Grab the nearest book.

1. Open it to page 161.
2. Find the fifth full sentence.
3. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.

Don't search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

My nearest book was Drugs in America: A Documentary History
edited by David F. Musto, M.D.
"Alcohol Explored" Howard W. Haggard and E.M. Jellnick, the sentence is:

"Within this range, alcohol concentration becomes dangerous to human life."

Go here and scroll down to Hilberg's remarks about Finkelstein in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy NOW!

"Raul Hilberg: Well, let me say at the outset, I would not, unasked, offer advice to the university in which he now serves. Having been in a university for thirty-five years myself and engaged in its politics, I know that outside interferences are most unwelcome. I will say, however, that I am impressed by the analytical abilities of Finkelstein. He is, when all is said and done, a highly trained political scientist who was given a PhD degree by a highly prestigious university. This should not be overlooked. Granted, this, by itself, may not establish him as a scholar.

"However, leaving aside the question of style -- and here, I agree that it's not my style either -- the substance of the matter is most important here, particularly because Finkelstein, when he published this book, was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, demonstrating that the Swiss banks did not owe the money, that even though survivors were beneficiaries of the funds that were distributed, they came, when all is said and done, from places that were not obligated to pay that money. That takes a great amount of courage in and of itself. So I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost."

And here's another occasion (again scroll down) when Hilberg spoke up for Finkelstein.

"Hilberg: Well Finkelstein is now maligned all over the place. There were obviously lobbies who tried to dislodge him from his position. Finkelstein is a political scientist. I believe he has a PhD degree from Princeton and, whatever you may think of Princeton, this is a pretty strong preparation to be a professional political scientist. He wrote to me a couple of times. He was the first one to take Goldhagen seriously. He attacked Goldhagen in a very long essay which I could never have written because I would have never had the patience."

Our colleague Jason has a great post over at Positive Liberty arguing that libertarian policies would not "take us back" to the 19th century and a world of unlimited corporate power, as his leftist interlocutor believes. I think Jason is dead on in his analysis, particularly about how libertarians have long objected to corporate abuse of state power, but he missed one opportunity to drive the point home further. He writes:

Yes, we libertarians sometimes do take the corporations’ side, as we do with antitrust law.

Perhaps that was a rhetorically necessary concession given the spanking that Jason lays on, but I think it gives away too much. Jason rightly notes just afterward:

The principle at work here, in every case, is that no citizen may use the government to live at the expense of other citizens. It makes no difference whether he represents a corporation or not; the state is not to be used as a private piggy bank. Libertarians have always opposed such efforts, even when this stance has made us politically unpopular.

Unfortunately, he never connects the dots: one of the reasons many libertarians object to antitrust laws is that they provide an opportunity for some corporations to use the power of the state to punish other corporations and, in the process, punish consumers as well. The majority of antitrust cases arise because one firm objects to the behavior of another and wishes to use the state to get them to knock it off rather than legitimately out-competing them for the consumer dollar. Antitrust is a form of corporate welfare. Such behavior was in fact the origin of antitrust laws. Jason rightly points to libertarian analyses of rent-seeking, but doesn't link that back to his concession on antitrust.

Bottom line: libertarian support for abolishing antitrust law is a perfect example of our willingness not to privilege corporations. Corporations who make an honest living and provide the benefits that Jason nicely delineates are not being "favored" if we abolish antitrust. We're just letting them do their job in serving the consumer. The corporations who should fear abolishing antitrust are the ones not "serving the public" because they choose to try to earn a living by using the state to coercively eliminate their competition.

Leftists who worry about corporations using the power of the state to enrich themselves should be right in the trenches with libertarians calling for the abolition of antitrust and other similar laws. Perhaps if more libertarians were also more vocal about decrying the same sorts of corporate behavior in the context of the war machine (what is Halliburton if not classic corporatism?), the left might take us more seriously on antitrust as well. In any case, there's no need for us to give ground on the antitrust question. Jason could well have said "antirust is yet another example where libertarians are objecting to the corporate-state alliance," rather than framing it as taking the side of the innocent corporation making an honest living. Given the rhetorical situation of his reponse to a leftist, it seems like a missed opportunity.