Liberty & Power: Group Blog
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Witch Hunt Against L and P Blogger
A witch hunt is underway at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale against L and P blogger, Jonathan Bean. Several articles have appeared, including here and here, and Ralph Luker has blogged in Bean's support.
Here is an account, "Handout Hysteria’ or Insensitivity?," from Inside Higher Ed (comments are at the bottom of the article):
But in the last two weeks, he has found himself under attack in his department — with many of his history colleagues questioning his judgment for distributing an optional handout about the “Zebra Killings,” a series of murders of white people in San Francisco in the 1970s. His dean also told his teaching assistants that they didn’t need to finish up the semester working with him, and she called off discussion sections of his course for a week so TA’s would not have to work while considering their options.
Students and professors at the university are trading harsh accusations about insensitivity and censorship, talking about possible lawsuits, and assessing the damage. Shirley Clay Scott, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, sent a memo to faculty members warning that they could “easily self-destruct if we do not exercise restraint and reason.”
I suggest you contact the following:
James Walker,
President@notes.siu.edu,
618-536-3331,
Office of the President-SIUP
Shirley Clay Scott,
Sscotts@siu.edu,
618-453-2466,
Dean College of Liberal Arts
Given a discussion a couple of weeks ago on antibiotics, bacteria, and pro[perty rights, the following report from the Washington Post today is worth considering: The above are one of the parties fighting the General Election in Britain (where else?) on the 5th May. Some excerpts from their 'Manicfesto':
Jonathan Bean is a popular professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale — even though his libertarian politics don’t always coincide with his students’ views. A historian, he was just named Teacher of the Year in the College of Liberal Arts.
More on antibiotics and property rights
"The German pharmaceutical giant Bayer suffered a serious setback last year when a federal administrative law judge backed a proposed ban on a drug used to fight poultry infections at factory farms. The judge cited growing scientific evidence suggesting that the practice was reducing the effectiveness of antibiotics vital to human health."
Since I only just discovered I can add blogs, i don't have the system down yet to enable you to click a word. Here is the the article
The article also raises another problem for anyone like me who supports markets and democracy. It adds:
"Facing defeat in a three-year legal battle, Bayer sought help in a new arena -- Congress. In a letter written in the office of Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.), and with the assistance of a Bayer lobbyist who was a longtime Pickering friend, 26 House members argued that the poultry medicine was "absolutely necessary to protecting the health of birds." It called on Lester M. Crawford, acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to set aside the judge's decision regarding the class of drugs. The Bayer product is known as Baytril.
"The Baytril case provides an unusual look at an attempt by lawmakers to influence the executive branch's handling of an important public health issue involving parochial economic interests and complex science."
This raises the question of how does a market society with democratic institutions handle the problem of money being used to purchase political favors. Libertarian orthodoxy likes to emphasize how government penalizes entreprenaurial activity - and often it does and this is bad. But the problem is more complex because successful businesses too often use their wealth to purchase favors and exemptions from government. This time they were caught.
The Official Raving Monster Loony Party
"Our team of experts has decided that Income Tax has not proved popular with the public and will therefore be abolished. It was started in order to finance the Napoleonic war in 1799 and we now believe that the time is right to announce the cessation of hostilities with Napoleon. Some of the money left in the coffers will be used to fill in our part of the Channel Tunnel in case no one has mentioned it to the French. Any remaining money will be strategically placed on a horse at the 3-30 at Haydock Park [racecourse] at odds of at least 12/1 in order to see us through until the next election. Income Tax will be officially replaced by people lending the government a bob or two at the end of the week when we’re a bit skint.
"In the interests of fair education policy, under a loony government all children will automatically be given full marks in their exams.
"Anyone caught breaking the law will be made to mend it.
"All food shall be clearly labelled “Recommended for Oral Use”.
"All WMD’s (weapons of Mass Distraction) will be made highly visible so that we can find them.
"Any politician wanting to start a war will be shipped off to the country in question with a bag of conkers [chestnuts.] They can then conker the country themselves.
"To keep up with the present government we promise to introduce many policies that have not been thought through properly, purely for cheap votes.
These include:
Giving everyone a quid who votes for us
"Vote for Insanity, You Know it Makes Sense!"
Their website: http://www.omrlp.com/
Friday, April 29, 2005
ACLU Enemy of the State
On the right side of the Instapundit screen, there is an advertisement for a t-shirt with the slogan, "ACLU Enemy of the State."
I wonder what the great libertarian Albert Jay Nock, not to mention L and P blogger Walter Grinder who wrote an introduction to Nock's book of nearly the same name, would make of this. The hammer and sickle is an odd touch. What's next? "Stalin: Enemy of the State."
Hat tip Matt Barganier. A leftist friend of mine, Softball Kenny, sent me an excellent column by conservative Andrew J. Bacevich titled the “The Normalization of War.” You must scroll down a little ways on the link to read it.
Aeon's posting on the possible destruction of "The Scream" is not complete without a picture. According to this Norwegian news story, Munch's "The Scream" has been destoyed. That's not good. This NYT story is interesting in lots of ways, but what struck me the most was the revelation that that famous photo of the helicopter evacuating people from the embassy roof in Saigon is actually something else. Have a look!
In other news, my promotion to Associate is now official. Woo-hoo! Brendan O’Neill explains why here. Sad but true. Reader Dan Schmutter passes along this preview of the Arianna Huffington group blog. I'm guessing this is satire, but who knows. In light of all the good discussion on Herbert Spencer that we've seen here and here on L&P, I wanted to share some good news.
A couple of years ago, I was asked to do an encyclopedia article on "Karl Marx" for the forthcoming International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, to be published by Routledge. Amazingly, there was not a single entry offered for Herbert Spencer (who many view as one of the founders of sociology) or of any of the great classical liberals. I knew that Spencer had fallen out of favor with sociologists over the years, and that too many working in that discipline had a tendency to dismiss (wrongly, I might add) the work of classical liberals as somehow too "atomistic" and not worthy of the sociological imagination.
Whatever the reason, I was quite frankly shocked that nothing on Spencer, liberalism, or libertarianism had been scheduled for discussion in the encyclopedia. So, I asked the fine editor if he would be interested in one additional contribution from me: a general, broader piece on libertarianism, that is, on the relevance to sociology of theorists working in the classical liberal/libertarian tradition. The editor accepted my offer. And instead of writing a sole piece on Marx, I wrote two pieces.
The entry on libertarianism brought into the encyclopedia a discussion of the works of Herbert Spencer (to whom I devote much space, relatively speaking), Carl Menger, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, and others.
I've just been informed today that the encyclopedia is due out in October 2005; I'll be sure to note it here when the time comes.
Thus, this is my way of thanking Roderick Long doubly: not only for his continuing work on Spencer, but also for offering constructive commentary on my essays before they were submitted to Routledge.
Cross-posted to Notablog. I've written ad nauseam about Election 2004, still of the conviction that the issue of same-sex marriage (and its connection to the broader issue of "moral values") had an important impact on the outcome. I have always believed "that other issues, especially the war, had an effect in shoring up Bush's winning coalition." Still, "the anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives were promoted by GOP strategists to bolster one aspect of the winning Bush coalition"; without "the socially conservative vote," which supported those initiatives, Bush could never have won such states as Ohio—indispensable to his national electoral victory.
One recent analysis of the Presidential election comes to a similar though much more informed statistical conclusion. Gregory B. Lewis, in the April 2005 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics, concludes that the "same-sex marriage" issue "mattered ... less than some issues but more than most. ... At the state level, even after controlling for Bush's vote share in 2000 and the general conservatism of the state population, popular disapproval of homosexuality influenced Bush's share of the 2004 vote and may have contributed to party switches by New Hampshire and New Mexico." Lewis admits that "[t]he vote was close in Ohio despite relatively high disapproval of homosexuality." But the question remains: "Would it have turned out differently without same-sex marriage on the agenda?"
That question will inspire many different answers. But I think the evidence strongly suggests that without the support of socially conservative Protestant and Catholic voters, who came out en masse to vote against same-sex marriage, Bush would have lost to Kerry.
In the same issue of PS, even those with a dissenting view (such as Hillygus and Shields) argue that the "values-based appeals," though not the only crucial issue, served to reinforce Bush's appeal among his supporters. As I have argued for months, this was part of the Rove strategy: without that support among Bush's core constituency, Bush does not win re-election.
Whatever one's views on this subject, I think the implications are becoming clearer with each passing week. Social conservatives believe that the Bush administration owes them. Of greater importance is the apparent belief of the administration that social conservatives are owed.
Cross-posted to Notablog. In his new article, "Evidence that the U.S. May Be Losing the Global War on Terror", Ivan Eland discusses how the administration might be hiding evidence of its own failures in the war.
War as a Way of Life
The Destruction of "The Scream"
Barbarians
Know what this is? Guess I didn't.
Iraq Still Isn't an Election Issue
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Huffington group blog
Spencer, Long, and a New Encyclopedia
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Same-Sex Marriage and the 2004 Election
Eland: U.S. Is Hiding Indications of Its Own Failure
According to Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who still has many sources within the intelligence community, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office is suppressing data showing that the number of major terrorist attacks worldwide exploded from 175 in 2003 to 625 in 2004, the highest number since the Cold War began to wane in 1985. U.S. officials said that when analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center declined the office of the secretary’s invitation to use a methodology that would reduce the number of terrorist attacks, her office terminated publication of the State Department’s annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report.
Dr. Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute:
Happy Birthday, Herbert Spencer
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
Today marks the birthday of Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820---8 December 1903), a thinker whose contributions to philosophy, biology, psychology, sociology, and political theory earned him the status of required reading in most universities a century ago. Today he is largely forgotten -- except in ludicrously inaccurate caricature as a "Social Darwinist" who supposedly advocated letting the poor and weak die off in order to improve the breed. (Nope, he never said it.) These days most of Spencer's works are out of print; no historic plaque marks his London residence (38 Queen's Gardens, just north of Kensington Gardens; I paid my respects there last May), and his grave is overgrown and neglected. Happily, however, interest in Spencer seems to be reviving of late.
Spencer was one of the last stalwarts of classical liberalism, holding up the banner of peace and freedom, and inveighing against regimentation and the régime of status, long after the liberal mainstream had sold out to collectivism and militarist imperialism. After working as a railroad engineer and an editor at The Economist, Spencer devoted the rest of his life to developing, over the course of many volumes, an integrated and systematic theory of life and society. His political philosophy (which I summarize in Herbert Spencer: Libertarian Prophet) anticipated -- and influenced -- much of contemporary libertarian thought. Likewise, his theories of spontaneous social order, pattern-perception, and the self-defeating character of direct utilitarianism anticipate the work of Friedrich Hayek; his evolutionary cosmology anticipates that of astrophysicist David Layzer and chemist Ilya Prigogine; his writings on the relation between statism, militarism, and male supremacy anticipate the insights of radical feminism; and his pre-Darwinian (1852) critique of creationism could have been written yesterday.
One of Spencer's contemporaries described him as a "prophet whose greatest discoveries can only be duly appreciated after two or three centuries." Let’s hope we can accelerate that process a bit. (For a list of online works by and about Spencer, click here.)
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Another "Hate Crime Hoax" (Trinity International University)
Earlier this week, CNN and other news outlets reported that black students at Trinity International University in Illinois had received racist letters, presumably from whites.
The school administration responded by evacuating all 200 black students on campus for their safety. No doubt, mandatory diversity training was being considered. It turns out that a black female student has confessed to sending the letters. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened recently. Will these latest revelations receive the same national coverage as the original story? In light of all the inconvenience experienced by the students, evacuated or otherwise, the comments of Lt. Ron Price (shown below) seem overly complacent to say the least.
Police said Hardin wanted to transfer to a different school because she was unhappy at Trinity but her parents would not let her. The letters, police said, were her way of implying the campus was not safe.
Hardin appeared at the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan Tuesday morning on a charge of disorderly conduct and a hate crime charge. Bond was set at $5,000.
“This was her way out of it,” said Lt. Ron Price of the Bannockburn police. “This was just a prank by someone who was very unhappy and it got out of control. There was no weapon and no one was ever in any real danger.” John Tierney keeps up the good work, with this excellent column comparing the Chilean approach to social-security reform to that of the US. I've had a lot to say about Saudi Arabia, and about the Bush administration's Adventures in Mideast Democracy.
Well, in Episode #2,345 of this Quixotic Political Saga, the Saudi royal family, which has been a trusted US "ally," "has been under pressure from Washington to engage in political reform at a time of social tension and a two-year campaign against the state by militants associated with al-Qaeda." Today, the news tells us:
Of course, the regime itself will pick "roughly half" of 1,200 councillors, which might "dilute" the power of Islamicists. Not that the Saudi regime is all that liberal by comparison. After all, this election news comes on the heels of another news story that the Saudis had detained 40 Pakistani Christians who were caught "attending a service in Riyadh" in a private home. The police also found (horrors!!) "Christian tapes and books." Since one cannot practice any religion other than Islam in Saudi Arabia, this is a crime, in case you were wondering.
I get exhausted pointing out the obvious. This is a regime that is allegedly a "friend" of the United States government. Let's put aside the prospects for democracy among "unfriendly" regimes. Of what use is procedural "democracy" when a "friendly" regime schools its citizens in a fanatical ideology of intolerance, when it marginalizes and criminalizes women, non-Muslims, and freedom itself? Of what use is "democracy" when the dominant culture would bring about a political condition that might make the current Saudi regime appear "moderate" by comparison?
Cross-posted to Notablog. On March 25, 1821 the Greeks declared themselves free of Ottoman rule. War ensued. On May 11, 1832 Greece was finally recognized as a sovereign state and this state of affairs was formally recognized by the Turks and the European powers with the signing of the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832. Go here for an account of the Greek War of Independence.
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries subsequently witnessed the gradual withdrawal of the Ottoman empire from Europe as various Balkan states sought and achieved independence from Ottoman rule. In the First World War the Ottoman empire was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Following military defeat in 1918 these three empires vanished from the face of the earth and a multitude of successor states arose. Most of the Ottoman empire in western Asia was divided into territories that became League of Nations mandates under British or French rule. In 1923 the Republic of Turkey was founded, in some sense the heir of the Ottoman empire. Today Turkey seeks membership of the European Union. Although the events of the First World War and its aftermath now seem very distant, they cannot be so easily forgotten for they continue to have a profound impact on our lives.
Today, Monday, April 25, marks the ninetieth anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. The Gallipoli campaign, a futile eight-month effort to capture Constantinople and so enable French and British forces to join the Russians in the war against Austria-Hungary and Turkey, cost the lives of more than 100,000 Allied and Turkish soldiers with another quarter of a million wounded. Australian casualties were 8,000 dead and another 18,000 wounded, and New Zealand casualties were 7,500. Australian and New Zealand nationalists regard the Gallipoli campaign as the coming of age of their respective states. The irony is that they were actually fighting for the British empire. For more on Gallipoli see here and here. And let us not forget Peter Weir’s fine movie Gallipoli (1981) starring the young Mel Gibson.
On Sunday April 17, the Biloxi Sun Herald ran a lengthy
interview with Senator Trent Lott on his "economic development" activities in Mississippi. What Senator Lott presents as economic development activity, others would see as pork barrel politics and the dispensation of privileges to the politically connected -- and there's plenty in the interview to support such interpretations. For instance, references to defense contractors that operate in Mississippi (particularly, to shipyards on the Gulf Coast) are sprinkled throughout the interview. One relatively brief passage, however, is especially pertinent to those of us who have been following the USM saga. In it, Lott describes the Congressional appropriations he has secured for universities in the Mississippi state system:
Chancellor Khayat at Ole Miss hasn't taken Federal subsidies to the physical acoustics program as a signal to tear down the English program or run off the senior professors in Psychology. President Lee at Miss State hasn't seen any need to shut down the Math department or bring the ax down on the Business school so his university's technology programs will shine forth with greater glory.
But at the University of Southern Mississippi, Shelby Freland Thames has interpreted special appropriations for Polymer Science and Economic Development as commands to ruin Nursing, deaccredit Business, gut the Honors program, underfund Math till it collapses, run off 1/3 of the English faculty, and take periodic whacks at everything else.
While I would imagine that Trent Lott's understanding of universities is rather limited, I very much doubt that either he or anyone on his staff expected Thames to take a wrecking ball to the rest of USM. I doubt, too, that anyone in Lott's office thought that demolishing most of USM would help draw high-tech industry to the southern third of Mississippi. Somebody forgot to tell Shelby Thames. D'oh!!! News is breaking in the case of Hussein S. Hussein,
an Associate Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Nevada Reno. Updated
Alicia Hardin, 19, of Dolton, confessed Monday to members of a task force investigating the matter that she mailed the three letters.
Tierney on a roll
Monday, April 25, 2005
Democracy and Saudi Arabia
Candidates on an alleged "golden list" backed by religious clerics have swept the final round of Saudi Arabia's first nationwide municipal elections. Islamist candidates won all the municipal council seats contested in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. They also fared well in northern towns as well as the comparatively liberal port of Jeddah, according to results released on Saturday. Women were barred from the polls, which were presented as a step towards more popular participation in public life.
There's No Escaping the Ottoman Empire--Part 1
Sunday, April 24, 2005
USM: You Mean I Wasn't Supposed to Kill the Rest of the University?
One of the things I've worked on over the years - and I've talked about it
and a lot of people didn't quite see it at first - but I tried to find niches
at our universities, which I could support with federal funds, federal grants
that were unique programs at those universities, which could then relate to the
creation of jobs.
At the University of Southern Mississippi it's the polymer science center
(and) the center for economic development and entrepreneurship; it's the
technology programs at Mississippi State University; it's the physics
acoustics program at Ole Miss and now with shipbuilding and with Northrop Grumman
looking to polymers or composites for hulls of the future, University of Southern
Mississippi is perfectly situated to collaborate.
Some Really Nasty Administrative Behavior at the University of Nevada Reno
A story picked up and given wide circulation by the Associated Press suggests that Hussein has been targeted by the administration at Nevada-Reno for whistleblowing. An earlier AP story, dated April 20,
includes further details.
Among the ingredients of this witches' brew are a bogus tip from the university police to the FBI that Hussein, a native of Egypt, was involved in terrorism; a Kafkaesque application of hate crime legislation (to punish the victim of the alleged hate crime); and what looks like major abuse of the university's Federally mandated committee for reviewing animal research studies.
I'm actually surprised that more university administrations aren't manipulating Animal Research Committees (or Institutional Review Boards, their counterparts for research with human subjects) in order to get even with researchers whose statements or actions have displeased them. But then, I don't want to give anyone any ideas. At least Nevada-Reno's administration failed to convince a hearing panel that there was anything to its trumped-up charges of violations of animal research rules.
All indications are that this one is going to get much uglier before it's over.
(A hat tip to Jameela Lares at the AAUP-USM
message board.)
Does Neuroscience Negate Personhood?
"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.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
USM: Wheels Are Coming off the Thames Machine
Last Friday, April 15, I had the honor and the pleasure to visit the University of Southern Mississippi campus, where I gave two talks to members of the USM chapter of the American Association of University Professors. I'm particularly indebted to Amy Young, the President of the USM chapter of AAUP, as well as to Michael Forster, Mark Klinedinst, and Myron Henry for being my hosts during different portions of my stay. I got the chance to meet many other USM faculty members who have been working to rescue USM from the misrule of President Shelby F. Thames, as well as some sympathizers from the surrounding community. I ate lunch and drank coffee at Javawerks, known in Hattiesburg as the "center of the resistance." I was given a handsome plaque by the AAUP chapter, which I will display in a prominent place--while remaining fully cognizant that the other two recipients of the same award, Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer, ran major personal risks standing up to the Thames regime.
The faculty members I talked to, far from being the lazy whiners of pro-Thamesian apologetics, struck me as tired but determined. They were bearing all the responsibilities that professors normally bear when the Spring Semester is about to end. Many were close to buckling under 3 years' worth of administratively neglected reports and committee work for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which accredits USM and has put the university on probation. The struggle to rid the university of Thames and his henchcrew has called forth whatever might be left in the reserve tank after they've attended to their primary responsibilities.
I wasn't there to rouse resistance against Thames by reminding everyone of the worst things he has done. I've done some of that in the past, and the audience scarcely needed reminding. Besides, a powerful three-minute video, apparently by the pseudonymous satirist See More, was played before both talks; it movingly (and sometimes hilariously) set images from the Thames era to "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones. My talks were about the faculty's role in running the university (known as "shared governance" in academic circles). I'll get to the substance of them in a later post. Instead of focusing exclusively on the ways in which Thames and crew have undermined shared governance, I also talked about some areas, such as financial reporting, that faculty members have traditionally conceded to administrators, but that I thought USM professors would be well advised to pay attention to in a post-Thamesian era.
Confidence is slowly growing that there will actually be a post-Thamesian era. I wish I could say that Shelby Thames is no longer enthroned at USM. Or at least that lame-duckitude has descended upon him. For in that case everyone could get to work neutralizing what's left of his power to do harm, while counting the days till his contract expires in March of next year. But the monthly meeting of the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees came and went largely as predicted. The communiqué that the Board issued after its meeting on Thursday April 21 indicated further movement toward a strong-commissioner model for the 8 univerisities in the Mississippi state system, while voting on the key components of the new system still won't take place for another month:
The Board also heard a subcommittee recommendation on annual performance goals to be used in evaluating universities and institutional executive officers. The goals, which will vary from institution to institution in order to take into account differences in universities’ missions, will be considered in final form in the May Board meeting. In addition, the College Board began considering a measure which would require annual evaluation of the institutional executive officers.
So May 19, when Thames opponent Virginia Shanteau Newton takes over as Board President from Thames cheerleader Roy Klumb, is the earliest that the Board can formally evaluate Thames' performance and decide whether his 4-year contract will be allowed to expire.
Action against Thames can still not be marked down as a done deal. Everything remains in the hands of an IHL Board that still has no formal channels of communication with professors or faculty bodies, and has made a whole series of incredibly irresponsible, high-handed decisions in his particular case. But the Board, seeking to recover from its biggest spate of bad press since the Civil Rights era, keeps grinding glacially toward internal reform, and desperation is rippling through Thames' supporters. This week, Shelby Thames lost a key component of his machine, and another has been discredited.
Yesterday, after months of rumors kept alive by her much diminished visibility in media stories about USM, the announcement came that Lisa Slay Mader is leaving the university on May 2.
Lisa Mader, who has served as spokeswoman for University of Southern Mississippi president Shelby Thames for more than two years, is leaving the university to join Wesley Medical Center, the hospital announced Friday.
The American even noted that she was Shelby Thames' private spokeswoman who only pretended to speak for the entire university.
Mader has ended up being loathed by just about everyone at the university, including those who doubt that she played any role in the decision-making. As noted in Reuben Mees' article, in today's Hattiesburg American:
Political science professor Joe Parker said Mader had a difficult role to fill in recent years and was not often well-liked by the faculty.
"I think she has been a spear-carrier for Shelby Thames and she collected a certain amount of hostility from the faculty," he said.
But he also said some of the tension could have been avoided by varying her approach to the issues.
"Her PR style is more political and more attack-oriented and it really showed up in the Glamser-Stringer incident, when she alluded to criminal charges and tried to put the faculty on the defensive," Parker said, referring to Thames' attempt to fire two tenured professors last year. "It really made her look more like a political flack than a public relations person."
Her move to Wesley Hospital, another Hattiesburg institution that is less prominent locally than the university, smacks more than a little of desperation. She will have to rebuild her credibility with the local media, all the way up from zero. Many observers had thought that she would prefer a job in a different part of Mississippi, if not in another state where her notoriety would be less likely to follow her.
Thames evidently feels some urgency about hiring a new spokesperson:
"But now we need to find an extremely competent person to replace her," Thames said. "We'll start meeting next week and then start advertising to find a top flight PR person."
But why would anyone want to step into that job, while Thames is still president but his days appear numbered? Failing to toe the Thamesian line will get the new PR person fired instantly. Toeing it faithfully it will insure that the PR person will be replaced as soon as Thames' successor arrives. There is a good chance that Mader's former position will lie vacant till next March.
The second wheel to fall off this week is a prominent Thames supporter who currently serves as the President of the USM Foundation. He has not resigned, but has discredited himself so badly that Thames would probably be better off without him. His is the kind of story, however, that deserves to be told in baroque and lurid detail; it would take up several installments of a soap opera, and deserves at least an entire Liberty and Power entry to itself.
To be continued.
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.
Tierney on science and neo-puritanism
I was delighted to learn a couple weeks ago that John Tierney would become the new NY Times op-ed columnist. Today's column is a great example. I apologize for using the reg-required link; I can't do the magic blog-friendly linking trick from my home computer. On Monday, I'll update this blog entry to include the non-reg link, but NYT reg is free, and many readers may already be registered, so go read this.
UPDATE - as promised, here is the blog-friendly no-reg link.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Grand Valley State Grovel Watch
The College Republicans at Grand Valley State University in Michigan are still degrading themselves. They are doing their best to appease the administration and show that they are sorry, yes truly sorry, for holding an affirmative action bake sale. Naturally, the GVSU administration has not hesitated to make the most of the situation by twisting the knife. It has put the chapter on probation and required a public apology. One administrator piously proclaims that the controversy provides a "learning opportunity" to "educate" the benighted.
The only bright spot in this sad affair is the admirable behavior of Kyle Rausch, the ex-head of the chapter. He has continued to stand up for campus free speech against the combined forces of GVSU's administration, timid College Republicans on campus, a cringing faculty advisor, and the Ottawa County Republican party. Says Rausch, “I no longer consider myself part of an organization which is so willing to apologize for their opinions.”
Here's a letter that I sent this Earth Day to the Christian Science Monitor:
Don Kates, the author of many books on gun control and the history of gun rights and gun control, passed along these recollections from a friend who was a Vietnam war vet. They concern two very different activists against the Vietnam War: Jane Fonda and Joan Baez:
For those who don't quite understand, being in favor of one side over another in a war is not "anti-war" activity. To the contrary! The articles about her and her "apology" (for choosing the wrong vehicle of publicity, not for her position in favor of the enemy) should not continue repeating the canard that she engaged in "anti-war activities" when she so clearly sided with a party to a war: North Vietnam. She absolutely refuses to acknowledge that she wasn't just a part of the anti-war or pacifist fringe in the United States at the time, but was in fact a true believer and supporter of North Vietnam during its war with the United States.
By contrast, look at the trip to Hanoi that famous folk singer Joan Baez, with Brigadier General Teleford Taylor (well-known Nuremberg war prosecutor) made just two and one half months after Jane Fonda's notorious propaganda visit. Ms. Baez and Gen Tayor were trapped in Hanoi during the entire "Linebacker II" Christmas bombing raids over and around that city--in which I again was heavily involved. Ms Baez made no bones about her pacifist beliefs and her hatred of wars. Yet, even after suffering through some of the most intense bombing raids of the entire Vietnam War, when asked by her hosts/watchers to make anti-US statements, she stuck to her beliefs, saying she hated all war by all sides, no matter what.
We fighting men heard Baez's statements as soon as they were made. Somehow, we ignorant warriors were sophisticated enough to recognize the difference between Baez's anti-war statements and Fonda's open promotion of North Vietnamese victory--an apparently too-subtle distinction that has escaped the press even today. Most of us respected Baez's view, even if we differed with it--and acknowledged her right as an American to express that view even during a war. I was able to talk personally to Ms Baez about that several years later; she was pleased that we warriors certainly understood her point. From the Associated Press:
Cleaned by Capitalism
22 April 2005
Editor, The Christian Science Monitor
Dear Editor:
Clay Bennett’s Earth Day cartoon shows scissors (labeled “White House”) recklessly slicing through environmental statutes. Without here questioning the merits of the statutes or the reality of the slicing, I plead for protection of a most endangered resource: perspective. Pause for a moment to appreciate just how clean and safe our everyday environments are compared to those of our ancestors.
- Refrigeration keeps our food free of bacterial pollution;
- indoor plumbing immediately whisks away our own waste;
- household detergents clean our homes of germs and grime;
- automobiles keep our streets clean of horse manure and the swarms of flies it attracts;
- antibiotics and other medicines protect our bodies from many diseases, such as tuberculosis, that were major killers just a century ago.
In fact, our everyday lives are more sanitary and healthier today than at any time in history.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
Enterprise Hall
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
Joan Baez v. Jane Fonda
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Actresses Oppose Compulsory "Treatment" for Children
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.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Will Muslim Votes Cause Labour to Lose This Safe Seat?
If you’re looking for an interesting article on the British general election, go here. Although this is primarily an account of the fight between Oona King, the Labour incumbent, and George Galloway of Respect to represent Bethnal Green and Bow in the House of Commons, the author also offers insights into national culture and politics. This is the constituency where in 1888 Jack the Ripper stalked his victims. This is the constituency where in 1936 the local Jewish community fought Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. And this is now a constituency where around 55,000 Muslims, mainly Bangladeshis, make up more than half the electorate.
I'm shocked--shocked, I say
A state agency wasting money? Who would have guessed? The only thing to do, I suppose, is to extend the scope of its power and increase its budget.
(Another shock: private agencies are doing it better. Boy these things sure are coming out of left field.)
Thucydides on War
I highly recommend Thomas Cahill’s crystalline little book Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea. Among the many gems you’ll find inside is this quotation from Thucydides; it’s part of the great historian’s reflections on the consequences of the Peloponnesian war.
“Practically the whole of the Hellenic world was convulsed, with rival parties in every state – democratic leaders trying to bring in the Athenians, and oligarchs trying to bring in the Spartans.... To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defense. Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect.... As a result...there was a general deterioration of character throughout the Greek world. The plain way of looking at things, which is so much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist. Society became divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow.”
More on Pope Benedict
I'm not a Catholic, so my interest in this stuff is academic in both senses of the word, but I feel like I ought to blog on it anyway.
While I think he's mistaken about gays, I think this is a good message: "One of Cardinal Ratzinger's central, and most misunderstood, notions is his conception of liberty, and he is very jealous in thinking deeply about it, pointing often to Tocqueville. He is a strong foe of socialism, statism and authoritarianism, but he also worries that democracy, despite its great promise, is exceedingly vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority, to "the new soft despotism" of the all-mothering state, and to the common belief that liberty means doing whatever you please. Following Lord Acton and James Madison, Cardinal Ratzinger has written of the need of humans to practice self-government over their passions in private life. He also fears that Europe, especially, is abandoning the search for objective truth and sliding into pure subjectivism. That is how the Nazis arose, he believes, and the Leninists. When all opinions are considered subjective, no moral ground remains for protesting against lies and injustices." (That's from a NYT op-ed by Michael Novak, read the whole thing here.)
All of that is true.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Gun Self-Defense Blog
I recently discovered Clayton Cramer and Pete Drum's "Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog," on which they catalog news stories about defensive gun use around the country. It's full of fun little stories like this one:
Man Fights Back Against Would-Be RobberI found this one a little unsettling, though:A Montgomery man fights back against a would-be robber... and wins.
Police say a deacon from Mount Olive Bapist went to the Normandale Compass Bank to deposit the church's offerings when a man approached him. The man then allegedly knocked the deacon down, took the money and started running away.
The suspect, however, was in for a surprise. The deacon was carrying more than a money bag to the bank... he was carrying a loaded gun. He began firing at the suspect, who slipped, fell to the ground and dropped the cash. When the robber went to retrieve the bag, the deacon threatened to shoot him if he touched it.
The suspect ran away.
Police Look for Victim Turned Shooter in NortheastA would-be carjacking victim in Maryland turned the tables on his alleged attackers by pulling out a gun and shooting them.
The driver shot one teenager in the stomach, and had a bullet graze the face of the other.
Police in Prince George's County believe the carjacking attempt and shooting took place on Route 450. They believe the teens then drove to a Northeast D.C. housing project, where they claimed to have been shot during a robbery.
But investigators soon learned the truth.
Police spokesman Corporal Joe Merkel says both suspects are believed to be 16. A lot less is known about the shooter.
Among the things they want to know is exactly what happened -- and whether the gun is legal.
It seems to me that P.G. County cops--who until recently had the the among the worst records for police brutality and unjustified shootings in the U.S.--have better things to do than pursue a citizen who from all appearances, used a gun justifiably in self-defense.
Pope Benedict, FYI
Here's the scoop: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is the new pope, narrowly edging out my friend Lou, who did toss his hat in the ring, though perhaps too late for anyone to notice.
Minuses: anti-gay-rights
Pluses: likes Beethoven
BTW, when did the MSM stop using the "John Cardinal Doe" arrangement in favor of the "Cardinal John Doe" arrangement?
Futures Market Right on New Pope
Go here for the full story. Yet again futures markets triumph.
Waco, Oklahoma, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic
For the ten-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing, and the twelve-year anniversary of the Waco massace, I have an article here about the events and their parallels with foreign policy and 9/11, all in the context of left-right domestic politics. I also have here a short addendum expounding upon one point a bit more.
Warbloggers Agog about Iraqi Poll
For some reason, Powerline is all agog about a survey of over 700 Baghdad residents. It is making the email rounds like greased lightning. In response to a question on if, and when, U.S. troops should leave, they answered:
At once = 12.56%
According to a future timetable= 81.80%
Do not know = 5.64%
John Hinderaker at Powerline were so overjoyed that he led with a headline, "Iraqis Thank U.S." Huh?
I don't understand what is new here. Polls have consistently indicated that the Iraqis want the U.S. want us to leave either now or soon.
In my experience, few opponents of the occupation believe that U.S. troops can, or should, leave "at once." I doubt that is even possible. Most do support a timetable, a position consistently opposed by the Bush administration. Since the first day U.S. troops set foot in Iraq, I have said that we should implement a rapid timetable for withdrawal.
It is noteworthy that the poll did not show any Iraqis who want the U.S. to stay permanently. Perhaps the questions were not asked properly.
It is true that the poll also reports the encouraging news that most of the respondents believe that the security situation has improved since the new government came into office but this result hardly justifies the headline "Iraqis Thank U.S."
Monday, April 18, 2005
Plan 9 From Chicago
The photo of Epstein posted by Gene Healy looks like a still from an Ed Wood movie.
They've Come to Suck the Blood out of the Constitution
I find complaints about media bias increasingly tedious and overworked. But here, in the midst of a generally fair NYT Magazine piece on libertarian constitutionalists, the Times' photog seems to have gone out of his way to make Epstein, Greve, and Mellor look like Johnny Cash in that "I'm-Almost-Dead" video he did right before he died. I've met all three of these guys, worked briefly for one of them, and had another as a professor. I can assure you that none of them have the zombie-like pallor the Times Magazine gives them. In fact, all three are very lively, happy guys. But the photos appear designed to confirm a cartoonish preconception that anti-government intellectuals are humorless, sinister prigs. Subtle.
Betting on the Next Pope
You don’t have to be a cardinal to participate in this election. Go here to find out more. And go here to wager on the outcome of this historic event.
Molinari Society 2005 - Call for Abstracts
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
The Molinari Society will be hosting its second symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in New York City, December 27-30, 2005. We plan a two-hour session, with two papers, and hereby solicit abstracts on the general topic of "Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin." Papers should address the general question of whether libertarianism should be thick or thin ("thin" libertarianism is libertarianism understood as a narrowly political doctrine, while "thick" libertarianism is libertarianism understood as essentially integrated into some broader set of social or cultural values) and may (but need not) also address the connection between libertarianism and some specific position or set of positions (environmentalism, left-anarchism, Aristotelianism, feminism, egalitarianism, Christianity, secular humanism, the labor movement, etc.).
Send abstracts to Roderick T. Long at:
BerserkRL@gmail.com
(Those interested in being a commentator at the session should do likewise.)
Deadline for receiving abstracts: 5 May 2005
Notification of acceptance / rejection: 15 May 2005
Accepted papers due: 1 November 2005
Benj. R. Tucker
Following the military defeat of the Southern Jeffersonians in the Civil War and the war reparations placed upon their property and livelihood, the American political world was left to the Hamiltonians for a generation. There were few options left. Jeffersonians in the North were tagged as Copperheads and rebel sympathizers. Southern Jeffersonians were disenfranchised in more ways than one. Tariff increases initiated by the Republican Party sent long-time Jeffersonian strongholds into bankruptcy. Many would later attempt to rebuild the lost economy of the South with the few scraps left by the carpetbaggers of the North; others left for the West in the hopes of finding better opportunities. The power gained by the Republicans was to give political control of the South and most of the other states within the Union to the G.O.P. With this free hand, there was little opposition to the special grants and privileges which were sought by their supporters and interests.
The next political battle Jeffersonians were to undertake was against the Tariff. This effort energized a new generation of Jeffersonians. Tariffs, by the late 1870's not only eliminated the federal debt but filled the coffers of the federal government with a surplus unheard of by any of the previous administrations. Indeed, it was an embarrassing surplus with little reason to exist. There were interest groups fighting over control of this surplus, including railroad interests, Northern banking interests and ex-soldiers and soldier wives' pension demands.
Much of the later American designs in the Pacific and elsewhere were a consequence of this surplus as Republicans fought to gain additional territory through military occupation and continued increasing control over lands reserved for Indians. Imperial designs were made upon Spanish claims.
As the Republicans understood, tariffs are a natural income for a nationalist state. It places control at the border as to what products may or may not enter. It is only a national state dominated by special interests which inherently benefits from these taxes. What is the proper revenue for local needs and focuses on benefits accrued from individuals within states and local jurisdictions for a republican state allied with other republican states in a federal system? Of necessity, it must be a form which, if not a voluntary payment, is of a nature which is controlled by the polity closest to the individual, wherein choices are made on the smallest level possible. Tariffs were certainly not the answer
The growing Free Trade Movement sought an end to the tariffs and corruption in state and federal governments by every means available to them, leading to several outcomes. The first and most important was the rise of the Democratic Party with Grover Cleveland at its helm. The next most important were the rise of the "Mugwumps" within the Republican party. For many Jeffersonian radicals, neither went far enough or sufficiently effective in their efforts and looked for alternatives.
The first major movement of the radical Jeffersonians evolved from the insights of a young journalist and firebrand, Henry George. With the publication of Progress and Poverty, as well as number of other books, pamphlets, essays and articles, a new movement arose with ideas for a dynamic capitalist free society, the single tax movement. The idea of limiting all government to a single tax based upon land value was debated across dinner tables and lecture halls throughout the country. It would preserve the Jeffersonian ideal by its primary emphasis upon providing income for cities and local communities (as land taxes have always done) and little for the higher levels (state and federal) save for what would accrue for a frugal government willing to provide for state and national concerns. This paleolibertarian notion was the direction of political activism for radical libertarians for generations.
Following the Civil War came a growing preoccupation with public corruption, beginning to overshadow concerns among reformers with Reconstruction itself. Their enthusiasm for the Republican party began to evaporate during Grant's administration. Tucker described his only sojourn into politics in The Life of Benjamin Tucker, Disclosed by Himself, In the Principality of Monaco, At the Age of 74:
"Four years of Grant and corruption had disgusted me with the Republican party, and the chance of seeing an honest man in the White House in the person of Horace Greeley, whom I had so long admired, made me eager for the fray. In Theodore Tilton's …establishment of his new paper, The Golden Age, I found an immediate opportunity for participation, as Tilton, in his youth a Tribune reporter under Greeley, had espoused the cause of his old employer, and was devoting both pen and tongue to his election. …I had still a few weeks in New Bedford, and it occurred to me that a part of that time might well be devoted to a canvass for subscriptions to The Golden Age. Less than a week's work in the city resulted in a list of respectable propositions, -- about thirty names, I believe, -- and without previous consultation with the management of the paper, I dispatched both the addresses and the money…, they rose promptly to the occasion. Straightway came a letter … urgently inviting me to take the agency for the entire State of Massachusetts. My refusal [was] based on the ground that I was soon to accompany my parents to Vermont…However, even in hopelessly Republican Vermont, I had one opportunity, while at Bellows Fall, to lift my feeble voice in the good cause..."
The stagnation of party politics in the mire of narrow partisanship and repeated scandals during the "Great Barbecue" of the Gilded Age cleared the way. The abolitionist, freethinker and father of the mutual insurance industry, Elizur Wright, spoke to black voters in the 1872 election that the Party of Lincoln had only freed the slaves as a wartime "expedient…It is you[r] obvious policy not to wed yourselves for better or worse to either party…but to go for that which best deserves and most needs your help…The great question now before the Republican party, and all the rest of us is whether after our bloody cutting out of cancer [slavery], we are to rot by the cancer of our corruption." While he supported Grant's troops ordered to combat the KKK, he would later say, "What is the use of keeping people's throats from being cut, if they are to be perpetually robbed?" (p. 180-81).
By July 4, 1876, Wright would found, with other former abolitionists (such as Moses Harmon), the National Liberal League which supported black emancipation, women's rights, but above all they identified themselves as individualists threatened by the imposition of state-enforced Christian dogma: "The platform of the coming millions is the individual," as Wright would say (p. 182). The League's stress was upon personal rights, civil liberties and freedom of thought. Anthony Comstock's crusade against vice and obscenity was to become their most noted battle front, with Ezra Heywood, who was arrested for the publication of his essay, Cupid's Yoke. D.M. Bennett, editor of freethought periodical, The Truthseeker, was also arrested by Comstock for mailing a copy of Cupid's Yoke through the U.S. Postal Service.
Ezra Heywood, an elderly abolitionist and opponent of the Civil War (he had opposed the violent methods used by Lincoln as well as that of the Confederate States of America), was highly regarded as a "gentle anarchist" who was fighting a battle for freedom of information, and the rights of consenting adults to their own personal relationships. An ardent feminist as well (and married to a strident feminist, Angela Heywood), he believed that men had reduced women to such socioeconomic dependence that, in order to live, women were forced to chose between selling their labor for next to nothing or selling their bodies into unwanted unions. This Heywood believed to be an insufferable injustice and devoted his writings to free love as a form of freedom from another type of slavery, as he explained in Uncivil Liberty as well as in Cupid's Yoke.
Here is the point where the subject of this article comes in, for he meets Ezra Heywood in 1873 at the National Free-Love Convention held in Ravenna, Ohio. Benjamin Tucker, who had become one of the controversial feminist Victoria Woodhull's "boy-toy" at the age of 19. As a long-time friend, J. William Lloyd would describe Tucker as a:
"well-groomed, fashionably dressed, with a neatly trimmed dark beard (beards were fashionable then), a swarthy complexion, flashing black eyes, a frequent if perhaps slightly nervous laugh, and a charmingly genial manner, which I never knew him to lose… Handsome, a brilliant translator, an editor of meticulous care and finish, a trenchant reasoner, with a faith and enthusiasm for his "ism" that had no bounds, he was like a strong current that swept us along… Tucker's manner of writing was what chiefly attracted attention to him. No more fiery and furious apostle ever put pen to paper. A veritable baresark of dialectics. He was dogmatic to the extreme, arrogantly positive, browbeating and dominating, true to his "plumb-line" no matter who was slain, and brooked no difference, contradiction or denial. Biting sarcasm, caustic contempt, invective that was sometimes almost actual insult, were poured out on any who dared criticize or oppose… this swashbuckler, on paper, when you met him in person, was the most genial, affable, and charming gentlemen that you could possibly imagine, kind, gentle and always smiling. I discounted this as toward myself but I could not learn that anyone had ever had a hard spoken word from him, and I have never to this day heard of one who had. Face to face this tiger was a dove."
Benjamin R. Tucker was to become America's greatest expositor of the philosophy of "unterrified Jeffersonianism" (as he called it), most commonly known as anarchism. Child of a Quaker father. a Jeffersonian Democrat and Painite Unitarian mother activist, both of old Yankee stock, he grew up as a child reading Darwin, Spencer, Buckle, Huxley and Tyndall, and listened to speeches by such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Emerson, Wendell Phillips, Carl Shurz and Charles Bradlaugh. When he moved in 1872 to Boston to study at MIT, he would meet and become friends with other American radicals like Josiah Warren, William B. Greene, Stephen Pearl Andrews and, of course, Ezra Heywood. As a matter of course while beginning his career as a journalist, mainly with the Boston Globe, he would work with journalists, many sympathetic with his views, and become familiar with other writers who would come into his circle of friends as he began publishing, editing and writing in the radical press of this time.
In 1892 in "Why I am an Anarchist" in The Twentieth Century, a New York weekly edited by Hugh O. Pentecost, Tucker said that anarchy is
"the realization of liberty. Destroy the banking monopoly, establish freedom in finance, and down will go interest on money through the beneficent influence of competition. Capital will be set free, business will flourish, new enterprises will start, labour will rise at a level with its product. And it is the same with the other monopolies. Abolish the tariffs, issue no patents, take down the bars from unoccupied land, and labour will straightaway rush in and take possession of its own. Then mankind will live in freedom and in comfort. That is what I want to see; that is what I love to think of. And because Anarchism will give this state of things, I am an Anarchist." (reprinted in Man! An Anthology of Anarchist Ideas, Essays, Poetry and Commmentaries edited by Marcus Graham, London: Cienfuegos Press, 1976. p. 136)
Tucker's beliefs were set down in the first issue of Liberty in August 1881:
"Liberty insists on the sovereignty of the individual and the just reward of labor; on the abolition of the State and the abolition of usury; on no more government of man by man, and no more exploitation of man by man; on Anarchy and Equity.-Liberty's war-cry is 'Down with authority' and its chief battle with the State-the State that corrupts children; the state that trammels law; the State that stifles thought; the State that monopolizes land; the State that give idle capital the power to increase, and through interest, rent, profit and taxes robs industrious labor of its products."
Tucker is best known as the author of Instead of a Book, By a Man Too Busy to Write One and Individual Liberty, both collections of essays culled mainly from Radical Review (1877-1878-indexed here) and Liberty (1881-1908-indexed here). Tucker's free-wheeling, laissez-faire, free market anarchism tinged with free love, Stirnerism with a good dose of humor, was analyzed, criticized, commended and blackballed, but it could not be ignored. His periodicals included discussion, propaganda, literary writings of note, debates, essays. The periodicals were brilliantly edited, typed in the best formats of its day, with beautiful artwork and photos. It would be in his periodicals that libertarians would know what is available and what were the issues were being debated.
A generation of radicals grew up reading his periodicals, books and essays in America, Europe and elsewhere. His staff of associates and writers were the best that liberty produced. He popularized Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and printed G.B. Shaw prior to any other American publisher. When Liberty stopped publishing in 1908 when Tucker's bookstore burned down, he would continue to write and communicate with others until his death in Monaco.
His impact was considerable, both within his own generation, and to the generations of libertarians that have come afterward as Rudolf Rocker points out in Pioneers of American Freedom (Los Angeles: Rocker Publication Committee, 1949. pp. 118-154)
Sunday, April 17, 2005
JLS 19.1 advenit
The latest issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies -- and the first one to appear under my editorship -- is out. See the contents summary here.
The Lochner Era, the New York Times. and Historical Myths
David E. Bernstein is on a roll. Over at Volokh, he systematically dissects Jeffrey Rosen's piece, "The Unregulated Offensive," which appeared in The New York Times Magazine. Rosen gets it wrong repeatedly in his analysis and description of the era of so-called laissez faire jurisprudence during the early twentieth century and the mythical "Constitution in Exile" movement. This lengthy blog is well-worth reading.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Computer-Generated Gibberish Accepted as Paper for Academic Conference
Some students act like jerks and throw pies (weren't they doing that tired prank way back in the 1980s?). Others pull more creative, and socially productive, stunts. Witness this gem of a story:
In a victory for pranks