Bush's Tyranny Thwarted--For Now

The news media seemed too preoccupied with Paris Hilton’s detention to notice, but a U.S. appeals court last week struck a major blow for liberty. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Bush administration may not declare a U.S. resident, whether a citizen or not, an “enemy combatant,” throw him in a military prison, and hold him without charge indefinitely — all without judicial review. Try him in the civilian courts or let him go, the judges said.

This double affirmation of habeas corpus and defendants’ rights is a stunning setback for President Bush’s attempt to assert autocratic powers under cover of his "war on terror."

The rest of my op-ed "Bush's Tyranny Thwarted--For Now" is at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Free Trade Imperialism

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

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

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

But the American imperium faces disorder in two broad regions of the world: first, the vast region spanning the Islamic world in the Middle East and Central Asia, and second, the continent of Africa. September 11 showed how failed states can provide a safe haven for terrorists who can directly threaten life and property in the American homeland. The maintenance of international order thus means ensuring that there is also domestic order in states that, if they fail, could become terrorist havens....

The United States has created the military structures to project its power, but it has failed to build the complementary imperial administrative structure required to run an empire....

Equally disturbing is the desire of all the participants in U.S. foreign policy to wrap themselves in the Wilsonian mantle. It seems that Americans find it difficult to give up their moral self-image of the shining city on the hill....

The major problem for the U.S. imperium is to keep its moralists at home.... But for the near future, despite its faults, the American imperium is here to stay. And it remains our best hope to maintain global order, as the British did in the 19th century.

In other words, if we want order, it's time America took off the gloves. No more Mr. Nice Guy, world.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Good Sense on Immigration

Immigration wisdom from Jeff Jacoby:

For most illegal immigrants, a legal option simply doesn't exist. Under current law, a young Mexican or Salvadoran who wants to improve his life by moving to America and working hard at a useful job generally has just two options: (a) Enter illegally, or (b) stay out forever. Several hundred thousand a year choose option (a).

To Representative [Steve] King and those who think the way he does -- the Pat Buchanans, the Lou Dobbses, the conservative talk-show hosts and their riled listeners -- the illegal entry is all that matters. They don't ask whether it makes sense to bar industrious and productive go-getters who value America as a land of opportunity and who supply labor for which there is a yawning demand. As far as they're concerned, illegal aliens are "immigration criminals," and the only issue on the agenda is how to keep them out....

But something is not wrong -- intrinsically wrong, bad in and of itself -- merely because it is illegal. It is against the law to put anything without postage into someone's mailbox.

If your neighbor prints flyers advertising a yard sale and drops one into each letterbox on the street, he has broken the law, but would anyone say he has done something evil?

Someone who crosses the border without a visa in order to find work doesn't deserve to be branded a "criminal." Doing so only inflames and confuses an issue that is contentious enough as it is. And it cheapens a word that should be reserved for those who purposely harm others through genuinely wrongful behavior: embezzlers, rapists, arsonists, murderers.

The demonizing of illegal aliens keeps us from having a rational discussion about US immigration policy.

Why Did They Attack?

Comedian David Cross's take on Ron Paul, Rudolph Giuliani, and bin Laden's reason for the 9/11 attacks.



Hat tip: Ben Richman

Free the New Youth 4!

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

Here's the post explaining the blog:

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

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

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Cory Maye Update

The latest from Radley Balko:

Last word on the Cory Maye case came late last summer, when the trial judge threw out Maye's death sentence due to ineffective assistance of counsel, and ordered a new sentencing trial. I heard from Cory's defense team earlier tonight that the DA's office has now said it will no longer pursue the death penalty.

That means Cory will now start his appeals process with the death penalty off the table. That's good news. But he'll still likely be re-sentenced to life in prison. So it's not great news.

Dare We Call It Tyranny?

The American people’s response to President Bush’s “war on terror” should be … terror. The administration, sometimes with Congress’s complicity:

is preparing for a 50-year stay in Iraq, complete with 14 military bases and an embassy larger than the Vatican. (Can there be a better recruiting program for al Qaeda?)

has abolished habeas corpus, the principle that for centuries has protected people from arbitrary confinement, for noncitizens declared to be “enemy combatants.” (While the federal courts have upheld the abolition of habeas corpus for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere overseas, fortunately an appellate court has just ruled against the administration in the case of a legal U.S. resident, Kahlah al-Marri, arrested in the United States, a ruling the administration is appealing.)

unilaterally claims the power to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” — torture — on suspected terrorists and to turn them over to foreign governments known to torture prisoners. This has been done to persons later cleared of wrongdoing.

runs secret CIA prisons in Europe and elsewhere. Thirty-nine persons seized abroad and believed to have been in U.S. custody have disappeared, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

violates our privacy by secretly accessing foreign phone calls, e-mails, and financial and other records — approved, if at all, only by a rubber-stamp “court.”

conducts searches without notice or judicially issued warrants. The administration’s assurances that it does not engage in misconduct are worth little, considering what has already come to light.

To hold onto the support of the American people for this dictatorial power, the Bush administration has engaged in its own form of terrorism by exposing domestic “plots” involving small rag-tag groups allegedly bent on, among other things, attacking Fort Dix and blowing up fuel tanks and pipelines near JFK International Airport....

The rest of the op-ed "Dare We Call It Tyranny" is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Habeas Corpus's Fork in the Road

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land."

--Magna Carta, this day, 1215

May the government declare a U.S. resident an "enemy combatant," throw him in a military prison indefinitely, and never charge him with a crime -- all without judicial review?

The Bush administration says yes. But in a key ruling (pdf) the other day, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals resoundingly said no. If it withstands further appeal, the decision will be a timely affirmation of the limits of executive power and the constitutional priority of civilian over military rule. Thanks, judges, we needed that.

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Habeas Corpus's Fork in the Road," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

George II Thwarted (So Far) on Habeas Corpus

George II may not arrest a U.S. resident on U.S. soil -- citizen or not -- and hold him in a military brig without charge indefinitely. So says the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an important 2-1 ruling yesterday. We can only hope it will be sustained on further appeal.

Contrary to the Bush administration's obnoxious autocratic position, Kahlah al-Marri (a married Bradley University student and father in the U.S. but a citizen of Qatar) has the right to file a habeas-corpus petition and the right to have any case against him handled by the civilian criminal justice system. This holds even if, as the administration charges, al-Marri is an al Qaeda "sleeper agent" who has volunteered for a "martyr mission" in the United States.

Money quote:

[T]he Government cannot subject al-Marri to indefinite military detention. For in the United States, the military cannot seize and imprison civilians -- let alone imprison them indefinitely. . . . To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them "enemy combatants," would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution -- and the country. For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power would do more than render lifeless the Suspension [habeas corpus] Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the rights to criminal process in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments; it would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. . . . We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.

The opinion his here (pdf).

If you're watching cable TV news, you may not know about this case. The channels are too busy covering Paris Hilton's detention. I await the filing of her habeas corpus petition.

The U.S.S. Liberty

My excerpt below on the Six-Day War does not discuss the curious Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, an intelligence ship, on June 8, 1967, about which the U.S. government has been far from forthcoming -- to put it mildly. Yes, the Israeli Defense Force attacked an unarmed U.S. ship while engaged in a preventive war against its Arab neighbors. Thirty-four sailors were killed, 174 injured in the attack. For full details, see Jeffrey St. Clair's article about attack in Counterpunch.

Here's a taste:

In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel's attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.

Only hours after the Liberty arrived it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over a period of three hours. The Liberty was flying a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.

A few hours later more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters, armed with rockets and machine guns. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.

A few minutes later a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which not only pelted the ship with gunfire but also with napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship's top officers.

...After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than a dozen American sailors.

...Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. "These errors do occur," McNamara concluded.

...The Pentagon lied to the public about the attack on the Liberty from the very beginning. In a decision personally approved by the loathsome McNamara, the Pentagon denied to the press that the Liberty was an intelligence ship, referring to it instead as a Technical Research ship, as if it were little more than a military version of Jacques Cousteau's Calypso.

Tip hat: Mark Brady.

Illiberal Means, Illiberal Ends

The years 1914-1918 must have been lonely for Randolph Bourne. Bourne was a popular writer in Progressive circles, prolifically turning out articles for The New Republic and Seven Arts magazines. But soon the former, along with other publications, lost interest in his writing and the latter ceased operations, leaving Bourne out in the cold. What happened? Bourne bucked his fellow intellectuals, including his mentor John Dewey, and opposed U.S. entry into World War I.

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Illiberal Means, Illiberal Ends," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

War Somehow Fastened on Us

Time brings a better adjustment to the war. There had been so many times when, to those who had energetically resisted its coming, it seemed the last intolerable outrage. In one's wilder moments one expected revolt against the impressment of unwilling men and the suppression of unorthodox opinion. One conceived the war as breaking down through a kind of intellectual sabotage diffused through the country. But as one talks to people outside the cities and away from ruling currents of opinion, one finds the prevailing apathy shot everywhere with acquiescence. The war is a bad business, which somehow got fastened on us. They won't want to go, but they've got to go. One decides that nothing generally obstructive is going to happen and that it would make little difference if it did. The kind of war which we are conducting is an enterprise which the American government does not have to carry on with the hearty cooperation of the American people but only with their acquiescence. And that acquiescence seems sufficient to float an indefinitely protracted war for vague or even largely uncomprehended and unaccepted purposes. Our resources in men and materials are vast enough to organize the war-technique without enlisting more than a fraction of the people's conscious energy. Many men will not like being sucked into the actual fighting organism, but as the war goes on they will be sucked in as individuals and they will yield. There is likely to be no element in the country with the effective will to help them resist. They are not likely to resist of themselves concertedly. They will be licked grudgingly into military shape, and their lack of enthusiasm will in no way unfit them for use in the hecatombs necessary for the military decision upon which Allied political wisdom still apparently insists. It is unlikely that enough men will be taken from the potentially revolting classes seriously to embitter their spirit. Losses in the well-to-do classes will be sustained by a sense of duty and of reputable sacrifice. From the point of view of the worker, it will make little difference whether his work contributes to annihilation overseas or to construction at home. Temporarily, his condition is better if it contributes to the former. We of the middle classes will be progressively poorer than we should otherwise have been. Our lives will be slowly drained by clumsily levied taxes and the robberies of imperfectly controlled private enterprises. But this will not cause us to revolt. There are not likely to be enough hungry stomachs to make a revolution. The materials seem generally absent from the country, and as long as a government wants to use the war-technique in its realization of great ideas, it can count serenely on the human resources of the country, regardless of popular mandate or understanding.

--Randolph Bourne, "A War Diary," September 1917

The Six-Day War

Excerpted from my "'Ancient History':U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention," published by the Cato Institute August 16, 1991. (See full paper for references.)

The Libertarian Event of the Season

The Future of Freedom Foundation scored big with its long-weekend conference on foreign policy and civil liberties in Reston, Va. I enjoyed every moment of it, and would like to publicly congratulate FFF President Jacob Hornberger for putting together such a magnificent program. Imagine a single gathering with Robert Higgs and Daniel Ellsberg; Ron Paul and Robert Scheer; Andrew Napolitano and Joanne Mariner; and many, many more. It was a shot in the arm for both the libertarian movement and the antiwar movement.

Keith Preston has written a good detailed summary of the speeches here.

A Democracy of Dunces?

When pro-free-market critics of democracy explain why laissez faire is not a winning election issue, they usually say that voters have a no incentive to research economic policy because one vote won't sway the election and the expected payoff to any individual voter is infinitesimal. So they, quite rationally, vote on other bases. This "rational ignorance" leaves space for special interests to have their way, despite the fact that if the voters paid attention to what was going on, they wouldn't put up with it.

That explanation leads to the conclusion that democracy does not work because outcomes diverge from what people really want but are powerless to obtain. On the other hand, fans of democracy think that the rejection of laissez faire shows the system is working just fine. But both sides agree that voters are rational (employing reason) under the circumstances.

Which story is true? Maybe neither.

Bryan Caplan's new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, which is beginning to make a splash (see this New York Times Magazine article), offers another reason why consistent pro-market policies don't do well....

The rest of my latest TGIF column, "A Democracy of Dunces?" is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

P.S.: I've been delinquent in posting because I spent the last several days near Washington, D.C., at the Future of Freedom Foundation foreign policy and civil liberties conference. It was a huge success and will clearly be the major libertarian -- and antiwar -- event of the year. An account of the conference is on Counterpunch here.

Happy Revisionist History Day

Revised and re-posted from last Memorial Day:

Since, as Paddy Chayefsky has his main character say in his movie The Americanization of Emily, " We...perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices" (see this and this), I've long thought that what is called Memorial Day would be better recast as Revisionist History Day. 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 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. A good way to spend part of the day would be to pick a war and read a high-quality revisionist account of it. Here are some books (in no particular order) you might use as a guide:

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

A good place to start is this article by Robert Higgs: "How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor" (The Freeman, May 2006).

Many other books and articles could be added to the list. The point is this: if we are to prevent wars in the future, we must self-educate and then, when opportune, teach others.

Congrats, Grandpa Cheney

Dick Cheney's daughter Mary had her baby on Wednesday. If Iraqi grandparents have time to pay attention to such things, they probably are envious that Grandpa Cheney doesn't have to worry about his new grandson being murdered by an American bomb falling out of the sky or soldiers bursting into his home looking for "insurgents."

Rembering the Dead

The Iraqi and Afghan dead, that is. Several hundred thousand Iraqis and Afghans are dead -- many more than killed on 9/11 -- and many more injured at the hands of the American military and the forces their invasion and occupation have unleashed. The Commander-in-Chief and his Iraq war planners knew it would happen ("Analysts' Warnings of Iraq Chaos Detailed"). Yet it goes on, the Democrats too impotent or cowardly to make a difference, the public complacent.

I second Arthur Silber's motion here:

Our national media remain cowed and intimidated, and they refuse, a few honorable exceptions aside, to provide details of the daily and hourly horrors in Iraq to the public. A single major newspaper could provide a noble and invaluable service: if they gave a damn at all about unnecessary death and suffering, they would select the most awful and horrifying picture they could find -- a body with its guts falling out, a bloody corpse shorn of arms and legs, a mutilated face made unrecognizable -- and fill up their entire front page with it, a new one every day. Perhaps after a month or two, enough Americans would demand that their government stop butchering people who never harmed us. [To achieve the sought-for effect, the pictures obviously should be of Iraqis, and only Iraqis. The Iraqis had no choice about our criminal war of aggression, and the endless destruction we have unleashed; the United States did -- and does, even today. We could leave, as we quickly would if we had any remaining decency and humanity, but we won't.]

So Why Is It Outrageous When Ron Paul Says It?

"Yesterday, in my speech, I quoted quotes from Osama bin Laden. And the reason I did was, is that I want the American people to hear what he has to say -- not what I say, what he says. And in my judgment, we ought to be taking the words of the enemy seriously." --George II, May 24, 2007

Hat tip: James Ostrowski

"National Continuity Policy"

From The Progressive:

With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.

In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”

Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”

He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."

The White House released it on May 9.

More here.

Perpetuating War by Exalting Its Sacrifices

I've posted this quotation before, but it deserves to be posted this weekend, when we will be bombarded with messages about honoring the war dead and wounded. The victims of George II's war program deserve pity not honor, pity that they were fodder for cynical politics and then used to propagandize the rest of us so more would eager victims would be found. Just remember how our rulers exploited the death of Pat Tillman. The blood-thirsty war chorus couldn't get enough of it. I recall Rush Limbaugh's unending hosannas. When you listen to the militarists safe behind their microphones, you sense that they are desperately trying to convince themselves that Bush's wars are really holy causes.

The quote, the best summation of why we should not honor the war dead, comes from the great antiwar movie The Americanization of Emily, script by Paddy Chayefsky. The lead character American Charlie Madison (James Garner) speaks to to his English girlfriend's (Julie Andrews) mother, who lost her husband, son, and son-in-law in the World War II:

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.

In other words, it is we who must stop the madness because it is we who make it possible in the first place.

More on Immigration

The new compromise immigration bill is drawing lots of flak, not least from conservatives who object to granting amnesty to millions of so-called illegal aliens in the country. (I prefer to think of them as independent migrants.) Here I have to agree with the conservatives. The illegals shouldn’t be granted amnesty. Amnesty connotes forgiveness for doing something wrong — and they have done nothing wrong. Indeed, the government should be asking forgiveness from them.

The of my op-ed, "Immigration Policy Reveals What We Are," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Be Our Guest (Worker)

The so-called guest-worker program, part of the controversial new compromise immigration bill now before Congress, sums up everything that is wrong in how many people think about immigration. On one side are those who want to keep foreigners out of the country on grounds that they will compete against American workers without providing offsetting benefits to the U.S. economy. On the other are those who want to admit some magic number of the right kind of foreign workers because it will benefit the U.S. economy. While they sling endless econometric studies at each other, some of us wonder: What about freedom? That question may seen quaint in the Age of Scientism, when economists and other practitioners of social science assume the role of high priests, but it's still worth asking, because a tower of statistical studies showing adverse effects on wages does not trump individual rights.

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Be Our Guest (Worker)," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Now Anarchy at the New York Times?

Am I mistaken, or is this New York Times column ($$) by David Brooks a subtle case for anarchism with decentralized law and law enforcement? It seems so even if he doesn't intend it that way.

The Insurgent Advantage

By DAVID BROOKS

The war on terror has shredded the reputation of the Bush administration. It’s destroyed the reputation of Tony Blair’s government in Britain, Ehud Olmert’s government in Israel and Nuri al-Maliki’s government in Iraq. And here’s a prediction: It will destroy future American administrations, and future Israeli, European and world governments as well.

That’s because setbacks in the war on terror don’t only flow from the mistakes of individual leaders and generals. They’re structural. Thanks to a series of organizational technological innovations, guerrilla insurgencies are increasingly able to take on and defeat nation-states.

Over the past few years, John Robb has been dissecting the behavior of these groups on his blog, Global Guerrillas. Robb is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and Yale University, and he has worked both as a special ops counterterrorism officer and as a successful software executive.

In other words, he’s had personal experience both with modern warfare and the sort of information management that is the key to winning it. He’s collected his thoughts in a fast, thought-sparking book, “Brave New War” that, astonishingly, has received only one print review — distributed by U.P.I. — in the month since it’s been published.

Robb observes that today’s extremist organizations are not like the P.L.O. under Yasir Arafat. They’re not liberation armies. Instead, modern terror groups are open-source, decentralized conglomerations of small, quasi-independent groups.

There are between 70 and 100 groups that make up the Iraqi insurgency, and they are organized, Robb says, like a bazaar. It’s pointless to decapitate the head of the insurgency or disrupt its command structure, because the insurgency doesn’t have these things. Instead, it is a swarm of disparate companies that share information, learn from each other’s experiments and respond quickly to environmental signals.

For example, the U.S. has spent billions trying to disrupt attacks from improvised explosive devices, but the I.E.D. manufacturing stream has transmogrified and now includes sophisticated metallurgy, outsourcing and fast innovation cycles. The number of I.E.D. attacks has remained pretty constant throughout the war.

Superempowered global guerrillas — whether it’s Al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents, Nigerian oil fighters or the Brazilian gang P.C.C. — specialize in what Robb calls systems disruption. They attack the networks that support modern life. In one case, Iraqi insurgents spent roughly $2,000 to blow up an oil pipeline in Southeast Iraq. It cost the Iraqi government $500 million in lost revenue. For the insurgents, that was a return on investment of 25 million percent.

The 9/11 attacks, the Madrid bombings, the Niger Delta oil well attacks and even the Samarra mosque bombing were all attempts to disrupt the economic and social systems of target nations.

But, Robb continues, these new groups are not seeking to take over their countries the way 20th-century guerrillas did. They have a prenational, feudal mind-set to go along with their postnational Silicon Valley-style organizational methods. They merely seek to weaken states, so they can prosper in the lawless space created by collapse of law and order. That way the groups don’t have to construct anything or assume responsibility for anything.

In fact they’ve learned, as Lawrence of Arabia learned decades ago, that it’s better to weaken target governments, but not actually destroy them. When nations don’t feel existentially threatened, they don’t mobilize all their resources to defeat their foes. They try to fight wars on the cheap, and end up in a feckless semibelligerent state somewhere between real war and nonwar.

Robb is pessimistic (excessively so) that top-heavy, pork-driven institutions like the Defense Department or the Department of Homeland Security can ever keep up with open-source insurgencies. Since 9/11, he believes, big government institutions have engaged in a process of hindsight re-engineering designed to reduce future risk, when in fact, the very nature of the threat is that it’s random and cannot be anticipated.

He thinks democratic nations need to build their own decentralized counterinsurgency networks, though he goes over the top in imagining local squads of grass-roots terror fighters.

But time and again, he hints at the core issue, which is that nation-states are inefficient learning organizations, at least compared to their feudal and postnational foes. If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques. The people now running for president will find themselves in bigger heaps of trouble than the current one now is — trouble that this presidential campaign hasn’t even dealt with.

Anarchy at the Washington Times

Ed Stringham, editor of the excellent anthology Anarchy and the Law, has a great op-ed in today's Washington Times about the miscarriage of justice in the Duke lacrosse case. Some excerpts:

[W]hy is law enforcement so political and has it always been this way? No.

Several hundred years ago, English law enforcement was a private system that included dispute resolution and closely resembled modern arbitration and mediation. The system was very different from today's adversarial system of criminal prosecution. When an injustice occurred, people would bring their dispute to private informal courts where the victim was compensated by the perpetrator.

Private law enforcement worked quite well until the Normans invaded England and the government decided to use the system to collect revenue, passing laws prohibiting private restitution and requiring all compensation be made to the king.

Eventually, when parties could no longer resolve disputes on their own, the system of private law enforcement disappeared. Only later did theorists develop arguments justifying why a government monopoly over law enforcement is allegedly necessary....

Government monopolies are not responsive to consumer needs in other areas, so we should not expect them to be responsive in the area of police and courts.

Luckily nongovernment alternatives do exist. The more we move away from a government monopoly, the less we are likely to see repeat tragedies such as the wrongful prosecution of the Duke lacrosse players.

The full article is here.

He Is the Very Model of a Modern Major Liberal

Jim Bovard makes the New York Times criticizing the newly appointed "war czar." (Barf) Read all about it.

Reason Sets the Record Straight on Ron Paul

Good post by David Weigel at Reason's Hit & Run blog smashing Michelle Malkin's baseless charge that Ron Paul believes the U.S. government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. It's here. Of course, as Weigel notes at the end, Paul's position as stated in the "debate" would have to be condemned by the "9/11 Truth Movement": "Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack[ed] us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years." (Emphasis added.) That hardly sounds as though he believes the U.S. government did the deeds.

Malkin tries to make much out of Paul's stated mistrust of government and his belief that government investigations often cover things up. Wow! These are things conservatives find subversive? Have they fully embraced the Fuhrer principle? I guess so. All the more reason for kudos to Ron Paul.

Bill Maher on Ron Paul

Bill Maher declares Ron Paul "my new hero" on this segment of his program here.

Giuliani, Radical Free-Marketeer?

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

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Paul's 9/11 explanation deserves to be debated

A defense of Ron Paul from a CNN commentator, Roland S. Martin, is here.

Another is here.

And if you can bear to be disgusted by the smearing of Paul, see this.

My own defense of Ron Paul is here.

Political Science

"[I]t would be quite illogical to believe that a scientist may without inconsistency subscribe to any value-position whatsoever...." That provocative sentence is found in an article by Belgian liberal legal scholar Frank Van Dun, "Economics and the Limits of Value-Free Science." What does it mean and how is it relevant to economic and political freedom?

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Political Science," is at the Foundation for Economic Foundation website.

The Game Is Rigged

Watch carefully how Ron Paul is handled by the media and the rest of the establishment, and you'll see how politics is played. It's not an honest game. (But we knew that already, didn't we?) His words are twisted, and in "interviews" he's constantly interrupted by hysterical commentators so that he can't get a solid sentence out to set the record straight. This is an honest discussion?

Did you notice how Sean Hannity immediately changed the subject on Paul after the debate? Hannity first asked him how he can blame America for the 9/11 attacks. And when Paul tried to repeat what he had actually said, Hannity switched gears and asked whether "we" should do nothing when dictators mistreat their people?

Pardon, Sean. But one subject at a time, if you please. Are we to conclude that you concede Paul's point that U.S. policy seeded the ground for terrorism and now you want to argue that terrorism is the price we must pay for an interventionist foreign policy? If so, say so.

Or do you just have attention deficit disorder?

Andrew Sullivan and Ron Paul

Blogger Andrew Sullivan has come to the defense of Ron Paul and his place in the GOP debates. Check out his several posts at The Daily Dish.

Go, Ron, Go!

From last night's GOP "debate." Kudos to Ron Paul! But will this be the excuse for ignoring him and excluding him from future debates? Let's hope not. A good account is here.

MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as -- almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?

REP. PAUL: Well, I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Senator Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy -- no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.

Just think of the tremendous improvement -- relationships with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men. We came home in defeat. Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution.

And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly. (Bell rings.) When we do, the wars don't end.

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

The "Debate"

Antiwar libertarians (in one sense that's redundant; in another it's not) are upset that Ron Paul is getting such short shrift from the news media following his participation in the Republican "debate." This was inevitable. In fact, the very format of the "debate" guaranteed that only the anointed top-tier candidates would get any respect. I use quote marks around "debate" because it was not a debate. It was a joint softball news conference with unequally allocated time. There were barely any follow-up questions, and the candidates were not permitted to question each other. What kind of debate is that?

Moreover, with ten candidates on the stage, we knew going in there would be no time for any positions to be developed. The whole thing was a joke, more precisely, a media event that MSNBC could milk for ratings.

If that network (and the others) were serious about informing people about who was running for these nominations, they would do, let's say, one-hour interviews with each candidate -- one on one. But no, for a couple of reasons they won't do that. First, they know the ratings would be too small to justify the time. How many people will tune it for ten long interviews?

Second, that format would require that "minor" candidates -- such as Ron Paul, an antiwar Republican who thereby doesn't fit most people's worldview -- would have to be given equal time.

So that's why we were stuck with the joke we saw the other night. I despise what most people call "democracy." And so do the television news people. But at least I admit it. I don't play Chris Matthews's game and pretend to be gaga about the process.

Speaking of Chris Matthews, who says he was against the Iraq was from the start: why does he say the troops are serving "their country." If the war is against the interests of most Americans, which Matthews says he believes, they can't be serving the country. At most they are serving the president. (I e-mailed this to Matthews. So far no answer.)

That Mercantilist Commerce Clause

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

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Herbert Spencer on Labor's Predicament

In their [workers'] social relations, too, there has been an entailed retrogression rather than a progression. The wage-earning factory-hand does, indeed, exemplify entirely free labour, in so far that, making contracts at will and able to break them after short notice, he is free to engage with whomsoever he pleases and where he pleases. But this liberty amounts in practice to little more than the ability to exchange one slavery for another; since, fit only for his particular occupation, he has rarely an opportunity of doing anything more than decide in what mill he will pass the greater part of his dreary days. The coercion of circumstances often bears more hardly on him than the coercion of a master does on one in bondage.

From Chapter IX of Principles of Sociology. The mainstream critics of Spencer, ignorant as they are of what the man actually wrote (see this New York Times article), would be surprised by this passage. Spencer does not appear to attribute the workers' predicament to government intervention, but rather treats it as something inherent in the nature of things. At the end of the chapter he wrote, "...there appears to be no remedy."

De Jasay on Limiting Power

Anthony de Jasay, an occasional contributor to ... The Freeman, is a refreshing political thinker. His classic, The State, asks questions few have asked since Thomas Hobbes assured us that swapping freedom for security under Leviathan was a slam dunk. De Jasay never fails to challenge his readers. Leave it to him to ask, "Is limited government possible?

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "De Jasay on Limiting Power," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

The Higher-Education Scam

Barbara Ehrenreich has an article about higher education here on Alternet that is worth reading. She begins by noting that the successful dean of admissions at MIT, Marilee Jones, was recently fired because contrary to her resume, she has no academic degrees. How could someone without a higher education succeed as an administrator in higher education? This opens up lots of other questions.

Here's an excerpt from "Higher Education Conformity":

[T]here are ways in which the higher education industry is becoming a racket: Buy our product or be condemned to life of penury, and our product can easily cost well over $100,000.

The pundits keep chanting that we need a more highly skilled workforce, by which they mean more college graduates, although the connection between college and skills is not always crystal clear. Jones, for example, was performing a complex job requiring considerable judgment, experience and sensitivity without the benefit of any college degree. And how about all those business majors -- business being the most popular undergraduate major in America? It seems to me that a two-year course in math and writing skills should be more than sufficient to prepare someone for a career in banking, marketing, or management. Most of what you need to know you're going to learn on the job anyway.

But in the last three decades the percentage of jobs requiring at least some college has doubled, which means that employers are going along with the college racket. A resume without a college degree is never going to get past the computer programs that screen applications. Why? Certainly it's not because most corporate employers possess a deep affinity for the life of the mind. In fact in his book Executive Blues G. J. Meyers warned of the "academic stench" that can sink a career: That master's degree in English? Better not mention it.

My theory is that employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one's ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white collar job, most of the time you'll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end -- whether in library carrels or office cubicles -- does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned -- although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.

Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-"team-player." You will do anything. You will grovel.

I don't think much of her proposal in the final paragraph:

"[W]e need a distinguished blue ribbon commission to investigate its role as a toll booth on the road to employment...."

That's like trying to use a pea shooter to kill an elephant.

Scratch a Conservative and You Find a ...

From Thomas Sowell:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

You fill in the blank in the title.

Weren't the American Revolutionaries Disloyal?

How did I miss this fascistic crap?

Loyalty Day, 2007

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

America was founded by patriots who risked their lives to bring freedom to our Nation. Today, our citizens are grateful for our Founding Fathers and confident in the principles that lead us forward. On Loyalty Day, we celebrate the blessings of freedom and remember our responsibility to continue our legacy of liberty.

Our Nation has never been united simply by blood, birth, or soil, but instead has always been united by the ideals that move us beyond our background and teach us what it means to be Americans. We believe deeply in freedom and self-government, values embodied in our cherished documents and defended by our troops over the course of generations. Our citizens hold the truths of our founding close to their hearts and demonstrate their loyalty in countless ways. We are inspired by the patriotic service of the men and women who wear our Nation's uniform with honor and decency. The military spouses and families who stand by their loved ones represent the best of the American spirit, and we are profoundly grateful for their sacrifice. Our country is strengthened by the millions of volunteers who show deep compassion toward their neighbors in need. All citizens can express their loyalty to the United States by flying the flag, participating in our democracy, and learning more about our country's grand story of courage and simple dream of dignity.

The Congress, by Public Law 85-529, as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as "Loyalty Day." This Loyalty Day, and throughout the year, I ask all Americans to join me in reaffirming our allegiance to our Nation.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2007, as Loyalty Day. I call upon the people of the United States to participate in this national observance and to display the flag of the United States on Loyalty Day as a symbol of pride in our Nation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Leave the Browns Alone!

Ed and Elaine Brown's constitutional argument against the income tax is balderdash. But the tax violates their -- and everyone's -- rights. The government should leave them alone.

Labor's "Right to a Free Market"

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

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Single-Entry Bookkeeping

The Economist magazine has joined most everyone else in at least partly blaming the Virginia Tech massacre on easy access to guns: "Had powerful guns not been available to him, the deranged Cho [Seung-hui] would have killed fewer people, and perhaps none at all." That sentiment is typical.

But it's flawed. If Cho had been unable to obtain handguns (doubtful given black-market sources), he might have bought shotguns and a hacksaw and produced far-more deadly sawed-off shotguns. Or he might have gone the Timothy McVeigh route and rigged up a bomb.

But let's assume Cho was not as determined to kill lots of people as he seems to have been. Let's say he could do no better than a knife or his fists. Let's say he was unable to kill anyone because guns were not easily available. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a trail of dead bodies nonetheless.

Why? Because each year far more than 32 people save their own or other innocent lives with handguns. (See this.) So while the VT students might still be alive, many others might be dead who today are not.

I am not weighing one life against another, or saying that X lives are not as valuable as 2X lives. I am saying that when one does accounting, one should count everything.

Op-ed: The Lesson of Virginia Tech

The idea that one’s security can be ensured by an external authority underlies ridiculous ideas such as gun-free zones, which end up being free-crime zones. When the innocent have access to guns and take responsibility for security, things turn out differently — crime is stopped cold. In 2002 a suspended Appalachian School of Law student with a poor academic record entered the Virginia campus and opened fire, killing the dean, a professor, and a student. The gunman also wounded three others. When the shots rang out, two students, independently of each other, headed to their cars to retrieve their handguns. Those students confronted the killer, at which point he dropped his gun and was restrained by other students. Three deaths — not 32 killed.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "The Lesson of Virginia Tech," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

"Dangerousness Is Not a Disease"

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

The Lesson of Virginia Tech

It's the same lesson we should have learned long ago: in practical terms, you cannot really delegate your right of self-defense. Whoever your agent is, he, she, or it cannot guarantee to be with you every moment. If you are threatened by someone, there is only one other person who is sure to be there: you. So you ultimately are responsible for your own self-defense. Gun-free zones are free-crime zones.

See Alexander Cockburn's "Bring Back the Posse."

Priorities

Why should troop morale be the controlling consideration in what we do and say about the war in Iraq? People are being killed and maimed. That's far more important than how American soldiers feel about their mission. We can address their self-esteem issues when they come home.

What's to Lose?

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

So in what sense would “we” lose? From the standpoint of the American people, it would be no loss at all. Rather, it would be a victory.

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Progressive Illiberalism

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

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Why?

Why did Cho Seung Hui kill all those people at Virginia Tech? Everyone is asking this. When I hear such a question, I sense that people want an expert to give a scientific cause-and-effect answer. Then I'm reminded of Thomas Szasz's insightful aphorism: There is no psychology. There is only biography and autobiography.

Actions have reasons not causes.

On the Road Again

I'm on the Bolivar Peninsula, near Galveston, Texas, to attend Hayes Carll's first annual Stingaree Music Festival. It's been a blast.

I'm blogging on my Treo, so I don't have all the comforts of home. Still I have some things to plug. First my latest diatribe on the war is here.

Second, my full account of the Georgia and Armenia trip is here.

Yo-Yo Ma on Globalization

"[N]othing great was ever produced in isolation. Even something as basic as our Western major and minor keys may have originally come from the amazingly complex modes of classical Persian music."

The great cellist went to point out that the cultures of East and West have been cross-fertilizing from Alexander the Great's time, if not earlier.

Home, Sweet Home

I made it home this morning, after an unscheduled overnight stay in a Chicago hotel. (The FAA made me miss my connection.) It was fantastic to see my friends in Georgia and Armenia, but it's great to be home after the long trip to the southern Caucuses. I'll try to record some further impressions in the next day or so.

Georgia on My Mind

We arrived back in Georgia at 4:30 p.m. Friday after a memorable trip to Tsakhkadzor, Armenia, not far from the capital, Yerevan. I gave two lectures -- one on the nature of taxation, the other on privatizing schools -- but just barely. A bad head cold nearly deprived me of my voice. But I managed to get through. The entire traveling party was hit with one malady or another, the price of a wearying journey that surely suppresses one's immunity. Anyway, we are all on the mend. This journey included a trek by foot across the border and through the bureaucracies between Georgia and Armenia.

During my tax lecture, one student denounced the inheritance tax, which is alway music to the ears. Another student asked whether taxes were necessary at all, and I referred the class to Gustave de Molinari's "The Production of Security" in order to pursue this interesting inquiry.

I should point out that at each of the seminars we hosted students who normally are unable to get together. In Georgia we had students from Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. None of these countries has good relations with the others. Armenians may not travel to Azerbaijan and vice versa. The countries are in a state of war over disputed territory. Wikipedia's account of the dispute is here. I am no expert, so I can't vouch for the Wikipedia article. But it probably explains the basics.

At the Armenian seminar we had Georgians and Azeris, but also students from Abkhazia. This is an area claimed by Georgia but Abkhazians are seeking independence, and Georgians have had to leave their homes in the conflict. An account is here. The point is that these students rarely deal with each other, and FEE helped bring them together. They were appreciative and everyone got along. During the final banquet, several toasts were made to liberalism and its principle of all people getting along through trade and peace.

Armenia, Armenia

We arrived in Armenia, outside the capital, Yerevan. We begin a FEE seminar tomorrow where I'll be lecturing on the welfare state and the nature of taxation. Stay tuned.

Taxation in Georgia

Shindisi, Georgia -- I lectured this morning on taxation. After pointing out that taxation is not dues or the price paid for services, but rather a forced exaction that creates two classes -- taxpayers and tax-consumers -- I explained that government cannot "efficiently" use taxation for social engineering (even if were desirable) because people are ingenious at adjusting their conduct in response to the incentives and disincentives created by the particular system. Thus government's targeting taxes at particular groups or activities is like an archer trying to hit a target in a dark room while blindfolded. As long as there are taxes, I told the students, the objective should be to keep them (and government spending ) as low as possible and taxation highly visible.

That's my good friend Gia Jandieri and me during a break in the action.

Thank Goodness We Can Ignore the Wars

New York Times foreign-affairs columnist Thomas Friedman laments that most Americans are disengaged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a recent radio appearance, Friedman cited comedian Bill Maher’s complaint that “the enemy” has had to fight only 140,000 Americans rather than all 300 million of us.

You hear this a lot. Commentators seem to long for World War II, when “the whole country was at war.” They criticize President Bush for letting most Americans shirk their responsibility. When he’s queried about what sacrifices he’s asked of the American people, Bush says they have forgone peace of mind and paid higher gasoline prices. Naturally, this does not satisfy his critics.

Let me suggest that Friedman and Maher couldn’t be more wrong. (Neither could Bush, of course.) It is a good thing that the current wars are not total wars and that most Americans are disengaged from the horrors inflicted by the U.S. government on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read the rest of my op-ed, "Thank Goodness We Can Ignore the Wars," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Jeffersonianism Interred

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

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

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

The Bag Made It!

My luggage arrived at Tbilisi International Airport this morning. To make sure I got it right away, I went to the airport to pick up myself. Thanks to Gia Jandieri for keeping on top of KLM for me and for driving me to the airport. Now for a shower and fresh clothes. Then back to the seminar.

This morning I lectured on the case for a free market in education. Two members of the Georgian Education Ministry attended, and we engaged in a lively discussion of the alleged need for state-controlled schooling. I regret to say that I didn't persuade them. But the seeds were certainly planted.

Richman in Tbilisi; Luggage Not

I arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Wednesday, which is more than I can say for my luggage. Nevertheless, that is surely preferable to the other way around.

My lecture on market anarchism at the New Economic School in Tbilisi, Georgia, went very well. By that I mean I was happy with my presentation and I got several excellent questions from the 30-40 students.

We (FEE) begin a three-day student economics seminar today in Shindisi, outside Tbilisi. I'll lecture on private alternatives to the welfare state, free-market education, and the nature of taxation.

On Monday we head to Tsakhkadzor, Armenia, near the capital, Yerevan, to conduct another seminar.

It's cold and gray here. But I always enjoy coming to Georgia because the people are so warm. And it's great to see my liberal friends Paata Sheshelidze and Gia Jandieri of the New Economic School. That's Paata in the picture accepting the Atlas Foundation's 2006 Freda Utley Prize for Advancing Liberty. He and Gia, along with their colleagues, do an admirable job of promoting liberty in this formerly Soviet-held country.

Meanwhile, my luggage is on a world tour. I understand it was in Milan and Istanbul. Hopefully, Tbilisi is on the tour.

The Freeman, March 2007

Click for table of contents and selected articles.

Away, Away

I'm away for 12 days in Georgia (the country) and Armenia to lecture at FEE student seminars. I will also give a lecture Thursday night on market anarchism. I'll post reports and observations as time allow.

Spreading Peace and Freedom in the Arab World

This video has been making the rounds, but in case you've missed it, you'll want to see how U.S. troops are spreading peace, freedom, and goodwill in Iraq. Note the solemnity the troops show about their noble mission. At times like these that I think of the courageous words of Herbert Spencer that you'll find at the top right of this blog.

Hat tip: Brad Spangler and Information Clearing House.

Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism

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

I first became acquainted with the late Arthur A. Ekirch Jr.'s The Decline of American Liberalism in my college days. The book was first published in 1955, then reissued in 1967. It was a History Book Club selection and, I've been told, a contender for a national book award. Ekirch wrote nine other books, including Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought (1971) and The Civilian and the Military (1972), especially relevant today....

Ekirch wrote for the intelligent nonspecialist, and his work sets the standard for accessible scholarship. The Decline of American Liberalism is a great place to start because it provides a readable look at the whole of American political-economic-intellectual history in under 400 pages. I highly recommend it.

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Democracy in Action

The most interesting part of the U.S. attorneys controversy is that no one in Congress knew that the revised the USAPATRIOT Act changed how interim attorneys were to be selected, giving new power to the executive branch. No one. Not even Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who prides himself on his legal and constitutional expertise. What other laws have these clowns passed without realizing it?

The Anti-federalists wouldn't have been surprised.

Patience?

On the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, George II pleaded for patience. Give the new offensive a chance to work, he said. But the debate over whether to give the "surge" a chance distracts from what really matters: the U.S. occupation per se. Opponents of the American empire refused to accept even one day of a U.S. presence in Iraq. The issue isn't whether Bush's plan can bring security to Baghdad. The issue is: what the hell are U.S. forces doing there in the first place? That Bush is even trying to bring stability to Baghdad is evidence of the government's imperial ambitions. It's none of the American people's business. The occupation must end now!

LeftLibertarian2

A new Yahoo group for left libertarians has been set up because of discontent over the the group known as LeftLibertarian. You can view LeftLibertarian2 by clicking here. For details on why a new group is thought desirable, see Roderick Long's post "Long Live Secession" listed over there in the "Sheldon's Shared Items" box. Even more details can be found in the group posts. Also see this. In a nutshell, it has everything to do with J. Neil Schulman's authoritarian rule over the other list. Hey, he owns the list. So a big bunch of us walked.

Barack by Popular Demand?

When you look at the top presidential contenders -- Obama, Clinton, Edwards, McCain, Giuliani, Romney -- I have no doubt that in terms of the total package, Obama is preferable to the others. I'm sure I disagree with virtually everything in his platform -- except his opposition to the war and related state crimes -- nevertheless he beats those others hands down. He's for socialized medicine? Who on that list isn't?

Go, Barack!

P.S.: I haven't voted since 1980, when I voted Libertarian for president.

Spencer the Great on Patriotism

Herbert Spencer, the English libertarian, was a great thinker, but he must be the most maligned intellectual in history. This is from his essay "Patriotism" (1902):

Some years ago I gave my expression to my own feeling – anti-patriotic feeling, it will doubtless be called – in a somewhat startling way. It was at the time of the second Afghan war, when, in pursuance of what were thought to be “our interests,” we were invading Afghanistan. News had come that some of our troops were in danger. At the Athenæum Club a well-known military man – then a captain but now a general – drew my attention to a telegram containing this news, and read it to me in a manner implying the belief that I should share his anxiety. I astounded him by replying – “When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.”

I foresee the exclamation which will be called forth. Such a principle, it will be said, would make an army impossible and a government powerless. It would never do to have each soldier use his judgment about the purpose for which a battle is waged. Military organization would be paralyzed and our country would be a prey to the first invader.

Not so fast, is the reply. For one war an army would remain just as available as now – a war of national defence. In such a war every soldier would be conscious of the justice of his cause. He would not be engaged in dealing death among men about whose doings, good or ill, he knew nothing, but among men who were manifest transgressors against himself and his compatriots. Only aggressive war would be negatived, not defensive war....

But those whose cry is – “Our country, right or wrong!” and who would add to our eighty-odd possessions others to be similarly obtained, will contemplate with disgust such a restriction upon military action. To them no folly seems greater than that of practising on Monday the principles they profess on Sunday. [Emphasis added.]

Bush versus Chavez

George II may be a lame duck in the United States. But his political career apparently isn't over. He's seems to be running for president of South America against Hugo Chavez. Of course the two candidates are making the usual promises of largess to the voters. It's left-wing state socialism versus right-wing state capitalism.

"I've come to South America and Central America to advance a positive, constructive diplomacy that is being conducted by my [sic] government on behalf of the American people [!]," Bush said.

"I would call our diplomacy quiet and effective diplomacy -- diplomacy all aimed at helping people, aimed at elevating the human condition [sic], aimed at expressing the great compassion of the American people [!]."

May the best man win.

Update: See my "Bush and Chavez: A Marriage Made in Hell."

Exporting the Welfare State

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

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

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

Let's not take this generosity thing too far.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Free to Migrate

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

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

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

If Bush Didn't Exist, Hugo Chavez Would Have to Invent Him

The New York Times reported yesterday that:

President Bush arrives here [Brazil] on Thursday with an energy partnership plan to create jobs and decrease poverty and inequality, a marked shift in Washington’s priorities for Latin America aimed at countering the challenge posed by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

The problem is that U.S. government involvement gives Chávez a reason for amassing more power. George II is playing right into his hands. But that doesn't mean the administration doesn't know what it's doing. It knows perfectly well. But an ascendant Chávez happens to give the U.S. government a pretext for further intervention. In other words, Bush and Chávez need each other. They are actually getting along very well.

A president who really wanted a proper relationship with the people of Latin America would call off the drug war -- the farmers there really love having their crops destroyed -- and then end all other forms of intervention in the region.