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Entries by Sheldon Richman

Saturday, January 30, 2010

TGIF: The State of Obama's Union

Despite what some popular right-wing talk-show hosts claim, Barack Obama is not pushing Marxism, revolutionary or otherwise. He’s pushing good old American progressive-corporate elitism.

Read TGIF here.

Posted on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 8:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Patents: End Them. Don't Mend Them

Freeman authors David Levine and Michele Boldrin call for an end to patents in this Christian Science Monitor article. A taste:

[I]ntellectual property does not increase innovation and creation. Extending IP rights may modestly boost the incentive for innovation, but this positive effect is wiped away by the negative effect of creating monopolies. There is simply no evidence that strengthening patent regimes increases innovation or economic productivity. In fact, some evidence shows that increased protection even decreases innovation. The main finding is that making it easier to get patents increases … patenting!

Posted on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 8:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, November 20, 2009

TGIF: The Mandated Health Insurance Outrage

Want to know how the politicians justify forcing us to buy health insurance? I discuss their screwball grounds in this week's TGIF.

Posted on Friday, November 20, 2009 at 10:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Pelosi Health-Insurance Bill Summarized

Happily, you need not invest the next few weeks of your life reading the 1,990-page House overhaul of the health-insurance -- and by implication, the healthcare -- industry. A convenient summary has been provided, compliments of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that the American people shall henceforth be:

Watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. ... [A]t every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. ... [U]nder pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, ... place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

All in favor say aye. The rest of you can go to hell.

Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 8:06 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Missing the Point

Reporting on this year's Nobel Prize winners in economics, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, the New York Times said:

Neither Ms. Ostrom nor Mr. Williamson has argued against regulation. Quite the contrary, their work found that people in business adopt for themselves numerous forms of regulation and rules of behavior — called “governance” in economic jargon — doing so independently of government or without being told to do so by corporate bosses.

Note the key equivocation over the word regulation. Most people use that word to mean government interference with private market activity. So the Times at first seems to be saying that Ostrom and Williamson do not oppose such government interference. Maybe they don't, but that's not what the Times goes on to say. Instead, it says that both have shown that people often generate their own efficient rules -- governance -- independent of the State (and corporate authority).

It's as though the reporter said, "Neither has argued against taxation. Quite the contrary, they found that people use market prices to pay producers for their efforts."

What the Times reporter misses is that spontaneously evolved bottom-up rules are to be distinguished from top-down government regulation, which statists believe is indispensable. The former results from voluntary interaction by people on the spot, the latter from coercion by a central elite. The reporter seems more interested in getting in a subtle dig at the free market, which is alleged to be "unregulated." Of course it isn't, as I point out here.

Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 11:56 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Monday, October 12, 2009

Insurance Companies Want a Mandate with Teeth

The health-insurance lobbyist complains that under the proposed healthcare overhaul the penalties on individuals who don't buy coverage would be too mild and would encourage people to wait until they are sick before buying a policy -- at which point they couldn't be turned down or charged more than healthy people.

That's right. The industry wants the government to force us to buy its product and to impose harsh penalties on those who refuse. The companies, which oddly are demonized by the "reform" crowd, are happy to accept all kinds of coverage rules in return for captive customers and guaranteed income.

If I may be so presumptuous as to edit Adam Smith:

People of the same trade seldom meet together with government officials, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 at 10:53 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, October 9, 2009

War Is Peace

We've come a long way since Frederic Passy.

Posted on Friday, October 9, 2009 at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 2, 2009

Chicago Dodges the Bullet

The people--as opposed to the elites--of Chicago should be eternally grateful they will be spared the Olympics. They would have been in for a terrible time with the impositions produced by government's idea of security and other acts of political opportunism. Especially lucky are the city's poor, who would have been removed to spare the elite embarrassment when the world cast its eyes upon the games.

Had I been a resident of Chicago, I would have said, Barack, Michelle, Oprah, mind your own business.

Rio, you have my condolences.

Posted on Friday, October 2, 2009 at 5:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Government's Track Record in the Insurance Business

Barack Obama and many others want the government to get into the health-insurance business. Very good. Is the government in any other kind of insurance? As a matter of fact, it is: flood insurance. It essentially has a monopoly. Here's a Reuters story about the House last month extending the "troubled [i.e., broke] program" for six months while postponing a comprehensive overhaul. Why does it need an overhaul?

The program has been deep in debt ever since the costly hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005. Repeated rescue efforts have failed....

[T]he administration said it favors forgiving the 40-year-old program's $19 billion debt.

This would not be the first time the program was bailed out by Congress or had its huge debt forgiven. This trouble did not begin with Katrina. See this article I wrote 16 years ago. (Scroll down.)

About the postponement of comprehensive reform, Reuters reports that Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank "said discussion on repairing the program needed to be put off due to other pressing matters, including healthcare and financial regulation reforms."

Translation: Government can't fix what it's already screwed up right now because it's too busy screwing up some other things.

Posted on Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, June 26, 2009

The Misrepresentation of Healthcare Reform

Why should the people get something through government–that is, at the point of a gun–simply because they want it?

The rest of TGIF is here.

Posted on Friday, June 26, 2009 at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, June 15, 2009

A Palestinian State .... If

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Palestinians can have their own country ... if, if, if, and if. See details here.

Reminds me of the story philosopher Norman Malcolm told about Wittgenstein:

When in very good spirits he would jest in a delightful manner. This took the form of deliberately absurd or extravagant remarks uttered in a tone, and with the mien, of affected seriousness. On one walk he "gave" me each tree that we passed, with the reservation that I was not to cut it down or do anything to it, or prevent the previous owners from doing anything to it: with those reservations they were henceforth mine.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, June 15, 2009 at 8:19 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, May 22, 2009

Progressive Talk-Show Hosts Split on Obama Plan

Rachel Maddow called Obama's "prolonged detention" plan "one of the most radical proposals to defy the Constitution."

Keith Olbermann didn't mention it, preferring to focus on the closing of Gitmo and Cheney's speech.

Kudos to Maddow!

Posted on Friday, May 22, 2009 at 9:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Quotations Galore

My old friend Dan Klein of George Mason University has compiled a fascinating group of quotations on not-the-usual topics for Econ Journal Watch. "Intellectual Hazard: A Liberal Selection of Quotations" is here (pdf).

Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 2:25 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Commerce Clause Question

Where in these words does it indicate that the national government may regulate only interstate commerce?

"The Congress shall have Power ... To regulate Commerce ... among the several States....

I know it's been interpreted that way since about 1808 (not 1789), but why? Does the text actually support that interpretation and no other? Not according to William Crosskey's detailed study of word usage in the late eighteenth century (Politics and the Constitution in the History of the Unites States).

It's not as if the framers of the Constitution were unable to write, "between Citizens of different States." They used that phrase in defining the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Maybe the Antifederalists were right. Maybe the Constitution did grant the national government plenary power over commerce and much else.

Posted on Sunday, May 10, 2009 at 4:49 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Calling a Spade a Spade

War: the ultimate shovel-ready project.

Posted on Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 9:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

I'm on the Glenn Beck Show Today

Fox News, 5 p.m. EDT. Topic: Is it Fascism or Socialism?

Posted on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 12:08 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Monday, March 30, 2009

Which Politician Came Up with the Idea that Dying for Your Country Is a Good Thing?

Watched Clint Eastwood's two excellent Iwo Jima movies, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima," this weekend. Moral: the world would be a better place if no one thought his country was something to fight or die for. That's also the moral of "The Americanization of Emily." I highly recommend all three movies.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, March 30, 2009 at 6:52 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Saturday, March 21, 2009

They Don't Read the Bills

[Cross-posted at Free Association and Anything Peaceful]

Rep. Maxine Waters of California admits that members of Congress don't read the bills they vote on. (Of course, we already knew this.) She made the confession during an interview Friday with Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC. The subject of the interview was the provision in "stimulus" bill that prohibited interference with contractual bonuses at bailed-out companies. O'Donnell pressed Waters to say if she realized that prohibition was in the bill she voted for, and Waters admitted she did not. O'Donnell vented frustration that members of Congress are ignorant about contents of legislation. Waters explained that she and other members read the "important" parts and are mainly concerned with the amount being spent and the beneficiaries. She said they rely on staff to feed them information. When O'Donnell questioned that procedure, Waters misdirected the interview by asking O'Donnell if she reads every word of the newspaper. (As though that were relevant.) Then she asked O'Donnell if she read every word of her mortgage. Unfortunately, O'Donnell let the interview wind down instead of going in for the kill. She could have pointed out that when a person fails to read her own mortgage, she may harm herself, but congressmen vote on things that affect everyone, using money extracted forcibly by taxation, and that no one is permitted to opt out. Congressmen are largely unaccountable because any single voter's "clout" is negligible.

As Mario Rizzo has wondered, if our alleged representatives don't know what is in the laws they pass, in what sense can we be said to have consented to be governed by them?

Watch the interview for yourself:

Posted on Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 10:21 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Thursday, March 12, 2009

That's Politics for You

I found this interesting tidbit in Wikipedia's entry on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act:

Democrats agreed to support the bill after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act...

G-L-B, the last significant bank deregulation that occurred in the U.S., repealed the part of the New Deal's Glass-Steagall Act that forbade a single institution from engaging in both commercial and investment banking. G-L-B was passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in 1999 and signed by Democratic President Clinton. His treasury secretary at the time was Larry Summers, now President Obama's top economic adviser. It's important to remember this when people say that banking deregulation during the Bush years created the economic mess. The Bush administration didn't deregulate anything of importance. G-L-B in no way contributed to the financial turmoil.

What's important about the quote is that it shows that the Republicans acquiesced in the strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is partially at fault for the mortgage meltdown. This is the law that compelled banks to increase their mortgage lending to people with low incomes and poor credit histories.

As we've long noted, both parties are guilty of creating the house of cards that has fallen.

Cross-posted at Anything Peaceful.

Posted on Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

My take on the inauguration is here. Here's a taste:

The peaceful transition from the Bush to the Obama regime is indeed the occasion, but let’s focus on exactly what is being transferred. Despite the oratory about hope, change, and renewal, government — as someone, perhaps George Washington, said — “is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force.” If that is right — and I contend it is — then in the inauguration we have the irony of a peaceful transfer of something that is anything but peaceful: the legal power to use physical force.

This is something to celebrate?

Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:28 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Keynes the Jokester?

I spent much of my recent vacation reading Henry Hazlitt's chapter-by-chapter demolition of Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), The Failure of the "New Economics" (1959). I didn't expect to read the book cover to cover, but after only a few pages I had to keep going. It is that well-written and interesting. I'm now a few pages from the end.

The more I read the more I thought: Keynes was surely joking. No one in his position could really be that confused, contradictory, and ignorant of economic logic. It had to be a gag on the economics profession, an emperor-with-no-clothes experiment.

Thus I smiled when I got to Hazlitt's statement in chapter XXV, "Did Keynes Recant?" (p. 398):

Keynes was a brilliant man. Much of what he wrote he wrote in tongue-in-cheek, for the pleasure of paradox, to épater le bourgois [shock the middle class], in the spirit of Wilde, Shaw, and the Bloomsbury circle. Perhaps the whole of the General Theory was intended as a huge (400-page) joke, and Keynes was appalled to find disciples who took it all literally.

If it was a joke, Keynes helped inflict much misery and oppression on innocent people just for a laugh. I guess for the elitist Keynes, the well-being of the masses can't be allowed to impede his bold and daring lifestyle. It is for people like him that secularists like me wish there was a place of fire and brimstone.

At any rate, I highly recommend Hazlitt's book. Don Boudreaux says that Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker proves that any subject, no matter how complex, can be written about clearly and accessibly. I say the same about The Failure of the "New Economics."

Cross-posted at Anything Peaceful and Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, January 4, 2009 at 11:09 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Second Amendment Book Bomb

Everyone committed to individual freedom in general and the right to keep and bear arms in particular will be interested in the Second Amendment Book Bomb. The book is The Founders' Second Amendment by Stephen Halbrook, a top gun-rights scholar whom I've known for years. The point of the book bomb is to bring public attention to the right to keep and bear arms by putting Steve's book at the top of the bestseller lists. I pass this along from the sponsor:

Monday, December 15, marks America’s Bill of Rights Day, the anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. To commemorate this event, the Second Amendment Book Bomb website has been created, a unique and powerful way to communicate the importance of the Bill of Rights’ Second Amendment for the protection of liberty. With your help, we can launch constitutional rights to the top of national book bestseller lists, making a loud and clear statement that Second Amendment rights are inalienable!

The Second Amendment has already won a historic victory on June 26, 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own and bear arms. However, the Heller ruling was immediately attacked and efforts continue on the national level and across the country to undermine gun rights. Therefore, to secure the Second Amendment now and for the future the American public must be made aware of the reasons why the Founders sought to protect this right.

And now we have the tool to do so. Fascinating, seminal, and inspiring, the new book, The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms, by Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook, is the perfect way both to educate ourselves and to reach friends and family who don’t yet understand Second Amendment rights. Our goal is to reach one million Americans with Dr. Halbrook’s book during the Holiday Season and throughout the New Year ahead. Will you help?

To achieve this goal the Second Amendment Book Bomb website has been established to create a phenomenon so great that even the mainstream media will have to take notice. Let’s spread The Founders’ Second Amendment so far and wide that Americans across the political spectrum, and all walks of life, will be discussing the Second Amendment in every possible venue.

With your help, we can make Dr. Halbrook’s book #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. To make this happen, please go to the website and pledge to buy at least one copy of the book before or on the December 15th Second Amendment Book Bomb date. Let’s make this the most amazing and explosive event ever on the right to bear arms, and declare in no uncertain terms that the Second Amendment will be around for a very long time to come.

Posted on Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 8:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Beth A. Hoffman, 1950-2008

I am saddened to announce that my longtime colleague and Freeman. managing editor, Beth A. Hoffman, passed away Monday at the age of 58. Beth, who joined the FEE staff over 30 years ago, was beloved by the Foundation’s many friends and supporters. She worked tirelessly and ably in a variety of capacities, including the editing of books and other materials. But her great love was The Freeman, which she served as managing editor for many years. While her important work was behind the scenes, it was not unheralded. She was a true champion of liberty whose contributions were many and long-lasting.

She will be missed.

She is survived by her husband, Peter, and son, Ted.

Posted on Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 8:48 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

What's So Funny, Chris?

Chris Matthews, host of "Hardball" on MSNBC (it really should be called Nerfball), last night found the idea of an African-American libertarian laughable. Now why in the world would he want to insult African-Americans that way?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 8:12 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Humility or Hubris?

Another presidential election has come and gone, only this time the results are astoundingly and, yes, satisfyingly historic. In light of our racial history and leaving aside political philosophy, I am overjoyed at what Barack Obama’s election means. I cannot put it better than Will Wilkinson did at The Fly Bottle, “It means something profound that a black man was elected to the most visible, high-status position our society offers. The mere fact that Obama won truly does make our society a better place.” I also share Wilkinson’s reservations. In a truly free society, the presidency would not be the most visible high-status position our society offers. That designation would be reserved for a variety of private-sector roles. Unfortunately, however, the presidency does have that status today, and Obama’s election must be appreciated from that perspective. Relatedly, I am uneasy about, though understanding of, the public displays that followed John McCain’s concession Tuesday night. Again, Wilkinson: “[F]rankly, I hope never to see again streets thronging with people chanting the victorious leader’s name.” Amen.

President-elect Obama’s many supporters and well-wishers have great confidence in his ability to solve the economic problems that vex American society. That ability is said to lie in his cool judgment, his good intentions, and his eloquence. Let us grant that he possesses all three. Valuable as they are, they will be useless if he attempts to solve our economic problems directly by an exercise of power. That’s because there is something he does not have -- something no man or woman can have: the power to repeal the laws of economics.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "Humility or Hubris?" is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 8:21 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Marshall Fritz, 1943-2008

I am saddened by the news that Marshall Fritz, my friend and constant source of inspiration, died yesterday at age 65 after a long struggle against cancer. Marshall was founder of both the Advocates for Self-Government and the Alliance for the Separation for School and State. It was in the latter context that Marshall and I worked together. He founded the Alliance in 1994, just as my book Separating School and State was being published, though neither of us knew in advance what the other was up to. Marshall's conferences (SepCons) were important gatherings of the wide variety of advocates of education freedom and opponents of government schooling. The Alliance continues to play a key role in promoting liberation of families from the state.

Marshall was a great public speaker, whose eloquence flowed from his love of life and his love of liberty. Because of his enthusiasm about the future and his great humor, Marshall was unforgettable. He was as decent a human being as I've ever known. Through all his medical challenges he was unfailingly optimistic and inspirational.

I will miss him very much.

Posted on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 7:18 AM | Comments (5) | Top

Friday, October 24, 2008

Who Needs Evidence?

Around the corner from FEE's offices, on Main Street in Irvington, N.Y., there's a life-size statue of Rip Van Winkle awakening from his 20-year slumber. After reading Jacob Weisberg's Newsweek and Slate columns this week, I feel as though I must have been asleep for an equally long time. According to Weisberg, editor in chief of Slate, the financial turmoil taking place worldwide is the fault of . . . libertarians. That must mean libertarians have been in a position to repeal generations of deep-seated government intervention in the financial and related industries, including the Federal Reserve system. That would have taken a long time, yet I don't recall reading that a libertarian revolution occurred in the United States. Surely it would have been in the newspapers. Hence, I must conclude that I, like old Rip, was slumbering all those years. I missed the revolution! It's the only possible explanation. Unless Weisberg is wrong.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "Who Needs Evidence?" is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 24, 2008 at 10:07 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Barack Harold Obama

I don't think Republicans would be using Obama's middle name if it weren't Middle Eastern-sounding. Do you?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 6:56 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Frankly, He's a Criminal and Should be in Prison

If you want to see the criminality of the U.S. government in all its glory, observe that Rep. Barney Frank, one of the men responsible for the current economic debacle, will head the investigation into what caused that debacle.

About the bailout of Wall Street, Frank had the nerve to say, "We were the EMTs rushing to the rescue of an economy that suddenly found itself choking, but now we have to perform more serious reform."

A better analogy would be this: Frank & Co. were choking the American people and while doing so, they picked the people's pockets and handed their money to Wall Street.

When will guys like this finally go to prison?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, October 4, 2008 at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 3, 2008

The Debate

Some cable commentators, Joe Scarborough, for one, think Sarah Palin deep down is a libertarian. It must be really deep down because there was no sign of it last night. Her explanation for the economic turmoil is "greed and corruption on Wall Street," which she promised McCain and she would clean up. You couldn't even tell from her remarks that Fannie and Freddie were creatures of the government. She pointed out that McCain favored tough regulation of them years ago.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 at 2:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Luxury or Necessity?

Have you noticed how many pro-"free-market" politicians and pundits believe that theory is a luxury we cannot afford in this time of crisis? What they are probably too dense to realize is that their support for a bailout of Wall Street is also based on a theory. Only it's a bad one.

With allies like that, we hardly need adversaries.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Pretense of Regulatory Knowledge

Advocates of the free market are sometimes parodied for their seemingly all-purpose answer to any problem: Let the market handle it. What may sound like a simplistic answer, however, is actually the most complex prescription imaginable. In the modern world, the workings of any particular market are so complicated, they are beyond the grasp of mere mortals. Moment by moment, day by day, so many subtly interrelated decisions are made by so many people worldwide that no individual or group could possibly understand the big picture in any detailed way. So there is nothing simplistic about proposing the market as a solution to an economic problem. It’s short way of saying: let the multitude of knowledgeable people seeking profit, risking their own money, and responding to incentives find a solution based on persuasion not force. Translated that way, it sounds like a promising approach.
Ironically, those who don’t appreciate markets are in fact the ones who offer a simplistic, even empty alleged solution to economic problems: government regulation.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "The Pretense of Regulatory Knowledge," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 at 2:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Welfare State or Corporate State?

It's a grave mistake to portray the economic problems as consequences of the welfare state, as traditionally defined. Rather, this is a failure of the corporate state, or state capitalism. Not only is this the truth, it also knocks the state socialists off balance. Let the conservatives argue that the failing system was designed to help low-income people. We know better: it was designed to politically funnel money to bankers, home builders, and the real-estate profession. As usual, low-income people were mere pawns in a special-interest scheme to shift risk from big business to the taxpayers.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 1:21 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Moving Target

The people who refuse to believe that their beloved home-ownership promotion program is largely to blame for what's going on today can't quite make up their minds about what is to blame. They "know" it has something to do with not enough regulation. But what? First they argued that the Bush regime engaged in an orgy of deregulation. They had to drop that line, however, because the last significant act of banking deregulation was signed by Bill Clinton in 1999. So they changed to "someone was asleep at the switch." Vivid metaphor, but no one has come up with an actual instance of a regulator being asleep at whatever switch he allegedly was asleep at. So now there's a new argument, voiced by Hillary Clinton this morning: the Bush regime failed to anticipate the need for a new regulatory structure in the global economy. (I won't ask why her husband also failed in that regard.)

To quote John Stossel, "Give me a break!"

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 1:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, August 8, 2008

Was the Constitution Really Meant to Constrain the Government?

My message is not one of despair. But we will not cause the freedom philosophy to prevail merely by invoking a political document written by men who thought the main problem with America was too little, not too much, government. Rather, we must cut to the chase and convince people directly that our concepts of freedom and justice best accord with logic -- and their own deepest moral sense.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "Was the Constitution Really Meant to Constrain the Government?" is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 8:56 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Saturday, July 26, 2008

On Winning and Losing Wars

The campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has already gotten tedious. In a campaign appearance the other day, he said in his characteristically sanctimonious way, “I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”
We ought to be jaded enough by politics to know that when a candidate says he’d rather lose the campaign than do X, Y, or Z, he’s being anything but courageous. Nothing is more calculated to help one win the White House than to say he’d “rather be right than president.” The last guy to say it and apparently mean it was Henry Clay in 1839.

The rest of my op-ed, "On Winning and Losing Wars," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 10:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, July 4, 2008

Getting Rights Wrong

It's the Fourth of July, the day we ought to contemplate and rejoice in Jefferson's radical declaration of the "self-evident" truth that all individuals are equally endowed with "certain unalienable Rights, ... among these ... Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Alas, the day cannot be one of unmitigated joy since we have again been reminded that the purported protectors of our liberties have little understanding of those rights. We thus live under constant threat from the very people who claim to protect us.
As you might guess, I am referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Second Amendment case, District of Columbia v. Heller.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "Getting Rights Wrong," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, July 4, 2008 at 8:35 AM | Comments (1) | Top

From Rebels to Sheep

On this July 4th I observe with shame this news from my town, Conway, Arkansas, as reported in the Democrat Gazette this morning:

A con artist posing as an undercover drug cop struck twice in Conway within the past week, stealing hundreds of dollars from unsuspecting victims.

Conway Police Department Lt. Danny Moody said the man flashed a fake badge and told his victims to turn over their money. The cash was involved in a previous drug deal, he said, and may be contaminated with “drug residue.” The supposed cop said he needed to take the money so that a police drug dog could inspect it.

The victims handed over their money, Moody said, and the scam artist drove away.

Moody said the fake cop took a “substantial” amount from five victims at the Economy Inn on Saturday and at America’s Best Value Inn and Suites on Monday. He would say only that it was more than $200. The victims were from South Carolina and Texas.

Moody said the department has a suspect. The department believes the man ran the same scam in Arkadelphia and Benton previously.

Need one comment?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, July 4, 2008 at 6:56 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, May 30, 2008

Can You Really Love Your Country?

Why do people get upset with Barack Obama for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel or with Michelle Obama for suggesting she’s not been proud of her country until now? Why is failing to “support the troops” regarded as a sin?

I ponder such questions in my op-ed, "Can You Really Love Your Country?" at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Posted on Friday, May 30, 2008 at 6:49 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Friday, March 21, 2008

Private Protection

I had the pleasure yesterday of attending a lecture by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, long-time libertarian writer/activist and a professor of economics at San Jose State University, on "national" defense in a free society. In making the case for private nonstate protection, he pointed that we already are protected to some extent from government invasion by private organizations. How so?

The U.S. government could be violating our freedom a lot more than it is now. During World War I, Eugene Debs was jailed for making a speech defending war opponents. This doesn't happen today. The main reason freedom of speech is more secure than it used to be is that the ACLU and other civil-liberties groups have for years promoted the idea to the public that free speech is a good thing. Moreover, whenever the state makes a move against it, these groups spring into action. That is, they act as private defense agencies. Interestingly, they are nonprofit and unarmed. Their weapons are ideas, which Hummel emphasizes are always the ultimate defenses against tyranny. As he says, "Force doesn't rule the world. Ideas rule the world because ideas determine in which direction people point their guns."

On the other side, Hummel pointed out, our freedom to own guns is to some extent protected by another set of private organizations, most prominently (if highly imperfectly), the National Rifle Association. Again, their weapons are ideas, not (ironically) guns.

This is not to say the protection is flawless -- far from it. But it is not insignificant. Think how much worse the U.S. government could be. If we want private protection to work better, we need to win people over to a set of ideas not as riddled by contradictions and compromises as the current set is.

But the point stands. Private organizations can defend liberty against tyranny. If they can do it with respect to the the U.S. government, they can do it with respect to any government.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, March 21, 2008 at 2:09 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Who Said This?

"Many of his policies did not work as intended but in the end FDR deserves great credit for having the courage to abandon failed paradigms and to do what needed to be done."

Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 7:20 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Privatized Profits, Socialized Losses

The Federal Reserve's decision to underwrite the bailout of Bear Stearns, the giant investment bank that's in deep trouble because of its involvement with securities backed by bad subprime mortgages, further exposes what is called capitalism as a system of government intervention on behalf of capital. The problem is, as usual, that capitalism will continue to be equated with "free market," which is now valiantly being saved by George II, Fed head Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

The subprime problem has its roots in pro-business government intervention; the policies at fault were designed to help the housing industry and the lenders who write mortgages. Now the other shoe is falling. Big lenders and investors handling securitized mortgages who are in over their heads will get their promised bailout under the "too big to fail" doctrine. And the rescue will set the table for the next round of bad business decisions and the next bailout. It's called moral hazard.

What does this have to do with the free market? As Kevin Carson likes to say, if this is the free market, then I'm against it. Of course, it is not the free market. The free market is a profit and loss system void of privilege. When businesses fail, they are supposed to actually fail, not turn to the taxpayers. What we really have is (state or political) capitalism, corporatism, or fascism. An essential characteristic of this system is that while profits are private, losses are socialized, i.e., ultimately covered by the mass of people without political clout.

Unfortunately, potential allies of libertarians won't catch the distinction and will thus be further alienated from true free-market thinking. They won't realize that the free market is the system that would deliver what they want, particularly much of what they call "social justice."

Now is the time for us to draw the distinctions as sharply as possible. Down with "vulgar libertarianism"!

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 2:51 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Ron Paul: The Lost Opportunity?

Ron Paul has done an immense amount of good in promoting the pro-freedom, anti-war, and anti-empire message. To be sure, it is not pure libertarianism. To get a sense of what he has accomplished, however, you should read Brian Doherty's cover story in the February Reason magazine. Here's a key part, describing an appearance in Iowa:

Posted on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 11:59 AM | Comments (48) | Top

Thursday, January 3, 2008

The Illegal-Immigration Issue in a Nutshell

Respect for the law is due only to laws that warrant respect -- namely, those that reflect the natural law of justice.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 7:49 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The Slippery Slope of Intellectual "Property" Law

"[T]he [recording] industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

"The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files [Jeffrey] Howell [of Scottsdale, Ariz.] made on his computer from legally bought CDs are 'unauthorized copies' of copyrighted recordings."

--Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2007

Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, January 1, 2008 at 9:45 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Sunday, December 30, 2007

On Amnesty

Ron Paul says he's against amnesty for migrants without government papers. I am too. Amnesty is a pardon for wrong-doing. Why would migrants without government papers need a pardon? They've done nothing wrong. But in the spirit of the season, the migrants might consider granting amnesty to the government thugs who have hounded them since they got here.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, December 30, 2007 at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Ron Paul and Immigration

I still think there is value in Ron Paul's campaign, but this commercial sure doesn't make it easy. Note that he takes the Tancredo position that earlier immigrants "followed the rules" and came here legally. But back then you had to have an infectious disease to be denied entry. Virtually everyone else could come in. Illegal immigration was unnecessary since there were essentially open borders. I continue to be appalled that Ron Paul is parroting the line of the worst opponents of immigration.

By the way, where does the U.S. Constitution give Congress the power to control immigration? Or is that an implied power?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, December 29, 2007 at 8:26 PM | Comments (13) | Top

Friday, December 28, 2007

Ron Paul and David Schuster

Ron Paul's MSNBC appearance with David Schuster, in which Lincoln and the Civil War were discussed for seven minutes, was a disaster. Why Ron Paul let it go on, rather than insist that they should be discussing a war that he could actually do something about if elected, is beyond me. No one who was not already a Lincoln revisionist would have been impressed. Schuster and his producers wanted to convey the message that Ron Paul is not a serious candidate (a "crackpot," as Jack Jacobs called him to his "face") -- and Ron Paul played their shameful game. A very big mistake indeed. Who's calling the shots in that campaign?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 10:05 AM | Comments (17) | Top

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

More on Ron Paul and "Meet the Press"

Interesting that Tim Russert didn't ask Ron Paul about the Iraq war, but did ask him about the Civil War. Didn't that end about 140 years ago?

MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery."
REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn't have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the--that iron, iron fist..
MR. RUSSERT: We'd still have slavery.
REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn't sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.

He might have emphasized that Lincoln did not forcibly prevent southern secession to end slavery but rather to preserve the Union and said that he would have maintained slavery had that been necessary to keep the Union intact.

But let his sink in. Russert didn't ask Ron Paul about Iraq but he asked him about the Civil War? What the hell is going on?

Here's the transcript.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at 11:10 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Ron Paul on "Meet the Press"

I just finished watching. I'm afraid I had my usual reaction. I felt let down, like something was missing. For one thing, Ron Paul talks too much about the Constitution and too little about liberty and justice. War in Korea would okay if Congress wanted it? When was the last time Congress voted for a declaration of war without the president asking for it?

He also sounded unprepared. If he is going to call for ending the income tax (why that one and not the others?) and for bringing all the troops home, he should know the numbers. He looks like he's winging it. No excuse for that.

The immigration answer was a disaster. He persists in speaking of an invasion. How offensive! He's lucky Russert wasn't better prepared. How does Ron Paul know we'd have fewer immigrants if the welfare state were abolished? I think we'd have more, considering how attractive the economic environment would be. But would he open the borders then? I'm not convinced he would. I am more and more suspicious of this welfare-state rationalization for immigration control. It has worn so thin there is virtually nothing left of whatever credibility it had.

I think I'll stop watching news of the campaign. I'm tired of being disappointed.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, December 23, 2007 at 11:45 AM | Comments (6) | Top

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Prioritize!

Much anti-immigrant sentiment, even among some libertarians, appears fueled by resentment that non-citizens might get tax-financed welfare benefits. This gives a curious amount of offense, especially when it concerns so-called "illegals," whom I prefer to think of as residents without government papers. (Like that's a big deal.)

I can only say this: There are things that offend me far more than foreign-born people's going on welfare. Here are two in no particular order:

1. Native-born Americans' going on welfare. (They were born in the "land of the free" and are supposed to know better.)

2. State-police tactics, including the witch-hunting of employers who have the audacity to hire "illegals," designed to catch or prevent the migration of people who are merely exercising their natural liberty.

Let's get our priorities straight.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, December 8, 2007 at 11:23 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Individualism, Collectivism, and Other Murky Labels

Imagine the following person. He believes all individuals should be free to do "anything that's peaceful" and therefore favors private property, free global markets, freedom of contract, civil liberties, and all the related ideas that come under the label "libertarianism" (or liberalism). Obviously he is not a statist. But is he an individualist and a capitalist or a socialist and a collectivist? It sounds like an easy question, but on closer inspection it's not.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "Individualism, Collectivism, and Other Murky Labels," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 8:50 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Woodstock May Have Saved Sen. McCain’s Life

John McCain scored a standing ovation at the last Republican presidential debate when he attacked Sen. Hillary Clinton for proposing — unsuccessfully — to spend a million taxpayer dollars on a museum commemorating the 1969 Woodstock festival, saying, “Now, my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time. But the fact is, my friends, no one can be president of the United States that supports projects such as these.” It would be easy to criticize McCain for politically exploiting his five-and-half years of suffering as a captive of the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. But there’s a more important point to be made.

The rest of my op-ed, "Woodstock May Have Saved Sen. McCain’s Life," is at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 6:41 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Robertson Endorses Giuliani

So let me get this straight: Rudy Giuliani denounces Ron Paul for saying that U.S. foreign intervention in the Middle East created the conditions for the 9/11 attacks, but he accepts the endorsement of a man -- Pat Robertson -- who said that his god may have allowed the attacks to occur in order to punish Americans for homosexuality, abortion, and other moral decline. Okay, I think I have it now.

While we're at this, let's note that Robertson has also attributed killer hurricanes to his god's wrath.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 6:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 19, 2007

What Nearly Killed Liberalism

The shifting meaning of the word liberal in the direction of statism has been analyzed often. But a few years ago Anthony de Jasay wrote a short comment on the matter that deserves attention. For Mr. de Jasay, the problem is not merely terminological. As he wrote in "Liberalism, Loose or Strict" (Independent Review, Winter 2005), while political ideas such as nationalism and socialism have had core principles, "Liberalism, I maintain, has never had such an irreducible and unalterable core element. As a doctrine, it has always been rather loose, tolerant of heterogeneous components, easy to influence, open to infiltration by alien ideas that are in fact inconsistent with any coherent version of it. One is tempted to say that liberalism cannot protect itself because its 'immune system' is too weak." His statement does seem to explain why liberalism has taken many forms over the centuries.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "What Nearly Killed Liberalism," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 19, 2007 at 2:41 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Naomi Klein: Free-Market Ally?

I haven't read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Treatment: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (or her other books). But based on what I've read about it, she's probably going to be misunderstood by some libertarians and free-market economists. Although apparently an attack on corporatism (fascism), the book is bound to be seen as a criticism of the free market. I assumed that Klein would promote such understanding by an imprecise use of terms -- and to some extent she apparently does so. But perhaps I've underestimated her. I caught her appearance on Bill Maher's program the other night, and during her interview she explicitly said that practitioners of crony capitalism have hijacked the rhetoric of the free market to advance their self-serving cause. She drew a sharp distinction between the two systems. "[I]t's certainly not the free market. ...Ironically, it's the free-market ideology that gets used to propel this [corporatist] vision forward. It's not free for anybody but the contractors." (The interview is here.)

Her thesis is that crony capitalists use crises to foist their "reforms" on otherwise unwilling people. Sounds like it should be read in conjunction with Robert Higgs's Crisis and Leviathan. Although Klein is not an advocate of a true free market, she seems to be an ally in struggle against corporatism. We should cultivate that alliance in public statements about her book and reinforce her inchoate view that being for the market is far from the same thing as being for capitalism.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 7:08 AM | Comments (9) | Top

Monday, September 24, 2007

A Chip Off Old Big Brother's Block

Late last month the California Senate and Assembly sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to prohibit employers from requiring workers to have RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips implanted under their skin. North Dakota and Wisconsin already have passed similar laws. Two other states are considering bans. VeriChip (motto, appropriately: "RFID for People") already has FDA permission to sell a device suitable for human implantation. Some people find this form of ID attractive because it can't be lost or, presumably, counterfeited easily. (We'll see about that.) But others, especially organizations dedicated to protecting privacy, object to treating other people like pets. What should an advocate of liberty think of all this?

The rest of last week's TGIF, "A Chip Off Old Big Brother's Block," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, September 24, 2007 at 6:40 AM | Comments (17) | Top

Friday, August 3, 2007

No Substitute for History

The great economist Ludwig von Mises showed that economics can be deduced from the axiom that human beings act: individuals consciously select ends and apply scarce means to achieve them. By examining the logical implications of that undeniable fact, one can come to understand the concepts value, cost, time preference, supply, demand, money, price, profit, interest, and so on. In light of this, it is noteworthy that Mises was also an accomplished historian. And more than that, he was an important historiographer; that is, he was interested in the why and how of history. This theorist who is so identified with the a priori method in economics also believed that a knowledge of history and its methods was indispensable to understanding the world.

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "No Substitute for History," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, August 3, 2007 at 1:53 PM | Comments (5) | Top

Monday, July 23, 2007

Syllogism

The state by nature is a threat to life, liberty, and property;
War is the health of the state (Bourne);
War is thus by nature a threat to life, liberty, and property;
No libertarian can consistently support what is by nature a threat to life, liberty, and property;
Ergo, no libertarian can support war.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, July 23, 2007 at 6:40 AM | Comments (31) | Top

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Ahistorical "Libertarian" Warmongers

Legal scholar Randy Barnett wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that one can be a libertarian and also support the war in Iraq. (Judge for yourself: "Libertarians and the War.") Much could be said about this woeful article. But I'll touch on just one point for now.

Nowhere in Barnett’s article does one find a hint that the leading, pioneering classical liberals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not just skeptical of the government’s war-making power; rather they were forthrightly antiwar, anti-empire, and pro-peace. These include Frederic Bastiat, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, and William Graham Sumner. This is no coincidence. These men were not ivory-tower theorists; they were historians as well as keen observers of contemporary events, applying libertarian principles to the historical conduct of politicians, bureaucrats, and diplomats. It was Sumner, echoing many before him, who pointed out that "national defense" means "war, debt, taxation, diplomacy, a grand governmental system, pomp, glory, a big army and navy, lavish expenditures, political jobbery." The liberals unfailingly understood that war meant the mass murder of innocents and regimentation at home. Nothing is easier for a politician than conjuring up a "self-defense" justification for war, but the great classical liberals would have nothing to do with it. For one thing, they realized that the self-defense analogy is bogus. When an individual defends himself, he does not tax others to help him, conscript others, or bomb the attacker's friends and family, who may be completely innocent of wrongdoing. The state is not an individual. The rules are different.

I think this gets at an underlying flaw in Barnett’s case. He, like others, approaches libertarianism in a hyper-rationalistic, ahistorical way. If in his view a policy position cannot be reached deductively from libertarian first principles, he concludes that libertarianism per se has nothing to say about it. But his method is wrong. Libertarianism isn’t purely an a priori theory. It's a set of insights about human beings and a unique historical institution -- the state -- insights produced by centuries of experience. Libertarianism properly conceived is an interplay of theory and history, neither ever losing sight of the other. It is, as Chris Sciabarra notes, dialectical.

Barnett curiously combines his simplistic a priori approach to libertarianism with a vulgar dilettantism regarding current events void of detailed knowledge about the U.S. government’s conduct in the world for at least the last 50 years. That is what allows him to blithely proclaim that there is no libertarian position on a war against a country that posed no threat to the American people and that was run by a former agent of American presidents. That's why he takes George Bush's pronouncements and policy seriously.

And why are libertarian such as Barnett comfortable with this dubious methodology with respect to foreign policy? Because not far below the surface, they are nationalists. The nation is still a special unit of emotional value -- particularly the U.S. There's an implicit theory of exceptionalism here too. That accounts for their lack of interest in the history of U.S. intervention.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 6:38 PM | Comments (8) | Top

Friday, July 13, 2007

Disappointed

I like Ron Paul and think he's done a great service by bringing his sensible views on the Iraq war and the 9/11 attacks to the public's attention. That is the most important thing that has happened in the presidential campaign so far, and it will be tough to beat. I've long known that Ron Paul takes an unlibertarian position on immigration. Still I am deeply disappointed to learn, from an article in the latest Liberty magazine, that he calls the illegal entry of Mexicans into the United States an "invasion." This description, given in a fundraising letter, is outrageous. These are human beings, with rights, seeking better lives in an environment more free than the one they are in. For the overwhelming majority of them, complying with U.S. law, an immoral law that violates all our rights, means never getting here--ever. They mean us no harm; on the contrary, they seek a place in the division of labor.

Therefore, they are not invaders and their entry in no way constitutes an invasion. This is belligerent Pat Buchanan-talk, and it is unworthy of Ron Paul. I hope he will rethink his position.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 9:40 PM | Comments (46) | Top

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Free Trade Imperialism

Here's something left-libertarians need to attend to: Deepak Lal of UCLA is touting a program of unilateral free trade AND unabashed U.S. worldwide empire. His book In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order seems to be his most complete statement on this.

Here are some quotes from his article "Empire and Order" in the March/April issue of Historically Speaking (apparently not online):

[T]oday there is again an imperial power that has an economic and military predominance unseen since the fall of Rome. The United States is indubitably an empire. It is more than a hegemon, as it seeks control over not only foreign but also aspects of domestic policy in other countries. But it an informal and indirect empire.... It is an empire that has taken over from the British the burden of maintaining a Pax to allow free trade and commerce to flourish. This Pax brings mutual gains. The U.S., like the British in the 19th century, has borne much of the costs of providing this global public good, not because of altruism but because the mutual gains from a global, liberal economic order benefit America and foster its economic well being....

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, June 23, 2007 at 11:05 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Free the New Youth 4!

A new blog has been started with the objective of freeing four young Chinese imprisoned for exercising their natural rights to free speech and assembly. "Free the New Youth 4!" can be found here. Here's the post explaining the blog:

On May 28, 2003, Jin Haike (靳海科), Xu Wei (徐伟), Yang Zili (杨子立) and Zhang Honghai (张宏海) were sentenced to between eight and ten years for the crime of “subverting state power.” Their charges stemmed from a small, informal discussion group they’d formed and dubbed the “New Youth Study Group” in order to debate ways in which China could further progress and prosper.

The New Youth 4 Coalition seeks to end their unjust imprisonment and return freedom to these four individuals who represent the best of Chinese progressivism and forward thinking.

We hope that through the power of dialogue and communication, the Chinese authorities will correct this grave injustice.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 6:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Rudolph Giuliani, Radical Free-Marketeer?

The Ron Paul moment in the second GOP "debate" made me forget another extraordinary remark by Rudolph Giuliani. He said said Hillary Clinton believes "an unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America."

What? Are we to conclude that Giuliani -- the persecutor of Michael Milken -- or anyone else who was on that stage, favors an unfettered free market? (Only Ron Paul comes anywhere near that position.)

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 at 8:56 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

"Science versus Consensus"

Considering the recent discussions here about science, consensus, and global warming, I thought this paper by Frank Van Dun would be of interest. Here's how it gets off the ground:

Tonight I am not going to comment on any particular item in the vast field of the “science” that supposedly underpins the Summary for Policy Makers (published on February 2, 2007) of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I have no competence to deal with any of it. I shall restrict my comments to two aspects of the IPCC’s treatment of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW):

1) How unproven assumptions built into computer models serve to transform the available “science” into a prediction of the state of the global climate a hundred years from now.

2) How the uncertainties and controversies that characterize science and research on the work floor disappear behind the shrouds of the supposed consensus on CAGW and the supposed fact that it is now 90% certain that CAGW is occurring.

To make such comments, one need not be a “climate scientist”. They rely on common sense, memory, and little bit of simple mathematics. For the sake of the argument then, I shall optimistically assume that “the science” is as good as one could expect, and leave it to the scientists to be sceptical with respect to each other’s work. My “Global Warming scepticism” concerns what the CAGW-establishment—the IPCC itself, and the political strategists, spin doctors, and technocrats in the EU and other international bureaucracies that have decided to hype CAGW—does with that science, how it coaxes it into a fallacious argument for its own sensationalist and alarmist conclusions and the political agenda they serve. In short, my scepticism concerns the alleged link between the available “science” and the so-called consensus on CAGW.

Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 5:29 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, May 11, 2007

That Mercantilist Commerce Clause

The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution has been used to justify a wide expansion of government power, from antidiscrimination laws to drug prohibition to a ban on guns near schools. In objecting to use of the Commerce Clause for such remote purposes, some constitutionalists rely on a particular historical interpretation of both the Clause and the Constitution as a whole. Could that interpretation be wrong?

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "That Mercantilist Commerce Clause," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 at 8:37 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, April 27, 2007

Labor's "Right to a Free Market"

No issue is more contentious in labor relations than the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill, now pending in Congress, would require the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to recognize a union when "a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations." Under current federal law, an NLRB-supervised election must be held and a majority must vote by secret ballot for the union before it becomes government-certified. The union-backed EFCA would presumably make it easier to establish a union in a company, but opponents say worker intimidation would be encouraged with an open card-signing process versus a secret-ballot election. What should free-market advocates say about this controversy?

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Labor's 'Right to a Free Market,'" is at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 at 11:43 AM | Comments (7) | Top

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

"Dangerousness Is Not a Disease"

Thomas Szasz's take on the Virginia Tech shooting is here at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 4:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, April 21, 2007

What's to Lose?

What would an American defeat in Iraq mean? Would evil Iraqis conquer the United States, force us all to speak Arabic, and convert us to Islam? Hardly. There is no threat whatsoever to the American people from the sectarian fighters in Baghdad or elsewhere in that country. Even the Iraqis who form the local al-Qaeda chapter have no designs on the United States. Indeed, they have their hands full in their own country. And their hands would be even fuller if the United States should withdraw. Even most Sunnis in Iraq despise the al-Qaeda types and their brutal methods. If anything holds the disparate Sunni factions together, it’s their common animosity to the U.S. occupation.
So in what sense would “we” lose? From the standpoint of the American people, it would be no loss at all. Rather, it would be a victory.

Read the rest of my latest op-ed, "What's to Lose?" at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, April 21, 2007 at 8:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 20, 2007

Progressive Illiberalism

"The Progressive movement, which dominated the American scene in the years from the turn of the century to United State entrance in World War I, was not primarily a liberal movement," writes Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. in his magisterial work The Decline of American Liberalism. "[I]n contrast to former American efforts at reform, progressivism was based on a new philosophy, partly borrowed from Europe, which emphasized collective action through the instrumentality of government."

Read the rest of my latest TGIF column, "Progressive Illiberalism," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, April 20, 2007 at 10:30 AM | Comments (10) | Top

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Jeffersonianism Interred

For historian Arthur A. Ekirch Jr., the decline of American liberalism tracked the rise of nationalism and the corporate state, the intimate alliance between business and government. He equates liberalism -- libertarianism -- with economic freedom and property rights for the common citizen, not just for an aristocracy. From the relative, though imperfect, laissez-faire periods of the Jefferson and Jackson presidencies, the United States moved almost unswervingly to become what Albert Jay Nock would call a "Merchant-state" in which the central government heavily intervened on behalf of particular business interests, hampering the independence and progress of upstart competitors as well as workers. For most people, this is what the word "capitalism" would come to denote. (See "TGIF: Arthur A. Ekirch Jr.,'s The Decline of American Liberalism.")

The Civil War was the great impetus in this direction....

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Jeffersonianism Interred," at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 23, 2007

Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism

I like revisiting classic, and unfortunately forgotten, works in the (classical) liberal, or libertarian, canon. This pays several dividends. For one, it brings great books to the attention of people who never knew they existed. Moreover, old books often contain insights and information you can find nowhere else. Murray Rothbard was fond of pointing out that, contrary to what people assume, knowledge does not advance inexorably "onward and upward." Important things can be omitted, overlooked, and forgotten. Consequently, later books on a subject can be less complete than earlier books. So it is wrong to think that the older books need not be consulted because subsequent work incorporates everything of value from the past.

I first became acquainted with the late Arthur A. Ekirch Jr.'s The Decline of American Liberalism in my college days. The book was first published in 1955, then reissued in 1967. It was a History Book Club selection and, I've been told, a contender for a national book award. Ekirch wrote nine other books, including Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought (1971) and The Civilian and the Military (1972), especially relevant today....
Ekirch wrote for the intelligent nonspecialist, and his work sets the standard for accessible scholarship. The Decline of American Liberalism is a great place to start because it provides a readable look at the whole of American political-economic-intellectual history in under 400 pages. I highly recommend it.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 3:10 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Exporting the Welfare State

So George II is in Latin America bragging about how much "social justice money" the "generous" American taxpayers have provided countries in the region. Social justice money? "In other words, it's money for education and health," Bush said. Right, he's exporting the welfare state.

Then he announced an ethanol deal with Brazil, enlisting that country in his campaign to forcibly pick the next energy winner. But don't expect him to lift a finger to remove the stiff tariff on Brazilian ethanol. "It's not going to happen," Bush said.

Did someone actually think we would let our little brothers to the south compete freely with our corn producers, who are so vital to national security? Those Brazilians make ethanol from sugar. Hey, we also have a sugar industry to protect here. And don't forget Archer Daniels Midland.

Let's not take this generosity thing too far.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 8:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Free to Migrate

No matter what the advocates of free immigration say about the natural individual right to move without government permission, many people remain unconvinced because they expect theory and practice to diverge. Open borders may be good in the abstract, we're told, but the theory doesn't reflect what happens in the real world. To begin, we ought to be suspicious of any claim that a good theory and practice part ways....

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Free to Migrate," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 7:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Stop Them!

Do President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have no idea of what made the founding of this country unique? It was the people’s deeply held belief that arbitrary rule by the state is an evil to be resisted at all costs. Even early America’s conservative elements, who hoped to remain in the British Empire, finally went over to the revolutionists’ side when King George III accelerated his arbitrary decrees governing the American people. Nothing indicts Bush-Cheney as profoundly as their displayed contempt for habeas corpus. I have no doubt that if they thought they could get away with it, they’d suspend it for citizens too.

Note well: the Constitution does not distinguish citizens from noncitizens. If the gang-run-amok in the White House can suspend habeas corpus for aliens, it can do so for the rest of us.

The threat to Americans from terrorism is minuscule compared with the threat from these megalomaniacs.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "Stop Them!" at The Future of Freedom website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Imperial Hopefuls

[N]one of the "hopefuls" is actually running for president. The job they seek isn’t merely the head of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Given the realities of the world, they are running for emperor. No one is qualified for that job.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "Imperial Hopefuls," at The Future of Freedom website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 5:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 23, 2007

Made Everywhere

In reality there are no imports and exports. There is only what I make and what everyone else makes. Few people would want to live just on what they themselves could make.... The case for free trade is conceded the moment someone eschews self-sufficiency. After that, we're just haggling over the size of the trade area. But if free trade (read: division of labor) is good, then the bigger the free-trade area the better. Globalization should be the worldwide removal of all barriers to the exchange of goods and services -- rather than trade managed through state capitalism and multinational bureaucracies. Unilateral, unconditional free trade is the smartest policy.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Made Everywhere," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 at 8:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Know When to Fold 'Em

Hawks such as Sen. John McCain who oppose Senate resolutions against the so-called troop surge in Iraq make a pernicious argument. Such a resolution “is basically a vote of no confidence in the men and women we are sending over there,” McCain said. "We’re saying, ‘We’re sending you — we’re not going to stop you from going there, but we don’t believe you can succeed.'"

McCain is right in one respect: The senators who oppose the escalation should be doing more than pushing a nonbinding resolution. They should be doing everything they can to stop President Bush’s war, even if that requires a constitutional confrontation with the executive branch.

But McCain and his ilk go further than pointing out an inconsistency in the Democratic chicken-doves. They think no one should ever say that U.S. troops cannot prevail in Iraq or in any other military mission.

If they really believe this, they display the mentality of a fanatical nationalist and imperialist. It hardly recommends one for the presidency.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "Know When to Fold 'Em," at The Future of Freedom website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 6:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 16, 2007

The Rent-Seeking Habit

Wal-Mart's CEO and his chief nemesis, the head of the Service Employees International Union, have joined forces. They recently appeared together at a news conference to endorse "universal health care," sugar-words for medicine by coercive bureaucracy. No, this is not another article about why a government-based medical system is a terrible idea. This is an article about a business leader looking to the state for a bailout.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "The Rent-Seeking Habit," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2007 at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 9, 2007

Health Hazard

Back in the days before America had an income tax (yes, son, I've read there really was such a time), proposals to impose the tax were met with warnings that it would be "inquisitorial." Opponents apparently didn't see its potential for manipulating behavior. But what more effective carrot and stick is there than an income tax?

... The tax system has no doubt distorted the medical industry along with lots of other things. But any piecemeal way out will surely introduce its own distortions by upsetting long-standing plans and depriving people of their money. The early critics were right: The income tax is poison to a society that values freedom and spontaneous order. We should have never gotten started with it.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 9:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

The Freeman

The January-February issue of The Freeman is now in my hands. Here are some highlights:

"Climate Change: What If They're Right?" by Max Borders
"Europe Meets America: Property Rights in the New World" by Andrew P. Morriss

"Open-Source Software: Who Needs Intellectual Property Rights?" by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine

"The Sovereign Presidency: Is This What the Framers Had in Mind?" by Joseph R. Stromberg

"The Fed's Potent Power" by Donald J. Boudreaux

"Big Government -- Big Risk" by David R. Henderson

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at 1:59 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Friday, February 2, 2007

Inequality Matters

In the controversy now raging over whether income inequality in America is growing a lot or a little, some pro-market people say it doesn’t much matter. This attitude is unjustified, not to mention harmful to the cause of individual freedom because it misses the bigger picture.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Inequality Matters," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, February 2, 2007 at 10:09 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Saturday, January 27, 2007

No Need for Energy Subsidies

For a guy who claims to believe in limited government, President Bush is awfully good at dangling subsidies and threatening coercion when he wants to encourage or discourage something. That’s the lesson to take from his State of the Union Address.

Look at what he said about energy....

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "No Need for Energy Subsidies," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, January 27, 2007 at 7:11 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, January 26, 2007

Lost Articles

The Constitution says that to be elected to the U.S. Senate, a person has to be 30 or older, a citizen for at least nine years, and a resident of the state from which the candidate is elected.

Alas, it says nothing about knowing American history.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007 at 9:20 AM | Comments (1) | Top

A More Progressive Tax

The Treasury Department (pdf) says George II's proposed limited tax deduction for medical insurance will make the income tax more progressive.

I thought he favored the flat tax.

Hat tip: TaxProf Blog

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, January 26, 2007 at 6:15 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, January 19, 2007

"Congressional Generosity" and the Power to Tax

Every now and then we get a glimpse into what government officials really think about our rights to life, liberty, and property. The U.S. Justice Department recently provided such a glimpse in a controversial tax case, Murphy v. IRS.

How revealing it is! Did you know that if the government abstains from taxing all your income, you should be grateful for this "congressional generosity"?

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 at 8:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Rising Prices Won't Mitigate Minimum-Wage Effects

Newspaper stories about raising the minimum wage often quote people who say the employment effects of an increase will be held down because sellers will raise prices and pass the extra cost on to their customers. (See this story on the effects of Arkansas's increase last October.)

But not so fast. If prices rise, where will we consumers get the extra money to maintain our present buying patterns? (I didn't get a raise.) If prices go up at my favorite restaurant, I'll have two choices: eat there less often or spend less elsewhere. Either way, jobs are in jeopardy.

Bastiat and Hazlitt were right.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 9:17 AM | Comments (13) | Top

Friday, January 5, 2007

Two New Articles

The least appreciated form of tyranny in the United States goes by the names "redevelopment" and "government-business partnership." While everyone knows about the threat of development-oriented eminent domain, thanks to the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, local tyranny goes much deeper than the "mere" taking of property in order to give it to another private party. A case out of Port Chester, N.Y., illustrates the danger.

The rest of this week's TGIF column is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

* * *

Over the last several days former President Gerald R. Ford has been repeatedly praised for “healing” the nation in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Democrat, Republican, and solemn pundit alike paid extravagant tribute to the man who, in their view, saved the American people from “disaster.” But is that what Ford really did? . . .
“The long national nightmare is over,” Ford said. But it wasn’t a nightmare for the American people. It was a nightmare for the power elite. Their very legitimacy was in peril. The debt to Ford for restoring their legitimacy is owed by those who hold and aspire to power, not by those who suffer under it.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "What Exactly Did Gerald Ford Heal?," at The Future of Freedom Foundation's website. Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, January 5, 2007 at 6:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Scenes from a State Funeral

There they were, watching as the casket bearing former President Gerald R. Ford was taken to Air Force One for the trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan: former congressmen, former House staffers, current congressmen, and other dignitaries.

Intoned MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews: "They are the foothills of Mount Rushmore."

Gag me with a spoon.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 6:42 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, December 29, 2006

End Slavery Registration Now!

Whenever U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who will soon chair the House Ways and Means Committee, calls for resumption of military conscription, a host of powerful figures, Republican and Democrat, civilian and military, chime in at once to repudiate his proposal. They respond that the U.S. military doesn’t need or want a draft. It’s good to hear them say that, and let’s hope they mean it. The draft has no place in a free society because it is slavery, the kind that can get you killed or put you in a position where you might kill someone else.

We opponents of the draft, however, would feel more comfortable if the people distancing themselves from Rangel would do something solid to show that they mean what they say. There’s a great way for them to show their bona fides: end draft registration.

Read the rest of my latest op-ed, "End Draft Registration," at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Praise the State

I believe the government-media complex quite likes when an old ex-president dies of natural causes. Short of an attack on our soil, nothing gives the power-worshipers such an opportunity to feed the public big doses of the secular religion we call statism. No matter how big a mediocrity a man (and perhaps soon a woman) may have been, if he has occupied the office of President of the United States, even if only for 2 1/2 years as the result of appointment by cronies, he becomes bigger than life, worthy of having his life examined as a Man of History.

In the case of Gerald Ford, a man who spent most of his adult life "reaching across the aisle" to impose laws on other people and taxing and spending their money, isn't it almost uncanny how destiny happened along and picked just the right man exactly when he was needed? And isn't it remarkable that in hindsight his decision to pardon Criminal-in-Chief Nixon (whose offenses, domestic and foreign, were endless) was the wise decision after all? (Why couldn't we see it back then?!)

I feel so secure knowing the locomotive of history is always on the right track, even when it doesn't appear that way. We can count on the government-media complex to be there to remind us just when we need reminding.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 9:32 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Sunday, December 24, 2006

End Draft Registration Now!

When U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel calls for resumption of the draft, everyone else in power says it is unnecessary and would even be bad for the all-volunteer force. George II presumably agrees. (A president running an unpopular war with his approval ratings could hardly afford to support conscription.)

Fine. If they all really mean it, let them end draft registration. Bush can do this by executive order. The incoming congressional leadership should call on him to do it. If there is no need for a draft -- there can't be; it is slavery, after all -- there is no need for registration.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at 9:25 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

I'm Person of the Year!

And so are you. Time magazine says we all are. Why? Because the World Wide Web let's us all determine the shape of the new media. Or something like that. I couldn't read the insipid thing. Anyway, if everyone is person of the year, then no one is. That's fine. It reminds me of W.S. Gilbert's lyric from The Gondoliers:

When every one is somebodee,
Then no one's anybody!

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 9:33 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Monday, December 18, 2006

Pinochet and Friedman

Brian Doherty of Reason has a thoughtful piece on the "relationship" between the right-wing Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and Milton Friedman. The typical left and right analyses of Pinochet and the economic policies followed by his regime are inexcusably simplistic. So Doherty's take is a welcome example of care and nuance.

His conclusion:

Undoubtedly, Friedman’s decision to interact with officials of repressive governments creates uncomfortable tensions for his libertarian admirers; I could, and often do, wish he hadn’t done it. But given what it probably meant for economic wealth and liberty in the long term for the people of Chile, that’s a selfish reaction. Pinochet’s economic policies do not ameliorate his crimes, despite what his right-wing admirers say. But Friedman, as an economic advisor to all who’d listen, neither committed his crimes, nor admired the criminal.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 8:33 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Iraq Study Group: Death by Consensus

When John Kerry came back from fighting in Vietnam, he famously inquired, How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake? Regarding the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), a lot of people would like to know, How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bipartisan compromise?

The rest of my op-ed "Death by Consensus" is at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 6:50 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, December 8, 2006

Global Warming and the Layman

Global warming is a divisive issue. People are either believers or skeptics, with each side viewing the other with apprehension. I've sided firmly with the skeptics, but lately I have had a nagging concern. Like most people, I am not an atmospheric scientist. I have no firsthand way to evaluate a scientific claim for or against the existence of global warming. So what grounds have I for believing what one scientist says against the thesis over what another one says in favor of it?

No good grounds at all. . . .

This much I know: these are highly complex empirical questions. They are not a political, ethical, or ideological questions. Thus the answers must be left to the scientific process, preferably untainted by government control.

In the meantime, laymen committed to individual freedom have their own question to attend to: If potentially harmful manmade climate change is occurring, how can it be addressed without violating liberty?

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, December 8, 2006 at 8:29 AM | Comments (5) | Top

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Is Any War Civil?

Whether Iraq is embroiled in a civil war is a matter of some controversy. News organizations such as NBC have dramatically announced that, indeed, it is. Pundits solemnly the debate the question on cable news talk shows. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says yes. Present Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says no.
Of course, the president of the United States agrees with Rice. He has two good reasons for doing so. If President Bush admits we have a civil war on our hands, the American people will (1) know that the Bush doctrine is a big flop, and (2) wonder why we should stay in Iraq.
So what sounds like a debate over semantics is really a matter of politics.

The rest of my latest op-ed is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 6:59 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Milton Friedman

Richard Ebeling and my tribute to Milton Friedman is here at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Posted on Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 6:19 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, November 4, 2006

Fear d'Jour

August 28 headline in the New York Times:

Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity

Yesterday's headline in the Boston Globe:

Pay outpaces productivity; inflation feared

Then there's today's headine in the Washington Post:

Jobless Rate Is Lowest Since '01

As Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek points out here, this month's fear that wages are outpacing productivity (and threatening inflation) apparently offsets August's fear that producitvity was outpacing wages. Funny, isn't it?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, November 4, 2006 at 9:28 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, November 3, 2006

Economists Against Economics

Five economists who either won the Nobel Prize in economics or who served as president of the American Economics Association -- and three who did both -- recently joined over 600 other economists in urging the federal government to increase the minimum wage. The signatures were gathered by the union-backed Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which unsurprisingly supports substantial government intervention in the economy.

I guess this is supposed to make us think more of the minimum wage. Instead, it makes me think less of the Nobel Prize in economics and the American Economics Association.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 9:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Eminent-Domain Chutzpah

Talk about chutzpah! A development company is thinking about suing Florida and the city of Riviera Beach for refusing to use eminent domain to provide land for upscale condominiums and a marina. Viking Inlet Harbor Properties was assured the city would condemn a number of working-class homes, but the city council had second thoughts. Now the company fears the $50 million it has already spent acquiring other lots will go to waste. “I’m stuck with these properties but can’t develop them because I can’t fill in the puzzle pieces,” said Mike Clark, president of the development company’s real-estate division. Hence the possible lawsuit.

Read the rest of my op-ed "Eminent-Domain Chutzpah" at The Future of Freedom Foundation website

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 6:37 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, October 28, 2006

The Libertarian Nobel Peace-Prize Winner

Last week, with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, I underscored the historical-philosophical link between freedom of commerce and peace in classical liberalism. (The article is here.) What I did not know at the time, and what I have since learned thanks to Auburn University philosopher Roderick T. Long, is that one of the first winners of the Nobel Peace Prize was a man who consciously placed himself in the liberal tradition of Frédéric Bastiat and Richard Cobden.

He was Frédéric Passy of Paris (1822-1912). The first year the Peace Prize was awarded, Passy shared the honor with Henry Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross and originator of the Geneva Convention (which gives him a special relevance today). Passy must have been highly esteemed indeed for the Nobel committee to have awarded him and Dunant the Prize.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, October 28, 2006 at 9:56 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Page Scandal: Political Corruption Precedes Sexual Corruption

For the sake of those vulnerable 16-year-old boys and girls who come to Washington each year, we should abolish the congressional page program immediately. I’m not referring only to the danger posed by the sexual predators in Congress. There’s a more widespread danger that hardly anyone cares about: the congressional page program encourages high schoolers to worship and lust for power. In 20 years only three congressmen have been known to engage in sexual improprieties with pages. But nearly all congressmen teach pages that raw government power is a good thing. In a society that thinks of itself as free, this is intolerable.

The rest this week's op-ed is at The Future of Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, October 28, 2006 at 9:55 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 20, 2006

Peace and Free Trade: "One and the Same Cause"

The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to a different sort of activist. Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economics professor, and his Grameen Bank won the prize for pioneering the concept of microcredit, small loans made to poor producers who because they lack collateral can't get conventional bank loans. "Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty," the Nobel committee said. "Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights."

. . . From the beginning (classical) liberalism regarded freedom of commerce and peace as, in Richard Cobden's words, "one and the same cause." As Joseph Schumpeter noted, "Wherever capitalism penetrated, peace parties of such strength arose that virtually every war meant a political struggle on the domestic scene." Leading French and British liberals played important roles in the world Peace Congresses held in the mid-nineteenth century, and American liberals rose up in protest when the United States went to war with Spain in 1898 and then held the Philippine Islands as a colony.

But, sadly, peace and commerce have gotten separated in the public's mind over the years, perhaps because opponents of the market and free trade have been the most visible critics of war.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 20, 2006 at 9:44 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Time to Get Rid of the State?

The practical case for free-market anarchism grows stronger each day. The proliferation of nuclear weapons, which so often is used as a reason for more government power, is actually grounds for abolishing the state altogether. (See this New York Times article, which reports that "atomic officials estimate that as many as 40 more countries have the technical skill, and in some cases the required material, to build a bomb.") As powerful as the U.S. government is, it cannot prevent other governments from obtaining or developing nuclear weapons and it can't prevent their use. The most it can do is reduce the danger by pursuing a noninterventionist foreign policy. But it is not likely to do this in the foreseeable future, and even that wouldn't reduce the danger to near zero.

Free-market anarchism, on the other hand, would necessarily entail a noninterventionist foreign policy, plus it would free up private entrepreneurial innovation to discover and implement methods of protecting us from a nuclear attack and terrorism in general. Decentralization is the key. A big part of this would be the privatization of public -- that is, government-controlled -- property. Nothing is more poorly managed than the government's assets. I'd rather have entrepreneurs than the U.S. government looking for ways to protect us. Not only will the state bureaucracy bungle and corrupt whatever it does, it will violate our liberties in the process. (Habeas corpus is becoming a thing of the past.) It is the very antithesis of what we need now.

For our own safety it's time for free-market anarchists to assume a higher profile. (In that regard I applaud the birth of the Center for a Stateless Society.) We uniquely have the solution to the most vexing problem of the day.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006 at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 13, 2006

The Just Market

Edmund Phelps, winner of this year's Nobel Prize in economics, published an inspiring, yet frustrating article, "Dynamic Capitalism," in the Wall Street Journal the other day. (Read it here.) In the article he seeks to establish the justice of entrepreneurship -- a worthy objective indeed. He spends the first part praising entrepreneurial "capitalism" and the dynamism it produces. Dynamism, he writes, has many benefits for everyone in society. Along the way he commends F. A. Hayek for pioneering contributions to economic thought. "Friedrich Hayek, in the late 1930s and early '40s, began the modern theory of how a capitalist system, if pure enough, would possess the greatest dynamism -- not socialism and not corporatism." While this is not quite satisfying -- doesn't Hayek's mentor, Ludwig von Mises, merit a nod here? -- at least Phelps has some sense of the value of the Austrian school.

Read the rest of his week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006 at 9:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 6, 2006

History Lesson Lost

Call me nostalgic, but I still have a thing for the Articles of Confederation. Maybe it's the enticement of forbidden fruit. In the government schools I attended little if anything was said about the eight years during which the United States of America were governed under the Articles. The curriculum writers must have had a good reason for not devoting class time to that period. What didn't they want us to know?

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, October 6, 2006 at 12:45 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Libertarian Class Analysis

My article "Libertarian Class Analysis," published by The Future of Freedom Foundation, is now available online.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 1:32 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Washington Logic

Washington is a funny place, with its own unique "logic." It's a "company" town, the "company" being the federal government, the "product" being public policy. As a result, an odd sort of "thinking" is encouraged there. It's not like other places. Or it wasn't before the accelerating centralization of power in recent times.

A good example of Washington logic was featured on page one of Wednesday's Washington Post. Here is the headline:
A Quiet Break for Corporations
Tariff Suspensions, Often Initiated by Companies Based Overseas,
Keep Millions of Dollars From Flowing to the Treasury Each Year
The story explained that Congress has the power to pass three-year suspensions of tariffs on specific goods. The bills do not name the companies that would benefit from suspensions, but the Post learned that most of the lobbying is done by large foreign-based multinationals with American affiliates. As it reported, "Lawmakers usually introduce the provisions at the behest of companies in their districts. Many of those companies and their executives have given federal campaign contributions totaling millions of dollars."

Thus the newspaper presents tariff suspensions as examples of special-interest lobbying and legislation.

If you sense something screwy about this story, it's only because you are not using Washington logic.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 1:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Does the Republican Base Know About This?

From yesterday's Washington Post:

For decades, marriages between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq were as ordinary as the daily call to prayer. But the sectarian warfare gripping the country has created a powerful barrier to Sunni-Shiite romances.

Married couples have filed for divorce rather than face the scorn of their neighbors. Fiances have split up as a result of death threats. And, increasingly, young single Iraqis have concluded that it is simply easier to stick to their own kind when it comes to love and family.

In a country where intermarriage was long considered the glue that held a fragile multi-ethnic society together, the romantic segregation of Sunnis and Shiites is more than just a reflection of the ever more hate-filled chasm between the two groups. It is also a grim foreboding of the future.

See what's happening? The Bush policy in Iraq is promoting . . . same-sect marriage!

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 6:14 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Robert Higgs Wins Szasz Award

Robert Higgs, author of Crisis and Leviathan and other important books, is the 2006 winner of the Thomas Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties (general category). Higgs joins a distinguished list of winners that includes Karl Hess, Phil Zimmermann (author of Pretty Good Privacy, the encryption program for everyone), and James Bovard.

Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute; editor of its quarterly, The Independent Review; and a columnist for The Freeman.

Winner of the award in the professional category is Robert Spillane of Australia. Spillane is a psychologist who has fought against psychiatric abuses, particularly the drugging of children. He is the author of nine books.

Szasz of course is the leading defender of individual liberty against the various opppressions that fall in the category he has dubbed the Therapeutic State. (For more information, see my Szasz in One Lesson.)

No one is more deserving of this award. Congratulations, Bob!

(Full disclosure: I am a member of the awards commitee.)

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 6:12 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, September 9, 2006

Inflicting More Pain

When government began controlling narcotics nearly 90 years ago, it assured Americans it would never interfere with the practice of medicine.

Chalk up another in a long series of lies by the state. In theory government serves the people. In practice it does something else entirely.

The crusade to determine what drugs we can and cannot use, and under what conditions, couldn't help but affect medical practice. Someone who wanted a drug controlled by the state had two ways to obtain it: he could go into the black market or go to a doctor. If the drug-enforcement agencies weren’t prepared to watch the doctors, how effective could the anti-drug policy be? So as time went on, they did watch the doctors -- and prosecuted them, ruining careers and sending some to jail in the process.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, September 9, 2006 at 8:06 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Saturday, September 2, 2006

Missing the Boat -- Again

[Cross-posted at Free Association.]

The blogosphere is alive with discussion of what's been happening to compensation for regular workersw over the last few years. See the several posts and comments at Cafe Hayek. I've addressed the issue here, but I want to add some points.

Libertarians constantly miss opportunities to appeal to good-faith left-leaners who are concerned that working people get the short end of the stick. Yes, they are subject to economic fallacies that should be addressed. Yes, they may misuse or misinterpret wage and total-compensation statistics. Yes, they may fall victim to demagogues, such as Paul Krugman. Yes, people generally live far better today than they lived 20 and 30 years ago -- although we don't give enough attention to how the Fed's easy-credit policies can create illusions of prosperity or how the government has inflated the price of housing, food, medicine, education, and energy. (See Jack Douglas's article.) All those things should be explained patiently and clearly.

But I fear that we miss the forest for the trees.

Posted on Saturday, September 2, 2006 at 11:32 AM | Comments (11) | Top

Friday, September 1, 2006

Eye on the Ball

Like clockwork, the New York Times has produced another page-one story purporting to show that living standards for many Americans have fallen, this time because wages in recent years have failed to keep up with inflation. This has been happening, write Times reporters Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt, despite rising productivity and even taking into account the shift from cash to noncash benefits, such as medical insurance. Meanwhile, profits are up. In other words, workers aren't getting their fair share of economic growth.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column here.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, September 1, 2006 at 5:54 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, August 18, 2006

The Constitution Within

In recent columns I've argued that a free society depends ultimately on people having a proper sense of just conduct. This means more than the words they recite or put on paper. Most crucial is how they act and expect others to act. For this reason it is futile to put undue emphasis on written constitutions as the key to liberty. The real constitution is within -- each of us. If the freedom philosophy is not inscribed in the actions of people, no constitution will help.

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 4:35 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Middle East History

Here are links to two articles on the Israel-Arab/Palestine conflict that I wrote in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in 1991. Both are relevant today:

"US Journalists Consistently Ignore Israeli State Terrorism" and

"Who Wanted Peace? Who Wanted War? History Refutes Israel's US Image"

Posted on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 4:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Obscuring the Reasons for 9/11

From Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute:

As both the Bush administration and its client government in Israel, with their invasions of Arab states in Iraq and Lebanon respectively, make the United States ever more hated in the Islamic world, a new book by the Chairmen of the 9/11 commission admits that the commission whitewashed the root cause of the 9/11 attacks—that same interventionist U.S. foreign policy....

The book usefully details the administration’s willful misrepresentation of its incompetent actions that day, but makes the shocking admission that some commission members deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Although to his credit, [cochairman Lee] Hamilton argued for saying that al Qaeda committed the heinous strike because of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq are “dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world.”

Some [9/11] commissioners wanted to cover up the link between the 9/11 attack and U.S. support for Israel because this might imply that the United States should alter policy and lessen its support for Israeli actions. How right they were. The question is simple: If the vast bulk of Americans would be safer if U.S. politicians moderated their slavish support of Israel, designed to win the support of key pressure groups at home, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make this change in course? Average U.S. citizens might attenuate their support for Israel if the link between the 9/11 attacks and unquestioning U.S. favoritism for Israeli excesses were more widely known. Similarly, if American taxpayers knew that the expensive and unnecessary U.S. policy of intervening in the affairs of countries all over the world—including the U.S. military presence in the Middle East—made them less secure from terrorist attacks at home, pressure would likely build for an abrupt change to a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. But like the original 9/11 Commission report, President Bush regularly obscures this important reality by saying that America was attacked on 9/11 because of its freedoms, making no mention of U.S. interventionist foreign policy as the root cause.

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: Ralph Raico.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, August 8, 2006 at 5:10 PM | Comments (14) | Top

Friday, August 4, 2006

Eminent Domain and Other Corporate Welfare

Driving south on I-65 through Alabaster, Alabama, last week, I noticed a sprawling new shopping center on my left. Wal-Mart stood out prominently, but I also saw Belk and Old Navy stores. Ross and Pier One were there too. J.C. Penney and Target will open next year. This was of interest to me because people's homes once stood where those stores now stand. Most of the homeowners had no choice but to leave because the Alabaster city council used its power of eminent domain to seize their properties and transfer them to a shopping-center developer. (Two homeowners managed to beat the city.) In America, as elsewhere, government is the ultimate de facto owner of the land. The apparent owners use it at the government's pleasure, and sometimes -- alarmingly often these days -- the government decides it would rather have someone else use a particular parcel. The direction of transfers is predominantly from the working class to Big Business. Is it any wonder that people can't always see the connection between capitalism and freedom?

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, August 4, 2006 at 8:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Speaking Truth to Power

Israel has failed to understand that it cannot expel a people and call itself the victim; that it cannot conquer its neighbours and treat any and all resistance to that conquest as terrorism; that it cannot arm itself as a regional superpower and annihilate the institutional fabric of two peoples without incurring the fury of their children in the years that follow.

--Karma Nabulsi, The Guardian, August 2, 2006

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 at 6:42 PM | Comments (3) | Top

"Sorry" Doesn't Cut It

From Adam Shatz in yesterday's LA Times:

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Israel did, in fact, make the same mistake twice in Qana — or, to take another recent example, in Gaza, where a family of eight spending an afternoon on the beach was killed by an errant Israeli shell in June. If Israeli assertions are true that these killings of scores of civilians were unintentional, does that mean that Israel can claim the high ground in its battle with Hezbollah and Hamas? Is Israel's "accidental" violence against civilians somehow better, or more morally acceptable, than that of a Hamas suicide bomber who steps into a pizzeria seeking to kill civilians? Or a Hezbollah guerrilla firing a Katyusha in the direction of a Haifa residential neighborhood? In short, do Israel's declared intentions make a difference?

To the victims in Qana and Gaza, the answer to these questions is obviously no. Nor will Olmert's "condolences" be greeted with anything gentler than sarcasm in the Arab and Muslim world, particularly because Israel barely paused after Qana before resuming airstrikes against Lebanon....

When Israel targets densely populated areas in hopes of killing one or a handful of militants, knowing that it may end up killing dozens of civilians, it can hardly claim to be showing concern for humanitarian law or civilian life. And by asking that we judge it by its professed intentions, rather than by its actions, Israel is asking too much of us and far too little of itself.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, August 2, 2006 at 6:33 PM | Comments (11) | Top

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Not World War III

When a war breaks out somewhere, two sound principles for civilized people are: (1) demand an immediate ceasefire and, failing that, (2) keep the war contained--do not broaden it, do not join in.

We can gauge the civility of the Bush administration's neoconservative boosters by the fact that they reject both principles.

My op-ed "Not World War III" appears today in the Baltimore Chronicle & Herald. It was distributed by The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, July 30, 2006 at 7:52 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Another Anti-Semite Is Born

The other day on CNN I saw a woman in Tyre, Lebanon, whose apartment had fallen in on her thanks to Israeli bombers, shout, "Death to Israel. God punish Israel."

No doubt an anti-Semite, like the young men chanting the same thing as they stood amid the rubble that was once their town.

I am reminded of Karl Kraus's aphorism: "The psychiatrist unfailingly recognizes the madman by his excited behavior on being incarcerated."

Likewise, the Israel supporter unfailingly recogizes the anti-Semite by his excited behavior on having his home destroyed by the IDF.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, July 30, 2006 at 7:50 AM | Comments (11) | Top

Where Is the Constitution?

The question in the title is not like "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" The answer isn't the National Archives. I mean the real constitution -- the set of attitudes that reflect what Americans will accept as legitimate actions by the people in government. Those tacit "rules" are the real constitution, not a piece of parchment behind glass somewhere or a booklet in someone's pocket. This real constitution more or less makes the written Constitution what it is at any given time. When Peter Finley Dunne's Mr. Dooley said that "th' Supreme Court follows th' illiction returns," he was only a little off.

Read the rest of my latest TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, July 30, 2006 at 7:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, July 21, 2006

A Failure to Communicate: The Case of the Minimum Wage

Many of us have been trying to teach the public that the laws of economics operate no matter what anyone thinks of them. They grow out of the nature of human action. But the message hasn’t gotten through. Around the country people are enthusiastically voting in referendums to raise their state's minimum wage above the federal $5.15 level. Petition campaigns to put the question on state ballots never fail, says the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. As NPR's Mara Liasson reported on "Morning Edition" recently, "It's not hard to get people to sign."

What's going on?

. . . Our work is cut out for us advocates of the free market. Since the educational strategy we have pursued until now has failed with large numbers of lay people, I suggest a modified strategy: It is essential that principled opponents of the minimum wage not appear insensitive to the plight of low-income workers. Some people of course are responsible for their economic plight, but many others are put at a disadvantage by the mercantilist, mixed economy we live in. (Let's not forget, it's not laissez faire out there.)

Read of rest of my latest TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, July 21, 2006 at 6:32 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

George II and Condoleezza's Moral Depravity

Surely this is a new low for the Bush adminstration. Any decent person would demand an immediate end to the murder and mayhem now taking place in the Lebanon and Israel. But George II and his foreign minister, Condoleezza Rice, insist that the time is not right for a ceasefire. When will the time be right? Here's what Rice told a press briefing today:

We all want a cessation of violence. We all want the protection of civilians. We have to make certain that anything that we do is going to be of lasting value. . . . We have to deal with underlying conditions so that we can create sustainable conditions for political progress there.

In other words, a ceasefire will have to wait. And in still other words, men, women, and children will have to continue being blown to bits.

When Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, standing with Rice, disagreed, saying, "A ceasefire is imperative. . . . We have to bring it [the fighting] to an end as soon as possible," Rice wouldn't let that be the last word. She added,

We all agree that it should happen as soon as possible -- when conditions are conducive to do so.

Translation: The killing and maining of Lebanese and Israelis shouldn't stop until Israel is ready for it to stop.

That is moral depravity, if anything is.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 6:29 PM | Comments (29) | Top

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Invisible Line

It's comforting to hear George II urge the Israeli government to "limit" civilian casualties and damage to Lebanon's infrastucture. That rule has worked so well for us in Iraq. I wonder what the official upward limit on collateral damage is, beyond which Israel goes from self-defender to aggressor. Evidently a blockade is not over the line; nor is the bombing of civilian areas resulting in the deaths of innocents, including children. Not to worry: Bush and Rice know where the line is.

U.S. efforts to reshape the Middle East are proceeding nicely, just as many of us expected. The key to misunderstanding the region is to ignore the context, namely, the long-standing Israeli violation of the rights of Palestinians with the full backing of the U.S government. This doesn't justify indiscriminate violence, but it does shed light on much that happens there. When we abhor the continuing abominable treatment of Palestinians the way we abhor the shelling of Israelis in northern Israel, we will have made some significant progress.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 7:35 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Government the Exploiter, Not Protector

If you begin with an incorrect premise, you are bound to arrive at bad conclusions. Nowhere is this more true than in matters of government. The debates over the “war on terror,” the Iraqi occupation, and the Bush administration’s casual approach to civil liberties are premised on the idea that the primary mission of the government in Washington is to protect the American people from harm.

Wrong.

None of the governments we are familiar with was established primarily to protect the general population.

Read my latest op-ed at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 7:10 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Soaring Revenue Is Nothing to Cheer

Why cut taxes? Judging by the popping corks at the White House this week, taxes are cut to increase government revenues so the budget deficit can be shrunk without reducing government spending. Tax cuts are good, but this justification leaves me cold.

The rest of my latest TGIF column is at The Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 7:05 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, July 8, 2006

Theodore Roosevelt Is No One to Emulate

We shouldn’t be surprised that President George W. Bush’s Svengali, Karl Rove, is an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. TR is hot these days. He made the cover of Time magazine, heralding a series of hagiographic articles, including Rove’s, that make him out to be the first modern American president. In Time’s view, that means he saw the country’s potential for big intrusive government at home and abroad — the first Imperial New Dealer.

Read the rest at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, July 8, 2006 at 9:38 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, June 30, 2006

Kelo One Year Later

Last Friday was the first anniversary of a sad occasion, the day the U.S. Supreme Court said the Constitution permits the politicians who run New London, Connecticut, to throw people out of their homes so the land can become part of a ritzy private waterfront development that is expected to produce more tax revenue than the residences that stand there now. In modern America workers are expropriated for the benefit of "capitalists."

Read the rest of my TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association..

Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 at 3:28 PM | Comments (5) | Top

Friday, June 23, 2006

Is the Income Tax Unconstitutional?

Wishful thinking, always a temptation, is hazardous. Example: An awful lot of people think the income tax as it applies to private-sector wage earners is illegal -- even unconstitutional -- and they assume that if they can only come up with the right legal arguments, judges will strike down the tax and make America a free society once more. Many such people are in prison today.

It would be nice if their wish came true. But it's not going to happen, for reasons I will discuss here. This is another example of Richman's Maxim: There's no shortcut to a free society.

Read the rest of my latest TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, June 23, 2006 at 8:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Americans Should Be "Anti-American"

[W]hen [Robert] Kagan writes about anti-Americanism, he’s deliberately using an equivocal term in order to elicit unthinking, knee-jerk anti-anti-Americanism in his readers. He likes the imperial U.S. foreign policy, so when foreign people express their hated for it, Kagan and his ilk misdirect us to think the foreigners hate us as individuals. The apologists for empire count on you not to examine the matter too closely, because if you did, you might see the merit in what the foreigners are saying.

America once signified the ideals of individual freedom, peace, and nonintervention. But if, as Kagan believes, Americanism now means imperialism, then good Americans should be “anti-American” too.

Read the rest of my op-ed at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Posted on Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 5:38 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Government by Obfuscation

Back when Americans were arguing over whether they should trade the Articles of Confederation for the newly drafted Constitution, the people called Antifederalists (the real Federalists, that is) warned that a complicated centralized political structure would obscure what the government does and expose the people's liberties to usurpation. Simplicity and transparency, they said, were bulwarks of freedom.

I was reminded of that when I read this Washington Post article last Tuesday by business columnist Allan Sloan. The upshot of his column is that among people who expect to inherit property, those he calls the "small rich" would be worse off if the estate tax were repealed permanently in 2010 than if the 2009 tax rules remained in effect. The tax rules are so opaque that only someone intimately familiar with the labyrinthine code could say if any given person would benefit or suffer from the repeal of a particular tax. Here, in what Mencken called the "land of the theoretically free," this is outrageous.

See the rest of my TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, June 17, 2006 at 6:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Debate Over?

As I see it (and as others have said before), the debate over anarchism is actually over among libertarians. Anyone who does not want a single world government is an anarchist at least at the international level. He or she apparently believes that individual governments, despite having differing legal systems, can be counted on to get along most of the time without going to war with each other (a la Hobbes), trading and otherwise cooperating instead. (If they didn't believe this, they should favor world government, or -- same thing -- an American empire.) Yet that in essence is the anarchist argument; it just hasn't been extended to the individual level yet. Free-market anarchists believe that individuals, despite having differing legal systems, can be counted on to get along most of the time without going to war with each other (a la Hobbes), trading and otherwise cooperating instead.

The internationalist anarchist may respond to the individualist anarchist by saying that we can trust governments to behave more or less constructively in an anarchist setting, but we can't trust individuals to do so. This argument is precisely upside down. There is far more reason to believe that individuals, deprived of the power of taxation and the mystique of the state, would get along than that governments would. After all, governments can socialize their costs thanks to taxation, while individuals can't. That creates perverse incentives for governments.

So isn't the debate merely about which level of anarchism is appropriate, rather than the validity of the anarchist principle itself? It reminds me of the old joke in which a woman tells a man that while she would sleep with him for a million dollars, she certainly would not sleep with him for fifty. "What do you think I am?" she asks. To which he replies: "We've already established what you are, miss. Now we're only haggling over the price."

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, June 17, 2006 at 7:39 AM | Comments (14) | Top

Sunday, June 11, 2006

This Is Where We Are

Bradley R. Gitz is the William Jefferson Clinton Professor of International Politics at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas, but being a good neoconservative, pro-empire Republican, he prefers to tell his newspaper-column readers he simply "teaches politics" there. This is from his column today in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

No, the ends don't always justify the means, but the end of defeating Nazism was the kind that truly justified any means, even the incineration of hundreds of thousands of German men, women, and children. Had we incinerated 10 times more than we did, the moral assessment would remain the same because to have run even the slightest risk of losing the war to a creature like Hitler out of moral squeamishness would have been to commit a vastly greater moral offense than perhaps any other in history.

Thus, in the end, it doesn'’t ultimately matter whether the brutality of the area-bombing campaign can or cannot be retrospectively justified by its military utility. All that should signify is that British leaders believed it was at the time, and they were the ones making those difficult decisions under circumstances forced upon them.

This horrifying quotation comes in the course condemning as the "worst book of the year" A. C. Grayling's Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan.

How nauseating, and how typical of the blood-thirsty imperialist neocon, for outrage at the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to be branded "moral squeamishness." This follows from Gitz's deep-seated faith that if the U.S. government, or one of its allies, commits an atrocity, it must really have been necessary and therefore morally unblemished. No need, in this view, to examine matters too closely. Gitz may fancy himself a historian, but he is surely no historian in the tradition of Lord Acton. Murray Rothbard reminded us,

As Lord Acton, the great libertarian historian, put it, the historian, in the last analysis, must be a moral judge. The muse of the historian, he wrote, is not Clio, but Rhadamanthus, the legendary avenger of innocent blood.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, June 11, 2006 at 8:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Whose Money Is It?

A bid to permanently repeal the federal estate, or inheritance, tax lost to a Senate filibuster Thursday. A compromise that would tax inheritances at a lower rate than previously is still possible, however. The tax has been in phase-out mode since 2001 and on its current course would disappear in 2010, only to reappear the following year. (Think of the incentives that creates.) The possibility of repeal had Big Government folks (the Bee Gees) beside themselves because it would "cost," that is, deny the social engineers, $600 billion over ten years starting in 2011. . . .That people actually own the money they make, and have the right to distribute it to their heirs, is conveniently ignored by tax defenders.

See the rest of my column here at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, June 10, 2006 at 11:34 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Iraq Death by Political Abstraction

Try as they might, apologists for the war in Iraq won’t be convincing when they insist that, at worst, the Haditha “incident” (or was it a mishap?) was the unfortunate work of a few bad Marines. It was something much worse.

When men trained to kill on a battlefield — this wasn’t the Salvation Army, after all — are ordered into civilian areas where many residents see the troops as an occupying force rather than as liberators, what would you expect to happen? We hear war defenders complain that “the enemy” doesn’t identify itself. Why should it? In the eyes of the “insurgents” they are resisting an army of occupation. That Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn’t foresee this resistance doesn’t mean it was unforeseeable.

So who is ultimately responsible for the massacre of the 24 unarmed Iraqis at Haditha? The one who put the Marines there: President George W. Bush.

Read the rest of my op-ed at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, June 6, 2006 at 6:07 PM | Comments (6) | Top

Friday, June 2, 2006

The Governmental Habit

In 1977 the late economic historian Jonathan R. T. Hughes published a book called The Governmental Habit (updated in 1991 as The Governmental Habit Redux). It showed how pervasive government intervention in the economy has been since colonial times. The title captures an important phenomenon. People are in the habit of looking to government -- the only agency that may legally wield or threaten force against non-aggressors -- to get what they want. While earlier generations of Americans were hesitant to ask the local, state, or national government to do certain things (although perhaps not as hesitant as we thought), few modern Americans have any such scruples.

Americans of all classes expect the government (translation: taxpayers) to pick up the tab for services, and the politicians and bureaucrats to compel others to do things they don't want to. Someone must be buying Matthew Lesko's books or he wouldn't keep paying for those irritating television commercials.

People even want the government to do things that are outright dumb, such as compel us to conserve energy.

Read the full article at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, June 2, 2006 at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, May 26, 2006

Natural, Not National Rights

Somewhere in my reading about immigration, someone made the deceptively simple point that it's not immigration we should be talking about but migration. That's another way of saying the focus has been on "us," when it should be on the people coming to the United States. The discussion has proceeded as if they have no rights in the matter but we do. We will let them come here if and only if we have a use for them. And "we" doesn't refer to a group of free individuals, but rather to a collective Borg-like entity with rights superior to any held by its constituents. The collectivist, and therefore statist, nature of the discussion indicates how far we've drifted from our individualist and voluntarist moorings.

Read the rest of my article at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, May 26, 2006 at 9:41 AM | Comments (10) | Top

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Republic versus Empire

Here is my favorite single line on how empire changes the domestic population:

[T]he difference between republic and empire might be restated as the difference between taking the girl next door to the Sadie Hawkins Dance and paying a Saigon whore in chocolate bars and the Yankee dollar.

It's from Bill Kauffman's "My America vs. the Empire."

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Another Psychiatric Political Prisoner

Anyone who values liberty should read about this travesty of justice over at Rad Geek People's Daily. Here's a taste:

Cleveland antiwar activist Carol Fischer is being held incommunicado in the psychiatric [section] of the Cuyahoga County jail in on the orders of Judge Timothy McGinty. Fischer, who at 53 years old stands 5'4" and weighs 130 pounds, was convicted of a "felonious assault" she allegedly committed against two Cleveland Heights police officers last year. The cops claim that Fischer bit and tried to hit them when they arrested her for posting "Bush Step Down" posters in violation of the city sign ordinance.

Locking up political dissidents in psychiatric wards is what they used to do in the Soviet Union. Free Carol!

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Nothing Unlawful

George II defended whatever eavesdropping he might be doing (he wouldn't say), by stating: "The intelligence activities I authorized are lawful."

In other words, in his view, "no controlling legal authority" has said otherwise. (Of course, he doesn't recognize that the courts have any role in overseeing his Unitary Executive.)

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 11:47 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Rush to Fallacy

Rush "Jail All Drug Users But Me" Limbaugh did it again the other day. His Blowhardedness, ever striving to be George II's No. 1 brownnoser, condemned the Democratic critics of the NSA's mass collection of our telephone records and showed he is either a demagogue or is actually unable to tell a sound argument from a fallacy. (I guess he could be both.) Here's his standard pitch: The Democrats oppose something George II's men are doing even though they have done or approved of the same thing in the past. Therefore their criticism is baseless.

Wrong. Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate a criticism; it just undermines the standing of the person making it. If Democrats condemn something the Bush administration does that they praised when Clinton did it, that's hypocrisy. But it doesn't mean the Bush administration is right to do it. It may mean Clinton was wrong to do it. What about princpled critics who condemn both administrations for their misconduct? Doesn't Limbaugh have to concede that criticism from a principled person is valid? That sounds like relativism to me: For Limbaugh, an argument is valid or invalid depending on who makes it.

Limbaugh has used this bogus line of attack many times. He once introduced something of a twist to the argument. When he got caught using more painkillers than the state's attorney thought he should be using, Drug Warrior Limbaugh said he wasn't a hypocrite because his prohibitionist stance is still valid. If you spend too much time trying to make sense of that, you'll give yourself a headache.

What should we expect? Intelligent discourse? The Doctor of Democracy heads the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies for gosh sakes. (Remember when conservatives said, "This is a republic not a democracy?")

In his contortions to defend the NSA, he said that to be consistent, critics should demand that the agency get a warrant before looking in the telephone book, which contains all our phone numbers. Yep, that sounds like advanced conservative thinking to me.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 11:43 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, May 12, 2006

Hillary versus McCain? I'll Take Hillary

George Will reported yesterday that Sen. John McCain, a presidential aspirant, recently told radio guy Don Imus:

I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government.

In other words, his conception of "clean" government takes precedence over free political speech. As Will asks, if McCain ever takes the oath to defend the Constitution, "what would he mean?" It is amazing that McCain is seen as a refreshing political personality. He's as reactionary and as power-lusting as they get. (And a sanctimonious warmonger to boot.) Will correctly notes that people like McCain, obsessed with campaign finance, hold two propositions at the same time:

Proof that incumbent politicians are highly susceptible to corruption is the fact that the government they control is shot through with it. Yet that government should be regarded as a disinterested arbiter, untainted by politics and therefore qualified to regulate the content, quantity and timing of speech in campaigns that determine who controls the government. In the language of McCain's Imus appearance, the government is very much not "clean," but it is so clean it can be trusted to regulate speech about itself.

If in 2008 it's Hillary versus McCain, I'm for Hillary, for two reasons: It'll keep McCain out of office, and the congressional Republicans will act more like an opposition party. Yeah, anybody but McCain.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, May 12, 2006 at 6:27 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Galbraith, Again

It occurred to me that I was too easy on the recently late John Kenneth Galbraith the other day. In the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, David Henderson reminded us:

He was also Kennedy's ambassador to India in the early 1960s. While there, Galbraith gave a series of speeches on economic development in which he hailed the role of government planning as opposed to economic freedom. In one speech, Galbraith stated, "The market cannot reach forward to take great strides when these are called for. . . . To trust to the market is to take an unacceptable risk that nothing, or too little, will happen." As is well known, the Indian government did not take the "risk" of relying on the market but, instead, stuck with its system of detailed controls over every industry. As is also well known, nothing, or too little, happened. India was mired in poverty which only began to lift after some decontrol started in 1991.

Where Galbraith says "the market" substitute "the ingenuity of free individuals." So, Galbraith is one of the people responsible for untold death, starvation, and misery -- and not just in India. Not bad for an arrogant elitist (and a collectivist moralizer masquerading as an economic "scientist") who probably never got his hands dirty.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 6:35 PM | Comments (6) | Top

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

The Frightening Unitary Executive Doctrine

George II and his people have made frightening claims about the scope of the allegedly inherent and implied powers of the presidency. Under this doctrine, a president may do anything in the name of fighting a war. Since in the administration's view the current and implicitly permanent "war on terror" includes the U.S. in the battlefield, the president can pretty much ignore the Bill of Rights even for citizens. Bye-bye Fourth Amendment protections. See ya, habeas corpus. Laws and treaties, forbidding torture, for example, can be ignored. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Posted on Tuesday, May 2, 2006 at 7:08 AM | Comments (2) | Top

John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith died at age 97 over the weekend. The nicest thing I can say about him is that he spent his long career trying to subjugate the individual to an all-powerful state administered by him and people like him. His answer to concentrated corporate power was concentrated political power, which is the source of corporate power in the first place.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, May 2, 2006 at 6:17 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Sunday, April 30, 2006

My President Invaded Iraq and I Didn't Even Get Any Oil to Show for It

From the Associated Press:

With the global economy carrying the weight of $70-a-barrel oil, dismay among many economists is focusing on Iraq, whose exports have slipped to their lowest levels since the 2003 invasion.

Iraq, a founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, sits atop the world’s third-highest proven reserves. The estimated 115 billion barrels under Iraqi soil is more than any known reserve of any other OPEC member except Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But contrary to optimistic prewar expectations, Iraq’s oil production has slipped since the U.S.-led invasion, to an average of 2 million barrels a day. Iraq has never regained even the reduced production levels that prevailed in the 1990s, when Iraq lived under U.N. sanctions.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, April 30, 2006 at 9:12 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Thursday, April 27, 2006

The Price of Empire

Empire — sorry, benevolent hegemony — has its price. Terrorism is one. Every empire in history probably had terrorism directed at it, because it’s one of the few weapons available to relatively weak nonstate adversaries. Another, less dramatic price is the determination of other countries’ rulers to go their separate ways. This can range from major moves to establish spheres of influence to sticking a thumb in the empire’s eye.

In the latter category comes word that the likely president of Peru, Ollanta Humala, has promised to end the U.S.-financed program to destroy the coca crop in his country. Coca is used to make cocaine, but also tea and herbal medicines. There’s only one proper response to Humala: Good for him!

Read the rest at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 7:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 24, 2006

Against Monopoly -- New Blog

A new blog devoted to the case against "intellectual monopoly" (a.k.a. intellectual property) is now in operation. Against Monopoly is a group blog that includes, among others, David K. Levine and Michele Boldrin, authors of the forthcoming book Against Intellectual Monopoly (see draft here), William Stepp, and me. See you there!

Posted on Monday, April 24, 2006 at 7:51 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 21, 2006

Corporate State or Laissez Faire?

This picks up on a running theme of Kevin Carson's: Vulgar Libertarianism. We free-market folks can sometimes be confusing to the rest of the world. One moment we complain (properly) about all the deep-seated government intervention, but the next moment we act like we live under laissez faire. Almost in knee-jerk fashion we scoff at reports that income is not growing at all levels, or that income mobility is not what it ought to be, or that CEO pay, severance deals, or retirement packages are ominously high. But if we really live in such an interventionist economy, then shouldn't we expect some undesirable consequences to show up in the data? E.g., if the market for corporate management -- i.e., the hostile takeover -- is stifled by protectionist intervention, as Henry Manne shows, then can't we conclude that CEO compensation might be higher than it would be in a free market? There might be some measure of freedom inside the corral, but let's not forget that there's a corral! In this connection, I refer readers to my latest column in The Freeman: "Full Context" (pdf).

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 at 8:11 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Thursday, April 20, 2006

It's Not Easy Being a Benevolent Hegemon

In an editorial about China today the Wall Street Journal says, "Managing the rise of any great power is an enormous foreign policy challenge that can easily go awry, as the world learned with Germany and Japan."

I tell ya, a world policeman's work is never done. You have to change regimes, watch out for weapons of mass destruction (while developing one's own killer "conventional" weapons), and manage the rise of great powers (so that they don't actually compete with you where it matters). That's a full plate by any standard. No doubt the busy president feels harried by all the criticism. Everyone's a critic.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

What Do You Mean "We"?

To say the least, there is tension between the ideas that we live in a free society and that government may determine whom we may sell to, rent to, and hire. This is the real heart of the immigration debate. Who should decide such things, free individuals or the state?

This question is obscured by the democratic myth. People often say, “We as a nation have the right to decide who comes here and who doesn’t. So we must get control of our borders.” The problem with this is that “we as a nation” don’t do anything. Individuals act, sometimes in concert with other individuals, but collectives do nothing. When we say “the nation does such and such,” we mean a group of politicians calling themselves “the government” and claiming to act for the nation do such and such. It’s true that in a society such as ours people vote for officeholders. But the connection between punching out a chad in a polling station and politicians’ making immigration policy is, shall we say, roundabout. It is so roundabout that it makes no sense at all to say that punching out a chad is the same as determining immigration policy. That’s a fairy tale. It’s time we became men and women and put away childish things.

The rest of my op-ed, "What Do You Mean 'We'?," is here at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at 6:11 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

U.S. Holds Acknowledged Noncombatants at Gitmo

Here's a story to raise your blood pressure. From the Christian Science Monitor:

Compared with most other detainees at the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Abu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdu al-Hakim have a strong argument for why they should be immediately released from the terrorism prison camp. According to the United States military, they are neither terrorists nor "enemy combatants."

So why are they being held at the camp nearly a year after a military panel ruled that they pose no threat to the US? They have no place else to go. Their appeal for freedom suffered a setback Monday.

The US government says that if the two men are sent home to the semi-autonomous western region of China they might face human rights abuses, and even torture, at the hands of Chinese authorities. Both men are members of the Uighur minority religious and ethnic group which has been the target of a Chinese government crackdown in recent years. They were captured after being trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

No other country has been willing to take them. And the Bush administration refuses to allow them to enter the US, even temporarily, out of fear of establishing a legal precedent that might be used by lawyers for other Guantánamo detainees.

On Monday, the US Supreme Court declined to take up the case. Instead, the matter will be argued on May 8 before a federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C. At issue is what power, if any, federal judges have in the matter.... [Emphasis added.]

A federal judge says the men are being held illegaly, but he also says he can't do anything about it. So the Bush administration is imprisoning people it concedes are not terrorists, or combatants, or even criminals. In other words, we know who the real criminals are.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, April 18, 2006 at 8:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Eradicating Crops: Who Do They Think They Are?

The news has me fuming today.

The Washington Post reports that the likely next president of Peru, Ollanta Humala, has promised to end the U.S.-financed program to eradicate the coca crop in that country. That's not what makes me mad. It's the program that does that. I can hardly imagine anything more arrogant and presumptuous than for a government to destroy crops in another country because that government doesn't want "its" people to have access to them. Nor can I imagine a program better suited to create hatred for Americans. And we wonder why figures like Chavez get into power. Are the people in Washington crazy? No, of course not. Somehow this fits their agenda of "benevolent hegemony." But it makes farmers in the Andes hate us and creates sympathy for Marxist guerrillas and terrorists. This is how our government protects us. What a joke.

Posted on Tuesday, April 18, 2006 at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 17, 2006

Patents and Other Privileges

The New York Times had an enlightening story yesterday on the background to the BlackBerry patent miscarriage of justice. It turns out that a computer pioneer and entrepreneur who hates the idea of patents wrote about wireless e-mail a decade before the idea was patented, and this fact was overlooked or withheld when Thomas Campana patented the idea and when Campana's patent-holding company, NTP, sued Research in Motion (BlackBerry's maker) for patent infringement. In fact, NTP's lawyers consulted with Geoff Goodfellow in order to "neutralize" him in their suit against R.I.M. Goodfellow says he made it clear to the lawyers that he had published his idea about wireless e-mail long before any patents were issued, but the lawyers now play innocent. Goodfellow remembers one of the lawyers introducing him to someone by saying, "Geoff's the inventor of wireless e-mail." The lawyer disputes this. But according to the Times: "At one meeting in Washington, when Mr. Goodfellow described his technology at a white board in a conference room, [NTP lawyer] Mr. Wallace insisted that the other lawyers not take handwritten notes for fear of leaving a paper trail, Mr. Goodfellow says."

All this is revealing because it casts doubt on whether Campana, who died a few years ago, ever should have gotten his patents even under existing law. It used to be harder to patent ideas that were "in the air." Campana's patents have been premilinarily invalidated by the U.S. Patent Office. Nevertheless, R.I.M entered into a $612.5 million settlement with NTP rather than risk being closed down by a judge's injunction.

The story demonstrates the problems with patents per se. Given the nature of ideas, when the state gets into the business of granting property rights in them, there is bound to be trouble. The story also shows that within the hardcore computer community there is an aversion to patents. Goodfellow says, "You don't patent the obvious. The way you compete is to build something that is faster, better, cheaper. You don't lock your ideas up in a patent and rest on your laurels."

Hat tip: William Stepp.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, April 17, 2006 at 8:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Good Quote

Browsing Chomsky on Anarchism at Barnes & Noble today, I came across this quotation from Daniel Bell:

It has been war rather than peace that has been largely responsible for the acceptance of planning and technocratic modes in government.

Conservatives who sincerely dislike big government might think about that one.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 at 6:03 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Friday, April 14, 2006

Gotta Love 'Em

I love those conservatives and Republicans who say that the key to ending the illegal immigration "problem" is to crack down on the employers who hire the "aliens." Whatever happened to free enterprise? It's okay as long as businesses hire the right people.

But the illegals broke the law, they say. There's no duty to obey an unjust law. I thought that was established long ago.

Posted on Friday, April 14, 2006 at 4:48 PM | Comments (3) | Top

"Failure to File" Says It All

“Willful failure to file a tax return is a misdemeanor per IRC Section 7203. In egregious cases, willful failure to file may be elevated to a felony under IRC 7201 Tax Evasion. In addition, a civil penalty for fraudulent failure to file may be applicable per IRC Section 6651(f).”

That passage in the Internal Revenue Manual, Part 25 (Special Topics), Chapter 1 (Fraud Handbook), Section 7 (Failure to File) is enough to sober up a drunk. (See it for yourself at the IRS website.) All who buy the fable that what we labor under today is self-government should meditate on that quotation. You must account for yourself to the government each year. If you don’t, you’ll be visiting a federal penitentiary.

Read the rest of my op-ed at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, April 14, 2006 at 4:48 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, April 7, 2006

More Campaign-Finance Reform

I see that the Republicans in the House stuck it to the Democrats by passing a new campaign-finance reform bill to limit contributions to nonprofit organizations (so-called 527s) such as America Coming Together, which worked so hard for Kerry in 2004. I guess this is the Get-Soros legislation. It's good to see the GOP standing up for free speech and limited government. How can limits on people's political spending possibly be justified?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, April 7, 2006 at 6:54 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Thursday, April 6, 2006

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Policy in the Middle East

Anyone interested in the Middle East -- or just peace, for that matter -- should read John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's excellent article in the London Review of Books, "The Israel Lobby." (The full unedited article with footnotes is here.) While it contains little that is not already on the record somewhere and nothing that would even raise an eyebrow in Israel, it has the merit of laying out the tremendous influence American partisans of Israel have over policymakers in Washington. I have been studying the Middle East, and in particular the Israel-Palestine dispute, for a long time, and I can highly recommend this article.

Predictably, the authors, a political science professor at the University of Chicago and an international affairs professor at the Kennedy School, Harvard, have been accused openly or subtly of anti-Semitism. Even Christopher Hitchens, who himself has been the victim of this calumny for his previous writings on Israel-Palestine, has joined the attempt to smear these men. It is truly shameful. But it demonstrates what the authors have tried to show: that the relationship between the U.S. government and the Israeli government is unique in a very bad sense. If you oppose the alliance with South Korea, no one will accuse you of hating Koreans. If you oppose the alliance with Israel, it will be suggested that you side with David Duke, if not Adolf Hitler. (If the critic happens to be Jewish, he will be psychoanalyzed.)

Anyone who engages in this illegitimate and disgusting tactic should be ignored. Having drawn a line between himself and civil discourse, he deserves no reply.

Read the article, for your own sake.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, April 6, 2006 at 9:20 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Monday, April 3, 2006

Not a War, But An Imperial Venture

President Bush, sticking to a script like a five-year-old clinging to a security blanket, insists that the United States can bring democracy to Iraq and other Middle East countries at the point of an American bayonet. So convinced is he of that, he has made death America’s best-known export.

Not everyone is convinced, however. A refreshing dissent was voiced during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit to the United Kingdom. There Douglas Hurd, Margaret Thatcher’s former foreign secretary, said what has long needed to be said: “It is quite possible to believe ... that essentially the path [to democracy] must grow from the roots of its own society and that the killing of thousands of people, many of them innocent, is unacceptable, whether committed by a domestic tyrant or for a good cause upon being invaded.”

The rest of my op-ed is here at The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Also, don't miss my analysis of Bush's promise to send Americans to defend Israel here.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 at 6:24 PM | Comments (19) | Top

The Wisdom of Richard Cobden

Some choice quotations from the great peace and free-trade activist who remains relevant today:

The middle and industrious classes of England can have no interest apart from the preservation of peace. The honours, the fame, the emoluments of war belong not to them; the battle-plain is the harvest-field of the aristocracy, watered with the blood of the people.

The peace party . . . will never rouse the conscience of the people so long as they allow them to induldge the comforting delusion that they have been a peace-loving people. We have been the most combative and aggressive community that has existed since the days of Roman dominion.

Hat tip: Ralph Raico (pdf).

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 at 6:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Rice on the Value of Democracy

Over in England Secrerary of State Condoleezza Rice has been met with antiwar demonstrations at each stop. This prompted her to say, "To a certain extent, the protesters make my point, that democracy is the only system where people's voices can be heard and heard peacefully and then safely ignored."

Okay, I made that last part up. But I bet that's what she was thinking.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 at 6:14 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 11, 2006

The New Mercantilism

Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine's book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, is still in the draft stage, but it has the potential to be highly influential. These two self-described "conservative economists" believe in property rights, but blast "intellectual property" right out of the water. Neither the moral nor the utilitarian case survive. The historical insights are priceless in showing that patents and copyrights are not necessary for innovation and creativity. Quite the contrary.

Chapter one contains a particularly important point, namely, that globalization as it is today being implemented, rather than meaning real free trade, is a device to impose American patents and copyrights on the developing world. Given the expansiveness of IP protectionism today, this means that the developing world will have scant opportunity to progress economically without paying tribute to American firms for ideas, something which cannot be owned. The parallel with mercantilism is inescapable. They write:

Now that the intellectual and political battle over free trade of physical goods seems won, and an increasing number of less advanced countries are joining the progressive ranks of free-trading nations, pressure for making intellectual property protection stronger is mounting in those very same countries that advocate free trade. This is not a coincidence.

Most physical goods already are and, in the decades to come, will increasingly be, produced in the less developed countries. Most innovations and creations are taking place in the advanced world, and the IT and bio-engineering revolutions suggest this will continue for a while at least. It is not surprising then, that a new version of the eternal parasite of economic progress -- mercantilism -- is emerging in the rich countries of North America, Europe and Asia....

The contemporary variation of this economic pest is one in which our collective interest is best served if we buy goods cheap and sell ideas dear. In the mind of those preaching this new version of the mercantilist credo, the World Trade Organization should enforce as much free trade as possible, so we can buy "their" products at a low price. It should also protect our "intellectual property" as much as possible, so we can sell "our" movies, software, and medicines at a high price.

They go on to say that just as the anti-free-trade fallacies had to be smashed to defeat the original mercantilism, now the IP fallacies have to be smashed to defeat the new mercantilism. "Our goal here is to demolish that glass house."

"Globalization" based on U.S.-led IP protectionism and the heavy-handed corporate state is not worth fighting for. It is rank injustice. But globalization based on real free trade is worth fighting for. As long as the first prevails, the anti-free-trade anti-globalists will have the moral high ground. But that high ground rightfully belongs to the voluntarists. Let's make sure we occupy it.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, March 11, 2006 at 8:01 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Anti-Patents Op-Ed Published

My op-ed, "RIM Was Wronged," appears today in the Chicago Sun-Times. It was distributed by The Future of Freedom Founation.

I should put on the record that there are no heroes in this story. Research in Motion Ltd, the BlackBerry company, has "defended" its own patents in the past and says it will continue to do so.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, March 11, 2006 at 7:59 AM | Comments (6) | Top

Saturday, March 4, 2006

BlackBerry Case: Property Rights? Balderdash!

As if we needed a demonstration of the injustice of patents, RIM finally settled the patent-infringement suit against it by agreeing to surrender $612.5 million to NTP. BlackBerry will continue. But make no mistake about it: this is legal extortion.

NTP is a patent-holding company. It doesn't make things. Instead, it monopolizes ideas and sues others for infringing on its state-granted privileges. Here's how the Wall Street Journal describes the background of the case:

NTP was co-founded in 1992 by former patent examiner Don Stout and the late inventor Thomas Campana, who worked on ways to send emails wirelessly. In 2001, NTP sued RIM saying it held patents covering the "push" aspect of wireless email.

RIM wasn't accused of breaking into NTP's office and stealing something. It was accused simply of implementing an idea that Campana had "worked on" and had registered with the state.

This is (intellectual) property and protection of property rights? Balderdash! It is a license to extort. As the Washington Post reports: "Intellectual property attorney Donald R. Steinberg said the size of the settlement might spur more lawsuits from patent-holding companies, but that in most cases, a settlement is often desirable because it limits risk on all sides." What risk does the suit-filing patent-holder take? That his extortion might not succeed? This is "entrepreneurship in the Corporate State.

What great products aren't we seeing because of this corrupt system?

Patents are a key form of state-privilege by which people get rich at the expense of others. The patent system would have no place in a real free market. It is said that patents are needed to encourage innovation, but now the truth is clear for all to see. Patents suppress innovation. The notion of intellectual property rights has no justification. It fails both the natural-rights and "utilitarian" test. As Thomas Jefferson recognized long ago, ideas, lacking finitude, are not the kind of "things" to which the principles of property can be applied:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, March 4, 2006 at 1:38 PM | Comments (30) | Top

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Silver Lining?

Whatever one thinks of Dubai Ports World acquiring leases to manage terminals at U.S. ports, there is one bright spot: People don't believe George II. He's basically asked for trust in his judgment on the deal, but today's New York Times shows he's not getting it: "Seventy percent, including 58 percent of Republicans, said Dubai Ports World, a company controlled by the emir of Dubai, should not be permitted to operate at United States ports, while 21 percent supported the arrangement." Bush's job-approval rating has fallen to 34 percent, and the percentage saying Iraq is going badly has increased from 54 to 62. Given a world of government-owned ports and government-owned companies, I don't see a problem with DP World's acquiring the leases. But it's nice to see the people expressing their distrust for a president who has systematically misled them.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 6:22 PM | Comments (11) | Top

Friday, February 10, 2006

Pork Fat Rules

Steven Malloy, debunker of junk science, has the details on the latest major study to demolish the myth that dietary fat and cholesterol are bad for you. The article is here. The study involved nearly 50,000 women. According to Malloy:

The most significant result of the $415 million study is that low-fat diets don’t reduce heart disease risk. As the researchers put it, “Over [an average] of 8.1 years, a dietary intervention that reduced total fat intake and increased intake of vegetables, fruits and grains did not significantly reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women and achieved only modest effects on cardiovascular risk factors. . . .”

Low-fat diets didn’t even improve heart health among the population of women who had heart disease at the beginning of the study. In fact, the low-fat diet regimen was associated with a slightly increased risk of heart disease among these women.

These results are quite a blow to the Diet-Government Complex, that constellation of pharmaceutical companies, food processors, and government bureaucrats that have been pushing low-fat, high-carb diets on us for years. This has been a thoroughly politicized process from the start. (See this New York Times Magazine article, "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?") As Malloy points out, the other major studies have consistently failed to support the fat-cholesterol-heart-disease hypothesis, but the results were always spun to distract attention from the facts. And the news media has always been too willing to merely reprint the press releases.

For the scoop on such things, visit the website of The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics . I'd also recommend Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's book, The Cholesterol Myths.

Somewhere up there, Dr. Atkins is smiling.

As Emeril Lagasse says, "Pork fat rules!"

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, February 10, 2006 at 7:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

The Tariff Is the Mother of the Trusts . . . and of War and Imperialism

On this date in 1883 Joseph A. Schumpeter was born in Trest (Czech Republic) in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Posted on Wednesday, February 8, 2006 at 8:25 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Where Are the Isolationists?

President Bush’s State of the Union address was one odd speech indeed. Besides his silly statement about our being “addicted to oil” and his messianic declarations in response to the “call of history,” he referred to isolationism four different times. Who favors isolationism?

The rest of my latest op-ed, "Where Are the Isolationists?," is here at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 7:57 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Monday, February 6, 2006

Render Unto Caesar

Since this was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's day at the Senate to defend George II's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, I thought it might be instructive to revisit his previous attempt at defending the indefensible. Remember the rendition controversy? That's the administration's policy of sending suspected terrorists (or so they say; there have been "errors") to countries (e.g., Egypt and Syria) with governments not reluctant to inflict a little pain during interrogation. When the press got wind of this, the administration was, shall we say, embarrassed. In an interview almost a year ago Gonzales said, "Our policy is not to render people to countries where we believe or we know that they're going to be tortured." But he added, "We can't fully control what that country might do. We obviously expect a country to whom we have rendered a detainee to comply with their representation to us. If you're asking me, 'Does a country always comply?' I don't have an answer to that."

Remember the doubletalk when you read his defense of eavesdropping on Americans.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, February 6, 2006 at 7:24 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Sunday, February 5, 2006

Penn Jillette: Anarchocapitalist?

Penn Jillette, the talkative half of the magic-comedy team Penn and Teller, is the subject of this article on Slate.com. Here's how he describes his late-night bull sessions with friend Paul Provenza, with whom he collaborated on the documentary The Aristocrats (which is about humor, not libertarianism): "We talk an awful lot about whether you have to stop at libertarianism or go onto to anarchocapitalism."

Hat tip: Jude Blanchette.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, February 5, 2006 at 12:44 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Islamo-Fascism and U.S. Intervention

David M. Brown at Blogcritics.org writes, "Whatever the full explanation may be, anyone who reads these stories and continues to claim that murderous Islamo-fascist antipathy toward the West and America is all or mostly about foreign policy, and would evaporate if only the governments of the West never acted militarily overseas, is not being altogether honest."

Impugning the honesty of those of us who see U.S. foreign policy as the chief instigator of Islamic violence against the West doesn't seem the best way to launch a debate salvo. But there you are. Brown contends that threats across the Middle East and Europe against the countries in which newspapers have published negative cartoons about Muhammad prove that the problem is Islamo-fascist culture, not merely Western intervention in the Middle East for the past 50 years.

"So, it's all about foreign policy? Tell it to the recipients of the latest Islamo-fascist death threats," Brown writes

A few points. Threatening violence against cartoonists, newspapers, and whole populations is monstrous, entitling potential victims to be on heightened guard against efforts to carry out such threats. Religious people who were really confident about their beliefs wouldn't react that way to satire. Why is it not enough to believe that their just god personally will inflict divine retribution in the afterlife, if not sooner? I guess that's why they call it "faith."

But Brown has not proved his point. This inexcusable response to the cartooning comes against a backdrop of decades of war, bombings that killed innocents, and intervention at times openly on behalf of tyranny. Wars currently rage in two Muslim countries, and threats loom against others. Can we really be so sure that in fact it's not largely about foreign policy? It would be naïve to suggest that ending intervention in the Middle East would overnight bring the evaporation of anti-Western violence. Geniis are not returned to bottles so easily. But that does not mean that Western intervention has not been the chief factor in the origin of that violence.

Maybe Brown's right. But he'll have to do more to demonstrate it.

Hat tip: Kn@ppster.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, February 5, 2006 at 10:36 AM | Comments (9) | Top

Friday, February 3, 2006

This Is the Limited-Government Position

George II speaking at a 3M plant in Minnesota yesterday:

I think the role of government is to shape the future, not fear the future.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, February 3, 2006 at 6:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 2, 2006

Bush's Confession

Did anyone notice that George II admitted that his Middle East policy will fail? It was right there near the beginning of his State of the Union address, when he said, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." He then promised to lay thick subsidies on corporations so they can find us alternatives to iffy oil.

But isn't his policy of shock, awe, and regime change supposed to bring all things wondrous – including stability – to the oil states? Did he let something slip here? Maybe the Hamas electoral victory had an effect on him.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, February 2, 2006 at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

A Very Scary Speech

Some reactions to George II's State of the Union address:
He still can't say nu-cle-ar.

Posted on Wednesday, February 1, 2006 at 7:10 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Perpetuating War by Exalting Its Sacrifices

For the first time in ages I watched the 1964 movie The Americanization of Emily, directed by Arthur Hiller, with screenplay by the great Paddy Chayefsky (available from Netflix). I won't go into the details of this antiwar romance set during World War II, just before D-Day. For that, click here to read Rick Gee's excellent run-down.

All I'll do is quote the lead character Charlie Madison's (James Garner) perceptive speech to his English girlfriend's (Julie Andrews) mother, who has lost her husband, son, and son-in-law in the war:

I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it's always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades . . . we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows' weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, January 31, 2006 at 8:45 AM | Comments (6) | Top

Friday, January 27, 2006

Is Ayn Rand Spinning in Her Grave Yet?

Ayn Rand had a pretty good handle on the mixed-economy, i.e., the corporate state (notwithstanding "Big Business: America's Persecuted Minority"), and its relation to war. (See Chris Matthew Sciabarra's classic article, "Understanding the Global Crisis: Reclaiming Rand's Radical Legacy" pdf.) So how curious that her favorite philosopher, Leonard Peikoff, and the institute he founded in her name support a foreign policy of intervention, war, and, perforce, mass murder (see the press releases and such at ARI), and her favorite economist, Alan Greenspan, became the world's chief central planner of money and banking. (He retires next week.)

Greenspan's economic philosophy was on horrifying display the other day when he urged Congress to close an exemption in the banking regulations that enables Wal-Mart to form an industrial loan company (ILC), a type of bank that could process credit- and debit-card transactions in its stores. Here's what Greenspan had to say, according to the Associated Press:

The character, powers and ownership of ILCs have changed materially since Congress first enacted the ILC exemption. These changes are undermining the prudential framework that Congress has carefully crafted and developed for the corporate owners of other full-service banks.

Importantly, these changes also threaten to remove Congress' ability to determine the direction of our nation's financial system with regard to the mixing of banking and commerce and the appropriate framework of prudential supervision. [Emphasis added.]

Is he kidding? Congress has "carefully crafted and developed" a "prudential framework" for the banking industry? And if we aren't careful we might harm Congress's "ability to determine the direction" of the financial system? Could it escape anyone's notice that here Greenspan reveals himself as favoring central planning on behalf of "the corporate owners of other full-service banks"?

Boy, with advocates of laissez faire like this, who needs fascists?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, January 27, 2006 at 6:12 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Eminent-Domain Watch

From the Institute for Justice: "BB&T, the nation’s ninth largest financial holdings company with $109.2 billion in assets, announced today that it 'will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain.'" (News release here.)

Hear, hear!

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2006 at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tautology

It's now being said that the guy who went bananas on a taxiing airliner, charged the flight-deck door, bit a passenger in a scuffle, and then jumped off the plane was mentally ill. Translation: the man acted unpredictably and inappropriately because he is the kind of man who acts unpredictably and inappropriately. Thanks. Now we understand.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2006 at 8:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Global What?

"Vienna’s subway tracks cracked, German authorities shut a key canal to ships after it iced up, and a zoo moved its penguins indoors Tuesday as a deadly deep freeze tightened its grip on much of Europe.

"Blamed for more than 50 deaths in Russia, the cold wave claimed at least 13 lives in the past five days in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, where authorities said another 30 people -- many of them homeless -- were hospitalized with hypothermia.

". . .Parts of Austria felt more like Siberia, with the mercury plunging well below zero. The bitter cold hit an all-time low of minus 24 degrees in the lower Austria town of Gross Gerungs, while in the beer-making town of Zwettl, it was minus 12 -- the chilliest Jan. 24 since 1929." (AP)

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2006 at 8:24 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Intervention Begets Intervention

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. wants President Bush to impose a "requirement that every car sold in America be flexible fuel-compatible" and to establish "incentives for: the manufacture and purchase of hybrids and their plug-in variants, greatly increased production of alternative fuels and the necessary, modest infrastructure modifications."

Why all this intervention?

Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2006 at 6:48 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, January 23, 2006

Beware "School Choice"

Some advocates of what is euphemistically called school choice argue that their reform would be a crucial step along the road to the separation of school and state. Some of us have dissented. Knowing how government works, we've had a hunch that vouchers and tuition tax credits would most likely lead to greater regulation of private schools. The cry of accountability for schools receiving public money would be irresistible.

Events are not only supporting our prediction, they are even worse than we might have expected. In Florida, groups that support tuition tax credits for private schools have been lobbying, so far unsuccessfully, for legislation to impose standards on schools wishing to participate in the scholarship programs. Associations of private schools are in the forefront of the lobbying coalition.

The rest of my op-ed, "Government role runs counter to school choice," which was published yesterday in the Myrtle Beach Sun News, can be found here. It was distributed by The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Monday, January 23, 2006 at 6:19 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Benjamin Tucker on the Therapeutic State

"Upholding thus the right of every individual to be or select his own priest, they [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Josiah Warren, and other anarchists] likewise uphold his right to be or select his own doctor. No monopoly in theology, no monopoly in medicine. Competition everywhere and always; spiritual advice and medical advice alike to stand or fall on their own merits. And not only in medicine, but in hygiene, must this principle of liberty be followed. The individual may decide for himself not only what to do to get well, but what to do to keep well. No external power must dictate to him what he must and must not eat, drink, wear, or do." ("State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ," Liberty, March 10, 1888)

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Sunday, January 22, 2006 at 5:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, January 21, 2006

The Gospel of Leisure

Professor David Levy of George Mason University has pointed out that when Thomas Carlyle labeled economics "the dismal science," he wasn't referring to the pessimistic conclusions drawn by Thomas Malthus. No, what Carlyle found dismal was that market-based societies entail free labor and rule out slavery, specifically black slavery. That depressed Carlyle. Perhaps slavery was gone in Britain forever, but now how could whites make sure blacks did the hard work they were destined to do?

Posted on Saturday, January 21, 2006 at 5:15 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Ersatz Autonomy

The U.S. Supreme Court, as everyone knows by now, has ruled that the federal government can't interfere with Oregon's so-called assisted-suicide law. I have mixed feelings. I'm happy the feds were told to butt out. But I don't like the Oregon law. It's an example of ersatz autonomy. It doesn't really recognize the right to take one's own life; rather, it empowers doctors to grant permission for and to facilitate a person's suicide if that person petitions his doctor and meets the highly stringent conditions set out in the law. For one thing, another doctor has to concur, and the patient has to be certified as not being mentally ill, which opens a floodgate of reasons to deny a petition. Thomas Szasz pointed out the fraud of assisted-suicide long ago. His book Fatal Freedom goes into the subject in depth. Here's a summary in one of his Freeman columns.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2006 at 9:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Stossel on Public Schools

I just watched my recording of John Stossel's 20/20 special on America's public schools. While I don't agree with his solution, vouchers (having the tax money follow the kids), I applaud Stossel for vividly showing how bad the government's schools are and how reactionary the bureaucrats and teachers unions are. The system is destroying the future of so many children, and all apoloigsts for it are accomplices to the crime. Innercity parents are realizing what's going on and who's at fault. They have been sold out by their self-styled champions, the crocodile-tear-shedding state socialists, because the jobs are secure and the money isn't bad. (It can take years to fire an admitted sex-offender teacher.) Besides, public schooling is a mother lode of profits for well-connected "private sector" contractors who sell the system everything from paperclips and textbooks to food and buses. Collecting the taxpayers' money is so much nicer than hustling for customers in a real marketplace. (Smash the School-Industrial Complex!) It is truly a tragedy.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2006 at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, January 13, 2006

More Corporate-State Land Theft

Norwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, is the scene of another corporate-state land grab, majestically called "eminent domain." (Think about what that phrase implies.) Here's the news story. The city has condemned 60 middle-class homes and businesses so that the properties can be conveyed to developer Jeffery Anderson and partners for expansion of a swanky shopping center and apartments. The new shopping-center wing would feature a Crate and Barrel store. (You can complain to the chain here.) Two homeowners refuse to bow to the state and have gone into court, with the help of the Institute for Justice. The case is now before the Ohio Supreme Court. During oral argument Wednesday, a member of the court asked an attorney for the town why the local government should have the power to brand properties "blighted" and to take them against the will of the owners. "In the end, it is up to the City Council to make that decision because they know the community best," said the attorney. Such arrogance from political hacks.

This is really getting out of hand. Big retailers (Wal-Mart, Costco, and others) should be ashamed of themselves for seeking to build stores on stolen property. It's time that we make them aware that we know what they are doing. No one without political connections is safe. The U.S. Supreme Court said last summer that taking private property in order to turn it over to developers is constitutional. Score another one for Spooner. At least the Supreme Court ruling prompted people to put the heat on politicians in some states. As a result, it might be slightly tougher for governments to seize land for so-called economic development. But in most cases, they can get their way by declaring a property "blighted." It's a virtual blank check. We'll be safe only when people realize that eminent domain strikes at the heart of liberty.

Laissez-faire voluntarists have long maintained that that the difference between being pro-market and pro-business is vast. Business was never enthusiastic for open competition, preferring the safety of protectionism in all its many forms -- consumers and workers be damned. We're at the point where being pro-market requires being anti-business.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, January 13, 2006 at 6:18 AM | Comments (0) | Top

It Takes Government to Create a Reading Crisis

My latest op-ed, "It Takes Government to Create a Reading Crisis," distributed by the Future of Freedom Foundation, appears in the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinal.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Friday, January 13, 2006 at 6:14 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Legal Plunder II

The Jack Abramoff story reminds me of an important book of a few years ago, Fred McChesney's Money for Nothing. Most people think that corruption in politics consists of donating to a congressional campaign so that the senator or representative will sponsor and vote for a bill that will do a favor for the donor. McChesney discusses a different sort of corruption: the harvesting of donations so that congressmen won't do something. Government holds the power to ruin specific interests by passing a tax, or a tax exemption or subsidy for a competing interest, or a regulation. This means that not doing something can be worth a lot of money to someone, and it can become a lucrative source of campaign money. McChesney says that members of Congress have made speeches suggesting some tax or regulation with the sole intention of gaining contributions from people hoping to dissuade them from doing what they suggested they might do.

Thus state plunderers have found yet another way to extort money from productive people.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 at 10:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Legal Plunder

There is something pernicious in the media's response to the Abramoff scandal. Jeff Greenfield of CNN this morning was regaling Don Imus with some of the details of how Abramoff paid congressmen to do his clients favors, such as block labor legislation in the Mariana Islands or help an Indian tribe get exemption from federal taxation. "You can't make this stuff up," Greenfield said. What's missing from that sort of comment is that this is what government does; it's what it has always done! (If there were no power to impose labor legislation, or other kinds of coercive favors, or to tax, no one could be bribed to prevent it.) Being surprised that it happens is like being surprised that monkeys eat bananas. These commentators surely know this. But their mission to promote the "democratic" consensus obliges them to encourage people think it once was—and could again be—otherwise. They are committed to making sure people never realize that plunder is the essence of the state.

Hat tip: Frédéric Bastiat.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Posted on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 at 10:20 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, January 5, 2006

Who Said It?

“It must be observed, however, that free trade is impractical so long as land is kept out of free competition with industry in the labour-market. Discussions of the rival policies of free trade and protection invariably leave this limitation out of account, and are therefore nugatory. Holland and England, commonly spoken of as free-trade countries, were never really such; they had only so much freedom of trade as was consistent with their special economic requirements. American free-traders of the last century, such as Sumner and Godkin, were not really free-traders; they were never able – or willing – to entertain the crucial question why, if free trade is a good thing, the conditions of labour were no better in free-trade England than, for instance, in protectionist Germany, but were in fact worse. The answer is, of course, that England had no unpreempted land to absorb displaced labour, or to stand in continuous competition with industry for labour.”

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2006 at 1:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, January 2, 2006

The Cure for Governmment Failure? More Government

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports the following today:

Despite 70 years of federal effort to address the imbalance, rural America remains significantly less prosperous than urban America, prompting new thinking about how to stem its decline.

The "new thinking" is entirely about how government might finally get it right.

Maybe it's me, but if private-sector efforts had failed at something for 70 years (or a lot less time than that), we'd be flooded with demands for the government to do something. But here we have a case where governments have failed miserably after all that time and what we're flooded with is . . . demands that government do something.

As Albert Jay Nock wrote in Our Enemy, the State (1935), "It is a curious anomaly. State power has an unbroken record of inability to do anything efficiently, economically, disinterestedly or honestly; yet when the slightest dissatisfaction arises over any exercise of social power, the aid of the agent least qualified to give aid is immediately called for."

Of course the case at hand is worse than the kind Nock alludes to because the failure is clearly government's.

(Cross-posted at Free Association.)

Posted on Monday, January 2, 2006 at 12:39 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, December 30, 2005

Some School Choice

Roy Cordato of the John Locke Foundation confirms the suspicions of those of us who see “school choice” (aka vouchers and tax credits) as the road to the ruin for currently (quasi)independent schools. In Florida, school-choice advocates, in a bid for support, have lobbied the state legislature for “accountability legislation” for schools that participate in a corporate tax-credit program. This sort of thing has happened elsewhere. So far the efforts have failed.

Interestingly, the article that Cordato bases his post on points out that associations of private schools are in the coalition lobbying for government standards. The article says, “Among the coalition's accountability recommendations are required standardized testing for tax credit scholarship recipients and teacher qualification requirements that allow for formal education or special knowledge of the subject.” Do you suppose that part of the motive is to crush private schools that are less able to withstand the bureaucratic impositions?

See Cordato’s post here.

(Cross-posted at Free Association.)

Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 at 7:52 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Thursday, December 29, 2005

"Free Election": A Contradiction in Terms?

The UN says the Iraqi election was fair. But hasn’t it overlooked a rather large consideration? Everyone who voted did so under duress; that is, everyone was threatened with government domination—taxation, inter alia—whether or not he or she voted. Thus the decision to participate in the election was hardly a free choice. “Free election” makes as much sense as "square circle." Or “paid vacation.” Or “military intelligence.”

Which reminds me of Herbert Spencer's point in Social Statics to the effect that in conventional thinking, no one is justified in complaining about the outcome of an election. If you voted for the winner, you obviously can't complain. If you voted for the loser, well, you knew you might lose when you voted. And if you didn't vote? Well, if you chose not to take part, how in hell can you complain now? Says Spencer: "So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted—whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine this."

(Cross-posted at Free Association.)

Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 at 9:25 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Monday, December 26, 2005

It's Good to Be the King

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says he sees “absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing” eavesdropping on domestic phone calls and e-mails without first getting warrants (New York Times). But he also says that George II would have had no problem getting warrants had he asked for them.

When a president finds the rubber-stamp process of the FISA court too onerous, you’ve got to wonder if something else is going on. As Mel Brooks said, “It’s good to be the king.”

(Cross-posted at Free Association.)

Posted on Monday, December 26, 2005 at 9:11 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, December 23, 2005

Nation-Building is Job One

“Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations....”

With that sentence the Bush administration, through Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has declared that it is formally in the nation-building business, reports the Washington Times. From now on the blunt instrument of the military will regard social reconstruction as an objective on a par with winning wars. Welcome to the New World Order.

The rest of my latest Future of Freedom Foundation commentary can be found here.

Cross-posted at Free Association. (Yes, I've given in to fate, at least temporarily.)

Posted on Friday, December 23, 2005 at 7:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Maybe It Is

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for...." Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia.

Posted on Sunday, December 18, 2005 at 8:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Spying Is Bigger than Voting

Jim Lehrer asked President Bush about the warrantless spying on Americans he authorized after 9/11. Bush smirked and said that is not the big story; the Iraqi election is the big story. Sorry, Mr. Emperor, you don't get to decide what the big story is. By any reasonable standard, government spying on innocent people is a far bigger story than any voting in Iraq. Hey, we vote here, but it didn't prevent this example of government oppression.

Posted on Saturday, December 17, 2005 at 2:52 PM | Comments (9) | Top

Friday, December 2, 2005

Democracy Unmasked

Letter, as yet unpublished, to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is more propagandist than objective news source when it writes (Dec. 1), “North Little Rock voters approved a two-year, 1-percent city sales tax Aug. 9 to pay for the [new Travelers] ballpark. . . .” Unless the vote was unanimous, this sentence is misleading. What it should have said is that some voters, who want a new ballpark, voted to force others, who do not want it, to help pay for it anyway. Voting results are never reported this way because it would reveal democracy to be mob rule rather than a system that respects individual rights and freedom. It has been said that democracy is based on a strange arithmetic: 50 percent plus one equals 100 percent, while 50 percent minus one equals zero. Is this what we want to give the rest of the world? And why can’t baseball stadiums be left to the private marketplace?

Posted on Friday, December 2, 2005 at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The Social Benefits of Making Money

Something I've wanted to say for a while, now here at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Posted on Friday, December 2, 2005 at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, November 12, 2005

"We have your child already."

That's a quote from Hitler. At any rate, my take on a recent federal appellate case involving a sex survey at a government elementary school, "The Ultimate Parent?" is at the Future of Freedom Foundation site here.

Posted on Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 10:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Stop Consumer Gouging!

My take on price-gouging is now posted on The Future of Freedom Foundation website. Enjoy!

Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2005 at 6:36 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Cell phones in Africa

“We all misread the market,” said South African Michael Joseph, chief executive officer of Safaricom, one of two cellular-telephone service providers in Kenya.

This is a quote from a fascinating AP story about how the use of cell phones is skyrocketing in Africa. According to the story:

The mistake, providers say, was to make plans based on gross domestic product figures, which ignore the strong informal economy, and to assume that because landline use was low, there was little demand for phones.

And more:

Harun is one of a rapidly swelling army of wired-up Africans — an estimated 100 million of the continent’s 906 million people. Another is Omar Abdulla Saidi, phoning in from his sailboat on the Zanzibar coast looking for the port that will give him the biggest profit on his freshly caught red snapper, tuna and shellfish.

Just another lesson showing that capitalism raises living standards and is capable of overcoming some pretty formidable barriers put in its way by the state.

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Posted on Sunday, October 23, 2005 at 8:00 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Mind Your Own Business, Mr. Bush

My take on President Bush's urging us to conserve gasoline is now posted at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Posted on Saturday, October 22, 2005 at 12:57 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Bureaucracy Can’t Be Run Like a Business

John Tierney is an excellent columnist, by far the best on the New York Times op-ed page. He showed it last week when he contrasted Wal-Mart’s superlative emergency preparedness with the government’s horrible performance during Hurricane Katrina. But Tierney misses an important point. See the rest at the FEE website here.

Posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 at 10:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

They Just Got Poor?

To hear some people tell it, you'd think the New Orleans residents hit hardest by Katrina were well-off until January 20, 2001, when George W. Bush took office; then they were suddenly plunged into poverty. The indictment of Bush isn't that he short-changed the welfare state and the poor, but that he continued its perverse programs, which were never intended to create prosperity and independence. The "war on poverty" has actually been spectacularly successful at achieving its real goals: dependence on government.

Poverty is largely a combination of corrupting government handouts and corruptible individuals. People work their way out of poverty all the time, refusing to be seduced by government. Others are happy to not have to exert themselves. The difference lies in the personal makeup of a given individual. Even bad parents and a lousy education cannot explain it. And this has nothing to do with race. See Appalachia.

Posted on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 at 6:29 AM | Comments (10) | Top

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The Day the Glue Came Undone

My take on some of what took place after Hurricane Katrina hit is here.

Posted on Wednesday, September 14, 2005 at 8:22 AM | Comments (0) | Top

DeLay Says Federal Budget is Fat-Free

"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an 'ongoing victory,' and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget."

This is the same Tom DeLay who declared Terri Schiavo "lucid."

Posted on Wednesday, September 14, 2005 at 8:20 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, September 2, 2005

Anarchism Anti-Defamation League Formed

In light of the calumny against anarchism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I announce the formation of the Anarchism Anti-Defamation League, AADL.

Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 at 12:41 PM | Comments (17) | Top

Friday, August 12, 2005

The Chutzpah of Wal-Mart's Critics

My article The Chutzpah of Wal-Mart's Critics is now posted at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Posted on Friday, August 12, 2005 at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | Top

"Hiroshima Film Cover-up Exposed"

This report in Editor and Publisher has to be read to be believed. Hat tip: Ralph Raico

Posted on Friday, August 12, 2005 at 12:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, August 4, 2005

Zen and the Art of Iraqi Regime Change

My article by that title is posted at The Future of Freedom Foundation site here.

Posted on Thursday, August 4, 2005 at 4:38 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Tom Cruise, Tom Szasz, and Psychiatry

Jeffrey Schaler, author of Addiction Is a Choice and editor of Szasz Under Fire, has written an excellent article on the controversy around Tom Cruise and his remarks against psychiatry. It's here.

By the way, Tom Cruise and Tom Szasz met when Szasz was honored for his defense of civil liberties. Here's a picture from the occasion.

Posted on Sunday, July 10, 2005 at 1:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Thank you, Justice Thomas

I've written three articles on the Kelo decision but have not managed to work in this full quotation from Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent:

So-called "urban renewal" programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted by uprooting them from their homes. Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. (Emphasis added.)

Aside from the accurate classical-liberal class analysis, note two things. Thomas questions eminent domain per se (it's "bad enough"). And he debunks the very possibility of just compensation. Why does subjective value preclude just compensation? Because the only test of the justice of a given level of compensation is the owner's voluntary acceptance, which is missing from contested eminent domain. In other words, what makes a transaction just and legitimate is not compensation but consent.

Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2005 at 7:29 AM | Comments (18) | Top

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Happy Birthday, Frédéric!

Today is Frédéric Bastiat's 204th birthday (1801-1850). Is there a greater hero of freedom? Bastiat left a rich literature of liberty that is indispensable to this day. The Law remains one of the best ways to introduce the freedom philosophy to novices. Each time I read it I marvel at how fresh it is. The first chapter of his Economic Harmonies is an excellent overview of what the free market and the division of labor make possible. His classic essays, among them "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen" (which includes his famous fable of the broken window), "A Petition" (in which the candle makers seek government protection from unfair competition by the sun), and "The State" (“the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody”), are unequalled in their ability to teach freedom in a clear and entertaining way.

Fortunately the Liberty Fund has put much of the Bastiat library online. Don't neglect this valuable resource.

If you'll forgive the self-promotion, I've written a biographical/bibliographical essay about Bastiat for the Liberty Fund. It is here.

Posted on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 at 8:29 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Monday, June 27, 2005

Trade Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...

Representatives of the Imperial President have traveled to the far eastern region to “negotiate” strict limits on exports. Although the recent surge in shipments of badly needed inexpensive clothing from traders in the region has raised the living standards of low-income people in the home of the Imperial Government, it offends well-connected Trade Federation interests. During the negotiations the far eastern leaders hold firm against the Empire’s intimidation and pressure. A trade war looms. Back in the capital of the Empire —

Hold on a minute. This is not the beginning of the next installment of Star Wars. It’s the latest news of the Bush administration’s attempt to get the government of China to rein in its apparel exporters.

More at The Future of Freedom Foundation here.

Posted on Monday, June 27, 2005 at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, June 24, 2005

Kelo v. New London

My take on the big Supreme Court eminent-domain ruling is at the FEE website here.

Posted on Friday, June 24, 2005 at 1:48 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Ron Paul Continues the Good Fight

This was issued today by the Liberty Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas:

The American tradition of parents deciding what is best for their children is under attack. The pharmaceutical industry wants universal mental screening for every child in America, including preschool children. But universal screening alone is not what the pharmaceutical industry wants. The real payoff for the drug companies is the drugging of children that will result -- as we learned tragically with Ritalin -- even when parents refuse!

The drug companies want your children to be "screened." The psychiatric establishment wants to do the "screening." And even a recent presidential commission (New Freedom Commission on Mental Health) supports it all. These powerful groups want your children "screened" -- whether or not you, as parents, give permission.

Congressman Ron Paul, an OB/GYN physician for over 30 years, is desperately trying to keep the drug companies, politicians and federal bureaucrats from becoming parents to your children. Dr. Paul will introduce this week an amendment to the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Act for FY 2006 that will withhold funds from being used to implement or support any federal, mental screening program.

In a letter to his congressional colleagues, Dr. Paul states: "As you know, psychotropic drugs are increasingly prescribed for children who show nothing more than children’s typical rambunctious behavior. Many children have suffered harmful effects from these drugs. Yet some parents have even been charged with child abuse for refusing to drug their children. The federal government should not promote national mental health screening programs that will force the use of these psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin."

If you think this action alert is about something that "can't happen here," think again. In 1995, the state of Texas launched the Texas Medication Algorithm Project. (WorldNetDaily.com, June 21, 2004)

The state of Illinois has also approved a mental health screening program. The Illinois legislature passed the Children’s Mental Health Act of 2003 which will provide screening for "all children ages 0-18" and "ensure appropriate and culturally relevant assessment of your children's social and emotional development with the use of standardized tools." In addition, all pregnant women in Illinois are to be screened for depression.

Dr. Karen R. Effrem, a pediatrician and leading opponent of universal screening with EdAction states: "Universal mental health screening and the drugging of children, as recommended by the New Freedom Commission [presidential commission], needs to be stopped so that many thousands if not millions of children will be saved from receiving stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their lives. America’s school children should not be medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious diagnoses."

Dr. Effrem warns:

1. Parental rights are unclear or non-existent under these screening programs.
2. Parents are already being coerced to put their children on psychiatric medications and some children are dying because of it.
3. Mental health screening does not prevent suicide.
4. Mental health diagnoses are "subjective" and "social constructions" as admitted by the authors of the diagnostic manuals themselves.
5. Most psychiatric medications do not work in children.
6. The side effects of these medications in children are severe.
7. The untoward influence by the pharmaceutical industry, or at least the impropriety, is abundantly clear in two important aspects of this issue.
8. Merging screening with the academic standards required by No Child Left Behind, as is happening in Illinois, will lead to diagnosis for political reasons. School mental health and violence prevention programs funded by NCLB and government counterterrorism operations are already using such criteria as "homophobia" and "defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN" to label school children and US citizens as mentally unstable and violent. (EdAction.org)

Urge your U.S. representative to vote "yes" on the Paul amendment to stop universal mental screening of children. If your U.S. representative does not vote "yes" on the Paul amendment, he or she supports screening your children without your permission -- just as the drug companies want.

The U.S. House will vote on the Paul amendment Thursday or Friday. Send your e-mail message today and call your U.S. representative too. Also, please spread the word.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 at 5:27 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Monday, June 20, 2005

Raich Medical-Marijuana Case

My take on the Raich medical-marijuana case is posted here at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Monday, June 20, 2005 at 10:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Fear Not China

My article about the fear of China was in yesterday's San Francisco Examiner.

Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2005 at 4:19 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Base Closings and Freedom

My take on the economics of base closings is in New York Newsday today, right here.

Posted on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 at 9:29 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Monday, May 30, 2005

Crisis, Leviathan, and the Revenge of the Sith

I saw Star Wars Episode 3 yesterday. Good flick. I came out with one dominant thought: George Lucas meets Robert Higgs.

Posted on Monday, May 30, 2005 at 3:16 PM | Comments (5) | Top

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

So This Is Free Trade

According to today’s Wall Street Journal, the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) would not open up the U.S. sugar market, which has long been laden with protectionist quotas, forcing U.S. residents to pay more than the rest of the world. The Journal also reports that Central American clothing makers would have to use American, not the cheaper Asian, textiles if they wish to sell here freely. That’s what passes for free trade today.

Posted on Tuesday, May 3, 2005 at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Does Neuroscience Negate Personhood?

Updated

"Should we ditch the concept of personal responsibility and construct the therapeutic state?," asked Michael Shapiro, a University of Southern California law professor.

Shapiro posed the question during a panel discussion devoted to "Responsibility and the Law," on the second day of the Our Brains and Us conference at MIT. Do any of the findings of contemporary neuroscience force us to ditch the concept of personal responsibility? Shapiro argued they don't. Why? Because we already knew that we are embedded in a network of physical causes from which our behavior arises. Neuroscience may give us a better understanding of the physical bases of causes in our brains, but it does not change the fact that our behavior has always been caused.

Those are the opening paragraphs from a new article, "Prozac Justice: Does Neuroscience Require a Therapeutic State?" by Ron Bailey, now on the Reason magazine website. It is sure to excite some comment from those of us who believe in free will and personal responsibility.

Bailey ends up expressing concern about a world where crime is regarded as a sign of illness rather than wrong-doing, and he rightly abhors the possibility of "prospective intervention" and indeterminate "therapy." But the article is plagued by a misunderstanding of free will, leading to the topsy-turvy view that while determinism would not negate moral responsibility, freedom of the will, if it existed, would. Thus:

Shapiro recognized that many people naively believe that free will, and thus personal responsibility and moral culpability, depends on the notion that people are somehow uncaused causers. But can someone really be held responsible in such a contra-causal world? Not really. As psychologist and philosopher William James put it: "If a 'free' act be a sheer novelty that comes not from me, the previous me, but ex nihilo, and simply tacks itself on to me, how can I, the previous I, be responsible?"

What's a contra-causal world? Free will does not mean actions are uncaused. It means they are caused by persons. The popular notion that persons can be reduced to mechanistic neurological processes is self-refuting—if true, its advocates are uttering not words but meaningless sounds. The "causes" of actions, Thomas Szasz reminds us, are called reasons. But those cannot be reduced to brain activity, however much they may depend on it.

Shapiro and Bailey surely can do better than James's straw-man argument—although not much better. The fact is, the free-will proposition is a self-evident axiom. One must tacitly acknowledge it even in trying to refute it.

Hat tip: Jeff Schaler

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Sunday, April 24, 2005 at 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Happy 85th, Thomas Szasz!

April 15 was Thomas Szasz's 85th birthday. The Reason Foundation held a small dinner celebration in Washington, D.C., which I was honored to participate in. My remarks are here. You'll see that I highlight key elements of Szasz's work and explore why most libertarians fail to appreciate it. I also touch on the parallel between his work and Austrian economics. Other remarks and photos are here.

Posted on Saturday, April 23, 2005 at 11:32 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Actresses Oppose Compulsory "Treatment" for Children

From the Associated Press:

Actresses Kirstie Alley and Kelly Preston pleaded with [Florida] lawmakers Tuesday to prohibit schools from denying services to students who won't take mood-altering drugs to treat mental disorders.

Alley sobbed as she told members of the House Education Council the stories of children who committed suicide or died after taking psychotropic drugs....

Children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can be eligible for special education programs for students with disabilities, including curriculum adjustments, alternative classrooms and increased parent and teacher involvement. The bill would prohibit schools receiving state money to deny those services if those students don't take prescribed drugs to treat the condition.

Alley's pleas, though, came after the committee stripped language from the bill that would have required schools to tell parents that there is no medical test to diagnose a mental disorder and that they can refuse a psychological screening for their children.

The committee also removed part of the bill that would have required schools to inform parents that physical conditions may be the cause of mental and behavioral problems, that they should consult with a medical doctor about such problems and that a diagnosed mental disorder will stay on a student's permanent record.

I guess Alley's and Preston's hearts are in the right places, but a more radical plea might have been more forceful. The bill they back would maintain all the "services" for the "diagnosed" children, and therefore the stigma of "mental disorder." The threat to children from the Therapeutic-Education State would continue.

Hat tip: David Beito.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Thursday, April 21, 2005 at 8:56 AM | Comments (7) | Top

Saturday, April 9, 2005

Self-Determination vs. "Assisted-Suicide"

Thomas A. Bowden of the Ayn Rand Institute writes, "The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise—to declare that society or God must give you permission to kill yourself—is to contradict the right to life at its root."

If that is so, then why does Bowden, in the same article, endorse the assisted-suicide law in Oregon (and the proposed law in Vermont), which, in his words, "permits physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a mentally competent, terminally ill patient who makes written and oral requests, consults two doctors, and endures a mandatory waiting period"?

That sounds like the "right" to ask permission to commit suicide, rather than the right to end one's own life. That "contradict[s] the right to life at its root." A consistent advocate of the right to commit suicide would oppose "assisted-suicide" laws and endorse full self-determination, which of course includes repeal of professional licensing, prescription laws, and the ban on forbidden drugs.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Saturday, April 9, 2005 at 1:54 PM | Comments (15) | Top

Friday, April 1, 2005

Economics in One Lesson Now Online!

Big news! Henry Hazlitt's classic, Economics in One Lesson, is now online, compliments of the Foundation for Economic Education. This is truly one of the great books on economics for lay readers. See the pdf file here.

Posted on Friday, April 1, 2005 at 3:30 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Friday, March 25, 2005

A Breath of Fresh Air in the Schiavo Case

One of the few decent things said by an elected official during the Terri Schiavo episode came from an unlikely source: Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. When he was being goaded to take custody of Schiavo in defiance of a court ruling, he said, "I cannot go beyond what my powers are and I'm not going to do it."

Posted on Friday, March 25, 2005 at 7:35 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Monday, March 21, 2005

A Blow to the Rule of Law

My views on the Terri Schiavo case per se are known. (See here.) Nevertheless, I am appalled by the assault on the rule of law launched by the U.S. Congress. The case went through the Florida courts and was reviewed many times. I don't like how the law is written, but it is a bald-faced lie to say, as one Republican representative said, that Terri Schiavo was deprived of due process of law. The precedent Congress has set—by decreeing that a particular person may file a state legal matter in the federal courts—will surely come back to haunt us. That this travesty is perpetrated by the party professing dedication to small government and federalism makes it all the more outrageous. This is a sad day in more ways than one.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Monday, March 21, 2005 at 7:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 19, 2005

The Terri Schiavo Case

The sad case of Terri Schiavo brings important medical-ethical issues to the fore. But this is not a hard case. As a general principle, when there is reasonable doubt about an incapacitated person's wishes regarding life-support and when someone is willing to pay for continued support, a spouse should not be able to terminate it. In this case, there is no written proof that Terri Schiavo expressed a wish not to be kept alive. All we have is her husband’s and others’ say so. Not good enough. In fact, according to Terri Schiavo’s parents, “When he [husband Michael Schiavo] promised the malpractice jury back in 1993 that he would take care of Terri for the rest of his life, Mr. Schiavo said nothing to the jury about Terri not wanting to be sustained on anything ‘artificial.’”

Not only was Michael Schiavo awarded money by a jury for her perpetual care, it has been reported that others have offered to pay for her life-support. Add to these facts that ten years ago Michael Shiavo commenced a romantic relationship with another woman whom he describes as his fiance, has had two children with that woman, and has announced that he has “moved on” with his life, and his wish to disconnect his wife from feeding and hydration tubes becomes suspect and indeed irrelevant. The Florida courts long ago should have excluded Michael Shiavo from the matter, declaring that he has a conflict of interest, and recognized Terri Schiavo’s parents as having her best interests at heart.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog

Posted on Saturday, March 19, 2005 at 12:59 PM | Comments (31) | Top

Social Security's Malign Premise

Isn't it fascinating to watch the left's sky-is-falling response to even modest tinkering with Social Security? I discuss it here.

Posted on Saturday, March 19, 2005 at 8:45 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Democracy Isn't Freedom

My article "Democracy No Guarantee that Freedom Will Reign" appears in the Chicago Sun-Times today.

Posted on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 at 6:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 4, 2005

Bush's Brave New World

My article “Bush’s Brave New World” is now online at The Future of Freedom Foundation website. Originally appearing in the November issue of Freedom Daily, it examines the disturbing recommendations of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.

Posted on Friday, March 4, 2005 at 5:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Free Martha!

I and many others have protested the persecution of Martha Stewart. Although the media treat it like a celebrity gossip story, it is in fact a travesty of justice. Ironically, her release from prison makes this even clearer. She must now present herself to the authorities to be fitted for an ankle bracelet (an electronic shackle) so that they can enforce her house arrest for five months. Is the law supposed to be mean-spirited? Here is a woman who assaulted no one, stole from no one, defrauded no one. She did no harm to anyone in any way. At worst, she lied to goverment agents who asked about a stock sale that was none of their business. She was never charged in connection with the sale per se.

Yet she is now confined to her home (not her entire property) until August. It may be a nice home, but that does not change the fact that the state intends to humiliate her. It goes to show that the state will tolerate many things. But lying to its agents is not one of them. Of course, those agents are perfectly free to lie to us.

Posted on Friday, March 4, 2005 at 10:53 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

The Medical-Insurance Scam

The heroic French liberal Frédéric Bastiat wrote that "The state is that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else” (Selected Essays on Political Economy, chapter 5, "The State"). Were he writing today he would surely extend his aphorism to include government-mandated/regulated medical insurance.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Tuesday, March 1, 2005 at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, February 25, 2005

Corruption at the FDA

One practical argument against government’s having the power to approve medicines for sale is that it lulls consumers into a false sense of security, which is worse than no sense of security at all. It’s easy for people, most of whom do not read critical writings, to believe that government personnel are disinterested parties in any process to determine which drugs may be marketed and which may not. In a fully free market, people would tend to be more skeptical, and there would be a better-developed market for independent information. At least people could not naively lean on the government as though it were a civics-book public-interest agency.

Today’s New York Times has a timely reminder, if one were needed, that the regulatory process is hopelessly corrupt. According to the Times, about a third of the panel of advisers who voted on whether the COX-2 pain medicines Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra should be permitted on the market had worked recently for the manufacturers of the drugs. The point is not that the Food and Drug Administration shouldn’t permit the drugs on the market. The point is that the government should have nothing to say about it.

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Friday, February 25, 2005 at 5:50 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Rush Limbaugh, Call Your Office

From Reuters (February 23): “Opioid therapy can provide significant pain relief for patients with chronic back pain due to non-cancerous disorders of the spine and is unlikely to lead to the development of tolerance or addiction, according to Minnesota-based investigators. . . .

“The authors conclude that, ‘doubts or concerns about opioid efficacy, toxicity, tolerance, and abuse or addiction should not be used to justify the withholding of opioids from patients who have pain related to defined spinal diseases.’

“This study, they add, ‘provides clinical evidence to support and protect physicians treating patients with chronic musculoskeletal diseases, who may be reluctant to prescribe opioids because of possible sanctions from regulatory agencies.’”

Source credited: Arthritis and Rheumatism, January 2005. The full news article is here.

Hat tip: Frank B. Fisher

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Friday, February 25, 2005 at 5:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Remember When We Used to Have Free Speech?

I just heard Ron Insana, a financial reporter for CNBC, tell Don Imus that people have been investigated by the SEC just for talking about Sirius satellite radio's stock. I'm old enough to remember when Americans had freedom of speech.

Posted on Thursday, February 24, 2005 at 6:39 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Social Security Confusion

Steve Landsburg has a worthwhile article on Slate. But he stumbles toward the end. He's right that the best way to help future retirees is to maximize production through the market. He is right that the debate is obscured by all the accounting illusions. He's right about savings, except I would say the government needs to stop discouraging it. It really doesn't have to be encouraged.

But he's wrong in this paragraph:

Which brings us to the president's proposal for private accounts. I like that proposal for three reasons. First, it will encourage people to save. Second, it will give people choices, and choices are good. And third, it will give more voters a stake in the capitalist system, making them more likely to vote for the sort of pro-growth policies that will improve the quality of life for us in our old age and our grandchildren.

Bush’s plan may not encourage new savings, but only shift savings from one form to another. The new choices it will provide will be limited and may be offset by the government's power to interfere in, or at least influence, the capital markets. And there is no reason to believe it will make people think like capitalists. That's a Marxist position that I can see no justification for. So-called private retirement accounts are more likely to extend the entitlement mentality to stock-market returns—and that would be very bad. On this subject see my Freeman article “No Shortcuts” (pdf).

Hat tip: Jude Blanchette

Posted on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 11:01 AM | Comments (4) | Top

Monday, February 21, 2005

Category-Mistake

According to the philosopher Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind, one commits a category-mistake when one "represents . . . facts . . . as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another."

A case in point is in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, in the article "The Therapeutic Mind Scan" by Paul Raeburn, who laments that most psychiatrists diagnose mental illnesses without examining their patients' brains, but reports hopefully on one exception, Daniel G. Amen, who uses single photon emission computed tomography to scan the brains of his patients. Raeburn is the author of Acquainted With the Night, which the Times says is "a memoir of raising children who have depression and bipolar disorder."

He writes:

"If scanners could uncover the signs of distinct mental illnesses in the soft folds of the brain, the way X-rays can reveal a tumor, and monitor treatment effectiveness, they would revolutionize psychiatry."

Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.

Posted on Monday, February 21, 2005 at 12:52 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Tuesday, February 8, 2005

I, Liberal

Pardon me, but I fear that the last time I mentioned this it got lost in the computer failure, the Ayn Rand centennary, and now the Hoppe controversy. At any rate, my defense of reclaiming the unadorned word "liberal," can be found here (pdf).

As you were.

Posted on Tuesday, February 8, 2005 at 12:25 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Friday, February 4, 2005

Social Security Reform Clarification

Today the Washington Post reported this:

"[W]orkers who opt for the accounts would lose a proportionate share of their guaranteed payment from Social Security, plus interest equal to the amount that money would have earned if the government had invested it in Treasury bonds. They would recoup those lost benefits through their accounts if their investments realized a return equal to or greater than the 3 percent earned by Treasury bonds currently held by the Social Security system.

"The Washington Post incorrectly reported Thursday that the balance of a worker's personal account would be reduced by the worker's total annual contributions plus 3 percent interest. In fact, the balance in the account would belong to the worker upon retirement, White House officials said. [Emphasis added.]

"'Individuals get to keep everything they set aside in personal accounts, plus the increased rate of return they'll realize on their investment,' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. 'So to suggest otherwise is wrong. It is the individual's account, and the government cannot touch it.'"

However, this money would be administered by the government, invested in government-selected securities by managers under contract to the government, and then doled out to retirees through a government-controlled annuity. Those details were not challenged by the administration spokesman.

Posted on Friday, February 4, 2005 at 7:41 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 3, 2005

Social Security "Reform" Fraud

Put not your trust in the state. See the details of the Bush "privatization" plan.

From the Washington Post:

"Under the proposal, workers could invest as much as 4 percent of their wages subject to Social Security taxation in a limited assortment of stock, bond and mixed-investment funds. But the government would keep and administer that money. Upon retirement, workers would then be given any money that exceeded inflation-adjusted gains over 3 percent."

And from the New York Times:

"The personal accounts would be administered by the government; private companies would manage the investment funds under contract with the government."

"When workers retired, most would be required to use at least part of their accounts to buy from the government lifetime annuities...." (All emphasis added.)

The key word here is government.

Oh, one more thing. This is Bush's opening position. It hasn't gone through the congressional compromise mill yet.

Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2005 at 12:47 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Wednesday, February 2, 2005

Shameless Plugs

The January-February issue of The Freeman is out, with selections posted on the FEE website. Our esteemed colleague Chris Sciabarra wrote a wonderful tribute to Ayn Rand (pdf) for her centenary. Also check out my column, “I, Liberal” (pdf).

My observance of Rand's centennial is here.

Posted on Wednesday, February 2, 2005 at 5:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, February 1, 2005

A Whopper of an Inaugural Address

My take on the president's Big Speech is here.

Posted on Tuesday, February 1, 2005 at 6:43 AM | Comments (1) | Top

This Just In

From the L.A. Times:

In what may be a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued a classified [!] report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and concluding that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991, intelligence officials familiar with the document said.

Posted on Tuesday, February 1, 2005 at 6:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, January 28, 2005

A Balanced Budget Is Not Enough

My article by that name is here at the site of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Posted on Friday, January 28, 2005 at 9:32 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, January 20, 2005

The Bush that Cried Wolf

President Bush is counting on crisis-mongering to get his changes in Social Security accepted by the American people and passed by Congress. The problem is that the last time he engaged in crisis-mongering it turned out that there was no crisis. The search for WMD in Iraq was quietly ended recently. No stockpiles of weapons had been found. So why should anyone believe him when he says Social Security is headed for crisis? Projections for the program depend on soft factors: future rates of economic growth, increases in life expectancy, and so forth. Anyone can come up with almost any scenario. The U.S. economy is very large and getting larger. That's good, but it also means, unfortunately, it can absorb a lot of government intervention. I suspect that a jury-rigging of Social Security is possible into the distant future.

That doesn't mean the system shouldn't be abolished. But that was true the moment after FDR signed the bill 70 years ago. I have to agree with George Will (oh, horror!), "[T]he philosophic reasons for reforming Social Security are more compelling than the fiscal reasons."

Update: Cato is also deemphasizing the alleged financial crisis in favor of the property-rights case. See this article.

Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2005 at 6:19 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, January 14, 2005

The Danger of Science

My article "The Danger of Science," which was first published in Freedom Daily, is now available online.

Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 at 3:17 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Robert Heilbroner, R.I.P.

Robert Heilbroner, the socialist, died the other day. As far as I can tell, he said two good things:

"Mises was right [about the socialist-calculation problem]."

and

“Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis.” (Sounds like Lachmann!)

Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 at 11:16 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Monday, January 10, 2005

For the Record

Rosemary Kennedy died Friday. She was 86. This daughter of Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy, sister of the late President John F. Kennedy and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was lobotomized without her consent in 1941—at the age of 23—by authorization of her father and without the knowledge of her mother. Joseph Kennedy made this decision because he feared that his mildly mentally retarded daughter might embarrass the family and jeopardize the political ambitions he had for his oldest son, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., who died later in World War II. According to a biography of the family, Rosemary's father was told by doctors that the lobotomy would eliminate her erratic behavior. It reduced her to a passive incoherent being who was unable to care for herself. She spent the rest of her life in institutions.

In 1949, eight years after Rosemary's operation, neurologist Egas Moniz of Portugal won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing lobotomy.

Update: According to Reuters, "Rosemary was the inspiration for sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics for mentally disabled athletes."

A statement issued by the Kennedy family said in part: "From her earliest years, her mental retardation was a continuing inspiration to each of us, and a powerful source of our family's commitment to do all we can to help all persons with disabilities live full and productive lives. Millions of people of all ages have greater hope today because of Rosemary."

My take: It seems that old Joe was worried that his daughter would not permit him to have veto power over her liaisons with men. She apparently thought she shouldn't have to dedicate her life to putting brother Joseph in the White House. Her father did not take kindly to such insolence. So he had her fixed.

(Cross-posted at The Szasz Blog.)

Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, January 8, 2005

Tsunami Aid: Not Theirs to Give

My article of that title can be found here.

Posted on Saturday, January 8, 2005 at 7:53 AM | Comments (22) | Top

Thursday, January 6, 2005

Barry Schwartz's Non Sequitur

Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, argues that changing government policy in order to provide more choice (such as in education, health care, and pensions) is not necessarily a good idea because an expanded array of options often makes people unhappy. Granting that dubious premise just for the sake of argument, my answer is: So what? Government’s purpose is not to make people happy or even to protect them from being unhappy. (As if it could do that.) If government has any legitimate purpose (a highly dubious proposition), it is only to protect life, liberty, and property—but I repeat myself.

Posted on Thursday, January 6, 2005 at 9:00 PM | Comments (6) | Top

The Shady Origins of Social Security

This brings me to the final defense of privatization [of Social Security]: the payroll taxes you pay are your money, and you ought to be able to do what you like with your money. This, I suspect, is the real justification behind the move to privatize, and it is the worst reason of all. The payroll tax is not "your" money; it's our money. Social Security was created as an insurance scheme, not a pension scheme. It was meant to provide a safety net, to protect the unlucky from immiseration in old age. The benefits we get are not payouts from accounts in which we have accumulated our own private stash. What we get is largely determined by what we earned, but we keep getting it even after we've taken out every penny we put in. And if we happen to die early, someone else reaps the benefits of our contributions.

That was in an op-ed by Barry Schwartz in yesterday's New York Times. Can you think of another paragraph with so many fallacies?

I've deconstructed Schwartz in "The Shady Origins of Social Security." My earlier tangle with Schwartz is here. (It may take two to tango, but only one to tangle.)

Posted on Thursday, January 6, 2005 at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Anti-Reimportation Hooey

Most people who want the government to block the reimportation of medicines justify their position by pointing to Canada’s price controls. They say that reimportation of medicines is tantamount to importation of those controls. If the government restricts trade every time some country’s interventionism produces arbitrage opportunities, we’re going to have an awfully comprehensive set of trade restrictions.

Addendum: Some free-marketeers, including Milton Friedman, say reimportation should be stopped to protect the patent system. I say allow reimportation; abolish patents (and copyrights).

Posted on Wednesday, January 5, 2005 at 1:44 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Buy American

My article on President Bush’s flip remark about “Buying American” as a way of shrinking the trade “deficit” appears here in the Miami Herald.

Posted on Tuesday, January 4, 2005 at 5:54 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, January 2, 2005

Tax Cuts Are Free

Over 75 years, the president's tax cuts will cost the Treasury $11 trillion, nearly triple Social Security's gap during that time. Washington Post, January 2, 2005, italics added.

I'm sure I'm repeating myself, but it's obviously necessary. Tax cuts don't cost anything. They are free because they constitute an abstention from seizing people's income. It's government programs that cost money. To argue that tax cuts cost the treasury money is like arguing that a burglar's decision to stay home one night cost him the money he would have stolen. It's true in a sense, but who cares? It implies that the owner's and burglar's claims to the property are equivalent.

Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2005 at 5:10 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

I Must Be Dense

Michael Kinsley's article "If It's Right, It's Wrong" argues that the case for privatizing Social Security is logically absurd. I'm not getting it. Maybe someone can point out what he's saying. Here's the privotal point, I think:

Many people believe that stocks pay better than bonds in the risk-adjusted long run. If so, letting people buy stocks with part of their Social Security tax payments would improve the Social Security system's overall return. The cost would be borne by people who bought bonds instead of stocks.

Privatization, in other words, rests on persuading Americans to accept a theory that must be widely disbelieved in order to be true. It's like Tinker Bell in reverse: If too many people are convinced that the theory is right, it's wrong. And the White House is campaigning hard to convince everyone the theory is true. If the campaign succeeds, the theory fails.

Responses welcome.

Posted on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 at 12:17 PM | Comments (7) | Top

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Double Standard?

The New York Times had a story the other day about how Wall Street firms have been secretive about their support for Social Security reform. The Times' point is that these firms stand to gain from the kind of changes President Bush and others are talking about, since money would go into private investment accounts. Therefore, the reform is suspect precisely because Wall Street investment houses would benefit.

That prompted this thought: When did the Times last point out that politicians who oppose changes in Social Security are also acting for their own benefit? Social Security is a potent source of political power. For example, it's great for buying votes and it gives members of Congress lots of money to play with (or it has until now). It's also a source of clout for AARP, which opposes any change as well. But don't wait for any newspaper to point that out.

Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 at 1:00 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Bush: Enemy of the Poor

My take on President Bush's decision to limit Chinese imports of textiles and clothing: "Limits on Chinese Imports Harm Low-Income Americans."

Posted on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 at 9:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, December 18, 2004

MLB, You're Out! (I hope.)

Kudos to the Cato Institute for perhaps helping to save the taxpayers a bundle of money to lure baseball to Washington, D.C. The Montreal Expos were set to move to D.C., attracted by the bait of a fully tax-financed stadium. But then the city council voted to require private matching funds. Baseball is now balking. Word has it that Cato's paper by Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys played a role in the switch. Check this out.

Raspberries to Major League Baseball and its policy of extortion. If it needs to steal from people to support itself, it can go to hell.

Posted on Saturday, December 18, 2004 at 7:51 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Oh Brother

“Speaking to reporters, Bush called the trade deficit ‘easy to resolve. People can buy more United States products if they’re worried about the trade deficit.’” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Posted on Saturday, December 18, 2004 at 7:28 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Medical-Marijuana Op-ed Published

My op-ed on the medical-marijuana case before the Supreme Court was published the other day by the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel.

Posted on Saturday, December 11, 2004 at 7:27 AM | Comments (5) | Top

Friday, December 10, 2004

Don't Just Cut the NSF. Abolish It!

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times is upset that the National Science Foundation had its 2005 budget cut 2 percent. Here's my take.

Posted on Friday, December 10, 2004 at 10:33 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Smith on Flew

I suppose that famous atheist and classical liberal Antony Flew's conversion to deism will be getting lots of comment. So I thought I would reproduce this material from George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God, 1974, pp. 233-34:

“Flew is quite right in insisting that the natural universe must constitute the starting point of our inquiry, and he is correct in pointing out that the burden of proof falls solely on the theist. But Flew is wrong, or at least misleading, when he grants to theism the theoretical possibility of gaining a foothold by dislodging naturalism through argumentation. There is no such possibility in principle.

“Naturalism has the priority over supernaturalism, not because it is the more economical of two explanations [as Flew has argued], but because it is the only framework in which explanation is possible. . . . Naturalism is the only context in which the concept of explanation has meaning.

“Once the theist removes himself from the framework of natural causality and the general principles or ‘laws’ by which man comprehends the universe, he forfeits his epistemological right to the concept of explanation and precludes the possibility of explaining anything.”

Posted on Friday, December 10, 2004 at 9:09 AM | Comments (18) | Top

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Hold On! I thought Outsourcing was Stealing Americans' Jobs

The Associated Press reports that hospitals are increasingly turning to radiologists in India when people need CT scans analyzed overnight. Is this taking jobs from higher-paid Americans? No! There's "a shortage of U.S. radiologists." There aren't enough to pull overnight shifts. And the hospitals pay the Indians just as much as they pay Americans. So much for the scare that outsourcing professional jobs is going to bring down the middle class.

Posted on Tuesday, December 7, 2004 at 8:52 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Monday, December 6, 2004

A Fine Start

For a lesson in how not to do foreign policy see the inaugural blog from Richard Posner. Yes, the Richard Posner. Behold rationalism and scientism run amok in the most dangerous of areas: the making of war.

Posted on Monday, December 6, 2004 at 6:21 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Is Protectionism Unconstitutional?

In the spirit of Lysander Spooner, I argue that it is. Read about it here

Posted on Monday, December 6, 2004 at 6:35 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Saturday, December 4, 2004

Interview about Albert Jay Nock

Here is an interview I did with Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about the importance of Albert Jay Nock. Enjoy!

Posted on Saturday, December 4, 2004 at 7:37 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Wednesday, December 1, 2004

Observation

Considering the state’s long bloody record, asking it to solve any problem is like asking the registered sex offender down the street to baby-sit.

Posted on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 at 1:41 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Tom, Dan, Goodbye Already!

If there's anything more nauseating than a state funeral for a president, it's the retirement of a network anchorman. Is the fact that we will no longer watch Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather read the news every night really a reason for what is tantamount to national mourning by the media elite? (For an example, see this by Dorothy Rabinowitz today.) Who are these people anyway? Have they demonstrated some unique perspicacity over the years? If so, I haven't seen it, and I've watched my share. What they seem able to do well is read a teleprompter without moving their eyes. Before they made anchormen they were part of the White House press corps, the biggest bunch of toadies on the planet, ever fearful of losing "access" to people in high places

From what I can tell, these guys are both maudlin apologists for the status quo; loyal defenders of the regime, whoever happens to be at its head; shameless spreaders of the lie that the government is the people and that elections express their will. In other words, the anchormen are members of the priesthood of that appalling religion democracy. Brokaw has the distinction of having augmented the national mythology about the Good War. (Read Paul Fussell for an antidote to Brokaw.)

The best development with respect to network news is that there are so many alternatives today that we can ignore it completely.

Posted on Wednesday, December 1, 2004 at 7:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

False Alternative

"Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum." So said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer yesterday while listening to arguments in the medical-marijuana case. (The Californian who brought the case is represented by Randy Barnett. See this.)

In other words, for Breyer medical oppression by an elite is preferable to medical oppression by the mob. Why Justice Breyer and virtually everyone else refuse to consider the alternative of medicine by individual choice is the big question of our time. When will the right of self-medication be held equal to the right of self-education? When will we be free to ingest whatever we want, just as we may read whatever we want?

On federalist grounds the decision ought to go to the defendant, which is how Barnett argued. (The plaintiff is Attorney General John Ashcroft.) But let's not be lulled into thinking that medical-marijuana laws advance liberty. There's a big difference between empowering doctors and liberating individuals. Despite appearances, this is not a step in the right direction.

Posted on Tuesday, November 30, 2004 at 7:52 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Are These Your Representatives?

The big spending bill going through Congress—the one that would have authorized the chairmen and staffs of the appropriations committees to look at anyone’s tax returns—once again makes the point that congressmen don’t read the bills they vote on. The House had passed the bill before the so-called representatives realized it contained that offensive provision. Once it was discovered by Democrats, the Senate passed a repeal bill. The Republican leadership chalked its inclusion up to bad drafting. Yeah, right. The Democrats are upset and are demanding that no bill be voted on within three days of passage by a committee. The Republicans are resisting that demand. Would you buy a used car from these people?

The incident shows what a fraud so-called representative government really is. Most people have no time to monitor "their" (ha!) government. The bigger it is, the less practical monitoring it becomes. Even if they had the time, their one impotent vote means there would be no payoff from investing the effort. Moreover, politicians have myriad ways to obscure what they do and to make it difficult to change things even if people found out. (They got caught this time—an unusual occurrence.) For elaboration of this important point see Charlotte A. Twight’s great book Dependent on D.C.

The upshot is that any resemblance between civics-textbook government and reality is a mirage.

Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2004 at 7:06 PM | Comments (0) | Top

What Can I Say?

From Tom Friedman's New York Times op-ed today:

I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to thank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways we really don't deserve them.

I'd catalogue the many fallacies in that paragraph, but it's 10 a.m. CST and I wouldn't want to miss turkey dinner, which will begin in seven hours.

Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2004 at 11:04 AM | Comments (3) | Top

What Happened to Outsourcing?

The demand for accountants is soaring, according to many news reports. (See this and this.) College graduates looking for jobs in accounting have it very good indeed. Only a few months ago a host of fear-mongering, protectionist pundits and politicians (Lou Dobbs of CNN, to name one) were warning that this was the very kind of job that would be sent overseas in an orgy of "outsourcing."

Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2004 at 9:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

It's the Policies that They Hate

The Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory body, says what some of us have been saying all along: U.S. policy is what has made radical Muslims hate us to the point of wanting to harm us. According to a board report, "Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies." This echoes the thesis of Michael Scheuer, the former CIA expert on al Qaeda, who published the book Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror under the name “Anonymous” while still working at the agency.

According to the report, there is "a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none...."

The report goes on:

The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.
Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.

The report also says that the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have made things worse, uniting extreme Muslim factions by giving them a common enemy. Another consequence is that the extremists have found new respect among mainstream Muslims.

The board recommends, among other things, that the U.S. government do a better job of explaining its policies and actions. Yeah, that’ll do it.

Posted on Thursday, November 25, 2004 at 7:21 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

A Turkey of an Idea

My take on the government’s suggestion for the holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2004 at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, November 19, 2004

Are They Gone Yet?

Living just 30 miles from Little Rock, Arkansas, I was nearly overcome by the noxious fumes of power emanating from Thursday’s dedication of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library. Presidential libraries, of course, are part shrine and part propaganda machine. They’re hardly worth celebrating. The best you can say about them is that they are privately financed—in a way. (Let’s not forget that Clinton’s was funded in part thanks to a last-minute pardon. Whether fugitive financier Marc Rich actually committed a real crime or not, it certainly looks as though Clinton sold the pardon.)

Whenever the President and the living ex-presidents get together, the power worshipers get all dewy-eyed about democracy. (Did anyone see Geraldo Rivera gushing about it on The O’Reilly Factor. Bah!) Imagine that, more than one person said (including Jimmy Carter), two Republicans and two Democrats (Bush I, Bush II, Carter, and Clinton) standing together peacefully. (Gerald Ford was ill.) Well, maybe it’s because they’re so much alike! The commentators also like to remark about what an exclusive club the presidency is. It certainly is. These few men have had the unique experience of running the most awesome apparatus of political power the world has ever known. It extracts about $2 trillion from the hides of the American people each year, bullies us in countless ways, has military forces in 135 countries, and spends more on armaments than most other countries combined. And these men all got there by bamboozling the American people.

Posted on Friday, November 19, 2004 at 5:57 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Condoleezza Rice Named Secretary of State

Oh yeah. Now I remember why I wanted George W. Bush to lose.

Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2004 at 1:03 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, November 9, 2004

My Modest Suggestion

Here’s my suggestion for Bush’s second term.

Posted on Tuesday, November 9, 2004 at 6:01 PM | Comments (4) | Top

Sunday, November 7, 2004

Ugh!

I didn’t vote on Tuesday, and I wouldn’t have voted for George W. Bush if I had voted. But this doesn’t keep me from being revolted by how the left-socialist pundits and cultural elite are interpreting the election results. (There is already a set of maps purporting to show that the red states correspond to the pre-Civil War slave states and territories.)

I would disagree with the typical Bush voter on many things. Nevertheless I am confident that he is not an intolerant, racist, gay-bashing, theocratic fascist. This voter most likely supports the war in Iraq not because he’s a neocon neo-imperialist, but because the Bush administration effectively and subtly, albeit cynically, tied it to the attacks of 9/11. This voter opposes abortion not because he wishes to see women subjugated, but because he believes that fetuses are rights-bearing persons. This voter opposes government funding of stem-cell research (something any libertarian opposes) not because he fears scientific advancement, but for reasons similar to his reasons for opposing abortion. This voter wants the U.S. Constitution changed to outlaw expanding the word “marriage” to include gay people, but he doesn’t want them marched to death camps or even stripped of civil liberties in lesser ways. Etc., etc., etc.

As I said, I disagree with these positions (except the one on tax-funded stem-cell research; I oppose tax-funded anything). Nevertheless, in my view America is not in the grip of Christian totalitarians or even authoritarians. Most of the people who voted for Bush probably generally favor smaller government over bigger government. They either are not aware that Bush has been a big domestic spender or they feel that whatever he has spent, John Kerry would have topped him if elected. (And since when has the left associated big spending with authoritarianism?! That would be progress indeed.) Most Bush supporters believe that Bush’s foreign policy is ultimately a national-security policy. They would be uneasy with explicit imperialism and would have opposed war in Iraq had it been sold purely on the basis of freeing the Iraqis and building a democracy there, which is why the Bush people came up with the WMD rationalization.

The red-staters are not libertarians (although they share some of our positions), but we have less to fear from them than we have from the secular left, which would impose legal and chemical straitjackets on us in the name of mental and physical hygiene, that is, science.

We should be able to disagree and make our case without demonizing our opponents in extreme and repugnant terms. Much of the left-socialist analysis of the election discredits the analysts, not the red-state voters.

This is not a great time for libertarians, but the dark ages are by no means descending on America, regardless of what Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, E. J. Dionne, Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand, and their worn-out statist ilk may think.

Posted on Sunday, November 7, 2004 at 11:38 AM | Comments (6) | Top

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Best Question of the Night

I thought the best question of the town-hall-style presidential debate was put to Kerry: Why should someone who believes abortion is murder be forced to pay for it? Unsurprisingly, Kerry gave an idiotic answer. See my analysis here.

Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 at 2:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, October 1, 2004

Kerry on Style, Both Lose on Substance

Kerry definitely won the debate by theatrical criteria. He looked and sounded better. Bush, as nearly universally acknowledged by now, looked and sounded terrible. He should have spent the day sleeping instead of hurricane-politicking in Florida.

On substance, I flunk them both. Bush was pitiful at defending his record in Iraq. He could hardly attempt it with a straight face. All he could say is that it's hard work and good people are working hard. Yawn.

All Kerry really promised is that he would try to arrange it so that foreign kids were shot and blown up so that fewer American kids would have to suffer. Now there's a policy I can get enthusiastic about. Didn't he promise to send more troops to Iraq?

I don't know what difference it will make in the end, but Kerry did what he had to do.

Posted on Friday, October 1, 2004 at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, September 27, 2004

Irving Louis Horowitz, Jacob Sullum Win Szasz Awards

The distinguished sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz and syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum are the winners of 2004 Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties.

Irving Louis Horowitz, winner of the professional award, is Hannah Arendt University Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University. Over the past several decades Horowitz has worked to develop a political sociology that can measure the extent of a society's personal freedom and State-sanctioned violence. As a result of his work, a standard for the quality of life in any particular nation or social system has been constructed based on the number of people arbitrarily killed, maimed, injured, incarcerated, or deprived of basic civil liberties. Horowitz has tried to build a bridge between his current analysis of State power and authority and his earlier studies of comparative international stratification and development. He is recognized as the individual who introduced the phrase "Third World" into the lexicon of social research.

Horowitz is the founder of Studies in Comparative International Development—now in its 40th year. He is also chairman of Transaction-Aldine Publishers. From 1962 to1969, Horowitz was professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin, Queen’s University in Canada, and the University of California, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Argentina, Israel, and India. He is a prolific author. Among his most recent books are Tributes: An Informal History of Social Science in the Twentieth Century; Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power, in its fifth edition; and Behemoth: The History and Theory of Political Sociology.

Jacob Sullum, winner of the general award, is a senior editor at Reason magazine and writes a column distributed by Creators Syndicate to newspapers throughout country, including the New York Post, The Washington Times, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His articles also have appeared in Cigar Aficionado, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and many other publications. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs.

Sullum’s work relentlessly defends the rights of consenting adults to consume even potentially harmful products, such as drugs and tobacco. He is a consistent champion of all civil and economic liberties. Sullum is most recently the author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, which refutes the idea that certain intoxicants must be banned because, unlike alcohol, they cannot be used responsibly. His previous book, For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health, unmasks the anti-freedom agenda of those who would legally harass people who choose to smoke.

The professional award is given to a specialist, such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or sociologist, who has drawn particular attention to abuses of civil liberties. The general award is given annually to a journalist or activist who has done exceptional work to promote the importance of civil liberties. The winners each receive a plaque and $1,000.

Past winners include anti-affirmative-action activist Ward Connerly, First Amendment journalist Nat Hentoff, computer-privacy champion Phil Zimmermann, author James Bovard, William Mellor and Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice, law professor Richard Epstein, development economist Peter Bauer, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, and Second Amendment scholar David Kopel.

The Thomas S. Szasz Award is a tribute conferred annually in the general and professional categories on persons or organizations, American or foreign, judged to have contributed in an outstanding degree to the cause of civil liberty. The award is intended to encourage civil libertarians to persevere in the battle to protect personal autonomy from state encroachment. The greatest encouragement, however, may be found in the life of Thomas Szasz himself.

For almost five decades, Szasz has distinguished himself as the preeminent defender of individual rights in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. He has remained a steadfast champion of the classical-liberal values of voluntary interaction, the rule of law, and an open society. His struggle on behalf of civil liberties has been indefatigable, sustained despite intense opposition over a lifetime of brilliant intellectual accomplishment.

Emeritus professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center/Syracuse, Szasz is the author of some 25 books, hundreds of scholarly articles, and a regular column in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. His most recent volumes are Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary and Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices, both published by Transaction-Aldine Publishers.

His other books include The Myth of Mental Illness; The Therapeutic State; Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers; Insanity: The Idea and It's Consequences; Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted; Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide; Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America; and Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry.

The Thomas S. Szasz Award is a project of the Center for Independent Thought.

Posted on Monday, September 27, 2004 at 6:01 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Big-Government Man

Worth reading: “How Tax Cuts Feed the Beast." What’s the argument for a Bush reelection again?

Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 9:40 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, September 17, 2004

Vietnam

I am annoyed by so much of the debate about Bush's and Kerry's roles during Vietnam. The other night Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame repeatedly said that the one thing no one can doubt is that George Bush was a "shirker" and Kerry wasn't. If he meant that Bush shirked according to the standards Bush himself would likely endorse, then Bernstein is right. But objectively speaking, Bernstein is wrong. To shirk is to avoid a duty or responsibility. No one had a duty or responsibility to go to Vietnam and shoot at perfect strangers who had never attacked him and to risk getting killed or maimed or just badly screwed up. Likewise, Kerry didn't "serve his country" when he went to Vietnam. At most he served a corrupt U.S. government that continuously imposed on the American people (not to mention the Vietnamese) by making them fight that immoral war.

Posted on Friday, September 17, 2004 at 4:26 PM | Comments (10) | Top

Thursday, September 16, 2004

When Three Stomachs Get Together, You Don't Know What They'll Come Up With

Gene Callahan, Sanford Ikeda, and I introduce a new academic discipline today: gastrointestinal economics today. Check it out here.

Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2004 at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Topsy-Turvy

What a topsy-turvy election! One candidate chose to fight in Vietnam. One candidate chose not to. Opponents of that war back the first, while supporters of that war back the second.

Posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 at 5:09 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Friday, September 10, 2004

The Dog that Won't Bark

Remember, as Bastiat taught, to look for the unseen (and unheard). A most telling fact about the Bush administration is that we will not see the Mission Accomplished footage in the President’s campaign commercials.

Posted on Friday, September 10, 2004 at 8:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, September 8, 2004

Politics Breeds Relativism

Thanks, Aeon, for that link to the article "Who Cares About the Truth?" It occurs to me that politics, democratic politics included, breeds relativism. Candidates and parties constantly argue over things that most people have no way of sorting out for themselves. So they decide who's right by party (or sometimes personal) identification? Did John Kerry deserve his medals or not? The answer depends on whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. Did George Bush fulfill his Air National Guard obligation? Same answer. Are tax cuts good for "the economy"? Same answer again. Should Dick Cheney be able to have secret meetings on energy policy? Should Hillary Clinton be able to have secret meetings on health policy? Just tell me the party affiliation and I'll let you know. It's all relative. There is no absolute truth.

If we could say nothing else about politics, that would be a damning indictment.

Posted on Wednesday, September 8, 2004 at 1:34 PM | Comments (1) | Top

"Free as a tethered ass!"

Do you want to know what it means to be free in America today? It means that if you want to air a political ad in the last 60 days of this presidential campaign, you are free to wade through this, to see if you're allowed.

That's freedom in America today. The founders will never stop spinning over this.

The title of this post is from W. S. Gilbert's Princess Ida.

Posted on Wednesday, September 8, 2004 at 11:33 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, September 3, 2004

Zell Miller, Fascist-in-Spirit

Something else from Zell Miller’s remarkable speech at the GOP convention. No comment needed:

And like you, I ask which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?
The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.
There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush.
In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley.
Our country was not yet at war but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.
President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."

I didn't watch the speech, but apparently the crowd went wild.

Thanks to Lew Rockwell for publicizing this.

Update: I've since watched the video online. For the record, there was no applause immediately after the Roosevelt quote. Applause came four lines later, after a reference to Wendell Wilkie, Roosevelt's 1940 Republican opponent: "And he [Wilkie] made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue." It's fair to say that Roosevelt's hideous quotation got no enthusiastic response—in fact, no response at all—from the convention throng. (Why didn't they boo?) Video is here.

Posted on Friday, September 3, 2004 at 12:04 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, August 27, 2004

Bush, Kerry, Vietnam, and Those 527s

I discuss President Bush’s position on 527 committees and John Kerry’s statements about his time in Vietnam in an article titled “Cynical Presidential Candidates.

Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 at 3:33 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Where Did America Go?

How distressing is it that today it is perfectly acceptable for anyone, including the President of the United States, to advocate the censorship of political speech during a campaign? The references to technical-sounding "527 committees" just obscure the fact that private individuals donate their own money to place anti-Bush or anti-Kerry commercials on television. Calling on the government to stop this--by violence if necessary, I presume--is about as un-American as it gets.

Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 at 9:16 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Oops!

I forgot to plug my article in defense of "price-gouging. I argue that if we must have a law, let's have one that requires gouging. It's here.

Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 at 9:03 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Metaphor Is Also a Refuge for Scoundrels

From Paul Krugman’s column today in the New York Times:

“What we need, according to [John Kerry’s view of the country’s health-care problems], is for the government to assume more of the risk….”

Translation: Far heavier tax burdens should be imposed by threat of violence on the most productive people in the country, the very ones who do most of the saving and investing, that is, the financing of life-saving and life-enhancing goods and services.

Posted on Friday, August 27, 2004 at 8:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, July 3, 2004

Government by Euphemism

I submit for possible interest my latest published by The Future of Freedom Foundation: Government by Euphemism.

Posted on Saturday, July 3, 2004 at 6:48 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, July 2, 2004

The Court Decisions

Apropos of what Pat Lynch writes below, I have not read the Supreme Court decisions yet and only a little analysis of them. But my good friend Jacob Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation, an attorney as well as a dedicated libertarian, applauds them in A Supreme Reason to Celebrate the Fourth of July.

Posted on Friday, July 2, 2004 at 10:46 AM | Comments (6) | Top

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Why They Hate Us

“The focused and lethal threat posed to U.S. national security arises not from Muslims being offended by what America is, but rather from their plausible perception that the things they most love and value—God, Islam, their brethren and Muslim lands—are being attacked by America.”

That’s what an anonymous senior CIA analyst writes in his newly published book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Brassey’s).

The book was reviewed by the CIA to see if includes classified info, which it does not.

According to the Washington Post, the analyst "headed the agency's task force on Osama bin Laden" and is a 22-year veteran "who occupies a senior position in counterterrorism."

The story says, "U.S. intelligence officials are not pleased with the tone and conclusions of the book, and have watched with surprise as sales have risen." (Emphasis added.)

All I can say is that if intelligence officials are surprised that this book is a hot seller, they should be in another line of work. Was there a safer bet?

Get the lowdown here. Also, see NBC’s interview.

Posted on Saturday, June 26, 2004 at 8:03 AM | Comments (5) | Top

Monday, June 21, 2004

This Perfect Day Arrives

If you thought the Bush administration couldn’t get worse, you’re in for a surprise. It’s about to launch a national mental-illness screening/treatment program modeled on a Texas scheme that is spending a fortune in tax money handing out powerful drugs and which has been under suspicion of corruption involving—what else?—drug companies. (The whistleblower has been fired.)

Of course the government’s schools will be in the frontlines in the search for mental disease. That would be bad enough if mental illness were real rather than metaphorical. But considering that the term masks a pseudoscientific exercise in the control of people who don’t live by accepted social rules, the program is especially ominous. Is This Perfect Day upon us? Forced diagnosis and treatment of counterfeit illnesses—I’m sure glad we have an advocate of limited government in the White House. See here. Nods to Jeff Schaler.

Posted on Monday, June 21, 2004 at 8:38 AM | Comments (8) | Top

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Our Elective Monarchy

Ronald Reagan’s state funeral got me thinking about the American presidency. That effort yielded these possibly interesting thoughts.

Posted on Saturday, June 19, 2004 at 12:09 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Friday, June 11, 2004

Mount Rushmore

There has been talk about adding someone to Mount Rushmore, and I have to agree it's time. Add Ray Charles! (And remove Lincoln and TR.)

Posted on Friday, June 11, 2004 at 8:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, June 9, 2004

Neuroscience Is Blind

Researchers in England claim they are beginning to understand why love is “blind,” that is, why people tend not to see faults in their romantic partners and children. The answer, according to British psychiatrist Raj Persaud’s report on the research, is that, for evolutionary reasons, “strong emotional ties to another person…affect the brain circuits involved in making social judgments about that person…. So love really is blind and there is a biological basis for the blindness.”

Persaud is impressed by the work of researchers Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki:

This is a profound finding in the history of our attempts to understand this most profound and powerful human emotion. It means neuroscience finally explains a puzzle that has flummoxed artists from Shakespeare to Sinatra attempting to interpret love, which is why we can't see the faults in our partners or children which others can clearly perceive, and as a result find our affection mysterious. It also explains why we take so long to finally see the flaws in those we idealise because of our love, and which means we can end up choosing the wrong person to commit to. (Emphasis added.)

A profound finding that explains a puzzle? How could it be, when in fact it is no explanation at all for why people behave a particular way? It’s reductionism, not explanation—like "explaining" why houses are built by reference to the physics of hammering nails into wood and other such processes.

Undoubtedly parts of the brain activate and de-activate when we look at our romantic partners and our children. And at some level it’s interesting to know which parts do which. But having that information is not the same as understanding love; nor does it explain the alleged “puzzle” over why we “can’t see” our lovers’ and children’s faults. Is that generalization even true? Are we blind to the faults, or do we simply accept them as the price paid for greater perceived benefits? The entire research program seems to be based on a flawed premise. Whatever the case, what is the puzzle? Strong emotions can influence or cloud judgment, although with effort people are capable of achieving a reasonable degree of objectivity. They do it routinely.

It’s not so much the neuroscientific findings that I’m interested in challenging, but the interpretation of the findings, which is not a matter of neuroscience at all. Bartels and Zeki put the cart before the horse. Obviously we use our brains when we act or think or feel emotions. And that’s the point. We use our brains. Our brains don’t use us. Of course we don’t directly activate or de-activate this or that area of our brains in the same way that we move our limbs. But we indirectly do so when we engage in various activities. When a man thinks of his wife or children, no doubt he causes some parts of his brain to change from their previous state. But the changes do not explain what he has done, what he experiences, or why, no more than the laws of electricity explain why I wish to illuminate my house. Nor do the changes explain why he ignores or fails to notice their faults. The words relevant to an explanation are “intend,” “choose,” “value,” and the like, not “pre-frontal cortex” and “magnetic resonance imaging.” That is, the explanation lies in the realms of praxeology (the study of the formal features of human action qua choice), psychology, and biography, not neurophysiology. We cannot hope to understand persons (as opposed to bodies) if we bypass the first three disciplines and focus on the last.

This has important ethical and political implications, because the more that neuroscience eclipses praxeology and psychology in “explaining” human action, the more individual liberty is threatened. After all, it is the pseudo-explanations of bad behavior via mental illness/brain disorder that permit state-deputized physicians to preventively detain and/or drug persons who have committed no crimes and to excuse from responsibility others who have. (For more see Thomas Szasz’s books Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences and The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience.)

Posted on Wednesday, June 9, 2004 at 5:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, June 8, 2004

Ronald Reagan, Protectionist

Jeff Tucker found another article, this one specifically on Reagan’s protectionism.

A longer paper on the subject, published by Cato, is here.

While I'm at it, here’s my Cato paper analyzing Reagan's intervention in the Iran-Iraq War. This is when the U.S. alliance with Saddam Hussein really picked up steam.

Much is made by some libertarians and better conservatives over the claim that Reagan adored Bastiat, Cobden, Bright, and Mises. He may have, at some level. But then shouldn't free trade have been his strong point?

Thanks again, Jeff.

Posted on Tuesday, June 8, 2004 at 2:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

A Look at Reagan in 1988

Jeff Tucker of the Mises Institute was entrepreneurial enough to dig up this 1988 article of mine on the Reagan years. It may be of interest.

Thanks, Jeff.

Posted on Tuesday, June 8, 2004 at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, June 6, 2004

Bushes on Reagan

The most sickening parts of the tributes to Ronald Reagan are the ones coming from George H. W. and George W. Bush, both of whom tried to score political points by taking none-too-subtle shots at Reagan's reputation for favoring small government. What else did "a kinder, gentler nation" and "compassionate conservatism" mean?

Posted on Sunday, June 6, 2004 at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

More on Assisted Suicide

Here is my response to the private reaction I got to my position on the Ayn Rand Institute’s statement on physician-assisted suicide:

Thomas Szasz's point about principals and assistants is crucial because clear language is both an inducement to and a consequence of clear thought. The physician is not merely an assistant if he has the power to veto the patient's desire to kill himself, which he does. Under the Oregon law, the attending physician and a consulting physician must agree, among other things, that the patient's judgment is not impaired and that he suffers no mental illness when he expresses the wish to kill himself and asks for the drugs with which to carry out his wish. The patient is not in the driver's seat. Do you think that if the two doctors veto the request, the patient can simply doctor-shop until he accomplishes his goal? The patient, having been certified as impaired and, by virtue of his request, obviously dangerous to himself, could be committed to a mental hospital against his will. We cannot separate the legal issue of suicide today from the entire psychiatric/mental illness edifice—a massive violation of individual rights that any Objectivist should categorically condemn.

Contrast that situation with a free market. A drug seller could choose not to sell lethal drugs to a terminal patient (or anyone else). But the situation would be very different from what exists in Oregon. If one retailer refused to sell the drug, the patient would be free to find another without fearing commitment to a mental hospital. The seller would not be under a legal mandate to certify that the patient was acting with "unimpaired judgment." He would have no legal liability if the patient committed suicide. (The family of the deceased could not sue him, for example.)

By the way, when a free-market pharmacy sells someone a lethal drug with which to kill himself, would we call that "pharmacist-assisted suicide"? Of course not. That's why Szasz labels "physician-assisted suicide" an oxymoron.

Re the claim that the Oregon law does not expand the power of doctors because they can already write prescriptions: the law expands the "therapeutic state" by widening the definition of "medical treatment." In Szasz's words, "neither the person who kills himself nor the physician or anyone else who gives him a lethal drug is performing a medical act." This is critically important: killing oneself is not treatment. Neither is helping someone to do so. "Not everything physicians do is a treatment," Szasz writes. Suicide is a moral/legal matter in which doctors have no special expertise. Yet the Oregon law obscures that fact—worse: it declares assisted suicide to be medical treatment. To put it mildly, there is no progress in having the status of suicide changed from symptom of mental illness to medical treatment.

Because the law expands the therapeutic state by expanding the notion of "treatment," I cannot accept the argument that physician-assisted suicide is a proper reform pending laissez faire in drugs. On the contrary, such laws (including medical marijuana laws) put off the day we will achieve laissez faire. Who needs laissez faire (most people will ask) if doctors can prescribe drugs under "proper" conditions and safeguards? But what about the rights of someone who is not a terminal patient but who nevertheless wants to take his own life? Is he not a self-owner?

We should use the right of suicide as part of our agitation for a free market and full property rights. As to what someone wishing to commit suicide should do in the meanwhile, I would prefer to see him break the law (as many do) rather than see more power go to the already-threatening therapeutic state.

Posted on Sunday, June 6, 2004 at 8:17 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Ronald Reagan

I was never a big Reagan fan. There was always more small-government talk than action. And in foreign affairs, there wasn't even talk. But I will say this: I despised most of his enemies, for they were the type who believe that anyone who opposes activist government is a bumpkin whose views deserve no response. By the way, my favorite picture of him is the one of him reading The Freeman while on an airplane, with Nancy asleep next to him, her head on his shoulder. As Steve says below, he really was interested in ideas.

Posted on Sunday, June 6, 2004 at 7:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, June 5, 2004

Ominous Feelings

I'm beginning to fear that Bush-Cheney-Rove are going to wiggle out of the tight spot they've been in. Truces are being arranged in the troublesome cities. American casualties will become scarce. The UN Security Council will pass the U.S.-U.K. resolution apparently giving the new Iraqi interim government "full sovereignty," including the authority to ask U.S. and other foreign forces to leave. Even though the new U.S.-backed Iraqi prime minister says that their exit would be a "disaster," the Bush administration will be able to tell the American people that democracy and peace are taking root and that the U.S. will be out in the foreseeable future. Result? Bush's reelection. Whatever else they are, they are competent politicians. (They also happen to be lucky enough to have the cipher John Kerry as an opponent.)

There goes our hope for gridlock: Kerry in the White House fighting with a GOP Congress.

Don't me wrong: I want the killing to stop; I want the Iraqis to be on their own; and I want the U.S. out. But I also want Bush defeated. It's the only punishment he and his people will understand.

Posted on Saturday, June 5, 2004 at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

What's the Difference?

A serial killer motivated by money is a hit man.
A serial killer motivated by anything but money is a psychotic.

Posted on Saturday, June 5, 2004 at 9:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

What a "History of Mental Illness" Means

Submitted to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

To the Editor:
I am puzzled by your June 4 story about moving “criminally acquitted patients” from facilities in Little Rock to facilities in Corning (“Judges get final say in patients’ transfers”). If they have been acquitted, why are they being moved anywhere? Then I learned that the Arkansas Partnership Program “has provided treatment to those acquitted of crimes because of mental disease or defect since…1995.” It goes on: “Most have…years of mental health problems.” Yet I was not reassured. For as Thomas Szasz points out, no one, including psychiatrists, has ever seen a mental disease, mental defect, or mental health problem. When people say they’ve seen those things, all they really mean is that they’ve seen bad behavior. But behavior, however bad, is behavior, not disease, and behavior has reasons, not causes (such as disease), even if the reasons are not readily apparent to observers. (Don’t bring up brain scans: they do not show causes of behavior. Correlation, even if it exists, is not causation.)
So when you report that people acquitted of rape, murder, and aggravated robbery have histories of mental health problems, all you’re saying is that these people have histories of bothering and harming other people. Why not just say that? And if that’s the case, why were they acquitted and why are they locked in a “mental health facility”? They belong in prison. We can't excuse people of responsibility for their crimes, then wonder what happened to self-responsibility.
Posted on Saturday, June 5, 2004 at 8:58 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Wednesday, June 2, 2004
Ayn Rand Institute Wrong on Assisted Suicide
The heirs of Ayn Rand who congregate in Irvine, California, with Leonard Peikoff have blundered. In a news release titled “Assisted Suicide: A Moral Right,” the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) expressed relief that Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide (PAS) law survived a challenge from the Bush administration.” Thomas A. Bowden, an attorney and ARI senior writer, said:

The real issue is whether each individual lives by right, or only by society's permission. Sometimes happiness becomes impossible to attain, as in the case of a painful, terminal illness. The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. If society can require you to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

Bowden is certainly right about that. The problem is that Oregon’s law does not embody the moral principle he describes. As the news release acknowledges, “Oregon's assisted suicide law permits terminally ill patients to ask their doctors for lethal doses of drugs, to be used, or not, by the patient at his own discretion” (emphasis added). Is that what advocates of self-ownership are fighting for: the “right” to ask one’s doctor for drugs with which to kill oneself? What if the doctor says no?
In fact, under the Oregon law the doctor has the authority to say no, which means this is not about individual rights but rather physician power. But why should physicians have such power? Suicide, after all, is a moral, not a medical, issue. As Thomas Szasz writes in Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide, “[T]he term ‘physician-assisted suicide’ is intrinsically mendacious. The physician is the principal, not the assistant. In the normal use of the English language, the person who assists another is the subordinate; the person whom he assists is his superior…. However, the physician engaging in PAS is superior to the patient: He determines who qualifies for the ‘treatment’ and prescribes the drug for it” (p. 65).
Speaking honestly, there is no right to assisted suicide (an oxymoron, Szasz writes). There is only the right to kill oneself. Once we're straight on that, we can see the problem clearly: the government prohibits nonphysicians from obtaining the means of painless, efficient suicide: namely drugs. Rather than coming to the defense of laws that give power to doctors, advocates of self-ownership and liberty should instead be calling for an end to all drug laws, including prescription laws.
Posted on Wednesday, June 2, 2004 at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, May 27, 2004
Read the Constitution
I hope this won’t make me sound like a fan of George W. Bush, but here goes anyway. I am sick of columnists and others reminding us that Al Gore won the "popular vote.” It’s irrelevant! (See Maureen Dowd for an example.) If the national popular vote had mattered, Bush could have run up his margins in Texas and his other safe states. But he didn’t because it would have been wasted time and money. Why? Because the Constitution set up the Electoral College. For the benefit of the Gore fans, what counts is how many state electoral votes a candidate wins, not how many votes cast by citizens. You get a state’s electoral votes even if you win the state’s popular vote by a margin of one. The Gore fans’ nattering is equivalent to claiming your team really won the World Series because although it lost four games, it scored more runs overall than the other team. Give it up, Gore fans. You’re only showing your ignorance.
Posted on Thursday, May 27, 2004 at 12:44 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Now I Get It
Conservatives are mad that the news media and Iraq-war critics focus on the bad news—abuse of detainees, bombings of wedding parties, and the like—while overlooking the good news—U.S. troops' building schools and hospitals. I get it: the good news is the extension of the welfare state to Iraq. Whoopee!
Posted on Wednesday, May 26, 2004 at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Don't Destroy Abu(se) Ghraib
President Bush should not authorize the U.S. military to destroy Abu Ghraib prison, site of U.S. abuses against Iraqi detainees (that we know). Why not? Because it is not Bush's to destroy. Let the Iraqis decide what to do with it. And then let them do it. Maybe someone will buy it and convert it into a museum of state horrors for all to see. At any rate, it's not "our" decision, even if the Iraqi "government" the UN creates says it is. What should the U.S. do? Give the keys to some Iraqi on the way out—of the country.
Posted on Tuesday, May 25, 2004 at 5:11 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Shameless Self-Promotion
As W. S. Gilbert put it in Ruddigore:

If you wish in the world to advance,
Your merits you're bound to enhance,
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven't a chance!

So here goes: A page of links to my writings on psychiatric and medical issues has been added to the Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility website. The specific page is here.
Posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 4:49 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Longing for the Good Old Days
During L'affaire Lewinsky, conservatives said that it took Bill Clinton to make sex a staple of the nightly news. At least that was consensual sex.
Posted on Tuesday, May 11, 2004 at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, May 8, 2004
Szasz in One Lesson
The following is my attempt to summarize a good deal of what Thomas Szasz has been writing and saying for nearly half a century.

If neuroscientists discovered that mass murderers and people who claim to be Jesus had different brain chemistries from other people, most everyone would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a mental illness/brain disorder (MI/BD).
If neuroscientists discovered that homosexuals had different brain chemistries from heterosexuals, far fewer people would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a MI/BD.
If neuroscientists discovered that nuns had different brain chemistries from everyone else, very few people would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a MI/BD.
If neuroscientists discovered that married men had different brain chemistries from bachelors, no one would accept this as evidence that they suffered from a MI/BD.

Clearly, a difference in brain chemistry per se is not enough to make people believe that someone has a MI/BD. It takes more. Why, then, would a difference in one case be taken as evidence of MI/BD, while a difference in another case would not be? The obvious answer is that people, including psychiatrists, are willing to attribute behavior to mental illness/brain disorder to the extent that they disapprove of that behavior, and are unwilling to do so to the extent they approve of, or at least are willing to tolerate, that behavior. (Psychiatry once held that homosexuality was a mental illness. That position was changed, but not on the basis of scientific findings. Science had nothing to do with the initial position either.)
In other words, the psychiatric worldview rests, not on science or medicine, as its practitioners would have us believe, but on ethics, politics, and religion. That would be objectionable only intellectually if that were as far as it went.
Unfortunately, it goes further, since the practitioners and the legal system they helped shape are empowered:

First, to involuntarily “hospitalize” and drug people “diagnosed” as mentally ill and thought possibly to be dangerous to themselves or others, and
Second, to excuse certain people of responsibility for their actions (for example, via the insanity defense).

P.S.: Everyone interested in liberty should read Szasz’s forthcoming book, Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices, now available at Laissez Faire Books.
Posted on Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Dominant Paradigm
David Brooks in today’s New York Times epitomizes what’s wrong with the dominant thinking about the fix we are in with respect to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East:

It was U.S. inaction against Al Qaeda that got us into this mess in the first place. It was our tolerance of Arab autocracies that contributed to the madness in the Middle East.

Inaction? It takes an amazing ignorance of the history of U.S. intervention in the Middle East to even think of that word in this context. (For a brief survey of that history, see my 1991 Cato Institute paper here.)
But at least Brooks sees the grave damage U.S. policy has done:

We've got to acknowledge first that the old debates are obsolete. I wish the U.S could still go off, after Iraq, at the head of "coalitions of the willing" to spread democracy around the world. But the brutal fact is that the events of the past year have discredited that approach.

Not that he has really learned the appropriate lesson, however:

We've got to reboot. We've got to come up with a global alliance of democracies to embody democratic ideals, harness U.S. military power and house a permanent nation-building apparatus, filled with people who actually possess expertise on how to do this job. [Emphasis added.]

Sometimes you’ve just got to acknowledge that some people are hopeless.
Posted on Saturday, May 8, 2004 at 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, May 7, 2004
Bush, Rumsfeld, et al.: Men for No Seasons
In light of the Bush's administration's glaring lack of respect for the rule of law, these immortal words from Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons" are particularly apt:
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
[Sir Thomas] More: Yes. What would you do: Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them all down -- and you're just the man to do it -- d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
Posted on Friday, May 7, 2004 at 11:47 AM | Comments (2) | Top

How Convenient
It’s amusing to see conservatives, whenever it’s convenient, reach for explanations that they routinely condemn when others employ them. Case in point: Yesterday Rush Limbaugh suggested that the soldiers who posed Iraqi prisoners in sexually humiliating positions may have been influenced by what they’ve seen over the years on pornographic websites. He cites this "great piece" in National Review Online that makes this case. See his remarks here.
In other words, it’s not their fault. The blame should be placed on their environment.
Posted on Friday, May 7, 2004 at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, May 6, 2004
Is Government the Source of Outsourcing?
People like CNN’s Lou Dobbs who lose sleep over the “exporting” of jobs typically want the government to stop, or at least discourage, firms from seeking the lowest-cost labor consistent with their objectives. The protectionists never wonder if existing government interference in the marketplace is the very reason some so-called “outsourcing” is occurring in the first place. Jude Blanchette at the Foundation for Economic Education shows that this is indeed the case, with the help of an enlightening report from the National Association of Manufacturers. "Don't Protect Manufacturing—Deregulate! is here.
Posted on Thursday, May 6, 2004 at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, May 4, 2004
Good George Will Column
“Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.”
This is one of the killer lines from George Will’s excellent column about George Bush today in the Washington Post. I recommend it.
Posted on Tuesday, May 4, 2004 at 1:59 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Monday, May 3, 2004
It's on the Wall
"In line with today's needs, the Selective Service System's structure, programs and activities should be re-engineered toward maintaining a national inventory of American men and, for the first time, women, ages 18 through 34, with an added focus on identifying individuals with critical skills."
That's from a proposal by the Selective Service System. See this.
Thanks to Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek.
Posted on Monday, May 3, 2004 at 9:48 AM | Comments (0) | Top

No, Limbaugh Meant What He Said
Bill Marina may be right that when Rush Limbaugh said he favors having a war every 20 years, he was merely screwing up Jefferson's remark about revolution. But I doubt it. I think Limbaugh meant exactly what he said: that it is good to put each generation through war—just for the hell of it.
Posted on Monday, May 3, 2004 at 8:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Making the Cut
Browsing in the La Guardia airport book store yesterday, I spotted 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know by the editors of the American Heritage dictionaries. The first entry my eye fell on, with pleasant surprise, was laissez faire. Here's the entry: "An economic doctrine that opposes government regulation of or interference in commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free enterprise system to operate according to its own economic laws. Noninterference in the affairs of others."
The first part isn't perfect—but all things considered, not bad. I didn't have time to see if socialism made the cut.
Posted on Monday, May 3, 2004 at 8:38 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Great Line
"Liberals like to equate crime in the streets with 'crime in the suites.' But nobody is unwilling to go outside their homes at night for fear Martha Stewart will sell them some stock."

—Thomas Sowell
Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 5:28 PM | Comments (3) | Top

Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Most Dangerous Mind-Altering Substance
What's the most dangerous mind-altering substance? The answer is here.
Thanks to Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek —Where Orders Emerge. (Great name. Forgive the shameless self-promotion.)
Posted on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 at 5:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, April 24, 2004
Say It Ain't So!
Stop the presses! Bureaucrats at the UN are suspected of corruption in their running of the “Oil for Food ” program while economic sanctions were being imposed on the Iraqi people. Who’d have thought that was possible?
Posted on Saturday, April 24, 2004 at 8:35 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Less than Meets the Eye
As a follow-up to this, I note that the American administrators of Iraq have also said that “limited sovereignty” does not include the authority to make laws. As far as I can tell, limited sovereignty encompasses only the power to wash the windows in Paul Bremer’s office.
Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman said, “The structure of the government…should not be overly large.”
Gee, maybe we in the United States should hope for occupation.
Posted on Saturday, April 24, 2004 at 8:31 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, April 22, 2004
Duh!
The other day I noted that neuroscientists are studying blood flows in the brain in a futile effort to learn what’s “really going on” inside voters’ heads when they see political commercials. On Thursday Fox News did a straight report on this non-story. The dumbest part was the reaction by Susan Estrich, the leftish law professor and Democratic operative: “What's the line between figuring out which ad works and figuring out, ‘how do I manipulate this particular voter through a combination of words and images in order to convince him to believe something he may not really believe?’”
What planet is that woman living on? That's what political campaigns routinely do. She ran Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign in 1988, so she did it herself!
Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 5:30 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Right Out of Orwell
From the Washington Post:

The new Iraqi interim government scheduled to take control on July 1 will have only "limited sovereignty" over the country and no authority over U.S. and coalition military forces already there, senior State and Defense officials told Congress this week.

And Iraqi women will experience only limited pregnancy.
Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 11:13 AM | Comments (1) | Top

War for Innovation?
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times is apparently unfamiliar with the voluminous economic literature on the benefits of market-based social cooperation, especially the division of labor and the law of association. Why else would he refer to a "war" for innovation, as he does in this horrendous column:

The bottom line: we are actually in the middle of two struggles right now. One is against the Islamist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, and the other is a competitiveness-and-innovation struggle against India, China, Japan and their neighbors. And while we are all fixated on the former (I've been no exception), we are completely ignoring the latter. We have got to get our focus back in balance, not to mention our budget. We can't wage war on income taxes and terrorism and a war for innovation at the same time.
Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 10:32 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Bush in a Nutshell
I know this has been commented on before, but I cannot resist. Here's the American people's and the world's problem in a nutshell. At his recent press conference President Bush said, "[M]y job as the President is to lead this nation into making the world a better place."
Perhaps there is nothing more dangerous for a president to think.
Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 9:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Government Stripped Bare
Do you want to see the true nature of government, particularly the U.S. government? Then read this, this, and this. No comment necessary.
Posted on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?
My thoughts on that are here.
Posted on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 at 11:47 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Heaven Help Us!
The New York Times reports today on research supposedly designed to "measure" what's going on in people's brains when they see various political images. In other words: more mumbo-jumbo from the world of neuroscience. (If I find out there was tax funding for this, I know which part of my brain will erupt.) A sponsor of the study said, "These new tools could help us someday be less reliant on clichés and unproven adages. They'll help put a bit more science in political science."
That's not quite right. It will help put a lot more scientism into political scientism.
Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 at 10:29 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 19, 2004
"Conscience on the Battlefield"
In response to the news that two American soldiers have fled to Canada because they oppose the war Iraq, Leonard Read's moving essay, "Conscience on the Battlefield," has been posted at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education. The essay was written in 1951 in response to the Korean War.
Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | Top

The Clear, Ringing Sound of Principle
From today's New York Times:
"We don't want to put troops into a situation that is increasingly a public-relations problem for the president," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a group of conservative political donors. "No one wants body bags coming home in September and October."
Or November 1 or 2.
Posted on Monday, April 19, 2004 at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, April 16, 2004
Does He Even Hear What He Says?
President Bush quoted in Bob Woodward's new book about the road to war in Iraq: "Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will.... I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible."
Huh?
Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, April 12, 2004
Excuse me?
From today's Washington Times:
"Israeli political sources said yesterday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will get a written U.S. pledge that in exchange for a Gaza pullout, Israel will be able to keep parts of the West Bank under a future peace deal."
Does the West Bank belong to the United States now?
Posted on Monday, April 12, 2004 at 3:07 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, April 9, 2004
QED
If, as Clark and Condi agree, no counterterrorist measure taken between January 20 and September 11, 2001, could have stopped the attacks on New York and Washington, this is all the more reason to cleave to a strict noninterventionist foreign policy. If there is no way to stop the people that intervention will make angry from striking back, then let's mind our own business and not make them angry.
Posted on Friday, April 9, 2004 at 2:23 PM | Comments (2) | Top

Thursday, April 8, 2004
Deanna Laney: My Take
The bottom line on the insanity verdict in Deanna Laney’s murder case is this: If she's not responsible for killing her kids, then you’re not responsible for not killing yours. The same psychiatrists and neuroscientists who think that Laney could not control her actions also think you can’t either (i.e., mind is nothing but brain).
Posted on Thursday, April 8, 2004 at 3:28 PM | Comments (6) | Top

Saying What Others are Thinking
Bradley Gitz teaches history at a small college in Arkansas and writes a column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He calls himself a libertarian, but he is a rabid hawk. In today's column, “Time for Ruthlessness”, he says what surely many conservatives are thinking, so I thought it was worth bringing it to wider attention:
"The paradox inherent in the American occupation is that we may need to demonstrate some of the brutality characteristic of Saddam Hussein to ultimately make Iraq a different and better kind of place than it was under him.... Saddam ruled Iraq in harsh fashion, but that harshness also served a purpose in terms of maintaining order. America needs to maintain order there, too, and one suspects that tanks will prove more useful in the short term for achieving that crucial objective than simply getting the electricity going or providing job opportunities."
Postscript: Andrew Bacevich says the appropriate comparision for Iraq is not Vietnam but Algeria.
Posted on Thursday, April 8, 2004 at 8:58 AM | Comments (6) | Top

Wednesday, April 7, 2004
Silver Lining
Let's look at the bright side of the latest developments in Iraq: The Bush administration is accomplishing its goal of bringing the Shiites and Sunnis together. Maybe the same strategy can be applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Posted on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Winning the Hearts and Minds
From today's Washington Post:
"In Baghdad, anxiety over the turn of events was matched by unease over dozens of casualties in Baghdad's poor Shiite neighborhoods. In Sadr City, a slum of 2 million named for Sadr's father, hundreds gathered before Sadr's office, waving flags and chanting his name. Two U.S. tanks were parked a few hundred yards away, their barrels trained on the crowds. Residents reported clashes overnight, and an Arabic television station said fighting had renewed Tuesday evening."
Posted on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | Top

The Big Lie Continues
President Bush yesterday in my state of domicile, Arkansas:
"We've got tough work there [in Iraq] because, you see, there are terrorists there who would rather kill innocent people than allow for the advance of freedom. That's what you're seeing going on: These people hate freedom, and we love freedom, and that's where the clash occurs."
Are the American people swallowing this swill served up by his Royal Smirkship?
Posted on Wednesday, April 7, 2004 at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, March 30, 2004
The Real Offense
Ever since former anti-terrorism specialist Richard Clarke publicly apologized, on behalf of himself and the U.S. government, for the security lapses that let 9/11 happen, debate has raged over whether a government apology is appropriate. It certainly seems that the multibillion-dollar "security" apparatus we are forced to pay for failed us—and not one head has rolled. Heck, no one has even been denied a promotion on account of the blunders. But an important point is being overlooked. There is one switch at which the government was not asleep: the foreign-intervention switch. The terrorist crimes of 9/11 were purely a consequence of years of U.S. meddling in the Middle East and elsewhere. Focusing only on the acts of omission will cause us to ignore the much longer chain of acts of commission.
Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 9:34 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Pot Calls Kettle Black, Then Shuts It Down
Now let me get this straight: the U.S. occupiers have closed a popular newspaper in Baghdad for, as the New York Times put it, "printing lies that incited violence." That is undoubtedly more serious than issuing lies to justify violence.
Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 9:15 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Saturday, March 27, 2004
Learning from the Past
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States:
President Bush: My fellow Americans, good evening. I want to announce tonight that I have sent American forces into Iran. We intend to use overwhelming force so that this conflict can be brought to a swift conclusion with a minimum of casualties. I'll let you know why we are doing this when the war is over. God bless America. Goodnight.
Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2004 at 8:59 AM | Comments (3) | Top

Friday, March 26, 2004
Empire Subverts Reformers in Middle East
Here is an excellent article from the Los Angeles Times showing why one should favor liberal reform in the Arab world and oppose American imperial intrusion there. In fact, the latter undercuts the former.
Posted on Friday, March 26, 2004 at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, March 25, 2004
Israel and Hamas: Strange Bedfellows
Lest we forget (or that we never realized it in the first place):
“In the early 1980s the occupation authorities encouraged the founders of Hamas, hoping that they would create a counter-weight to Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Even after the start of the first intifada, the army and the security services gave preferential treatment of Hamas.” —Uri Avnery, long-time Israeli writer and peace activist
Hamas's suicide bombing is what they call "blowback".
(It shouldn't be necessary to add this, but it is: "blowback" is not a synonym for "justified.")
Posted on Thursday, March 25, 2004 at 2:31 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, March 24, 2004
It's Not the First Time
I am amused that Israel’s supporters are upset that the late Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder assassinated the other day by Israeli forces, is described in media reports as a “spiritual leader,” rather than as a terrorist leader. What’s the problem? It's not the first time a spiritual leader was responsible for fomenting mayhem and murder.
Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 at 8:58 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Oops! Did I Really Say That?
Top La-Z-Boy imperialist Bill Kristol should be appreciated for his honesty, especially when he reveals something so astounding. Yesterday on Fox News’ “Special Report with Brit Hume,” Kristol trashed former antiterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who has indicted the Bush administration for pre- and post-9/11 misfeasance and malfeasance. Kristol’s chief complaint against Clarke is that he broke an implicit agreement between the equally culpable Democrats and Republicans not to use the other’s antiterrorism failings to score political points.
That is, indeed, how the system works. Did Kristol mean to give so much away?
Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 at 8:57 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, March 22, 2004
What in the World Is a War on Terror?
Robert Higgs has written what I have been thinking for a while, namely:

"The war on terror," he [President Bush] insists, "is not a figure of speech." Well, I beg your pardon, Mr. President, but that is precisely what it is. How can one go to war against "terror," which is a state of mind? Even if the president were to take more care with his language and to speak instead of a "war on terrorism," the phrase still could not be anything more than a metaphor, because terrorism is a form of action available to virtually any determined adult anywhere anytime. War on terrorism, too, can be only a figure of speech.

The Bush image-makers have so little regard for the American people that I’m sure they came up with the label “war on terror” because it has the fewest syllables. That it's meaningless was irrelevant to their purposes.
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2004 at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Is There No End to Demagogy?
It’s almost funny how the war party and its cheerleaders will say whatever is convenient at the moment to justify their horrendous policies. Before and after 9/11, many of us pointed to the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia as a dangerous provocation. We were mocked by the La-Z-Boy warriors for “blaming the victim.” Now these same apologists for mass murder (when committed by the American military) credit President Bush’s war against Iraq with permitting the withdrawal of the troops from Saudi Arabia—a “major irritant” to Arabs and Muslims.
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2004 at 9:49 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 20, 2004
Out of Control
"The military said Friday night that it was dropping all charges, including one of mishandling classified information, against Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." —New York Times, Saturday
Think about what they dragged this guy through, including adultery and pornography charges. No doubt about it: the government is out of control.
Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2004 at 10:47 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Some Neocon
From David Brooks's column in the New York Times today:
"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?
Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2004 at 10:44 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Friday, March 19, 2004
Iraq-—One Year Later
Here's my take.
Posted on Friday, March 19, 2004 at 2:07 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Saturday, March 13, 2004
Business as Usual
From today's Washington Post:
"The government's longtime chief analyst of Medicare costs said yesterday that Bush administration officials threatened to fire him last year if he disclosed to Congress that he believed the prescription drug legislation favored by the White House would prove far more expensive than lawmakers had been told."
As we know now, the official cost estimate is a third higher ($535 billion over ten years) than we were told when the bill was being debated. What did did John Kerry call them? Crooks and liars? (Not that his wing of the ruling class is any better.)
Posted on Saturday, March 13, 2004 at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, March 12, 2004
Are Conservatives All Socialists Now?
Have you noticed when it comes to the airwaves, nearly everyone is a socialist? In the controversies surrounding Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Howard Stern, and Bubba the Love Sponge, the phrase "the public's airwaves" has been invoked multitudinously. In all the cable-TV debates over the coming crackdown on TV and radio indecency, I haven't heard one person question this collectivism. Conservatives are the worst offenders. Where are the individualists among them?
Posted on Friday, March 12, 2004 at 10:19 AM | Comments (1) | Top

Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Why Haiti?
My modest contribution to opposing the Haitian intervention ran in the Orange County Register today. Have a look. (Registration is free.)
Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at 3:51 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Such Ironies!
The ironies of the Martha Stewart prosecution and conviction abound. The first that comes to mind is that the Food and Drug Administration reversed its rejection of ImClone Systems' anticancer drug, Erbitux. It was the imminent rejection of the drug in 2001 that prompted ImClone CEO Samuel Waksal to try to sell his shares, word of which was passed to Stewart, perhaps prompting her to sell her shares.
Second is that although no one was victimized by Stewart's sale of the stock shares, there may be plenty of victims from her indictment, prosecution, conviction and imprisonment. Stewart sold her 4,000 shares on a day when nearly eight million other shares in that company were sold. (The previous day only about a million shares were bought and sold.) Whoever bought Stewart's shares was already in the market looking for ImClone stock and must have known that an FDA ruling was imminent. (Some investors like to gamble.) Many people seem to think that Stewart buttonholed some schnook on the street and hyped the stock in order to pressure him into buying her shares. That's not how it works.
While no one was harmed by what Stewart did, many people stand to be harmed by what the government and jury did. The jurors think that their verdict will be good for the "little people." But it is "little people" who will be hurt by the fall in the value of shares in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO). It is "little people" who work for MSLO and whose jobs are now in jeopardy. It is "little people" who work for KMart, the struggling retailer closely associated with Stewart. Their jobs are also in jeopardy.
According to the government, Martha Stewart lied to cover up—what? Noncriminal behavior. (It never charged her with insider trading.) Under proper law, the authorities would not have asked her why she sold her stock—she had no fiduciary responsibility to ImClone or its shareholders. The case is a travesty, for which many innocent people will suffer—not least of whom will be Martha Stewart. More here and here..
Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, March 2, 2004
To Go or Not to Go?
I'm closely following the controversy over Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Although I haven't seen it, I've had a few things to say about it, and that has prompted friends to ask if I intend to see it. As of now, no. I don't go to slasher movies, especially with subtitles. But I am looking for a sign that I should go. Plummeting ticket and popcorn prices would do.
Posted on Tuesday, March 2, 2004 at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, February 12, 2004
Some Support
President Bush's chief economist, Gregory Mankiw, got a lesson in Washington culture the other day. Testifying in Congress he said, as any good free trader would, that the outsourcing of labor by U.S. firms in order to take advantage of economies will bring benefits to the American people. The Democrats blasted him, of course, and the administration came to his defense—well, sort of. A White House spokesman said President Bush suports "free and fair trade. He is committed to a level playing field." Translation: He doesn't really agree with Mankiw at all.
Posted on Thursday, February 12, 2004 at 9:01 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Which Is It?
President Bush continues to maintain that the choice to avoid war belonged to Saddam Hussein alone. All he had to do was abide by the UN resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction and other things. But surely Bush is not being honest here. He now defends the war on the grounds that not only did Saddam have the capability to build weapons, but that he was a brutal dictator, a financier of Palestinian terrorism, and the obstacle to democracy in the Middle East. Had Saddam fulfilled the UN resolutions to the letter he’d still be in power, a brutal dictator, a financier of terrorism, and an obstacle to democracy. Does that matter to President Bush or not? Was war in the cards no matter what Saddam did about the alleged weapons?
Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 at 1:57 PM | Comments (1) | Top

Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Johnny, We Know Ye All Too Well
As a charter member of ABB-04 (Anybody But Bush in 2004) I am naturally keeping an eye on John Kerry. Oh yes, his antiwar message is badly muddled by his vote in favor of the blank check Bush asked for. His faux naivete is pathetic. ("I was voting for a process." No, you were voting for a war.) But last night I was really disturbed when, on claiming victory in five states, he trotted out his line about "Benedict Arnold" corporations that move out of the country to reduce their taxes. This idiotic populism, nationalism, and protectionism might be too hard to take.
Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2004 at 9:54 AM | Comments (2) | Top

Good News
The good news from Super Tuesday was the poor showing and subsequent dropping out of Joseph Lieberman, the most hawkish contender in the race. It is gratifying to see him do so badly in the primaries and caucuses. Staking his candidacy on Delaware, of all places, was absurd. That he placed a distant second to Kerry is delicious.
Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2004 at 9:46 AM | Comments (0) | Top

This just in...
A new study indicates that if the presidential election were held today...the turnout would be very light.
Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2004 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, January 29, 2004
Big Government Conservatism: Is There Another Kind These Days?
David Beito’s post and Radley Balko’s Foxnews.com column remind me of something big-government right-winger George Will wrote in the 1980s. He chided conservatives for saying that the government cannot competently set minimum wages or provide health care, because if people come to believe that, how will they be persuaded that the government can effect regime change in other countries? (He had Cuba in mind back then.) This constitutes a case for conservative totalitarianism.

By the way, this is the same George Will who wrote recently: “A prescription drug entitlement is not inherently unconservative, unless the welfare state itself is—and it isn't.”
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 at 2:41 PM | Comments (0) | Top

New Hampshire Non Sequitur
The news media continue their unrelenting propaganda on behalf of the “democratic process.” In reporting the results of the New Hampshire primary, one cable TV news reader noted that Wesley Clark had beaten John Edwards for third place by about 800 votes, demonstrating once again, he said, that “every vote counts.” And exactly how does it demonstrate that? All it tells me is that any person in New Hampshire who cast more than 800 votes that night might have made a difference in who placed third.
Posted on Thursday, January 29, 2004 at 2:23 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Monday, January 5, 2004
WHY IS LIBYA DIFFERENT FROM IRAQ?
The announcement that Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi has agreed to give up his quest for biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons and submit to inspections raises two questions. First, has Gadaffi promised to turn Libya into a democracy? If so, I missed that part of the news release. The Bush doctrine isn’t supposed to be simply about “weapons of mass destruction.” It’s also purportedly about bringing democracy to the Middle East. Second, in Libya’s case President Bush is content to forgo regime change and settle for inspections. But why? Gadaffi is not a nice guy. He has run a brutal regime for a long time. He was involved in the horrible Pan Am 103 bombing over Scotland, which killed hundreds of innocent people. If inspections are a satisfactory safeguard with Libya, why weren’t they so with Iraq? Or does Bush hold a regime-change card up his sleeve?
Posted on Monday, January 5, 2004 at 9:44 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Sunday, December 14, 2003
MIXED FEELINGS
So U.S. forces have finally captured Saddam Hussein. Talk about mixed feelings! The murderous bastard deserves to die a long slow death at the hands of the Iraqis he so brutally oppressed. But the thought of U.S. troops hunting down another country’s dictator makes me sick.
Posted on Sunday, December 14, 2003 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top

NOT AN EASY JOB
You’ve got to sympathize with the campaign-finance reformers. They don’t have it easy. You try removing the appearance of corruption from an intrinsically corrupt enterprise.
P.S.: With respect to Keith Halderman's post: any congressman who admits that he voted for the bill believing it to be unconstitutional while assuming the Supreme Court would kill it has committed an impeachable offense. There may be a separation of powers (in theory), but members of Congress take an oath to uphold the Constitution too. On that matter, there is no division of labor.
Posted on Sunday, December 14, 2003 at 6:45 AM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, December 11, 2003
CORRECTION
The reporting about the just-upheld campaign-finance law has been confusing, probably because the law itself is so confusing. At any rate, yesterday I stated, apparently erroneously, that issue ads which implicitly target candidates were banned in the 60 days before an election and 30 days before a primary. It seems that the law only heavily restricts such advertising by imposing rules on how the money for it can be raised and spent. But the ads are not banned. See? The state isn’t so bad after all.
Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 at 5:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Wednesday, December 10, 2003
MONEY AND POLITICS
The Supreme Court has upheld the fascistic campaign-finance law, which limits how much money people can give to political parties (who’d want to do that?) and, even more egregiously, bans political “issue ads” by private groups in the last 60 days of campaigns. The 5-4 majority said the appearance of government corruption justifies these restrictions. In other words, the distributive state requires the suppression of free speech and private property (money). Or in still other words, if the powers that be can make people think the system isn’t corrupt, it can carry on indefinitely.
Oh, one last thing: this is one of the bills that President George W. Bush didn’t veto. (He hasn’t vetoed any, actually.)
Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 at 2:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Friday, December 5, 2003
BEWARE NATIONAL GOALS

Oh great. The Bush people are looking for “unifying national goals” for the second term. Ideas being kicked around include going to the moon (again?), extending life spans, and eradicating childhood illnesses. According to the Washington Post, “One person consulted by the White House said some aides appear to relish the idea of a ‘Kennedy moment’ for Bush, referring to the 1962 call by President John F. Kennedy for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.” (Groan.) An administration official “said Bush's closest aides are promoting big initiatives on the theory that they contribute to Bush's image as a decisive leader even if people disagree with some of the specifics. ‘Iraq was big. AIDS is big,’ the official said. ‘Big works. Big grabs attention.’”
This puts Bush squarely in the neocon “national greatest conservatism” camp. As he says on the campaign trail, he wants “great goals worthy of a great nation.”
As a libertarian I know likes to say, Are we to be spared nothing?
Posted on Friday, December 5, 2003 at 2:00 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Thursday, December 4, 2003
C-H-U-T-Z-P-A-H

Can the Bush supporters spell “chutzpah”? On TV they are falling all over themselves to praise Bush for his political courage in scrapping the steel tariffs. Excuse me—but who put the tariffs on in the first place? His courage supposedly lies in his willingness to risk losing the swing steel states for the sake of free-trade principle. But the supporters neglect to point out that Bush was getting pressure from a swing steel-using state (namely, Michigan), as well as states such as Florida that would have suffered from European retaliation sanctioned by the World Trade Organization. His stated reason for ending the tariffs? They worked! By the way, he promised to protect the steel industry from "dumping." Some man of principle. Humbug!
Posted on Thursday, December 4, 2003 at 2:55 PM | Comments (0) | Top

Tuesday, December 2, 2003
TRADE POLICY NONSENSE

I sure hope the current controversy over Bush’s steel tariffs puts to rest the fallacy that protectionism is in the “national interest.” Here’s a clear case where wine for one interest group (steel producers/workers) is poison for another (auto producers/workers, among others). “Buy American” is not only wrong-headed; it’s also incoherent.
P.S.: I'm taking great pleasure at Bush's predicament.
Posted on Tuesday, December 2, 2003 at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | Top