Webinar: The Myth of Market Faiilure

Here's the audio for my FFF webninar on the myth of market failure. Enjoy!

The Libertarian Angle

The latest Libertarian Angle covers the drug war and foreign policy. Enjoy!

TGIF: Truman, A-Bombs, and the Killing of Innocents

Sixty-eight years ago today a president of the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a city full of innocent Japanese. It was the second time in three days that Harry Truman had done such a thing: He had bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The fatalities in the two cities totaled 150,000–246,000. The victims – mostly children, women, and old men – suffered horrible deaths in the blasts and firestorms. Only shadows remained of those who were vaporized. Many more were injured; others later died from radiation sickness.

Appallingly, history has been kind to Truman, and people who profess a variety of political views claim to admire the “plucky” plain-speaking guy from Independence, Mo. As I see it, however, no condemnation could be harsh enough, for if Truman wasn’t a mass murderer, no one was.

Read it here.

The Libertarian Angle

The latest Libertarian Angle discusses the uncompromising nature of libertarianism.

Evil Incarnate

The Butcher of Asia

(HT: Zora Neal Hurston)

Scott Horton Appearance

Last week Scott Horton and I discussed matters related to the minimum wage and government obstacles to individual advancement. Listen here.

The Real Days of Infamy

Today is the 68th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, one of President Harry Truman's acts of mass murder against Japan in August 1945. The anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing is Friday. (It has lately come to my attention that the U.S. military bombed Tokyo on Aug. 14--after destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki and after Emperor Hirohito expressed his readiness to surrender.)

There isn't much to be said about those unspeakable atrocities against civilians that hasn't been said many times before. The U.S. government never needed atomic bombs to commit mass murder. Its "conventional" weapons have been potent enough. (See the earlier firebombing of Tokyo.) But considering how the "leaders" saw The Bomb, its two uses against Japan stand out as especially heinous acts. The U.S. government may not have used atomic weapons since 1945, but it has not yet given up mass murder as a political/military tactic. Presidential candidates are still expected to say that, with respect to nuclear weapons, "no options are off the table."

Mario Rizzo has pointed out that Americans were upset by the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 yet seem not to be bothered that "their" government murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in a few days.

As Harry Truman once said, "I don't give 'em hell. I just drop A-bombs on their cities and they think it's hell." (Okay, he didn't really say that, but he might as well have.)

Rad Geek People's Daily has a poignant post here. Rad says: "As far as I am aware, the atomic bombing of the Hiroshima city center, which deliberately targeted a civilian center and killed over half of the people living in the city, remains the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of the world."

Other things to read: Anthony Gregory’s “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the US Terror State” and David Henderson’s “Remembering Hiroshima.”

Finally, if you read nothing else on this subject, read Ralph Raico's article here.

[A version of this post appeared previously.]

Bastiat and Subjective Marginal Utility

Frederic Bastiat really was a precursor of the Austrian school. 

Menger was indeed a revolutionary, but that does not mean that no one before him glimpsed ideas that would later blossom into the Austrian school. As far back as Socrates, thinkers grasped the theory of subjective value in the praxeological sense, and we find a nearly complete subjectivist-marginalist framework 20 years before Menger took pen to paper — in the work of Frédéric Bastiat.

In Bastiat’s unfinished magnum opus, Economic Harmonies (1850), he, like Menger, put the spotlight on the choosing individual and what she tries to accomplish through exchange. Trade, for Bastiat, is an exchange of services that will render useful things: I’ll do something for you (furnish a useful thing, for example) if you do something for me. It’s up to each individual to evaluate the terms and decide if the exchange is worthwhile. Methodological individualism, marginalism, and subjectivism are all to be found in Bastiat.

Read about it here.

Latest Op-Ed: How to Help Fast-Food Workers

Doubling the minimum wage may seem like a good way to help fast-food workers, but it would hurt them instead. So what should we do? We must sweep away the government-created barriers to income earning, barriers that protect established businesses from competition and rob the most vulnerable people of options.

Read all about it.

The Bradley Manning Verdict

Now we know what happens when you embarrass the scoundrels who run the U.S. government.

Bastiat Gets It

"Never shall we succeed in preventing the production of something that, since it is in demand, has value." Economic Harmonies

Interview with Guillermo Jimenez

Guillermo Jimenez interviewed me recently for Demanufacturing Consent. Here's the audio.

TGIF: James Madison: Father of the Implied-Powers Doctrine

Don't be fooled by Madison's promise that the Constitution would create a government of "few and defined" powers. Read about the real Madison.

From Articles of Confederation to Constitution

My July FFF webinar was titled "From Articles of Confederation to Constitution." Here's the audio.

The Libertarian Angle

In the latest FFF Libertarian Angle, Jacob Hornberger and I discuss some of the differences between libertarians and conservative/"liberals." Enjoy!

TGIF: What an Honest Conversation about Race Would Look Like

Posted at The Future of Freedom Foundation:

Ever since George Zimmerman’s fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin hit the national headlines last year, calls for an “honest conversation about race” have been heard throughout America. (Up until then, apparently, we’ve had only conversations about having a conversation about race.) However, one need not believe that the Zimmerman shooting and verdict were about race — I watched the trial and I don’t — to think that an honest conversation about race is indeed long overdue.

First on the agenda should be the many ways that government policies — either by intent or by palpable effect — embody racism. Let’s call them vehicles for official racism. I have in mind things like the war on certain drug manufacturers, merchants, and consumers; the crusade against “illegal” guns; the minimum wage and related laws; and the government’s schools. All of these by far take their greatest toll on people of color.

Private racism, whether violent or nonviolent, is evil and abhorrent; it is also unlibertarian — yes, even nonviolent racism is unlibertarian, as I point out in “Libertarianism = Anti-Racism.” There I wrote,

The Irony of the Zimmerman-Martin Case

Funny, if anyone can be said to have stood his ground rather than retreat, it was Trayvon Martin.

Rand Paul, Jack Hunter, and All That

I cringe every time libertarianism is associated with the Confederate States of America. Read Jeff Hummel's Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men to see why you should too.

Scott Horton Show

Scott Horton and I talked about immigration on his show the other day. Here's the audio.

When Is a Military Coup Not a Military Coup?

When calling it such would harm Israel and anger the American Israel (Jewish) Lobby. The ouster of Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi has all the characteristics of a military coup, but the Obama administration refuses to label it such. Why? Because under U.S. rules, military aid may not go to a country in which the military coup removed a democratically elected president. Egypt's gets over a billion dollars a year in a deal struck among the Egyptian, Israeli, and U.S. governments under the 1978 Camp David Accord, which constituted a peace treaty between the two Mideast nations that had gone to four war times. Under the deal Israel gets about three billion dollars a year in U.S. military assistance. The Obama administration won't cut the aid to the Egyptian military for one simple reason: Israel and its American lobby don't want the aid ended. Since 1978 the Egyptian military has been a key to Israel's continuing subjugation of the Palestinians, particularly those held in the Gaza Strip. Israeli leaders care about only one thing with respect to Egypt: Will its government continue to honor the Camp David Accord? The Egyptian military can be counted on to do so as long as it is dependent on U.S. aid. (Morsi did nothing to undercut Camp David.)

In other words, the billion dollars that go to the Egyptian military is really indirect aid to the Israeli regime and thus a means of enabling the occupation of Palestine.

Word games are a big part of what goes on Washington, D.C.

Op-ed: What the Immigration Bill Overlooks

My latest op-ed points out that the Senate's "comprehensive" immigration "reform" bill missed a few things.

TGIF: Airbrushing Barbarity

In "Airbrushing Barbarity" I explore the insidious practice of discussing public policy in value-free terms.

This Week's Scribblings

Op-ed: "Big Brother, Not Snowden and Greenwald, Is the Story"

Snowden and Greenwald have not “aided the enemy” — unless the American people are the government’s enemy. What they have done is embarrass the Obama administration by exposing criminal activity.

 For the media’s defenders of power against truth, that’s inexcusable.

TGIF: "Is Edward Snowden a Lawbreaker?"

Lex injusta non est lex — an unjust law is not a law.

Media Priorities

If the television talking heads spent half the time discussing NSA spying that they spend sneering at Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, the people might actually get mad at Big Brother.

TGIF: National Servitude

The idea of "national service" never goes away. It just stands in the wings waiting to reappear. Well, it's back, and here is my take.

What do [the advocates of  “national service”] really want: improvement in the lives of people or service to “the nation,” which always translates into service to the state? If it’s the latter, they should remind themselves that earlier attempts to institutionalize that notion of duty weren’t pretty.

Just Wondering

Has the NSA spying ceased pending the debate?

TGIF: It’s Not Edward Snowden Who Betrayed Us

TGIF this week cuts through the NSA fog to show that how one comes down on the controversy depends on whether or not one trusts power.

Op-ed: Obama Speaks with Forked Tongue on Surveillance

My take on the revelations about the NSA's spying.  Bottom line:

Obama says, “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

That’s wrong. If the politicians’ only response to revelations that they’re violating our privacy is to ask for trust, then we already have problems.

Hero

Edward Snowden, Unmasker of Big Brother

Does He Listen to Himself?

If Barack Obama really "welcome[s] the debate" on the surveillance state, why is his administration pulling out all the stops to find the leaker who's making that debate possible?

TGIF: The Lie Factory

Obama says things are going well in Afghanistan. He lies.
Read all about it.

Caplan on Pacifism

Bryan Caplan defends his antiwar stance against Jan Ling in this Learn Liberty video.

 

Op-ed: The US Base on Diego Garcia: An Overlooked Atrocity

Most Americans know (well maybe not) that the U.S. government has a military base on the island Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. But how many know of the atrocity that occurred to establish that base?

Read about it.

TGIF: So What If Freedom Isn't Free?

My reply to those who admonish us libertarians that freedom isn't free.

Op-ed Obama's Willful Foreign-Policy Blindness

Here's my take on Barack Obama's May 23 major foreign-policy address.

For more on the phony nature of the speech and alleged policy changes, see William Saletan's unmaking.

Readings in Revisionist History

I've been asked to post my list of readings in revisionist history separately so the link can be distributed. I haven't read all these books, but those I haven't gotten to yet come highly recommended by people I respect. I will add to the list from time to time.

• We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now, edited by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• The Failure of America's Foreign Wars, edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger
• America's Second Crusade, by William Henry Chamberlin
• Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal, by Ralph Raico
• Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, by Jeff Riggenbach
• War Is a Lie, by David Swanson
• War Is a Racket, by Smedley D. Butler
• Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, by Paul Fussell
• Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
• The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, by William Appleman Williams
• The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition, by Arthur Ekirch
• The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, 1890-1920, by Walter Karp
• The Costs of War, edited by John Denson
• Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer
• All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer
• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson
• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, by Chalmers Johnson
• War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin
• The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, by David Hirst
• Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001, by Ussama Makdisi
• The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination, by Jeremy R. Hammond
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe
• The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, by Miko Peled
• Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II, by Jim Powell
• American Empire: Before the Fall, by Bruce Fein
• Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World, by Jonathan Kwitny
• The Emergency State: America's Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs, by David C. Unger
• Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, by Nicholson Baker
• Secrets, by Daniel Ellsberg
• The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, by Nick Turse
• “War, Peace, and the State,” by Murray Rothbard
• “‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention,” by Sheldon Richman

Revisionist History Day, 2013

Today is Revisionist History Day, what others call Memorial Day. Americans are supposed to remember the country's war dead while being thankful that they protected our freedom and served our country. However, reading revisionist history (see a sampling below) or alternative news sites (start with Antiwar.com and don't forget to listen to the Scott Horton Show) teaches that the fallen were doing no such thing. Rather they were and are today serving cynical politicians and the "private" component of the military-industrial complex in the service of the American Empire.

The state inculcates an unquestioning faith in its war-making by associating it with patriotism, heroism, and the defense of "our freedoms." This strategy builds in its own defense against any criticism of the government's policies. Anyone who questions the morality of a war is automatically suspected of being unpatriotic, unappreciative of the bravery that has "kept us free," and disrespectful of "our troops," in a word, un-American.

To counter this common outlook, which people are indoctrinated in from birth and which is shared by conservatives and Progressives alike, we should do what we can to teach others that the government's version of its wars is always self-serving and threatening to life, liberty, and decency.

In that spirit, I quote a passage from the great antiwar movie The Americanization of Emily. You'll find a video of the scene below. This AP photo is a perfect illustration of what "Charlie Madison" is talking about.

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

My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. . . . [N]ow my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave. [Emphasis added.]

Enjoy the day. I'll spend some of it reading revisionist history and watching Emily.




Here's an all-too-incomplete list of books in no particular order (some of which I've read, some of which I intend to read):

• We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now, edited by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• The Failure of America's Foreign Wars, edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger
• America's Second Crusade, by William Henry Chamberlin
• Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal, by Ralph Raico
• Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, by Jeff Riggenbach
• War Is a Lie, by David Swanson
• War Is a Racket, by Smedley D. Butler
• Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, by Paul Fussell
• Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
• The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, by William Appleman Williams
• The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition, by Arthur Ekirch
• The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, 1890-1920, by Walter Karp
• The Costs of War, edited by John Denson
• Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer
• All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer
• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson
• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, by Chalmers Johnson
• War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin
• The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, by David Hirst
• Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001, by Ussama Makdisi
• The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination, by Jeremy R. Hammond
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe
• The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, by Miko Peled
• Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II, by Jim Powell
• American Empire: Before the Fall, by Bruce Fein
• Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World, by Jonathan Kwitny
• The Emergency State: America's Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs, by David C. Unger
• Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, by Nicholson Baker
• Secrets, by Daniel Ellsberg
• The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, by Nick Turse
• “War, Peace, and the State,” by Murray Rothbard
• “‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention,” by Sheldon Richman

By the way, if you can't help but think of this day as "memorial day," then at least spend part of it remembering how the U.S. government has caused the deaths of so many people.

TGIF: The Greatness of Peace Activist John Bright

John Bright is one of the great heroes of liberalism for his devotion to free markets and peace. His speeches on peace and nonintervention make good reading for the Memorial Day weekend. Here is a sample.

Op-ed: Bangladeshi Workers Need Freed Markets

"Pro-sweatshop" is not a libertarian position. See why here.

TGIF: Abolish the IRS -- and the Income Tax with It

My take on the IRS scandal.

Also see TGIF: No Intervention in Syria.

To Be Governed . . .

“I sure want to do some governing.” --Barack Obama

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

Nakba Day

Today is Nakba Day, the day of remembrance of the catastrophe that befell Palestinians during the aggression-based and unlawful  establishment of the Jewish State of Israel 65 years ago. Over 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages, and many massacred, in an ethnic-cleansing operation that should shock the conscience. The Arabs who remained in the Israeli state that was imposed on them by Zionist military forces have been second-class citizens from that time. Don't expect much notice of this in the mass media.

The best short introduction to this shameful series of events is Jeremy Hammond's The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination. See also Hammond's "The Myth of the UN Creation of Israel."

Other good reading on this matter: David Hirst's The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics, and Jack Ross's Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism.

UPDATE: This has just come to my attention (HT: Mondoweiss): Amjad Alqasis's "The Ongoing Nakba: The continuous forcible displacement of the Palestinian people."

Op-ed: A Modest Gun-Safety Proposal

The problem with the gun-safety lobby is that it doesn't think big enough. See my modest proposal for gun safety.

Concealed Carry

I wrote this letter to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after reading that the University of Central Arkansas had decided to forbid faculty members and students from carrying concealed handguns. It was published today.

I see the University of Central Arkansas has chosen to prohibit concealed-carry of handguns.

Why would the school want to make the campus safe for the criminally minded? Nothing is more potentially dangerous than a gun-free zone.

The Essence of Production

There are two ways to produce any good: directly, i.e., by transforming inputs into the more useful form you want; and indirectly, i.e., by transforming inputs into a more useful form that someone else wants and exchanging it for the good you want. Both processes consist in transforming inputs, and hence are two variations on the same theme.

P.S. Money doesn't change the essence of what I've described. It's just roundabout barter, to use a thought from Bastiat.

P.P.S. There are no "exports" and "imports." There are only what I produce and what everyone else produces.

TGIF : Criminal Government

TGIF: Criminal Government. Why do they get away with torture?

Just Wondering

I'm betting the one who radicalized the Tsarnaevs lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Has the FBI paid a visit?

Scott Horton Show

I was on the Scott Horton show last week. You can listen to the conversation here.

Interview

Joseph S. Diedrich interviewed me recently. Here are the results.

TGIF: Liberty, Security, and Terrorism

Whether U.S. foreign policy really had anything to do with the Boston Marathon bombings, there are reasons enough to scrap it and to follow strict noninterventionism, since that would cease the daily brutality against Muslims (and others) committed in the name of the American people. One bonus from ending U.S.-sponsored murder and mayhem in the Muslim world is that it would remove a potential reason for violence against Americans.

Read  TGIF: Liberty, Security, and Terrorism

Also see "What if the Tsarnaevs' Motive Was Revenge for U.S. Foreign Policy?"

Martial Law in Massachusetts

No lover of liberty can help but be appalled at the display of naked force during the period of de facto martial law in the suburbs of Boston. Here’s a sample:

Hypocritical Democrats

So what else is new? But in this post, Glenn Greenwald shows the hypocrisy of Democrats who are criticizing Sen. Lindsey Graham for demanding that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev not be treated like a normal criminal defendant, Miranda warnings and all. It turns out that President Obama and AG Holder essentially killed Miranda some time ago.

Slate's Emily Bazelon nails it too.

A Reminder from Thomas More

From A Man for All Seasons by Robert Boldt:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Latest TGIF

TGIF: Government Should Stop Its Own Violence First

Stupid Criminals

Maybe not all criminals are stupid but a lot of them are. The apparent Boston Marathon bombers opened the last chapter of their criminal enterprise by robbing a 7-11. How hackneyed can you get?

UPDATE: Latest word is that the Tsarnaev brothers did not rob a convenience store at all. (Someone else did that.) What they did was hijack a Mercedes SUV and force the driver to get money out of an ATM. They then let the driver go unharmed, while taking his car.

Frog Supremacy

Frogs are superior to human beings. They do jump out of gradually heated water.

Demagogy on Manchin-Toomey

The Manchin-Toomey expansion of background checks to private gun sales was reasonable legislation, its advocates insist, because it would have forbidden the creation of a federal registry and exempted transfers of guns between family members and between friends.

Those features appear to be in the bill, but why should that matter? The champions of Manchin-Toomey would have us believe that once the bill passed, no more gun laws would ever be proposed again. That is, they’re either naïve or dishonest. I don’t think they’re naïve.

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former member of the House and self-styled Second Amendment man who supported Manchin-Toomey, is an egregious example of this dishonesty. He spent weeks mocking opponents for not being mollified by the bill’s compromises. Can he be unfamiliar with the legislative tactic of gradualism? Start a program small to minimize opposition, then expand it in later years when people have become inured.

It’s not as though this tactic has never been used. The income tax started small in 1913 and applied only to the richest Americans. Those who expressed concern that the tax would expand were ridiculed as paranoid. Sen. William Borah, an Idaho Progressive Republican said, “No sane man would take from industry its just reward or rob frugality of a fair and honest return.”

As I wrote in Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax (1999):

The 1913 income tax was put at 1 percent on net income after a personal exemption of $3,000, some credits, and an additional $1,000 exemption for married couples living together. There was also a graduated 2 percent to 7 percent surcharge on incomes from $20,000 to $500,000….

In 1913, the average personal income was $621. Only 2 percent of the population was liable for the tax between 1913 and 1915.

In other words, the tax was introduced as a tax on the rich exclusively.

If the system were in place today, a single person making less than about $45,000 (the bottom 75 percent of filers) would pay no tax. A couple earning less than $60,000 would pay nothing. Incomes up to $300,000 would be in the 1 percent bracket. Someone would have to make $7.5 million before paying the top 7 percent rate. In 1994 dollars, the exemptions of 1913 would be worth $44,776 for a single person and $59,701 for married couples.

But it didn’t take long for the tax to become a tax on the masses. War, as usual, fueled the expansion. The anti-tax prophets were right.

The income tax is not the only example of gradualism. Social Security was also introduced as a modest program with a low tax. (The public was against it.)  Now it and Medicare take about 15 percent of a worker’s income. For details see Charlotte Twight’s Dependent on D.C.

The upshot is that you cannot judge a legislative bill in isolation. The dynamics of politics must be taken into account, especially the politicians’ ability to (in Twight’s words) “manipulate political transaction costs.” This refers to the many methods that government officials have to conceal what they’re doing and to make it costly for people to resist if they find out.

How might this idea apply to Manchin-Toomey? This isn’t rocket science. The bill may promise universal background checks (except for family members and friends), but it can’t keep that promise. Criminally minded people will always find ways to obtain guns outside the system. Theft and the black market will make that a certainty. Gun-running is as old as guns themselves, and nothing is more adaptive than the black market.

So what will happen after the next atrocity occurs with a firearm? The advocates of universal background checks will surely say, “We tried this modest approach, and it failed to keep guns out of the hands of bad people. We must do more.”

“More” could well include national registration. It’s a matter of logic. If I own a gun, how can the government assure that I haven’t sold it without running a background check on the buyer? One way the government might find out is to establish a gun registry and periodically do spot checks to see if people still possess the guns that are registered to them. If people are serious about outlawing sales without backgrounds checks, wouldn’t they be driven to such a proposal? As the ACLU has pointed out, the civil-liberties implications are ominous. Registration makes confiscation feasible.

This is not paranoia. It’s a recognition of the dynamics of demagogic politics. If, as polls purport to show, 90 percent of people favor universal background checks and they prove futile in stopping gun atrocities, what will people favor next? Which way are they likely to go: toward full deregulation of gun ownership or toward more draconian measures?

I know where my money is.

Interview on Tracesofreality.com

Guillermo Jimenez interviewed me for Tracesofreality.com. Here's the video:

Time to Bring Bush & Co. before the International Criminal Court

From the New York Times:

A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.” The study, by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, is to be released on Tuesday morning.

Read more.

What We Know about the Boston Marathon Bombings

They were crimes, not acts of war.

The Boston Marathon Bombings

My heart goes out to the loved ones of those who were murdered, the injured, and all others who were affected--the people of Boston.

The Libertarian Angle

The latest edition of FFF's The Libertarian Angle is now online. Issues discussed: gun control and Melissa Harris-Perry's view that children belong to the "community."

TGIF: The Market Is a Beautiful Thing

Market advocates tend to respect the intellect of their fellow human beings. You can tell by their reliance on philosophical, moral, economic, and historical arguments when trying to persuade others. But what if most people’s aversion to the market isn’t founded in philosophy, morality, economics, or history? What if their objection is aesthetic?

Read TGIF: "The Market Is a Beautiful Thing"

The Deir Yassin Massacre, April 9, 1948

Today is the 65th anniversary of the slaughter of the Arab inhabitants of the Palestinian village Deir Yassin (population about 600), west of Jerusalem, at the hands of Zionist militias, Irgun and Lehi, or Stern Gang. About a hundred residents, including 30 infants. (Irgun was led by future prime minister Menachem Begin. Another future prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, was a Lehi commander.) By any standard, these were terrorist organizations. Indeed, conservative historian Paul Johnson writes that the Zionist militias created the terrorist model in the Middle East.

Dein Yassin was just one of the many atrocities that comprise the Nakba, or the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in the founding of Israel. In fact, residents of other Arab villages fled their homes as the Zionist paramilitary forces spread the word about Deir Yassin. Historian Ilan Pappe writes, "At the time, the Jewish leadership proudly announced a high number of victims so as to make Deir Yassin the epicentre of the catastrophe--a warning to all Palestinians that a similar fate awaited them if they refused to abandon their homes and take flight." In his memoir, Begin wrote that panicked Arabs fled their homes in great number at the "wild tales of 'Irgun butchery.'"

Here is a moving account by Dina Elmuti at Electronic Intifada.

According to Wikipedia:

In 1949, despite protests, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Shaul Bet was built on what had been Deir Yassin's land, now considered part of Har Nof, an Orthodox area. Four Jewish scholars, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon, Werner Senator, and Cecil Roth, wrote to Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, asking that Deir Yassin be left uninhabited, or that its settlement be postponed. They wrote that it had become "infamous throughout the Jewish world, the Arab world and the whole world." Settling the land so soon after the killings would amount to an endorsement of them. Ben-Gurion failed to respond, though the correspondents sent him copy after copy. Eventually his secretary replied that he had been too busy to read their letter.

In 1951, construction of the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center began, using some of the village's houses, now hidden behind the hospital's fence, with entry closely restricted. Har HaMenuchot, a Jewish cemetery, lies to the north. To the south is a valley containing part of the Jerusalem Forest, and on the other side of the valley, a mile and a half away, lie Mount Herzl and the Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem.

For more, see Jeremy Hammond's The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination and Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

TGIF: The Myth of Market Failure

When I say that market failure is a myth, I don’t mean to deny that ... regrettable situations can occur. I only mean to deny that they are peculiar to the market.

Read: "The Myth of Market Failure."

Latest Op-ed

Progressives Believe in Money Magic - - The Future of Freedom Foundation

TGIF: Loving Economics

TGIF this week is a review essay of Peter Boettke’s new book, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Enjoy!

The Importance of Spontaneous Order in Teaching Libertarianism

The good folks at Libertarianism.org dug up this 1981 video of my after-dinner talk on spontaneous order from back in my Libertarian Party days.
   

The Right-Wing Accepts Obama’s Tribalism When It Supports Israel

The right-wing seemingly never misses a chance to go after Barack Obama for his collectivism and alleged dislike of America. Yet when Obama embraced blood-and-soil tribalism openly and implied that America was not the “land of the free” for everyone, the right-wing apparently had nothing to say.

Why? The subject was Israel, and the right-wing shares Obama’s tribalist premises on that subject.

In his speech in Jerusalem on March 21, Obama said:

For the Jewish people, the journey to the promise of the State of Israel wound through countless generations.  It involved centuries of suffering and exile, prejudice and pogroms and even genocide.  Through it all, the Jewish people sustained their unique identity and traditions, as well as a longing to return home.  And while Jews achieved extraordinary success in many parts of the world, the dream of true freedom finally found its full expression in the Zionist idea -- to be a free people in your homeland.  That’s why I believe that Israel is rooted not just in history and tradition, but also in a simple and profound idea -- the idea that people deserve to be free in a land of their own.

The first half of the paragraph is full of fable and fabrication, though he’s right about suffering, prejudice, pogroms, and genocide. To understand what’s wrong with those sentences, consult Shlomo Sand’s two excellent books The Invention of the Jewish People and The Invention of the Land of Israel (both available for Kindle). Invention is not unique to the “Jewish people.” Many peoples and nations are the product of what Sand calls “mythistory.”

What I want to focus on in Obama’s statement is this:

And while Jews achieved extraordinary success in many parts of the world, the dream of true freedom finally found its full expression in the Zionist idea--to be a free people in your homeland.

Obama is saying that Jews need to live apart in Israel or they can’t be truly free. Think about the implications. Something about Jews makes it impossible for them to be really at home anywhere—including in what the right-wing (and presumably Obama) tout as the freest nation in the history of the world. So Jews need an ethno-religiously exclusivist state. That view amounts to a wholesale rejection of the western liberal tradition, which was inclusive and universalist and in which all people have the same rights without being seen as members of a tribe. Isn’t it the official line that this is what made America great? So why is Obama rejecting it? And why is the right-wing conspicuously silent?

Of course the right-wing can’t raise any objection because it is staunchly in Israel’s corner, which means endorsing its medieval notions. (Forgive me for writing as though the right-wing is monolithic. It is not. Suffice it to say there are honorable exceptions.) So the right-wing is stuck (like Obama) with a contraction: Jews aren’t fully free and at home in what they claim is the greatest and freest country on earth. This seems to be an insult both to Jews and the United States, but no one will say it. (And people wonder why Chuck Hagel once called the Israel Lobby “intimidating”—before being intimidated into withdrawing the charge.)

Obama and the right-wing would find their position untenable if they had a few facts. Throughout Jewish history, few Jews have had any desire or perceived obligation to move to Israel. (Most of those who went wished to die there in order to be near Jerusalem when the messiah comes and raises the dead.) When the Zionist movement was launched in the late 19th century, most American Jews rejected it firmly; for one thing, they couldn’t imagine a freer place than America. They also realized that there is no Jewish People—no race, no ethnic group, no tribe—but only many culturally diverse people worldwide who (in different ways) embrace Judaism. American Jews were explicitly—vehemently—anti-Zionist and would have been even if Palestine were a “land without a people” (which it certainly was not).

Worldwide, Zionism was a minority position among Jews until World War II, at which point for most Jews it became a humanitarian cause on behalf of the survivors of the Nazi Judeocide. Besides the books linked to above, see Jack Ross’s Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism.)

Understand that Zionism did not begin as a humanitarian cause. The Zionist pioneers (many of whom were secular intellectuals) aspired to remake (invent) the “Jewish People” by getting them away from cities and towns and turning them into tillers of the soil in their own exclusivist nation.  (Theodor Herzl might well have been the first self-hating Jew.) The early Zionists wanted—indeed, expected—all Jews everywhere to take up permanent residence in Palestine. (That’s why the Palestinian Arabs had to be removed, violently if necessary, from the land they inhabited and worked for at least thousand years.) By the in-gathering standard, Zionism has been a colossal failure. Few Jews want to move to Israel, and many in Israel are emigrating. When the Soviet Union let Jews leave, they overwhelmingly wanted to move to the United States, but the Israeli government conspired with the U.S. government to push them to Israel against their will. (See my “Let the Soviet Jews Come to America” [1991].)

Hence the old joke that Zionism amounts to one Jew raising money from a second Jew to send a third (poor) Jew to Israel.

As one rabbi put it recently,

When we say “Next year in Jerusalem'” [during the Passover Seder] we mean that all Jews should actually be in Israel and in Jerusalem (not just as tourists!). We mean Jerusalem as it is ideally meant to be - with the Temple, the Sanhedrin and a Jewish Monarch. We're still waiting. Even we here in Jerusalem say “Next year in Jerusalem!” [Emphasis added.]

On the basis of Jews’ demonstrated preference, the rabbi will have a long wait.

Obama’s words are a reminder of the shameful double standard favorable to Israel that many people hold when it comes to the “Jewish state’s” crimes and offenses. As David Bromwich asks, can you imagine Obama’s saying: “Shiite Islam found extraordinary success in many parts of the world but its dream of national realization has attained its full expression in Iran.”

The right-wing wouldn’t have been so silent.

Roderick Long Scores on the Marriage Equality Issue

Victory Through Lexicography? | Bleeding Heart Libertarians

Op-ed: How the Media Beat the Drums for War

How the News Media Betrayed Us on Iraq -- The Future of Freedom Foundation


The tenth anniversary of the start of America’s illegal and aggressive war against Iraq should not pass without recalling that the mainstream news media eagerly participated in the Bush administration’s dishonest campaign for public support. It is no exaggeration to say that most news operations were little more than extensions of the White House Office of Communications. Abandoning even the pretense of an adversarial relationship with the government, the media became shameful conduits for unsubstantiated and outright false information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged threat to the American people. Included among the falsehoods were reports that Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, had trained al-Qaeda fighters, and had attempted to obtain uranium ore and aluminum tubes for nuclear bombs.

Put bluntly, the disastrous invasion of Iraq, which was sold on the basis of lies told by President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and others might not have happened without the enthusiastic help of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and others. The blood of more than a hundred thousand — perhaps more than a million — Iraqis and 4,500 Americans is on their hands too.

Today, like the Bush administration alumni attempting to duck responsibility, the media blame “bad intelligence” for their conduct. But that will not wash. The dissenting reports of Knight Ridder’s Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, along with a very few others, show definitively that in 2002–03 solid intelligence information undermining every propagandistic administration claim was readily available to anyone willing to use traditional reporting techniques. Strobel and Landay were mostly ignored. On the rare occasions when the New York Times orWashington Post reported on the doubts intelligence personnel had about the Bush narrative, the stories were buried deep in the paper. (See Bill Moyers’s special “Buying the War” and Greg Mitchell’s book Wrong for So Long.)

The media did not merely pass along baseless assertions; the television channels also attempted to shape public opinion with a biased selection of guests. Prowar voices abounded, while informed war skeptics were scarce. Even when an opponent of war was featured, he or she had to share the time with a prowar advocate, yet the prowar side was often featured unchallenged. As the war became regarded as inevitable, the cable news channels shifted almost exclusively to military analysis, as though the question was no longer whether the nation ought to go to war, but rather how it would be fought. Many of the retired generals who were presented as objective experts had seats on the boards of defense contractors and were getting Pentagon briefings.

What motivated those who covered the run-up to the Iraq invasion this way? Several factors were surely at work. Groupthink and the fear of going out on a limb must have played a large role. The vaunted courage of journalists is more pose than fact. (This makes the work of Strobel and Landay, Phil Donahue of MSNBC until he was cancelled, and Bob Simon of CBS’sSixty Minutes all the more admirable.) “Pack journalism” is reinforced by a fear that reports suggesting skepticism about a military action will be interpreted as unpatriotic. The smear factories run by militarist right-wing media watchdogs ensure this will be the case. Moreover, being branded un-American for doubting a president’s case for war may lead to viewer or reader boycotts, which in turn may lead to pressure from advertisers. Thus, the corporate bottom line played a role.

Another factor is the simple truth that war makes better news than peace. No one wins a Pulitzer Prize for being a peace correspondent. We must not underestimate this as a motive for favoring war.

Finally, we can’t overlook that many in the media were simply motivated by nationalism and deference to the state with its dazzling war technology.

This story of media malfeasance would be bad enough if it were just history. Unfortunately, even as media figures now issue mea culpas about their shameful Iraq “coverage,” they are engaged in precisely the same shoddy business with respect to Iran and its alleged but unproven nuclear-weapons program.

Whose Idea Was It?

With all that's going on, you may be forgiven for wondering if modern Israel was some anti-Semite's idea.

Israel's Greatest Fear

Widespread nonviolent Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation is the Jewish state's greatest nightmare.

Land Claim

Favoring the expulsion of people from the land they and their kin have inhabited continuously for at least a millennium, because a deity allegedly promised it to one's purported tribe thousands of years ago, seems the very essence of religious fanaticism.

Latest Appearance on Scott Horton Show

Scott Horton interviewed me last week about Bastiat's theory of how free markets socialize wealth. Listen here.

TGIF: Bastiat on the Socialization of Wealth

My latest TGIF explores an aspect of Bastiat's thought that gets too little attention: "Bastiat on the Socialization of Wealth."

Get the Name Right

NBC chief diplomatic stenographer Andrea Mitchell noted yesterday that President Obama embarks today on his visit to Israel and the West Bank. This is incorrect. Obama will visit Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestine. The state of Palestine declared independence almost 25 years ago and has since been recognized by 131 of the UN's 193 member states. That the U.S. government doesn't recognize Palestine is part of its long-standing policy of enabling Israel's oppression of the Palestinians.

Recent Scribblings

Op-ed: "The Dow Jones Is Lying"
TGIF: "Freedom Overlooked"

The Libertarian Angle

Jacob Hornberger and I have started a new weekly Internet show for the Future of Freedom Foundation: The Libertarian Angle. Here's the edition for March 12:



The first two editions follow:

Op-ed: Cutting Government Would Boost Economy

Budget sequestration is as modest a step toward cutting Leviathan as one can imagine. Further progress will be difficult as long as people believe that slashing the size of government conflicts with reviving the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Read it here.

The Vanishing Washington Post AIPAC Headline

This was the headline on today's Washington Post page-two story about Vice President Joe Biden's appearance at the AIPAC (Israel Lobby) conference. It's curious to say the least. Loyalty? Whose loyalty to whom? Also curious is the fact that this headline did not make the online HTML edition of the Post. It was changed to "Biden seeks to reassure AIPAC of U.S. commitment to Israel."

The website also features an e-Replica of the newspaper, but the three times I tried to view page A2, I received this message:

404 - File or directory not found.

The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Was the Post embarrassed by its headline?

TGIF: Sequestration and the Chimera of the Informed Voter

Sequestration is not a disaster in the making, but how's the average person supposed to know that? I look in this question in my latest TGIF: "Sequestration and the Chimera of the Informed Voter."

What Sequestration Amounts to

Source: Congressional Budget Office

HT: Cato Institute

Big Bad Sequestration

Latest scribblings

Op-ed: "The Minimum Wage Harms the Most Vulnerable"
TGIF: "What Support for the Minimum Wage Reveals"
Op-ed: "The American People Need Real Spending Cuts"

Unintended Consequence of the Minimum Wage?

"Ironically, the minimum wage creates a reserve army of the unemployed. That in turn allows employers to be less thoughtful, helpful, and kind. It destroys the civilizing effect of competition by muting it. That encourages exploitation. It reduces the cost to employers of racism or cruelty. Before the increase, being obnoxious or racist made it much harder to find employees. A minimum wage makes it easier to indulge in bad behavior. The costs are lower. Before the minimum wage, a cruel, selfish employer might have had to mentor his employees or train them or be nice to them despite his nature. Now he won’t have to. He can still get workers to work for him. Even more cruelly, the minimum wage encourages workers to exploit themselves. They work harder and put up with more abuse from the boss because the minimum wage reduces the alternatives that are available." --Russ Roberts

TGIF: Does the Market Exhibit Cooperation

Last week's TGIF rebutted a challenge to the view that the market does not embody literal social cooperation. I think it does. Read it here.

Op-ed: Drone Trust the Government

My latest op-ed, "Drone Trust the Government," discusses the basic reason to reject the government's policy of drone warfare.

My Appearance on Speaking on Liberty

Podcast on the 16th Amendment

Steve Stanek of the Heartland Institute interviewed me recently about the Constitution, the 16th Amendment, and the income tax. Listen here.

About Universal Background Checks

Proponents of government-mandated “universal” background checks on gun buyers make a bad counterargument to those who oppose the popular proposal. Opponents correctly point out that people with criminal intent can reasonably be expected to find gun-buying channels that require no background check. Gun-running is among the oldest professions, and the black market will always be with us. Just ask anyone who wants to buy illegal drugs. So it is valid to point out that the promise of universal background checks—even if that were a legitimate government activity—is chimerical because universality can’t possibly be achieved.

Supporters, however, challenge this argument by contending that it proves too much: If legislating background checks is futile as a crime-fighting measure, they ask, why have laws any against criminal activity, such as the prohibition of murder? Those laws will never stop everyone from a committing crime, so what’s the point?

I find this argument flawed. Let’s remember that the background-check requirement is intended, prophylactically, to keep guns out of the hands of those who would do harm. In contrast, the state’s prohibition against murder is intended, retrospectively, to authorize government agents to apprehend, prosecute, and imprison people who commit unjustifiable homicide. Yes, there may be some deterrent intent (and effect), but the main objective is to permit action against those suspected of murder, etc.

Supporters of background checks may respond that a “universal” law would permit the state to go after those who have used guns aggressively. But this argument is of no force simply because if someone uses a gun aggressively, the state already has grounds to apprehend and prosecute. What value is there in being able to also charge a suspected mass murderer with illegal possession of a gun?

In my view, this practical criticism of legislated universal background checks withstands scrutiny. The law would give a false sense of security by promising what it cannot deliver, but meanwhile could impede persons without criminal intent from obtaining firearms for self-defense. Someone determined to commit a mass shooting or other crime can reasonably be expected to buy his or her guns through channels that do not require background checks, and that won’t be too difficult. But people without criminal intent will be reluctant buy guns outside the law, even if they aren’t able to get one legally. (Someone with a felony drug conviction, for instance, may not legally possess a gun.)

Of course this criticism, although valid, is not specifically a libertarian criticism. A more specifically libertarian criticism is that mere possession of a firearm involves no aggression, regardless of a person’s background, and therefore should not be prohibited. (Property owners of course should be free to manage their property with respect to guns as they like.)

But isn’t the law worth it if it might save one innocent life? And what if the law might cost one innocent life? Why is one innocent life regarded as more valuable than another?

Misunderstood 16th Amendment Is 100 Years Old

Today is the 100th anniversary of ratification of the 16th Amendment, the so-called income-tax amendment. Contrary to popular myth, it did not legalize taxes on wages and salaries, because such taxes had never been ruled unconstitutional. For details see my series "Beware Income-Tax Casuistry."

You Can’t Be for Freedom and Border Control

Conservatives who lie awake nights worrying about “illegal immigration” reveal something unflattering about themselves. Isn’t it odd for people who claim to favor individual liberty and limited government to at the same time fret that people “cross our border” without government permission? Why would anyone need the government’s permission to cross an arbitrary political boundary?  What happened to natural rights? And why would self-proclaimed champions of the free market demand harsh penalties for employers who dare to hire people who haven’t first gotten permission from the government to live and work here? Employment is peaceful exchange. Where does the government get the moral authority to regulate exchange?

If one favors freedom, one favors freedom of movement. Does that mean I favor amnesty? No, it doesn’t. I oppose amnesty on two grounds.

First, amnesty presupposes wrongdoing and “illegal immigrants” have done nothing wrong; they are merely people without government papers—big deal. There is no duty to obey a “law” that conflicts with natural law.

Second, I do not think government officials should be forgiven for the injustice committed against people without government papers. Thus I oppose amnesty for those officials.

Hagelian Synthesis

Much is being made of former senator Chuck Hagel's seeming lack of preparation for his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday and his rough handling by Republican senators about statements he made about Israel, the "Jewish Lobby," Iran, Iraq, and more. However, something important has been missed in the post-hearing analysis, namely, that Hagel couldn't candidly answer the questions about his past statements because he wants to be secretary of defense [sic].

I'm quite sure Hagel could cite at least one instance in which the Lobby intimidated a member of Congress. Anyone who says this doesn't happen is lying or willfully ignorant. Nor would he have trouble naming something "dumb" Congress has done under pressure from the Lobby. A good place to start would be the enabling of Israel's subjugation of the Palestinians and its building of illegal Jewish-only settlements on land owned by Palestinians, a policy that alienates Muslims and gives them reason to despise America.

There's only one reason that Hagel disavowed his earlier statements and played coy with the Republican senators: He wants to run the Pentagon.

Recent Scribblings

TGIF: "Economy or Catallaxy?
Op-ed: "The Ominous U.S. Presence in Northwest Africa"
Op-ed: "Mali: Here We Go Again"
TGIF: "Government Undermines Social Cooperation"
"World War II Spending Did Not End the Great Depression"
"No More Corporate Welfare"
"Against Government Debt"

Did the Government Drive Aaron Swartz to Suicide?

My latest op-ed explores the case of Aaron Swartz, the programming prodigy and Internet freedom activist who faced 35 years in prison before taking his own life this month.

Read "Did the Government Drive Aaron Swartz to Suicide?"

Aaron Swartz, RIP

I highly commend Glenn Greenwald's article about Aaron Swartz, the young genius and passionate champion of Internet freedom, who recently committed suicide after being targeted by a Javert-like federal prosecutor. Swartz's story is a sad commentary on the American justice [!] system.

James Buchanan, RIP

Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan, a founder of the Public Choice school and a proponent of radical subjectivist economics, died today at the age 93. He leaves a library full of writings important to libertarians.

Gary Chartier has notes on Buchanan at the Center for a Stateless Society site.

Israel Lobby or Jewish Lobby?

I'm amused by the criticism of Chuck Hagel for referring to the Jewish Lobby, instead of the Israel Lobby. When it's convenient, Israel's supporters never fail to insist that Israel is the state not of its citizens or even its Jewish citizens, but of the Jewish people worldwide. Any Jew (by criteria set by ultra-orthodox rabbis) may move to Israel and immediately become a citizen. A Palestinian Arab born in what became Israel in 1948 and driven out during the Nakba is forbidden to return to his home.

Of course, not all Jews are Israel chauvinists, but that's not relevant here. The point is that Jewish Israel chauvinists support Israel because in their eyes what's good for Israel is good for the Jewish people.

I tried to capture this point in my cartoon.

By the way, "Jewish Lobby" is an uncontroversial synonym for AIPAC in Israel.

Priorities

Hey, no big deal if the U.S. government murders people in other countries.

No big deal if it sends people off to be tortured. 

No big deal if if holds people indefinitely without due process. 

But God forbid it should miss a bill payment!