Arthur Silber
More and more, it appears that there is almost no reason at all for having a"mainstream" press in this country. The evidence continues to mount about the extent to which the press is utterly servile, and does nothing but slavishly repeat the line that those in power wish to have repeated.
Here is Larry Lessig about an instructive example as to how this works:
The US president owns neither his words nor his image - at least not when he speaks in public on important matters. Anyone is free to use what he says, and the way he says it, to criticize or to praise. The president, in this sense, is"free." But what happens when the commander in chief uses private venues to deliver public messages, holding fewer press conferences and making more talk-show appearances? Who controls his words and images then?I must repeat here a crucial point which Lessig and many other critics of"media concentration" miss completely. And that is simply this: such media concentration is only made possible by government intervention. It is not that government has done anything to" create" more competition, or to discourage the increased concentration of media power in the hands of a few.Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has grabbed the headlines, another documentary is at the center of this debate. In August, Robert Greenwald will release an updated version of his award-winning film, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War. Greenwald has added a clip of President George W. Bush's February interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, NBC's Sunday morning talk show. In the clip, the president defends his decision to go to war - astonishingly unconvincingly.
Greenwald asked NBC for permission to run the one-minute clip - offering to pay for the right, as he had done for every other clip that appears in the film. NBC said no. The network explained to his agent that the clip is"not very flattering to the president." Greenwald included it anyway. ...
So why did the current leader of the free world, who rarely holds press conferences, agree to speak on a talk show that refuses to license on a neutral basis the content he contributed? Is vigorous debate over matters as important as going to war less important than protecting his image?
This question is crucial, and thus Greenwald has decided to defend his fair use right, even if it means staring down a bunch of lawyers in court. The argument: It's hard to tell"the whole truth" about the Iraq war when you censor bits of that truth because a network tells you to. But what this incident demonstrates most is what many increasingly fear. Concentrated media and expansive copyright are the perfect storm not just for stifling debate but, increasingly, for weakening democracy as well.
On the contrary, as I discussed here at length, when government first intervened in broadcasting -- using the very dangerous fiction of"public ownership" to do so -- it did so on behalf of certain already vested interests, precisely to discourage the rigorous competition that was emerging. Just as in the history of the railroads, the vested powers in the communications industry wanted to cut off that competition -- and they decided that relying on government power was the most effective route to doing so. From that earlier entry, quoting an article by Sam Wells:
[C]lassical economist Adam Smith, New Left historian Gabriel Kolko, activist"liberal" consumerist Ralph Nader, conservative Chicago School economist Milton Friedman, liberal power-structure analyst William Domhoff, right-wing constitutionalist Dan Smoot, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, power-elites researcher Antony Sutton, and libertarian economic historian Murray Rothbard -- whatever their differences on policy recommendations and other issues -- they all concur on one point: privileged power elites and oligopolies tend to be strengthened rather than weakened by bureaucratic regulations from government. Political interventionism tends to artificially stabilize the market in favor of"the big boys" (as Ralph Nader calls them) and against greater diversity, market alternatives, and competition.From the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on, events followed the pattern they always do when government intervention is involved: the intervention causes massive dislocations and imbalances in a certain sector in the economy; people decry the dislocations and imbalances, and insist that only more government intervention will solve them (failing to notice that government intervention caused the problems to begin with); the newest intervention causes more problems; the additional problems, say the critics, can only be solved by still more government intervention...and on and on it goes.
It used to be the case that some liberals could see this phenomenon in foreign affairs, but not in domestic economic matters -- and that some conservatives could see it in domestic economic affairs, but not in foreign relations. But now, since the Democrats and the Republicans are almost indistinguishable in terms of the fundamental principles that they accept, almost no one can see this phenomenon in any area.
So we pursue massive intervention both domestically and overseas. And that intervention causes more, and worse, problems than those it had been intended to solve. Did the invasion of Iraq causes serious imbalances in the Middle East and result in a greater terrorist threat? Never mind: another invasion (or the threat of one) will solve that. And then the imbalances and threats increase still more -- at which point, we are told that even more intervention is required, this time somewhere else (usually where our earlier actions have caused a previously negligible threat to arise).
And on and on it goes here at home, and all over the world -- and all any of our leaders can say is,"More! More! More!," unable to question their assumptions or challenge the premises which rule their outlook. As I have said before, this is one commonly cited view of insanity, raised to the status of rigid dogma in the halls of power: taking the same actions over and over, but somehow expecting a different result this time. And the press dutifully reports the government line, and refuses to question it beyond a certain point.
It is in this way that we are led further and further into disaster, on an ever-widening scale, and no one has the courage or honesty to challenge the framework which almost everyone has accepted for more than a century. And our freedoms, and genuine security, vanish more and more by the day.
Someday, perhaps at least a few people with a certain degree of influence and authority will have had enough. And possibly, if we are very lucky, it will happen in time.
Cross-posted at The Light of Reason.)
Aeon J. Skoble
After the Athenian forces defeated the Persian land force, the rest of the Persian fleet sailed around with the intent of attacking Athens. The entire Athenian army then hightailed it back to Athens, beating the Persian fleet by an hour or so. The sight of this made the Persians retreat, and made pro-Persian Athenians unwilling to betray their city. The Pheippides story does indeed seem to be myth, but there's an apparently true story which is actually even better. BTW, they ran 24 miles, not 26 - the discrepancy has to do with whether you measure from the modern-day town of Marathona versus the ancient battle site. Still pretty cool though.
Why does the false legend have such persistence when the truth is so much better?
Pat Lynch
Remember in 1992 when George Bush Sr. was embarassed on the campaign trail when he was asked how much a carton of milk cost? It made him look completely out of touch with reality. Well guess what, Nader has never had a credit card. The Luddite claims they are leading us to the ruin of our civilization. So he bitches because hotels and airlines won't hold his room without one. Earth to Ralph: do your ride a horse instead of using cars? Candles instead of electricity. Is there anything you won't complain about?
Sweden is an interesting place. I recall Tyler Cowen telling me he could easily live here. I don't share that view, but I certainly can see some of the attraction. The people are nice; the city is clean and charming, and the weather had been surprisingly un-Swedish. But after chatting extensively with one of my hosts, Niclas Berggren at the Ratio Institute located here in Stockholm I'm not sure I could stomach tax rates in excess of 60% total and a mountain of state regulation on a variety of matters.
That having been said the place is socially progressive and certainly appears wealthy. I've counted more Porsches of various makes and models here than in any other European city I've visited recently. How people can afford them when they're paying about 8 bucks U.S. for a glass of beer (taxes to encourage clean living) is beyond me. More from my adventure here later this week.
William Marina
That great Brit Imperial Drum Beater, Niall Ferguson, now teaching History at Harvard, but on vacation in London as befits any European in August, has some choice observations for Americans, "Bone-Tired? You Need a Job in Europe:The work ethic in the EU wanes as time on the job expands in U.S." Pity that Americans have such little leisure time. With all of the comparisons with the Roman Empire, we have many less official Circuses. Those Europeans just don't understand about the virtues of the Protestant Ethic, and how that is all part of being"born again" and"saved."
Aeon J. Skoble
It’s interesting that this blog is hosted by “History News Network,” yet as far as I can tell, at least 10 of the L&P bloggers are non-historians. Including me: I’m a philosophy professor. (While we’re doing numbers, six of the other bloggers are people I’ve met personally (ten counting the contributing editors list), four are people I’ve corresponded with or spoken to on the phone, but never F2F, and the rest I’ve never met, but in most cases have read their work somewhere other than L&P.) As Chris implies, I’m from NYC, but now I live in Massachusetts, teaching at Bridgewater State. I do political philosophy, moral philosophy, phil of law, and then there’s the popular culture writings. So, I’ll mostly be blogging on those areas, but might occasionally have something to say about other fields, if I know anything about them.
Couple confusing things – 1, my first name is pronounced as “Ian.” 2, tenure and promotion are separate here, so while I’ve just been granted tenure, I won’t be promoted to associate til the spring (assuming I get promoted, of course).
During most of vacation, I had no internet access (the horror!), and I see to my great dismay that I missed some fascinating threads on libertarianism and foreign policy/war both here and at Volokh. Curses! It would be overly obsessive to go back over the archives of the last 6 weeks and chime in late, so I won’t. But next time! While I was disconnected, though, I finally had a chance to read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and it’s as good as I had heard.
Anyway, happy to be here. Next, I attempt to do some work.
Gene Healy
6- Please explain the cell-phone invoice amounting to $756 (2,800 riyals) when you have mentioned communication expenses of $300.
7- Why are you renovating the computer? Have I been informed of this?
I said"almost" too fascinating to make political points with it. But not quite. So, for starters,"The computer did not reveal any links to Iraq or any other deep-pocketed government." What a surprise!
And, in the" calm down, get ahold of yourself" category, there's this:
In 1999 al-Zawahiri undertook a top-secret program to develop chemical and biological weapons, a program he and others referred to on the computer as the"Yogurt" project. Though fearsome in its intent, the program had a proposed start-up budget of only $2,000 to $4,000. Fluent in English and French, al-Zawahiri began by studying foreign medical journals.
Among those are such up-to-date tracts as"mid-twentieth-century articles from, among other sources, Science, The Journal of Immunology, and The New England Journal of Medicine, and ... such books as Tomorrow's Weapons (1964), Peace or Pestilence (1949), and Chemical Warfare (1921)."
Of all the things to keep us up at night, perhaps AQ's homegrown dog-poisoning arsenal shouldn't be one of them.
Of course, they do seem to have a decent grip on grand strategy:
Like the early Russian anarchists who wrote some of the most persuasive tracts on the uses of terror, al-Qaeda understood that its attacks would not lead to a quick collapse of the great powers. Rather, its aim was to tempt the powers to strike back in a way that would create sympathy for the terrorists. Al-Qaeda has so far gained little from the ground war in Afghanistan; the conflict in Iraq, closer to the center of the Arab world, is potentially more fruitful. As Arab resentment against the United States spreads, al-Qaeda may look less like a tightly knit terror group and more like a mass movement. And as the group develops synergy in working with other groups branded by the United States as enemies (in Iraq, the Israeli-occupied territories, Kashmir, the Mindanao Peninsula, and Chechnya, to name a few places), one wonders if the United States is indeed playing the role written for it on the computer.
Roderick T. Long
At the Mises University on the evening of August 6th, I was assigned to be the"mystery speaker." Jeff Tucker asked me to pick a controversial subject, so I picked anarchism (though I’m not sure that counts as a controversial subject before that particular audience!).
Anyway, an MP3 audio file of my talk is now online here. I talk about some of the chief objections to anarchism and I offer counter-arguments. (One issue I don't talk about is military defense under anarchy, but for that issue see my anarchist resources page.) I find the sound of my voice somewhat annoying, and the sound of my laugh incredibly annoying (it all sounds so much better in my head than it does from the outside), but hey, it's what I've got.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
My article, Caught Up in The Rapture," was just reprinted on the SOLO HQ website. The article was written in June, and it appears in the August-September issue of The Free Radical. In many ways, it is a sequel to my recent essay,"Bush Wins!," providing a kind of sociological underpinning for my view that a Bush victory is more than likely.
Because the articles were written for a magazine that has its share of libertarian and Ayn Rand-influenced readers, I think I should provide a bit of context for the most recent essay. As readers are no doubt aware, I've been very critical of"Objectivists," who have lent their support to the war in Iraq; I believe that too many have turned their backs on Ayn Rand's radical legacy. As I have stated, those Objectivists who have supported (wittingly or unwittingly) the neoconservative"nation-building" agenda are undermining Rand's profoundly important critique of the welfare-warfare state in general and US domestic and foreign policy in particular, bolstering the efforts of established power elites.
With regard to the Iraq war, however, Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's legal heir, had actually hoped that both the Clinton and Bush administrations would have invaded Iran first. Peikoff still believes, apparently, that the invasion of a"secular" state, Iraq, was the wrong war to start. Ironically, though, he argues, as do I, that there are many things wrong with the current administration, which derives much of its support from Christian fundamentalists.
Almost simultaneously with the publication of my Free Radical essay, Capitalism Magazine posts a link to a recent lecture of Peikoff's, which points to the same trends that I have written about extensively in the piece that appears today. But there are differences between the Peikoff and Sciabarra perspectives. Peikoff argues that the President's fundamentalist base is leading an assault on American culture. (He recommends a number of essays critiquing Bush's fundamentalism, including John Lewis's article"The Threat of a Faith-Based Defense of America.") Peikoff is so profoundly against Bush that he believes that"not even Hillary Clinton as President would be a threat at this juncture, not a threat to the very foundations and even existence of the United States" that Bush represents.
On the surface, says Peikoff, Bush is"basically interchangeable with Kerry," but the"big difference is this: ... Bush is working to achieve a massive entrenchment of fundamentalism into our government and political system. Kerry has no such agenda. ... Anyone who grasps philosophy," Peikoff asserts, should support Kerry, rather than the"God, faith, sacrifice, statism" of the Bush administration. For Peikoff, Bush has become an"advocate" for a"Puritan theocracy" (a point made by Arthur Silber at his Light of Reason blog for months). Peikoff asks:"Now, if this goes on for even four more years, how long do you think intellectual freedom and freedom of speech can last?" He continues:"I don't think there's the least moral justification for sitting the election out on the grounds that, well, both of them are no good. ... That is a total immoral evasion. ... One [Kerry] is normally, disgustingly bad. And the other [Bush] is apocalyptic bad..."
Alas, I don't think it is an"immoral evasion" to sit this election out; I think Bush is going to win the election, as I wrote here, and that the fundamentalist impact on American culture and politics assures that victory, especially if that voting bloc comes out in full force for its candidate. But even if Bush loses, I don't believe there is any fundamental (no pun intended) difference between the candidates with regard to the Iraq war, which has now been institutionalized. Both are ardent supporters of the welfare-warfare state, and thus far their engagement with one another constitutes a"nondebate."
That said, I do believe that the fundamentalist upsurge is profoundly affecting American culture and politics. As I write in"Caught Up in The Rapture":
Religion has been an omnipresent factor in American political culture. As Murray Rothbard has argued, ethnoreligious conflict has long impacted on the ebb and flow of American politics, influencing even the shape of political parties. In his essay, “The Progressive Era and the Family,” Rothbard wrote that the battle between pietist and liturgical Christians was often at the heart of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century political controversies. The pietist doctrine essentially rejected the “creeds of various churches or sects” and any “obedience to the rituals or liturgies of the particular church.” For the pietist, the experience of being “born again” is paramount; it is a “direct confrontation between the individual and God, a mystical and emotional conversion in which the individual achieves salvation.” Pietists, especially of the evangelical variety, were deeply dedicated to the belief that"[s]ince each individual is alone to wrestle with problems of sin and salvation, without creed or ritual of the church to sustain him, the evangelical duty must therefore be to use the state, the social arm of the integrated Christian community, to stamp out temptation and occasions for sin. ... In particular, sin was any and all forms of contact with liquor, and doing anything except praying and going to church on Sunday. Any forms of gambling, dancing, theater, reading of novels—in short, secular enjoyment of any kind—were considered sinful. ... Evangelical pietism particularly appealed to, and therefore took root among, the “Yankees,” i.e., that cultural group that originated in (especially rural) New England and emigrated widely to populate northern and western New York, northern Ohio, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois. The Yankees were natural “cultural imperialists,” people who were wont to impose their values and morality on other groups; as such, they took quite naturally to imposing their form of pietism through whatever means were available, including the use of the coercive power of the state."
Over time, the political parties reflected the split between pietists and liturgicals. Whereas the more laissez-faire oriented, nineteenth-century Democratic Party attracted liturgical voting blocs, Whig and Republican voters were predominantly evangelical pietists, making war on liquor, immigration (especially Catholic immigration), and private, parochial schools. The pietists were the driving force in the state establishment of public schools as a means to impose civic virtue. The Republican Party was soon constituted by both pietist social reformers, who advocated government intervention to impose evangelical values, and business interests who advocated government intervention to impose federal regulation on unruly states, as well as tariffs, land grants, and subsidies. The pietist-business alliance was mutually reinforcing; it spurred a Progressive movement—generally dating from the end of the nineteenth century till the outbreak of World War I—which united industrialists, scientists, social workers, academics, and technocrats, in an attempt “to control the material and sexual choices of the rest of the American people, their drinking habits, and their recreational preferences.”
Rothbard emphasizes that “all the facets of progressivism—the economic and the ideological and educational—were part of an integrated whole. The new ideology among business groups was cartelist and collectivist rather than individualist and laissez faire, and the social control over the individual exerted by progressivism was neatly paralleled in the ideology and practice of progressive education.”
With the onset of world wars and depressions, the Democratic and Republican parties soon became mirror images of one another, in terms of their common support for the interventionist agenda. But, in many ways, today’s Republican party—which has long boasted of limiting the size of government—has returned to its evangelical pietist and interventionist roots. Indeed, George W. Bush, who, as a child, attended Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches, later experienced a “reconfirmation” of faith—he has never used the phrase “born-again”—to become a Methodist, perhaps the most strongly pietistic of Protestant denominations.
The essay then analyzes the extensive cultural and political impact of the fundamentalist upsurge. I argue further that Bush has become a cultural warrior of sorts, tapping
into the rise of evangelical Christian fundamentalism as a political force. ... The Bush administration has thus become a focal point for the constellation of two crucial impulses in American politics that seek to remake the world: pietism and neoconservatism. The neocons, who come from a variety of religious backgrounds, trace their intellectual lineage to social democrats and Trotskyites, those who adopted the “God-builder” belief, prevalent in Russian Marxist and Silver Age millennial thought, that a perfect (socialist) society could be constructed as if from an Archimedean standpoint. The neocons may have repudiated Trotsky’s socialism, but they have simply adopted his constructivism to the project of building democratic nation-states among other groups of warring fundamentalists—in the Middle East.
I should point out that the essay is not an exercise in religion-bashing. But it is a call for a fundamental separation between church and state. That will require, as I say,"nothing less than an intellectual and cultural revolution ..."
My essay is published online in full (minus some nice photos that appear in the print publication) here.
Arthur Silber
There is one aspect of our Excellent Adventure in Iraq and the response to it which continues to mystify me. Despite the continuously increasing and massive evidence of crony statism and corporate corruption inherent in our"rebuilding" efforts, many supporters of our foreign policy don't seem to be troubled by this issue at all. This is even more puzzling when you consider that many of those same supporters describe themselves as"libertarians" of various hues -- and that all this is being done with money belonging to U.S. taxpayers.
Don't they care at all that money is taken from innocent, law-abiding citizens at the point of a gun -- and then transferred to fantastically wealthy and powerful companies who have the right connections in Washington? And don't they care at all that it's their money that is going down the drain? To judge from the comments of many such people, it appears they don't.
So this won't bother them either:
Halliburton Co. did not adequately account for more than $1.8 billion it billed the government for work in Iraq and Kuwait, a published report on the findings of Pentagon auditors said Wednesday.Oh, well. Just a drop in the bucket.The results of the audit, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were the latest financial headache for Houston-based Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which filed for bankruptcy protection last year to resolve billions of dollars in pending asbestos claims.
The $1.8 billion amounts to 40 percent of the $4.18 billion KBR has already billed the Pentagon for its work feeding and housing military troops. The Pentagon could begin withholding payments from KBR if it determines it is owed money - though it has yet to do so. ...
The audit, part of a report dated Aug. 4 that has yet to be made public, found that KBR's"internal control policies" are"inadequate for providing verifiable, supportable, and documented cost estimates that are acceptable for negotiating a fair and reasonable price." Pentagon officials told the newspaper that that no defense contractor has had its estimating system ruled"inadequate" in years.
Auditors' concerns included more than $900 million in payments for dozens of dining facilities; auditors say that more than a third of those costs may be unjustified, the newspaper said. Auditors also are examining $180 million in costs charged for fuel from Kuwait that was delivered to Iraq.
And I'm sure the Religious Right is mightily relieved to find that all those libertarians and like-minded folks who support Bush's foreign policy are actually such kind-hearted, generous and altruistic folks, who are so, so happy to give their (and your) money away to all those deserving and oppressed companies and then see it vanish down the drain.
Why, it's positively Christian of them. I think it's just swell.
Roderick T. Long
The first Molinari Symposium has been scheduled! The venue is the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Boston, December 28th. The topic is"Libertarianism and Feminism." The participants include Elizabeth Brake, Charles Johnson, Jennifer McKitrick, Aeon Skoble, and your humble correspondent. More details here.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Last night, the Empire State Building dimmed its lights in honor of Fay Wray, who passed away at the age of 96. She starred in the original 1933 version of"King Kong."
That's the kind of classic black-and-white movie that my colleague, pal, and fellow Yankees fan, Aeon Skoble, would really appreciate. He's got impeccable tastes in film (we agree on so much), and also happens to be a first-rate thinker. L&P readers may remember Aeon from his provocative guest stint here about a month ago. It gives me great pleasure therefore to welcome back Aeon, who is here to stay as our newest regular blog contributor.
You can read more about Aeon on his home page. He is also editor-in-chief of Reason Papers.
It is my hope that among his first posts, Aeon will revisit our thread here, and deliver on his promise to link to a copy of his superb essay on the relevance of gay-bashing in the comics world. (And for fans of"The Simpsons," don't forget to check out his terrific co-edited anthology, The Simpsons and Philosophy.)
Welcome aboard, Aeon!
David T. Beito
L and P Blogger, Robert Higgs has argued persuasively the World War II failed to bring prosperity or even bring genuine recovery from the depression. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Thomas Cochran and others provided evidence that the Civil War retarded economic growth. To what extent is the the Iraq war responsible for the sluggish recovery?
Ivan Eland
The Saddam-al Qaeda connection has fizzled and no nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons have been unearthed in post-invasion Iraq. So the Bush administration’s fallback, ex post facto rationale for invading Iraq, is that the country is better off without Saddam. But the U.S.-backed Iraqi government seems to be ruling more like Saddam everyday.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has recently ordered the arrest of political opponents, closed a prominent media outlet reporting stories that were embarrassing to the Iraqi government, and taken up aggressive tactics vis-a-vis the opposition guerrillas, including reinstating the death penalty against them.
After the cosmetic changeover of power from the U.S. occupation to a hand-picked Iraqi Prime Minister, Allawi’s behavior is predictable. With an Iraqi glove now on the fist of U.S. power, Iraqis can get away with much harsher policies toward other Iraqis than could a foreign occupier—especially the leader of the free world, which has billed its invasion as bringing democracy to an autocratic country. Thus, the U.S. government, as it has done so many times during the Cold War and after, is masking with high-flying democratic rhetoric the substitution of an unfriendly dictator with a friendly one.
The Iraqi government has ordered the arrest of political opponents Ahmed Chalabi and his nephew Salem, who is leading the prosecution of Saddam. They were originally darlings of the Pentagon and American neo-conservatives but have since fallen out of favor with the Bush administration. The Chalabis did too much consorting with the theocrats in Iran for U.S. authorities to stomach.
In another Saddam-like move, Allawi has closed the Iraq office of Al Jazeera, the pan-Arabic television network, for broadcasting images that embarrassed the Iraqi government. Apparently, the network’s coverage was placing too much emphasis on the rampant kidnappings that have recently paralyzed Iraq.
Finally, Allawi is attempting to show that he will be aggressive against the opposition guerrillas. He has vowed that the fierce offensive in the holy city of Najaf by U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces against the militia of cleric Moktada al-Sadr would continue with no cease fire. Given the sorry state of the Iraqi security forces, the U.S. military is really the one that has decided that no quarter will be given to the insurgents.
And the aggressive tactics will continue even after guerrillas are captured. After the invasion, to signal that a new benevolent era had arrived in Iraq, the U.S. occupation authority under L. Paul Bremer III suspended the death penalty. Of course, “suspended” is the key word. A suspension, rather than elimination, would allow a future Iraqi government to bring the ultimate penalty back if things got rough. Things got rough.
Allawi has cast the death penalty so widely that it covers almost any type of guerrilla attack. The death penalty can be applied to Iraqis who engage in ambushes, hijacking, kidnapping, attacks on infrastructure and murder. Of course, killing someone when defending the home country from an unprovoked and unnecessary foreign invasion and occupation is defined as murder. Even in World War II when the stakes were much higher, the United States did not execute captured German or Japanese soldiers for defending their homeland. In fact, after the war, the vast majority of them were given their freedom. Furthermore, although Iraqi officials have claimed that the list of capital offenses excludes any possibility that the death penalty will again be used for political reasons, the ultimate sentence can be meted out for the vague offense of “endangering national security.” Such Orwellian wording has to make Iraqis—accustomed to Saddam’s terror—very nervous about the direction the new Allawi government is heading.
Americans should be nervous, too. One of the many emerging parallels between the current Mesopotamian mess and the Vietnam War is the use of autocratic tactics by U.S.-installed puppet governments that lacked popular legitimacy. That strategy failed in Vietnam and it is likely to fail in Iraq. The only way out for the United States is to allow Iraqis to have genuine self-determination soon.
David T. Beito
Instead, the occupation has fostered a new and unanticipated problem: a large and growing homegrown insurgency. The study estimates that the number of foreign fighters has risen slightly in the last year while the ranks of Iraqi insurgents have increased four fold.
David T. Beito
Pat Lynch
As I've blogged about previously, trade is for me a significant litmus issue on liberty, and the idea that Bush might become a real free trader in a second term is tempting, particularly since Kerry's response to the progress has been bland at best. What do we think? Can Dubya be trusted to follow through, or is this merely an election year move to try to attract a folks like me in swing states? His record has been so disappointing it's tough to imagine, but the deal proposed would be an enormous benefit for the poor in the developing world and U.S. consumers.........
Roderick T. Long
A: We don't make quantitative predictions.
I've just finished a week of Mises University, lecturing on apriorism, abstraction, and anarchy. It's encouraging to see the hordes of bright, committed, hardcore Austro-libertarian students that come to these conferences; the ruling class has no idea what's about to hit it in a few years.
My JLS article Austro-Libertarian Themes in Early Confucianism is now online. (And for an earlier but longer draft see here.) I argue that despite the Taoists' good press among libertarians, it was actually the Confucians who were the truest forerunners of libertarianism in ancient China.
I've been reading Tocqueville's and Hugo's memoirs about the 1848 revolution. Their ability to delineate, with a few brief anecdotes and descriptions, the character of the principals on the various sides is devastatingly effective.
I see in the news that the U.S. puppet régime in Iraq has temporarily (?) banned the al-Jazeera network. Apparently those pesky al-Jazeera reporters"have been showing a lot of crimes and criminals on TV," which"transfer[s] a bad picture about Iraq." So this paternal time-out is intended to give those nattering nabobs of negativism"a chance to re-adjust their policy against Iraq."
Um ... Operation Iraqi what again?
David T. Beito
Hagel is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and has many books and articles to his credit on business, technology, law, history and economics. He has received honors from the World Economic Forum, Harvard Business Review, and Business Week.
From a personal standpoint, it especially means a lot to me to welcome Walter E. Grinder.
He is currently the CEO of the Institute for Civil Society. I first met Walter in 1981 at a conference for undergraduates in Wisconsin when he was Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Institute for Humane Studies.
If anyone qualifies as my mentor, champion, and protector in academic life, it is Walter Grinder. He did not stop with me. Over the decades Walter has helped dozens of students including more than one member of Liberty and Power. Professors mentored by Walter are now bloggers at Volokh Conspiracy , Beneficence , the Marginal Revolution, and many other sites.
In addition to his priceless contributions as a mentor, Grinder has edited Albert Jay Nock's essay, Our Enemy the State (New York: Free Life Editions, 1973) and co-authored with Hagel,"Toward a Theory of State Capitalism: Ultimate Decision-making and Class Structure," Journal of Libertarian Studies (177, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 59-79.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
I am elated to see Walter Grinder and John Hagel join the ranks of Liberty & Power Group Blog, and wanted to personally welcome them aboard. Walter was so instrumental in helping to craft my libertarian education as a young undergraduate—something I will never forget—and I'm sure that my comments here will make both of these gents blush a bit.
But David reminds us correctly of the pioneering work that these two scholars did decades ago on the theory of state capitalism. Their seminal article,"Toward a Theory of State Capitalism: Ultimate Decision-making and Class Structure," which was published back in 1977 in the very issue of The Journal of Libertarian Studies, remains, for me, one of the most important essays ever written in libertarian social theory. Grinder and Hagel brought together insights from Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, Oppenheimer, Nock, and others, exploding the left-right dichotomy and forging a powerful class theory.
Their work was a profound revelation to me back in the 1970s; being bombarded by Marxist theory in college, I remember how enthusiastically I read their essays, published and unpublished, convinced then, as I am today, that it is possible to construct what I ended up characterizing as a"dialectical libertarian" social theory, one that is cognizant of historically specific conditions, while being thoroughly radical in its political implications.
I am proud to be among so many like-minded scholars here, whatever differences of opinion we might manifest (complete agreement, after all, would be so boring). I am prouder still to now have among us two gents whose work continues to inform my perspective till this day. Glad to have you!
Arthur Silber
About a year ago, on the heels of the Supreme Court decision striking down the state law in Texas prohibiting sodomy, the Washington Times had an altogether predictable massive anxiety attack because of what its editors saw as the impending collapse of Western civilization. In writing about the Times editorial, I quoted Skip Oliva (of Citizens for Voluntary Trade) as follows:
The Times editorial does not use the phrase"individual rights" once, but it does refer to"states' rights." It's no coincidence that"states' rights" was once used to justify segregation and slavery. Under the federal Constitution, sovereignty is vested with the people; the states are but a convenient mechanism for dividing government power. Since the function of sovereignty, i.e. government, is the protection of individual rights--and only the protection of individual rights--there does not exist any distinct"states' rights" which can overrule the individual's liberties. No matter how big a majority might wish to do so in any given state, the government may not regulate the private consensual sexual conduct of its citizens on the grounds of public morality.Skip also noted that conservatives have long ignored the Ninth Amendment with"malicious forethought," which is indisputably true. You can read much more about the Ninth Amendment, and its guarantee that the individual is sovereign in his personal autonomy so long as he does not violate the rights of others, here and here.
In another post that dealt with the numerous errors in a Ramesh Ponnuru article about the constitutionality of the Texas sodomy law, I repeated what I myself had said earlier on the subject of"states' rights":
One other point: many conservatives, and even many libertarians, often advocate"states' rights" on issues such as abortion and sodomy laws. I think they are grievously mistaken about the underlying issue: if a right is, in fact, a legitimate individual right, it is not up for grabs by the individual states -- i.e., the various states may not properly decide to recognize an individual right or not. This is not to say that there are not many genuinely optional issues about which states may legislate in different ways. But again, with regard to individual rights -- such as the right to one's own body (under which right I include the right to abortion, the right of consenting adults to engage in sexual activity, and the"right to die" -- and I will address the last point in a separate post soon) -- these may not legitimately be infringed upon by any government, including a state government. But certain advocates of"states' rights" seem all too willing to trade in one centralized tyranny for 50 smaller ones. A tyranny of whatever degree and scope is wrong, and it is certainly wrong when it violates and disregards the most basic personal rights -- and the fact that a government does so only in a smaller geographical area does not make it any less wrong, or any less abhorrent.As I noted, many"libertarians" make the same mistake that is more commonly associated with conservatives. Here, for example, is Ron Paul -- the only self-proclaimed"libertarian" in the United States Congress -- speaking to the House in support of the Marriage Protection Act, of which he was proudly an original cosponsor:
Mr. Speaker, as an original cosponsor of the Marriage Protection Act (HR 3313), I strongly urge my colleagues to support this bill. HR 3313 ensures federal courts will not undermine any state laws regulating marriage by forcing a state to recognize same-sex marriage licenses issued in another state. The Marriage Protection Act thus ensures that the authority to regulate marriage remains with individual states and communities, as the drafters of the Constitution intended.After further details about the alleged"need" for the Marriage Protection Act, Paul says that"[i]t is long past time we begin using our legitimate authority to protect the states and the people from judicial tyranny."The practice of judicial activism – legislating from the bench – is now standard procedure for many federal judges. They dismiss the doctrine of strict construction as outdated, instead treating the Constitution as fluid and malleable to create a desired outcome in any given case. For judges who see themselves as social activists, their vision of justice is more important than the letter of the law they are sworn to interpret and uphold. With the federal judiciary focused more on promoting a social agenda than on upholding the rule of law, Americans find themselves increasingly governed by judges they did not elect and cannot remove from office.
Consider the Lawrence case decided by the Supreme Court last June. The Court determined that Texas has no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because these laws violated the court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Regardless of the advisability of such laws, the Constitution does not give the federal government authority to overturn these laws. Under the Tenth Amendment, the state of Texas has the authority to pass laws concerning social matters, using its own local standards, without federal interference. But rather than adhering to the Constitution and declining jurisdiction over a state matter, the Court decided to stretch the “right to privacy” to justify imposing the justices’ vision on the people of Texas.
And lest anyone fail to understand what he is up to tactically, Paul spells it out for you:
Since the Marriage Protection Act requires only a majority vote in both houses of Congress (and the president’s signature) to become law, it is a more practical way to deal with this issue than the time-consuming process of passing a constitutional amendment. In fact, since the Defense of Marriage Act overwhelmingly passed both houses, and the president supports protecting state marriage laws from judicial tyranny, there is no reason why the Marriage Protection Act cannot become law this year.In other words: it's just too damned hard to get a Constitutional amendment passed by Congress and approved by the required number of states -- so let's take this really neat way to get around all that nonsense, and do what we want without all that fuss and bother!
Scavenging for additional justifications for his views, Paul appeals to tradition and ignorance, in a manner that would make any conservative happy -- for example, this guy. Paul says:
While marriage is licensed and otherwise regulated by the states, government did not create the institution of marriage. In fact, the institution of marriage most likely pre-dates the institution of government! Government regulation of marriage is based on state recognition of the practices and customs formulated by private individuals interacting in civil society. Many people associate their wedding day with completing the rituals and other requirements of their faith, thus being joined in the eyes of their church – not the day they received their marriage license from the state. Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty.It should be noted that, both in his general approach and in his specific use of language -- his criticism of federal judges as"social activists" more concerned with"promoting a social agenda," for example -- Paul is thus far indistinguishable from any run-of-the-mill conservative. But it is this paragraph that contains the worst intellectual error in Paul's approach, and that is the root of all his other mistakes:
Some may argue that allowing federal judges to rewrite the definition of marriage can result in a victory for individual liberty. This claim is flawed. The best guarantor of true liberty is decentralized political institutions, while the greatest threat to liberty is concentrated power. This is why the Constitution carefully limits the power of the federal government over the states. Allowing federal judges unfettered discretion to strike down state laws, or force a state to conform to the laws of another state, leads to centralization and loss of liberty.First, please be aware that this is the one and only time that Paul even mentions"individual liberty" -- and he mentions it only to swat down those who oppose his support for this legislation out of misplaced concern (in Paul's view) for such"individual liberty." I fear I must remind you at this point that Paul presents himself as a"libertarian," supposedly concerned with individual rights above all. Obviously, I have to remind Paul himself, since he is willing to see individual rights attacked by the states at the most fundamental level -- and do precisely nothing about it.
This is simply the elevation of form over substance, and it represents a"rationalistic" approach to this question, completely cut off from facts and from the actual reality with which we are presented. By this, I simply mean the following: Paul begins with the unquestioned premise that"decentralized political institutions" are the"best guarantor of true liberty" -- and he will do everything he can to maintain such"decentralized" institutions, even if that means that states thereby have untrammeled power to destroy individual rights completely. To put the matter more simply: Paul has no principled objection to absolute tyranny, as long as such tyranny is exercised in a small enough geographical area.
To make this issue absolutely unmistakable, let us rewrite Paul's key paragraph, in part updating it to reflect what might be current concerns for a certain (hopefully small) segment of our fellow countrymen:
Some may argue that allowing federal judges to outlaw the institutions of slavery or involuntary servitude, or to prohibit the establishment of internment camps, for African-Americans and Arabs can result in a victory for individual liberty. This claim is flawed. The best guarantor of true liberty is decentralized political institutions, while the greatest threat to liberty is concentrated power. This is why the Constitution carefully limits the power of the federal government over the states. Allowing federal judges unfettered discretion to strike down state laws, or force a state to conform to the laws of another state, leads to centralization and loss of liberty. This would be true even if federal judges were to find that state laws in favor of slavery or involuntary servitude, or the establishment of internment camps, for African-Americans and Arabs constituted a violation of individual rights.Are we clear on this now? I hope so.
Paul's reprehensible performance on this issue reminds me of a remark I have often heard about a certain type of devotee of Ayn Rand's ideas, the type who likes to think of himself as some sort of"radical," but who underneath is actually a hide-bound traditionalist: that this kind of person is actually"a conservative who doesn't go to church." In the same way, many"libertarians" -- when you peel away the veneer of superficial and unprincipled concern for liberty and individual rights -- reveal themselves as worshippers of state power, so long as that power is sufficiently small in scope or exercised in ways with which they happen to feel comfortable, on whatever basis which appeals to them at the moment.
And in this way, these"libertarians" are also" conservatives who don't go to church." Paul should either take up the mantle of what conservatism represents today completely -- or decide that he actually wants to fight for the rights and autonomy of the individual, against encroachments by any government, state or federal.
In the meantime, I truly wish he would keep quiet about this kind of issue. He is also the kind of person who gives genuine libertarians a bad name. I can't blame people who have no idea what libertarianism stands for today. It is people like Paul who create a multitude of confusions, and who make libertarians indistinguishable from, for example, the crowd at National Review.
Perhaps Paul should start writing for them. After a while, I think he would feel completely at home. And he and the others there can share stories late at night about how those"activist judges" will shortly bring about the destruction of everything good and decent in civilization, and that they can prevent it only if Paul and his ilk can manage to find a Constitutional shortcut to forestall that calamitous End of Days.
(Cross-posted at The Light of Reason.)
