Liberty & Power: Group Blog
Entries by Steven Horwitz
Friday, October 10, 2008
Horwitz on Stossel on October 17
John Stossel's annual special, this year titled "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics," will include some of the footage from an interview I did with him back in July on my work on Katrina and Wal-Mart. It's on ABC on Friday Oct 17 at 10pm EDT., assuming we aren't under martial law and watching government propaganda by then. Tune in and enjoy.
And catch Bryan Caplan on tonight's episode!
More Naomi Klein Bashing
Well with the economy going nuts, there's always time for a little fun and frolic. In a recent blog post, Will Wilkinson quotes this lovely nugget from Naomi Klein, arguing why Milton Friedman and his ideas are still responsible for the crisis and other evils of corporatism even though he rejected said corporatism:
Now, I admit to being a journalist. I admit to being an investigative journalist, a researcher, and I’m not here to argue theory. I’m here to discuss what happens in the messy real world when Milton Friedman’s ideas are put into practice, what happens to freedom, what happens to democracy, what happens to the size of government, what happens to the social structure, what happens to the relationship between politicians and big corporate players, because I think we do see patterns.
So Friedman and his ideas are guilty because people who supposedly believed them put them into practice in ways that utterly contract them, but that are nonetheless, in her warped logic, predictable applications of said ideas.
Well I'm glad to see that it's now fair game to pin the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century on Marx. After all, just substitute Marx for Friedman in the above and then just add "and leads to 100 million innocent dead" and see if it isn't just the same.
Even on Klein's own whacked, but now even playing field, I'd say Milton still comes out ahead.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
An Open Letter to my Friends on the Left
On my web page, I have posted an open letter to my friends on the left that attempts to persuade them that the current financial mess is not the product of free markets but a whole variety of government intervention. I further attempt to persuade them that, for reasons they might share, solutions that bailout the lenders and ask for more regulations will be counter-productive. I hope this letter also serves as a kind of "one-stop shop" (a Wal-Mart Super Center perhaps?) for a variety of examples of the role government intervention played in generating this crisis. It's about 3000 words, covering a whole number of related positions I've heard these friends argue for in the last couple of weeks.
If you have additional ideas, let me know, as I am more than willing to update the letter to cover things I might have missed. Other feedback is welcome as well, either in the comments or by email.
Cross-posted at The Austrian Economists.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Chirp, chirp, chirp
Those are the sound of the crickets coming from the world of Naomi Klein (link to the worst book of the decade not provided) and friends as the real truth about the relationship between crises and political economy is now right in their faces, providing exactly the evidence against the "shock doctrine" that some of us pointed out right away: crises cause the state to grow and the free market to shrivel. Disaster Socialism is back in business.
On a related note, will folks on the Left attack the Paulson bailout plan for the naked violation of the rule of law that it is? From the proposal:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
This abrogation of the rule of law, after all, is precisely what the Left has correctly opposed about the Administration's conduct in the "war on terror," so why not continue the same opposition here? Anyone want to take a guess at the odds of that happening?
Cross-posted at The Austrian Economists.
Our Common Humanity in Death and Marriage
I interrupt the ongoing socialization of US credit markets with a temporary subject change (and not because my subject is necessarily more important).
I spent yesterday morning attending a memorial service for the mother of a colleague here at SLU. One element of the SLU campus is that we have a large (for our size) and vibrant gay and lesbian community within the faculty, of which the colleague in question is a member. Watching her long-time partner grip her hand as they walked in and watching one member of a gay faculty couple with his arm around his long-time partner during the service (not to mention another long-time lesbian couple two rows behind me) got me thinking about the same-sex marriage issue.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Why Experience is a Bad Thing in Politics
If you had your choice about who you were going to get shot by, wouldn't you prefer someone with very little experience with a gun?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Elitism and Hubris of Obama
This is a beauty. Obama on how he needs to get beyond empty rhetoric in his acceptance speech Thursday night:
"I'm much more concerned with communicating how I intend to help middle-class families live their lives."
Oh gee, thanks Obama, but I'll pass on your "help." I'd prefer the empty rhetoric, if that's okay with you.
The elitism that suggests that middle-class families need his "help" in living their lives is exceeded only by the hubris of him believing he knows what it is that they supposedly need. I'm pretty sure most of the middle-class, more and more of whom are moving up and out of the middle class, can figure out how to live their lives on their own, thankyouverymuch.
It's a sad state of affairs that as bad as Obama is, he's probably not quite as bad as the other major party candidate.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Barney Frank for President
Any politician who says:
"The vast amount of human activity ought to be none of the government's business. I don't think it is the government's business to tell you how to spend your leisure time."
might actually be worth the effort to vote for! Where's a pen to write him in?
Better yet, it was in the context of his introducing "a proposal to end federal penalties for Americans carrying fewer than 100 grams, almost a quarter-pound, of the substance."
Is it too much to hope for that Rep. Frank includes economic activity other than drug purchases in the things that are in that "vast amount of human activity" that are none of government's business?
Friday, July 4, 2008
Happy Birthday to US
Some very brief thoughts of mine on the day over at Western Standard, a very nice and quite libertarian Canadian site.
Cross-posted at The Austrian Economists.Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Media Manipulation and Environmentalism
Critics of markets often argue that corporations manipulate images, both still and moving, to "trick" buyers into purchasing their products. Of course, in the market, if said products don't deliver, buyers have alternatives.
Not so in politics, where such manipulation is plentiful as well and where the decisions of the state give us no alternatives.
In my post yesterday, I mentioned NASA scientist James Hansen's Torquemada impersonation in his call to try oil executives for crimes against humanity. This morning, I read an account over on Planet Gore of Hansen's first testimony on global warming 20 years ago and the way in which several members of Congress and staff manipulated the visual scene to create support for Hansen's testimony. Here's an excerpt from the account linked above:
Specifically, the PBS series Frontline aired a special in April 2007 that lifted the curtain on the sort of illusions that politicians and their abettors employed to kick off the campaign.
Frontline interviewed key players in the June 1988 Senate hearing at which then-Senator Al Gore rolled out the official conversion from panic over “global cooling” to global warming alarmism. Frontline interviewed Gore’s colleague, then-Sen. Tim Wirth (now running Ted Turner’s UN Foundation). Comforted by the friendly nature of the PBS program, Wirth freely admitted the clever scheming that went into getting the dramatic shot of scientist James Hansen mopping his brow amid a sweaty press corps. An admiring Frontline termed this “Stagecraft.”
Sen. TIMOTHY WIRTH (D-CO), 1987-1993: We knew there was this scientist at NASA, you know, who had really identified the human impact before anybody else had done so and was very certain about it. So we called him up and asked him if he would testify.
DEBORAH AMOS: On Capitol Hill, Sen. Timothy Wirth was one of the few politicians already concerned about global warming, and he was not above using a little stagecraft for Hansen's testimony.
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn't working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.[Shot of witnesses at hearing]
WIRTH: Dr. Hansen, if you’d start us off, we’d appreciate it. The wonderful Jim Hansen was wiping his brow at the table at the hearing, at the witness table, and giving this remarkable testimony.[nice shot of a sweaty Hansen]
JAMES HANSEN: [June 1988 Senate hearing] Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.
Next time someone accuses capitalists of using manipulative images to persuade people to buy something, you might bring this little incident up and point out that at least we have choices in the market.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Environmentalism as Religion: Meet Another Torquemada
In an earlier post I offered some thoughts on environmentalism as religion and later offered David Suzuki as an example of someone out to punish the heretics. Lest you think he was the only Torquemada, I give you James Hansen. In today's Guardian we find a story with the following lead paragraph:James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
I'm sure that my good friend Gus is going to tell me that these folks aren't representative of the mainstream of environmentalist thought or that just because people say things like this, we shouldn't dismiss the environmentalists' concerns completely. I am in agreement with the latter, but I'm increasingly doubtful of the former. James Hansen "heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York." and is often noted as "Al Gore's science advisor."
Just how much more mainstream can you get?More important: who will have the courage to name such demagoguery for what it is?
(HT to Max)Friday, June 13, 2008
New Op-Ed on Expanding the Fed's Regulatory Powers
The Cato Institute has just published an op-ed of mine titled Giving the Fed New Powers Ignores History.
Summary:
Like the child who murders his parents and then asks for pity because he's an orphan, the Federal Reserve has a long history of asking for more regulatory powers to clean up messes for which its action or inaction is the primary cause….Cross-posted at The Austrian Economists
The history of banking in the United States and elsewhere does not show that the industry is beset by market failures that require regulatory intervention. To the contrary, almost every major crisis faced by the banking system has been the consequence of already-existing regulations, many of which came about as responses to previous crises caused by older regulations. Countries, like Canada, where some of the worst of these regulations were absent, have not had the same history of crises as has the United States. Perhaps this time we will learn from history and avoid a new regulatory regime that will create new threats to an already somewhat shaky U.S. financial system.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Why Daddy is a Libertarian
My friend Jeff Ellis at The Thinker takes on a book called "Why Mommy is a Democrat" and offers a short and sweet take on "Why Daddy is a Libertarian" aimed at kids, tongue firmly in cheek, as he says.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
In Memoriam: Sudha Shenoy 1943-2008
Julie Novak is reporting at her blog that Liberty and Power's Sudha Shenoy has died after a bout with cancer. Julie's obituary provides all the relevant information on Sudha and her career. Sudha was everything Julie says she is and more. She was truly one of the founders of the Austrian revival. Although she never published with the frequency of many of the rest of the stellar group of young scholars who attended the first revival conference in South Royalton, VT, she was active, including her contributions here at L&P. Her knowledge of history, especially European economic history, seemed endless and her training as an Austrian economist enabled her to see things in that history that others often overlooked. She was also one of the loudest classical liberal voices against the American imperialism of the last few years.
But above all of that, she was "old school" in all the best senses of the term. She was a scholar and a gentlewoman, and she was fun to be around. Last November at a Society for the Development of Austrian Economics session looking back at the early years of the Austrian revival, Roger Garrison told a hilarious story (as only he can) about an early conference in California that included Sudha taking an unplanned dip in the pool. My own favorite memory is what a good sport Sudha was when a group of us at an SDAE meeting a few years ago decided to go out to dinner at a barbecue place. It was decidedly not her scene, but she came along, found some things she could eat, and had a great time I think. It was also one of the few chances I really had to chat with her one-on-one as we sat at the same end of a long table. It was a great experience.
Rest in peace Sudha and thanks for all that you have done to help put Austrian economics where it is today.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
A new Austrian Economics scholarly listserv
The Society for the Development of Austrian Economics is happy to announce the creation of a new scholarly listserv dedicated to the discussion of Austrian economics. Information follows below:
The AustrianEcon listserv is a scholarly discussion list sponsored by the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics (SDAE). It is devoted to the ideas of the Austrian school of economics and related contributions to the understanding of human action and its consequences. We aim for as broad a discussion as possible across any disciplines or schools of thought that relate to Austrian economics. It must be emphasized that the listserv is not a forum for political discussion except to the degree that such issues have a direct connection to the scholarly contributions of the Austrian school both past and present.
Membership in the list is subject to the approval of the list manager. Membership will be limited to those affiliated with universities, think-tanks, or other scholarly/intellectual organizations. Exceptions for those not so affiliated will be granted on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the list manager. SDAE members are automatically eligible for membership. You can join the Society at http://it.stlawu.edu/sdae . You can request to join the list by emailing the list manager Steve Horwitz at sghorwitz@stlawu.edu .
We strongly encourage members to use the list as a vehicle for the dissemination of their current scholarship. In particular, discussion of working papers is a very valuable use of the listserv. Any members wishing to make a paper available for discussion should contact the list manager and the paper will be posed at the SDAE website for list members to access. Austrian analyses of current contributions to the mainstream economics literature are also strongly encouraged as is discussion of current work in related disciplines (e.g., evolutionary psychology, political science, history, etc.) or traditions in economics (e.g., constitutional political economy, public choice, or various “heterodox” schools etc.) of which members might be less aware.
AustrianEcon is a moderated listserv. All posts require the approval of the list manager.
Friday, May 30, 2008
The State, Parental Rights, and the FLDS in Texas
I've largely been quiet about the FLDS case in Texas where state authorities seized over 400 kids from a fundamentalist Mormon ranch on the grounds that the group was abusing the children, either physically or sexually via forced marriages/coerced sex between older men and girls in their mid-teens. The authorities found a number of girls who had either already had children or, in two cases, were currently pregnant (6/2 UPDATE: David Friedman points out in the comments that both of these "girls" were in fact not minors - they were 18 and 22). As a result, they argued that all of the children were in danger, presumably the boys because they were being raised in an environment in which they were groomed to be rapists, at least in an institutional sense. In the wake of yesterday's Texas Supreme Court decision upholding an appeals court decision that ordered the children returned to their parents, I thought I'd share a few thoughts.
Cases like these do pose difficulties because they raise an interesting conflict of legitimate rights. Children surely have a right not to be physically or sexually abused and in the non-anarchist world, it's legitimate as part of the state's job of protecting rights to respond to genuine cases of such abuse (noting that what constitutes physical abuse isn't always crystal clear). But parents have rights as well, both at the state level and in terms of the federal constitution. And those rights include the right to make decisions about how to raise and educate their children. We might not like what parents teach their kids, but unless there's evidence of actual abuse, parental beliefs alone are not sufficient grounds to deny them their rights. Yes, this group's practices might threaten the rights of some of their girls, but the state's action definitively denies the parental rights of the adults and libertarians, it seems to me, must account for both sets of rights, even as we might recognize there are trade-offs and imperfections all around.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Total Takedown of Naomi Klein
Back in October, I posed "Two Questions for Naomi Klein," in response to her then-new book Disaster Capitalism, which argues that "free market ideologues" have consciously created crises as opportunities to force their unpopular policies on unsuspecting populations, both in the US and elsewhere. Specifically, she sees Milton Friedman as the source of all of this evil.
My two questions were a drop in the bucket compared to the total and utter takedown of the book administered by Johan Norberg in a new Cato Policy Briefing entitled "The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics."
I'm not going to snippet it as the whole thing deserves to be read as a masterful, well-footnoted, response to Klein and others like her. If you have friends who are talking about Klein's book, send them Norberg's piece.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Rushing to War, Part Two
Thanks to the generosity of the Koch Foundation, we have inaugurated a Visiting Speaker Series in Political Economy here at St. Lawrence. Our kickoff speaker in March was Chris Coyne, who did a fantastic job with a talk on After War. Last night was our second speaker for the semester, Pierre Desrochers of the Geography Department of the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Many of you are probably familiar with Pierre's work.
As I did with Chris, I gave a brief introduction that both said something about the speaker but also talked about the issues each was addressing. I tried to pick themes that illustrated the ways in which libertarianism shares the values of the left. In Chris's case, I talked about the anti-imperialist tradition of classical liberalism. For Pierre last night, I talked about the parallels between the War in Iraq and the calls, especially in the current issue of Time, for a "war on global warming." I share a slightly revised version of my thoughts on those parallels below.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Wal-Mart, the Coast Guard, and Hurricane Katrina
In my relentless attempts at self-promotion, I'm happy to announce that my policy study for the Mercatus Center on the role of the private sector (and the Coast Guard) during Hurricane Katrina, focusing on Wal-Mart, is now available on the web. This study is part of Mercatus' larger project on Katrina, all of which is well worth perusing. Here's the link and the executive summary:
"Making Hurricane Response More Effective: Lessons from the Private Sector and the Coast Guard During Katrina"Many assume that the only viable option for emergency response and recovery from a natural disaster is one that is centrally directed. However, highlighted by the poor response from the federal government and the comparatively effective response from private retailers and the Coast Guard after Hurricane Katrina, this assumption seems to be faulty. Big box retailers such as Wal-Mart were extraordinarily successful in providing help to damaged communities in the days, weeks, and months after the storm. This Policy Comment provides a framework for understanding why private retailers and the Coast Guard mounted an effective response in the Gulf Coast region. Using this framework provides four clear policy recommendations:
1.Give the private sector as much freedom as possible to provide resources for relief and recovery efforts and ensure that its role is officially recognized as part of disaster protocols.
2. Decentralize government relief to local governments and non-governmental organizations and provide that relief in the form of cash or broadly defined vouchers.
3. Move the Coast Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) out of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
4. Reform "Good Samaritan" laws so that private-sector actors are clearly protected when they make good faith efforts to help.
If disaster situations are to be better handled in the future, it is important that institutions are in place so that actors have the appropriate knowledge to act and incentives to behave in ways that benefit others. The framework and recommendations provided in this paper help to provide a good understanding of the appropriate institutions.
Crossposted at The Austrian Economists.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Obama on Race in America
Just finished watching Obama's response to the Rev. Wright controversy. He gave a very good talk, both in terms of content and in terms of him trying to extract himself politically from the situation. The text can be found here (at least for the time being).
The one comment I'd make off the top of my head is that his rhetorical strategy of invoking, in a positive way, the Founders and the Constitution and suggesting that their general vision was right even though it was corrupted by slavery, will lead some to (rightly I think) compare this talk to King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. King's use of Biblical imagery as well as references to the Founders gave that document much of its rhetorical power by calling whites to account by their own value systems.
To be clear, I'm not saying that it is the equivalent of King's Letter, just that this rhetorical element may bring forward those comparisons.
Obama's explicit comparisons between the anger of Wright's generation and how it plays out in African-American churches and the anger of white Americans about ongoing economic change (which Obama has misdiagnosed, but that's another story) or perceptions of reverse discrimination seem to come from a similar sort of place: I understand why you are angry and you need to understand why we are angry and, by your own ideals, you should want to recognize the source of our anger and join in addressing it.
In any case, the speech will continue to get talked about and we'll see if my prediction about comparisons to King's Letter hold up.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The State in Action - Destroying Families Edition
From today's Detroit Free Press comes this story of a 13 year old boy (with Asperger's no less) who had to endure humiliating and manipulative interrogation by suburban Detroit cops in response to utterly false claims that his father had sexually abused his 14 year old sister, who is autistic.
Here's an excerpt from the story:
Monday, March 10, 2008
Global Warming and the Local Weather
In three recent posts, I offered some thoughts about the parallels among environmentalism, religion, and authoritarianism. I want to continue that line of discussion for a moment with a weather report. It's been a very snowy winter here in Canton, over 100 inches actually, which is 50% above our average of about 66. Ottawa to our north has had over 400cm, or 157 inches. We are both nearing our snowiest winters ever. It has been cold, though none of those -30F nights that we usually have a couple of each winter. Still, it's been a "real" winter like we haven't seen for years up here. Thus it's tempting to make all kinds of snarky remarks about global warming. But I'm not going to do that because I'm always quick to criticize people who use every heat wave or warm summer to make claims about a phenomenon whose reality is a matter of decades or centuries, not weeks or years. However, this winter does raise another point that I will get to below.
Monday, February 25, 2008
My New Freeman Article
The January/February 2008 issue of The Freeman is now available online. I have an article therein entitled "Free-Market Money: A Key to Peace," (PDF) based on this blog post. I argue that the classical liberal concern with keeping money production out of the hands of the state was, and is, a means by which its anti-imperialism could be effected. Without recourse to the printing press, the State is that much less likely to be able to afford foreign aggression. In fact, most central banks have grown out of the need for surreptitious forms of revenue, especially for war. The free bankers and the peaceniks need to get together and see their common ground: if one believes in peace and opposes the warfare-imperialist state, one needs to consider seriously the arguments against central banking. The beast needs to be starved.
One of the great things about having the time to blog this year (thank you SLU for your generous sabbatical/leave policy) is that it really can be a platform for first drafts of other things, or just a space to organize your thoughts in a less than fully formal way. The transformation of a blog post into a Freeman piece is precisely why blogging is, or at least can be, really productive for a scholar.
Cross-posted at The Austrian Economists.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Who Said It?
"It seems to me therefore clearly not desirable that generally higher education or research should be regarded as legitimate purposes of corporation expenditure, because this would not only vest powers over cultural decisions in men selected for capacities in an entirely different field, but would also establish a principle which, if generally applied, would enormously enhance the actual powers of corporations."
Answer below the fold.
Friday, February 8, 2008
And One More Bit of Environmentalist Authoritarianism
Who says good things don't come in threes? To finish three posts on environmentalism, here is, courtesy of Jonah Goldberg, an op-ed from an Austrialian academic and environmentalist arguing that environmental concerns are so important that they should trump both democracy and freedom. Note the last paragraph in particular:
Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled as Marxists, socialists, fundamentalists and worse. These labels are used because alternatives to democracy cannot be perceived! Support for Western democracy is messianic as proselytised by a President leading a flawed democracy
There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. It is not that liberal democracy cannot react once it sees a threat, for example, the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency. If governments can recognise a financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why are they unable to do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? Quite simply our system is seen to live and breathe by the present economic system; the problem is that living and breathing within the confines of the world ecological systems is contrary to the activity of progress and development as defined within liberal democracy.
The Chinese decision on shopping bags is authoritarian and contrasts with the voluntary non-effective solutions put forward in most Western democracies. We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions. It is not that we do not tolerate such decisions in the very heart of our society, in wide range of enterprises from corporate empires to emergency and intensive care units. If we do not act urgently we may find we have chosen total liberty rather than life.
That we must choose between "liberty" and "life" puts a whole different spin on the whole "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" thing now doesn't it? Evidently, when you have the Truth, it must be imposed upon the non-believers whether they want it or not.
Goldberg adds a line from the guy's co-authored book page: "[T]he authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power." Has inter-war era scientism ever been more plain in our own time than this?
For Goldberg, by the way, this is a nice bit of evidence for his new book Liberal Fascism, which argues that modern American liberalism, deriving from Progressivism, shares some important features with the political economy of 20th century fascism. Modern liberalism, he argues, is fascism with a smiling face. Their underlying philosophy and many of their institutions are similar to those of the fascists, but their intentions are much more noble. The op-ed above certainly fits that description. Having started reading the book last night, and having seen a draft of the chapter on economics, I can tell you that it's a serious piece of intellectual history that should be taken seriously by precisely the folks who are going to dismiss his argument without reading the book.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Quick Follow-up on Environmental Heretics
Lest you believe that the notion of heretical behavior and other elements of the worst of organized religion within the environmentalist movement are hyperbole, check out what the Canadian scientist David Suzuki had to say about politicians who question the science of global warming (HT: Ron Bailey):
Toward the end of his speech, Dr. Suzuki said that "we can no longer tolerate what's going on in Ottawa and Edmonton" and then encouraged attendees to hold politicians to a greater green standard.
"What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act," said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
"It's an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years."
Deny the faith, go to jail. All the more ironic that he was a former board member of a civil liberties organization. Whatever one's views on climate change, suggesting jailing those who dissent should be beyond the bounds of reasoned discussion and smacks of the mentality of witch hunts, pogroms, and forced conversions.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Environmentalism as Religion, Religion as Environmentalism
I give you the subject header of an email that just came across our faculty/staff listserv, courtesy of the Chaplain's Office:
"Christian Ash Wednesday: Why not give up carbon for Lent?"
Now the idea was not literally to "give up carbon" altogether, although that would make Rand's characterization of environmentalism as "death worship" much less hyperbolic than I've always believed it to be. Rather, it was an exhortation to reduce energy usage on the margin.
Still, it does serve as a reminder of what many have seen as the disturbing parallels between much of organized religion and popular forms of environmentalism. Seeing them explicitly combined in such a "logical" way makes these points even more telling:
Thursday, January 24, 2008
"Can Marriage Survive?" at Cato Unbound
I blogged about this over at The Austrian Economists and never mentioned it here. I shall remedy that now.
This month's "Cato Unbound" symposium is on "Can Marriage Survive?" and includes a several very good essays, especially the lead by Stephanie Coontz and the follow up by Betsey Stephenson and Justin Wolfers. Check out Coontz's reply as well. Coontz is one of the best scholarly writers on the family around and recently made an argument in the NY Times for getting the state out of the marriage business.
I had a long blog entry in response that is now part of Cato Unbound's "Best of the Blogs" section.
Enjoy.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Are "PC Libertarians" Really Statists in Disguise?
Among the more curious arguments made in the wake of the Ron Paul newsletters affair is the charge that those libertarians who decried the racism and homophobia of the newsletters are revealing their underlying statism. The most complete version of this argument is here. You can also see it here, where I've been declared a "Libertarian War Criminal" for "Siding with the State’s Thought Control in the Ron Paul Newsletter Affair." It has also been made in different forms, or cut and pasted from the first blog, into a number of comments threads at Hit & Run and elsewhere. A representative sample from the first link:
Political correctness is a very strong signal of statism. In the mind of a statist, something is either required or banned. Either homosexual behavior is banned or it is required that everybody respect homosexual behavior.
In the statist world of the “cosmopolitan libertarians,” only cosmopolitans get to satisfy their preferences and tastes (or as some others choose and should be free to choose to view them, vices) in the marketplace. Statists in their guts, the “cosmopolitan libertarians” view any differences in values as political threats. Suburban and rural preferences and tastes, whether vices (like racism and homophobia) or otherwise must therefore be shouted down and banned, and even the most ardent libertarian like Ron Paul for whom it is suggested might hold any such values they view as a political threat.
I'm not interested in a line-by-line fisking of this stuff, although I will ask where anyone has said it is "required" (i.e., presumably at the barrel of a gun) that everybody "respect homosexual behavior" or that vices should be "banned." All I've ever said is that we should name those things for what they are, shame those who use such rhetoric, and decide whether we as libertarians wish to continue to associate with them. I also said it was a decision that each of us had to make as individuals, though I still think we'd be better as a movement without it. It's funny that folks who shout so much about the "right of association" are so upset about others making calls to choose not to associate with them.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Paul Newsletters and the Problem of the Paleos
I’m catching up on some of the reaction around the libertarian blogosphere this morning as a windstorm knocked out my internet connection yesterday (though I did get tons of reading done!). There’s too much good stuff out there to link it all, but I do specifically commend Radley Balko’s piece at Reason’s Hit & Run, especially this bit:
Of course, Paul was never going to win. So the real concern here is what happens to the momentum for the ideas his campaign has revived. The danger is that the ignorance in those newsletters becomes inextricably tethered to the ideas that have drawn people to Paul's campaign, and soils those ideas for years to come. You needn't be a gold bug or buy into conspiracies about Jewish bankers, for example, to see the merit in allowing for private, competing currencies (what PayPal once aspired to become). You needn't believe blacks are animals or savages or genetically inferior to believe that the welfare state's perverse incentives have done immeasurable damage to black families. You needn't be a confederate sympathizer to appreciate the wisdom of federalism. You needn't be an anti-Semite to wonder about the implications of the U.S.'s broad support for Israel.
Some of these ideas have always faced a certain hurdle in the national debate. To argue against welfare, hate crimes laws, and affirmative action, libertarians (and conservatives) always have to clear the racism card first. To argue for ending the drug war or knocking out huge federal agencies, we always have to clear the "'I'm not a kook" card. Today's news, combined with Paul's high profile, I think carries the potential to make all of that a little more difficult.
What has surprised me, I must admit, is the fact that so many fairly prominent libertarian commenters are surprised by all of this. First of all, these newsletters have been brought up before, though perhaps not as many examples, nor as many really offensive ones. But more important, those of us who have been paying attention to the libertarian movement for the last 15 years knew that the paleo element was growing and was associated with all kinds of unsavory views from the ugly segment of the hard right. Did all of these supposed observers of the libertarian scene not pay attention to the appearances that Paul has made at all kinds of fringe events? Did they not pay attention to the links between people associated with Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute (Paul’s intellectual home) and racists, anti-Semites, Holocaust skeptics, homophobes, Confederacy praisers, and conspiracy theorists of all types, all of which have been ably discussed and documented by Right Watch and Tom Palmer, among others? Perhaps the under 35 crowd doesn’t have the longer-run history that those of us in our 40s do.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
TNR Hit Piece on Ron Paul
Well the long-awaited Jamie Kirchick hit piece on RP is up at The New Republic. The Paulites are already drilling him a new one in the comments. Kirchick argues that all of RP's old newsletters show he's a racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, cranky loon. We've been down this road before of course, and Paul and the campaign has responded to some of this stuff.
Just a few reactions of my own:
1. Like many of the RP supporting commenters, I'd like to see scans of the actual newsletters so the full context can be seen.
UPDATE: the scans are here. (HT: Jason Briggeman.)
2. Some of what those newsletters say I would call racist etc., but certainly not all of it and perhaps not even the majority of it. Criticism of Israel is not ipso facto anti-Semitic and I see nothing in the piece that I would call anti-Semitic. Name calling isn't the same thing as racism - Barbara Jordan frequently did play the victim and was, arguably, a socialist. Some of what Kirchick sees as ugly is also just policy disagreement. Some of it is bad though.
3. I found it interesting that Kirchick made an explicit connection to the Mises Institute and distinguished their "brand" of libertarianism from the more "urbane" of Cato or Reason. That will increase the fund raising at the Mises Institute for sure! As someone more sympathetic to the Cato/Reason brand, I do think differentiating those products is important and I'm glad Kirchick did so.
4. Kirchick's attempt to turn the Mises Institute's work on secession into ipso facto evidence of racism is really pathetic. In and of itself, of course, secession is very much a noble libertarian tradition. I guess it's naive to think that journalists are not so simple-minded as to be unable to separate the general principle of secession from the particulars of the Civil War. A smear job is a smear job. Of course the charge he's leveled here is an obvious risk when the same organization talks about secession and then also engages in Civil War revisionism and Lincoln bashing, and offers kind words about the Confederacy and the culture of the South.
In general, this is a mostly recycled set of charges that the campaign has dealt with before. My own view is that RP is not nearly as guilty as Kirchick would have it but he's also not innocent either. If you have a newsletter with your name on it and you have byline-free commentaries, some of which say some nasty stuff, you best be prepared to be called to account for it. As I said in my earlier series of posts, RP has walked the line with this stuff for a long time, so it's no surprise that it would be fodder for smear job that mixes unfair charges with accurate ones.
Addendum: at some level, the very fact that Paul has a background such that these newsletters and their comments exist is the real problem here. Imagine what a libertarian candidacy without his baggage might have done.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
David, Would This be Mutual Aid?
Via Radley Balko, some lions, lots of buffalo, and an alligator. Obligatory libertarian content: The buffalo sure seem to have a very effective citizens' militia to repel aggressors!
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
What's Good for Il Duce... or Can We Get a Little Empathy Now?
Over at Cliopatria, Timothy Burke complains that Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming new book abuses the word "fascism" in describing modern US liberals as heirs of the fascist tradition of the earlier 20th century. Putting aside whether Goldberg is right or wrong for the moment (though having seen a draft of one chapter on the economics of fascism, I thought his argument was good enough to require a serious response from the left, rather than the comparisons to Ann Coulter it is drawing in Matt Yglesias's comments), I think it's probably a good thing for those on the left to have to deal with what they perceive to be misleading or inaccurate terminology about their beliefs that is damaging.
After all, libertarians have been dealing with everything from Pinochet to Halliburton described by leftists as "the free market," when neither authoritarianism nor corporatism are what libertarians stand for (the latter is closer to fascism, Italian style, in my view). And let's not forget Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine in which Milton Friedman and capitalism more generally are linked to torture and the intentional destruction of communities for political purposes. Then there's Michael Moore blaming the "free market" for the problems with US health care, an industry in which almost half of the expenditures are made by government. The left has practically made a movement out of blaming every social outcome they don't like on "capitalism" or "the free market" (regardless of the actual institutions and policies in place) and/or calling everything that conservatives or libertarians do that they don't like "fascism." It's hard to drum up a ton of sympathy when the current victims have been guilty of the same sorts of sins.
So now that the worm has turned, and a conservative is seen to be abusing the language in describing the views of the left, perhaps folks on the left will be more circumspect in their own use of language when talking about the positions held by conservatives and libertarians, or in labeling the institutions of the very mixed economy as being "free market" or "capitalist." At the very least, I hope they are more empathetic to libertarians when we complain about such abuses.
Cross-posted at The Austrian Economists
