's philosophy that stands against the Neo-Conservative.
I swear: I had absolutely nothing to do with that. Apparently, many Japanese readers are interested in the globalist implications of neoconservatism, so anything suggesting opposition to it is a selling point.
Read the whole essay here.
David T. Beito
David T. Beito
Pat Lynch
Presidential elections don't set up clearly until we're much later in the cycle, so the current polls really don't tell us much. Past research has shown that polls don't start to get it"right" on calling the race until September. But another indicator is useful, incumbent job approval.
There's a sort of rule of thumb in U.S. elections that when incumbent job approval drops below 50% s/he is in trouble. Maybe we've all overlooked this rule because Bush won such a close election finishing second in the popular vote count, so that fact that his job approval has been hovering around 50% for much of this year gets forgotten.
But the recent trend for him has been downward as this average of polls on the Real Clear Politics webpage shows. And sub 50% means that not just Dems but a fair number of independents now don't like his performance. If elections are retrospective evaluations of incumbents, which I think they are, this may be Bush's biggest source of concern today.
