Why We Need a Fully Free Marketplace of Ideas

No true seeker of truth can oppose the fully free marketplace of ideas. For details of the hardheaded practical case, you can do no better than to consult chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. If you can't spare the time to read this short chapter and book, here's the money quote: "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."

Our Foolish Politicized Era

It's ridiculous to think you can divine people's politics merely from their views on the pandemic or any given policy response to it. Similarly, it's absurd to rebut a view by referring to the holder's politics.

How to Panic the Public

1. Disseminate worst-case scenarios, taking care to ignore the dubious assumptions that go into modeling while vilifying anyone, no matter how well-qualified, who refuses to ignore them.
2. Emphasize the (alleged) benefits of a draconian government response, taking care to ignore the costs while vilifying anyone, no matter how well-qualified, who refuses to ignore them.
3. Repeat as necessary, preferably often.

An Economy Cannot Be Crippled

Lockdown doesn’t cripple “the economy.” It cripples people who are trying to live. Strictly speaking, there’s no economy. There are people interacting in particular ways regularly.

What the Love of Power Trumps

How interesting that the people most worried about Trump’s authoritarian personality demand draconian government responses to the pandemic. Love of power must trump fear of Trump.

Roderick Long Interviews Me, Part 2

TGIF: Is Socialism Good in Theory?

This is an expanded version of something I wrote for The Freeman, October 2003, during my tenure as the editor.

Socialism has been mortally discredited on economic grounds, thanks to Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and history. But for many people it has not been discredited on moral grounds. You can tell this by how often people say that while socialism doesn’t work in practice, it is good, even beautiful, in theory. (Even Thomas Sowell has said that.)

Strange notion—that a theory which doesn’t work in the world can somehow still be good. Where else is it to be judged? William Graham Sumner, I believe, pointed out the contradiction: there must be a good theory that explains the system that does work in practice, but that theory would conflict with the other theory also held to be good. So we end up with two good but conflicting theories. Something is wrong.

Appearance on Agoric Cafe

The first of my two appearances on Roderick Long's Agoric Cafe is now posted. We discuss a variety of issues. Part two will be posted next Sunday.

 

The Criminal War against Iraq

I haven't read the book yet, but I recommend this review of Robert Draper's How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq by James North at Mondoweiss.

Indisputably, George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on lies and cooked "intelligence," was the worst, most consequential foreign-policy move by an American president in recent history. The Middle East, the United States, and the rest of the world will suffer its effects for many years to come. This is not just a work of history, based on 300 interviews. North writes:

The Iraq tragedy is relevant today. On September 14, Donald Trump made up a new threat from Iran, and tweeted: “Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met by an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!” Trump sounds unhinged—until you recall that just this January, he provocatively ordered the assassination of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani—and got little resistance from either the mainstream U.S. press or the foreign policy establishment. Cowardly group-think didn’t end with Iraq.

 

Stephen F. Cohen: A Rare Voice of Sanity Gone

One of the saddest pieces of news is the death of Stephen F. Cohen at age 81. Cohen, who taught at Princeton and NYU, was an eminent scholar of the history and politics of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. He spent his last years warning against the years-long bipartisan effort to prosecute a new cold war against Russia, with special attention to what has unfortunately come to be known as Russiagate, the groundless allegation, debunked by only a few heroic thinkers, that Trump is an agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who--fiction has it--is Stalin-reincarnate intent on reconstituting the Soviet Empire. (Putin has also been called, absurdly, a "new Hitler.")

Cohen's last book was War with Russia?, in which he warned that the new cold war could easily turn hot and even nuclear, thanks to Russiagate and U.S. imperial policy in Ukraine and Syria. His analysis is impeccable--not to mention frightening. “I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen said.

I won't go into detail about Cohen's final intellectual battle because the indispensable Caitlin Johnstone has done the job admirably. I'll close with her words: "In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen’s death is a blow to humanity’s desperate quest for clarity and understanding." And, I would add, peace.

Appearance on "Don't Tread on Anyone"

 Keith Knight interviewed me for his video/podcast "Don't Treat Anyone." Enjoy!

One More Time with Tom Woods

Tom Woods and I did another round of talking about What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

Trump and Netanyahu's Plan B

Trump and Netanyahu first tried to bribe the Palestinians into capitulating to the Israeli imposition. But the two men failed. So now they are executing Plan B: bribing the Arab states’ rulers to give up even the pretense of championing the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel. In that, the two are succeeding.

The Crisis in Civil Rights

My old friend Bill Evers and the Independent Institute have assembled a useful reader's guide to the civil-rights issues of our time: race, police brutality, anti-Semitism, and poverty. Check it out here.

On the Tom Woods Show

Tom Woods and I discuss libertarian fundamentals as presented in What Social Animals Owe to Each Other on his internet program. Listen here.

Complying with Mandates

It's utterly conceivable that the government might mandate that we do (or not do) what we already ought (or ought not) to do, seeing as how social animals owe things to each other. In such cases, refusing to engage (or abstaining from engaging) in the mandated (or forbidden) behavior because the government has mandated (or forbidden) it is just wrong, edgy individualist rationalizations notwithstanding. Needless to say, I should have started this post with "Needless to say...."

The Choice We Don''t Face

Despite what some people suggest, our choice today is not between black lives and private property. Quite the contrary: respect for black lives logically entails respect for all persons, their possessions, and their peaceful projects. The first property right is self-ownership: one's property in oneself. (The abolitionists called slave traders and owners man-stealers. Get it?) Do the rioters not know that black people also own shops and other businesses? Or are those owners considered acceptable casualties in the struggle? And have those owners been asked to consent to that demeaning status?

Further, no one has spelled out the practical connection between rioting and looting on the one hand and the achievement of respect for black people by the police on the other. Far from an obvious connection, the disconnect is clear. If society faces a choice between civil unrest and Hobbes's Leviathan, I have no doubt which one most people, including most black people, will choose. That situation will hardly usher in a blissful time of respect for black people's or anyone else's lives by the police.

Unpleasant Times

If Ludwig von Mises were alive today he would be viewing our current predicament with alarm but not surprise. He lived through something similar about a century ago.

In response to inexcusable police brutality, some outraged people who've taken to the streets have crossed the sacred line between peaceful protest and violence. Recent months have brought vandalism, arson, and injury in Kenosha, WI, and Portland, OR, and now intimidation of innocent bystanders in Portland and Washington, D.C. Now comes the ominous response.

This escalation by people who pose as friends of social justice (I don't doubt the sincerity of the nonviolent others in the streets) is both immoral and dangerous, both in its own right and also because it feeds those, like Trump, who might like nothing better than to bash a few heads before election day. Those among the protesters who perpetrate street violence are playing with fire, and they well know it, hoping that the state's reaction will serve their cause. But they are wrong. Whatever their cause, unless it's violence for its own sake, the result will be a strengthening of the worst aspects of the state--with the support of most people in the country.

Mises would have recognized what is going on because he'd seen it before. Have a look at chapter 10 of his book Liberalism, "The Argument of Fascism," for his observations in 1927 on what had taken place in Italy from about 1919 to 1922, when Mussolini took power and established a one-party dictatorship. That something even remotely similar to those events is now happening in America would have horrified and saddened him.

In that chapter Mises discussed the extended violent confrontation between communists/socialists and fascists in the streets of Italy. As the foremost champion of peace, freedom, and social cooperation (including economic exchange) of his day, Mises was horrified by the events. He noted that previously the antiliberal Italian right-wing nevertheless had reluctantly paid some slight homage to liberalism and its restraints on power, which it despised, because it was so central to Western civilization. But when the Italian Socialist Party began to achieve political success and make Bolshevik-type demands for fundamental social change, and when communists and socialist--emboldened by the state terror and mass murder in Russia--violently clashed in the streets with the right-wing "black shirts," Mussolini's budding fascist movement found their excuse to do what they had wanted to do all along: abandon token deference to liberalism, which it condemned as pacifist and weak, and embrace the so-called glory of violence without restraint. Mises wrote:

One must not fail to recognize that the conversion of the Rightist parties to the tactics of Fascism shows that the battle against liberalism has resulted in successes that, only a short time ago, would have been considered completely unthinkable. Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the arch-enemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. [Emphasis added.]

Then Mises added, just so there would be no mistaking his meaning: "For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, [Fascism's] appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods." Fascism was antiliberal in every respect, Mises noted, including its nationalist and militarist foreign policy, which "cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization."

Mises pointed out that liberalism was not opposed to the use of violence when it was necessary to thwart violence. But again, to make sure he was understood, he quickly added:

What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power. The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence.

For Mises, the use of violence for the propagation of ideas was both wrong and counterproductive. Stifling the ideas of opponents gives them a credibility they might not otherwise earn: "Resort to naked force—that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments accepted by public opinion—merely gains new friends for those whom one is thereby trying to combat. In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails."

He continued:

Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism.

I will next reproduce the controversial conclusion to Mises's chapter; if I don't, someone else will:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.

No liberal--libertarian, that is to say--can read this with joy, but it would be unfair to interpret Mises, as some have tried, as harboring even a speck of illiberal sentiment. (See his 1944 book Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War for his view of, among others, Nazi Germany. Mises, whose heritage was Jewish, had to flee Austria and then Europe altogether because of Hitler.) Look at things from Mises's vantage point: he saw horrendous violent clashes in the streets and the looming threat of a Bolshevik state in western Europe draped in the garb of universalism and egalitarianism. (In contrast, militant Italian nationalism hardly had universal appeal.) Liberalism, unfortunately, was not on the agenda. So he had to decide which was the greater threat to Western civilization--which side if triumphant would have a smaller chance of surviving beyond the short run. Let's not forget who was on the socialist side: people who were inspired by Lenin and Trotsky, architects of the 20th century's first one-party terror state. So who can say Mises was wrong? I can't.

Of course we're not living in analogous circumstances. Notwithstanding increasing hyperbole from both wings of the establishment, we don't face a choice between Bolshevism and fascism, although I am aware of Trump's authoritarian disposition and Biden's devotion to the all-service state. Still, it's too close for comfort. We now are now seeing violent street confrontations--and the potential for bystander casualties--between two sides each with a predilection for violence, even if neither one has a fleshed-out program. (Apparently, the clashes are an all-white affair.) If things get further out of hand, the public will likely and reasonably demand a restoration of order, and many in power will be only too happy to comply--and then some. What will come next?

I don't want to exaggerate--the worst incidents have been confined to a few cities--but I fear for the future.

A Question of Motives

People who regard themselves as members of the ideological environmental movement may or may not have good science on their side in any particular matter, but they do themselves no service when they speculate wildly about the motives of their opponents.

I frequently hear such environmentalists characterize their opponents as people who want to make the planet uninhabitable for human beings and other living things. I suspect I'm not alone in finding that motivation highly implausible, and I'm surprised that those who traffic in such accusations don't realize that they undermine their own cause when they try to sell that implausible story to the public. It may explain why they have yet to close the sale after all these years.

Note what I am not saying. I am not saying that those environmentalists accuse their targets of being in denial or of being ignorant about the alleged dangers of their policy preferences. No, they accuse them of wishing to destroy the planet. If you don't believe me, watch this video in which Noam Chomsky, a bright guy who has made many important intellectual contributions, does just that. (In this video Chomsky says that Trump is more dangerous than Hitler was because Trump seeks an end to life on earth.)

Are we really to believe that the individuals named as public enemies seek an end to life or just don't care if human life becomes impossible in the near or distant future? Do these people have no children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, or friends with such? Even in the unlikely case that the answer is no, what motive could they possibly have for not caring about what happens to humanity after they die? Greed? Don't many of them think they have enough money--or are we to believe they're all Scrooge McDucks?

My point is not to take the side of the alleged public enemies in this or that matter. It is only to insist that the environmentalists need a more plausible story for their opponents' policy preferences. But I've yet to encounter one offered by the environmental movement. Simply portraying the enemy as nihilist is inexcusable, not to say (as a friend put it) lazy. I have a hard time believing that anyone on the fence would find the standard claim convincing.

I suspect that the reason for this ridiculous tack is that to assume good-faith disagreement would violate the environmentalists' take-no-prisoners attitude. If they allowed for good faith in their opponents, they might then have to acknowledge that much of the environmentalists' apocalyptic claims are disputed by reputable and well-credentialed scientists--which is something ideological environmentalists are loathe to do. They'd much rather portray their adversaries as greed-crazed or religiously fundamentalist or ideological monsters, if not all three, however incompatible those things might be.

The principle of charity holds that you should take on your opponents' strongest case, even if no opponent makes that case himself. Lazily conjuring up the most malevolent case will fail to convince any decent listener. All it will do is reinforce the feelings of those already convinced. If the goal is to actually effect beneficial change, where's the gain in that?

That question may answer itself. Perhaps the goal is not to effect change but rather merely to engage in holier-than-thou self-pleasuring.

Beinart Tries to Square the Circle

Peter Beinart has written a provocative and courageous article in which he calls on "liberal" Zionist Jews to amend their notion of Jewish identity in order to reject separation from the Palestinians and to embrace equality instead. He has timed the article with the impending though delayed Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, territory seized in the 1967 war and in which Palestinians have no rights whatsoever. Annexation will formalize what Israel has become de facto in the eyes of most of the world: an apartheid state.

Kudos to Beinart for his latest step in placing justice for the Palestinians at the top of the liberal Jewish agenda. In doing so he renounces the two-state resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which he had supported, in favor of some kind of single state--a binational democracy or confederation--in which Jews and Arabs live together with equal rights. As he puts it: